Leaf Enlightened [Common Meter]

I stared, and stared, into a leaf
  until my vision changed.
 And I could see the whole, wide world
   so artfully arranged.

The leaf, it mapped my universe
   from atom to the sprawl.
 Compressed, layer-on-layer, there
    was one and, at once, all. 

But before I could grasp all that
   this vision truly meant,
  a gust of wind did catch that leaf,
     and fluttering it went.

Satori [Free Verse]

It was a moment 
 of silent spaciousness.

In the midst of a fight,
 there was no enemy --
  just the effortless
   dance of the thing.

That moment 
 expanded to the infinite,
  & snapped back 
   to one tick after the tock.

Since then, 
 no catastrophe has felt 
  too great for a smile.

Spontaneous Ideation [Free Verse]

ideas accelerate to the surface
like air bubbles

from whence they came,
i cannot say

they passed up from below
the lit sea

from the darkness 

maybe, like air bubbles,
they follow a mostly straight path,
but i cannot say for certain
what happens below the light

i catch only the vapor that drifts up
out of the popping bubbles

and it must be gathered quickly 
before it spreads on the wind,
becoming lukewarm nothing...

damn increasing entropy!

Black Hole [Kyōka]

deep in the cave,
there’s a hole that knows no light;
everything
and nothing can reside
within that black hole

Mad Mind-Fire [Free Verse]

My brain is an angry sac of neurons:
hot wired / electrified.

Sizzling synapses ready to snap
and spew seedy scenes
upon this world.

But no one hears a scream
in the dark void of a barren mind:

though the scream radiates outward
as a painful wave of unknown
origin & purpose,

a tremor in the fabric of us

Self Speculation [Free Verse]

What's a Self?

...a soul?
...a set of neuronal activity?
...an illusion?
...a ghost in a machine?
...the body, the brain, &
the whole enchilada?

Memories can be false,
and some always are.

Thoughts can be illusory,
and some always are.

Feelings can be flighty & fickle,
and some always are.

If one loses a little toe,
is one a diminished self,
or still whole?

What about if one loses
a pinky toe-sized mass of brain?

So many possibilities:

...death,
...changed personality,
...emotionlessness,
...speech pathologies,
...blindness,
...memory loss,
...coma,
...no discernable change,
and so on.

What's a Self?
...a dog?
...an embryo?
...an AI?
...an extraterrestrial?

What is a self?

Am I a self?