bluebird

 

 

 

 

 

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you? 

 

 

 

~ Charles Bukowski

from The Last Night of the Earth Poems

 art by Ayat Fawzy

 

 

 

 

a gardner digs in another time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The gardener digs in another time, without past or future, beginning or end.

 A time that does not cleave the day with rush hours, lunch breaks, the last bus home.

 As you walk in the garden you pass into this time —

 the moment of entering can never be remembered.

 Around you the landscape lies transfigured.

 Here is the Amen beyond the prayer.

I have re-discovered my boredom here… 

where I can fight “what next” with nothing.

My garden is a memorial, each circular bed a dial and a true lover’s knot 

— planted with lavender, helichryssum and santolina.

to whom it may concern
in the dead stones of a planet
no longer remembered as earth
may he decipher this opaque hieroglyph
perform an archeology of soul
on these precious fragments
all that remains of our vanished days
here — at the sea’s edge
I have planted a stony garden
dragon tooth dolmen spring up
to defend the porch
steadfast warriors

 

 

 

 

~ Derek Jarman

from Modern Nature

with thanks to brianpickings

art by Emily Hughes

 

 

something unimportant

Happy as something unimportant

and free as a thing unimportant.

As something no one prizes

and which does not prize itself.

As something mocked by all

and which mocks at their mockery.

As laughter without serious reason. 

As a yell able to outyell itself.

Happy as no matter what,

as any no matter what.

Happy

as a dog's tail.

~ Anna Swir

from Talking to my body

translated by Czeslaw Milosz

without why

The Rose is without why

She blooms because she blooms

She does not care for herself

Asks not if she is seen.

***


The rose which here on earth is now perceived by me,
Has blossomed thus in God from all eternity.

~ Angelus Silesius

photo by albert koetsier

wordless and idea-less

Let your ears hear whatever they want to hear;
 let your eyes see whatever they want to see;
 let your mind think whatever it wants to think;
 let your lungs breathe in their own rhythm. 


Do not expect any special result,
 for in this wordless and idea-less state, 
where can there be past or future, 
and where any notion of purpose? 


Stop, look, and listen.

~ Alan Watts

a flowing force

Songs are thoughts, 

sung out with the breath when people are moved by great forces

 and ordinary speech no longer suffices. 

 

Man is moved just like the ice floe sailing here and there out in the current.

 His thoughts are driven by a flowing force when he feels joy, 

when he feels fear, when he feels sorrow. 

 

Thoughts can wash over him like a flood,

 making his breath come in gasps and his heart throb. 

 

Something like an abatement in the weather will keep him thawed up. 

And then it will happen that we, who think we are small, will feel still smaller.

 

 And we will fear to use words. 

When the words we want to use shoot up of themselves -

 we get a new song.

~ Orpingalik

 Inuit poet and shaman

every time

Let people realize clearly 
that every time they threaten someone
 or humiliate or unnecessarily
 hurt or dominate or reject
 another human being, 
they become forces for
 the creation of psychopathology, 
even if these be small forces.
 Let them recognize that every person
 who is kind, helpful, decent, 
psychologically democratic, 
affectionate, and warm,
 is a psychotheraputic force.

  ~ Abraham H. Maslow

those irrational fears

Most parents, when they see children not terrorized by the things that terrorize them, 

they work very hard until they've finally got you terrorized. 

They teach you those irrational fears. 

Well-meaning, but they do just the same. 

~  Abraham / Hicks

Two Look at Two

.

Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountainside
With night so near, but not much further up.
They muct have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of the path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
In one last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. "This is all," they sighed,
"Good-night to woods." But not so; there was more.
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in tow,
Was in her clouded eyes: they saw no fear there.
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
"This, then is all. What more is there to ask?"
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,
Not the same doe come back into her place.
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,
As if to ask, "Why don't you make some motion?
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.
I doubt if you're living as you look."
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared
To stretch a proffering hand-and a spell-breaking.
Then he too passed uncsared along the wall.
Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from.
"This must be all." It was all. Still they stood,
A great wave from it going over them,
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favor
Had made them certain earth returned their love.

.

~ Robert Frost

.

toward me

Existence leans its mouth
toward me,
because my love
cares for
it.

 

 

 

 
~ Meister Eckhart

art by Coleen-Joy Page

love and compassion

.

.

We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received
wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion....

This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need
for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated
philosophy, doctrine or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple.
The doctrine is compassion.

Love for others and respect for their rights and
dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need.
So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we are
learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow some
other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others and
conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is
no doubt we will be happy.

~ Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

.

 

 

 

deepest root of compassion

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bearing the unbearable is the deepest root of compassion in the world. 

When you bear what you think you cannot bear,

 who you think you are dies. 

 

You become compassion. 

You don't have compassion - you are compassion. 

 

True compassion goes beyond empathy 

to being with the experience of another.

 

 You become an instrument of compassion.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass

 art by Susan Cohen Thompson

 

 

 

scapegoating?

 

 

 

 

The word “scapegoating”

 originated from an ingenious ritual described in Leviticus 16.

 According to Jewish law, on the Day of Atonement,

 the high priest laid hands on an “escaping” goat, 

placing all the sins of the Jewish people from the previous year onto the animal.

 

 Then the goat was beaten with reeds and thorns,

 driven out into the desert, and the people went home rejoicing. 

 

Violence towards the innocent victim was apparently quite effective

 at temporarily relieving the group’s guilt and shame. 

 

The same scapegoating dynamic was at play when European Christians

 burned supposed heretics at the stake, and when white Americans

 lynched Black Americans. In fact, the pattern is identical

 and totally non-rational.

Whenever the “sinner” is excluded, our collective 

ego is delighted and feels relieved and safe.

 It works, but only for a while, because it is merely an illusion.

 Repeatedly believing the lie, that this time we have the true culprit, 

we become more catatonic, habitually ignorant, and culpable

—because, of course, scapegoating never really eliminates evil in the first place.

 

 As Russian philosopher Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote,

 “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, 

and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.

 But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

 

” As long as the evil is “over there,” we can change or expel

 someone else as the contaminating element. 

We then feel purified and at peace. 

...we think our own violence is necessary and even good.

 But there is no such thing as redemptive violence. 

 

Violence doesn’t save; 

 it only destroys all parties in both the short and long term. 

 

 

 

 

~ Richard Rohr

adapted from CONSPIRE 2016: Everything Belongs

 

 

 

 

 

annals of T'AI CHI: "Push Hands"

 

 

 

 

 

In this long routine "Push Hands,"

one recognizes force and yields, then 

slides, again, again, endless like water,

what goes away, what follows, aggressive

courtesy till force must always lose,

lost in the seethe and retreat of the ocean.

 

So does the sail fill, and air come

just so, because of what's gone, "Yes"

in all things, "Yes, come in if you

insist," and thus conducted find a way

out,  yin following and becoming  

by a beautiful absence it's partner yang. 

 

 

 

~ William Stafford

from Poetry, Sept. 1992

 

 

 

choices

 

 

 

 

 

 

What we ordinarily mean by choice is not freedom.

 Choices are usually decisions motivated by pleasure and pain,

 and the divided mind acts with the sole purpose 

of getting “I” into pleasure and out of pain. 

 

But the best pleasures are those for which we do not plan, 

and the worst part of pain is expecting it

 and trying to get away from it when it has come. 

 

  when I try to act and decide in order to be happy,

 when I make “being pleased” my future goal.

 

 For the more my actions 

are directed towards future pleasures, 

the more I am incapable

of enjoying any pleasures at all.

 

 For all pleasures are present, 

and nothing save complete awareness of the present 

can even begin to guarantee future happiness.

It seems that if I am afraid, then I am “stuck” with fear.

 But in fact I am chained to the fear only so long as I am trying to get away from it.

 

 On the other hand, when I do not try to get away I discover 

that there is nothing “stuck” or fixed about the reality of the moment.

 

 When I am aware of this feeling without naming it, without calling it “fear,”

 “bad,” “negative,” etc., it changes instantly into something else,

 and life moves freely ahead. The feeling no longer perpetuates itself...

 

The further truth that the undivided mind is aware of experience as a unity,

 of the world as itself, and that the whole nature of mind and awareness 

is to be one with what it knows, suggests a state that would usually be called love…

 

 Love is the organizing and unifying principle which makes the world a universe

 and the disintegrated mass a community. It is the very essence and character

 of mind, and becomes manifest in action when the mind is whole… 

This, rather than any mere emotion, 

is the power and principle of free action.

 

 

 

 

 ~ Alan Watts

from The Wisdom of Insecurity

art by Van Gogh

with thanks to brainpickings