Sunday, April 11, 2021

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


 
 

Friday, April 9, 2021

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




Tuesday, April 6, 2021

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

.

Saturday, April 3, 2021

toward me








Existence leans its mouth
toward me,
because my love
cares for
it.
 
 
 
 
~ Meister Eckhart
art by Coleen-Joy Page




see no stranger

 
 
 

 


See no stranger has become a practice that defines my relationships. . . .
 
 Seeing no stranger begins in wonder. 
It is to look upon the face of anyone and choose to say: 
You are a part of me I do not yet know. 
Wonder is the wellspring for love. 
 
Who we wonder about determines whose stories we hear 
and whose joy and pain we share. Those we grieve with,
 those we sit with and weep with, are ultimately those we organize
 with and advocate for. 
 
When a critical mass of people come together to wonder about one another,
 grieve with one another, and fight with and for one another, we begin to build
 the solidarity needed for collective liberation and transformation
—a solidarity rooted in love. . . .

Out in the world, I notice the unconscious biases that arise in me
 when I look at faces on the street or in the news. 
To practice seeing each of them as a sister or brother or family member, 
I say in my mind: You are a part of me I do not yet know. 
 
Through conscious repetition, I am practicing orienting to the world
 with wonder and preparing myself for the possibility of connection.
 (Sometimes I do this with animals and the earth, too!) 
 
It opens me up to pay attention to their story. When their story is painful, 
I make excuses to turn back—“It’s too overwhelming” or “It’s not my place”
—but I hold the compass and remember that all I need to do is be present
 to their pain and find a way to grieve with them. 
If I can sit with their pain, I begin to ask:

What do they need?
 
 
 
Valarie Kaur
 Australian aboriginal art
 
 
 

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

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
 
 
 

Monday, March 29, 2021

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
 
 
 
 
 

Saturday, March 27, 2021

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