painting by e.e.cummings

i like my body when it is with your body

...

i like my body when it is with your

body,  It is so quite new a thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

i like your body.  i like what it does,

i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine

of your body and its bones,and the trembling

-firm-smooth ness and which i will

again and again and again

kiss,  i like kissing this and that of you,

i like,slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz

of your electric fur,and what-is-it comes

over parting flesh.....And eyes big love-crumbs,

...

and possibly like the thrill

...

of under me you so quite new

...

~ e.e.cummings

.

The Uses of Sorrow

...

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

...

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

...

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

...

~ Mary Oliver

.

Thirst

...
Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have.  I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons.  Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell;  grant me, in your mercy, a little more time.  Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart.  Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.
...
~ Mary Oliver


.

These roses under my window

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower, there is no more; in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. 

...

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

.

i love you much(most beautiful darling)

i love you much(most beautiful darling)


more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky


-sunlight and singing welcome your coming
although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
noone can quite begin to guess

(except my life)the true time of year-

and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such
sunlight as will leap higher than high
through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each

nearness)everyone certainly would(my
most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love

~ e.e.cummings

A Moment of Happiness

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.

We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden's beauty
and the birds singing.

The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.

You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.

The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.

In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

~ Rumi

The Dalliance of the Eagles

...
Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate divorce flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.
...
~ Walt Whitman


.

Archaic torso of Apollo

...
We have no idea what his fantastic head
was like, where the eyeballs were slowly swelling. But
his body now is glowing like a lamp
whose inner eyes, only turned down a little,
...
hold their flame, shine. If there weren't light, the curve
of the breast wouldn't blind you, and in the swerve
of the thighs a smile wouldn't keep on going
toward the place where the seeds are.
...
If there weren't light, this stone would look cut off
where it drops so clearly from the shoulders,
its skin wouldn't gleam like the fur of a wild animal,
...
and the body wouldn't send out light from every edge
as a star does...for there is no place at all
that isn't looking at you.  You must change your life.
...
~ Rainer Maria Rilke


.

Let the beauty we love be what we do

...
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.  Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading.  Take down a musical instrument.
...
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
...
~ Rumi 


.

The clay jug

...

Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains,

and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!

All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.

The acid that tests gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.

And the music from the stirings that no one touches, and the

source of all water.

...

It you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:

Friend, listen:  the God whom I love is inside.

...

~ Kabir

~ click title to hear reading.

from Anam Cara

...

In your clay body, things are coming to expression and to light that were never known before, presences that never came to light or shape in any other individual.  To paraphrase Heidegger, who said, "Man is a shepherd of being,"   we could say, "Man is a shepherd of clay."  You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.  Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography but to the clay our of which you are formed.  At other times, you will find sorrow moving through you, like a dark mist over a landscape.   This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you.  It is a mistake to interfere with this movement of feeling.  It is more appropriate to recognize that this emotion belongs more to your clay than to your mind.  It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass; it is on its way elsewhere. Regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient, sisters and brothers of the one clay.  In each of us a different part of the mystery becomes luminous.  To truly be and become yourself,  you need the ancient radiance of others.

...

~ John O'Donohue

.

...

It was among ferns I learned about eternity.

Below your belly there is a curly place.

...

~ Robert Bly

.

what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan,  and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention,  how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me,  what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver



.

In my sky at twilight

...
In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.
...
The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!
...
You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.
...
You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of you eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.
....
~ Pablo Neruda


.

don't go back to sleep

.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

.You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

.People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

.The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

~ Rumi

I dream of a quiet man

I dream of a quiet man

who explains nothing and defends

nothing, but only knows

where the rarest wildflowers

are blooming, and who goes,

and finds that he is smiling

not by his own will.

~ Wendell Berry

you shall above all things be glad and young

.

you shall above all things be glad and young

For if you're young,whatever life you wear

..

it will become you;and if you are glad

whatever's living will yourself become.

Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:

i can entirely her only love

..

whose any mystery makes every man's

flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

..

that you should ever think, may god forbid

and(in his mercy)your true lover spare:

for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave

called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

..

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

..

~ e.e.cummings

.

from 'Walden'--In proportion as he simplifies his life

In proportion as he simplifies his life, 
the laws of the universe will appear less complex, 
and solitude will not be solitude, 
nor poverty poverty, 
nor weakness weakness. 
If you have built castles in the air, 
your work need not be lost; 
that is where they should be. 
Now put the foundations under them.

~ Henry Thoreau 

.

Do you have the patience 
to wait until your mud settles, 
and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving

 until the right action arises by itself? .


~ Lao-tzu

.

perfect dogma

.

'There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.'

.

~ Hermann Hesse 

.

from 'On the Road'

.
... the mad ones 
the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'
.
~ Jack Kerouac,


.

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

~ Mary Oliver

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you


here is the deepest secret nobody knows


(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart


i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)




~ e.e.cummings

.

escape from these two worlds.

There is no salvation for the soul 

But to fall in Love.

It has to creep and crawl 

Among the Lovers first.

Only Lovers can escape 

From these two worlds. 

This was written in creation.

Only from the Heart 

Can you reach the sky. 

The rose of Glory 

Can only be raised in the Heart.

~ Rumi

it is so long since my heart has been with yours

it is so long since my heart has been with yours

shut by our mingling arms through

a darkness where new lights begin and 

increase,

since your mind has walked into

my kiss as a stranger

into the streets and colours of a town-

that i have perhaps forgotten

how,always(from

these hurrying crudities

of blood and flesh)Love

coins His most gradual gesture,

and whittles life to eternity

-after which our separating selves become museums

filled with skilfully stuffed memories

~ e.e.cummings

.

e.e.cummings-charcoal sketch

Just keep going

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I just believe in me...Yoko and me

...

I don't believe in magic

I don't believe in I-Ching

I don't believe in Bible

I don't believe in Tarot

I don't believe in Hitler

I don't believe in Jesus

I don't believe in Kennedy

I don't believe in Buddha

I don't believe in Mantra

I don't believe in Gita

I don't believe in Yoga

I don't believe in Kings

I don't believe in Elvis

I don't believe in Zimmerman

I don't believe in Beatles

I just believe in me

...

Yoko and me ...

...

~ John Lennon

 

.

It is the mind

If nothing will serve a man but rich clothes and furniture, statues and plate, a numerous train of servants, and the rarities of all nations, it is not Fortunes's fault, but his own, that he is not satisfied; for his desires are insatiable, and this is not a thirst, but a disease; and if he were master of the whole world, he would be still a beggar. It is the mind that makes us rich and happy, in what condition soever we are; and money signifies no more to it than it does to the gods.

~ Seneca

...

Late evening finally

comes: I unlatch the door

and quietly

await the one

who greets me in my dreams.

...

~Otomo No Yakamochi


.

guardian angel

I am the bird that knocks at your window in the morning
and your companion, whom you cannot know,
the blossoms that light up for the blind.

I am the glacier’s crest above the forests, the dazzling one
and the brass voices from cathedral towers.
The thought that suddenly comes over you at midday
and fills you with a singular happiness.

I am one you have loved long ago.
I walk alongside you by day and look intently at you
and put my mouth on your heart
but you don’t know it.

I am your third arm and your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you don’t have the heart for
and who cannot ever forget you.




~ Rolf Jacobsen

Brute force crushes many plants

...
Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.


...
~ DH Lawrence
 
.

In dreams I walk with you

A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night

Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper

'Go to sleep, everything is all right'

I close my eyes, then I drift away

Into the magic night. I softly say

A silent prayer, like dreamers do

Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you.

In dreams I walk with you, in dreams I talk to you
In dreams you're mine all of the time, we're together
In dreams, in dreams ...



~ Roy Orbison

catcher in the rye

"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like—"

"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said.

 "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."

"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."

She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye."

 I didn't know it then, though.

"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said.

 "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game 

in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around—

 nobody big, I mean— except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.

 What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—

 I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going

 I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. 

That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye 

and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing

 I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy." 

~ JD Salinger

.

 

 

... or you must not reason at all

...
When she had said goodbye to her husband and her children and there was only a minute left before the third bell, I ran into her compartment to put a basket, which she had almost forgotten, on the rack, and I had to say goodbye. When our eyes met in the compartment our spiritual fortitude deserted us both; I took her in my arms, she pressed her face to my breast, and tears flowed from her eyes. Kissing her face, her shoulders, her hands wet with tears -- oh, how unhappy we were! -- I confessed my love for her, and with a burning pain in my heart I realised how unnecessary, how petty, and how deceptive all that had hindered us from loving was. I understood that when you love you must either, in your reasonings about that love, start from what is highest, from what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their accepted meaning, or you must not reason at all.

...

~ Anton Chekhov

.

I used to be shy

...

I used to be shy.

You made me sing.

...

I used to refuse things at table.

Now I shout for more wine.

...

In somber dignity, I used to sit

on my mat and pray.

...

Now children run through

and make faces at me.

...

~ Rumi

.

The night knows nothing of the chants of night

.

The night knows nothing of the chants of night.

It is what it is as I am what I am:

And in perceiving this I best perceive myself

.

And you. Only we two may interchange

Each in the other what each has to give.

Only we two are one, not you and night,

.

Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,

So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,

So far beyond the casual solitudes,

.

That night is only the background of our selves,

Supremely true each to its separate self,

In the pale light that each upon the other throws.

.

~ Wallace Stevens

.

I am for you, and you are for me

.

I draw you close to me, you woman

I cannot let you go, I would do you good,

I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake,

but for others' sakes,

Envelop'd in you sleep greater heroes and bards,

They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.

~ Walt Whitman

.

as is the sea marvelous

as is the sea marvelous
from god's
hands which sent her forth
to sleep upon the world
...
and the earth withers
the moon crumbles
one by one
stars flutter into dust
...
but the sea
does not change
and she goes forth out of hands and
she returns into hands
...
and is with sleep ...
.
love,
the breaking
.
of your
soul
upon
my lips
...


~ e.e.cummings

Time to ignore sensible advice,

to untie the knots our culture

 

ties us with. Cut to the quick

Put cotton in both sentimental

 

ears.  Go back to the reedbed.

Let the cane sugar rise again in you.

 

No rules or daily duties.  Those

do not bring the peace of silence.

~ Rumi

Poetry is just the evidence of life.
If your life is burning well,
poetry is just the ash.

...

~ Leonard Cohen

.

...

I've given up on my brain.

I've torn the cloth to shreds

and thrown it away.

...
If you're not completely naked,

wrap your beautiful robe of words

around you, and sleep.

...

~ Rumi

.

I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose

...

I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

...

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

...

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way

...

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

...

~ Pablo Neruda

.

in gratitude

We kneel in gratitude

as the movements in love

disperse our sweet intentions

across the fictions

of Companionship-

two of the creatures

which You named Me

~ Leonard Cohen

She is standing on my eyelids

...

She is standing on my eyelids
And her hair is wound in mine,

She has the form of my hands,

She has the colour of my eyes,

She is swallowed by my shadow

Like a stone against the sky.

...

Her eyes are always open

And will not let me sleep.

Her dreams in broad daylight

Make the suns evaporate

Make me laugh, cry and laugh,

Speak with nothing to say.

...

~ Paul Eluard

.

my soul was drenched

When the Day came --
The Day I had lived and died for --
The Day that is not in any calendar --
Clouds heavy with love
Showered me with wild abundance.
Inside me, my soul was drenched.
Around me, even the desert grew green.

~ Kabir

He had waited so long

...
He had waited so long: his latter years had been no more than a stand-to. Oppressed with countless little daily cares, he had waited: of course he had run after girls all that time, he had travelled, and naturally he had had to earn his living. But through all that, his sole care had been to hold himself in readiness. For an act. A free, considered act; that should pledge his whole life, and stand at the beginning of a new existence. He had never been able to engage himself completely in any love-affair, or any pleasure, he had never been really unhappy: he always felt as though he were somewhere else, that he was not yet wholly born. He waited. And during all that time, gently, stealthily, the years had come, they had grasped him from behind ...

...

~ Jean-Paul Sartre
 
.

Up those stone steps I climb

...

Up those stone steps I climb
Hail this joyful day's return

Into its great shadowed vault I go

Hail the Pentecostal morn

...

The reading is from Luke 24

Where Christ returns to his loved ones

I look at the stone apostles

Think that it's alright for some

...

And I wish that I was made of stone

So that I would not have to see

A beauty impossible to define

A beauty impossible to believe

...

A beauty impossible to endure

The blood imparted in little sips

The smell of you still on my hands

As I bring the cup up to my lips

...

No God up in the sky

No devil beneath the sea

Could do the job that you did, baby

Of bringing me to my knees

...

Outside I sit on the stone steps

With nothing much to do

Forlorn and exhausted, baby

By the absence of you

...

~ Nick Cave

.