river, bank

a country

what you call yourselves
the many of you
changes with millenia
as language rises and falls
what you call
the sound of it
once clear
becomes
a bird's note
unintelligible
(perhaps beautiful)

the word for yourselves
is the my
in country

land is
without you
namelessly
indelible
important to itself

love

I
would die
rather
than let this
hit word leave my
hard mouth.

I would crawl up stairs
gasping
for air
to breathe
forgiveness.

I pray
108 times twice.
I repay
an old debt
with interest.


Fear and anger -
I have
tidal surges.

I tithe
to you
3000
prostrations.

I tithe to you
all that is left
of love.

glass bones

The bog ate the milkiness -
transparency an afterward

Bog bodies,
peat icicles

Glass bones-
I think for days now
on those slender
flutes,
playing underfoot.

27.12.12

Son returns from China
kisses you warm

on Christmas eve
you die

slipping on ice
warning -
you'll fall!

"9 weeks ago",
grieves granddaughter,
"I had 4. Now 2 !"

after

after this

she saw the doctor
he wrote (large, emphatically)
C  O  N  T  A  G  I  O  U  S  !

after that

she thawed a lie
trying to lose it
a p o l  o  g i  s  e   d
(awkwardly, insincerely)

after all
she said
even Hitler had something -
all of us do.

sounding joy

great light

this day

born

christmas

moon waxing gibbous

-6 C

on this holy day

find yourself an elephant

or

find yourself

alone

remember hemingway

it's
what you





    

lucid dream 1

children
fear
again and again
changes
us
as we
them

changes
everything

this dream

one fear after another -

one
one

one.

the river - freeze

water, sunblind

dangerously close to


transformation

extension

out there

time so short

a suffix

rain

practice active listening

diminishing year

years
noble souls

as many as
drops of

snow ll

second grey day
yellow, orange
trucks
building the bridge
white sky
dry streets

workers
ready


to know

when

to stop
to start

bow

what i heard


kamsa mamarho cheol hamnida

108배 참회문

first snow

triangulum mid sky
orion rising
there
jupiter in taurus
uranus among
whales and fishes


billions blink

blowing

drifting

among

several sandy inches of snow

see that

A balanced
approach !



Take
a
look.

some things

dream book (lucid)

black water (beauty)

slippers

seon (staying here now)

lunch

walk

clean brushes
clean spirit

pain 2

So
some thing untouchable
lifts every voice

when you look at it

a lost child is a firefly
lights up the struggle
to be in this
beautiful world

it's not a pain that sits still
it dances and sings and plays
around your heart

you sit still
and breathe
and see it
follow its dragon
as it rides the sky
and rains upon us

everything
everything

Bandi fireflies
green glow love
winter dragon's white flame  wings

everything
everything

pain

didn't believe
but true
20 children killed
and teachers too

the matricide
suicide

maybe more horror

this evening
enough
for streets of parents
husbands
wives
lovers

it's her birthday tonight
with a cake

it's enough to be silent
pray joy
pray joy

when they are ready

reflections on a good week

if

if
i examine  my practice
i like small thing-ness
copper leafed boxes of wood and water
flint cast-offs and toy castaways
in what my parents called good materials
plant cloth, metal, and glass,
fine dried wood, stone and earth

i like retrieving
memories
that are not memories
but present states
which is
i think
my job

if
i have eyes
i examine them
clean up
sweep the floors of my house
so i can see in all directions

i like small soul gestures
a mudra, a syllable of god -
the repetition of a kyrie
or  faded midrash
a bead
masbaha  or subha(99)
mala (108)
rosary (54, 150)
or

komboloi (33)

if i make

39 metal pools for a teaspoon of black water
a 110 metal beaded mala
as clumsy and heavy
as beautiful broken and drilled stones

i make thing-ness that expands me
one cm at a time

Lux, lucia lungta - december 13

braving darkness
buried at noon today
your lungtas, lucia
to rise
like cloud mountains
dancing in the sky
on
Easter's day

happy birthday steve buscemi

(among others)

                                 heinrich heine
                                 mary todd lincoln

under this new moon no blues,
think of the champ, archie moore
to whom my brother in law, long ago,
introduced his then small children

you're somebody's hero, too, steve buscemi

happy birthday steve

play a little rimsky korsakov

hum the strums of carlos montoya

read steve

this poem's pick              kenneth patchen

live it up

an artist needs art
like he needs his heart

aymeric and nicholas of belgium are 7

7 and 13 - 2 for 2 primes - princes too!
 that's pretty fine,  steve

prime time
it's that kind of year

believe steve

things are looking up         ben bernacke's birthday too

he's no fool
went to school

i wish you a green and fruitful day
green and great as Haida Gwai
in an Emily Carr canvas

both green wishes, steve, for growth

so

know

because you are

all of this

i wish

you
steve buscemi
you

happy birthday

bus mudras*

the holy everyday
if you look

crooked glasses and teeth
soft and musty like a bruised plum
repeating your plea
i am hungry
i am hungry

your florescent vest
if i'd looked
tells
disabled
but i have something
to think about, Song Chol

fool
who's the fool?

you gave her a handful of chips
which she happily chomped

isn't that why we're here?

you smiling Christmas
as the older gentleman
did as he got off

and i blessed you then

for waking me up to


the what is this
for what it is


* dedicated to all passengers, especially to the midday northbound 67 bus - 20 ksepana mudra   29 vajra mudra  42 atmanjali mudra

shroud

Sturdy
unbleached
muslin
placed in the earth
during Advent
over-wintered

Easter
spring
resurrection.

washed and hung

lungta
dream

12 12 12

is 9
is 108
is
is

a hot spring hidden in blue clay

is the realisation of being
loved
cared for
free

is number numerable

is

is

now

look again

p a t i e n t        

 v e r s i on      

 no     

                                                                                             e x p e c t a t i o n s

walk

through
through
through

walk through

the integration of

movement
feeling
thought

clear clean spaces

your life
everyday your life
walk through it

Vairocana mudra of unity and wisdom

white water moon

2008 Avalokitesvara  Seol Min Seunim

buddhism and death

this place

of sun
cold
high skies
water

this is
this is

this place

hurt

let it in
expand
feel it
look at it
let it out

let it

go.

lovelife

Dirty old water -
he called you that.

But I admire you,
desire you.

I choose you,
oh river
in the rain,
at 36 degrees,
to grow old and grey with.

celestial positions

ordinal values

13th Baktun ends

14th Baktun begins

the 1st Canon
and its companion retrograde

the beautiful 13th
triplex

the 14th
16th notes, 6 times

the final soggetto
cryptogrammic loveliness
muse mathematics

embracing starry notes and heavenly calculations
that
in truth
are the mind's time
the poetics of our
passage

here.

listening to stars and streams

http://oregonbachfestival.com/digitalbach/goldberg/

"Discovery of BWV 1087 

In 1974 a published copy of the Goldberg Variations, first owned by Bach himself, was discovered in private possession in France. Accompanying the manuscript, in Bach's hand, there was attached a single page with fourteen canons on the first eight notes of the Goldberg ground. The discovery of the hitherto unknown manuscript was immediately hailed as the most important addition of a Bach source in recent decades. Of the fourteen canons, only numbers 11 and 13 had been known before 1974. "

"Signature Number? 

It is a coincidence, perhaps, that there are fourteen canons in the Goldberg addendum. But to those who are cognizant of Bach's fascination with the number 14 as the sum of the ordinal values of the letters of his name (B+A+C+H), the number of canons in this cycle is more than coincidental. Bach's last major work, Art of the Fugue contains fourteen Contrapuncti, the last of which is the unfinished quadruple fugue in which the third subject is the BACH motive. If the number of canons can be understood to represent the composer's signature number, we might infer that Bach wished for the cycle of canons to represent, just as the Art of the Fugue represents, the last word on the subject. "


Baktun  (14)

Bach tune -14 being the sum of the letters of his name (B+A+C+H = 2+1+3+8)

Leaving

Between Skaggerak and Katttegut,

in an empty finger of country,

creased by fjord, low streams,

he was seen loping

once
twice

and again.

To where?

wolf

You the first in 199 years
throat tumorous and slowly starving.
Dying voiceless, alone
howl now
I was here
I was here.

"If we take the advice of the Buddha and other great teachers from the past and continue to practice meditation, we too begin to move away from feeling like we are bombarded by a waterfall of thoughts.

Instead we feel more like we are in the midst of a very powerful thought river. This is not a  bad start.

Over time and with practice, it feels like the thoughts bombarding us are more at the pace of a babbling brook or a gentle stream,

which ultimately leads to the mind of wakefulness - a large spacious pond without a ripple on it."

- lodro rinzler

tiger and monk - as thoughts from a museum

Joseph Wright of Derby
an asthmatic Caravaggisti
painted two small girls
dressing a kitten in doll's clothes.
In the candle light, the kitten's
still blueish eyes gaze out.
She's furious.
One of the girls smiles, inviting us to forget this.
Gentle creature!
However, at this moment, the cat, precise, discerning, is caught
before she wrestles free, leaps, and leaves the picture.

Delicious!

Francisco Zurbaran
painted the saint from Assisi
in his tomb
contemplating a skull.
His?
Held like a gourd, crown down,
the shadowed saint in a shadowed tomb
gazes into the
skull's dark pool.
Does he drink cool water
as Wonhyo did?

Delicious!

removing
100 tacks
100 staples
rolling up canvases

one
"The Dark Wood"
another
"Anger"

an open space

p  a  t  i  e  n  c  e

bridge work

Bridge work continues,
the raised span
inaccessible
for another month or so.

It is not silent,
this inaccessability -
it murmurs, hums for hours each day.

Lost connections
continue to speak.

A cautious communique
is a nod
to the discipline required,
to the expertise
of renewal.

One hopes
it will not be the same,
after bridge work,
going here to there.

Walking

An every day walk,
even in the rain,
should recognise you, your life.

There was a hill I walked to,
overlooking a stream in a blind man's park
where thousands of bats fed at sunset.

incorrigibility

A cold city hill
dipped down -
a street became a thousand stars.
Dark school buildings were my pillow.

delusion

Mount Parnassus
rose among the coyotes
and trees, as I walked to
the Pacific through the fog.

panic


A rivelet
in a vast corn field,
where sat
an exhausted pheasant, pointed me north and homeward.

anger

Now
a river full of light
a brook of black water
a sea
a sea -
water walks me home through the hill-less land.

obsession

Tendencies and disturbances, reform.
I walk, I walk, I walk.


사 is a temple
built of walking,
로 the wide avenue
to it.

27 challenges, 100,000 petitions

seven hours into the evening ahead

we agree

no
more
talking.

om benza sato hung
27 times

why not repair
in lieu of
reparation?

om benza sato hung
100,000 repetitions

friendship is not
out of the question.

27 times

in less than ten minutes,
is it possible to
renew karma
clean out the soul?

100,000 repetitions

before sleep,
wash all of yourself.

om benza sato hung

27 times
100,00 repetitions

december attachments

Those born under the goat moon
will experience some difficulty-
astronomical calculations of
a vague uneasiness


The moon is waxing gibbous.

Here.

It's 53 degrees fahrenheit.
At 
43.0389° N longitude
and
87.9064° W latitude,
the tides
remain
measurably
fortuitous.

The Mayan
end of world
is the
Christian
beginning,
and somewhere in the middle,
a solstice returns.

You are so attached, he said.

Let go
of the moon and mathematics.

Surrender geography, the skies.

Stars,
gods
wane.

Even time wanders away.

Nothing needs you,
not even
yourself.

reconnecting

I cannot
remember how

to link

you
to me

or
them
to us.