Sunday, December 31, 2017

l i s t (s)

everyone remembers something


list one     (recommended)

cactus flower

apple cider
vinegar
(realtor.com)
Z
strictly preventative
no office visit



list two  (mistranslated)


1
lamp moon          
   ランプ            月
   Ranpu           tsuki                               a month of lamps

2
earth diaspora      
    地球                ディアスポラ
    Chikyū                 Diasupora                earth dispersal

3
water                                                
       水
     Mizu                                                            w a t e r

   Japan riverside children's                
            日本の川辺の子供たち
 Nihon no kawabe no kodomo-tachi

                                       children on the river side of Japan

4
air dead cicada                              
    空気が枯れた蝉
   Kūki ga kareta semi
                                              cicadas where the air died


air dead dragonfly                      
       空中潜水トンボ
    Kūchū sensui tonbo

                                                  air diving dragonfly

(re) s o l u t e

Attention: When ....resolute and recollected, pure of deed and persevering, ....attentive and self-controlled and liv.. (ing) according to the Teaching, her reputation is bound to grow."
- Dhammapada  2.24


Buteo lineatus
in the snow garden
breast a corn doll color
preening high
in the old elm


she's
about
to spring upward
spying
something
someone
riverine,
near.





Monday, December 25, 2017

1

in this dream the snow is falling on birds as white as
while the cold clear sky
swoops down and catches us mid-wing
we swerve up
gliding on polar air
dancing
along the Milky Way
before
tobogganing down to our beds flecked wet and brilliant


2

rise
from bed
ascend
into Christmas Day
luminous


3

a chorus
crossing earth
singing of
one birth
after another

Saturday, December 23, 2017

an echo that thinks itself a loon

is frozen stress,

soon

a song

in anchor ice

Under, over, within me,

others

continue.

So many!

The earth, sea and air surrounding hold an abundance of them.

Look,

I know this about the dead -

if we're scored,

they're ahead.






Sunday, December 10, 2017

w h e r e

4方向
4 Hōkō                of Japan 

西
Nishi                                west



まだ
mada                            not yet

                                       

私の家                
watashi no i.e.    my house

                             is

                             is

                            is

                    east

 


O  h  i  o.           


Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Monday, November 27, 2017

Thursday, November 23, 2017

It was for her a race against the rising tide of panic that came with this,

the present.

The present was not a gift.

It was a bitter stew of every small and large flaw she contained,

every stupid thing she had said, every error, anger, hurt inflicted and given.



To quiet her mind she found a mahjong puzzle,

solitaire, in the shape of a coal tug.

She played again and again for hours, for days, months,

pushed and pulled, towed through and against the panic.



144 pieces, an enigma of placement and chance,
heavy lidded hours
of subtraction strategies,
luck,
patience.

The distance closed down to 12 tiles,
6
and then no moves more,
not ever,
as if the tiles themselves,
dangerously close to extinction,
reroute.

Avoid discovery.

Shuffle underneath.

Refuse to pair.


She couldn't win.


Four years after his death, she admitted defeat.


Unsolvable.


To live with that

to upend the inadequacy, to accept failure

Summoned

to return, however painful, to now.

This is the solitaire that is.

I'm the boat in need,

upstream and cross-current,

pushed forward, tugged,

unpaired,

as one.


Tuesday, November 21, 2017

The life of a single day is better if one sees the rise and passing of things. 

8.113 Dhammapada


d i s r u p t i o n    ( d i s t o r t )

unsolvable

won't quit
this.

delete complete. open. repeat.

no panic. no mind.


time to leave.


time for this to go.

so completely.

there have been others.

unknown.


Tuesday, November 14, 2017

mahjong - the boat

Place, push, erase a tile, then another.  Listen to the invisible. The boat remains, in pieces.

The hull remnant, splintered mast.

the wreck drifts beyond salvage, a dream.






so calmly
the  hours

contentment


Saturday, November 4, 2017

キンモクセイ [ 氷 ]




The smell surround -  kinmokusei

October's days, lingering.






Sweet olive, osmanthus.

speaks    甘い amai sweetly






November's the wind, a mountain stinger.


Takao is drinking   氷 Kōri  i c e.


puzzled

stumped

mused
After killing mother (desire) and father (conceit) and two warrior kings, ..destroying the kingdom and its subjects along with it, the brahmin goes on  his way unperturbed.  Dhammapada  21. 294




Sunday, October 29, 2017

Monday, October 23, 2017

Phusis and Nomos


n a t u r e    a n d    c u l t u r e

after Lan

Deluged!

An alarm emerges from the wind

three notes full, struck, ascending.

Al Burani, master accumulator,
a counting animal, thought of
listening to time, creating tables of religious calendars
observing how festivals swerved with the stars


A scattering of Neanderthal,

this morning dust.

Afterward.

The river has subsided.

An eye passed by.






__________________________

Kanizsa'a Triangle














____________________________

Kanizsa's Drawings









Sunday, October 15, 2017

Sunday, October 8, 2017

note surround

1

a thicket within

____

where the chair tip touches the floor
there's a wood I am lost in

_____

if
lived
these lives
unceasing

______

I imagine Hiroshi Teshigahara arranging きんもくせい

(kinmokusei osmanthus fragrant sweet olive).



In heaven,

earthen jars

are

arranging the water.


______


Place milk tea popcorn

maple leaf

persimmon

in a corner.

Cover with wet snakeskin.

___________





Tuesday, September 26, 2017

nightjar
or
owl

cricket surround

one piece
two
dress darkness


Saturday, September 23, 2017

the end of an



aptitude for forgiveness.


ending never-ending.


ideal, as ideograph.


everything, including the lie encompassing everything.





Friday, September 22, 2017

Here.
wagtail in brown field, flicking.
Lost.
Sakaigawa.
Bamboo.
School flags.
Children's voices
draw me here.
Found.

Found.

Here.
Eight years to finish.


No.
Or no, nothing.

Make money. Live hard.

Make money.

Obasan!

Keep quiet. Listen.



Thursday, September 7, 2017

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

t h o u g h t s c o n t ' d .

Y  u  n,

you,  ee  (n).

What is

our

impact

at day four?

Here

is

the center of the

north,
south.

Expect the worst.

Conditions

seem to be

core concentrated.

Remember

there will be

damages.

Where

do

you

ee(n)

yun

shift?




Tuesday, September 5, 2017

last night's
harvest
moon


a rabbit
and a fat white woman.

Remnants

1

life came to each:

Nakhla meteorite

a recipe box

poetry.

A comedy of

love

sacrifice

pathos.

2

False indigo, wild blue

rattle bush

horsefly weed

baptisia australis

create a magazine, command strips of

intuition, experience.

3

Is it the invisible guardian

or an interference?

The origin of your story

depends upon

four letters, molecules.

Inside atoms

stories of

3 billion years,

told in three letter words.

4

Water states.

Counting 19 in the Quran,

counting coup in Pyongyang.

You live through it

or you don't.

In three letters,

write your name

in invisible

in indelible

strips,

fusing or falling apart.


Thursday, August 24, 2017

wants


the immigrant wants a nation
the refugee wants to go home
the native wants a pilgrimage

the rich want their way
the poor want their way

the birds want air

the bus passenger wants a car
the homeless wants a room
the worker wants a pay raise

the fish want water

the sick want health
the old want youth

the worm wants earth

the child wants summer
the lover wants spring

the flame wants more fire




Sunday, August 20, 2017

Late afternoon yesterday,
while
taking 2 photos
of light on smashed glass,
a man screamed at me,
threw food.

I walked away,
silent.
He followed,
screaming.

At the crosslight he left me.

In front of me
was a birch tree and a small white dog.
The dog was so kind.
The tree was so beautiful.

...we live who have nothing of our own. We shall feed on joy...

-15.200 Dhammapada


new moon


Sunday, August 13, 2017

Awoke from morning dream -

you, dead, wouldn't forgive.

Holding

me

I tried to untie us, cried.

Stress -

I have days of it, and doubt.

Change

places -

you

puts
you
here.


It's not true,
you.

It's morning -

me,

only this.


Saturday, August 12, 2017

the life of a single day is better....
8.110 dhammapada

waning gibbous



In the parking lot, among hard coal,
stones.

I find fossils
from the sea -
a folded fish,
shell,
krill-like diminutives in broken red chert.

Stone for stone
life's
long dead,
stored,
anonymous.
We
too
will
give
bone,
blood,
flood soil,
make mountains
or,
drifting to sea edge,
enter in.
Shell, us, we, stone,
once, then again,
when we end.
All cycled
selves
forgotten -
so many!

To be rock
isn't
imagined
or
immortal.

How can stone,
beyond memory,
be lonely?
There's no
without,
wanting,
wishing
or waiting.

You'll forget this,
but I'll say it.

We are mud
on loan,
all demi-stones.





Friday, August 11, 2017

습기찬 (seubgichan)

When you
under
trout
running
inside
the
water
remember him
you're (yr)
eyes
not welling
but


this.

Moist.

night sound


A
snuffling snort
in the weed pile
as possum,
trundling,
stumbles upon
.........
and eats.

Saturday, August 5, 2017

slid down

the mulberry

into

the garden

goldenrod
"one has no need of faith, one who knows the uncreated, has cut off rebirth..."
-- 97.7. dhammapada



(waning gibbous, unseasonable coolness)


earth cleared
pulled plants drying in the sun
with two days rain
a sere brown

a soul who

knows soil

grows

In a Japanese story
a man-tree hybrid
with two memories
saves his village
from an earthquake.

I thought of two men

one old now
far from me
apart

ground isn't sound
between us

another dead
uncreated
sends messages
warnings
his ashes
buried with his mala
under
a cedar sapling.







Sunday, July 30, 2017

G a u l

Gauls like Bolinans
were dangerous -
Had panthers or poetry
slipping through
manufactured pastorals
to threaten serialised retreats and postcard lagoons.

Gauls
were weeds to the Romans,
as Bolinans were to the wealthy.

I place stones around my mulberry, one for each weed culture
uprooted, but resistant.

More. More than two.


Monday, July 24, 2017

r i k y ū

a broken black bowl
still turning tea, opening
out, and in, and through


an element of
then, now, when held, without end,
is room enough for


water which recalls
stone sieve sluice thunderstorm
as silence sinks in




Sunday, July 9, 2017

three poems for Bakin

the rain

the wind

once

still.

________

one step forward?

all paths

trace the shape of a pear.

Even Buddha grows into one.

__________

stones by heart

wounded women

pour bronze and garden.




Thursday, July 6, 2017

t a n a b a t a

if it rains
we won't meet
but that's a lie
we've invented
as the rain falls
we slip through
for days not hours


on this day
I don't watch stars
but streams
slipping like somen
into your arms.



Monday, July 3, 2017

practice,
not faith,
through cultures of darkness

present (remains) obscured


vista unfolds.

increased
concentration
is an encapsulate of

the among,

not of,

and free.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

here and beyond, bhikku says,
the rejoicing spills out of the mind into the hands
that arch and fumble and fling out .
let me tell you a story without signs
but full of hands
maybe tonight
lit by the last quarter.
.

standing windward
the city underneath
in this high empty lot
practice for
the turtle, the cranes,
the lonely cormorants below.
Lift the pizza boy off his bike and throw him at the moon.
Blink at cats. Nod the  bats along the river,
but use only your hands,  rejoicing.
Don't
say
a
word.

Friday, June 9, 2017

life support
webbed
exterior
(hard driven)
power
in
or
which
is continuing.

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

it's wind that brought the winged shell
in gibbeted room
his flight night
more than full
up in a cup
to the open door sky
I knew that roach, that wind, the fear,
and inside cleared room for it.

Roaches don't like light.


Shine.

Sunday, June 4, 2017

you should encourage yourself, yourself
restrain yourself, yourself
self-protected
live happily


You have four boxes of her - white ash, black earth. You've emptied one box.
The others are her, to hers, out there, incommunicado.
You're protected, split, spilt, done.

One thought ashes would be scattered together. Not so.

I dusted a plastic bag of you over the Seine, sent your last ash in water over yellow flowers in Valencia.

Most of you in your home, though, in my studio between the cats.

That's how death really is.




Monday, May 15, 2017

waning gibbous
the scent of rain

an after image -

waking to 3 lines of light.


Monday, May 8, 2017

Saturday, May 6, 2017


May has arrived,
fulgent, lush,

bloating azalea
first roses, jasmine.






Dreaming avocado,
as the body,
of another
after
after
you.

Thursday, May 4, 2017

notes

Toko Shinoda has beautiful ink daughters.

__________________________________________________________________________

Niels Bohr's entanglements gourmandise Einstein - it's spooky, gloved stuff.

Spin complementaries, copious quantities of binaries.

Quantum bytes can be made of anyone that behaves as a mixture.
How do we greet these new selves?

Teleporting particles! Tanabata revelation! Refugees from purity!

We need to ask what original really means. We each could behave as if we, like twins,
are fraternal pairs.

_________________________________________________________________________


Someday a computer will be the size of a grain of sand. That is, between the tiny and the unseen
we'll work and play.

________________________________________________________________________










Tuesday, May 2, 2017

1

What if black black

isn't mourning
sewn into lengths

and black black 
(mended, remnant)
doesn't shroud?

Show us, she said,

2

midnight
rain


3

sleep


4

are household gods,

a l i g h t

after death,

or

life after death,

small films

for our small deaths

(the font, fontain, fontanelle)

 and dying.


5

No.

These are

nothing more than dark sounds found in a river.

You're the evening shadow of
crane
egret
white headed thrush

flushed out and

forwarded,

repeating

6

どきどき (dokidoki)

7

gusho gusho  (d r e n c h e d)

bisshori!


8

Drops!

ポツポツ!

Potsu potsu!

There are so many small deaths in

every wet remembered life. 


Doused,

one can be said to


8

shine!

ぴかぴか!

pika pika!

Your eminence, ascendant,

an after-ozone scent.




9

In every atom, Lucretius,

the sound of eternal life is deafening.

ザーザー zaa zaa 

zaaaaaaa zaaaaaaa

zzzzzzzzz   

aaaaaaaa

shhhhhhhhhh

says the skin of the world.


10

Black.

Black
isn't anything
without a sign.

Eyes, ears write too.


11

Careful

of the unessential.

It's not the same as this!

12

This is everything black inside   

an atom
of water
of light
of us.
























Saturday, April 29, 2017

left

waxing crescent
birdsong
outside 42,
where 59 is I follow
left a broadside

if a dying
was a mulberry
as a Gaul bound
by building shadow
what's left


a baby's fontanelle
pressed
releases
life after death
left-hendededness
fragile god


of the household
left
another
as number
as sprung forward
as borne ahead

begins

Thursday, April 13, 2017

chant for spring in the north

Forsythia

now pollen stung

and hallowed,

sinks

her muddied knees

on ice

as ground

leaks sun-hot sound.


gate, gate

So I bow

gate, gate

as I sow.


Primula

are  parasols.

Yellow pillars

 are daffodils

parasam

'mid para sums

gate, gate

of crocus corms.


gate, gate

Oh body's gate!

gate, gate

A bodhi's borne

gate, gate

on blood gold May

gate, gate

and buttercups.



Bodies, somas,

body's pulsed

solomon's sealed

in svaha's house.



















Wednesday, March 29, 2017

first heard
that bird
(re) called
thrush
its chest
rising
east


the rising and passing of things

1

Moving your photo, from one kitchen to another, brought me to tears.

2

The sky was a brilliant cloudless blue.
I waited for the cook to empty two large pots of used grease.
He gave me five empty boxes.

3

There is a young drug addict living down the alley.
He is thin, wounds on his face, dirty clothes.
His eyes glaucous, absinthe.

4

Fog blurs the bridge.
Traffic .
The snuffling of an animal.

5

Days best one another.
This one has its points.
For instance,
the smile of the woman at the recycling center,
where we lifted and pushed my old stove into a bin.
Or
Tony and I
remembering our lives in San Francisco,  over
coffee and blueberry pie.


Sunday, March 26, 2017

tired bones

boxing stones

in the studio
a table for work

Friday, March 24, 2017

eolithic

at the beginning
it seemed improbable
glass jars filled with jam

speaking
through
the stars and back is
as a telephone

magic
(if it exists)

light of apricots and
night conversations -

an almost
imperceptible nudge
towards

transparency




Wednesday, March 22, 2017

2 questions for USPS

1

you lost my letter?
certified isn't confidence
traceable? trackless.
most likely a human error
ahh, she says.
I understand.
I offer you, from my intergalactic heart, forgiveness,
This is star bound generosity,
extra planetary, plenary.
uhhh, you say,
and
have a nice day too.


2

post mistress
from LA
wants to know
if a banana
stamped
with an address
can be sent.
To?
the president.
there's a note.
Says?
shove this up yr ass.
Undeliverable.