[ARTS]: Big and Little Poetry--free verse, any verse.

[Tai Shi]

from The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Hafiz The Great Sufi Master

The Body A Tree


The body a tree.
God a wind.

When he moves me like this;
Like this.

Angels bump heads with each other.
Gathering beneath my cheeks,
Holding their wine
Barrels

Catching their brilliant tear
Pearl

Rain.

I thought of my beautiful wife with this poem who won every academic award, but she chose to take care of my daughter and me rather than try for a PhD. We were told we would not get jobs if we continued into academia. I was to study poetry, and she Mesoamerica. We gave it up, but I gave in went to another school to more closely study poetry. She payed for my education. My MFA creative writing/poetry costs $10,000, my MA English EdS higher education about $10,000. I feel sad in my old age that we did not spend more springs together. I chased rainbow dust. She worked in an office. She gave birth to our daughter. Our daughter studies Japanese literature, and she has just landed her first Japanese translation job--a book of poetry. When she was in high school she renounced poetry because, I assume, I made very little money and she did not want to depend on a man to take care of her. I know it is true because she also studies sexuality. Her mother is brilliant, and she is brilliant. In the first heart to heart talk we have had in many years, the last one ending in anger, she listened to me, "You got your smarts from your mom, and you got your direction from me." "I know dad." "You know I will probably go before her, and who will take care of mom?" "I will dad!" Later, "You know Laurel I will probably live in a nursing home." "No mom, I will have a big house. You will come live with me!" "Silly girl! no I won't!" Laughter! And, that was that. My Zen Teacher calls my wife my best Zen Teacher. My wife's name in Romance languages means pearl, such a pearl that only in old age do I see she is priceless, I am the man who sold everything to purchase the priceless pearl, and I ran to find her a rainbows, and I almost missed the barrel of rain in my midst, in the sea, in the spring. Now we are old, and she takes care of me.

Gassho
Calm sad Poetry

[Tai Shi]

Hanzan


The first butterfly of spring

The creature without bones

always on stiff plumb blossoms.



Boncho


Although the hedge

the white plum blossoms

by the ash tip.

[Tai Shi]

Basho 1644-94


Wind in autumn

a door slides open

and a sharp cry comes through.




Into my gate of brushwood sticks

The wind sweeps

tea leaves.

[Tai Shi]

I am more alive
When I sit Shikantaza
Or hold her hand,
Nothing to part ways
Unwillingly my side,
Hurts, Muscle spasm,
Zazen. I cry in night
Fright sometimes,
Finely she takes
My hand, leads
Me ever out, up, away
Eternal day, or night.

Gassho
Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

Why does my bipolar
Attack me sometimes
All those years of disability
Trying to run away dying
At 71, where do my poems
Surface like ice, snow.

[Tai Shi]

Now disability thickens
Bipolar Tardive Dyskinesia
Drain muscle until I write
Stops spasm separately
Only one moment divided
Self rises as illness bites
My side trunk expands
Nowhere to run no where.

Tai Shi/sat/lah=Gassho/

[Tai Shi]

Her Life @Work

@Time of time, clocks
On Spring @Day, Cold
Per, @imate our home
Needed, @we are cold
On Spring @Day, never
With cold @we are bound
With April first @cold
Cold robins @return
To @ice and storm
One inch of @snow
April begins @ice
We @freeze in bed
That @warns of bones
Old @beyond any
@Sitting Buddha,
What will come @1951
When @father wrought
Chevy @Bel Aire, here
Aire silfs @bring her,
Her @understanding,
This is @an hour, this
Is lost @parents. now
Only @the two of us
Together@, we have
Found @our love, new rings
Newer earrings@
Laying @boxes of beauty
Sapphire @diamonds,
Rubies, now @kapibara
Simple @designs
@Always she left
In museum@ her
Legacy, @University
To work, @life's work
For those torn @unseen
In @battles of world
Desenion, when@
Armies wrought@
She is there, @ordinary
Cracking @world
She is with @child
Now with world@
Solvens, @she brings
All love @immortal.

Gassho
She@/lend a hand _/|\_
Tai Shi@

The poems I write
are all in the shades of blues
and none of them dance
they are all still like statues
till they're read and sung to life

Rob
sat today
lah

To play a blues song
you must sing of your sorrow
and enjoy the dance
of the end of a days work
and still the sweet muscle grind

Rob
sattoday
lah

[Meian]

Lost friends

My heart still aches

In the distance.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

[Tai Shi]

Loving Kindness

Wind of December, end,
If December of December
Warped in yarn for,
Faster, cold, cold,
Divided misunderstanding
As cold is everywhere,
Disability, except how to be.
Disability is not disability,,
Disability is not inferior.
I found the way in Buddhist
Zen Way, Quiet, sitting
Paperback first edition
Smallish Way of Shikantaza,
Of Zen. Slow my breath,
Light wonder fulfil my
Tai Shi Go to Jukai, give
Valued light to Marjorie
Smile, not to weep, or cry.
This is hope, Hope fulfilled
For Peace and light
Smile, now clean pleasure,
Except one. If world peace,
Humanity deserves better,
In ZaZen I found better,
Study for Lay member,
Honesty, open minded,
Willing, study honor system
Ango, study, partner, now
Ubasoku, grandmotherly,
Learn to teach peace,
Erving after morningstar,
Earth, call Buddha peaceful
Support all of us all, how we
Find friends, understood.
Honestly, I was not angry.
Now Peaceful man.
Smile, smile, smile,
Love, Loving Kindness.

Gassho
sat/ lah

[Meian]

"Ghosts"

And the wind rushes in-
Slow down! This all will pass,
I say to the pounding rain.

Dark clouds collect over my home
A flashpoint in the air of time
as his incense envelopes me
once more.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

[Tai Shi]

So warm inside
Love warm in so wondrous me and trees one
Back again under this post gone and made
Will You everyday offer me a branch with Treeleaf?

Gassho
Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

Saga of the Brain

This is AVM removed,
Arteries restore
Oxygen restored,
Right temporal Lobe
Of brain, this is
Altoger science not
Sitting miracle.
Resilient is my brain
Noteworthy is addition
Of inhaler bring added
Oxygen again and again
Even so released narcotic,
No longer present
In my brain, added
High blood medication

Mine is deep breathing
Oxygen again and again
Thinking language
Of this center so breath
Of Language creativity!
This is science, not men
Of God, not deity
This is aadvance
Noted by my wife
My Marjorie sees
This change is no
Game or luck or
Systematic artesian
Water, well of life, elixir
Of life, not magic
But brain compensating
On Left Side hemisphere
Resiniancy, compensating
Vital organ is the brain.

Sustain normal man
Estimate full health
Eighteen months
After operation, mind
With matter, understands
Why breathing not zazen
Releases essential
Molecules of O2, O2
Doubly bound science
Not supertician
Not magic not at this
Now, living in the now,

No mistake medicine
Brings forth healing
As vital neural
Transmitter of pain centers
The communication
Interstitial regained.
Mine is the recipient
Of helpful CBT, cognitive
Behavioral Health
Hospital and Avera
Hospital opening
The hand of health.

More science as
Gastro intestinal
Passage way opened
Blood cancer on hold
Never will only these
Anticoagulants stopping
Stroke, with lessening
Causes of heart attack
Cholesterol removed
With statin. It is brain again
More chemistry
No two carcinomas
iN foot bones, leg wound,
Explaining inflammation
Reasons for bone
Marrow biopsy negative
Nothing to explain
Nothing there, bone
Free to produce
Healthy red blood
Cells, but Ankylosing
Spondylitis horrible
Deuteriations of spine
Not assigning bad and good.

Neck and lower back
Right eye, lungs, filled
With smoke in ancient
Days, clogged lower
Right lobe of lungs
This is damage done
By joining academia
The Academy of Scholar
Exploded in hypocrisy
Wives of professors
Selling cigarettes
To college students
To unsuspecting
Students unaware
Their Jokes, all destroyed
For livelihood, lies
Of the mortified Attorney
General's Report, cigarettes
Tobacco leading to death
Nothing given nothing
Gained ironically
Words of King Lear,

Shakespeare immortal
Found deaths demands
Daughter of truth
Cordelia, so would
Not say I love you
Above all else, all sisters
Countenance other women
True, or just another lie
Like my brother's life.
Father if you say
You love us equally
You must follow through
Because, our own Laurel
Daughter and brother
Robert Douglas, and
Grandson Ian only
Asking that you be
Not like Lear not
Like Cordelia not like
Sisters have no truth,
No daughters of yours,
Look even your recipient
Of medicine, removal.
Look, it's not magic,
Or prayer of God himself.

We know what you deny
Science, chemistry,
Brain, muscle, intestines
Without tumors, and you
Won't see as you prepare
For death, we believe John
Lennon said no Heaven
No Hell, only sky, above,
Earth below. I know

Buddha rightly touched earth
Looked, ask morning sky
Found planet he didn't
Know what thought was
Star significant. now
We know, faculty as you
Were were wrong,
Buddha not assuming
Planet or star. now I believe
He had heaven riight, memory,
My song could go on and on.
Let us stop here knowing
Ancient fallacies, killer
Death, not science
Now we know, and shall
Know more serenity,
Know what we live.

Gassho
sat/lah
CET/Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

March Birds

I sat quietly like song,
Song of morning bell
Bell that rings us in,
Shikantaza whiteout
Within, cold rain
March wind rings everness,
Sometimes with snow,
Sometimes with wing,
Of birds come back
Wings slack before wind,
Before rain, before change.

Gassho
sat/lah