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

[Nengyoku]

Otagaki Rengetsu, recommended Siekshi. He says of her "a poet calligrapher, a Go player, warrior, a dancer, etc, She lost essentially all of her family (and two husbands) young. Her work is personal and often deeply tinged with loss that permeated her life" Thank you friend for this recommendation." Anyone may recommend poets, specifically women in our thread, and if you an, quote a few lines of poetry. Perhaps Haiku belongs elsewhere, but feel free to suggest Haiku and quote a few lines.
Gassho
sat/ lah

Rengetsu's poetry is always very touching.
If I may share a link, if not please remove it. I keep rengetsu.org open in a separate tab and try to read a couple poems a day. They have many of her works catalogued there.

One of my favorites:

Waiting for the one who does not come
the moon has fallen
behind the tips of the pines...
Ah, the sound of the wind
coming to assail my heart

Gassho,
Nengyoku
Sat

[Tai Shi]

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

All painful
Dust darkens moon!
Tonight is gone, you
Stop and end,
In Longest February.
Our words found
Our child who lives
Reality in Japan words
Dancing in hearts, only
She watches our coldest
Honesty found daughter
Of possibilities became our
Hopeful friendship.
We ended days of night!
Friends we have our
Final darkness, In our
Turning wind, cold, inside freezing alone we found
Moments of warm listening.
Sounds of gratitude,
Clearly lulled our minds,
Songs we chose together,
Endings, choosing ashes,
Flowers in gardens above
Then gone, together we left,
Stopped our own hearts.
Together, we will never
Turn to any other bloom,
This our own.
Gassho
Tai Shi
sat/ lah

[Tai Shi]

Robert Bly, American Poet, 1926-2021
At this web site, readers will find information on every facet of Robert Bly's literary career, including bibliographies, reviews, and interviews, as well as new essays, poems, and translations, to increase their understanding and enjoyment of Bly's work.

In his numerous roles as groundbreaking poet, editor, translator, storyteller, and father of what he has called "the expressive men's movement," Bly remains one of the most hotly debated American artists of the past half century. What is it about Bly and his ideas that inspires such impassioned responses from readers and associates? The psychologist Robert Moore believes that "When the cultural and intellectual history of our time is written, Robert Bly will be recognized as the catalyst for a sweeping cultural revolution." And literary critic Charles Molesworth suggests that some of Bly's importance and complication lies in the fact that he "writes religious meditations for a public that is no longer ostensibly religiou

[Tai Shi]

After the women's movement in 1974 and after World War 2 into the present, dating back to Susan B Anthony and women in the United states, in Paris, In Sweden, and seeking even in Japan, all women finally having decisions over birth, Betty Friedan, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Baize, Sylvia Plath, Alice's Restaurant, Judy Collins, and a whole arts culture I not enough about in the 1980s, but I do know that our women who are priests in training, and all those women who are actually leading women and men seeking Buddhism, being Priests, and all walks of life leading, seeking liberation in voting and in work for all of us, and out of this came a men's movement lead by Robert Bly against anger into right of passage.

When I came to Treeleaf Zendo, I was a very angry man and then I began what questions needed to be answered for me; how do I cry with honesty, and my tears became honest for women and men? I knew that I had to live for two women in my life, for my friends and father, brother. I had to live or die for the women in my life who had taken good care of this disabled man. I listened to our Kokuu, and many teachers over the years of my life. I took this decision to have Brain Surgery. I decided to have brain surgery to live, and knowing I could make a difference in the life of two women, I began to understand kindness.

The the Tee Shirt my wife wears says simply "Kindness" as she takes care of us, of our daughter and me, How does that Tee Shirt say only one thing, "Kindness," and how does the Dali Lama say that "Kindness is his Religion" and I studied the book Loving Kindness be Sharon Salzburg, Loving Kindness, How to Be Sick by Toni Bern Hard, both influential for me, a disabled man cared for by women, and I knew that a Fire Sermon's at the center this message only for me; Buddha was Loving Kindness, and this Sangha taught me Loving Kindness in the Buddha's metta, His basic message "metta" or Loving Kindness as I underwent a Surgery that was dramatic, but in the hands of a very good Surgeon, Dr Shawn Voumg, thinking of our teacher Jundo had said that my best Zen Teacher was my wife Marjorie

I known I must have that surgery for those two women, Laurel Ann Taylor, and Marjorie Joan Remacle-Taylor, I know why when we were married she said, "I almost kept my own last name." Now I know that every woman must have her own name, and she must have her own time, and if she wants her own room. This name is her father's gift to her, and she deserves everything I am my own teacher and her partner. She only says "I love you." In writing, in the lovely simple greeting cards for birthdays and holidays. She does not believe in speaking those words.

I know that women need absolutely, as Virginia Woolf said, Rooms of Their Own, Time of Their Own, and especially their own right to their own lives, and work they choose, land they own, and the right to vote for women and men to make sure of equitable laws. I understand the sacrifice our daughters and mothers make for me an those women who live for all of us, for other women, and their right to their own lives. My wife gave up this room, and after I fell into concussion, she said, "You must take this room our older bedroom for your own office, not the basement down in that basement to that office down stairs" I received seven stitches in my head, I sleep early so she has time to herself. Now my doctor says something triggered the growth of a deadly AVM present even before birth. I know risking my life for those two women for brain surgery was a good thing because that AVM was robbing O2 from that Right Temporal Lobe, and music and Language, and memory were being affected and made me angry.

I came of age at 70 years by placing wife with myself yet for herself to me live longer in our old age together, and as Robert Bly said in his book Iron John which I read with the book Peace is Every Step in 1993 when my anger drove me out of full-time teaching, some right of passage must make us all adult. Men must find their way, but I was sober, and taking my first steps to understanding the precepts. On January 10, 2016, I began to undertake the precepts and I received the special gift of my rakusu from this Sangha because I cannot sew. I say dear wife of her choice for it was she asked me to marry her, Marjorie, and she sewed my rakusu cover in one night exactly to pattern from scraps of old cloth in her sewing box as the rags of those first Followers of the Dharma of Loving Kindness.

She became my teacher. Last March a promise came true for me. I learned not to be in debt and I learned to listen to her, "Are you spending too much?" I pulled back, and I know she is right. She knows I am not dipping too much into my own money of my Social Security portion she gives me, allowance which each week she puts money into my own account, so she lets me be responsible. We have been together this year 40 years. I listen to, and she just told me to take my medicine, and savings grow. I don't dip too much into the money she gives me; she says we will be scattered in that flower garden behind George Booms Funeral Home, and I think about the laws that prevent us from being set under an Ash tree.

Now as I write, I know that the ecological imbalance, think of how we try to help toward control of global warming, that in nature has stopped the Ash trees from growing, and whole Ash groves must be destroyed to stop the parasite that kills them. So, we will be spread on the flower garden. We will not be naturally disposed under an Ash tree as she says against the laws, "It is easy and I like it, and Laurel will have a place to come." I say, "I will never leave you. I told you that when I almost died in 2011." We are together now, and Laurel is doing her work, and may find a beautiful partner, and she may find this is her only work or "I what I want" as it is not what she expected. These are not love stories. These are our decisions.

You lose your audience if the poem is longer than 14 lines. I told you all that when we got started writing here, but I am both essayist and poet. Maybe someday an editor will rework the long poems into essays. Please someone edit all of me in every section and not changing what is mine, just "Big and Little Poetry" or everything could be a book, so each section could be a book. Let all, women and men, be our own teachers, and now make way for people like me, the disabled, this mentally and physically ill. I married a brilliant woman with a brilliant career of 30 years of her life supporting our little family and paying for our schooling. She once cried out, "When do I get mine!" She was helping women and men force so do we now honor their lives and we as Buddhist so honor. Now the house is hers, and my Will leaves her everything. We are 66 and 70, and must think ahead. She has remodeled this home of hers and finally to get what she wanted, and of course she hired the work done, and she has her own money, her own land, and her own right to vote for whoever she wants, she thought out in time when support would be crucial as in time of pandemic, our support, our savings and retirement.

I have been made the great honor of UBASOKU that will always be in my chosen path of lay Buddhist. Let me be of help, and let Iron John be truly my Right of Passage in my brain surgery, my choice that I give away to the three of us, Marjorie Joan Remacle, Laurel Ann Taylor, and Charles E Taylor, and as once she said to me because of irresponsibility, "You are now stealing from your family!" I have learned my right of passage by "Showering The People I Love With Love," my road having been Fire and Rain. I try to live metta. I do not spend beyond my means, or beyond her means, or beyond our means. My bipolar and pain is under control. I offer my life to the three of us as Blake spoke of, my loving kindness which you have taught me.
Gassho
sat/ lah

Tai Shi he, him, they, them

[Tai Shi]

Robert Bly, American Poet, 1926-2021
At this web site, readers will find information on every facet of Robert Bly's literary career, including bibliographies, reviews, and interviews, as well as new essays, poems, and translations, to increase their understanding and enjoyment of Bly's work.

In his numerous roles as groundbreaking poet, editor, translator, storyteller, and father of what he has called "the expressive men's movement," Bly remains one of the most hotly debated American artists of the past half century. What is it about Bly and his ideas that inspires such impassioned responses from readers and associates? The psychologist Robert Moore believes that "When the cultural and intellectual history of our time is written, Robert Bly will be recognized as the catalyst for a sweeping cultural revolution." And literary critic Charles Molesworth suggests that some of Bly's importance and complication lies in the fact that he "writes religious meditations for a public that is no longer ostensibly religious."

The above was cited for the Robert Bly Page

[Tai Shi]

Rich thank you for the gift gift of song gift of Haiku. Say Great Amen.

Tai Shi


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Rich]

Rich thank you for the gift gift of song gift of Haiku. Say Great Amen.

Tai Shi


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Thanks. Will post another one soon

Sat/lah


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rich]

Photo taken in Florida

https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0x2953399124f0cbb46d2cbacd8a89cf0599974963/87056004882282058863354508692964023730894337998857036091036768760764127248393

Sat/lah


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tai Shi]

One Buddhist Gives One Vision

Bird song since February cold,
Robins orange and gray, then stair
Steps at end of April shelter

Into body of angry bones to delay
Bodies of war in Spring pain,
Rain white on neighboring

Sunday sit to stand with cane to help,
With breath made whole, silence
From trees outside Sutra green

Defines without death, night opens
To song before scorching earth,
While Zazen cools Buddhist mind,

Emptiness of will, summer comes
Not today my Child crying for toys.
Attacks are blown West in wind

Gone making Global Warming hot,
Pandemic defies life of ancient toil,
Across Spring, burned wheat

While parents cry for homes
Made dirty bunkers. Temporary Peace
Clay Lands on anonymous face

Opening graves without fear. Try
To understand storm clouds
Of Death of food in Subway

Shelter. Who feeds his child of war?
Old in hiding shelter or young defying
Missiles. Yellow light in blue sky.

Loving kindness could prevail
Metta chanting with those in Tonglen
Quieting great minds of freedom.

Gassho
sat/lah
Tai Shi

[Kokuu]

That's beautiful, Tai Shi!

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

[Zenkon]

seeing that I want,
I can stop wanting.
seeing that I hate,
I can stop hating.
seeing that I love,
I can stop loving,
and just see

Gassho

Zenkon

[Zenkon]

rushing rivers and,
tranquil streams,
all waters meet,
in the same ocean

Gassho

Zenkon

[Tai Shi]

We are Ukrainian

Sky green with moon, sky
Moving up in clouds dense
Gray, gray with brown, gone
Mad today nothing,
No Winter. Ice opposite
To oppose living possibly
Things to witness touching
Weep for Lives suffering
Color for the sun? Much
Death of such Pain as this.
Is this pain. Who can say,
"I am Ukrainian?" on plain
Beneath breathe, Sunset
Blaze, look Into horizon
Dusty clouds Scared.
Life, Eternal not?

Gassho
sat/ lah
Tai Shi


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Rich]

https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0x2953399124f0cbb46d2cbacd8a89cf0599974963/87056004882282058863354508692964023730894337998857036091036768773958266781697/

sat/lah

[Tom A.]

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

Over billions of years
The universe
Spun up elements
Some evolved into fire

Some say…

“So,
over billions of years
It’s just how
The universe evolved
And spun up fire:

Fire evolved
With the inescapable
Greed and desire
To consume
Everything
And anything

Tortured because
The universe
Has no care
If a fire is satisfied

Tortured
With the inescapable
Greed and desire
To consume
Everything
And anything”

Yes that is true.

And…

Fire can be contained
Settling into one place

In this moment
The fire is perfect
Complete
And whole
Not waiting
To greedily
Latch on to
Everything and
Anything

Fire is just itself
Never tortured
Never waiting

Because…

Fire IS the billions of years
That evolved itself into fire

Fire is earth... And water
Fire is air... And solid
Fire is heat... And cold
Consuming and consumed

The fire is the universe
Forever satisfied
Even if not.

Flowing upward
The fire naturally lets go
(It has no choice)
Of its inescapable
Greed and desire
Not torturing itself
To consume everything
And anything
And the moonlit sky
Does not obstruct it’s
Dangerous flames and
Poisonous smoke
To flow upward
And float away

(Please kindly look past the pretentiousness and length. It’s not a subtle “poem” or whatever it is, I’m not smart enough for subtlety.)

Gassho,
Tom

Sat


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro