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

[Meian]

Lost friends

My heart still aches

In the distance.

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[RobKen]

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

[RobKen]

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

[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@

[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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Meian]

'Bird Song'

A bird flies

...a cardinal's love song

Blooming trees.

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[Tai Shi]

It's Tired but New

I grow old grows like our pine tree
At northwest corner of our home
In June 1975, slowly out of youth,

Explained the young gardner,
"That white pine probably won't grow,
Not meant for South Dakota."

Mom dug a hole in our yard, three feet
Into topsoil, through rock cutting
Prices, Contractor spread clay. They placed

Roots firmly into topsoil at the corner of our
New home. The beatific sapling living.
In purchased dirt, I paid no attention,

"Why didn't the split for a good gift
On Fathers' Day?" Never gave
Thought about trees while gaining age.

Twenty-five years later,
Branches upwards, near Sioux Falls
Thirty-six feet tall in 2010,

Why should I think in June
Such enlightened thoughts, the future
Books about Rocky Mountain National Park?

14000 foot peaks, realizing, shale in heat
Eighty degrees, never thinking change
to seventy-one. Boulders

Solid molten rock, into our climb
One Hundred feet more, lungs ached
At 8500 feet. Air so thin, dry oxygen

With enough silver in those rocks
Days of grate poetry, west Conestoga's
Another pass, not pebbles on mountains.

As we approached clear, glacier stream
Stood alone wild innocent faun, away
From thicket, dense brush, chattering

Birds, We climbed up rock to 9000 feet
Scintillating boughs evergreens;
If we touched baby deer,

Doe peering from evergreens trees
Watching as always sun rays crept slightly
Through high conifer boughs,

Mother could bite flesh, then deep
From our wounds, baby rejected.
I drank from snow melt stream

Never fearing Giardia from animals
Near glacier fed water in June.
Our White pine thrives in drought.

After my cataract surgery
The tree shakes in our picture window
With breeze great pane of glass,

Grass bejeweled with dew.
Boughs shimmer like rain.
For the first time in twenty-six years,

I saw why they gave me
That Father's Day gift, when
She knew that three foot sapling

Would grow older with me.
Mom conceived of time, my cataracts gone,
In kindergarten our daughter of play

Our bright future at 71 and 68 I realized
The tree. Our Daughter now
Thirty-four reads Snow Country in Japanese.

Gassho
sat/lah
Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

It's Tired but New

I grow old grows like our pine tree
At northwest corner of our home
In June 1975, slowly out of youth,

Explained the young gardner,
"That white pine probably won't grow,
Not meant for South Dakota."

Mom dug a hole in our yard, three feet
Into topsoil, through rock cutting
Prices, Contractor spread clay. They placed

Roots firmly into topsoil at the corner of our
New home. The beatific sapling living.
In purchased dirt, I paid no attention,

"Why didn't the split for a good gift
On Fathers' Day?" Never gave
Thought about trees while gaining age.

Twenty-five years later,
Branches upwards, near Sioux Falls
Thirty-six feet tall in 2010,

Why should I think in June
Such enlightened thoughts, the future
Books about Rocky Mountain National Park?

14000 foot peaks, realizing, shale in heat
Eighty degrees, never thinking change
to seventy-one. Boulders

Solid molten rock, into our climb
One Hundred feet more, lungs ached
At 8500 feet. Air so thin, dry oxygen

With enough silver in those rocks
Days of grate poetry, west Conestoga's
Another pass, not pebbles on mountains.

As we approached clear, glacier stream
Stood alone wild innocent faun, away
From thicket, dense brush, chattering

Birds, We climbed up rock to 9000 feet
Scintillating boughs evergreens;
If we touched baby deer,

Doe peering from evergreens trees
Watching as always sun rays crept slightly
Through high conifer boughs,

Mother could bite flesh, then deep
From our wounds, baby rejected.
I drank from snow melt stream

Never fearing Giardia from animals
Near glacier fed water in June.
Our White pine thrives in drought.

After my cataract surgery
The tree shakes in our picture window
With breeze great pane of glass,

Grass bejeweled with dew.
Boughs shimmer like rain.
For the first time in twenty-six years,

I saw why they gave me
That Father's Day gift, when
She knew that three foot sapling

Would grow older with me.
Mom conceived of time, my cataracts gone,
In kindergarten our daughter of play

Our bright future at 71 and 68 I realized
The tree. Our Daughter now
Thirty-four reads Snow Country in Japanese.

Gassho
sat/lah
Tai Shi

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[Tai Shi]

Precepts Right Themselves

This night, black spaces deeply spread
Before dawn. I rise to 31 F degrees,
Is this dangerous? Even first of spring, heavy
Frost tonight. It is below 32 F degrees,

Now 30 F. Correct snow, not heavy freeze;
Now teaches me to stay warm into night,
"Not 32F in weather." Said my wife,
No one can sleep in North America.

I recline in my chair at no expense,
Now I sing praises full octaves,
No sleep tonight, so began some stars
Altered in this net of sky, not even stairs

Of Milky Galaxy correct my mind;
My tea at 5 am. I've come to blackness
Of true dharma; stars quiet, I find some truth
In white frost planted growth of death!

Giving me this partial time; rockets
Exploding up; so war can begin another
Way to rain in Texas; long orf, wild weed,
Instead finding solace in inky space.

Unhappy birds have disappeared. No
Habitat. My Buddha is not gone from heat.
Zazen at 8am; assembled, we now grow
In Zendos some slow delight. I have opened

Chapter One; I chant, I sing; I fold my hands, I bow
Chant, Sit for 30 minutes! Inky sight passed
Away, become day; released into my way,
My cure of infectious mind now yellow bright.

Again I've read Cervantes tilting at his mills,
My Roshi is Sancho in this Sad remitting way
The same is not Japanese; instructions being
To cure; I trust in honestly spring not frost.

Did save my sight, my meditative life!
How many times must I find truth?
Ancient pilgrims of Fire Sermon stopped.
These Precepts announce another golden way.

sat/lah

[Rich]

Each moment a gift
A blank sheet to choose colors
Paint your life with love

Sat/lah


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