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

[Housai]

受戒 (Jukai)

Im not good with numbers
My wife told me that we had been together
For a quarter of my life

I told her that was impossible because
I had been studying zen for that long
More than twice as long as I have known her

So you plan to live to 100 then?
25 years! Have I been a fraud?
25 years of the most consistent element in my life...

3 refuges, 3 pure precepts, 10 grave precepts
Are nearly meaningless in the face of that time
Eventually, you will out wait your need to realize anything

No book, no belief, no doctrine, no education, no ideology, no story, no habit, no teacher, no friend, no lover,
no relationship can ever be compared.

_/\_
sat/ah
matt

[Tai Shi]

Frost at Minus Three

Another soft this morning
As frost sits on some blade
Of grass, on dirt beneath,

I wish for more slumber,
Resting from water masses
Beneath grass,

Arthritic pain wastes
Time on me, I am
Not free, enslaved time

By thoughts of my past,
Withstanding nothing, withholding,
All, I sit in Zazen, snow is if

I'm Melted, refrozen. I wish
For an end, for more
Generosity, anything.

Roaches upon morsel of rot
Scintillating, as bacterium
Worms now asleep,

She is free, sandworms blocked
In spring, follow me, blocking
We lie together as another

Pair. Gone from dust-deep
Underfoot, stumble again,
What becomes as dusty as

Multifidous? Money
My organs envelop more,
Not to take my lust.

Gassho
Tai Shi