margin.haiku

difference soothes her
washed aside by the mainstream
dry of its desires

its powerful tow
flooding out glowing glass tubes
takes planets along

Fate of the Mighty

marble emperor's head used to block Roman sewer...

"... or it could have been put there to symbolise the resentment of a pagan people for their Christian emperor." -- Eugenio La Rocca, superintendent of Rome's artefacts

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Selfhood and Compassion

"All those of compassion should encourage their minds to think: 'Every living being, whether born from the womb or born in any other way, whether they have perception or none, we should bring toward the boundless freedom of liberation. And when this vast and immeasurable number of beings has been liberated, we must not believe that any being has been liberated!" Why is this? It is because no compassionate person who is truly compassionate holds to the idea of a self, a being, or a separate individual.' "

-Diamond Sutra

Poet Stanley Kunitz

fine story on his walls...

dancing

she is dancing
floating high up the air
she is entrancing
making magic with her hair

she is inviting
wearing flowers on the bloom
reuniting once again
moving gently
'cross the room

we are playing
making music with our hearts
life is saying
something special with the rhythm
of our parts

coins are falling
and the zils begin to sing
light and dazzling
turning graceful as a wing

you are lovely
as your swaying builds into a trance
smiling ladies
all together in the dance

Morpheus

come swiftly with thy black sleep
ticture such light as might penetrate
this fleshy substrata around my rock skull
this leaden soul
snuffing out the last of any imagined whole

dwelling only in an absent darknesss
spinning outward
hinged only such as a universe might sow
yielding ordered happenings within
infinite patterns impossible to know

recline upon a perfect curve that bends away
yawning void that does the self betray
plumbed only after awareness goes astray
and a hidden light prevails

plunge me first into your solemn ink
flood this blunt gristle with a dying comet's glow
blast a chasm through my gut with paltry life's power

ever replicating
fruiting in a single blossoming
before oblivion overtakes

jisei

how does one study, "jisei" or Japanese death poetry?

"Jisei: "Death poem" or "death message," also translated variously as "passing away," "last words," "farewell poem to life," or "parting with the world." The 'jisei' is a formal message written shortly before or even on the verge of death, usually in poetic form, but occasionally in prose. "

this kind of poetry -- and this side of Japanese culture generally-- fascinates me, not the least reason being how, on many levels, Japanese character symbology becomes influenced over time by poetry. "Many examples of jisei... "

Excellent description here: "Consider the following poem spoken by military scholar Ota Doken in 1486, just after he was stabbed in his bathtub:

Had I not known
that I was dead
already
I would have mourned
my loss of life.

"Or this poem spoken by Musho Josho in 1306 to his fellow Zen Buddhist monks, moments before he died sitting upright:

When it comes - thus!
When it goes - thus!
Both coming and going occur each day.
The words I am speaking now - thus! "


No, I don't fully get them either. But on another level, you can't get THAT into jisei, I suppose, until you kick the bucket.

Missing the Ocean

I yearn for that fold of ocean front.

Her night and fog and wind
baffling my soul into a misty fringe
a thousand startling voices
running on the surf.

Crash again
and I am at the limits of perception
facing this donor of life
giver and taker
lapping at the very altar of my jellied bones.

As blinking foam am I to her embrace
evaporating into the darkness.

rivers.haiku

cleansing blessed chants
absolving water so pure
it hews the mountain

swirling transparent
with every sighing prayer
gone washing away

guttural rumbling
in echoes cutting canyons
emptiness within

nothing's hidden force
stillness made loud and rushing
rivers lead one place

The Human Folly of Naming

"A name is imposed on what is thought to be a thing or a state and this divides it from other things and other states. But when you pursue what lies behind the name, you find a greater and greater subtlety that has no divisions. Atoms of dust are not really atoms of dust but are merely called that. In the same way, a world is not a world but is merely called that."

--Visuddhi Magga

Deceit: Business As Usual

"As usual, the electoral campaigns were run by the PR industry, which in its regular vocation sells toothpaste, life-style drugs, automobiles, and other commodities. Its guiding principle is deceit. Its task is to undermine the "free markets" we are taught to revere: mythical entities in which informed consumers make rational choices. In such scarcely imaginable systems, business would provide information about their products: cheap, easy, simple. But it is hardly a secret that they do nothing of the sort. Rather, they seek to delude consumers to choose their product over some virtually identical one. GM does not simple make public the characteristics of next year's models. Rather, it devotes huge sums to creating images to deceive consumers, featuring sports stars, sexy models, cars climbing sheer cliffs to a heavenly future, and so on. The business world does not spend hundreds ob billions of dollars a year to provide information. The famed "entrepreneurial initiative" and "free trade" are about as realistic as informed consumer choice. The last thing those who dominate the society want is the fanciful market of doctrine and economic theory."

-- Noam Chomsky, from "The Non Election of 2004"

To Ra

THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
--
A HYMN TO THE SETTING SUN

A Hymn of Praise to Ra when He Riseth Upon The Horizon, And When He Setteth In The Land Of Life.

Osiris, the scribe Ani, saith:

"Homage to thee, O Ra, when thou risest as Tem-Herukhuti. Thou art adored by me when thy beauties are before mine eyes, and when thy radiance falleth upon my body.

Thou goest forth to thy setting in the Sektet boat with the fair winds, and thy heart is glad; the heart of the Matet boat rejoiceth.

Thou stridest over the heavens in peace, and all thy foes are cast down; the never-resting stars sing hymns of praise unto thee, and the stars which rest, and the stars which never fail, glorify thee as thou sinkest to rest in the horizon of Manu.

O thou art beautiful at morn and eve, O thou lord who livest and art established, O my lord!

time and time again

"Capitalism is a war machine. Its very existence is competition and there is a continuous possibility that this competition will express itself in a military form. It's not really possible to say where one "official" war ends and another begins. "

-- History of Working Class Resistance to War