NO ONE WAY

 don’t be daft.

         

Great earthlings

                  and tiny space beings

Run   the biosphere      together

 

         Endorphins          policed                

                  for traumatized           

equivalents.        

 

The perspective  of the Roshi

suggests     

A first         transmission

 

         “Rejoice not in a long-neck clam”

 

Nature’s open syllable          

Sounding like it’s here          underwater

                  Mimesis

 

You can’t herd memories      compelled

         from shore to shore

                  for profit

 

         Never again                           

a dry martini                         

         in the garden                        

                   of wet words 

                          

Take the odds

                  spooning

pays off

WHERE WE SLEEP

Harvesters came

for the hay

 

Between the icon’s window

and the sunset's 

non-Euclidian

horizon

 

Birds returned

from the fields 

silenced at Vespers,

camouflaged

and sheltered

by ground, shrub, and trees.

 

*

Enemies camped

in the woods

 

Taking the archetypes of dreams

out on patrol

 

Any thought

of sulfur, salt, and mercury

 

Gave territory away

for pyrite’s foolish likeness.

 

*

Know doubt

no problem

 

Hear and see

imagination

 

How we got here

how we left

Two stories shifting

angled perspectives

 

In either meaning

intending neither

 

 

A FIGURE OF FORM

 

8 winds

                    on dharma wheels

         centered

      intentionality

 

         opposites

       “partly right”

         either way

            calmly

           pristine

                  

unique      to the seeing     thru samsara

 

         *

    after vision

be-sworded sight                rigged

                                           genes

 

                                            evolving

                                            worth

        

trailed jasmine's

                           “mental” confusion

 

                  it is one thing

                  to guard the guard

                  another to try out

                           trust

 

         the non-judgmental

         reticence     and, so what?

 

                                              appreciative

         all will belong

self of many

         disinterested

         one

 

        *

a place for the word 

(wary of jousting)

lies in its language

 

a life-changing 

entrance into dimensions

         ego diminished       

 

skyed love

meaning  “wisdom”

  reforms community

CONCISION

    Language, all gussied up, eased

  
into hours talking with itself - 

a Texas drawl,

Wild Turkeys

   twisting away

         the orange rind.

Always the last to leaf

(in) leave taking.

Damp silence

mudding clarity.

 

You bring your sweat to the job,

the art of hanging sheets

between gravity and the weave of clouds

   chasing the drift

 

It happened because we left the window open.

I slept with a woman

who synchronized clocks

with the tiniest whims

of reciprocity.

 

Rhythm guides the body’s placement,

Image moves it on.

Vocabularies

break down their construction,

nouns become verbs,

resurrected.

Samuel Johnson’s dictionary 

had rocks to roll.

Or a measure of music was heard

within one discordant vowel.

 

         *

Two centuries ago, 

Fiction couldn’t survive secrecy.

A chair was thrown across the room.

A carriage pulled away from the house

and into fog.

Rhetoric climbed atop grammar.

 

Look at what you have to say at dawn,

ticketing a stop sign

your tongue consumed 

in a slow poke’s

Speakeasy.

 

         *

The hand moves to cover

inaccuracies

My face, wincing

 

I trample the way

Soft, vulnerable growth

In the moisture 

 

Teeth cut short

And lips

-       Babble on

 

*

Noon sun honeymoon 

Passing through the cerebral

exactment

where sweethearts flourish

THE GOD LEFT BEHIND

To do a runner

means to outdistance

the voice of conscience

coming from the castle

 

We arrowed through 

the toll booths

without getting shot

 

Tunnels cut up the sky

Guests offered giddy congrats

anticipating hoofing back

 

I sorted the hierarchy

(me on the bottom tier)

    of obligation

 

    living in a trailer

somewhere sixties

before we missed out

 

Enclosure revived deprivation

"truth-being"

nears belonging

 

    *

Did I mention Vajrasattva?

Deity on the scene 

cannot be real but feels

absolutely real

 

   turbulent scales

    laid open

to this or that

                  deafness

 

    *

climbing the ladder 

reaches into the attic

yes, you may

 

squeeze through 

the soft spot

on top of your skull

OTHERWORLDLY

Hugging the outside wall

as if a shadow

He sees in the dark, sure

a hint of motion

will converge the guards

 

It is my sudden and strong

Singing voice

they will hear, a fakir's

timeless mantra

on the Fourth Way

 

The saint has made gifts

of his adornments, turned 

land over to the homeless,

and cloaked himself

in a beggars’ identity

 

Outside the gates of the city

that barred his re-entry 

a crowd awaits the Wonderworker

and I fall at his feet, calling out

the 99 blinded names

LOVE, JUSTIFIED

 

The absence of death

is lostness of memory   

 

The imposture 

quickly justifies himself 

 

Sad, that consciousness 

Devolved

 

“A specific capacity to be redeemed”

 

   *

 

What’s funny about love 

You forget the details 

remember the fall

   that one day, you first

loathed yourself

 

You never had recognized 

truth being Less

Human 

drawing the animal 

Spirit Card

   

seeing clouds as thickets

tall tree limbs climbed

to pry holes open 

for leafed cleansing

the moony sky’s sin

 

   *

 

The horizon is a mouth opened wide

Its hunger paves the asphalt sky

Oiled seas’ rustproofing sticks

Shorebird feathers to bodies -

A smoke aggrieved diffraction

 

Pulling myself up and over

the overwrought boardwalk

At the vacancy of doors

(its society teeming)

fairground rides invert

the undercarriage

 

You find the mailbox empty 

This being the surface of our greetings 

Its irony repose of laughter

 

   *

 

The museum keeper sorts and labels

Objects entrusted him, changing

Shows weekly, hoping visitors will not tire

of returning.

         As they observe

objects, he observes them,

hearing a voice outside his head

“unbalanced” whose?

Labels and paintings

deliberately mismatched

 

   *

 

What I miss other than you

   is also you

 

Thunder God

   indelible Lightning,

         totem

each with a claim

on a thin electric Wand

  of interruption

Piercing the fruitful

petroglyph

with a lot to ask

 

of elders, and a populace

   poverty-stricken

 

*

 

I picked some lovely flowers for you.

 “Don’t bring them by.”

 

Forests are the home of the imagination

Couldn’t get around it No matter what

 

Your life

Needs to approach

Your shoes

 

 

                                    09/05/2024

WATER LANDINGS

Placebos

being sop

mark your absence, 

but when present

the red wolf

 

recovers

communication,

intuiting

medicine’s 

danger.

 

Chaos, spirit, 

and light

temper anew 

diminution

fitted

 

for all equations

of the heart.

The dead

have an anechoic

tomfoolery

 

shooting hoops

laces pulled tight

with leg power

another jump

advancing crustacean

 

its potential

of an olden

weight-bearing

authority

toweled off

THE CONTINENT IS YOURS

Binoculars adjust for the eyes.

On a nearby hilltop

a business economy watches 

the normative close in,

circling like raptors 

 

The fire      of repudiation     having been lit

dancing commenced

 

Land rent   not to be

         collected    

                           slavery, tenancy, capitalism

evicted       

from this world   

(its place of progress)

 

w/nu hope 

w/out enclosure   laws of protection

for people,        not property,      freed 

 

*

The sky spits on me

I congratulate myself

feeling nothing

no anger, nothing

no spittle

 

I thrive alone

ignored

perfecting wisdom

while others go blind

forgetting the sutras

 

Let the text have its life

I recall the child

awakened by Mother

over no intention

but sweetness

*

Trust me

goes further

than prove it

 

a la carte

sins in stars

Spinoza’s Monism

 

   coming apart.

No man will tell me 

what to do

 

when I fly away

I’ll ask for Biscoff

Cookies if I please

 

  We age into frailty

cling to the few

distinctions we yet

 

uphold ashamed

and glad to be

forgotten

 

 

  *

I embraced a blind man

Walking his cane through the dark

When his head came off in my hands

 

Morning, and the head was back in place

Hair jelled up like the peak

Of a wooden fruit picking ladder

 

Uniformed, charged with reparations

On a continent stuffed with stowaways

Escaped from their cabins

 

No more heavy lifting

Slavery (Egyptian)

The whole population 

   building pyramids 

 

   or captives taken in war

Slavery (Roman)

The emperor’s face

Stamped on his coin

 

Patricians putting plebians to work

Taxes going up with interest

Into feudal dispensation

 

By strength, for fealty

Land parceled 

Tenants farming

 

Waiting for capitalism’s

   evening out.

Revolutionary

         motivations abound

 

  *

The soul has no connection           to Realty Drive

Pawn your security key       

    deficits, decibels, descriptions

belong to resist - 

                  beyond self

                  combat we

                  recognize

                  the body,

                  recall it’s

                  person

                  now without

                  origin

                  or bardo

                  lights - 

                       the voice    of your   thrown-ness

 

   *

Three disciples climbed

to the full reveal

of the transfigured

form

that can’t be looked upon 

and seen

 

Three disciples

         holding out

                  for a peaceful mind     

         the God-Man

         having promised,

                           “I will send it along     later”

   

Form you desire

                  Beauty       composed          restored

                           to original           face

 

 

                       01.02.2024 – 07.17.2024

                        -for Seraphim Sigrist