P'u-t'o Temple

By Yuan Mei
(1716 - 1798)


English version by J. P. Seaton






A temple, hidden, treasured
in the mountain's cleft
Pines, bamboo
such a subtle flavor:
The ancient Buddha sits there, wordless
The welling source speaks for him.

rain blots gold soundz

rain blots gold soundz waiting for the bell i'm 9 years old dripping dry under a playground cover by now my dad is miles away woke up in a haze cartoon noises pop tarts getting dressed a wild ride in the backseat down glassy city streets




~me

from the vaults

Monday June 6th, 2005


slightly stone cold crazy
going places i never wanted to go
no more burn only silky sips of salvation
things fall apart fresh & raw
old rasputin a knife in the dark
black moor the hounds are at the gate


get behind me satan
jesus check your head


falling from a great depth
now i got worry
marcello mastroianni
cold fusion nuclear solution
living fossil newborn waste
blue olive blue orchid blue train
dreamland iris recognition manic depression


my chemical romance is a mephisto waltz
time passes
we leave two-step imprints
across the chronal surface
night and day
grim fandango and me






~me

from the vaults

Tuesday June 7th, 2005


perhaps the atoms just let go
(how to destroy the earth)
a promise lost leftover languishing
smoke & whiskey smoke & whiskey
swirls on the ice
my funny valentine break my heart
into the black into the black
swirls on the ice
how to destroy the earth
let go night people let go
the hounds are upon us


~me

from the vaults

Saturday June 11th, 2005


jesus went to the whisky a go-go with a whip 
and he said
"the world's a mess... it's in my kiss"


---------------


there's no sun up in the sky
grinding down in this empty space
to languish in an ambient grief
resolve replicate repeat myself
needle stuck in the groove
what comes after my blues
have covered the earth?
where is the end in sight?
to sleep in in an all-night reverie
on a cloud of flannel sheets
and cat whiskers in my face


~me

Proverbs and Songs

Proverbs and Songs


By Antonio Machado
(1875 - 1939)


English version by Robert Bly




I
The eye you see is not
an eye because you see it;
it is an eye because it sees you.


II
To talk with someone,
ask a question first,
then -- listen.


III
Narcissism
is an ugly fault,
and now it's a boring fault too.


IV
But look in your mirror for the other one,
the other one who walks by your side.


V
Between living and dreaming
there is a third thing.
Guess it.


VI
This Narcissus of ours
can't see his face in the mirror
because he has become the mirror.


VII
New century? Still
firing up the same forge?
Is the water still going along in its bed?


VIII
Every instant is Still.


IX
The sun in Aries. My window
is open to the cool air.
Oh the sound of the water far off!
The evening awakens the river.


X
In the old farmhouse
-- a high tower with storks! --
the gregarious sound falls silent,
and in the field where no on is,
water makes a sound among the rocks.


XI
Just as before, I'm interested
in water held in;
but now water in living
rock of my chest.


XII
When you hear water, does its sound tell you
if it's from a mountain or farm,
city street, formal garden, or orchard?


XIII
What I find surprises me:
leaves of the garden balm
smell of lemonwood.


XIV
Don't trace out your profile,
forget your side view --
all that is outer stuff.


XV
Look for your other half
who walks always next to you
and tends to be what you aren't.


XVI
When spring comes,
go to the flowers --
why keep on sucking wax?


XVII
In my solitude
I have seen things very clearly
that were not true.


XVIII
Water is good, so is thirst;
shadow is good, so is sun;
the honey from the rosemarys
and the honey of the bare fields.


XIX
Only one creed stands:
quod elixum est ne asato.
Don't roast what's already boiled.


XX
Sing on, sing on, sing on,
the cricket in his cage
near his darling tomato.


XXI
Form your letters slowly and well:
making things well
is more important than making them.


XXII
All the same...
Ah yes! All the same,
moving the legs fast is important,
as the snail said to the greyhound.


XXIII
There are really men of action now!
The marsh was dreaming
of its mosquitoes.


XXIV
Wake up, you poets:
let echoes end,
and voices begin.


XXV
But don't hunt for dissonance;
because, in the end, there is no dissonance.
When the sound is heard people dance.


XXVI
What the poet is searching for
is not the fundamental I
but the deep you.


XXVII
The eyes you're longing for --
listen now --
the eyes you see yourself in
are eyes because they see you.


XXVIII
Beyond living and dreaming
there is something more important:
waking up.


XXIX
Now someone has come up with this!
Cogito ergo non sum.
What an exaggeration!


XXX
I thought my fire was out,
and stirred the ashes...
I burnt my fingers.


XXXI
Pay attention now:
a heart that's all by itself
is not a heart.


XXXII
I've caught a glimpse of him in dreams:
expert hunter of himself,
every minute in ambush.


XXXIII
He caught his bad man:
the one who on sunny days
walks with head down.


XXXIV
If a poem becomes common,
passed around, hand to hand, it's OK:
gold is chosen for coins.


XXXV
If it's good to live,
then it's better to be asleep dreaming,
and best of all,
mother, is to awake.


XXXVI
Sunlight is good for waking,
but I prefer bells --
the best thing about morning.


XXXVII
Among the figs I am soft.
Among the rocks I am hard.
That's bad!


XXXVIII
When I am alone
how close my friends are;
when I am with them
how distant they are!


XXXIX
Now, poet, your prophecy?
"Tomorrow what is dumb will speak,
the human heart and the stone."


XL
But art?
It is pure and intense play,
so it is like pure and intense life,
so it is like pure and intense fire.
You'll see the coal burning.

40 or how i'd rather have a slow dance as the Earth's crust breaks beneath our feet

 the joy of physics or how i've been living afraid of death there is a spot on Jupiter we think we know what it is from here we can see it speculate meaning estimate rotation and velocity but we'll never feel it not enough time to come to terms with time touching the invisible surrounding us unhinged i think my vision improves but who knows ? a phoenix rose burned and crashed again ~ the mind of nature under my tree sit in space draw the circle wait


truly


i'd rather have a slow dance as the Earth's crust breaks beneath our feet Ella + Louis or Cohen's Blue Alert complete the circle one more orbit with you




~ me

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
By Mary Oliver
(1935 - )


Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?


Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?


Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!


No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!


Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?


Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.


And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?


Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!


To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!


To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!


To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened


in the night


To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!


Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?


While the soul, after all, is only a window,


and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.


Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe


I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.


For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!


A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.


Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?


And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.


That was then, which hasn't ended yet.


Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.


I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

Listen to what your version of the sock puppet monkeys are urging you to do

What influences do you really, really need to say goodbye to? The next six months will provide you with ample motivation and opportunity to finally bid those farewells. What long-term cycle really, really needs to be drawn to a close, no more hemming and hawing, all loose ends tied up and all mixed signals clarified? Again, the time between now and the middle of June will bring you the necessary inspiration to make it happen. But it'll take deep thought and sustained work and an expanded sense of humor, so get started soon.

One of my favorite landscape painters makes a livable wage from selling her art. She has had many gallery showings and has garnered much critical acclaim. That's the good news. The bad news is that she feels obligated to keep churning out more landscape paintings -- even when her muse nudges her to take a detour into, say, abstract expressionism or surrealistic portraits. Galleries don't want anything from her except the stuff that has made her semi-famous. "Sometimes I fantasize about creating a series of 'Sock Puppet Monkeys Playing Poker,'" she told me. If she were an Aries, I'd advise her to do what I think you should do in 2010: Listen to what your version of the sock puppet monkeys are urging you to do. 

~ Rob Brezsny

the universe is trying to tell me something out there superearth covered in 40 mile deep oceans boiling ~ lush life more than this we hope to see with the naked telescope a holiday on the rocks out there someone just like us except more creative maybe a little kooky keep us on our toes perhaps they see with eyes on stalks and speak by slapping faces

cathedral galaxies my mind wanders to dodge reality a life stunted bad habits making decisions changing course to maintain the same orbit but newton's laws give way at high enough speeds liquid freezes or floats away you know what to do do what you know do it punk

~ me

after midnight step into blue what is the mission ?  Norway saw a spiral sign in the sky ~ things fell apart pretty quickly after that what was lost was never found again ~ light bends near the sun all color is light's disruption ~ if there is free will then why am i this way ?  nothing numbs the feel the spiral the refraction buoyancy sinks big waves busted odyssey lucid calm so fleeting

~ me

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

By Wallace Stevens

(1879 - 1955)

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections,

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

there are worlds out there that have fallen into their sun or been set free into nothingness ~ a year may be three days ~ mars is covered in carbon dioxide ice ~ dust devils can be seen from space ~ gullies ripples streaks endless silence ~ nearby earth tugs a wobbly sun ~ 5 second films what happens in a compressed instant ~ each thought falls further back into orbit ~ a full moon fades away and comes back ~ i dont know anything my mind a sieve coated in midori i dont know anything crave something will slip through your fingers an LHC symphony a street fight a situationist riot so tired so mad so

 ~ me

they found water on the moon today it was clear green and tasted like absinthe ~ no one couldve predicted this ~ a spoon stirs in a reservoir glass michael collins saw it from space just him and nobody else

all of my past selves are at the party tonight i go for the shins suddenly with my telescoping steel baton its a 100 decibels in here the glasses clink the world quakes blood and spit and the things i break i crack the shell poke my beak through finally

~ me

in space no one can hear the ice in your whiskey ~ nothing dispels my darkness it just comes and goes as it pleases ~ a vine that strangles the tree ~ the sun is in the right place rising and falling gears interlocking everything perceived Sol illuminates feeds cradles rocks to sleep ~ a candle's skin glows from the burn underneath ~ the surface will crack give way ~ further magnification brings more to light ~ atoms stacked upon atoms piles of color rioting in the streets ~ what has been leaves an orbit trail of debris ~ ahead the path is clear if not seen

- me

“What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.”

~ Ludwig van Beethoven

“ The manner in which Americans consume music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.”

~ Frank Zappa

kick your own ass

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of

colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the

night." - Rainer Maria Rilke

"It is essential to have Knowledge; it is also essential to escape the

Known." - J. Krishnamurti

HEALING SHOCKS

Many of us are essentially asleep, even as we walk around in broad daylight. We're so focused on the restless narratives and repetitive fantasies unfurling in our heads that we only dimly perceive the larger story raging in all of its chaotic beauty around us.

To have any hope of permanently breaking out of our fuzzy trance, we require regular shocks. A single jolt might cause us to briefly come to attention and see the miracle of creation for what it is, but once the red alert has passed, we relax back into our fixation on the dreamy tales our mind never stops telling us.

In the course of its conspiracy to shower us with blessings, life does its best to provide us with a steady flow of healing shocks. But because it tends to err on the side of tenderness, its prods may be too gentle, allowing us to ignore them. Gradually, life will up the ante, trying to find the right mix of toughness and love, as it encourages us to WAKE UP!

But our addiction to the phantasmagoria is tenacious. The stream-of- conscious narratives and ever-bubbling fantasies, even when they're racked with torment and terror, are perversely entertaining. And so we may avoid responding to the kind shocks for so long that life finally has to resort to stronger medicine. Then we might get sick or lose our job or muck up our closest relationship.

It doesn't have to be that way. We could cultivate in ourselves a sixth sense for the wake-up calls life sends us. We might develop a knack for responding with agile grace to the early, gentler ones so that we wouldn't have to be visited by the more stringent measures.

There's also another possibility: With hungry intent, we could seek out and hunt down invigorating jolts. We wouldn't wait to have our asses kicked, but would kick our own asses -- over and over again, with a creative ingenuity that would be the envy of a great pronoiac novelist or musician or filmmaker. Who knows? We might even master the art of inducing shocks that feel really good.

~ Rob Brezsny

"It is eternity now; I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is immortal life."

- Richard Jefferies

8

what happens when time passes? oceans shift mammoth volumes of water grainy reality interlocking Mayan cycles 4 sides of 91 steps platform peak = 365 to create the space for time to unwind feed the sun with blood sustain light it's up to us


at the mouth of the Well of the Itza the world tree cave the spin of the earth is never the same each day ~ our burning sun is eight minutes in the past ~ the first day didn't have a yesterday back in time we eventually suddenly run out of structure rewind the expansion and it spirals out of existence all of time has always existed the future is a black jaguar on the dark side of the moon


the edge of space is tied up in ribbons of Andromeda's hair ~ the heliosphere twirls in churning orbits her movements collect the solar winds in a ballerina's skirt Cassini could not see it Voyager passed between the knots the scent of Fuji apples and kiwi a massive fruit stand ring embraces all of us freed from the rocks it's ok the beyond is not empty rather colorful has a sweet laugh and smells good


~ me

tethered to the sun

tethered to the sun a true god if ever there was one molten strands hold the orbit a pirouetting charred neutrino pyre 864,938 miles high radiant creme brulee every Beatles song John Lennon ever wrote

what our ancestors knew about the stars cave painting by firelight this is the ritual ecliptic paleolithic narcissistic houses in the sky we worshiped but the gods couldn't care less

black gives way to blue cosmos cornflower aerial release fairy rings 1500 year old trees string theory matter's notes universe as a symphony plucked strings there is a block the size of Rhode Island the mind cannot comprehend but can hear the tones

the laws of physics break down at the instant of creation vibrating entanglements 11 dimensions membrane theory m theory madness

~ me

Xxxxx stout

Xxxxx stout down the grist maw from the hopback to the mash tun old books you can smell the pages the stacks are martian canyons kept alive with an origami stent if you could not fail what then?  take the red pill the humidor is open she has whatever you need

- me