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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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wind through the piñon trees

by

awareness, conversation, poetry, silence, snarky

talking to fellow Texans at the Grand Canyon

We stood at Yaki Point, silent, awed

content in the silence of the wind

through the piñon trees.

They walked up the trail behind us:

There are no words,

she expounded as if someone asked.

(But there are always words

I thought, even in the canyon’s silence).

Yet, they kept talking:

how Yosemite is more Impressive

Oh, you have to go there

The hikes— so strenuous

We were so sore afterwards

Then they walked away talking

as if to someone else.

While the wind moved through the piñon trees

filling the silence they left behind.

(June 9, 2022)

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Ikkyu Reiterations: Truth Will Out

by

despair, hope, ikkyu, poetry, politics, teaching, tired

I am heartsick: again

the frauds conspire to slander

our old teacher; it’s easier

to mock an idea,

than to refute its truth.

Chrysanthemums bloom into the fall.

Everything to its season.

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Pursuit of Wisdom

by

hubris, humility, identity formation, poetry, sentence, ways of knowing

I know enough to know

I don’t know enough

to know nothing.

(June 7, 2022)

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Ikkyu Reiterations: I, too, am Just Passing Through

by

acceptance, attention, dance, delusion, desire, ikkyu, meditation, poetry, samsara, zen

Death’s daughters dance

seductively

a slow strip tease;

their delusions draped

in our desires and discontents.

Without the diligence

to be dissuaded,

I take delight

in every turn and twist

of their exigent dance.

With my attention split

between hesitation and fear,

I fool myself to think

my life is more, or less,

than some other’s. Thus

distracted, I lay my hand

on the earth’s warm skin

to reassure myself again,

that I am still here.

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again

by

change, control, difference, haiku, optimism, pessimism, poetry, ways of knowing

my glass is empty

i open a new bottle

my glass is now full

(June 1, 2022)

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Ikkyu Reiteration: I Talk Too Much to Fill the Emptiness

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aging, awareness, change, ikkyu, meaning, meditation, memory, poetry, zen

As we spend the summer debating

death’s vague dichotomy (as if

the dead stay up late worrying

about personal liberty), Evil walks

casually along the rows with a scythe

leveling the field with each slow swath.

In early Autumn, night’s splintered

with lightning storms, first dark,

then light, then dark again like a child

flickering a light switch indecisively:

the world about us is exposed briefly

before vanishing into memory’s shimmer.

I have forgotten so many things

I thought I once knew; I remember

I shut the gate to something, but

forgot where it was, where it led to,

or if there were cows there to escape

into the empty Winter pastures.

(June 1, 2022)

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Ikkyu Reiterations: I Write a Poem Again

by

anger, babies, children, death, hope, ikkyu, meditation, poetry, students, teaching, tired

A poor response to terror— again,

to children slaughtered in their classroom—

And again, will we learn anything this time?

The politicians and news pundits

gossip and chitter like crickets;

and nothing, again, nothing is done.

Here, a few hours distance to Uvalde,

Black-eyed Susans and Horse Mint dance

to the wind, as if nothing changes.

Each time (so strangely common) I think

of my students and the possible horror—

and pray (in my way) for redemption.

Tomorrow, my students will graduate,

and head off to college— with the hope,

again, that they will change this world.

(May 30, 2022)

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Portraiture

by

aging, change, erasure, middle-age, poetry, transition

I’m in this snapshot

laughing at a party.

I look old, like a skull

embedded in a wall.

I do not know myself,

at least not enough

to admit what I’ve done.

I deflect, disengage;

yet, I am still there,

disembodied: a voice,

thin and transitional.

My splotched skin’s

stretched thin

across my skull.

The bones show through

like field’s slow erosion.

I wear myself

against the day,

until I am erased.

(May 28, 2022)

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Possibility’s Collapse Into Singularity

by

aging, poetry, tired

A slow cascade into old age,

until the only choice is no choice:

where there is no memory

outside myself; where

the story is only mine

to revise, where I step forward

without hesitation

and unlatch the last door.

(May 24, 2022)

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Blood of the Innocent

by

anger, change, paradigm shifts, rage

I have said this before: There needs to be photographs published of the aftermath of these shootings. Not the bodies of the torn up 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders (6-9 yo), but the destruction of the room. Blood spattered across the walls where their work had been displayed by the teacher. The work the children had been so proud to see hanging on the wall. Walls that are now blood stained. These common classroom artifacts desecrated in blood need to be seen…these murders are not neat and tidy, easily forgotten (obviously). Do not show the dead children, show the bullet holes in the walls, show the blood. The blood of the innocent. Maybe that would help in bringing enough rage to the surface to bring about meaningful change. Maybe.

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Ikkyu Reiteration: The Elite Have Problems, So We Do

by

broken, control, definition, fear, ikkyu, poetry, politics, power

Among the wealthy and secure,

wealth and security breeds fear;

then fear becomes the watchword

no one will admit to knowing.

We are all entangled in their lies;

our hearts strangled with our sighs.

(May 23, 2022)

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Ikkyu Reiterations: To Suffer and Sorrow

by

abstract, awareness, control, difference, fate, meditation, perspective, poetry, ways of knowing

We are a two-headed bird lost on cold mountain.

Night unfolds into day, as day slips into night.

Guilt and regret caw constantly over the dead;

We forget the fruit left on the counter at home.

(May 16, 2022)

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Ikkyu Reiterations: Samsara

by

awareness, change, contentment, cycle, delusion, happiness, ikkyu, meditation, patience, poetry, process, process, not a journey, samsara, transition, ways of knowing, zen

As if she has been here for millennia

calmly chewing grass, the buffalo stands

in an open field below the mountain.

Aware of the biting fly and herself,

but little else, she still provides so much

into the life of the poorest village.

What difference can the monk’s laughter make

to her as it echoes through the valley?

(May 14, 2022)

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Ikkyu Reiterations: Fool’s Gold

by

aging, delusion, ikkyu, meditation, poetry, ways of knowing, work in progress, zen

Caught in ecstatic wonder

the young girls make love

with tempestuous abandon.

While he follows the rules

of the old games, he’s mocked

for his sad delusions:

In dream’s river, the two

drowned consorts come to him

with promises of consummation.

Thus he becomes a cuckold

to himself, looking for coins

beneath a withered willow.

(May 12, 2022)

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Here Now (iterations #1 and #2)

by

attention, clarity, life, meditation, poetry, time, ways of knowing

The ascendent moon

negotiates the chase tree’s

dark-twisted branches.

_________________

There are moments

within moments

within moments,

a slow descent

into the repeating

heart of the lotus.

Sunlight takes on

a clarity which radiates

from all it touches,

as shadows sharpen

themselves against

the light’s keen edges.

From the river bank,

the water glistens

like distant laughter,

while we stand still,

watching, between heart beats,

the river rush past us.

(May 10, 2022)

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