Is part 2

The koan of everyday life
can quickly become the koan of
moment to moment to moment
to moment....
.
.
.
to the ineffable, the unexaminable.
Why the struggle then to express the inexpressable,
to explain the unexplainable, save that the utterance
and the unutterable are not two.

Is Part 1

"The world is neither significant nor absurd; the world quite simply is."
Robbe-Grillet

As all there is
Is is
And as is is
Ever branching
Ever ising
Right here
Right now
Transient as it is
Is as good a spot as any
To take stock.

As in
Thought B needn't follow thought A
Like a sieg-heiling rat
Run through a maze.
Thought B needn't even be B.
Why the need for sequencing?
Thought A bursts
Another A arises
In is is there
Really all these
Separate isses?
A's B's?
From where doesn't is
Extend
To where doesn't it
Reach.

A postscript to James Joyce's "The Dead"

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

While every falling flake
May be ephemeral
Emblazoned in each swirling reflection
Is the silvery glint of
Oneness diving before
The light.

Bongos

Once I bongoed
It all became clear,
But then there are those
Who haven't bongoed, and worse,
Sad and forlorn,
Those that never would.

Astronomy

I eye the stars
but do not wish
to know their names or
the constellations they form,
pontoon bridges for thought.

I only wish to sense
as clearly as they
the light that webs us
together.

Standing up for Joseph

He wasn't just hanging around,
Attending.
She was pretty.
He was a man.
Who starts these stories?

My mother told me how only he
Helped at my birth, how
He wiped her brow with a wet cloth
And wept for joy when he
Placed me in her arms
For the first time.

When he passed, I walked into the desert
And slept beneath a star smeared sky
Finally seeing, three days later,
High in the streaks above, a smile from
The only wise man I've ever known.

On "The Passion Of The Christ"

Whom did it pain more,
as the nails bit his flesh
Jesus, thinking he was God
(with all which that implies),
or the faithless thief
hanging to his left?

Golf

A beautiful mistress
who offers me just enough favors
to insure my return
when she can then,
more often than not,
treat me with scorn and derision
before promising, with a seductive grin,
to be better next time.

Eluding the tackler

The past is always talking.
So much time putting me together.
But if attention outpaces
Understanding's cozy embrace
All life, my thoughts being part,
Unfolds effortlessly, fluidly.

Whatever I'm concluding is in
Complete, is partial, is
Wrong.

As everything everythings everything
Where are the dead ends?

Impromptu at the doorway using big words

How tenuously this clinging
self vibrating at the universe's
unendingly permeable vortex,
this perpetually unfolding threshold,
quivers within, about
our omni directional
way.

The wisdom of

Solomon had 700 wives
and 300 concubines,
and then there's puny old me
thinking i'd be satisfied
with only an extra nine or ten.

Seasons

here i am
more and more
less and
less
getting in the way
of the
way.

how can there be any
obstacles?

Spring blossoms do
not shed
doubts.

to what do
memories, insights
stick?

the wisdom of

the wisdom of trevor
who, before repeating 2nd grade,
observed how c. and i
were, side by side, working
on separate computers.
trevor:" so you e-mail each other
instead of talk?"
me: "we're a 21st century couple."
c.:her later blog entry tells
how she's so freaking out living
with someone,"even on a trial basis"
(her reminder/warning to me),
but that she "adored this person"
(her encouragement/solace to me).

Because she's young and beautiful

Because she's young and beautiful
she doesn't have to be smart or interesting.
Because she's young and beautiful
everything she utters is of its very nature
already smart and interesting,
at least to those besotted souls
not so young
not so beautiful.

Eclipse Means Abandonment

just when
you think you've hit rock bottom
you realize
an echo way below
it's just a ledge
you've landed on
a cracked ledge
you're only part way down

S
N
A
P
.
.
.

the stream enterer

coming, going,
here, there,
no gap.
how, the crow asks, can one be two.
stream sound.

can many be one?
is loving the world separate
from loving oneself?
released, the hand fills the hand,
and the vast sky sure doesn't hinder white clouds from flying.

what is apart from your birth,
what has not gone into your making,

has not led to you,

does not, indeed, flow from you?

fathomless this bag of bones,
this stirring center,
interweaving within, about,
beyond.

dogen warns: "do not suppose that what you realize
becomes your knowledge and is grasped
by your consciousness."

a gust of wind italicizes you, your.