Jim Murphy - Labor Pains

Christmas

2010-11-21T08:41:00.000-08:00

The present
Is the present
Ever here
For the opening

Christmas

2010-11-15T13:48:00.000-08:00

The present is the
Present
Ever here for the opening

Forging a life in those empty places
Reveling amidst the in-betweens
Now is the time
Here is the place

What we are
And what is
Fits together
Perfectly

Upping the Ante of the Possible

2010-09-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

Those hackneyed myths desperately clutching
At the tail of an ever ungraspable presence
A shuffling of the deck
To find a script you can speak
But life being life
Which has to move
Like it or not
Ready or not
There is no one way
You're supposed to feel

Spinning gold filigrees from the straw
Of yesterday's regrets

The Sensei's Status Update and His Subsequent Comments on Same

2010-07-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

(Status) More flame than statue
More verb than noun
More ellipses than period...

(Comment) The wretched detritus of a wastrel's life
By turns profligate
Then penurious
Pathetically seeking solace with his parsed distinctions
His self-congratulatory smugness

(Comment) While the would be Bohdisattva wondered
How to ferry all these people across
He sank
In the quicksand
By the shore

Is part two

2010-04-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

What we are
And what is
Fits together
Perfectly

A Song Of Innocence

2010-04-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

Spirit guides are everywhere
Animals may be the loudest
The most insistent...
That jay exhorting
Squirting out its comment--
Let go... move on...
Next time on your head--

Or the shadow at my feet
The wind-stirred leaves
A toe stubbed
All hint
Who... What... Where...
When...
Doesn't...

Surf Camp

2010-04-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

My goggles are foggy
But my thoughts are clear
Or is it the other way around
Vice/versa
Both/and
Neither/nor

Being/nothingness strikes again

Or is it emptiness/form...

T he Sensei's Epitaph

2010-04-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

The wretched detritus
Of a wastrel's life
By turns profligate
Then penurious
Dissolute in all save excess

Florida

2010-04-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

Defusing the frustrating

Finding the funny faster

Exhilaration

2010-03-18T08:01:00.000-07:00

Right now
Right here
Indra's web
Glistens

Metaphors

2010-02-26T04:27:00.000-08:00

Energy manifests in infinite ways
Provided no blood be drawn
Bones broke
Best to ride it

Tiger Woods invokes Buddha

2010-02-19T08:22:00.000-08:00

The world does not bow down to Buddha
It's just that he moves so fluidly through it
No Buddha I
But a stumbler, a tripper
Careening, in my slow-witted way,
Towards the light
I am already riding

There is not only this

2010-02-12T08:01:00.000-08:00

Fleeing the vessel
Venturing further and further away
Stretching the cord
From the good ship "Identity":
This flame inside us
Moves at light speed...

Powder Day

2010-02-05T06:21:00.000-08:00

Moment by moment
Explanation-free
Can religions exist
Without
Fear...

Status Update

2010-01-15T06:39:00.000-08:00

While the would be Bodhisattva wondered
How to ferry all these people across
He sank
In the quicksand
By the shore

Status Update

2010-01-14T07:02:00.000-08:00

One needn't travel vast expanses
To be a nomad.
Of course, that depends on how one
Defines "travel," "expanses," and "nomad."
In fact, by how one defines all
Of the above...

Status Update

2010-01-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

What seems obvious to one person
Is opaque to another
This Terra Firma
Ain't very firma

Movement..
In every possible direction...

Status Update

2009-12-31T13:20:00.000-08:00

Can't dwell on my mistakes
Measureless as they are
Strewn as stars about the cosmos
But see them as steppingstones
To be skipped across.

Status Update

2009-12-17T08:44:00.000-08:00

I am not here to toil
I'm here to play
As if there were
An "I"
A "here"

Dharma Path

2008-12-04T08:30:00.000-08:00

You don't study Buddhism
To learn the sutras
Or to practice meditation.

You don't study Buddhism
To become more aware
Or even to become a Buddha.

You study, you live, you do
Buddhism
To be Buddha.

Of the 10,000 eyes.

Now toss this onto the compost pile
And start again.

On my cat scan

2008-11-08T13:45:00.001-08:00

The fidgety waiting room,
Its antiseptic scent hinting not so much at fear
As at a grudging acceptance.

Eve never ate of the tree of good and evil.
Her plucked fruit came from the tree of
The knowledge of good and evil.
Here, there's a different kind of knowledge.

As ever, there is Shakespeare.
"If it be now, 'tis not to come,
If it be not to come, it will be now.
If it be not now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all."

Question:

How ready was Hamlet?
More to the point,
How ready am I?
How ready are
you?

Yet, pray, define readiness.

An open hand held out freely?

NARRATIVE

2008-08-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

"Oh blessed rage for order, pale Ramon"--Stevens

My story spinning out,
A blind man's cane clicking
In the darkness of Plato's cave.

The story beguiling,
Justifying whatever propelling impulse
It follows a half a step behind:
Slime in the snail's wake,
Effluvium forming ever novel
Combinations from the
Mountain of yesterday's shit.

All this to both create and soothe
My-- "but I had to do it"-- defense.

THE ACTOR PAUSES

2008-07-09T07:29:00.000-07:00

"The poem of the mind in the act of finding what will suffice. It did not always need to know; the scene was set; it repeated what was in the script." Stevens

The Actor Pauses
Steps out of his role
stands back
ignores the lines that
yesterday whispers in his ear

Silent
aware
hears the chatter
the king of the mountain
demands for utterance
this thought
that

Watches without attachment
not a whiff of answers
only breath
relaxation
just this
just now

2008-06-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

UNHITCHING

She wants to give him confidence,
to make him feel good.
His attraction, my attention, gives her confidence,
makes her feel good.
Where is the someone making me feel good?

But i shouldn't need that, should know better.
The Diamond Sutra knows.
Where, Subhuta, is the abiding self to which
confidence would adhere?
Where, Subhuta, is the abiding "confidence"?
To what would this illusion cling?
To another illusion?
Me?
Just cut to the feeling good.

Is part 2

2007-12-13T07:32:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

"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"

2007-09-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

"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

2007-09-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-11T05:32:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

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"

2007-09-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-04T05:13:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-31T15:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-28T17:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-25T06:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-24T13:35:00.001-07:00

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.