Sometimes after finishing a book, I like to commemorate the occasion with a small poem. The book was Zen Comments on the Mumonkan by Zenkei Shibayama. Some of what I found therein inspired unexpected insights.
After Reading the Mumonkan
just a single stroke
black paint presents a circle
the empty center
wider than the pacific
reveals and obstructs the way
After listening to an Amerindian read his stuff at a poetry reading here in Portland, I pretty much knew what the subject matter of my next poem would be. His “poetry” turned out to be an angry prosaic tirade against white people, and it went on and on and on.
I, being mostly a mix of white, didn’t feel it applied to me, because I wasn’t the one who caused so much injury to his ancestors. As I listened, I found myself reflecting on the fact that pretty much anyone raised on American soil is a Native American. Looking at it animistically, I realized that we grow up immersed in the ghosts of Amerindian ancestry, as well as a growing mix of other ancestries.
This strain of thought led me to reflect further: The food we eat, the water we drink, everything. Barring imports, it all ultimately comes from the ground we live on. So we are quite literally made of—manifest from—the bodies and psyches of our Native American ancestors, regardless of race. How could we escape it? They are as much our ancestors at this point as they are the ancestors of the Amerindians, because we—white, black, red, or yellow—are re-manifest from the very same atoms and psychic engrams.
This would have to cause some degree of spiritual ambivalence, at best. And so my 5th hybridanelle poem.
Legacy
an essence rises from the land into our spirits
a touch like the raven’s down dispersed on a maiden flight
that permeates our souls with an otherworldly memory
in one ear seethes resentment deep and bitter
reflections of a suffering long endured
and in the other burns remorse as sour
this land is an amalgam of disembodied psyches
its rivers and rocks infused with their enigmatic drift
an essence rises from the land into our spirits
as one hand grips a wound too deep to bear
the other twists a blade that lightly glimmers
reflections of a suffering long endured
we drink of water filled with transcendental engrams
a sense emerges in all who share in its natural course
that permeates our souls with an otherworldly memory
as one arm holds a steady hand for moments
and all the warriors freeze in sober pause
the other twists a blade that lightly glimmers
like sea-mist on the wind our minds are touched by phantoms
immersed in their love and hate—a plight we cannot escape
an essence rises from the land into our spirits
one eye sees arrows pierce men to their rest
another watches bullets drop their targets
and all the warriors freeze in sober pause
the waking world is brim with long forgotten relics
their shapes reduced to the dust we breathe from the fragrant air
that permeates our souls with an otherworldly memory
one hero’s war-lance slaughters human objects
the rage that sent it warm upon the blood
another watches bullets drop their targets
all ancestries are fused in our subconscious insights
we dream their atrocities—their advances and retreats
an essence rises from the land into our spirits
that permeates our souls with an otherworldly memory
each side is long remembered in our veins
in one ear seethes resentment deep and bitter
the rage that sent it warm upon the blood
and in the other burns remorse as sour
Publication History:
Blackmail Press (web-based) — Spring 2006
Cherry blossoms are everywhere in Portland. They are just everywhere. It seemed they deserved at the very least a tanka.
Niveous Cherry Blossoms
white catkin branches
sway beneath the light gray sky
rain drips from rooftops
each wind-burst fills the air
with flurries of dancing petals
This, my 4th hybridanelle poem, was written for someone I never got to meet, the ex-husband of my first wife. He committed suicide not long after she divorced him. His ash remains are buried at the base of a young sequoia on his father-in-law’s property in Northwest Oregon.
Fusion
Publication History:
Pacific Review — Fall 2006
As a runaway teen, one of my rules of thumb was to never sleep where anyone I had gotten a ride from suggested I sleep. I didn’t like the thought of strangers knowing where I would be during the night. I had no way of knowing how twisted such people might be, nor the sort of twisted company they might keep.
As I wandered the States for nearly two years, I normally slept out in the open, up high out of view of any nearby roads, or in dense woods or thickets. But sometimes it rained. I didn’t have a tent, though in retrospect I can see that it would have made sense for me to have at least toted a tarp around.
It was usually when it rained that I took my biggest risks in choosing a place to sleep. With dry weather, it was easy—just bed down away from people someplace out of view. But rain changes the situation. The human urge to stay dry is based on the fact that the body loses heat much more easily and rapidly when wet. And aside from this being unpleasant and discomforting, there’s also the very real threat of death from exposure.
Still, I generally considered the threat of being discovered as greater than the threat of freezing to death. People act on unpredictable urgings. They can leave a victim with fewer options than a little cold and wet might. So it would have to really be storming, and cold, before I’d consider passing the night in an abandoned, or empty, house. Much less a place suggested by the last person to give me a ride that day.
This poem, my 3rd hybridanelle, attempts to depict the experience of passing the night in just such a house. I didn’t sleep well that night—not so much because of the intensity of the storm as because a total stranger knew my whereabouts that night.
Stormlight
Frantic flashes illustrate my view,
Random moments shot into the light;
Thunder crushes every hope anew.
I pass the night in a frail abandoned home,
A weary vagrant teen deprived of will
Awaiting the dawn within its quaking hold.
Visions strobe throughout the empty room,
Shadows briefly singed by every bolt;
Frantic flashes illustrate my view.
I curl within my bag against the wall;
There’s nothing left for the winds to rip from me,
A weary vagrant teen deprived of will.
Etched amid the suffocating gloom,
Monster clouds roll black against the night;
Thunder crushes every hope anew.
I’ve struggled to grasp what life could ever mean
As memory and mind are stripped away;
There’s nothing left for the winds to rip from me.
Leafless limbs are drawn in sepia hues;
Stark against the darkness of my thought,
Frantic flashes illustrate my view.
I watch and listen, numb and half-aware,
My slumber but vivid streaks of fitful dream,
As memory and mind are stripped away.
Anxious waiting constantly resumes;
Shocked repeatedly from fugue to doubt,
Thunder crushes every hope anew.
I try to manage what rest I can redeem,
Protected from the storm by shifting frames,
My slumber but vivid streaks of fitful dream.
Desolation roars the whole night through;
Forces seem to tear the world apart;
Frantic flashes illustrate my view;
Thunder crushes every hope anew.
Uncertain shadows pose in countless forms;
I pass the night in a frail abandoned home,
Protected from the storm by shifting frames,
Awaiting the dawn within its quaking hold.
