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The Distant Self

Lately I have been pondering the nature of death, what it really is. Is it closing your eyes one last time never to wake up? Or is it something more subtle, more unnerving—something much closer to home? When I look back through time to the teenager I once was, that person is not here. He is dead, and he has been dead for a very long time. But because I am still strong and somewhat clear of mind, I can forget that death and focus on the present life as if it now unfolds. But the reality is, there are moments, days, circumstances that I would hold onto for eons if it were possible—but they have long since passed and are dead.

The Distant Self

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Perhaps the movement between carnal death and birth is much the same. Even after that point of presence jumps from our last breath to some unfathomable new context, there is a recognition somewhere in our newly manifest being that something has been lost—a past and fully developed identity. Perhaps this death occurs on a lesser scale over and over throughout the experience of living. And those who see this most clearly are those who still live after everything else has been lost, and all they have left is to struggle for moments of clarity while wasting away in a nursing home.

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Contrast

My third synthetic ode. I would like to eventually find the time and energy to write more. The first two parts are structurally isometric while the last has a structure of its own. Parts I and II focus on opposites, in this case the female (yin) and male (yang) energies, respectively. Part III explores a synthesis of the two.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis—Using purely depictive language. All synthetic odes are done this way. It’s a time consuming process.

Contrast

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.

I will at some point get around to writing an article on the synthetic ode, since I’m the only one who can explain it. It is my creation, after all. But first I want to write more such poems, so as to become completely clear about what elements of language and prosody must be present for a poem to be called by this name.

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Maya

This was originally going to be at least a portion of part I for “Contrast”, but after several months it never progressed. So I decided to call it its own poem and start over with the former.

Maya

From hard hidden folds where granites press
stony drops through limestone crevices
to streams that coalesce in emptiness
and pool in caverns dripping far from sight
to canyon narrows carved from monuments
heft high above a universe of waves
to stillborn depths where ancient forms of life
move like starving ghosts amid the void
she creeps through time an ever present force
birthing shapes amorphous to the mind
which rise and bubble out into the light
manifest for moments on the wind

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evaporation

Someone emailed me a Zen poem, and I found myself tapping out this small response.

evaporation

in an ocean of stars
a ballet sun pirouettes
alone in a glimmering sea
of waltzing partners

in an ocean of light
waves wash the empty shores
of a trillion winkling eyes
an island of contemplation

mass gave light to motion
birth gave life to mind
thought gave dream to atoms
form gave way to karma

by the river of no return
a solitary observer
breathes in the emptiness
steam rising to nowhere

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True Nature

This one was scribbled out as I sat atop a giant bit of driftwood watching the waves during a recent hike on the Lost Coast Trail in Northern California’s Sinkyone Wilderness State Park.

True Nature

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.
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Glance

When I go backpacking, I tend to my bring my journal along, or at least a little composition book. Here I’ll record any thoughts I have, or poem fragments. I should do this more often, since it affords me an opportunity to really sit with my thoughts, undistracted. Later I’ll go through the poem fragments and see about expanding them into actual poems (though I’m told a poem fragment is usually itself a poem).

Of the five or so recorded during my recent eight day walk, this one feels the most complete.

Glance

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.
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strobe

Reflecting on the nature of existence again. It’s not like I try to solve the great mystery of being when I reflect on just what our experience of existence is and where it comes from. Nothing like that. When I reflect, it’s usually because I suddenly had an insight, and I find myself meditating upon it. For me, such insights tend to revolve around the coalescence of being rather than on the nature of being itself. Perhaps in time these insights will lead somewhere, so long as I’m careful not to over-think them and just let them be what they are—insights, pure and simple.

strobe

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

As for the coalescence of being. It seems to me that the process would be a cycle of coalescence and disintegration (birth and death) with no real beginning and no real ending.

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kalpa

My 12th trisect. The content required a lot of meditation and reflection on the nature of being—and a few conversations with a well-whiskered monk over Scrabble. Segment one depicts the body, as in the corporeal form. Segment two depicts mind, which was really easy since everything is mind. Segment three depicts samsara, which is also pretty easy because everything is also rolled up in that process.

kalpa

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

The subject matter explored here is of great personal interest. Probably since I was 5 or 6, I’ve been reflecting on the nature of being. It started with a budding fear of death. But as soon as I found myself struck by that fear, I also found myself asking, “Just what is it that dies?”

Everyone seems to have their own answer to this question. As for me, I have found a balance with it. I am content now to leave it unanswered. Unanswered, yes, but this does not mean unexplored. I don’t seek an “answer” at this point, because I’ve realized that there may not be one. But this shouldn’t stop me from seeking insight. Insights and answers are not the same. This poem has manifested from insights and makes no attempt to answer anything.

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sunyata

A friend of mine, a scholar of Buddhism and traditional Chinese, has recently been talking about how ‘sunyata’ is grossly mistranslated into English and misunderstood in the West as ‘nothingness’, when the most accurate translation would be ‘evanescence’.

When he first mentioned this I thought to myself, “Well then, I guess that makes sense.” Everything about life and every moment has always seemed evaporative to me.

I didn’t quite know what the title of this would be when I started writing it, but about halfway through, ‘sunyata’ seemed like a perfect fit. Still feels like a perfect fit. So, my 23rd villanelle.

sunyata

fill with evanescent light
every momentary cell
coursed throughout imagined form

every vessel heart to limb
pulsing moments on to self
fill with evanescent light

illuminate each hidden fold
churning vapors through the soul
coursed throughout imagined form

every fiber bound to life
linking bone to skin be still
fill with evanescent light

elucidate this vital force
streaming like an endless swell
coursed throughout imagined form

every sorrow pain and fret
breathing mixed amid the silt
fill with evanescent light
coursed throughout imagined form

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subjectivity

Just did a little reading about an old Russian art movement called suprematism, manifesto and all. Kind of a curious thing. It was originated by an artist, Kazimir Malevich, around 1913, and he declared the movement ended in 1920. The only art movement I can think of whose originator eventually decided to end it. Never mind, though, Malevich was apparently charismatic enough to draw in a few adherents to suprematism, who continued creating supposedly suprematist artwork and writing (one Russian poet played with it) well after Malevich ended his movement. I guess if you don’t want something to take on a life of its own, don’t publicize it.

Anyway, Malevich was inspired by cubism and futurism to start this movement. In effect, suprematism is a sort of combination of the two. Cubism is basically artwork comprised of representational industrial shapes and angles like cubes and circles. Futurism is the extreme abstraction of the same.

Malevich, apparently, saw some metaphysical connections and called his attempt to bring them out ‘suprematism’.

So, here’s my stab at it, just for metaphysical cubist kicks.

subjectivity

clear your mind white
empty the canvas of thought

paint a black circle
a ring of smoke

outside is all the void
inside the void of self

scrape the inner edge
with a triangle’s black points

spirit thought and body
trapped within the void

now fill the black triangle
with questions feelings doubts

a snail crushed underfoot
a daughter crushed by steel

a spider’s shriveled figure
a mother’s crinkled corpse

a fly smashed by the swatter
a son smashed by debris

a red fox snared in iron
a father trapped in credit

it all lasts but a moment
the circle snaps and fades

and the triangle’s edges scatter
to join the canvas white

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Grace

However you may idealize the human form, there is one reality that wins out in the end—It will moulder and rot and decay back to the dust. There is nothing we can hold onto. Everything must go, even our most cherished fancies.

Grace

take your long lithe figure
your bright ruby smile
and take your pliant stride
filled with suggestion

take your smooth soft skin
carved from lily petals
and your slender toned belly
set in round swaying hips

and take your gentle cheeks
your life-altering glance
fixed like glimmering jewels in
Athenian curves

take it all off
to the charnel grounds
and meditate awhile
amid the waste

fill your porcelain nostrils with
the stench of what’s to come
and fill your deep brown eyes with
the reality of your perfection