This Was Supposed to be a Poem About Snowflakes v/2.0

There is no hope in youth,
only fading, nor comfort in age,
only failing. We cling to sand
and pray for rain, and don't you know
every prayer is answered?

There is no safety in numbers,
only grasping, nor contentment in love,
only asking. We tell our children to share
and fill our houses with greed, and don't you know
every hypocrisy is a tiny cell of cancer?

There is no Truth in opinion,
only thinking, nor Wisdom in judgement,
only speaking. We lie to ourselves
and forget that we lied, and don't you know
of all Liars who is the master?

There is no Love in our love,
only clinging, nor fondness in distance,
only ringing. We name our fear Love
and hide Love in the basement, and don't you know
we cover the basement door with plaster?

There is no Peace in the world,
only waiting, nor efficacy in action,
only praying. We send up prayers for change
and we remain the same, and don't you know
every prayer we send is answered?

Two Haikus

Haiku for the Coquettish Waistrel Pictured Below

Life is meaningless,
God, no one understands me,
Try to look sexy.


Haiku on the Occasion of Thanksgiving Day, 2005

Thankful for a bed,
slept, I could have ate instead,
Million turkeys dead.

Blog This

Thanksgiving haiku for Joey

pine cone centerpiece:
the territorial flag
of a meal conquered

Pinky

To live inside a colored womb,
a pink astronaut fleshy
and fragile, soon to be expelled
to spaceship earth from inner space
a wet cocoon, a smushed face
and tiny fingers in the picture
and tiny fingers and smushed face
and dad that day in the waiting room
'cause they wouldn't let him in
this soon or maybe he didn't want or was
camping with a friend.
Floating in fixed
space, milk and honey flowing in floating
and floating and then...

And time and world rushing in
and where did my ocean of honey go?

Mother is food and rootedness and self, we end in
eachother and have no end.
In eachother a wealth of love and
warm mommy-juice to float in is self and love
without end.
Mother is Goddess, is Lover, is Friend,
is Spaceship and Space.
Pinky in space in Mother in space in Mother
in space, millions floating and loving,
a race of pink astronauts, another world
close as stretched-tight skin, made of love and wonder,
but we have only cameras
to look in.
What happened to heart-eyes, Mother?
Were they cut with umbilical cord, can we learn
to use them again?
If I say the right words will you let me fly back
to that cocoon,
fleshy, warm and
soon?

As the hand held before the eye hides the tallest mountain, so this small earthly life hides from our gaze the vast radiance and secrets of which the world is full, and whoever can take life from before his eyes, as one takes away one's hand, will see the great radiance within the world.

-from Ten Rungs: Collected Hasidic Sayings
Martin Buber

What happens when we take away the hand from before our eyes? That is, what happens when we step back from our own suffering, our own pain, and see it in the context of all the suffering and pain with which the world is full?

When we hold our personal dramas and tragedies before our eyes, we become blinded, in a way, to the outside world. For while we see the pain and suffering around us, it seems to us inconsequential compared to that pain which is all the time held before our eyes. Our own pain seems a gargantuan mountain, before which the mountainous pain of the world shrinks, almost to nothing.

When we take away the hand from before our eyes; that is, when we see that it is just our hand held before our eyes, and not a mountain, as we once suspected; when we see rightly; then the fathomless mass of all the suffering in the world presents itself to us and our own suffering receeds, almost to nothing.

With our hand held before our eyes, the world seemed filled with pain: our own. When we take away our hand the world again seems filled with pain: that of all the others in the world.

Before there is pain, after there is pain. So what did it avail us then, to remove our hands, since our world was, and still is, suffering and suffering?

The suffering, however, is not the same.

When we hold our hand before our eyes we suffer because we sense that there is a lack, that something is missing. And because we see only ourselves, we sense that something in ourselves is missing. This sense of lack creates our first suffering. But then we suffer again, for we also sense that it is beyond our power to fill this need. For if it were within our power to fill this need then surely we would have filled it already. We suffer because we feel a space within us and then we suffer because we can find no way to fill this space. We suffer because we realize that we will never be able to relieve our own suffering.

But when we pull back our hand and our eyes see rightly, then we are confronted by the suffering of all the others in the world; we sense that something is lacking in the world. We feel the world's need now, instead of our own. But while we could see no way of easing our own suffering, now we see an infinitude of ways in which we may ease the suffing of others. Here is a need we can fill! For while no one may lighten his own load, each may lighten the load of his brother, if only in some small degree.

And the miracle is this: in filling the need of others, we find our own need filled. And this is "the great radiance within the world".

Suppose

"Supposing truth is a woman--what then?"
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil




Suppose truth is a woman--then what?
Suppose you call her late at night and she doesn't want to talk to you.
Suppose you're a little drunk when you call and she hangs up on you and
when you call her back
she doesnt' answer...

Suppose truth only looks like a woman
and you don't find out till later that those tits you fell
in love with
--immediately, deeply--
were only water balloons, and you feel a bit silly,
falling in love with water balloons,
but you buy some the next day, just to see...

Suppose truth is a lesbian who doesn't want anything to do with you
romantically,
but does think you're a great guy and gives you a big hug
every time she sees you...

Suppose truth isn't a lesbian at all but nonetheless
wants nothing to do with you
romantically.
Or worse, only pretends to be a lesbian
when you're around...