amateur poetry for the amateur critics

 

I realize it's been almost a year since I've posted anything on Xanga.  In the meanwhile, I've written this (along with a few other things). You'll be sorry enough I did if you try to wade into this sputum.

2007.09.23--A Zenless Progression

I: God Save You, Like the Queen of My Anxiety

So many things to say,
And sometimes I despair.
So many things to feel
I wish were never there.

When woken from a sleep
So tenuously held onto--
A sleep that is forgetting,
A pause in letting
My overtired, taxed mind
Remember where the worry is.
And even when
Sleeping is dreaming,
And dreaming is remembering the worry
In overblown, fantastic nightmare currency
That turns the worry into
A shocking, schticky, sickly schlock
Of weird-out, crazed-out nonsense,
Well, at least I'm sleeping,
I could say--
I'm left with only wishing
I was left to dream.

So what am I to do?
Forget, or hope to,
With varied vices and distractions,
Guilty dirty mags and drink, and drugs,
Or facing it and trying to draw it out
Like blood with leeches:
Accepting long late nights,
And writing--pages of worry--
With ink on page--
With ink on paper, and coffee and cigarettes?

So many things to say,
That I despair
That pen and ink and
Whorled, wearied mind will be enough
To suck out all the worry
And dry me of my despair.

Not even my despair,
And I despair my love's despair:
Frustrated expectations
Of herself and others--
Herself never enough to please
Herself or others.
Trying to forget the pain
In all the worn-out, old familiar ways
Bleeding herself of sensation
In little nicks on her own body
Instead, like me, of bleeding out sensation
And wicking congealing black ink on the page.

I wish she would, she could,
And think she should
When every hot, shallow cut she makes
Cuts deeper on me, deeper cuts--
Cuts of despair that's deeper (in her);
Cuts deeper cuts, despair of wounded heart;
And wounded heart, cut, bleeds
Internal bleeding, depression
At knowing deeper despair of expectations
Than I, bumbling I, helpless hoping I,
Know how to handle.

I write for you, my love,
To write my love, and wish and hope,
My love, to bleed for you, from you,
With helpless hoping leeches of the mind
That hapless hoping of my soul,
Which is yours in worship of the deity of love
We share,
Will, against helplessness and haplessness,
In straining brief expression, help
Or hope to help.
I cannot know. I'm not beside you
Or inside your own turmoiling mind.
Not inside you, though I'd wish to hide you in
Hurried sing-song of my grasping mind.

I can and cannot understand,
Close by felt responsibility and
Responsible responseless irresponsible action,
But far by fact and distance and
The almost perhaps insurmountable distance
Between two any flesh-clothed minds.

So I despair
That my ink-leeching will serve
To bleed you of despair, depression,
Felt, felt, and again-felt debts
And uncompleted longings,
That anything I do or can do to save
You, will save you.
Will you save you? Can I save you
Worry, and protect you
From vicissitudes of weary worry
And regret?
Or will despair, as I despair
That you despair,
Be too much for you, and
Too much for me?

So much to say, and wish
Or do, and I, I cannot
Tell, which fits each
By category in what I do and can.
So much to hope, and I
At least half-despair, my love,
That I am any more than just a man
And these just words.


II: Regressive Intermission

If it was you, then it is you:
Is that all there ever is?
If it was true, than it is true.
Is there any truth in this?

Is what my worst is
All that I am?
Is this also true of you?
Is there any getting past it,
Growing out of who we were;
Is there a who we are, and will be?

Karma, Buddha speaks regression
Always trapped always in the pain.
Is there hope for Zen satori
Coming instant often with brief pain again?


III: May Maya End (with Other Cuts)

If we can believe what we are told,
All the stories told of old
Tell us there is more than rationed thought.
If we can believe the things we read,
There's a less-cold comfort
From the ages.

Hear the sages: Old Zen masters
Tell disciples: there's something you haven't caught yet.
From the hoary, told, Satori!
There's something beyond the boiled-down thought
Of humanity: regret.
Sometimes spoke in answerless riddle--
Hear that old, cold tattler prattle!
Bending on a wooden cane, a Moses-staff.
Bodhisattva, claimed enlightened,
All the poor disciples frightened:
Nonsense riddles told, with claims attendant.
Don't try not to solve them, or to
Say the answer.
Dance around it, mystic-spinning, with the mind,
And let the soul walk to it.
There's an answer, just not in words.
Or perhaps one wearied Word will
Die to be the saying. That's the answer known.

Let the words die; they're all-killing,
Like the actions that they spawn.
Trying to understand the world, the words,
The law of words and word-wrought action.
All it, it all kills. All it kills is
Mind kills soul when mind claims answer
To the riddle, riddles every day.
Every day a new one, new ones,
Every day an answer, word-answers
Killing-myths of out-explaining.

Sticking image of the staff--
The sage's staff: Look to the staff
And it'll save you! Little save you
Will the words of
Endless explanation you save up
And hope, with hope that you'll
Explain the world away
And its pain with it.
To the staff! Writhing caduceus on it,
Knotted snake on it, whose sight will save you.

Poor disciples! Hoping something someone said
Will save them, hearing only helpless riddles,
Nonsense riddler: I go to die. I live to die. By death you live.
All but the last makes sense,
All but the last heard too many times,
Hence the new riddle.

Sticking image: look to the staff! the old sage says.
Poor disciples! Hearing riddles, hoping
Someone's words will save them,
Theirs or someone else's, aged
Myths rehashed or laws rehatched--
Head-shaking Zen rabbi sage
Of their words-obsessing wishing
Calmly that to answer-riddles that they tell
The words-obsessing sad disciples would just listen
With the ear of wisdom that, word-weary,
Hears the answer-truth in riddles.
Aged beyond his years, the master waits.

No bon mot, mot juste, just the right word
That we're striving for--just words!
Only words, and words, and words
(World-weary before his time master,
And word-weary as for all time,
And time, and time, disciples)--
Cannot save us. The Zen sage can sweat blood
And still disciples cannot listen
To more than words, just words,
Words of law and myth and worldly wisdom
(Which) cannot save them. So, the sage,
world-weary and words-despairing, says the
Answer in words that are riddles
Of truth more than words.

Images, riddle-images, to
Word-rich, riddle-weary, knowledge-poor disciples.
Poor disciples! Sticking images of riddle-image:
Staff held high to zenless kenless disciples,
Knowing none of knowing more than knowing
As the Zen rabbi sage truth-priest tells them
Only riddles. Riddles answers to words,
And no words answers to riddles, to the
Riddle of maya, of life, and life, and life
That has no life in it.

Zen master. Mechizadek priest of truth,
Ancient before time, and infinity backwards and forwards,
Enlightened bodhissattva staying only in the world
In hopes that he, Moses holding himself
On the staff and writhing with the
World-sick world dying of life will
Look to the staff! and be saved.
Look the staff! The riddle
Of himself, and seeing
Poor word-sick disciples striving for the truth
Contained transcendent in his
Old beyond old before old
Doddering writhing striding
Blood-sweating staff-holding staff-held self.
Sick! Sick, sick with others', all others',
World-sickness, when he himself was free to step beyond.

(I wish I could write. I write, I write in darkness,
Rather to sleep than struggle with the words;
Myself a word-weary, word-obsessed disciple--
Poor disciples!--tired with the words
I riddle in the darkness, as I seek
Some word-transcended, world-transcendent
Messiah Bodhisattva Truth.)

Sticking image: Look to the staff!
Not despair, though with despair
Of self-inflicted, self-chosen
Maya suffering of yet-existance,
But calm, even if not calm,
Self-riddling, writhing on the staff
Moses rabbi bodhisattva Zen master held up
For salvation! And
An instant! Not unplanned
But planned before the ages and
Calmly executed, if uncalmly executed
On the staff, by the staff;
Poor disciples watching, riddled out
And watching one last riddle mystery play
Of riddling staff held up, held out,
And striking on the zenless, kenless
Disciple forehead. Sticking image!
One last wordless riddle after word-answerless
Word-riddles spoken,
Sage striking disciple on the forehead, and,

Oh! My love, the love, the pain in striking
Final riddle on disciples' eyes,
The final answer-riddle spoken in doing, not speaking,
And pain of sacrifice--blind-feeling, feckless
Words cannot describe an answer--
Drawing blood on striking, shallow cut deep into
The dazed disciple's mind and soul, and then
Satori!
Last satori-answer, wordless answer to wordless riddle,
Transcending distance between selves, and pouring out
Blood and water, and
An answer.