Its chimes like a lullaby, one
Ancient, cursed. In the soothing
Moments the horror sings out.

Never is it wound up, the lid
Opens a jar, a sensation of
Serenity, to those allured  
By its corrupted song.

Old wood opens as a blackened figure
A wisp of old reaches forth. The music
Plays, soothing on the sense, but all
Is about to change.

Each note lunges in the mind, each
Corroded note, changes thoughts
Of kind, serenity is morphed into
This altered state of mind .

It doesn't matter child, woman
Man, all who hear this ancient
Lullaby cursed upon man and soul.

Object in hand, nothing else is  
Heard only that the music is
Everything, it whispers on Skin,
Bone and mind.

Each drop of blood is a note,
Each scream is but chorus in
This Lullaby of death. It
Gently fills the air with its
Soothing intentions.

The lullaby will never end, the
Figure a wisp upon a stand,
Bows to the audience of blood,
And slowly closes its lullaby of
Death. It has once again sang its
Song, and all is silence once more.

So the only thing you lay claim to
is you are a poet.

He was referring to my CV
where it was mentioned boldly
the art I dabble in.

But that’s no skill
shrugged the questioner
doesn’t hone your ability
in finance management
or marketing strategy

can’t fetch one good deal
for the company
your poetry

but to be frank with you
I too wrote a few
only to dump before it got me
your poetry

otherwise I fear
I would not have been here.

Outside were faces in nervous wait.

I wondered if among them
was another poet!

She grew tired
of having to hide
from her need
to look deeper outside

so she struck up a match
and she burned
down all of her prisons
and never returned.

Written by Serge Kahili King

There is a famous *Zen koan (philosophical riddle) which asks,

"What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

The student of Zen is supposed to meditate on this riddle until some degree of insight or enlightenment occurs. *The tricky part is that there is no right answer. What you are, or what you know, or what you believe, is what you get.

Although no longer an active student of Zen, I was recently meditating of the riddle of one hand clapping when I got an answer that might be useful to share:

The sound of one hand clapping is the same as the sound of two hands clapping.

How could that be, you ask (for the sake of this article
I am assuming that you do ask)? It's simple, I reply.
The concept of clapping implies that a sound is being produced by two surfaces coming into contact, even if only one of them is actually moving.
No sound, no clapping; no second surface, no sound. Yet, the riddle definitely states that there is a sound and that there is clapping.

Therefore, my answer follows logically.

Yes, I know, the answer to a koan is supposed to be beyond logic, but rest assured that the answer came intuitively. The logic came after.

Before you dismiss this as simply a bit of cleverness or a waste of time, let me tell you about the rest of the meditation. After the revelation that the sound of one hand clapping must be the same as the sound of two hands clapping, it struck me that this was a nice metaphor for two of the corollaries of the Second Principle of Huna.

The basic principle states that there are no limits, which implies that everything is in a relationship to everything else. And that implies that if you change one side of a relationship you change both sides.Even if only one hand changes its position relative to another, unmoving hand , a clapping sound will be produced.

We don't have to wait for both sides of a relationship to participate before bringing about beneficial change.
Change one side of that relationship and the other side has to change because the relationship has changed.

We use this idea a lot in teaching Huna.
For instance, in third-level healing work where we assume that

everything is a dream and everything is dreaming, we say that
~ if you change one dream you automatically change all related dreams.

So you can go to an imaginary garden and make changes to symbols of your life experience, and your life experience will change.

In second-level healing work where we assume that
everything is telepathically linked, we say that
~ if you begin to silently bless and forgive people with whom you are having difficulties, they will know it and they will begin to change their behavior toward you without a word being spoken.

And in first level healing, where
we assume that everything is separate but potentially interactive,
we teach that
~ if you smile and hug a lot you will tend to get a lot more smiles and hugs back, even from people who don't normally smile or hug.

Now what do you think would happen if you applied this idea to the whole of your life?

In a strained personal relationship, for example, instead of waiting for the other person to make the first move toward reconciliation you could start the process in your own mind, either by purposely creating a better opinion of the other person, or by imagining the two of you getting along with all of your differences.  Sorry, you can't control with your imagination what the other person thinks or does (it simply doesn't work), but you can use imagined persuasion just as you might in a face to face meeting. As in any form of persuasion, however, the more your persuasion is based on a benefit to the other person, the more successful it is likely to be.

In a strained global relationship, assuming our theory is valid
(which means workable). We might be able to get together even in a smallish group and and rethink ((or redream)) our relationship with one or both countries involved. Theoretically, of course, it ought to take only one person to make a change. On the other hand, the change of one person's relationship to a country might only produce a very small change, so the more people the better. The thing to remember, in this context, is that you are trying to change how you think or feel about the country, not trying to change the country. It's a subtle but important difference, and it applies to people as well as countries.

If this idea catches on we can introduce  "a Huna koan" ((the actual Hawaiian phrase is "nane huna," a hidden riddle or conundrum))

*"What is the sound of one person loving?"