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Raj Arumugam Oct 2010
"What is the Dao,
Lao Tzu?"

Says Lao Tzu:
"That which can be described
that is not the Dao"
Grace Pickard Apr 2015
Enveloped with pine-
Stretched across statelines:
Beauteous blue upon envious emerald
Pooled amongst royal white mountains
Adorned with grey jewels of centuries
Emitting sweet, earthy aroma
She caresses the land.
Mother to lakes hidden by her red fir,
Provider to the fiery yellow cress
Hydrant for all animals alike.
M(ama) Rose keeps a chary eye
on her joint creation:
The provider, the mother,
The revered, grandiose puddle
is threatened by scarcity.
The royal white mountains,
Remain royal- but lack frost,
And thus the water retreats
Shriveling back 13 feet from shoreline
This once sacrosanct lake---
Devastated.


Keep Tahoe Blue?
Keep Tahoe Wet.
Climate change is not a myth. Sacred places are being destroyed and diminished. All of earth is divine. The world needs everybody's help to counter the suffering, don't lose hope and keep action.
Ken Pepiton Mar 2023
Genesis
****** and his cities,
Peleg the earthquake,

cities of crafts and exchange

waste disposal, chaos control
ordinal first to last sequence
father, physical strong, less curious
mother, fragile smaller, more observant.

Plural spiritual entities, Elohim, watchers,
applications of reason, reporting events.

Balance demonstrated with spinning
and flipping throwing things,
fitting thing piece to piece cunning spun
framing weaving
loose and taut, twanging
whistle, whine howl yells bells song

Eventual progress, time out of mind, slow
and steady,
patient, put down, put up, leaning, pushing
pulling, windwise rushing in, to fill the empty

Mind, imageless, no holds, no solidity,
all is spirit, no atoms even, perhaps, not even,
quarkish pairs of ups or downs that spin
on points in ever after solid state called
Heaven, the firmamental place where none was.

Higg's Field.
Unknown known matter and energy, we know.
We know something power enough to seem matter,
exists,
beyond our individuated mind's grasp.
Okeh.

Spread so as we may imagine, when itself began
with the initial edges, or edge, it would be, inside
any bubble-edge is inside,
they say outside is unimaginable

flat out planed point of anything
pounded thin as any bubble wall,
-blood-brain boundary, shocking discovery

yes, as with point spreads stretched to firm
mental plotted points of possible otherness,

ways one may be seen divided
duty-wise. Needful news.

Drink water from your own cistern,
save rain water for washing hair,
keep the spider in the spout,
to catch most matter washed
from the roof over our minds vidroning view

Googlized minds, in Disneyified Meta Cognosis,

we arrived at our destination,
and they have clouds of cotton candy.

- must be all vain, all is vanity, that's fair.
- Ecclesiastes, my old ****-rod-*****-point
pain on my backside,
such as Moses saw of Him whose name is as the Dao,
the name that may be said is not Ha Shem,
the side that may be seen is not His, you see, the hole,
not the whole,
and once that is filtered through, a certainly tangled web,
where in it seems,
Jews, in cultural roles granted, now, bat und bar mitzvah,
no veiled ****** similarities to the Handmaid's Tale.

No weeping over spilt milk,
never cry wolf.
Never speak of the devil, for … what speak we in,
when worshipping and praising and praying is supplicant
pose, supposed to induce holy awareness of mathematical me.

What might be the odds, set
taking all bets,
in spirit and in truth, as held in the wedom we acknowledge,
you and me, we agree, we become maker of this bubbling state,

we boil the cauldron, wear the caul of the first born-
we take the fat from the caul of the liver, and offer the smell,
to the unspeakably named reality we make believers build
in times of plenty, we make beautiful things together,

we call dreams retellings, but the tellings flow from deeper wells.

We are more ant-ish than sheepish,
we are more horse-ish than wolfish, in the wild.
We are more dog-ish than cat-ish, in civilized spaces.

Nurture native natal ground boundary of any wedom,
go beyond,
in quest of all we failed to grasp, the wind we fit to words,
and hold the gathered sheaves , in fists,
this is it,
why one how come to become. We be. Alwise, always willing

to envision further than we think men by right may see,
the tree the fruit was forbidden from,
bade the birds imbibe, and the elephants and monkey's too,

certainly, imagine, the plan got out of hand, it was
mandatory
in the garden walled off speck of life,
pre concepts weyeken called cells.

E= okay, rebalance all you respond with

who says what C equals, at my scale, in a mind,
in or out of the body, I can not say, significantly
different from saying, I can't say,

see, set, mindtimespace, spacetimemind, point. A.
Daily bread, liquidity.
Debanjana Saha Sep 2017
The essence of festivities all around
And the ray of hope
lit in our eyes
Few more days
And it begins.

Festival will come, once again
New attires, new hopes
shining in bright light.
Mother Goddess arrives,
to heal our mind.

9th and 10th day left
With good wishes all around
When Goddess Durga arrives
Returns back our smiles
And heart fills up with happiness.

With the arrival of Goddess Durga
Take back the past
Take back our past love
Take back everything
Which no longer belongs to us
And make us anew.

Written originally in Bengali-

Pujo pujo gondho
Amader sobar chokhe aalo
Kichu din aaro
Tarpor pujo aarombho.

Pujo aashbe, abar aasbey
Notun kapor, notun aaloker dhaara
Maa elo abar,
Mon k saariye deoyar jonno.

Nobomi r dashmi baki
Preeti o Shubhechha
Maa-r aagomone
Firbe abar haashi
Mon bhore Khushi

Elo Maa Durga
Aager din er kotha
Aager prem
Sob firiye nao
Amader notun kore dao.
The Durga puja essence and a feeling of newness with the bloom of happiness in mind & heart. I wrote the poem in my mother-tongue Bengali and translated in English as well. There are few things which cannot be expressed until spoken in mother-tongue. It's the language which binds us to the heart. Festival always brings happiness, praying that our souls would find some rest when blessed by Goddess Durga.
Sir Douz Dante  Feb 2017
Dao
Sir Douz Dante Feb 2017
Dao
This is not a poem as you think,
Its more of life as i see,
It wont rhyme as you expect,
But my words i hope will make sense,
I have cultivated in the dao of love.,the heavenly dao,
Mark this day will you,,
I see love crushing my heart,
My strong dao will waver,
She will betray me,
She will hurt me,
But i have forseen,,
I am prepared.
Raj Arumugam Sep 2010
will the French
please stop stealing words
from Pretty Olde English?
we can’t but fix a secret meeting
and choose a rendezvous
and we discover the French have already
stolen every secret including the word rendezvous!
Oh, the French, when will
they stop this pilfering of English vocabulary?
I buy some trinkets and stuff for my beau
and they tell me my beau has been taken by the French –
and to add insult to injury
(those thieves!)
they’ve stolen all the stuff too!
Oh, there’s no stopping the French.
I can’t even sit to dine and say
“Bon appetit!”
and they steal my words,
and they run off with the dessert…
and would you believe it?
those cunning French,
they even steal the restaurant and its décor!
Oh, the evil French, will they never stop this? -
stealing from fecund English, so simple and innocent…
You see, even the Great Poet John Keats
he starts his poem in English
La Belle Dame sans Merci
and no sooner had he written the title,
the French stole the very words! -
and so ******* was our Romantic John Keats,
he wrote the poem itself
in what he hoped could never be Frenched!
Ah, the French…would you please stealing
words from our Fair Damsel English….


And the Chindians too!
Chindians?
you know,
the Chinese and the Indians together!
(Yes, it’s a new word,
shows how inventive English is.)
Well, the Chinese have done it with
a smile and a kowtow! –
there you go, while you bow or cringe,
the Chinese steal the kowtow;
and before our very own eyes
today even in our modern world
the Chinese steal words like Dao, Zen, taofu,
chi, and feng shui;
and the Indians, not to be beaten,
and perhaps with a vengeance
to deal a fatal blow to the Raj,
they steal words like: nirvana, pundits, yoga,
juggernaut, pepper and curry

And of course
there are many more tribes and nations
in this merry global **** of Gloriana English
and there’s just nothing Britannia can do about it!
Oh, what’s the world coming to
when our Plain Jane English is molested like this;
and so I do my part
the Dark Knight coming to her rescue -
perhaps this earnest appeal in verse
will touch the hearts of the beasts and dragons
and they’ll keep their claws away
from our Fair Helpless Dame English
old willow  Feb 2021
my own heart
old willow Feb 2021
Living carefree, unrestrained,
That is my heart dao.
To live so freely, transcend reincarnation,
one must overcome life.
Whom to where my eyes stride,
See trillions upon trillions of mortal heart dao.
The road is endless, so is my heart.
If the heaven wield, then earth pave.
If the world shielded, then my heart pierce.
The ocean is many, the many is one.
The dao is many, the many is one.
The heart is many, many is one,
Greed, Love, Hatred, Jealously,
desires stem from the heart.
The myriad things are dao,
ultimately the many whence one.
Jackie B  Dec 2014
Dao
Jackie B Dec 2014
Dao
-Dao-

Beauty in the details. Intheplacementof spaces. In the p.o.i.n.t.s. between words.

With sense and presence, no perception, I live in truth. In a real place, not like my room, or my house, or new york. A real place, you know, like the one in your heart. The place you imagine. A real place.

Blindness veils, thoughts tear away, but when everything else quiets, I’ll get there. A real place.

Where I feel. Everything, in the palm of my hand and the beat of my heart. In the hand of a friend. In a fresh start.

Don’t prepare. Don’t obsess. Just be. Forget the rest.

There’s a sky. I promise.

There are stars and a moon.

There’s order in the world, it’s just called disorder.

Feel you’re heartbeat.

Come with me.

Don’t miss the chance to kiss the sky before you die.

Don’t ever, just get by.

Soar.

It’s all in me. Its all in you. Every molecule atom electron in the world. They move. They change. But they stay. So everything is really the same. Can you ever feel that in your heart? Sometimes I can. When I listen— sometimes I hear.

You,

your smile,

leaves blowing on the trees,

Water trickling down a stream,

Ice floating on the top.

Flowers pushing through the frost of spring,

Bloom and die, die and bloom

Come and go, go and come

Good, bad and beautiful. My heart. The world.

Stop. No-

-Dao-
Wally du Temple Dec 2016
I sailed the fjords between Powell River and
Drury Inlet to beyond the Salish Sea.
The land itself spoke from mountains, water falls, islets
From bird song and bear splashing fishers
From rutting moose and cougars sharp incisors.
The place has a scale that needs no advisers
But in our bodies felt, sensed in our story talking.
The Chinese spoke of sensing place by the four dignities
Of Standing of Reposing of Sitting or of Walking.
Indigenous peoples of the passage added of Paddling by degrees
For the Haida and Salish sang their paddles to taboos
To the rhythm of the drum in their clan crested canoes.
Trunks transformed indwelling people who swam like trees.
First Nations marked this land, made drawings above sacred screes
As they walked together, to gather, share and thank the spirit saplings.
So Dao-pilgrims in the blue sacred mountains of Japan rang their ramblings.
Now the loggers’ chainsaws were silent like men who had sinned.
I motored now for of wind not a trace -
I could see stories from the slopes, hear tales in the wind.
Modern hieroglyphs spoke from clear-cuts both convex and concave.
Slopes of burgundy and orange bark shaves
Atop the beige hills, and in the gullies the silver drying snags
and the brilliant pink of fire **** tags
A tapestry of  times in work.
A museum of lives that lurk.
Once the logging camps floated close to the head of inlets.
Now rusting red donkeys and cables no longer creak,
Nor do standing spar trees sway near feller notched trunks,
Nor do grappler yarders shriek as men bag booms and
Dump bundles in bull pens.
The names bespeak the work.
Bull buckers, rigging slingers, cat skinners, boom men and whistle punks.
…………………………………………………………………….
Ashore to *** with my dog I saw a ball of crushed bones in ****
Later we heard the evocative howl of a wolf
And my pooch and I go along with the song
Conjoining  with the animal call
In a natural world fearsome, sacred and shared.
---------------------------------------------------------­---
Old bunk houses have tumbled, crumbling fish canneries no longer reek.
Vietnam Draft dodgers and Canucks that followed the loggers forever borrowed -
Their hoisting winches, engines, cutlery, fuel, grease and generators.
While white shells rattled down the ebbing sea.
Listing float homes still grumble when hauled on hard.
Somber silhouettes of teetering totems no longer whisper in westerlies
Near undulating kelp beds of Mamalilakula.
Petroglyphs talk in pictures veiled by vines.
History is a tapestry
And land is the loom.
Every rock, headland, and blissful fearsome bay
Has a silence that speaks when I hear it.
Has a roar of death from peaking storms when I see it.
Beings and things can be heard and seen that
Enter and pass through me to evaporate like mist
From a rain dropped forest fist
And are composted into soil.
Where mountains heavily wade into the sea
To resemble yes the tremble and dissemble
Of the continental shelf.
Where still waters of deception
Hide the tsunamis surging stealth.
Inside the veins of Mother Earth the magmas flow
Beneath fjords where crystalised glaziers glow.
Here sailed I, my dog and catboat
Of ‘Bill Garden’ build
The H. Daniel Hayes
In mountain water stilled
In a golden glory of my remaining days.
In Cascadia the images sang and thrilled
Mamalilikula, Kwak’wala, Namu, Klemtu
The Inlets Jervis, Toba, Bute, and Loughborough.
This is a narative prose poem that emerged from the experienced of a sailor's voyage.
Tao  Dec 2022
My Dao
Tao Dec 2022
The sun dies as the night comes to start my day anew
The glistening tears threaten to fall
Twinkling; thrumming on taut sinew
Grey define my mood
It foams and rolls, it toils and crawls
Again the thunderous sound
Again regretfully it sounds
The stable seas unleashed
A cry carried on the wind
In the deafening crash
           I seem to hear the sound of my
       heart break
Long time no see
JP Goss  Aug 2014
Faerie Fey
JP Goss Aug 2014
1
Faerie, fey, in a windless stride
Along the verdant wood and wild
Beasts, so are, here do abide
Yet this urban life, maxims beguile.
So true, the only beast is man
Though he’s born of claw, the tooth
By birth it’s of the haft
Dagger, gun, and perfidious craft.
Apart, I see only one
Together, sparks to bring, undone
Me, for this, I dare not stand.
Such impropriety, a fellow’s creed
Rich are all in my mother tongue
Speak volumes for their egotism,
And seemingly endless greed,
Divest from it, with righteousness,
With acts they before shun.
Bah! To clean air and streams to follow
Network of the aimless vein
Blood for the vindicated!
Whilst they proceed to their empty smog
And free wills ever truncated
Marching headlong and abreast
To Hell they step in tow.
Never mind those evils done
My cure is in anathema, unchained
The inner man, the wild!
Autonomy, dumb, and pure!
I am the center of starry pull
I’m the individual, in me all is whole
I am the blot, the rebel, and the Wife of Lot!
A mark upon the cosmichead
My material exists, destined to rot
But, this death, it shall be free
Unlatched from this society.
No more shall these orchestras
Be condemned to prune as sighs
Now to high monastic chants
To venerate this life of mine.
Every corner of this brick and mortar
Keep us penned, like cattle adorned
In slacks and ties, agendas several miles high
This Fetish-Messiah, Banality
Makes sweet the cuds of humanity
None of this impurity can exist beneath
The canopy, foundation’s wrought of Ego’s dust
Pretense, a star, of foundry of the Heaven’s cusp.
#2
**** this, i have returned
the scwl of the citi
So litle and worthless
Huge slabs of grey metal
--failed of my conviction
i’m knowing in the sense
of Tao (dao), mute and confused
Tying to remove it
farce and utopia!
This cow is really low
Munching on—now, I know
As the faeries said
“At cross, betuta, moss”
What mean, all nonsense. All!
#3
The city was always upon my soft palms
That chaffed when I struck for a flame
The vanity hung in loose little threads
When my sleeves fell tattered, the same
It was through my teeth, my fellows did breathe
Strangers upon the tongue
I saw in the water the face of them
And heard them in my curses  
A stranger voice said “we” and “them”
Had genesis’d these verses.
It was those about me who birthed the world
As I had done for them
Momentum! Be quick! For fellow man!
As I am
As you are
The other’s cosmic order
I’ve built the structure I can deny
But with undeniable mortar.

— The End —