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Matt Feb 2015
Form is emptiness
Emptiness is form

1. Sunyata (Emptiness) is the profound meaning of the Mahayana Teaching.

Two thousand five hundred years ago, the Buddha was able to realise "emptiness" (s. sunyata). By doing so he freed himself from unsatisfactoriness (s. dukkha). From the standpoint of enlightenment, sunyata is the reality of all worldly existences (s. dharma). It is the realisation of Bodhi — Prajna. From the standpoint of liberation, sunyata is the skilful means that disentangle oneself from defilement and unsatisfactoriness. The realisation of sunyata leads one to no attachment and clinging. It is the skilful means towards enlightenment and also the fruit of enlightenment.

There are two ways for us to understand this concept of sunyata in the Mahayana context. One way is to try to understand the explanation about its true nature. The other way is the realisation through practice. What we are going to discuss now is about its true nature.

Mahayana teachings have always considered that the understanding of sunyata is an attainment which is extremely difficult and extraordinarily profound.

For example, in the Prajna Sutra it says "That which is profound, has sunyata and non-attachment as its significance. No form nor deeds, no rising nor falling, are its implications."

Again in the Dvadasanikaya Sastra (composed by Nagarjuna, translated to Chinese by Kumarajiva A.D. 408) it says: "The greatest wisdom is the so-called sunyata."

This sunyata, no creation, calmness and extinction (s. nirvana) is of a profound significance in the Mahayana teachings. Why do we see it as the most profound teaching? This is because there is no worldly knowledge, be it general studies, science or philosophy, that can lead to the attainment of the state of sunyata. The only path to its realisation is via the supreme wisdom of an impassionate and discriminating mind. It is beyond the common worldly understanding.

2. The Significance of Sunyata and Cessation

The Buddha always used the terms void, no rising and falling, calmness and extinction to explain the profound meaning of sunyata and cessation. The teachings of the Buddha that were described in words are generally common to worldly understandings. If one interprets the teachings superficially from the words and languages used, one will only gain worldly knowledge and not the deeper implication of the teachings. The teachings of the Buddha have their supra-mundane contexts that are beyond the worldly knowledge.

For example, sunyata and the state of nirvana where there is no rising nor falling, are interpreted by most people as a state of non-existence and gloom. They fail to realise that quite the opposite, sunyata is of substantial and positive significance.

The sutras often use the word "great void" to explain the significance of sunyata. In general, we understand the "great void" as something that contains absolutely nothing. However, from a Buddhist perspective, the nature of the "great void" implies something which does not obstruct other things, in which all matters perform their own functions. Materials are form, which by their nature, imply obstruction. The special characteristic of the "great void" is non-obstruction. The "great void" therefore, does not serve as an obstacle to them. Since the "great void" exhibits no obstructive tendencies, it serves as the foundation for matter to function. In other words, if there was no "great void" nor characteristic of non-obstruction, it would be impossible for the material world to exist and function.

The "great void" is not separated from the material world. The latter depends on the former. We can state that the profound significance of sunyata and the nature of sunyata in Buddhism highlights the "great void’s" non-obstructive nature.

Sunyata does not imply the "great void". Instead, it is the foundation of all phenomena (form and mind). It is the true nature of all phenomena, and it is the basic principle of all existence. In other words, if the universe’s existence was not empty nor impermanent, then all resulting phenomena could not have arisen due to the co-existence of various causes and there would be no rising nor falling. The nature of sunyata is of positive significance!

Calmness and extinction are the opposite of rising and falling. They are another way to express that there is no rising and falling. Rising and falling are the common characteristics of worldly existence. All phenomena are always in the cycle of rising and falling. However, most people concentrate on living (rising). They think that the universe and life are the reality of a continuous existence.

Buddhism on the other hand, promotes the value of a continuous cessation (falling). This cessation does not imply that it ceases to exist altogether. Instead, it is just a state in the continuous process of phenomena. In this material world, or what we may call this "state of existence", everything eventually ceases to exist. Cessation is definitely the home of all existences. Since cessation is the calm state of existence and the eventual refuge of all phenomena, it is also the foundation for all activities and functions.

The Amitabha Buddha who was, and is, revered and praised by Buddhists around the world, radiates indefinite light and life from this "state of cessation". This state is a continuous process of calmness. It will be the eventual refuge for us all. If we think carefully about the definitions of calmness and extinction, then we can deduce that they are the true natural end-points of rising and falling. The true nature of the cycle of rising and falling is calmness and extinction. Because of this nature, all chaos and conflicts in the state of rising and falling will eventually cease. This is attainable by the realisation of prajna.

3. Contemplating the Implications of Sunyata and Stillness (Nirvana) by Observing Worldly Phenomena

All existences exhibit void-nature and nirvana-nature. These natures are the reality of all existence. To realise the truth, we have to contemplate and observe our worldly existence. We cannot realise the former without observing the latter. Consider this Heart Sutra extract, "Only when Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva practised the deep course of wisdom of Prajna Paramita did he come to realise that the five skandhas (aggregates, and material and mental objects) were void."

Profound wisdom leads us to the realisation that all existences are of void-nature. The sutras demonstrate that the profound principle can be understood by contemplating and observing the five skandhas. We cannot realise the truth by seeking something beyond the material and mental world. The Buddha, using his perfect wisdom, observed worldly existence from various implications and aspects, and came to understand all existences.

In summary, there are three paths to this observation:

a) We should observe the preceding state and the current state of conditions. i.e., Observation according to the concept of time.

b) We should observe existences according to their interrelationships. i.e., Observation via the concept of space (either two or three-dimensions).

c) We should observe the true nature of all myriad beings. This is like observing the worldly existences of a point, a line and an area. Those with supreme wisdom understand the true nature of all worldly existences by observing vertically the relationships between the preceding and current conditions, and horizontally the interrelationships. Then we can understand the true meaning of void-nature and nirvana-nature.

3.1 By observing the preceding-stage and the current-stage conditions, we can verify the Law of Impermanence of all worldly existences. All existences, be they material or mental, be they the material world, or the physical or mental states of sentient beings, are subject to continuous change.

The world may have certain states of beings where they stay static or are in equilibrium on a temporary basis (for example hibernation). But when we observe them with supreme wisdom, we will find that not only do they keep changing on a yearly basis, but also that this change applies to even every briefest moment. After the current state of conditions have ceased to exist, the newly-formed state materialises. This is the state of rising and falling. The rising and falling of each small moment reveals that all existences are ever-moving and ever-changing.

Conventional scholars have a very good explanation of these ever-changing worldly conditions. However they, including the practitioners of dharma, try to make sense of the reality from the ever-changing worldly existences. That is, they are fooled by the material existences and are not able to understand the deeper truth of all existences.

Only those with the supreme wisdom of the Buddha and Mahabodhisattvas realise and understand that all existences are illusions. They understand that existences are not real from the observation of the flow of changing existences. The numerous illusionary existences may well be diverse and confusing, arising and decaying. But when we look into their true nature, we will find them void and of nirvana-nature.

On the other hand, since all existences are of nirvana-nature, they appear from the perspective of time, to be ever-changing. They never stay the same even for the briefest moment. Impermanence implies existences do not have a permanent entity. This is another implication of the nature of sunyata and stillness.

3.2 From observations of existence via inter-relationships, we can conclude that nothing is independent of the Law of Causation, and that everything is without ego. For example, the Buddha explains that the individual sentient being is composed of physical, physiological and psychological phenomena. The so called ego is a deluded illusion which does not exist in reality. Its existence depends on the combination of both physical and mental factors. It is a union of organic phenomena. Thus we call it the empirical ego. It is a mistake to cling to it as an infatuated ego.

The Indian concept of the supreme spirit implies someone who rules. The spirit is the ruler who is independent of is self-dependent and all causes. In other words, the spirit is the one who is free from all primary and secondary causes (for physical and mental aspects). The spirit is the one who has the soul of his own body and mind. This is the ego or supreme spirit that the theologists cling to. From their view point, the only way to avoid physical and mental decay is to be self-determined and self-sovereign. In this way, the supreme being can stay permanent in the cycle of reincarnation, and return to the absolute reality by liberating himself from life and death.

But from the profound contemplation and wisdom of the Buddha and Mahabodhisattvas, we know there is no such reality. Instead, egolessness (non-self) is the only path to understand the reality of the deluded life. All existences are subject to the Law of Causes and Conditions. These include the smallest particles, the relationship between the particles, the planets, and the relationship between them, up to and including the whole universe! From the smallest particles to the biggest matter, there exists no absolute independent identity.

Egolessness (non-self) implies the void characteristics of all existence. Egolessness (non-self) signifies the non-existence of permanent identity for self and existence (Dharma). Sunyata stresses the voidness characteristic of self and existence (Dharma). Sunyata and egolessness possess similar attributes. As we have discussed before, we can observe the profound significance of sunyata from the perspective of inter-dependent relationships. Considering dharma-nature and the condition of nirvana, all existences are immaterial and of a void-nature. Then we see each existence as independent of each other. But then we cannot find any material that does exist independent of everything else. So egolessness also implies void-nature!

3.3 From the observation of all existences, we can infer the theory of nirvana and the complete cessation of all phenomena. From the viewpoint of phenomena, all existences are so different from each other, that they may contradict each other. They are so chaotic. In reality, their existence is illusionary and arises from conditional causation. They seem to exist on one hand, and yet do not exist on the other. They seem to be united, but yet they are so different to one another. They seem to exist and yet they do cease! Ultimately everything will return to harmony and complete calmness. This is the nature of all existence. It is the final resting place for all. If we can understand this reality and remove our illusions, we can find this state of harmony and complete calmness.

All our contradictions, impediments and confusion will be converted to equanimity. Free from illusion, complete calmness will be the result of attaining nirvana. The Buddha emphasised the significance of this attainment and encouraged the direct and profound contemplation on void-nature. He said, "Since there is no absolute self-nature thus every existence exhibits void-nature. Because it is void, there is no rising nor falling. Since there is no rising nor falling, thus everything was originally in complete calmness. Its self-nature is nirvana."

From the viewpoint of time and space, we can surmise that all existences are impermanent, all existences have no permanent self, and nirvana is the result of the cessation of all existences - the Three Universal Characteristics. But there are not three different truths. Instead, they are the characteristics of the only absolute truth and the ultimate reality. This is the explanation of Dharma-nature and the condition of nirvana. The three characteristics are the one characteristic, and vice versa!

We may cultivate our meditation, contemplating the impersonality of all existences. This will lead us to enlightenment via the path of voidness. Contemplating nirvana and complete calmness leads to enlightenment by the path of immaterial form. Contemplating the impermanence of all existences, leads us to enlightenment by the path of inactivity (no desire).

The Three Universal Characteristics are the other implications of Dharma-nature and nirvana. The paths to enlightenment are also the same cause of absolute reality. All of them return to the Dharma-nature and the condition of nirvana. In short, the teachings of the Buddha start from the observation and contemplation of all worldly phenomena. They are like thousands of streams of water competing with each other, and flowing from the top of the mountains to the bottom. Eventually, all of them return to the ocean of voidness and nirvana.

4. Sunyata and Cessation is the Truth (Nature) of All Existences.

All existences that are recognised by worldly understanding, whether materially, spiritually or intellectually, have always been misunderstood by us. We cling to them as real, physically existing and permanent. Actually, they are only unreal names.

The more precise meaning of the term "unreal name" is "assumption" or "hypothesis". It is an empirical name. It is formed by the combination of various causes and effects. (These include the effects of mental consciousness.) It does not exist by itself. Everything exists relatively. Thus, what is the ultimate truth? If we investigate existence further, we realise that all existences are empty. This is the fundamental characteristic and reality of all existence. It is ultimate and absolute. But we should not think that empty means nothing. It implies the disentanglement from the worldly misunderstanding of the existence of self, identity, and the realisation of the absolute.

In the Sutras and Abhidharma, the worldly understandings are sometimes referred to as all phenomena (Dharma). Sunyata is referred to as "Dharma-nature", and hence there is a distinction between "phenomena" and "Dhamma-nature". However, this is only an expedient explanation that helps us to realise the truth of sunyata through the phenomena of all existences.

We should not think that "existence" and "nature"; or the "phenomena of Dharma" and "Dharma-nature" are something contradictory. They are just concepts needed to understand the implication of sunyata.

We may analyse the exp
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
sometimes you look at these people and think:
is it better me drinking whiskey, or is it better treating
them ontologically as zoological specimen
                                                  and worth of caging?
i think that the Aristotelian awe-principle
for the practice of philosophy was
overly-exaggerated with dues
that consider science, i think that science
confiscated the emotional
imprint of philosophy that's bound to awe
and said: willcommen unto die phobia-realm...
which i still ascribe to postcolonialism...
  the times' propaganda say:
             arachnophobia is perfectly suited
to match-up to a billionth remark of Islam,
which is why i find Islamophobia so weird...
   arachnophobia consists of only one spider...
minding the phobic in Islam?
                          it's not a case of one spider...
it's a case of spiders...
                             they can't reason with
the Big Brother opportunism, which exists...
turning the blind eye won't help...
  it will simply aggrivate such people...
and using this language has created such
frustrations... correctly? aggravate,
dance of vowels. phobias aren't big, they're small...
miniscule... tell people that something is
small when it's actually big enforcers
a postcolonial past more so...
   i see these children like the psychotic reaction
to a prophesy kindred ot Harold II's slaughter
of the innocents...
                  they're there to edorese someone...
      after all: who gives a **** about these people?
                                                         ­  (endorse)
the psychiatrist gets paid, the mental health nurse
gets paid... why would they give a **** in a way
that says: i wasn't paid for this bollocking!
  maybe up in Manchester... but down here in London,
they don't buy disguises, you're
labelled Romanian: you're bound home where
you could have been a plumber but are reduced
to a straitjacket because: some ******* said
you didn't **** her... Philip Collins and hey:
welcome to paradise.
                        down 'ere in Loon-town you get
your money's worth...      
                   i wish they took care of me...
   silence pays... you get your cringe's worth of ****
to the Kilimanjaro's worth of calling
               bottled crema-foam on a phallus
an anorexia... as i see it: anorexia in Freudian lingo
is an objection toward treating ****** artefacts
in culinary terms... means that paradox
of having a cake and eating it too...
                obviously you'll sexualise problems...
i think anorexia is a question of making
          ****** parts culinary aggregates...
                i'm not jotting: girl, aged, 16, ***-starved..
i mean in general... making ****** objects
equivalent toward a culinary status for a care
to make them more appealing in being ******...
the anorexic might start thinking: so i **** it,
and don't eat it?   penguin clap for an icecream cone!
ruffian yoga minus the slippers and the seal clapping...
the loudest revision of applause: i can guarantee....
cos the flippers were wet... hence the additional
aquatic acoustic.
                    this is very much akin to that quantum
theory of: tornado at coordinate a.,
         and a butterfly as coordinate b.,
          i can see anorexia as a substitute to sexualised
preferences in making body-parts partially edible...
            i see **** i think of the cow's ******-pouch / pillow...
    i don't know, maybe because being in my 30s
i can still fake arousal when looking at it...
       i am not the original alienist... some martian
took my title role...
          but i can understand anorexia as a way to rebel
against putting potato mash and a steak and a few
veggies with the same duty nod as one might put
a ******* object into one's mouth and having to
a Werther's Original suckling tactic on it and
never attach a bone to it, i.e. never eat it...
      anorexia by my standard is verily sexualised...
   you put something into an open space and
it's almost a trans-transgender movement...
      which is why i find the transgender "curiosities"
obstructs in art... post-transgender occupancies
           are not reserved for the easily pleased...
anorexics are such people...
             this is sexuality confused with dietary requirements...
this isn't a circumstance of pronouns politicised
and exploits of modern medicine...
                   i do tend to abuse seafood
whenever i am cringed by the suggested floral pattern
whenever i dare not see the benefits of cesarean...
and i just can't see islamophobia fitting the irrational
rationality of other conscripted phobias...
          poor choice of Greek to be honest...
                      i think they're referring to:
a subtler suggestion, minus the crusading empowerment
that's yet to be honed on...
                        well **** yeah...
once you've actually a philosophy book,
   you'll become immune to any writing advice...
                you'll actually become immune
to advice for writers.... bhy writers... because you'll
realise their opinions are disputable and therefore
disposable... because they forgot that the one thing
that democracy hates... is its subversion,
                     art is the foremost stealth-seeker of
despotism in democracy... because it simply loathes
plagiarism... art is despotism in democracy...
               and it knows it... it's just too "shy" (aah...
wee wee poo poo) to admit it...
                 from what i learned from athos?
the best advice? is to not give any advice.
                    athos? alex dumas, the three musketeers.
the moment you finish a philosophy book,
a creative writing workshop and a quote by
Hemingway will seems as nothing but a bad dream -
these quotes come from people who abhorred
the mere concept of spelling, due and through
it being an "inconvenience"...
this is from people who suggested you were always
an incapable narrator without a daydream to
escape into... these writers began sounding like
your english teachers...
              then again... is sexualising problem better
than abstracting them? personally, and
without due approval: and all the more happy for
such a circumstance having been presented for me...
            we know the sane are too numerous
because they are allowed to make too much sense
of their dreams...
                     i contend anorexia, not as an eating disorder,
but as a disorder of a culinary aversion toward
          sexualising non-culinary objects in culinary terms...
or adding cream to the phallus or melted chocolate
to the ****...
                 i find that certain culinary objects are
oversexualised...
   and this is the norm: that extends into what
quantifies as the norm, for the norm is always
a quantifiable parameter than a qualifiable
      exchange, since an exchange never appreciates
     a qualification, or a grocer's worth of norm
for a conversation of two quid's worth of earning
equates to 20 tomatoes...
    we have assumed to know it all
whereas we are congregating in a plughole
     of close proximity prefixes, i.e.
re-: reflect, reflection, reflexion, reflex,
  reiteration, reimagining, retraction, reaffirmation...
    it's a tsunami of language / lounging with too
many images... it's "lounging" with too many images...
it's the proximity of prefixes... twinned with
the opportunism of the genus of synonyms creating
a deaf-shaft of faking rhetoric...
     i still placard the whole circumstance
a dance of vowels, or the unforced deviation of
keeping up an aesthetic....
                     no, i can't claim schooling,
because i don't want to claim being indoctrinated...
     and perhaps my Freudian is a little-bit
copper-wired / ageist...
                  but isn't food for the anorexic
  a bit like turning a ****** object into food
          for the ennobled aggregational stereotype?
the jokes aren't jokes for anorexics...
  the cucumber is doubly manifest
                         as both edible, as both sexually
arrogant... and thirdly as "inspiration" for
an architectural project...
                      oh **** fame... little albino blondie
can **** on my testicular cancer for all i care...
               and say the bulge was: like
******* on a cowish ******...
                                      i like puppets anyway,
cos i'm a bit laxed in that way...
                         for all the things that might be
given, of the few things that can't be translated
from house or car, or a wife and 3.4 children statistic:
personal integrity.
        obviously certain people can only hum along
to the achievements of a zenith's worth of a house
and a car and a dog...
                            personal integrity is almost too much
for them, such "essential" components of being
a human rather than doing a human reaction
       later involve the cliche of the ultimate gamble...
and we all know how humans love to gamble...
well... few ever manage to gamble the stake of:
a leap of faith... and we all know how Nolan's inception
         ends...           that's me seeing the film a few years later...
      so how does man, the gambler fair
   when he's asked to gamble with the odds
  leap ratioed against a stumble?
                                      numbered is that 10:1?
it's just fascinating that vowels are the sole assured
                        proprietor of "dyslexia",
or as i care to mind: even with a language proficiency...
and tongue-tied waggle that's excusable for
anyone ready to write something down.
      i can appreciate being an individual,
but i can't celebrate it... i'll only utilise my individuality
to create a new plateau, a norm, the most
distinguished liberalism of my individualism;
     i will only utilise my individuality to create a new
norm - and anything that comes against it:
can burn in hell.
To Ezra Pound

These are the names of the companies that have made
        money from this war
nineteenhundredsixtyeight  Annodomini  fourthousand
        eighty Hebraic
These are the Corporations who have profited by merchan-
        dising skinburning phosphorous or shells fragmented
        to thousands of fleshpiercing needles
and here listed money millions gained by each combine for
        manufacture
and here are gains numbered, index'd swelling a decade, set
        in order,
here named the Fathers in office in these industries, tele-
        phones directing finance,
names of directors, makers of fates, and the names of the
        stockholders of these destined Aggregates,
and here are the names of their ambassadors to the Capital,
        representatives to legislature, those who sit drinking
        in hotel lobbies to persuade,
and separate listed, those who drop Amphetamine with
        military, gossip, argue, and persuade
suggesting policy naming language proposing strategy, this
        done for fee as ambassadors to Pentagon, consul-
        tants to military, paid by their industry:
and these are the names of the generals & captains mili-
        tary, who know thus work for war goods manufactur-
        ers;
and above these, listed, the names of the banks, combines,
        investment trusts that control these industries:
and these are the names of the newspapers owned by these
        banks
and these are the names of the airstations owned by these
        combines;
and these are the numbers of thousands of citizens em-
        ployed by these businesses named;
and the beginning of this accounting is 1958 and the end
        1968, that static be contained in orderly mind,
        coherent and definite,
and the first form of this litany begun first day December
        1967 furthers this poem of these States.

                                        December 1, 1967
Kendall Mallon Apr 2013
pigeons perch themselves preening
on marble fauns ambivalent to their
perch, while dark skinned men prowl;
seeking tourists (Americans) to sell
cheap novelty items, over priced, yet
bought to drive away the insistent
merchants; ignorant to the realization:
if you remain silent and don’t make eye
contact you will not forfeit your money...
merchants who ruin the peace and awe
of grand feats of sculpture—I know they
are human (on a base level)—craving
money to make a living, yet there are
many (more respectable) professions…
their presence  crowds the already
crowded (streets and) piazzas—aggregates
of language babble—old women and men
meandering along waiting to die—hoping
it is true: the slower you move the faster
time flows—if not: to hell with relativity!
(should have put chips on more than one table)
can math really explain all?—or
is life more than abstract objects?
while the din of crowds palpitates my heart
making way for anxious calculations,
C— and I hurry pass to find some area
to give the artefacts the respect they deserve
thunder cackles in the morning
a witch is a woman
with any amount of wisdom
your words are as bland as coffee
and the dandelions are talking
for i am permanently amused
by vicissitudes and antelopes
and aggregates of moods
feelings and isotopes
hanging by psychotropic ropes
firmly financed by our fingertips
lifetimes triangulated in transitions
farm the fallow fields
and try to heal the poppies
dropping numbers
and putting aside our copies
a simulacrum of similes and shortages
as field mice and farmhands
dance on saturn’s rings
despite all of jupiter’s complexities
your complexion is never shallow
and i swallow seawater
to embrace the sweet finality of life
bleh Apr 2016
-
it moves in lines, upon flat surfaces
  we tried to catch it last week, but, no dice
‘that’s your department, isn’t it? take responsibility.’
  true.
but, we were waiting for confirmation.
                  ‘excuses aren’t relevant here,
                        moving forward is a precondition for itself,
                                 so nothing will change until it’s properly addressed.’

the counter’s still pointing at「 green 」 though.

  things should be safe for now


three months pass.


         it multiplies in aggregates
               motion seeps within still surfaces,

‘where were you last summer?’           like a lava lamp
oh, you know, out and about,               it deforms
busy. buzzy. buzz.                                  and,
‘oh. yeah. we can’t afford                      separates from itself

deficit here, can we?                              into self contained units
i hope everything’s okay.’                     and
   it’s fine.                                                 floats away.
                                    …
                     ­       ‘that’s good’
                                    …
‘we were thinking of leaving this place soon, anyway.’



fair enough.
  no one’s
                  really expecting anything to be found, anyway.

the counter is pointing at 「 red 」 now, though


three months pass.


it breeds through rumpled cloth, and breaths out through solid objects.
colours float over matted patches, a ringing sound pierces out of iron bars.

        -   the counter no longer shows anything

people pass themselves at crossroads,  half turning,
  to  speak,    but carry on walking their separate ways
  (it’s okay, none of us had anything to say, really)

        -   we expect a full report, you understand?

the spaces between take root. shadows flicker though the limelight
        filter filter, pass over. embroid and disperse

        -   yes,   of course. there’s no one left to read it, though.

the counter is pointing to 「 itself 」

huh.

must be broken
liar sickle pond mountain
Ashish Gupta Jan 2014
There is no such thing as life!
Not as it is made out to be anyway- something different.
Life! it's merely a label ascribed to aggregation of little particles.
That is what the sum total of all human drama is,
in the annals of human history, like both, a movement of a whole people
to get rid of ******* fascism, or the struggle of one person
to get rid of bowel movement - seemed like a good idea in the darkness
but with dawning of light, comes back to bite you in the *** -
just aggregates of little particles aggregating in different ways,
evolving to make a better aggregate,
War is a part of this – for a better aggregate, so is Love.

Why not a selfish materialistic weasel be then? Some ask,
After all it would not matter if I were to risk being heroic, would it!
Aye! it would not matter. But then, so also doesn't failure,
complete utter – never finding a lover – failure.
It simply does not matter, so why not?! Why not try?
Why not go up, or down if you will, in a blaze of glory.
You really have no excuse, not to scale your summit,
not to awe every moment of your so-called life.
When your story is finally writ, before your pyre lit,
the only question for the coins will be
Did that stiff ever say **** it and then awesome it?
Copyright (c) 2014 Ashish Gupta
(This one is  an experiment off the beaten track of my poetry style. Sardonic and motivating, with dark humour. It's a lemon sundae with hot dark chocolate syrup. Critique welcome!)
Tess Calogaras Mar 2016
Sometimes I think
of what a tragedy it is
for us to build towers so tall,
that we couldn’t see.
That it was not a home
but a barrier of walls.
Stacked so high with bricks.
With my weakened state and
feeble limbs
I could not crack
Nor chip away
At aggregates and paste
to see even the slightest trace
of light.
Tessa Calogaras
Copyright 2016
shivers of black
velvet heat
on my pillow. cases
of frustration
licking filth til skin is raw
licking skin til raw is numb
distract the mind from agony
ebony eardrums
rolling purrs and howls, so demanding
fear aggregates into flexed claws,
teeth bared.
to witness such simplicity is to the likeness of a gaze
into a baby's eye.
fragile and innocent
but pinning my feeble wrists.
i raise them to a beast
to surrender to the animal
that i may sleep.
12/18/08
071116 #8:28PM

No matter how fine my aggregates are,
I still feel incomplete.
I'm not that strong,
And alone, I'm easy to break.

You could feel my cracks and leave me to banishment,
But You showed me the other face of strength.
Never did I know that there were three hollows within me,
Until I experienced those cracks
that made me lose my own strength.

The hard rock was shuttered,
And many times, I felt so useless.
But there You are and picked me up,
You carried me and reshaped me into a new me.
With tools, I had never known,
You accompanied me to reach my uttermost  potential
And yes, I have known my purpose.

You filled my holes with who You are
As a three-in-one God
And now, I have acknowledged how vital it is
To allow your reinforcement
In order that I could stand still.

You're not just testing my resistance and foundation
But stretching me to the fullness of Your expertise.
You can unused me and break me if You wanted to
But You had Your goodness and grace extended
In order that I may live.

I know, I would be hurt
But I know I was found by You,
And I was made by You --
I was made for You
Seeing those hollow blocks in construction, they remind me of who I am and whose I am now, reinforced for the glory of God! I feel blessed.
OnyxSea Nov 2017
What is the body,
but a pile of meat?
Moving around,
seeking only to eat?

What makes us human,
what makes us strong?
What is it that pulls us along?

Do we have a soul?
Or just a mind?
Do we have an identity,
beyond what we can define?

What exactly lasts,
what thing underlies,
our very existence,
whose meaning is undefined?

Some call it "soul",
others simply "mind,
yet there are others,
who call it not "mine".

The first sees an eventual, heavenly life,
borne from the sacrifice of a holy Christ,
or the forgiveness and judgement of a heavenly being,
or the results of past actions, coming into being.

The second sees the mind,
a product of the brain.
No different from nature,
which never ceases or begins.
Having existed since beginningless time,
what comes to be, eventually declines,
and one is returned, to the darkness underlined.

The 3rd is one, who does not distinguish,
he sees the body and mind,
not as one who would wish,
for a lasting identity, or an eternal peace,
nor does he see it, as one who just is.

Instead he sees things, unlikely as it may,
the aggregates of consciousness and body, clear as day.
He does not deceive himself, thinking of meaning,
nor does he lie, thinking himself as "body".

He separates the speculation of a soulless man,
as he does the thought of a mind separate from man.
He overcomes the dualities which we normally comprehend,
With a sight that sees, what is simply at hand.

The truth that this body, its aggregates and mind,
are all but products of our imaginary mind,
which projects and creates,
in an endless thought-pattern,
a speculation that is ceaseless,
an identity to be had.

Instead he deconstructs,
he sees the body as it is,
an aggregate of thoughts, perceptions and things.
He overcomes the idea of "suffering" that exists,
and does not cling to the idea of "pleasure" for bliss.
He rests in the nature that is rightfully so,
not overthinking, whether he has a soul.
Because such things, are deceptions coming to be,
by the ever-thinking mind, always deceiving thee.
Angel Feb 2013
I am thinking of the words I spoke, two simple words, "I would"
And how they changed the nature of our relationship
I never planned to tell you that I would, if you let me
In some parallel universe we are together

Under God we are not, you and I are aggregates
Of a whole compartment, known as the heart
There are moments, on rare occasions in the winter
When I regret the conversations we have had

I compose inside my head a simple thought or idea
That I 'think' is rooted from who you have shown me how to be
But the lover I hold now is quite the opposite of you
Sometimes I wonder if that is why I chose him

I want to escape you, go in the opposite direction of everything you are
Because I clung to you during the darkest time of my life
These words I type do not rhyme, do not hold a special pattern
But they hold the honest truth of what I would call my essence

I thought it was beautiful that you never showed your anger
Even when your parents threw you out on the street
So I learned to live at peace with myself in a world full of hatred
It seems no one else can understand this concept but us

There it goes again, that word, 'us'
We are not a pair, we are separate parts
But I am afraid I will never let go of those words, 'I would'
Does that perhaps translate my apprehension of the truth?

I am with someone else, and you occasionally make love to your ex-lover
Whom I would not be surprised if you ended up together with again
But I often jar the contemplation of that lateral cosmos
Where I wake up to you dawn after dawn
In that sacred instant, the lacerated Marie approaches her and invites her to settle on the table that was also fractured, both of them sit arranging the items that were still intact. Marie calls him Lazarus and he admits it with a gesture, he takes the ointment and places it on the table near the feet where they had left the icon on the table. The innopia of time was accessed in the source that was overflowing with ciphers, which mediate between the anointings of the omega liturgy that arose in a chimeric, which arises from the same temporal support from the ruins of Agios Andreas to Bethany, to its An iconographic extension that gouged the ointments that were overthrown by the gutters on the faces of both, Marie and Lazarus, but also Simón bilocated in Lázaro himself. The embalms and musks spilled everywhere, even reaching the crest of the Estinfalos that dated with the desire to free themselves, since Ayia Andreas rarely tried to trap them in the conferred of María, Marta, and Lazarus, with the triangulation that was content with the balms for the head and the blessed feet of the Lord, when pointing out that he came from his head and that he incarnated the Seventh Heaven, that his feet were already set in the house of Simon the Pharisee and not in the house of the Brothers of Bethany, joining with Mary Madalena as the unified professed of Bethany in their hearts. The anointing inked the sky of Jesus with his head of red blood cells and vapors of Lilies, and the ground crowning Limbo on the third day of Anastasis.

Marie's anointing witnessed the flood of seven soulless beings, who vexed her island in the disciple, who apprehended herself in the affection of the Bethany brothers, anointing her looming and faithful ***** Lazarus, anointing him without measuring or excepting the amounts of incense that They fell from the head of the icon, which spilled it from his hair on both of them who were posthumous minutes of Kairos, containing the bequeath of a fractured poly Christ and completely replaced as a saved icon, as it did with Lazarus of Betania, now Lazarus of Spinalonga. The afternoon was getting dark and the perfumes lost their effect, both of them having to get up from the table, similar to an improvised Matakis, with great similarity to a majestic quadrangular triclinium, for furniture that was made of living flesh to heal them in the interval of the hours. Lazarus lacerations starting on his left leg. Everything was already a post-Betanian conciliation, which foreshadowed guarantees even beyond the ascended soul, with bread, jugs of wine, and swift prayers of cheers, which led them out of the conventual of the island, towards the aggregates of the Estinfalos who called them to crown themselves. over them, anticipating the premonitory and appropriate musks to say goodbye to this Expiring Cenacle between two entities, rising in the bronze elytra with the others to rule their true owners.
Anastasis
072716

Sometimes, I get confused w/ life's bearings
How to verify Your location
And how to conform to Your standards.

Sometimes, I found myself disoriented.
But whenever I change my route,
You're already ahead of me –The date of approval
Became as accurate as who You are.

You're the Compass of my True North,
And so You set my boundary lines,
You have set me apart –
Subdividing those aggregates & compartments in me.

I wanna get lost only in Your arms,
And never will I get lost again.
"as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." - Psalm 103:12 (ESV)
Kaitelka was in the Equinoctial Aftó of Áullos Kósmos IV after geomancy was oriented as a star Argonaut bathing in the Aegean while waiting for the ******* of various sectors of Áullos Kósmos. Between both Aulos and Citara, she was modeled with the aulética-citarística, glimpses of her Psychic Trisomy. In effect of the existence of an extra chromosome in a diploid organism 158, for a quantity of chromosome fifty-four, instead of a homologous pair of chromosomes. From this position she was limiting herself with her chromosomes of normality in the genetic proximal, upon entering the Bay of Skalá, which was waiting for her native again, where the art of navigation flourished in the nitrogenous water that brought her from Skalá; from Eleios-Pronnoi, about 39 km south of the main city on the island of Argostoli, in southern Kefalonia, on one of the Ionian islands of Greece. From here, she mimetic, she turned towards the art of the unknown sea next to Wonthelimar who endorsed her with his favorite, collapsing and disoriented by their anti-gregarious territorial similarity, and maritime per se the Otolith that brandished him in dual places of Ionian-Dodecanese geography, following the semiotic songs of Leiak that emerged from the aulética to infer Balénid genres, which acted precisely between the island and the bay of Patmos with the same name as Skalá, to meet everyone and be a participant in the construction of the sanctuary.
Kaitelka's Vernarthian tenor carried her behind her with another Ballenid, this one again carried the Demiurge Ezpatkul, with his prominent Augrum or Gold incisors that turned on the backs of all the borer beetles, being Scarabaeidaes that were delimited towards logic, and paraphrase of a qualitative satirical, especially in the modality of the subgenre, and sub-mythology of Vernarth. To commend all the hypotheses of this whale that sang with the native cephalization ultrasound, where it continued to arrange means between the middle and in its cranial cavity to the percentage of the world map, with the muzzles of its larger fins transmitting waves of parapsychological regression towards Vernarth, and parodying the transparent cendal ballads that he did with his passage through the water, despite not having members that strengthen the controversial cetacean passerby by waters of a melodious rhetorical language, such as a great inspirational helix, and satires that house greenhouses in most of the jubilation, akin to rudders that I furrowed in his verbal poetry, easing restrictions, and possessing the genome that was deprived of his gestation, of the maternal expropriation, victimized with fears of omega, and of Apocalypse hungover by sea and water candy. They piloted their heart valves, mere and Dantesque with the Zeusian buttress spauto, muddled and bundled in their bombastic myocardium like omitted ships without ever lifting anchor and setting sail, a very brief tulle of water satirized aggregates of their formula, and a piece of stony wood on their spur he braced himself like a mammal, he was carrying his weight in a literary category where there is no way to test it. Without hindrance, she was hilarious next to the breakers in the manner of a belligerent tendril with thick keel skins, dramatizing him, and perhaps that would delay her in reaching the investiture of Vernarth's Proskynesis Himation, some looked out jocular and foreshadowed to meet with her. Her chains were Caucasus icebergs, demystifying seasonality by residing linked to a single destination of Balénido Down, ******* with her dorsal that exhaled rearrangements of the Cinnabar genome, clarifying hormones and stereotyped balenid chromosomes.

The concordance of the Satirical subgenre, and the inanimate polarized gender correspondence to Kaitelka, usurping the intentionality of the sub-mythological drama, in two Radas of Skalá that appeared to lose the standard of their ears, with tragic representativity versus comedian staging, heralding an interlude between two areas that struggled to have it directed towards three comedies that pounced on three tragedies, missionizing crossed features of the ideals of survival, with parables preceded by the soul-linguistic being, due to its canonical supernatural modality when it was mimicked with disciplined domains after of a rhetorical poetics, rectified in religions granting orphic messianic structuralism bis of the equinoctial aft; foreshadowing the hymns of Orpheus in the Bible, and metaphorical in revealing divine truth, accessible only to spirits worthy of it. The purpose of metaphor in her poetry has the deciding function of the ineffable of thought, through simile, or in comparison to imagining. The song is one poetry, and the song such a praying too, prayer and ritual forming an inseparable syntagma of meaning in her escaping from Arbela's zither, impossible to differentiate in the biblical psalms themselves. The penultimate of them recalled number 149, being a hymn destined to accompany the dance; Orpheus says: "make melodies for him, with drums and lyres." It is known that the classical instrument of Orpheus reaches the level of the sacred in biblical texts. Psalm 150 contains an orgiastic ending to a symphony, in the description of the instruments that accompany the word and the voice that praises God, with sermons from Kaitelka blooming from an oceanic being and printing songs of the subgenre, without blemish of sub- mythology and the unconfessed proceeding. The comical exaltation of him recreates aspects of great joy, for whom in his Orphic water, he feels vibrations under his belly portraying cathartic and semiotic of his own trisomic root, in an effort to decode drama, for intermezzos of the mythological subgenre. Borker with his sword Mythos interpreted the story of Kaitelka when he tells her about the melting of Horcondising, seeing in them friendly glaciers that included her within provincial storytelling that sensitizes the culture being reborn on its spheres and plasma hematocrits, for an apologist who admits acting corporality and inanimate. Its genesis is Bereshit, "which names and does not start", from the undervalued parashot of the gods and kings, ordering them from the ibidem to inter dogmatism, in which it contributes in its credit reserve, in large consortiums besieging colonies by the southern seas of the Nótos of Borker. "Evil tears their veins heal their goods relegates the forgetful in the tradition of their existence alongside the demiurges, incontinent to their ills who enjoy making creation sleep, soothing it in innocuous myths that are often more than a supernatural truth!

Helios went out to the road by the west and not by the east, in the nascent instant of the ectoplasm that revealed micro satires that led to the station of the hero who lives hidden, behind the proscenium of a cultural and religious intimacy, Kaitelka plunges a few meters below the Aegean where he was already arriving, and he can realize that he did not see marine species around him, only beams of lights that distorted the view of those who flatter him on a descent? Underwater a mythical mission wailed on dry surfaces, and in the phenomena of the underwater stones, they relaxed before any reflection of the veracity of a myth of expression in the mouth of a fish other than Theseus, brushing systematic hermeticisms with the gloomy and infinitesimal. All this dialectical journey towards inevitably alternating molecules of his finite genome, to reestablish in his hybrid status when arriving at Skalá, here he would have to use his two neurochemical brains for a mortal instinct that does not die inside the mouth of a whale, but in the interrogation after being swallowed…? based on the extension of the sexagesimal nanoscale of Leiak, equipped with a fractional comparing that collects mythologies within them, for the uncertain truth. Kaitelka's only etiological myth burden is a consequence of her suffering, which is offered in her psychic trisomy, for being bastardized by three chromosomes, disorderly the reality of her specimen that unfolds her as a congenital disease.

Kaitelka says: Who am I and where do I come from? I am reaching the floodgates of my lord Vernarth, and I can see that I am reborn in his astragalus and vines, which tell a story ****** under the tripod and vapors of Herófila. Authoritarian truth that will bow before a pig to become, smelling here in the tragic essence, and in truths that are hidden in its symbolic denial?
Kaitelka is instituted a few miles before she begins to navigate in a zigzag, trying to condense forces for the origin of her ethereal, with sarcasm techniques that self promote her to blink in deluded tears and moan in the scenarios of uncertainty, in the opinion of pouring real myths, transposing its flow in the destination that is flooded in imprecise gestures and between cries with super sounds that raised it on the swells, and these, in turn, were shedding the mystery Masken by raising water concentrated in onerous poly morphology. With joys and hilarious meltdowns on the mountains, she approached everything when she arrived at the pleasant Skalá, escaping from cosmogony that linked her weightlessly on the light water, overflowing towards the very origin of a Vernarthian deity, in pasts and futures that do not intersect in the radial of its origins. The sky proclaimed laughter and mimic gestures that adhered to the vitrifying phenomenon of past-present pashkien images, ready to lightning that heals the invalidations of walking on troubled waters, a dipsomaniac leitmotif in early Christian justice.
                                            
Kaitelka sins irascible, violent and proud, urgent and judicious, but conciliatory despite carrying a cross and a harpoon on her back. She will continue to be Kaitelka Down, but Patmos will arrogate her Thracian gift of her of Orphic origin to her, for purposes of her radial preeminence in the Ballenids that hoist all the sacred sites. The biological diagnostic prescribes an univitelino twin whale, but when she goes beyond the hirsute destiny of her Iliad, she begs to go transforming into the rainy sphinx on the thick bronze ceiling as she breaks in the minting of the coins, towards a stop of seduction that enthrones in the gloom of the minotaur, and in the numinous hands of a daffodil on the face of the Epsilon. Or crawling in the mitral and in her valvulopathy with messengers, carriages, and with swans or pigeon birds; perching on a wreath of roses and myrtles that surround her red bozos. Almost always appearing undressed next to her escort, usually multiplied in excess towards her, with the amazement of her animal consorts that dolphins are, and Thracian pigeons, a priori being covered by the Pythia of Delphi that is migrating in the murky triumphs of the Achaemenides in Gaugamela.
Áullos Kósmos IV
A Davis Aug 2014
I don’t know if I could tell you the truth

A bowl of things, placed then left
Where dust aggregates.
Time drags on, but feeling does not appreciate

Sitting on your floor cross-legged
Across from wax that burns, ready to hit the candelabra
Try not to feel ragged, depleted
And feel rich: with time, with love, with hate
All repeating

A grasshopper, a spring, the trampoline
Where we felt all those things

Draw everything to a close
Tie it up tight and make sure there are no holes
Bury it in the ground for some stranger
So they can see what was left..

At least someone will know)
Mark Wanless Nov 2017
"Sweet Smile"


Sweet smile
Walking away
Do you live
The live long day
I think not
That your honest
Presence is a continuous
****** attribute of the
Pretty woman you are
Currently attached to
Moment by moment
Aggregates coalesce into
The physics of your brief
Existence which is that
Which i now write about
In my need and desire
To express in words
The experience of this mountain
Here and now
For your viewing pleasure
And perhaps
Mark Wanless Nov 2017
"Puppets Of The Cosmos"


    Puppets of the cosmos we are
    No they conspiracy      together one form
    Mind breathers processors excreter's
    **** happens thought wise watch
    Where you step      to late!      brain feces
    Everywhere      permeates mental atmosphere
    Undiscovered doesn't mean non-existing
    Fuzzy headed people all over      mental health
    Is contagious      germs of pre-conscious origin
    Float the psychic wind up yours and in
    You can't help it      cold      flu      aids      hemorrhagic
    Fever equivalents      scary isn't it      i prefer
    Not to see but can't pluck out the
    Deep down power greater than myself
    Beautiful handiwork malleable consciousness
    Somehow full of
    Not knowing
    So much hidden
    Only a constellation away
    Star travelling I'm a-going
    Won't be back again
    One way trip in space time mind works
    No beginning no end of cause effect
    Seeing is believing
    The answer gnosis sapiens
    Next step compassion evolving forever
    Now shape not big enough but
    Desire creates genetic change
    Psychophysical aggregates      karma collectors
    Cut the strings and be free!
    Make self not war
JAATC Jan 2021
A smile so bright, make the sun take Yeshe's advice
And check up on its mental, jealously dimmin its light
Same time subtle, as I walk gently in righteousness
Face lookin serious but on the inside I feel so delightful
Conceptually analytic diggin up every root to decipher
*** I polluted as sky due to attachment and desire
And I is non-self existent and I am this mind and body
So I choose to practice dharma til I rest upon peace and enlightenment
And transform my karma, til my debt, is annihilated
And I reach liberation
No time to pause doe, through breaths I strive with a restless aspiration
Til every being is emancipated
From self-*******, delusion and ignorance, all the aggregates
And we all can rejoice in happiness
And salvation
And until we make it
My duty here, on this earth, will always be awaitin
But I ain't troubled *** I fit the placement
Like a center piece on a table I'm centered, focus and able
Tell da world we gon be straight like 180
de Pony Sum May 2020
I

I recall in tranquillity

Fever-dive hours.

Once I saw a sailboat listing

Upon a great-waved sea

The sea was I and so was the boat

I could not see any stars

For the blasts of ocean-spray



In what quiet cove can I go hiding from a storm

Blasting up the cartoid artery and flooding through

The cognitive estuaries, over-spilling memory’s tributaries?

Tell me where I might make my stand against my wrath?

Might a clever present play the future off against the past?

Am I to live only in the lacunae between foretelling & recollection

In the times between guilt and dread when, exhausted of mental flight,

Whether backwards or forwards, the mind drifts in easy content?



We shall build a tower

let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth



II

Behold, a shattered glass bowl that held doubts

They multiply in shattering

As each beam of light

Crosses every glass splinter

It breeds a new splinter

And a new lance of light

Fecund heresiarch



Absolute clarity lies within

That lit glass rubble but the trouble

Is that so does everything else

As in Borges’ library up in that tower



III

Do you know where your right hand is? Walking through a shop and not knowing whether you’ve assaulted someone heedlessly. Analysing each moment of your past like a sicko prosecutor. The fears iterate by sinister Darwinism, seeking cognitive blind-spots. Did I mutter threats of violence to that child? Did I insult that shop attendant? Mixed memory and aversion form a rancid bin-juice born decaying.



IV

I came to the stairs

There was a wobble in her voice

By each step her voice rose higher

So I rise to her and she calls with greater urgency

And I rise to her with greater urgency

She and I can only meet after escalation shatters

Past the horizon of panic and further-

Past the sea rock of worn defeat

She and I must be one.

I sprint.



V

Imagine that someone came to you in the middle of the night, stepped into your mouth and began to grow through your capillaries. They were not content merely with habitation, their constant insistence was that you must keep grafting dead organs and limbs onto yourself. You become a born-again Frankenstein (don’t be a pedant) with all the zeal of a convert to an undead lifestyle. The new limbs are heavy, and stink, and burn up your flesh with septisemic fire and ****-flood, but the man who stepped inside your mouth begs you stitch on more.



VI

The inside of a head becomes lonely as it becomes crowded

The only things that elbowed through those crowds

Were other hauntings

Brief dune-sedge love in salted ground

Warring wrath against money made world

Twin engines of raging-love and loving-rage

Racing for diversion and the exaltation of rebellious motion

Circulation round the track kept my blood in motion

Rammed down winds to bellow my lungs



Political contention, war, courtship, frenetic study

Vain dreams of greatness, discontent

Which gave me a little contentedness

To declare permanent war or endless love

And so to terminate surrender in unutterable resolution

“Optimism of the will!”- clenched hands, though they wobble

In the obsidian lands where resistance gave no comfort

Resistance still gave sustenance

Just as all the previous Sugatas



VII

Life is so long. Are you so innocent? You are tired. You dream of a gentle place. You saw it as anyone might imagine it- holy light on wild-flowers, easy with its comforts, free with its joys. To be such a place it had to be distant from this world and sealed against you.



VIII

Maybe I just wasn’t ******* often enough?

Victorian life is better novelised than lived

Hysterical, neurotic, guilty, phantasmal

Maybe I wasn’t drinking enough?

A friend called me the Ayatollah

In respect of my beard and sobriety



Hume and the Buddhist sages pronounced that persons are aggregates without greater unity. I find myself a bundle but there is no liberation here. The parts rub against each other like cans in a grocery bag bruise fruit. Or perhaps I am the curate’s egg.



IX

Give me a seabird’s wings

On the cliffs, about forty meters over the crab pools

I dream of ascending with the gulls, but higher

Diving and again rising in alliance with wind

What waves perturb the gull are brief

And if it is to end by hawk, that too is brief

Yet I would rise higher still, till I sat on a perch

Overlooking time and the jolting succession of moments

Above the waves of kings, ministers, exchequers

Yet if I am not to reach that exalted perch

I will be low enough to observe the bright net

Of refracted sun that plays upon the hills of water

Give me a seabird’s wings



X

Easier perhaps to talk of the accoutrements of terror and the reflections it invoked. Easier to do that then to photograph medusa. Yet I do remember being confused as to whether I was more guilty or more afraid. It seemed important that I be more guilty than be afraid, but it is hard to feel guilt while facing knives. Consequently, I felt supplementary guilt at my thin guilt.



We shall build a tower

let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth



XI

The future is boundless, not only ahead but sideways

The patterns of your inferences only ever ape

The subtle causal chains which bind the forward momentum

Of the world whose surface you cling to

The mind is stretched between times and possibilities,

Beyond any accommodation by mental sinew and bone

The heart successively roars and fizzles



XII

I came to the living room

And it was filled with ash

Though I never smoked

Or sat by fire

I made an ink of that ash

And began to write these verses

upon my arm



XIII

He is there, and I smile into his oblivion

He never loved you, so ideas of romance

Had the character of Banach-Tarski’s sphere

He is gone now, other suburbs, other worlds

I do not miss him, except on special occasions

My affections were never lost, except perhaps at the first moment

Dead on arrival

Yet still worthwhile



It is right to rebel against most things

But not you, oh sweet tyrant

It’s good odds you kept me breathing



IXV

We do not sit upon heaven’s throne

Nor are we the rebel, cast down like a slash of lightning

We are the flesh that raised our gaze

Half wondering, half begging

The dance is ending, where is the bridgegroom?



XV

How rash are those who clamour for justice?

(I have been among them)

Life is wide, deep and changing. We are excesses

Of identity, act, motivation.

Of miscalibrated judgement and selfish grasping.



Do you think you would be clean under heaven’s eye?

Were there a book that contained each numbered thought and small deed

Of yours wouldn’t you shred it, burn it and eat the ashes?

I wouldn’t. I would give you that book. Press you to read it.

I do not think you would like me, but my terror is to be misunderstood

I fear that you will think I am a different kind of monster than that I am.

So I give you my promise, that should an angel scribe that book

I’ll give you a copy.



And I promise that if you ever give me a copy of your celestial biography

I’ll try to shut the my eye of judgement and open that of mercy

It’s simple self interest. Chesed pro chesed.



XVI

Can we remember pain? In our mind’s eye we might

See rose fluids or, under that, a startling glimpse of pearly white

Laid open by a scalpel. We shudder back. We peer forward.

But who has the pen by which to bind agony?

“Sharp”, “dull”, “throbbing”, “irritating”, “intense”

Wholly feeble, as if a snake tried to wander with its vestigial leg bones

But that is where we find ourselves- thirsty for conveyance in a desert of names

We can only hope to articulate pain through our inarticulateness

Just as, by chance, static on a television set captures a snowstorm



I remember wandering the streets, sobbing and calling for divine fire to **** me and all the other wicked. As I wept I listened to pop on half smashed headphones. What would it take to make you march through city streets weeping and calling the fires of an unknown God?



XVII

I ascended to the attic

To store, retrieve, invent

A mnemonic parade

Without volition my hands

Raise the dust in small incantations

How does one dislodge a fake memory?

Or terminate the routine of shuddering



I see

He and she are here, interlocked eye-beams

I am not in either eye

In this attic I lay in the pattern of my veins

I am sinews. Whether these gobbets

Be thought or flesh I am in neitherway free

I am chained by my own substance

Above me powers contend in the air.



XVIII

Think now

Life has many cunning passages, contrived corridors

And issues, deceives with whispering trepidations,

Guides us by vanities.


After such knowledge what forgiveness?

Forgiveness after such knowledge what?

What forgiveness after such knowledge?

Knowledge what forgiveness after such?

Such knowledge what forgiveness after?



IXX

In metamorphosis the tissue is not merely subtracted from and added to inside the pupae, rather the whole flesh devours itself, save for microscopic clusters (imaginal bodies), becoming a soup of cells. What unites both life-stages is scarcely more than a double-helixed teleos. Yet memory persists.

We shall build a tower

let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth



**

If I could but seize the wax of Icarus

The tailor of Ulm’s fabrics

Etana or Bladud’s crown of feathers

If I could but fly, I could seize the sun’s silver

Forge a mirror by which to demonstrate

The storm that rends the head

Of some shivering soul you know

Forgive a thief that stole for you and

Shelter all, for you cannot see their weather



XXI

To find a point of collapse at which

loss and victory die.

And that sea is now

A vast lake that

Night or day

Forms a perfect twin

To the sky

Over the stones of the tower

Drift currents and sweet, lazy fish

The waves will dance again

But I might hope to dance

With them
Afterword

This poem is allusive to the point of plagiarism, and past that. My purpose is to convey an experience with all that I have and I’ll gladly steal words for that. Given the greed with which I have pilfered the words, I thought a referencing system was needed. Passages in italics are more or less lifted wholesale from elsewhere. There’s plenty of references, parallels and allusions which aren’t italicised. Since italics aren't visible on this platform you can see them here: https://deponysum.com/2020/05/10/deadwater/

The debt to T.S. Eliot is obvious, even in the title. The debt to the Aiken’s Tetelestai and the Romantics (including Eliot perversely read as a romantic) is less obvious. It’s very much a poem about me, and I apologise for that vanity. My story is not unique. My particular kind of OCD based on a fear of harming others is quite common. Yet few talk about it for fear of seeming like a dangerous ******. It is an inherently self-concealing form of mental illness. Especially as I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to avoid the narcissism of self-display even in an anonymous form, but I want to show you this story, lest it be scattered everywhere among the nameless like me, and forgotten.

For those who have loved me.
Iyallo Nov 2020
I sit on my back with my legs high in the sky,
I sit to find, I am on a wet and musky
rock , I sat once and found pale grass,
while now the rain like storm sprouts life like annual grass.

A storm that strikes thunders on the ground,
each space is submerged into a dark and deep sound,
while water aggregates in rivers,
the worlds of people enter bedcovers.
KorbydAngyle Oct 2021
Aggregates of Hospital's Alabaster-
deigned frightfully close -
   of enemy, boisterous identity,
cantankerous breach some...
  of happiness some and more, for the host!

Tell of a motley crue, worn of shoes lapping pathways, virtue abounds
Inside every great inclusive vault, medicinal throws
         The good work abounds!
         Abundance of the light!
Tenor falls... health's witness.... new compromise to abundance
whence lastly an ill went, new great cheers
nurture the horizon
once all well, God amiss
The nurses, ours glowing,
Help by God's witness
ever the constitutional Hostess
JAATC Oct 2020
Guard your passions,
And watch your motives
Those ethers always open
And those dark serpents
Be slithering through the grasses
Of your aggregates,
Grasping
Attached like magnets
Tell me how skillful is your magic?
That static don't cling
To the golden fleece of a master
Moods influenced by I,
So every move made in rapture
Reside in Sukavati,
Calm abiding
In Three Principle Aspects
Renunciation, Bodhichitta, Shunyata
Made actual
Tactical and tactful
Calculated
While open to spontaneous
Grace
A warrior
For peace love and happiness
While rummaging, mining,
and distilling me gray matter,
stoking mentality activates
oft time surprising me,
where unexpected novel

cognizance never abates,
I experienced becoming
linkedin with cosmic fates,
sans collective unconscious
soul of the universe,
and chanced to espy,

(albeit only a trimmed speck),
the spirit of William Butler Yeats
considered one of the foremost figures
of 20th-century literature,
where elan suddenly accelerates
though immediately abruptly stops

dead still in figurative tracks
utter disbelief accompanied
by shell shocked shyness accentuates
to remain stock still
suddenly feeling inadequate, inferior
immovable, insignificant...self doubt actuates

internal tussle, while
wise counsel within adjudicates
unable to convincingly
brush off devil's advocates,
which in no way, shape or form
successfully bolsters cockamamie idea,

floats and navigates fan to see, alternates
with bold prospect an emotional
paralysis immediately aggravates
anxiety as cowardice accumulates,
nonetheless pesky needling aggregates
maximizing far fetched optical illusion,

despite what must be hallucination,
this laughable wordsmith appreciates,
though many wildest dreams of mine defy
explanation, a feeble attempt articulates,
how dreamlike hypnotic stance captivates,
thru cosmic haze quantum matter assimilates

aura, charisma, enigma
rippling ethereal tore'n shroud
sensing, nursing, imbibing...
indecisiveness capitulates
wavering seduced mooring
temptation assertively celebrates

nonpareil genius among pantheon,
whose Eire rush grandeur circulates
thru time and space infiltrates
stimulating within mine off kilter crown,
where reverence circulates,

for long deceased Irish poet laureate,
his unseen presence amalgamates
vibrant tendrils of late
August author's grandeur effectively percolates
within and illuminates me with inspiration.

— The End —