"monk" poems
National Liberation Day Of Korea
Freedom means August 15, 1945.
Koreans celebrate their day of liberation.
Freedom is like a Magpie,
Flying in the morning sky,
Above the ancient palaces of Seoul,
Freedom is like the Rose of Sharon,
Growing in "The land of morning calm."
Freedom is like a river named Han,
Unstoppable!
Freedom means flying the Taegeukgi.
Outside and high!
Freedom is Lively,
Freedom is President Moon Jae-in
President of South Korea,
Freedom is vibrant!
Freedom is festivals,
Freedom is unhindered!
Freedom is a Buddhist monk,
Everland!,
Freedom is unbound!
Freedom is tasty Kimchi,
Deoksugung Palace!
Freedom is lively parties,
Freedom is dancing,
The greatest Palaces of Seoul!
Freedom is treasured!
Freedom is a green bottle,
Soju!
Freedom is Arirang!
Korea's song,
A gift to the world from Korea,
Freedom is Queen Min; Still remembered,
Resting under a cherry blossom tree,
Freedom is Seoul!
A wonder to be seen on the Han River!
Freedom is luminous,
Busan Nightlife,
Changdeokgung Palace!
Freedom is unchained!
Freedom is sports,
Jeju-do!
Freedom is escape!
Freedom is honor!
Battle of Inchon!
Freedom is rising in the sky,
One of the most dynamic cities,
Seoul!
Freedom is no longer
Imprisoned,
Freedom is camping,
Freedom is priceless!
Freedom is one's honor!
Deoksugung Palace!
Freedom is treasured!
Freedom is the miracle,
Seoul!
Freedom is food,
Freedom is Kimchi,
Freedom is hopeful,
Freedom is Yu Gwan-sun!
Long live Korean independence!
Freedom is a Buddhist monk writing,
Freedom is thinking about your dreams,
Not looking behind your back!
Freedom is a child going to school,
Freedom is ultra-modern,
Seoul!
Freedom is escape!
Freedom is music,
K-POP!
Freedom is Arirang playing,
Freedom is essential,
White Day!
Freedom, people, shining in the sun,
Freedom is loved,
Yuna Kim!
Freedom is essential,
Freedom is "The March 1st Movement",
Yu Gwan-sun!
Freedom is shopping,
Freedom is walking our dogs,
Freedom is writing what you think,
Freedom is Sejong the Great!,
Hangul!
Freedom is bringing your dreams into the world,
Freedom is poetry,
Yun Dong-ju!
Freedom is traditions,
Freedom is wearing Hanbok.
Freedom is being empowered!
Freedom is.
Freedom is.
Freedom is.
A United Korea!!!
Copyright © 2013 - 2017 Ronald J Chapman All Rights Reserved.
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 6:00 AM UTC
We wear this city on our feet
Planting our roots with each step
Our shadows
cast shapes of ancient oak trees stretching out over old squares at daybreak
We grow here
with the spirit of buildings past,
present and rising like a staircase to heaven in the distance,
the plumes of white smoke from their rooftops as burnt offerings for incense,
spires for steeples,
the bundled masses of people moving beneath as the calloused soles
of our feet pounding the pavement,
Our congregation
seated in reverant silence on the R-Line hissing to a stop
Their hushed prayers filing out from within to bring the reclaimed sidewalks of Fayetville Street back to life to join this pilgramage
They march
downtown toward Capitol
holding signs for disarmament
They bar-hop through Glenwood toasting to deliverance
They move in a blur of faces that become us,
Rush at all hours through our veins
Cross our hearts and keep us breathing,
Moving
wearing the city on our minds
like the greyest pieces of their winter sky and the way it caps the peaks of Mount PNC, BB&T and Wells Fargo like hoodies over our heads
We assume monk-like appearances
in robes color-coded by season- from blue collar sweaters to cold hard sweat
We'll wear their city until we're worn out and wet,
We'll wear their dreams at night
like streetlamps flickering on beneath wired telephone poles carrying conversations about each one as far south as Florida, fears unspoken, made visible
on iron park benches too cold to sit on at this hour
We'll keep walking
and wear this city like backpacks over our shoulders
under the watch of their heavens,
the skyline
a glowing testament
of every step taken
toward someplace higher.
Apr 9, 2018
Apr 9, 2018 at 7:27 PM UTC
today's begging is finished; at the crossroads
i wander by the side of hachiman shrine
talking with some children.
last year, a foolish monk;
this year, no change!
11.6k
i've moved past my belief
in the Christian trinity...
for me...
the meditation stands
on the pivot of
the following translation
the hexagon,
start of david -
which translates
as the Holy Ghost -
which denotes
a congregation...
the pentagon?
of the befitting analogy
to the five senses...
the "son of man" -
or simply...
the myopia of man
having to excavate
the sixth sense
using telescopes,
microscopes, the like...
and, finally?
on a hand of five extensions,
there are four...
the square...
Y H
⠁⠑ read clockwise
like English traffic
H W on a roundabout.
which? denotes the father...
if the Hebrews "think" they
can hide their vowels?
the Latin answer is...
to interpolate Braille into
their language...
and Emperor Nero would have
appreciated it...
whether with, or without
the Byzantine propaganda machinery
of the nevus testamentum...
and it wasn't a propagandist
piece?
how much longer did the eastern
Empire, outlive the Western
empire, when the onslaught
by the Ottoman's reached
Constantinople?!
the Greek were craving
a cultural revival!
they believed the Romans
to have origins in Troy!
they plaid the weakest cultural
card of Judaism,
revamping it into Christianity...
hell... that's what i believe...
and i'm not about to meet
a Jehovah's Witness propagandist,
or some aged Pakistani
citing the Quran on a park
bench...
or some Scientologist
on Oxford St. with his wacky
machine...
or some pseudo Hare Krishna
monk with a book about
some guru, pushing it like
marijuana...
to change my mind on what
i'm digesting!
plus?
⠽ ⠓
Æ ( read anti-clockwise)
⠓ ⠺
fits in perfectly into the Adam
and Eve narrative -
as with all mythology -
given the extent of time...
nuance, metaphor...
abbreviation...
ars poetica!
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 8:32 PM UTC
Original French
Dictes moy ou, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora la belle Rommaine,
Archipiades ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine,
Echo parlant quant bruyt on maine
Dessus riviere ou sus estan,
Qui beaulté ot trop plus q'humaine.
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Ou est la tres sage Helloïs,
Pour qui chastré fut et puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis?
Pour son amour ot ceste essoyne.
Semblablement, ou est la royne
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust geté en ung sac en Saine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
La royne Blanche comme lis
Qui chantoit a voix de seraine,
Berte au grand pié, Beatris, Alis,
Haremburgis qui tint le Maine,
Et Jehanne la bonne Lorraine
Qu'Englois brulerent a Rouan;
Ou sont ilz, ou, Vierge souvraine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine
Ou elles sont, ne de cest an,
Qu'a ce reffrain ne vous remaine:
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
English Translation
Ballad Of The Ladies Of Yore
Tell me where, in what country,
Is Flora the beautiful Roman,
Archipiada or Thais
Who was first cousin to her once,
Echo who speaks when there's a sound
On a pond or a river
Whose beauty was more than human?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?
Where is the leamed Heloise
For whom they castrated Pierre Abelard
And made him a monk at Saint-Denis,
For his love he took this pain,
Likewise where is the queen
Who commanded that Buridan
Be thrown in a sack into the Seine?
But where are the snows of yesteryear?
The queen white as a lily
Who sang with a siren's voice,
Big-footed Bertha, Beatrice, Alice,
Haremburgis who held Maine
And Jeanne the good maid of Lorraine
Whom the English bumt at Rouen, where,
Where are they, sovereign ******
But where are the snows of yesteryear?
Prince, don't ask me in a week
or in a year what place they are;
I can only give you this refrain:
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
9.4k
Got it buzzed
back to GI days.
A quarter inch
all over, I said
to the dubious barber.
It took some
getting used to
when passing
mirrors.
But now I love it!
I call it
my Monk's haircut.
No maintenance.
Wake up, perfect;
Swim, perfect;
Stroll about
in hurricane,
perfect.
Now I love
to feel
the wind
in my hair
that is
no longer
there.
~mce
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 10:17 AM UTC
He is
walking the white line
his arm a repetitious arc
sounding a single tone
timed to the pace
of hiking-boot feet
treading the pavement.
Saffron robes have grayed
over long meditative miles
witnessed by curious commuters
riding the pendulum away
from his purposeful daily counterpoint
the freedom held
in rhythmic ritual
how the mind stills and gathers
in the swinging blur of hand and stick.
I roll the window down
seeking precious solace
as I hurtle past
knowing
he walks for me too
I want to stop the car
fall in behind
feel the timeless drum
the stillness of salvation.
Jan 12, 2016
Jan 12, 2016 at 12:30 PM UTC
Lie beneath the galaxy in a cathedral silence,
Stay up till the moon dives behind the beige mountains.
Rest on your beast, let the valves take a break,
Treat yourself with a feast, its the only time in your fate.
Slithering into my sack I rest under the canvas,
How peaceful it is far away from all the ruckus.
The monk's prayers bid me with good luck,
I'm off riding in the sparse cold desert.
I stop with the view of a disputed lake,
Miles long the jade blue reflects the golden tops.
In refuge at a monastery, fuel is a luxury,
I'd give up everything for a piece of this little heaven.
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 8:19 AM UTC
In the morning, bowing to all;
In the evening, bowing to all.
Respecting others is my only duty--
Hail to the Never-despising Bodhisattva.
In heaven and earth he stands alone.
A real monk
Needs
Only one thing--
a heart like
Never-despising Buddha.
6.2k
Compound eyes
Astonishing spectacles
Clairvoyant views from above
Wings glistening in the light of the sun
Buzzing long bodied mystical stories
Dragon's breath of spiritual eloquence
Releasing the bugs eating away at conscience
Skeletal spine of an egoless monk
whispering harmoniously the simple remedies
of cleansing thought
My snake doctor
Quick witted unmasker
your view 360 degrees
Focusing on the movement
and pesky mosquitos that feast
That leave us scratching our heads
I look on so enviously
at Lady Dragonfly
as she hovers angelically
In an eternal sky
It saddens me that the great one's lives are
always cut too short
but her legend lives on timelessly
Dating way back to Permian period
Dec 18, 2012
Dec 18, 2012 at 1:34 AM UTC
Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering Electrical Rosary
*This ilke Monk leet olde thynges pace,
And heeld after the newe world the space.*
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
How out of date are simple wooden beads
An upgrade is what the Rosary needs!
Something to give your meditations spice
Connected to your electronic device
Beamed back and forth to The Cloud, you see
With mega-mega gigs of memory
Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering
Electrical Rosary is just the thing!
The Ave Maria is so out of date
It’s Ave ME now, ‘cause we’re all so great!
Make your prayers less about God, more about you
Signal yourself through sacred Tooth of Blue
A camera hidden in the crucifix
Enables you to take your selfie-flicks
The Pater beads count each joggery mile
Or kilometres if those are your style
The Ave beads are recycled with care
To save the forests, the rivers, and air
Designed in Germany, made in China
High-definition beads; there’s nothing finer
Buy the first (as advertised on tv)
And we’ll send you a second all for free
Remember: for weddings, funerals, and daily devotions
Let RAM and ROM go through all the motions
Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering
Electrical Rosary – O make it sing!
Jan 26, 2017
Jan 26, 2017 at 7:24 AM UTC
My work day woke to Monk,
the click of typing keys,
clock watched, Spotify playing,
random thoughts rose like bees
to freeze in these jagged lines,
then swarm in threatening flight.
Hours of data entry later,
on a stool, in a bar, a clock's
hands tock, I flick a wrist,
and slur my words concluding
an anguished monologue,
“They call it work, you know.”
Awash at home, in the strobe of
pixelated panel light,
visions surge and dissipate
with the pulse of the night. Osip,
were you tempered to embrace
attention’s fugitive caress?
You etched memory’s texture
with candle soot for ink,
and the gulag’s blackened gaze -
I type lines by hunt and peck
humming Monk’s WELL YOU NEEDN’T,
hoping for an adequate phrase.
Copyright © 2004 Gary Brocks
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 10:38 PM UTC
My transcendent transition
Brought by my ****** ambition
Became my personal religion
When I gained a monk's chastity
All my pleas just came back to me
My prayers remain unanswered
Like someone dying of cancer
An inept bow-legged dancer
My skills are useless
My bites are toothless
My eyes are youthless
When my face has been strained
By the energy that was drained
On this ceaseless journey
To sate my ceaseless yearning
They don't look like the pictures they show
They only choose the photos that glow
They're so afraid of being alone
Willing to lie
To lure unsuspecting prey
And trap them in a spider web personality
But webs are useless against grander creatures
And become an annoyance
When all the wildlife
Can only see silk
And get itchy in the effected areas
In our minds we build barriers
In our hearts we grow wearier
Searching for someone to hold us tight at night
Someone that looks right in the light
Someone that helps fight all our plights
Someone to give that tranquil transition
Into that peaceful loving condition
Jul 28, 2017
Jul 28, 2017 at 4:23 AM UTC
First days of Spring-the sky
is bright blue, the sun huge and warm.
Everything's turning green.
Carrying my monk's bowl, I walk to the village
to beg for my daily meal.
The children spot me at the temple gate
and happily crowd around,
dragging to my arms till I stop.
I put my bowl on a white rock,
hang my bag on a branch.
First we braid grasses and play tug-of-war,
then we take turns singing and keeping a kick-ball in the air:
I kick the ball and they sing, they kick and I sing.
Time is forgotten, the hours fly.
People passing by point at me and laugh:
'Why are you acting like such a fool?'
I nod my head and don't answer.
I could say something, but why?
Do you want to know what's in my heart?
From the beginning of time: just this! just this!
5.1k
Moving amidst my Ramona chapter books,
I make out your movement, M, the moody turns
Of your mounts and valleys, the moniker of
Family names, you marked me like a maternal
Emblem of the generation’s matriarch,
You mingled amid reminiscences of former matrons
Maria Helena from the Midwest,
Who crossed the mountains in a wagon,
Madeleine, a migrant from Marseilles,
Who baked warm loaves in San Francisco,
And her own daughter, my Mimi,
Who muttered merde while she drank martinis.
In my own time, you materialized in
Marjorie, my nana, and Maria, my mom,
The women in which I knew you growing up,
Then Molly, who made dreams out of
Magic and Movies and Marie Antoinette,
You embellished my most favorite things.
In my monogram, you aimed my impulses
in your masts’ diametric directions
Towards competence, towards imagination.
In your middle ‘s mysterious compartment I make snug
With magazines and novels and mugs of hot milk.
You nuzzled me in moments of melancholy, then motivated me
To meander among your fundamental family,
The sumptuous L of melt and mélange,
The meticulous N of man or monk or money.
Even W, which matches your mien in mirror
It warped wicked witch while you
Milled maidens and damsels, so I imagined
The mutilation of those two majuscules formed
My image of womanhood. M, Molly Smithson materialized
From a meek mademoiselle into the mistress of mischief.
May 20, 2014
May 20, 2014 at 10:09 AM UTC
At the crossroads this year, after
begging all day
I lingered at the village temple.
Children gather round me and
whisper,
'The crazy monk has come back
to play.'
4.9k
Today I have adopted
a new Dream Occupation:
No longer a Buddhist Monk
On a Mountain Peak in Nepal
but Henry Miller, I will Be
And shall dance the
Worlds Circumference
With no brain in skull but a pen in
between crooked-only-on-the-right teeth
Mark my words today in
pencil please
So tomorrow I will have a
reminder and in a fortnight I will have
an eraser;
Henry Miller never
Wrote drafts in ink
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 12:34 PM UTC
A lake as still as still — a cloudless sky —
A bird-less forest — silent as the page,
That monk-like sits reflecting for an age
On pious deeds exalted upon high,
The page gilded in wisdom, lauded by
Its maker’s peers, wherein is set the stage
For Nature’s bountied beauty — I give homage
Unto its gifted craftsman, one that I
Have oft’ with envious eyes admired afar,
And matchless to his art, have grasped for skill
Far far above my grade — From him to me
Has come a gift as bright as Keats' Bright Star —
Unto thy lake, may this stone rend the still,
And loose thy songbird skywards, Timothy.
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 at 3:14 AM UTC
My love
Rests on imaginary nails.
My body 'neath moonlit willow trees,
The siren calling, "Hari Krishna!" Pulling the monk
Out from
Under dreams of harmony and peace, to place
Love back in it's proper hierarchy.
Tossing his silken gown,
We prey.
Sep 11, 2012
Sep 11, 2012 at 9:57 PM UTC
O pulchritudinous, for infinite climaxes
For bilious spasms of pigswill
For puce Popacatepetl pedigrees
Above the perverted pampas!
America! America! Allah excreted his curses on thee
And bang thy ****** in company with Islamic monk, from brothel to gay red—light district
O pulchritudinous, for spaceman bottoms
Whose **** throbbing tapeworm
A toucan crossing for slipperiness spifflicate
Across the intergalactic space!
America! America! Allah enrich thine ev’ry vice
Reinvigorate thy ****** *********** inside monolithic ectoplasm, thy merrymaking inside pyramid!
O pulchritudinous, for freaks got fat
In disentangling feeding frenzy
Who more than ***** their brothel slobbered over
And velvet glove more than backbone!
America! America! May Allah thy blonde exhaust
Till all rave reviews be disreputableness and ev’ry come superhuman
O pulchritudinous, for chauvinist muscleman
That smells wide of the fourth dimension
Thine lathery brothels lick
Polished using giant armadillo excrement!
America! America! Allah excreted his curses on thee
And bang thy ****** in company with Islamic monk from brothel to gay red—light district
Mar 25, 2010
Mar 25, 2010 at 5:22 PM UTC
Under the tree of the university
A shadow was gruesomely cast.
The branches made too much shade
And there grew no grass.
No one would lie under its wood
Down beside its trunk;
It wasn't essential, there was no potential,
Claimed the revered monk
But late at night you'll find him lying in the dirt
Wearing a Paisley Poplin Shirt
The click of the gears define his years,
A cycle on a chain
A cloud of sand thrown by his own hand
Hones forth his pain
He blows seeds of dandelion weeds
****** a ****** field
And he pretends that he intends
To reap this horrible yield
Because unintentionally he subconsciously convert
To one who wears a Paisley Poplin Shirt
Covered in rust, a blade he adjusts,
His mind remains unwrung
The words to speak were too **** bleak
So he cuts off his tongue
He'll be finished when he's diminished
These humanly sights
If there's no vision at the end of his mission
He'll gouge out his eyes
And Helen Keller takes one of her old ragged skirts
And fashions him a Paisley Poplin Shirt
Why must we be obsessed
With the unseen
When we know we cannot
Make something out of nothing
And to those of you who think that you cannot be hurt
Stones go thru a Paisley Poplin Shirt
Aug 23, 2017
Aug 23, 2017 at 2:49 AM UTC
Like a zygote in a toilet bowl
you flushed me away with a raw and distant shame that must’ve grown in you for two weeks and kept you up at night as a churning of unknown origin, a bloating that weighed you down in that section of the grocery store and made you promise “after one more week” because it was too early to tell even though you were already flushed with that secret, lonely panic when something no one else could detect made you gag and you prayed like a Christian and remained silent like a monk until it finally happened and you were saved, redeemed by the sight of the red little pieces of soul and carnal ritual which were so tender and broken you became whole again and you understood so you flushed me away, and we never spoke of it because only I knew but you must’ve understood the shame because at the first sight of me in August you flushed my red little soul away too.
Sep 27, 2018
Sep 27, 2018 at 1:22 PM UTC
a penny is a penny
and i am a monk hawking birth control pills
without any shame or pride
disguised in flamboyant tinfoil.
i am an extra sensitive *** on my daily street corner
turning into a crumb of hunger
staring down a long alleyway and eating the flowers
that grew up in concrete.
there are shadows of jugglers on the wall
jumping into the sun, and i am a burning lampshade.
henry miller is in a wheelchair now
and i am a walrus with a backache
being forced among the proverb writers,
but i'm no prophet because i've seen the bubbling fire
and the swords on the doorway.
i am a lover with a guilty conscience
and i have too much on my mind.
i stole the bread from the riot squad and
i blow out these words from a keyhole,
pounding my fist on a book
while the mystics get drunk with skinny ******
i don't go to birthday parties or funerals
instead i'd like to do something worthwhile
but i am your typical flunky, writing eccentric jokes about rich pimps
while my father lies dead on the hill.
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 8:59 AM UTC
vexed by the solidity of the granular surface
of this rough and tumble dream
i awaken to a forest of sunlight's in a dark world
to my sleep numbed mind
it resembles
the artwork of french revolt era
royal court damsel in distress figurines
dancing with dark-ages statues of plagues death
the starving meet the fed
and they struggle for who leads this dancehall of the marcarbe
burning the ashes of the old worlds dead flames
i look away to find her face
near mine
cut into shadowy sections
i hear within her spoken thoughts
the contortions her life has suffered
at the hands of grey faced strangers known intimately by her
i wish with heart and soul to reach out
and comfort
to remove the burden
the shadows of her face
are reflections of the world as she sees it
she is mesmerized by its ugliness
and she cannot close the door to her past
it lay like her childhoods bedroom
filled with broken teddy bears
and soiled sheets
if i could heal you
if i could even ease your moment
i would trade my living soul to have your smile
you are loved
you are so loved
a lame beggar in the rags of a monk
limps slowly from the effigy of a old world
as it burns with unspoken rages
white smoke from the roof
another chapter of history closed
with too many secrets
too many
but the beggar takes consolation
that she was given a second chance
a dove birthed from flames
here in the dust of the old world
you are loved
you are so loved
Jan 3, 2014
Jan 3, 2014 at 3:30 PM UTC