"suchness" poems
By some Remove privy to self-preservation's
extras...to be, or not to be had...beached, I've
been...electromagnetically torn asunder!
Odd sounds do, and do come in and out...
a crackly chirp singing the foundations of worlds.
The melancholia of space junk stuck to a mind of
distance...hoards copious amounts of love-filled
forgetfulness.
Bye...bye...Buddha, in all your "suchness"...bye...
bye...letting go is the only Way.
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 11:53 PM UTC
Sunlight rushed on your talons
as receding seawater...
the sand quickened black...
fine tuning stars.
Over-majesty...horizon's
scream vowed to silence,
~High on Light~
your crazy outburst of flight.
Weighing on air--
blank with groundless view...
spirit-sifted.
Solitary to the degree of
divine feedback...
moment to motion....
motion to moment,
perfectly still and air born.
A pounding and liberating
heart thousands of
feet above...
for below.
Feathers refined by fires
too dear to see...
more akin to what experience
Knows of itself.
Entire languages contained
in mere words...
that seem to be unsaid
in the saying.
You're the White bedside
vigil of life to death.
The Narrow Way
narrowed to nonentity...
till nothing was in vain,
and such became Suchness.
Love's love of being gave
your being...
as simply and fully.
Ashes to ashes, you fell
from a wayward sky...
a wiry Cruciform trembled
beside you as if on a
projection screen.
Perhaps to symbolize
you could go on forever flying...
or close your eyes and go on
forever in the here and now.
You are the stuff of dreams...
as I Am...
I don't know what else to call
you, but Eagle-man...
may you sleep deeper
than sleep
upon a purple
cloud.
*Based on a being I saw in a dream years ago...I tried to
put the being's essence into words.
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 12:21 AM UTC
Part of this mind
is furiously angry
and part of this mind
is extremely kind
and this is a condition
which applies
to my whole family
and I have been struggling
to control the anger
by letting it be
and I have been practicing
to bring out the kindness
by being right here with us
so the dual nature
of the split mind
is non-existent
in this suchness
which doesn't have
to be silent,
only loving.
Jan 31, 2012
Jan 31, 2012 at 1:00 PM UTC
A soft snow fell today
burying the Fall,
causing the deer mice to scurry.
Darting, and dashing,
eluding Yoji,
Feline King.
Gone are the dizzy days of Summer,
here are the days of reflection.
Introspection that's Winter's job.
Judging me, preparing me,
"keep up Larry", the Winter says.
"Let us temper ourselves for another year."
My Parents are both 95 now,
95 Winters have they.
Of keeping up, they are Masters.
Planning each hour of the day,
quality time is all they have.
Resistance is futile.
So, like the Seasons, I must change.
Taking off the clothes of one,
understand to die with each breath is to live.
Vowing to accept the suchness,
welcoming the unique events in my life.
Xeroxed, I think not.
Yesteryears' regrets and tomorrow's fears are insane.
Zealous am I about this moment.
Feb 10, 2013
Feb 10, 2013 at 12:15 AM UTC
this year, horse chestnut
leaves were first to fall
lime trees were the last
Nov 21, 2014
Nov 21, 2014 at 3:59 AM UTC
you are slow like daggers or
cancer.
this is what it feels like to travel
on a discourse:
something about you metastasizes
in my mind whenever the silences
are no longer beautiful;
and just like that, I thumb a prayer
to the fallen obsidian,
this harbinger of marvelous calm.
sometimes all the rooms are white
and I am immersed deep into pallor –
when both our eyes do not meet,
I wring out a cockeyed miracle:
dragging the blood of the trees with me,
these bushy polyps,
these benign volcanoes skin,
ashen and dull like a heart – these agonized
appurtenances, I gleam like light
cut from the mirror and fade out
as my visibilities hide.
something in me smiles when you
are flattened out – cross-legged, interconnected
unloose a star fettered somewhere deep where
hands cannot reach for the inside of a tomb.
this suchness that when I feel your sensations
press their threats against my skin,
you are a salutary squelch
in this pure-iron condition, or a heavy-earth machinery
moving inside my marrow, that deep
into death like a morning waist-high
with tears, walled in by requiems.
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 10:35 PM UTC
Something viscous and of the Earth
rampant hydraulic and geometric
where...
ever the green neddles empire
cupped hand of salt and clay
where red is skin unwashed
where smoothed stones
come under scrutiny
of rainfall
burnished by atmos
tasting of remnant iron
back of the mouth adrenaline
fear where choking lives
beguiled feints of the (nearly)
..the almost
..the always
just out of reach
seductive...
by satiated tones hither
yet kissed to life abrupt
sputtered out from shoals
soft guarded places
padded in the low end
theory spun cobweb
tied by philosophy of moss
long stretched wisps of time
that curl as smoke meanders
to drink in the momentary
nooks where God is salve
woven to worship pause
tangled and braided just so…
to hug in the splendors
a ram with horns wide like horizons
and spirals under darkened eye
on recoil, on tiptoes
that beckon to ride without saddle
eating ego and back peddle
whole seasons by the mouthful
each blinked snug
and overshadowed by determination
dancing as singular sensations
serenity swimming river's bend
circles slipping outward
elliptic goldfish spinning
hypnosis beneath lotus
opposite ever ends of the prism
A coy wink of rhythm
sway and schism cast
flailing from a cyclical sun
suchness dissipating
with the touch of dusk
and surrendered to fog
unveiled de ja vu to wax
to fauna melting orange in the distance
beyond moon picturesque
as a resonant echo breathing
armored against the crow’s call
feather fall looming, changeling
Sisyphean song obelisk
songs and sirens that got away
at nineteen hertz and rising
from the bottom of the arched heart
leaves falling scattered, witnessed
to swaddle as hinges the seasons
as transcendence including
wreck's collection magic chasm
rising and riding a tidal twist
we are each and all the alchemists
that decide the sacred
feinting flourishes we entertain
where nostalgia shades it's crispness
where hope holds hands with memory
to sip the nectar from the nightly charades
in the details that kiss the bottom lips
Aug 10, 2017
Aug 10, 2017 at 10:23 PM UTC
Ideas usurp various limits
by the judicious art
of cross-application.
Dec 8, 2015
Dec 8, 2015 at 5:06 PM UTC
I stand in the shower with lavender fields in my chest
how do I scrape off the muck, scoop out the loathing
and take off the gloves to pick up the patches of fear
that periodically gather at the base of my shower drain
how do I heal each limb so that with majesty
I awaken knowing
full and bright that I am a child with wings
and elevation is the right song that pours out when I dream
an inheritance marbled into my being’s skin
…
how does a child beget forgetting
how does an adult continue such forgetting
what is the suchness of wholeness
whose scent of remembrance seems mythically far
but its verity present within our plot
…
our hands reaching for the bunches of lavender
that can be gathered from a bountiful field
a calm whiff of what we truly are
that can send us back into an infinite space of fruitful life
cusping possibility
...
portable pastures inside our homestead
running water
and a chance to be cleansed
what suchness of being over my body
how ecstatic
how simple to stand under the showerhead
on the toes of today
with a meadow in my chest
Sep 23, 2019
Sep 23, 2019 at 4:31 PM UTC
AN RUD A DÚIRT ÉAN BEAG LIOM
( A Little Bird Told Me)
- for David Cooke -
"For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter." - Ecclesiastes 10-20
"Oh!" said the bird
" A human who..."
( and I never saw such
a surprised starling )
"...can understand
our language!"
"You can speak!" I blurted out.
"So, I see can you!" gasped the starling.
"The strange thing is...!"
I framed my words carefully
"...we can understand each other!"
the starling finished my sentence.
"But how..?"
being human I had to ask.
"Forget the hows and whys!"
friend starling replied.
"Just relish the moment
the such and suchness of it all!"
I made up my mind
to do so.
"Everything talks if
you only listen!"
the starling continued
its lesson.
"The mountains talk
to the seas continuously!"
The starling so
informed me.
"But humans never ever
(well hardly ever)listen!"
chirped the starling
playfully.
I see it had been listening
to Gilbert and Sullivan.
"And..." the starling went on
it was us birds who taught them!"
I could tell it was proud of
the whole nation of birds.
"Well, I'ill be...!" I sad.
"Yes..." said the starling "...a poet!"
"Poets know the language
of everything"
The starling stated
as if it were a law.
"What the reed in the rushes
told the lake..."
"Or how the sky sees
and says it all..."
Then its feathers trembled
with the change in the air.
"Well, I must fly!"
chuckled the starling.
"Well, well..." boomed the sky
in perfect Blueness.
"Was that a human
I saw you talking to..."
thundered it vastness
dark clouds looming on its horizon.
"Noooo - not me!"
lied the starling
for whatever
reason.
"Hmmm..!" hmmmm the sky suspiciously
"He looked a bit Irish to me!"
"Níl Gaeilge ar bith agam ar chor ar bith!"
stammered the starling.
And the day continued on
talking to Time incessantly.
***
The éan beag that told me all this against the wishes of the sky...was the drud or druideog...the common starling or as in the W.B. Yeats' poem THE STARE'S NEST.
It liked to quote the lines to me in its own charming voice.
"We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty;"
And here was my little stare friend opening my mind out and turning the key.
When caught by the sky telling tales to humans the little fella tries to get out of it by telling the sky "I don't have any Irish at all!" but in Irish. Of course the sky although knowing everything didn't however know any Irish!
I was uncertain of the lines about uncertainty in the Yeats and was trying to remember the Callimachus about people not listening...how a mountain never listens to a sea. And David Cooke when he was staying with us was delighted to find some Greek that he both loved and could indeed read and I thought I betcha David could tell me. But of course not having a David Cooke at hand I stumbled along in these lines and offered up the poem to him.
Sep 8, 2021
Sep 8, 2021 at 5:49 PM UTC
I - the Devil
& she's the devil's fav. poem
that i rejoice throttling
deep down into
the suchness
of words with the
huma of love
& the pleasure of wot? -
written & rune 'pon the
parchment of HER world.
Dec 8, 2019
Dec 8, 2019 at 12:36 AM UTC
AN RUD A DÚRIT ÉAN BEAG LIOM
( A Little Bird Told Me)
- for David Cooke -
"For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter." - Ecclesiastes 10-20
"Oh!" said the bird
" A human who..."
( and I never saw such
a surprised starling )
"...can understand
our language!"
"You can speak!" I blurted out.
"So, I see can you!" gasped the starling.
"The strange thing is...!"
I framed my words carefully
"...we can understand each other!"
the starling finished my sentence.
"But how..?"
being human I had to ask.
"Forget the hows and whys!"
friend starling replied.
"Just relish the moment
the such and suchness of it all!"
I made up my mind
to do so.
"Everything talks if
you only listen!"
the starling continued
its lesson.
"The mountains talk
to the seas continuously!"
The starling so
informed me.
"But humans never ever
(well hardly ever)listen!"
chirped the starling
playfully.
I see it had been listening
to Gilbert and Sullivan.
"And..." the starling went on
it was us birds who taught them!"
I could tell it was proud of
the whole nation of birds.
"Well, I'ill be...!" I sad.
"Yes..." said the starling "...a poet!"
"Poets know the language
of everything"
The starling stated
as if it were a law.
"What the reed in the rushes
told the lake..."
"Or how the sky sees
and says it all..."
Then its feathers trembled
with the change in the air.
"Well, I must fly!"
chuckled the starling.
"Well, well..." boomed the sky
in perfect Blueness.
"Was that a human
I saw you talking to..."
thundered it vastness
dark clouds looming on its horizon.
"Noooo - not me!"
lied the starling
for whatever
reason.
"Hmmm..!" hmmmmthe sky suspiciously
"He looked a bit Irish to me!"
"Níl Gaeilge ar bith agam ar chor ar bith!"
stammered the starling.
And the day continued on
talking to Time incessantly.
Sep 8, 2020
Sep 8, 2020 at 9:05 AM UTC
My dear old friend
is waiting for people
to bring her the pill, which will end her life.
She wants it to arrive
before the pain is too much
before the confusion cannot be laid to rest
before she loses her self along the way.
She did this life full up
her hands were always glowing
she did not take more wounds than she could carry
and she did not hide from those she had
and spend her days, as some of us might
standing three quarters in shadow
hoping to be whole again
by chance.
She held it all, once she was grown
in her long strong arms
and carried it full term
to the Big Table and
without a sideways glance or
a catch in her breath
she shared it all with everyone there
with everyone whose eye’s could see
with all the family from all our lives,
she shared and then felt better
to have touched as she was touched
as light knows itself, and rejoices.
This is the story. That is how it unfolded.
Now, what can be said?
I am so full, it’s leaking out
everyone here, everyone at the big table
we could never be more proud
of the person you are, and the person you
let yourself become
your willingness to be
and become whole
even when it looked like
everything might fall apart-
you’ve discovered the trick
that nothing is as simple
as it appears.
I will remember your smell
the suchness of you, in passing
and be sure as you can be
that I will know you again
in another time, another life
when you are fooling me
by being my child, this time
or maybe a happy dog I see
along the way
this is what the tricky ones do
as it is their heart at play
because they finally know that
they rejoice in living all the parts of this life
but they are not bound in fear by any.
Thank you for teaching me, and
being my friend.
In the distance, I can hear the bell calling
wake up wake up wake up
it has echoed near and far
always, throughout my life
I share this with you
as a clue on your journey
and I will loan you, if needed,
my old well worn night wings
you can jump up so high
and then break the illusion
ride the bell singing
way up to the breathing
the endless breath circling
high above this world
and the wings will drop away
because there is no thing such as falling
and there are no more edges
there is only the song
and the breathing
and the song
and you
May 16, 2018
May 16, 2018 at 12:55 PM UTC
Karma is a friend
Not a judge or a jury --
More like a suchness...
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 7, 2019 at 10:29 AM UTC