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Thread: ARTS: Big and Little Poetry--free verse, any verse.

  1. #151

    ARTS: Big and Little Poetry--free verse, any verse.

    Shawnzen, I appreciate your poetry and understanding what I was doing with you tonight as I get ready to go to bed. I understand your little gifts. Your big gifts. You made me care and look again for your name.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 06-04-2021 at 03:05 AM.
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  2. #152
    I love this verse because it reminds me of “the silent Zen verb” Jundo is always raving about. It’s a verse from ‘Elegía del silencio’ (July 1920) by Federico García Lorca

    en Espeñol:

    Huyendo del sonido
    eres sonido mismo,
    espectro de armonía,
    humo de grito y canto.
    Vienes para decirnos
    en las noches oscuras
    la palabra infinita
    sin aliento y sin labios.

    In English:

    Fleeing from sound
    you are sound itself:
    ghost of harmony,
    smoke of the cry and of song.
    On dark nights you come to us
    to whisper the infinite
    word without breath,
    without lips.

    And one from me:


    When just sitting
    The bottom falls out
    Nothing left
    But everything
    Whole and complete



    Gassho,
    Tom

    SatLah
    Last edited by StoBird; 06-06-2021 at 05:15 AM.
    “Do what’s hard to do when it is the right thing to do.”- Robert Sopalsky

  3. #153
    Gift of my Buddha Nature

    He held in right hand, pen of left hand escaped then gone,
    Years before. fingers of tight, left hand useless. Pressure typed,
    He vowed to Compose no lines in bones. Instead in fine relief
    With this precious gems, his poetry washed of dead ash,

    From splashing wounds which crippled his great mind,
    When Darkness left, she created her own brilliant ideas, great
    Blackberry Winter, then his daughter born of travail, another work
    Husband's blessing spoken infinity of love for one to need life

    Silently much Greater mother for child, she carried quietly
    Little girl in quiet stillness brought motherhood to wonder
    Where baby would grow, how stillness she would be in his arms
    Lives given to books, gift for child who escaped with difficulty,

    Family final relief, both ways with words figured into details,
    Man with sobering thoughts, clean Rocky Mountains climbed,
    Woman with work monuments of motherhood, flowering motherhood
    In solitude as her child grew while she became thoughtful mother

    Gracious for her sober husband who decades together expected
    In more quiet manly, piety loud acts into air, days growing
    He slowly found his sight. Motherhood was beautiful. Careful
    He showed more than comfortable clothing with meaning

    They finally aged together after time wore on, singleness
    Together one family incarnation, realized with intention desired
    Her uncut flowers grew everywhere. laughter, perennials yearly
    Mothers Day Stylized in Joy, freedom to care for girl's life,

    Child's mind grew, he lost anger in him lost slowly to one,
    Habitual requirement of lost his in adulthood petty emotion
    from deftly drawing his mind lost in sixty-eight years
    With his own Mother, he worked day by day, was finally

    Father, never loneliness again, partner restored to lead song
    Not false wisdom, anguished in tranquility regained step by
    Step, money saved at his age ceasing death while she labored.
    Words Resumed full momentum in poems, serious laughter,

    Delight of Fourth Quartet days without his ratcheting stigma
    Power in sanity, ever mindful of his ways always, returned instead
    Of Wonder in St. Louis capturing lands where delicious gardens,
    Vineyard grew while French didn't weep when Tathagata's
    Kind word was quiet below his Bodhi Tree bringing stillness,

    Like morning stars, earthly touch. Then beams of The Sutras,
    Resurrection so Truthfully not endured, but combined, completed,
    These men and women naturally, Four Nobel Truths a gift
    Which husband embraced in arms distant like truth free, one's

    Simple eight fold path never stated, river crossed daily, implied
    Peacefully in precepts providing path undertaken instead
    Of delicate forced thinking. Companionship working today,
    With gratitude of joy, loyalty rising before simple work creations

    In glorified Haiku thinking scribbled words tumbling without books
    Forgotten like eight spokes of wheels rolling forth where Asoka
    Relived his battles in these publications forgotten earned degrees
    Charged every flame, every deftly wrong word edited out of suffering.

    Never where he sought found purity in writing, where are forms
    From his mind given to younger friends in gaining no fame. left
    To one dying of fatal fatigue syndrome or rheumatoid spine, rituals
    Of light for work, Freedom in spoken verses never silently made, lead

    Into ignorant of blue Skies, Pearls where Appassionato played
    Centuries before visions without distortion, they always wrote fine
    Poems of Loveliness, friendship secured his lines of surety, younger
    Played Brandenburg Violins, Gifts pf Alpines he passed on meadows,

    Mountain Trails traversed language where lupins fell, petals on shoulders.
    Wrought purple, blue lupins in memorized Deer Park, in Plumb Village
    In fall gold, red trees, another wise trees in Vermont, where spring days
    She played with owners friend, daughter finding self, different trails

    Her words greater Populated from free of daylight, each Discovery
    In great Criticism of Women in Literature wrong, long poems helped
    Hidden Deep social media meaning fear of lost meaning soon disappearing
    Gone after purge, nothing reached she found their when lines

    Divided The Heart Sutra lost enlightenment inspiration flooding
    Rivers, computers wrong, purged of intensive books gone, panic
    For posterity, each year, final gifts destroyed greatest lines, stories
    Prose, all Literature brilliant Daughters writing books, she saved this art.

    Parents gave life to their daughters greatest wish to write, their wish
    Finest rubies, daughter freedom Forty years after marriage vows,
    Parents aged, Laurel wreath, her own words of magnitude ageing now,
    To uncover young Japanese poems, prose more stories, completion.

    Then they could comprehend, daughter's gifts of equanimity realized
    More than desire above childish thinking, her own Shikantaza, Tai Shi's
    Poetry gifts of white flowers, great seeds, food of poems with hooded
    Certainty in honesty, transparency, words with blue translucency.

    Gassho
    lah/ sat

    06/14/2021
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 06-14-2021 at 10:48 PM. Reason: revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  4. #154
    Beautiful verse Tai Shi! I love this.

    Gassho,
    Seikan

    -stlah-


    Sent from my Pixel 4a (5G) using Tapatalk
    聖簡 Seikan (Sacred Simplicity)

  5. #155
    Prairie before Dawn

    Poetry respects
    Lilies of the rain
    Naturally scattered
    Blue nature, as more
    Of Buddha's linage
    Delicate music night,
    Mindfully Diurnal
    Life of conifer touch
    Self, green mornings
    In stories monogamous
    Found birds in domes
    Near waterfalls
    Renbourn as wrens
    Most secretive of Fire
    To never destroy,
    Insectivores destructive
    Not upon Earth
    Or other creatures.
    They hide or show
    Varieties play
    In touch together
    Flowers of birth
    Twenty pairs
    Soft petals
    Only baby
    Felt good four
    Months difficult birth
    To end all time,
    Eyes, children
    Choices for none
    Gentle trees could fall
    Like Mother bird
    She could provide
    Never Four,
    Three their gift
    To girl, Laurel
    Baby presented

    They could build
    Poetry fruition,
    Why his lights,
    Look at reflections
    Look at forest pines
    Of his heart turned
    Carefully prairies
    Grow crops, gain
    Food to help both,
    Sadness their way
    Mountains gone,
    Dispelled War, peaceful
    Guns never caried
    Away, more tears
    He could be taken
    From evergreen
    Sliced into pieces
    Insane, not insanity
    Regained selfhood
    In fatherhood,
    His tears
    His solitude.

    He ran away to Asia
    His mind, his vocations
    Of Bill Everson found
    In his poetry, encouraged
    In letters, Advisory
    of Writing good verse
    This woman bore child
    Shown brilliance
    In great sadness
    Slow mind thinking
    Sixty-nine years
    Word fortifications
    Gone, what takes
    Place as she closed
    Her perfection
    His Lotus Sutra
    Both remain
    Human for child.
    Child accidental
    They Knew
    Their poverty
    Give today
    Never to child
    Childhood seen
    Not found this work
    Away his Drink,
    Quietly taken.
    More than three
    Decades Now each day
    In sober thoughts
    Great balance
    This wheel sown
    Earth inspired Reality

    Understood wars
    Closed nothingness
    Shown wide awake
    Not romancing,
    Enhancing parenthood
    Faces never wayward
    Notes, invisible
    Painfully Risen
    Held bodies
    Found what cared,
    Their safety
    In child's life.

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 06-24-2021 at 08:42 PM. Reason: Full revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  6. #156
    Poet and teacher
    Everson was an influential member of the San Francisco Renaissance in poetry and worked closely with Kenneth Rexroth during this period of his life. Throughout his life, Everson was a great admirer of the work and life of poet Robinson Jeffers. Much of his work as a critic was done on Jeffers's poetry.

    Everson registered as an anarchist and a pacifist with his draft board, in compliance with the 1940 draft bill. In 1943, he was sent to a Civilian Public Service (CPS) work camp for conscientious objectors in Oregon.[1] In Camp Angel at Waldport, Oregon, with other poets, artists and actors such as Kemper Nomland, William Eshelman, Kermit Sheets, Glen Coffield, George Woodcock and Kenneth Patchen, he founded a fine-arts program in which the CPS men staged plays and poetry-readings and learned the craft of fine printing. During his time as a conscientious objector, Everson completed The Residual Years, a volume of poems that launched him to national fame.

    Everson married poet Mary Fabilli on June 12, 1948,[2] and influenced by her religious devotion, converted to Catholicism.[3] Everson joined the Catholic Church in 1951 and soon became involved with the Catholic Worker Movement in Oakland, California. He took the name Brother Antoninus when he joined the Dominican Order in 1951 in Oakland. As an initiate in the Order, he printed the unfinished Novum Psalterium PII XII, an acknowledged masterpiece in American fine press printing. A colorful literary and counterculture figure, he was nicknamed the Beat Friar. The central motif throughout all of Antoninus' Catholic poetry is Incarnation, the central symbol of the Christian mystery. In 1956, he met an English Dominican, Father Victor White, at St. Albert's Dominican priory. White, of the English Dominican province and a longtime friend of Carl Jung, with whom he maintained a voluminous correspondence, was resident lecturer and theologian there. It was through this relationship to Victor White that Antoninus learned to look at his dreams from an in-depth religious angle for meaning. He devoured the Collected Works of Jung and began his psychological analysis of the unconscious as well as the analysis of many individuals who came to him for counseling. Antoninus wrote the first draft of his long erotic poem River-Root / A Syzygy, which he considered to be his most prophetic work. As Everson said in an interview for Creation magazine, with its founder and editor, the theologian and Episcopal priest Matthew Fox, he saw it as a complete re-writing of the Song of Songs, bringing frank Eros back into the Psalms and undoing Christianity's longstanding separation of the sexual from the spiritual for purposes of modernity. Jung's writings influenced the contributions Everson made to post-religious poetical thought in America. After leaving St Albert's, where he had practiced as a lay monk, poet and spiritual counselor for 18 years, Antoninus left his religious habit after a reading at the University of California at Davis campus on December 7, 1969. He left the Dominicans in 1969 and married a woman many years his junior, Susanna Rickson. At this time, he became a step-father to his son, Jude Everson. When Antoninus wrote The Rose of Solitude, he saw it published in many magazines. However, when he wrote The Veritable Years under William Everson, having left Antoninus behind, he couldn't even get his work reviewed. He then assumed the mantle of a poet-shaman to replace his religious habit. The 1974 poem Man-Fate explores this transformation from Brother Antoninus into William Everson, the West-Coast poet-shaman. Everson was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1972.

    Everson spent most of his years living near the central California coast a few miles north of Santa Cruz in a cabin he dubbed Kingfisher Flat. He was poet-in-residence at the University of California, Santa Cruz during the 1970s and 1980s. There he founded the Lime Kiln Press, a small press through which he printed highly sought-after fine-art editions of his own poetry as well as of the works of other poets, including Robinson Jeffers and Walt Whitman. For the most part, Everson's reputation was based on his poetry, printing, and public readings.

    In 2009 Everson's former student Steven Herrmann brought renewed attention to Everson as a shamanic teacher. Herrmann later compiled a series of interviews with the poet-shaman from 1991 to 1993 that were published as William Everson: The Shaman's Call. Everson maintained an adhesion to his Catholic faith until his final days. In 1982, by a meaningful coincidence, Everson was asked to write an introduction to Victor White's book God and the Unconscious. In the final two years of his life, Everson worked on an unfinished autobiographical work titled Dust Shall Be the Serpent's Food. Everson died at his home on June 2, 1994, and his body was buried at the Dominican Cemetery in Benicia, California.

    Everson's papers are archived at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA[4] and The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.[5]

    Black Sparrow Press released a three-volume series of the collected poems of Everson, the last volume was published in 2000. In 2003, the California Legacy Project published Dark God of Eros: A William Everson Reader.

    Found in Wikipedia
    In 1988 I corresponded with William Everson.
    My Mentor at the time was Bill Hotchkiss friends with the poets of San Francisco.
    Dr Hotchkiss was English Instructor and tenured faculty at Sierra College and helped publish The Sierra Journal where over two decades I published many poems. Everson examined a portfolio of five of my poems while I was graduate student at Colorado State University commenting to me in 1988 that I held great promise as a poet. At one Time my friend Bill Hotchkiss maintained a strong friendship. Hotchkiss self published much of his own work. When Bill Hotchkiss passed away in 2008, I took it hard and lost my vicarious relationship with these poets. I had lived with my father in 1972, the time of the Kent State Massacre. My Farther lived in Colfax, and Sierra College is located in Rocklin, California, I was a poetry student of Bill Hotchkiss in 1971, 1872, In the Draft Lottery I held the number 288, and I remember my father rushing in to tell me "Chuck, you missed the draft!" However. it was true that I still could have been taken to fight in the Vietnam, War. That fall, I flew to Amsterdam where I bought a bicycle and bicycled across the Netherlands and into Germany. I held a Student Visa because the end of October I entered the Goethe Institute as a Germany Language student. At the end of December I gained employment at Kaufhof in Munich where I worked until mid spring and took off with two people my age and we toured Europe that Spring and early summer. I flew to Des Moines where I met my mother and reentered Grinnell College io earn my BA in English literature in 1974. I entered therapy the fall of 74 diagnosed with mental illness and for four years I "Got my head on straight." It was not until 2018 I began mental health "with bipolar one, having somehow kept my marriage, and parented with my wife a young woman ABD PhD at this point. She is in Japan doing research on obscure writers found in social media. I do not understand her linguistic research. When she finishes in three years she will be BA, MFA, PHD. In the schools she has attended, she owes $10,000. She has earned every accolade a scholar can earn, and will begin to teach as visiting American Teacher, at I think Wasa University in or near Tokyo. She is now in Tokyo under quarantine for Covid 19 as a precaution for this virus. When she finishes quarantine in two weeks, she begins her research as Fulbright scholar in Tokyo. It was in 1975, after I took General Psychology I first read Zen Mind, Beginner Mind and launched in into my search for this practice called Zen, and I tried every imaginable chemical to try and find satori, and to this day I have not found it. The same comment can be found by Suzuki Roshi' wife. I gave up alcohol, with the help of my wife Marjorie, meaning pearl, July 22, 1987 on the verge of losing all. In December of 1990 I earned my MFA in creative writing. Thank you Bill Everson, and Bill Hotchkiss, and my advisor at CSU who has maintained a lifelong friendship Professor Emeritus Bill Tremblay who has practiced Tai Chi through the Nyropa Institute. I have had a life of lost and found poetry. Workshops where I was awarded As And with MFA in creative writing/poetry I have had a "wonderful life" with my best Friend Marjorie, we were married June 12, 1982. Someday I want to write my novel The Orange Bicycle. Referenced material here from Wikipedia, and my personal experiences.
    Gassho
    sat/lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 07-12-2021 at 02:35 PM. Reason: Credits
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  7. #157
    My brevity is lost in three books, the third underway. Oh Jundo, or Kokuu the poet or the Grandfather of American poetry in the 20th Century, Jewish again, Marvin Bell, the eternal ache.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 07-16-2021 at 09:28 PM. Reason: concision, spelling.
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  8. #158
    Still is air

    Some poetry
    From silent Douglas Fir
    Brother, father, mother
    Aunts, cousins, family gone
    Cannot see, wife, daughter,
    Remain Everlastingly
    In stanzas stronger
    Than ash or any tree.

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 07-24-2021 at 04:55 PM. Reason: word order (syntax)
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  9. #159
    His Lotus Sutra

    Life is poetry
    Baroque in music
    Bach his land,
    Decade on Decade,
    Joy in Poems discover
    Daughter's Japan
    Her red sun.

    Purple bright,
    Delight is new
    For all to see
    Belgian pearl,
    Yet, love is sad,
    Mother's Grace
    Bestows his pain,

    They part again
    Their swollen
    Sadness grows.
    Marjorie JoAn,
    Wipe your tears,
    Your Laurel Ann
    As mother Mary
    Knew recovery
    His Soto Zen,
    Was Universal,
    As Unity.

    "Your final calm,
    Dad Gift of Gatha
    On Fathers Day."
    Peace in Lotus
    Circling dew.
    His Sutra azure
    Buddha soft
    Equality great
    Soprano peace.

    Taught his spine
    Relaxed his pace
    His sad Hiroshima
    Bones collide
    Bright as ocean
    Small his spine
    His counterpoint,

    So real her voice
    Crimson Japanese.
    No anger wrought,
    Daughter shows
    Hope he sought
    Planed in poetry
    Her living trust.

    Gassho
    deep bows
    sat. lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 07-24-2021 at 06:11 PM. Reason: complete ideas
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  10. #160
    I invite everyone; to new people I invite all. Post any poetry, or any art writing; letters, or journal/ diary entries, scratches in old text books, doodles, jotted dreams or dreamscapes, love notes, waste paper notes. Especially your own poems, made here, or there. Your empty space. Little or big. All.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  11. #161
    Member brucef's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2016
    Location
    Encounter Bay, South Australia, Australia
    Billy Collins is an American poet who was born in 1941. This is his poem Picnic, Lightning.

    It is possible to be struck by a
    meteor or a single-engine plane while
    reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
    are flattened by safes falling from
    rooftops mostly within the panels of
    the comics, but still, we know it is
    possible, as well as the flash of
    summer lightning, the thermos toppling
    over, spilling out on the grass.
    And we know the message can be
    delivered from within. The heart, no
    valentine, decides to quit after
    lunch, the power shut off like a
    switch, or a tiny dark ship is
    unmoored into the flow of the body's
    rivers, the brain a monastery,
    defenseless on the shore. This is
    what I think about when I shovel
    compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
    I fill the long flower boxes, then
    press into rows the limp roots of red
    impatiens -- the instant hand of Death
    always ready to burst forth from the
    sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
    the soil is full of marvels, bits of
    leaf like flakes off a fresco,
    red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
    to burrow back under the loam. Then
    the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
    clouds a brighter white, and all I
    hear is the rasp of the steel edge
    against a round stone, the small
    plants singing with lifted faces, and
    the click of the sundial as one hour
    sweeps into the next.

  12. #162
    Brucef, thank you so much for your poem by Billy Collins, Poet Laureate in America; according to Bruce Weber in the New York Times, as America's "Most Popular Poet," "most famous for conversational poems." By the way, I made a one time donation of $2.75 to keep Wikipedia afloat, and you can too. That's where I get my information and this is good stuff given there by the Poetry Foundation. Please, please, all of you like brucef, give us a poem and especially one of your own.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 08-18-2021 at 04:38 PM. Reason: more info, encouragement.
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  13. #163
    Last night it began
    The nagging voice
    Belittleing all I am
    What I have become
    I ache inside heart
    especially in me mind
    I never sought
    To rectify the earth
    With Arterial Vevus
    Malformation, average
    Not I still write poetry
    I sit a little each mornig at eight
    Feel tired this day, see it is not
    Exactacly tumor or egg
    About sizing up,
    Like hen's egg lump in my Right
    Temporal Lobe si it far beyond hope
    So far not larger than golf ball,
    Too bad I could never look beyon
    Crack of time spider leggs
    I am not free, what kind of ball
    Resides behind my right
    Eye ball, bigger than
    My eyeball its 2.2 centemeters
    Of next to terrible meat
    You mught bye in a cow,
    Delectable to eat if carnivor,
    I to try soy based morning
    Treat, I do not eat flesh
    Of humans, or pigs, or chickens
    Wonder what kind of fish
    My teacher feeds his family, his son
    Like my daughter when
    Wghen she vacataded
    My AVM, I weep, but she Facetimes
    Me now she knows faith grows
    In her they will find solutions
    For my brain, a treat, a message
    Meaning some meaning as I look
    Down my throat of death, entertain
    My hopeful direction, oh surgeon
    I see in one week.
    Not exa
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  14. #164
    Wire Forgives Gifts

    Thus morning, almost 9:00,
    Maurice Ravel once said.
    "I am the gretest living
    Composer. and I wil earn
    $1000, while for an American,
    In Paris you will be given
    $50,000 this year alone, wheel
    Of time will make me great, you
    On different shore. I live reach
    For shore in Paris, you in New York
    City, forgive blunt knowledge
    Someday you will know ignorance
    As you forgive yourself, I forgive
    You, absolutes have no place
    In compositions, always tikered
    Rewritten and slaved over."
    Look at our own Walt Whitman
    Your Valere. Malurme Great image
    Poet reliving Plato renew, you
    Finding Emily Dickinson great
    With hearse, great after death,
    With Rilke old Dutches, Tiger, Paanther
    Only studentts rest of Songs of Experience
    Songs of Death, love, hinting of wisdom
    Love intertwined with two, wisdom
    in Balzak if come Eliot as witness known
    The Wastland with French La Mare
    Reflect waters of infinite rolling wave
    Ripple now we know of staineed pure inside
    Outside, I kindly stopped for death without
    Twierling wire in the blood, surgeon, rasp
    Malfoformations of infinite wonder, rasp
    Clean Brain of human desingm and
    Rebirth HD more than she could write,
    Images like flowers, simple Daisy falling,
    Walnut sliced open in liberal reassurance,
    Wonder not will sprouts within child mouth
    Provider of foods, existance when poetry
    Misspelled wonder of magesty like Whitman
    Nurse misspelled three ways more of division
    Accepted as wild roses, forgot me knotts
    Real of Time withheld to understanding
    Never fo into notes this falling piano
    Wonder, rolling into disonance, pitsicato
    Ravel; Piano Concerto in G major
    We give back to our Platonic ochestra,
    Most withheld the eight-year-old child,
    Celebration trumpet Euquarist gone
    Forgiving flowers, gone from hands
    Undone in haste; Dickinson, I could
    Not stop for Death, so she kindly stopped
    For me, my deatth shall not in wild moss
    Mosses and Lichens, chamelion of plants,
    Growth on North while others turn heads
    South gather sun red petals, pistol, light,
    While green lives another billion years,
    Human on from year to a million
    Year old on rotting trees, skeletons,
    Dandylions seed the earth, human heads
    Leave us as global worms too much,
    Humankind fortitude big V 8 pickups hawled
    To garbage heap, French or American
    US cannot vaccinate when they insist
    On death, man takes his shots because he'd
    Rather live without AVM be damned, wire
    In brains, surgery, one gifted brainl survives.

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Calm Poetry
    10/ 05/2021
    11:10 A.M.
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 10-05-2021 at 04:38 PM. Reason: revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  15. #165
    Ravel in Morning Light,

    Sun shining.
    Beams through open window,
    Pound never hands giving us
    The key delight always
    Trust even here, my message
    One who follows, never divides
    Welcome tidal wave, not
    Destroyimg this monument
    Seven years, rebuild time safer,
    Japan, second quake, who
    Besides those your
    Compsitions, why don't
    I know, do you know Ravel?

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Taishi
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  16. #166
    Don't recall his name,
    Hardly twice, virtuoso
    Great piano in World War,
    Lost right hand, crushed,
    From arm, smashed flesh
    In war, heaved to give up
    Life eternal, beauty gone
    Given to ravages of Hell,
    Men fight for land,
    Then eyeing women,
    On park bench, feeling
    In cold fall preparation
    Of memory, alone army
    Of the night, seldom
    Wonders through infinite
    Life, away I was shot
    Even to seal beer at dawn
    Jitters for Glass of $.50
    No money that was me,
    Hard drunk, up the night
    Before, no real job, defying
    Monday on his time card
    No real hours to keep,
    Then young woman
    Thrilled snow to him
    Some peace of mind,
    In whole teaching, he
    Found her class teaching
    First year students famous
    Nothing to but heavy
    Smoking round of jars
    Of cigarettes in whip
    Him, finding her, lived
    Together love just playing
    Concerto for One Hand,
    Mental illness round
    Like blood, psychosis
    Bought him time, found
    Surrender i Front Range
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  17. #167
    How can a doctor operate,
    To cauterize wounds, save
    Life, brain, heart, or mind?
    All patients risk death.

    Family on every word,
    Right thing to do? More
    Than one third risk of life,
    Life for giving over to life
    Seeing surgeon's risk?

    Patient gown worn five
    Days, frive a.m. at Surgical
    Tower Realizations, brains,
    Bones and hearts; he's
    Under from anesthesia?

    Titanium in craniotomy
    Two plates, bone in brain,
    To neurology resting
    ID, where are you?
    Your full name, birthday?

    Kitchen arrives with food
    Hunger, eating, oh taste,
    Diatician asks selection.
    What date is it? What day
    Of the week? Every time.

    Cognition fine unexpected
    Recovery more than years,
    Understands his surgery
    Sentiment clear
    Lazerus, speaking,
    Physical Therapy, walk

    To his recliner, to climb
    Simplicity one foot
    Solid steps to home.
    Clearity, actions
    In recovery,
    Impediment gone
    Gratefully disappeared
    Auterial Venus Malformation,
    Wilderness of specimens.

    Recovery smiles slightly
    He lives, how he walks
    Moves fingers of hands
    Decades, clearity within.
    Simple removal of shoes.

    No damaged tissue,
    AVM gone natural stance, veins
    Closed off, oxygen deliberate,
    "Can you walk up your stairs?"

    Home for support,
    Teacher Jundo there,
    Micheal, Kevin, Allan Reike
    To affected cranium, response
    Relax tissue cannot see,

    Family Comes agiain,
    Rev Allan brings Flowers,
    Rev. Michael Messamger,
    Texting from Japan, daughter?
    News of daughter
    She brightens him FaceTime
    Wi Fi from Tokyo, father I am
    There for you, father I am here!

    Finally father knows his role
    As parent, is this because AVM
    Removal as brain returns
    To normal work. He's home
    No fear. Life improved.

    Calls his wife, his friend's iPhone,
    Child Tokyo to South Dakota,
    Messages, this is what
    I did today! What did you do?
    Reality isn't simple,

    Action makes here for there.
    Words diffifdent, healthy,
    Sleeping nights deliberate,
    Shakespeare Pukish everyword,
    He Looks for ntural right.

    In morning air,
    Cane or walking stick, easy,
    No push or pull,
    Happened to you! Your are
    Here. You know this day.
    Date, birthday, oriented.

    Fully present, good
    Declarations of 70 years,
    Relaxation truth, zazen,
    Rakusu through poetry,

    Arthritis not so cruel,
    Operations don't cure age,
    He knows deep exercise,
    Neighbors know, remember
    Twenty-sevre fear gone,

    Present at birth, they grow,
    Sadness, removed
    Minimal, can read, writes
    His poetry, Reading young,
    Body scan, counting,
    One to ten back again,

    Organized,
    Coordination, balanced
    Arhtritis. Body captures stiffness,
    Age, mind returns, fullness
    Appears well.

    None or all people
    His life can find gratitude
    Over, suple thoughts
    Hot cereal breakfast
    Medications to help
    He gets old, age heavy
    Mantal, middle path.

    Notations on a Brain Surgery
    Gassho
    sat/lah
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 11-21-2021 at 10:57 PM. Reason: revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  18. #168
    Where he is not alone, all people
    In his life, he finds deepest gratitude
    Gratitude, giving over, suple surrender
    Simple things like hot cereal breakfast
    Simple medications to help
    Just he gets old but age is no heavy
    Mantal, acceptane of middle path
    Buddha way, he smiles he is there.
    Lovely! So glad you are here to still write, Tai Shi!

    Gassho
    Kokuu
    -sattoday/lah-

  19. #169
    Member Getchi's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2015
    Location
    Between Sea and Sky, Australia.
    Waves come in,
    I recognise One.
    Now it's all gone.


    Geoffrey.
    Nothing to do? Why not Sit?

  20. #170
    I am

    standing in the eye of the primordial forest;
    dew-soaked grass crushed beneath bare feet;
    the touch of clover flowerheads tickling toes.
    Yet, I am neither grass nor clover flowers.

    I am

    breathing slowly, deeply; inhaling all the wonder;
    the scent of wildflowers, damp moss and conifers;
    permeating my body and saturating the stillness within.
    Yet, I am not wildflower, damp moss or tree.

    I am

    teased by the swirling upon my tongue as it settles;
    tasting the last vestiges of heavy, mist-laden smoke;
    bringing moist hints of earthiness and terpenes.
    Yet, I am neither the earth nor the majestic pines.

    I am

    ever-present consciousness filling with nature’s harmony;
    a symphony of soft birdsong and distant rushing waters;
    accompanied by the verdant forest’s more subtle melodies.
    Yet, I am neither birdsong nor the distant rushing river.

    I am

    opening lids warmed by the rising sun to greet the day;
    a rich palette of yellows, purples and greens materialize;
    revealing the kaleidoscopic masterpiece on visual canvas.
    Yet, I remain aware that I am not a yellow, purple or green.

    I am

    filled with awe and wonder; mind completely overwhelmed;
    until the thought, “I am blessed,” follows “I am undeserving”;
    awareness recedes as the echoes of mind obscure the stillness;
    and I foolishly believe myself to be blessed and undeserving.

  21. #171
    Angel, you are such bright and natural images, and we see you are the earth, and natural and light. You are light with repitition, and all that is light becomes your beauty.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 11-21-2021 at 11:06 PM. Reason: clarity
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  22. #172
    Very nice,Angel

    Sat/lah


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    _/_
    Rich
    MUHYO
    無 (MU, Emptiness) and 氷 (HYO, Ice) ... Emptiness Ice ...

    https://instagram.com/notmovingmind

  23. #173
    Sentient Being

    Blue days of Ango
    Slipped away, my head
    Scar at first so much
    To touch, ago was yesterday
    There should be snow,
    December 1st, 2021, I will
    Forever remember October
    29th at 9:00 a.m. today
    Never far away, white clouds
    Tears clear from both eyes
    Not just left, Right Eye in front
    Of place where AVM behind,
    Is gone, Surgery saved my life
    Remberances miracles never
    Happen my life, this is One,
    Making arrangements
    On phone brain oxygen,
    There is this white chord,
    From wall where I Breathe O2
    For my Right Temporal Lobe
    All is mixed for my Brain, I don't
    Feel white music, alphabet,
    Mixed with white, blue words.
    Comes into my heart, left effect
    From Tonglen I realize, I breath
    For others, I sit again. How did
    I come one month two days,
    I feel my days slidding as care,
    Nurse Asked every two hours
    This year, white edges, date
    Of sheets on my blue ICU
    Every half hour they ask again
    What is my name, easily date

    Where I am, I look
    Out my hospital window,
    Reality sets in, I am sentient
    Being, I have been freed
    There's some Higher Power
    Must ask why me. Why silver
    Operating Table, srgeon asks
    First, "Do you want to close
    Your eyes? It's alright
    If you do." He speaks again,
    Silver words as tools in room.
    Nurse has shaved my head
    Dressed me cold, naked
    In paper gown. I know
    The surgical team has walked
    In will take gown off when I
    Am under. I start my count

    One, two, three, four
    One, two, three, four
    Is this zazen? I left my light
    Go out, vein slides with sleep
    Im slipping under, reduced
    To sleep? Dressed in recovery
    "What happened, am I

    Rolling down white halls?
    My eyes are fixed on ceiling
    Tiles, cotton gown wrapped
    Around my limbs white this year
    I am winding into my ICU
    Room, for first time Reality
    Check, free at last, all
    Sentient beings, me I ask
    I am alive? My name, date,
    Location, why I am here?
    Every half hour nurses
    Ask simple questions, I am
    Lifted my to radiology
    Angiogram third time I'm,
    Somewhere date is the 29th
    I glance at clock, it's 3:37,
    Six and one half hours,
    How did this happen? I
    See again, the silver tools
    Upon creamy walls, surgical
    Suite, and there are three
    I know I could not see
    Room filled with six, eight
    Ten people, One, two, three
    Four, zazen, I was under,
    Now I'm here, my life, friend
    39 years, tells me then
    AVM is completely gone
    Was not so deep, surgery
    Was only four hours, recovery
    Two hours, two small titanium
    Plates, my head is wraped
    In white bandages, fitting
    Loosly around my head,
    The under garments,
    My blue shorts, blue Tee
    Replaced paper gown, I see
    Green paper gone, clean
    White blue stipes, hospital
    Gown, My wife is relieved
    I see it in her eyes, her
    White face has changed
    To relief, color returned
    To both of us, they ask
    Again, location, name,
    Birthday, why I'm here,
    Date written on white
    Board, I laugh as nurse
    Asks once more "How many
    Days have you been here?"
    They slip my mask over
    My ears, then I am helped
    To wheel chair This room
    Will have better view
    White lights line the street,
    How is it that I sleep? Hospital
    Helicopters whirl in, then out
    I don't see it coming remove
    Bandges removed from my head
    Free at this time, every six
    Hours, clear fluides my hand
    Feels nothing, told I'm
    Getting Insulin and steroids
    To reduce sugar before I eat,
    To reduce inflamation of my brain.
    My blood sugar above 200, only
    189 lbs, how many kilos?
    The surgical follow up
    Takes every vital evening
    After move, I'm to remain
    Then OT, PT, Speech Therapy,
    Cleared for discharge, no insulin.
    Steroid pills continued at home,
    Miracles do not happen
    To me, I survived, angiogram
    Showed perfect surgery,
    I am well. I don't feel change
    Yet it's there. clean shorts, shirt.
    Pants, coat, It's November 3rd
    Of course I know the date
    As I slip on my athletic shoes
    Nurse wheels me through
    Great lobby with cool air
    November 3rd sweeps by.
    I slide into car seat
    Simple chatter, white frost
    Into air. Days, my primary
    Doctor right again, don't
    View my sanity, I'm sane,
    More like smooth stones
    Man of thirty years ago
    An illusion, a 70-year-old
    Man, Now white is black
    Seats of car, cold imprint
    Hospital, gone, onto 18th
    Street. She's carefu November
    17th I return, walk
    Into same room where
    Miracle began after Kyousui
    Implored my wife to drive
    Me to the ER, no more .This
    Began, Nurse weighing me,
    In ER, Now Nurse Practioner
    Gently pulls my staples
    From my scar, then says wait
    Your surgeon, who I know
    Spends 30 minutes, shows
    Before and after angiograms
    I know my surgery well
    It was perfect, I listen, details
    Explanation, At home To
    Ravel's Piano Concerto
    For The Left Hand, my music
    Yes, there, my words slip
    White before my fingers
    Healing this of course writing
    On white paper, slow blue
    Pen over, over, over
    I'm sentient being, free.

    Gassho
    Tai Shi
    sat/lah
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  24. #174
    Beyond Directions

    Waiting room
    Before surgery
    I prayed, I was,
    I am fearful, my
    Heat sings
    Under chair,
    With Concrete
    Floor I have now
    Dharma sharing
    Most elated
    With fear, how
    Just to feel
    Firmament, be
    Nothingness,
    With something
    I cannot touch,
    Feel. How dare I
    Another answer
    10 thoughts
    Signs or actions
    Prescribed like
    Spoonful's capsules,
    Needles, gas
    Steroids, insulin,
    Am I interventions,
    My tubbing, Ah this
    Is after surgery. How
    Did neurology know
    When to wheel
    Me into room, Sangha
    Friend of 39 years,
    Is 41? do we count?
    We made our own Sangha
    Relatives nothing
    Two years bedding
    Fact finding tries
    Until one knows
    She is "the one,"
    Wait says, unless
    We could have
    Endured together
    My head warped,
    Staples pulling, in
    Weeks will remove,
    Scalp, realized
    Success. I know?
    Alive. I know this.

    sat/ lah
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 12-10-2021 at 10:17 PM. Reason: editing
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  25. #175
    DAI ZAI GEDA PUKU
    MU SŌ FUKU DEN’E
    HI BU NYO RAI KYO
    KŌ DO SHO SHU JO

    Robe of liberation boundless
    Field beyond both form and formless
    Wearing the Tathagatha's teachings
    Vowing to save all sentient beings
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  26. #176
    Vessels Removed in Song Of Hands

    Yes complex tissue operation,
    Removal of vascular tissue, hands
    Reaching into his skull, doctor skill,
    Staff in operation asked only beyond

    Would you prefer to closed Pain
    Your eyes, the instruments as wood
    Working of life looked awake, sight
    Awakened, he says no more, he has

    Seen none before surgery's tools
    Like workbench, like carpentry building
    Hands, digits can build next his life
    Again, he counts Zazen, one

    To ten, back again, on counting
    He calmly sleeps, his pain in throat
    Slimed to nothing, air his breathing
    As slipping into slumber without

    Pain he was not afraid as surgeon
    Told me him all could remove blood
    Vessels clogging mind, concentration
    As he he six books, novels with ease

    Then Thich Nhat Hanh, Fiction showing
    Skill of Surgeon, four nurses handing
    Tools, Nurse assistant, radiologist,
    Heart and Lung Technician

    The entire consort together as orchestra
    Surgeon, giving me life, hands take and cut
    Off, give Future of this seventy-year-old
    Man simple he is given to to life

    Which we hold dear, with renewed
    Vitality, happiness sings success
    Dr knew his hands gave five,
    Ten, fifteen more years, his old

    Age secure. This patient his wife in-fact
    Knew life into brain not taken, given
    To, as carpenters build, skill more grouped,
    Houses for this life, unusual protection,

    This check after all, hospitalist conception
    Says he success, the surgeon's hands
    Success, our living testament life
    Removal of Atrial Venus Malformation,

    AVM is gone, October 29th then
    on November 17th, 2021, shows patient
    All perfect as angiogram showed veins
    Will die, Completely removed, final check

    Six months away, another angiogram,
    Will show success, still doctor checking
    Then blood mass removed, veins ceiled
    Off, O2 to brain tissue, air flows again

    Surgeon's hands before his final
    Board certificate , oral tests, far knowing
    Beyond our poetry, yet poetry, we all
    Sing as patient talks, last successful test.

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 01-02-2022 at 05:01 PM.
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  27. #177
    Tai shi, these lately are very good work. _()_

    gassho
    d/s sat/some lah
    Visiting unsui: use salt

  28. #178
    Shonin Risa Bear
    Hard luck avoided from our own Kyousui retired nurse saved me. His art of nursing, all his life all he ever loved and wanted isn’t praise for giving life comfort. It was for him automatically giving. Taishi get to an ER now, then to my dearest love and universe “Get him to earth to asking pace. Hospital ER get him now!” This comfort my dear friend saw I have years to be Zen promises to maintain life in precepts life universe into life life and life. Dharma life giving honesty without understanding why but I’m even with why l learned long ago. With what you need what you know down deep into bones when I was a young child we had nothing nothing else to do with loans took my mother down for my one and only mother who found a man who truly loved her just as my poetry was loved and loves Marjorie I pearl of greatness she loves me. I am a teacher always like my nurse friend one of my best friends ever saved my brain saved my heart saved my life. Tai Shi poetry giver of words so when I speak of truth I learned truth at the feet of my mother who had moreover truth in her cancer we came back to each other son and mother mother’s love including Zen all this is impermanent but memories etched into poetry poetry and love. My poetry even bad poetry is about love and love is eternal.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    calm poetry


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  29. #179
    What I Give

    When life pours out softness, Conifers
    Pines, I am birth. I am evergreen, I understand
    My fatherhood? When blood is our tissue,

    Would you let me be in your life, husband,
    Father, Jewels in rain, I take nothing, give
    Something, life giving water for my Orchid,

    You are Spectrum light, Alice Hindman,
    for writing my novel as Marjorie, orange
    Bicycles in Europe Anderson's parables,

    Decades clothed with death, Eight-hundred miles
    Central Europe, rain, storm. Learn poetry
    Universal as One Third chance of Death in deluge,

    Angiogram reveals mass, I risk for their beauty.
    For self, gaining years more? Ever given my rakusu
    I cannot make. Gift of Sangha for my worlds?

    Refuge in Buddha, Refuge in Dharma, teachings
    Refuge in Sangha, rags died to let clothing
    Given more time for my simple education.

    How they cover my nakedness with life, One tree,
    I water strongest Douglas Fir, my brother
    His home protected from Torrente. dipped,

    In water. Jukai with Conifer, in operation connect,
    I emerge from emptiness, Emptiness of Form,
    Form is Emptiness. I Found my heart, no death.

    Subverted AVM, brain nearly washed away with pain
    Two moths after surgery, I hurl Strong Water,
    Not From Sky? What universally gives more years?

    Nursed to health bedside still waters in valley
    Writing soft poetry, calm, strong life for Trees,
    White Pine in Tsukuba with our daughter in Tokyo.

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 01-26-2022 at 03:10 PM. Reason: revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  30. #180
    I respect Shonin Risa Bear. Thank you very much. I respect your latest book. I have trouble with fees for self publishing.
    Thank you.
    Gassho
    sat/lah
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  31. #181
    Her Shoes Were Words

    She gave to father
    German Zen masters
    Who carried zazen west
    When more Japanese
    Lyric as casting lillies
    Into Bower,
    Asking no more release
    How pain into stands of sound,
    Unvarnished laughter,
    Better UBASOKU touched
    Lotus Sutra Brush seeking
    Words after Ten
    That Morning young-
    Old, release her days
    Knowing child lyric
    Tears, 1989 his window
    Then knowing he climbed

    Longs Peak at 30 days,
    Sobriety made clear,
    Everyone, grieved
    No more in South Dakota,
    He lived for January 2016
    Light. Given his child,
    Last in January 2022
    Realizing knew poems,
    Never condemned.
    If trees leafed
    Forth convictions

    Subtlety chosen
    What eleven-years-old
    Learning to read
    Years young, speaking
    Of books Yes!
    Replied admittedly path
    Of session he could see
    Dawn of Dogen over
    Yin Yang Self helping others,
    UBASOKU, and know,

    Seventy years
    Gone for loving
    Kindness, Buddha
    Incense, longing
    Healing in October
    Morning a.m crawled.
    To Hospital on the third
    Bleeding to ICU 2010
    2011, memory gone
    October 29th, 2021,
    Sliced open happiness
    After surrender?

    In autumn arthritic,
    Strain of bone, vertebrae
    One of session, hands
    Folded nothing more,
    Gift of Kokuu for Jundo
    Teacher's desire set aside
    Helping others
    Somer Kohans
    Answered, Tathagata
    Thich Nhat Hanh,

    Interbeing recognized
    1987 touching Colorado,
    With her no toxic substance
    Trail Ridge Highest
    Knowledge in Wisdom
    Bodhisattva's day.

    Enter wise, fallen
    Angels do not exist
    Never Genjokoan,
    Beyond community
    Emptiness, alone
    Beyond his years,
    She lead him
    Another defeat, woman,
    Verses for daughter
    Sprung From hands,
    Writes Japanese
    Lines, free verse.
    Walks delicately
    Through flowers
    She scattered his ashes.

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 01-28-2022 at 05:15 PM. Reason: revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  32. #182
    Saga of Alana the Japanese Cat

    Cloud in January,
    Cornfield's abondondoned
    In dew, or frozen light, Dogen
    Left Zen Master's Leaning
    This Morning's essence.

    Devoured dragon spaces,
    Sun in clouds behind glacial
    Mountains of gray moisture
    Across open prairie damp
    Snow flurries before it dropped
    Into temperatures of Ice Age
    Gone, farms on Highway 38,
    They drove into safety.

    This Night before asking
    Is call from daughter in Japan?
    Again phone rang in silence,
    Phantom thieves, texts
    Their daughter wrote poems
    "Father, I know what diversion
    You created to keep politicians
    Awake as old ones, now
    You are old too, dawn ripples
    Division of night, daylight
    Darkness." Creating lines
    Beautiful verses, arcadian words

    Asunder, fathers jagged spine,
    Arthritis in vertebrae Spondylitis,
    Surgeon removed AVM, gave
    Reality, more sentience, mild,
    Pain returned on January 28, 2022
    Never more wandering thoughts
    Alone, Koans unraveled, dim light,

    Another winding South Dakota
    Farm elision fields Coleman,
    Hartford, Humboldt, mind relaxed
    Cold winters more than realization
    Gapples after harvest, milk,
    Grape juice, morning food,

    Honey dripped
    From their own pens,
    Daughter, writing again
    Structured sentences marvel
    At words into stars slipping.
    We know events are labor,
    Partake of day, sun's feast,
    Delicious, daughter meditates
    On her poetic writing. Mother's,
    Life in Colorado mountains,
    To Illinois plains, at four-years
    Old, daughter winsome grew

    Intelligent little Poet,
    "My Little Book of Poetry."
    With play could invision,
    Her delight, built verses
    Depth of father's lines,
    Dove's Haven, signs
    Of bird song, daylight.
    Comes breathing end.

    Fatherhood launches
    Her way from Sioux Falls
    To sheltered publications
    From Tokyo to Iowa,
    To St. Louis, she finds
    Midwest always home,
    But West not foreign, islands
    Of rice, not Corn, or wheat,
    Her delight Waseda University
    Washington University,
    University of Iowa,
    Middlebury College, Her essays
    Translations of Japan's Nobel
    Prize winning author.
    Ever her career, she's gone
    Into dim recollection of her
    Academic homes, seeks home
    Of her own.

    West Central to West, China,
    Korea, Japan, Largest gain
    Language her father dimly
    Knows from Tsukuba.Daughter
    Laurel Chiba to Hokkaido,
    Zendo provided from Jundo,
    Young, and old, women
    Men, Disabled, everyone
    All accepted serious intent
    Who seek learning ancient
    Compassion bestowed
    Gift of zazen, Shikantaza
    Teaching gratitude, equanimity,
    Freedom from anger, most
    Respect to Life, to all
    Earth, sentient beings
    Sought, as all attone.

    Father sees with joy
    Daughters progressed,
    Compassion in Hiroshima,
    As father, mother, daughter,
    Cried and astounded,
    Beheld Tsunami, Fukushima,
    Silence, daughter rescued
    Animals, cats that would die,

    Brought to Midwestern town
    Family cared for, Cat finally
    Crawled into fathers lap,
    To warm herself from zero
    Celsius, and below, this cat
    A fairy Queen, named Alana,
    Date, northernmost island,
    Where certain death, now
    Japan in Family house,
    Empathy part of family
    Growth, life, and poetry.

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 01-28-2022 at 07:00 PM. Reason: revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  33. #183
    Here's one I read today that really touched my heart. By Rengetsu.

    なれきつる
    春やをしほの
    山ざくら
    青葉がくれに
    うぐひすの鳴

    Won't she miss
    the spring she knows?
    From her shelter of green leaves
    in the cherry trees of Mount Oshio
    a warbler cries...
    Who is your warbler? What is their spring? Their shelter of green leaves amongst the cherry trees?
    What is your spring? Your shelter?

    Gassho,
    Nengyoku
    Sat
    Thank you for being the warmth in my world.

  34. #184
    Beautiful images, Japanese? Chinese? I will try my writing skills like this beautiful little poem Nengyoku, thank you so very much.
    Gassho
    sat/lah
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  35. #185
    Quote Originally Posted by Tai Shi View Post
    Beautiful images, Japanese? Chinese? I will try my writing skills like this beautiful little poem Nengyoku, thank you so very much.
    Gassho
    sat/lah
    Most of Rengetsu's poetry are Waka in a classical Japanese form.
    I'm glad you liked it

    Gassho,
    Nengyoku
    Sat
    Thank you for being the warmth in my world.

  36. #186
    Blizzard

    When my wife
    Stops behind the snow
    By our yellow cedar deck,
    To pick up her shovel,

    I look at corn near
    Highway 38. My hands
    Knotted with arthritis,
    I can not clear this drift.

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 02-07-2022 at 06:07 PM. Reason: revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  37. #187
    Lovely poem, Tai Shi! I hope the snow got cleared.

    Gassho
    Kokuu
    -sattoday-

  38. #188
    Hi Kokuu. Actually the snow was weeks ago, and because of less snow this, “summer drought might be bad!” I am very happy today. Though my Kindle won’t communicate with Treeleaf, it does let me read news sent to email.



    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  39. #189
    Maybe this s more appropriate place to share a title from another most neglected group of proper, and the Women in out home, and I am only one male in a home of four females including two cats, for my birthday gift from my daughter;
    The First Free Women, Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns, translator and editor. Matty Weingast. given me by our daughter Laurel Ann Taylor, ABD, PhD, Japanese literature, comp. lit.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  40. #190
    Hello Friends, anyone may, can, and have shared their own poetry here. and this little volume of poetry, Jundo has told me is about 90% translator/author 10% women poets. Onkai has recommended two books of poetry, and these were recommended by Jundo as well. Maybe when Jundo checks in with us here he may recommend contemporary women Buddhist poets, and maybe share with his poetry, help us out with this primarily poetry thread though in the past we have also recommended poets and poetry which any of you may do. Jundo. please help us out. Onkai and anyone who knows any women Buddhist poets, or any poets, outside classics poetry, bt poets you like, tell us of these like the one I bought for about $$10 or my like daughter's contribution. I bought the less expensive of Jundo's recommendations. And I will also check with Onkai to recommend other poets who are women. Any women poets, please post here, for it gets tiresome having me be the only poster. Yes, there must be hundreds of poets both women and men who might like to post here. Thank you all. I will also ask Jundo to give this thread a few good words because any poetry is welcome here rhymed, unrhymed, free verse, blank verse, paragraph poetry, structured, literally any verse big or little, Jishin had suggested a long verse from a poet he liked, and others may recommend other poets. Thank you all.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 02-09-2022 at 06:38 PM. Reason: editing encouragement.
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  41. #191

    ARTS: Big and Little Poetry--free verse, any verse.

    Otagaki Rengetsu, recommended Seishi. He says of her "a poet calligrapher, a Go player, warrior, a dancer, etc, She lost essentially all of her family (and two husbands) young. Her work is personal and often deeply tinged with loss that permeated her life" Thank you friend for this recommendation." Anyone may recommend poets, specifically women in our thread, and if you an, quote a few lines of poetry. Perhaps Haiku belongs elsewhere, but feel free to suggest Haiku and quote a few lines.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 02-10-2022 at 04:26 AM.
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  42. #192
    Quote Originally Posted by Tai Shi View Post
    Otagaki Rengetsu, recommended Siekshi. He says of her "a poet calligrapher, a Go player, warrior, a dancer, etc, She lost essentially all of her family (and two husbands) young. Her work is personal and often deeply tinged with loss that permeated her life" Thank you friend for this recommendation." Anyone may recommend poets, specifically women in our thread, and if you an, quote a few lines of poetry. Perhaps Haiku belongs elsewhere, but feel free to suggest Haiku and quote a few lines.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Rengetsu's poetry is always very touching.
    If I may share a link, if not please remove it. I keep rengetsu.org open in a separate tab and try to read a couple poems a day. They have many of her works catalogued there.

    One of my favorites:

    Waiting for the one who does not come
    the moon has fallen
    behind the tips of the pines...
    Ah, the sound of the wind
    coming to assail my heart
    Gassho,
    Nengyoku
    Sat
    Thank you for being the warmth in my world.

  43. #193

    ARTS: Big and Little Poetry--free verse, any verse.

    All painful
    Dust darkens moon!
    Tonight is gone, you
    Stop and end,
    In Longest February.
    Our words found
    Our child who lives
    Reality in Japan words
    Dancing in hearts, only
    She watches our coldest
    Honesty found daughter
    Of possibilities became our
    Hopeful friendship.
    We ended days of night!
    Friends we have our
    Final darkness, In our
    Turning wind, cold, inside freezing alone we found
    Moments of warm listening.
    Sounds of gratitude,
    Clearly lulled our minds,
    Songs we chose together,
    Endings, choosing ashes,
    Flowers in gardens above
    Then gone, together we left,
    Stopped our own hearts.
    Together, we will never
    Turn to any other bloom,
    This our own.
    Gassho
    Tai Shi
    sat/ lah
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  44. #194
    Robert Bly, American Poet, 1926-2021
    At this web site, readers will find information on every facet of Robert Bly's literary career, including bibliographies, reviews, and interviews, as well as new essays, poems, and translations, to increase their understanding and enjoyment of Bly's work.

    In his numerous roles as groundbreaking poet, editor, translator, storyteller, and father of what he has called "the expressive men's movement," Bly remains one of the most hotly debated American artists of the past half century. What is it about Bly and his ideas that inspires such impassioned responses from readers and associates? The psychologist Robert Moore believes that "When the cultural and intellectual history of our time is written, Robert Bly will be recognized as the catalyst for a sweeping cultural revolution." And literary critic Charles Molesworth suggests that some of Bly's importance and complication lies in the fact that he "writes religious meditations for a public that is no longer ostensibly religiou
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  45. #195
    After the women's movement in 1974 and after World War 2 into the present, dating back to Susan B Anthony and women in the United states, in Paris, In Sweden, and seeking even in Japan, all women finally having decisions over birth, Betty Friedan, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, Joan Baize, Sylvia Plath, Alice's Restaurant, Judy Collins, and a whole arts culture I not enough about in the 1980s, but I do know that our women who are priests in training, and all those women who are actually leading women and men seeking Buddhism, being Priests, and all walks of life leading, seeking liberation in voting and in work for all of us, and out of this came a men's movement lead by Robert Bly against anger into right of passage.

    When I came to Treeleaf Zendo, I was a very angry man and then I began what questions needed to be answered for me; how do I cry with honesty, and my tears became honest for women and men? I knew that I had to live for two women in my life, for my friends and father, brother. I had to live or die for the women in my life who had taken good care of this disabled man. I listened to our Kokuu, and many teachers over the years of my life. I took this decision to have Brain Surgery. I decided to have brain surgery to live, and knowing I could make a difference in the life of two women, I began to understand kindness.

    The the Tee Shirt my wife wears says simply "Kindness" as she takes care of us, of our daughter and me, How does that Tee Shirt say only one thing, "Kindness," and how does the Dali Lama say that "Kindness is his Religion" and I studied the book Loving Kindness be Sharon Salzburg, Loving Kindness, How to Be Sick by Toni Bern Hard, both influential for me, a disabled man cared for by women, and I knew that a Fire Sermon's at the center this message only for me; Buddha was Loving Kindness, and this Sangha taught me Loving Kindness in the Buddha's metta, His basic message "metta" or Loving Kindness as I underwent a Surgery that was dramatic, but in the hands of a very good Surgeon, Dr Shawn Voumg, thinking of our teacher Jundo had said that my best Zen Teacher was my wife Marjorie

    I known I must have that surgery for those two women, Laurel Ann Taylor, and Marjorie Joan Remacle-Taylor, I know why when we were married she said, "I almost kept my own last name." Now I know that every woman must have her own name, and she must have her own time, and if she wants her own room. This name is her father's gift to her, and she deserves everything I am my own teacher and her partner. She only says "I love you." In writing, in the lovely simple greeting cards for birthdays and holidays. She does not believe in speaking those words.

    I know that women need absolutely, as Virginia Woolf said, Rooms of Their Own, Time of Their Own, and especially their own right to their own lives, and work they choose, land they own, and the right to vote for women and men to make sure of equitable laws. I understand the sacrifice our daughters and mothers make for me an those women who live for all of us, for other women, and their right to their own lives. My wife gave up this room, and after I fell into concussion, she said, "You must take this room our older bedroom for your own office, not the basement down in that basement to that office down stairs" I received seven stitches in my head, I sleep early so she has time to herself. Now my doctor says something triggered the growth of a deadly AVM present even before birth. I know risking my life for those two women for brain surgery was a good thing because that AVM was robbing O2 from that Right Temporal Lobe, and music and Language, and memory were being affected and made me angry.

    I came of age at 70 years by placing wife with myself yet for herself to me live longer in our old age together, and as Robert Bly said in his book Iron John which I read with the book Peace is Every Step in 1993 when my anger drove me out of full-time teaching, some right of passage must make us all adult. Men must find their way, but I was sober, and taking my first steps to understanding the precepts. On January 10, 2016, I began to undertake the precepts and I received the special gift of my rakusu from this Sangha because I cannot sew. I say dear wife of her choice for it was she asked me to marry her, Marjorie, and she sewed my rakusu cover in one night exactly to pattern from scraps of old cloth in her sewing box as the rags of those first Followers of the Dharma of Loving Kindness.

    She became my teacher. Last March a promise came true for me. I learned not to be in debt and I learned to listen to her, "Are you spending too much?" I pulled back, and I know she is right. She knows I am not dipping too much into my own money of my Social Security portion she gives me, allowance which each week she puts money into my own account, so she lets me be responsible. We have been together this year 40 years. I listen to, and she just told me to take my medicine, and savings grow. I don't dip too much into the money she gives me; she says we will be scattered in that flower garden behind George Booms Funeral Home, and I think about the laws that prevent us from being set under an Ash tree.

    Now as I write, I know that the ecological imbalance, think of how we try to help toward control of global warming, that in nature has stopped the Ash trees from growing, and whole Ash groves must be destroyed to stop the parasite that kills them. So, we will be spread on the flower garden. We will not be naturally disposed under an Ash tree as she says against the laws, "It is easy and I like it, and Laurel will have a place to come." I say, "I will never leave you. I told you that when I almost died in 2011." We are together now, and Laurel is doing her work, and may find a beautiful partner, and she may find this is her only work or "I what I want" as it is not what she expected. These are not love stories. These are our decisions.

    You lose your audience if the poem is longer than 14 lines. I told you all that when we got started writing here, but I am both essayist and poet. Maybe someday an editor will rework the long poems into essays. Please someone edit all of me in every section and not changing what is mine, just "Big and Little Poetry" or everything could be a book, so each section could be a book. Let all, women and men, be our own teachers, and now make way for people like me, the disabled, this mentally and physically ill. I married a brilliant woman with a brilliant career of 30 years of her life supporting our little family and paying for our schooling. She once cried out, "When do I get mine!" She was helping women and men force so do we now honor their lives and we as Buddhist so honor. Now the house is hers, and my Will leaves her everything. We are 66 and 70, and must think ahead. She has remodeled this home of hers and finally to get what she wanted, and of course she hired the work done, and she has her own money, her own land, and her own right to vote for whoever she wants, she thought out in time when support would be crucial as in time of pandemic, our support, our savings and retirement.

    I have been made the great honor of UBASOKU that will always be in my chosen path of lay Buddhist. Let me be of help, and let Iron John be truly my Right of Passage in my brain surgery, my choice that I give away to the three of us, Marjorie Joan Remacle, Laurel Ann Taylor, and Charles E Taylor, and as once she said to me because of irresponsibility, "You are now stealing from your family!" I have learned my right of passage by "Showering The People I Love With Love," my road having been Fire and Rain. I try to live metta. I do not spend beyond my means, or beyond her means, or beyond our means. My bipolar and pain is under control. I offer my life to the three of us as Blake spoke of, my loving kindness which you have taught me.
    Gassho
    sat/ lah

    Tai Shi he, him, they, them
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 02-13-2022 at 09:22 PM. Reason: revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  46. #196
    Robert Bly, American Poet, 1926-2021
    At this web site, readers will find information on every facet of Robert Bly's literary career, including bibliographies, reviews, and interviews, as well as new essays, poems, and translations, to increase their understanding and enjoyment of Bly's work.

    In his numerous roles as groundbreaking poet, editor, translator, storyteller, and father of what he has called "the expressive men's movement," Bly remains one of the most hotly debated American artists of the past half century. What is it about Bly and his ideas that inspires such impassioned responses from readers and associates? The psychologist Robert Moore believes that "When the cultural and intellectual history of our time is written, Robert Bly will be recognized as the catalyst for a sweeping cultural revolution." And literary critic Charles Molesworth suggests that some of Bly's importance and complication lies in the fact that he "writes religious meditations for a public that is no longer ostensibly religious."

    The above was cited for the Robert Bly Page
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 02-13-2022 at 05:59 PM. Reason: credit
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  47. #197
    Brain Surgery

    What Can I say for his beautiful surgery,
    After summer, Ash grove killed by parasite,
    In autumn, Wind, on October 29th,
    Trees in color, she remembered rain storm,

    The month beyond his seven decades,
    Years he dwelt behind blue shutters,
    Torn away from home, she worried, sought
    Her dream of her beautiful Flowers around

    Upon her porch for family. his lonely White Pine,
    On Fathers Day, this gift had sprung up sapling
    Twenty-five feet high branches, meant
    To grow for Jukai, evergreen, every spring,

    Every January he watched years, few squirrels
    They play at last spring at City Park, walking
    Beyond this untold story, briefly unfolding
    Before young neurol surgeon told

    Him thus, "We can make you explain
    More. Perhaps write longer poetry
    Decades more, room to watch

    Another bright red autumn sun
    In March or April." Apart another
    Birth miracle their lovely birth, sunsets
    Over surgery, his sight of eighty-five

    Trips around sun, many years of spent
    His body, might become like ash, yellow
    Trunk as flowers, wooden fertilizer, spread
    Limbs killed battling beetle, ash borer, rot

    Away this cut to bone and flesh removal AVM
    Give life of flowers in bed of language sought
    Brief stay against time with his words
    He walks the earth on birthday September

    Diagnosis, Moistened his January." thirty
    Days into Fall gone, he sits zazen as UBASOKU,
    This is your truth. No death came
    To find lay members on day of diagnosis,

    Around our star, possibility for wife
    For daughter how dad made her thirty-second
    Birthday PhD, ABD, nothing for fear for, he
    Would he love words again, love music once again?

    Left Temporal Lobe, his chances sixty-six
    Percent. Yet, Primary Doctor chance two percent
    Knows his patient nineteen years
    Needs reissuance for his itself, for written

    Information charted, poems successful
    Truthful, peaceful, answered metta questions
    City, where is date and time. Three days in ICU,
    One neurology , six weeks more of Therapy, done.

    Nurses say his his friendly
    Nurses, "You don't realize,
    What difficulty this showed, level one AVM,
    Not so deep into white, gray matter"
    Part of Lotus Sutra above his desk.

    Gassho
    sat/lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 02-17-2022 at 03:57 PM. Reason: revision
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  48. #198
    My Sorrow

    Prayer for some
    Paragraph for others,
    For me tonight Bach
    Brandenburg Concerto
    Number Three, Third
    Movement number three
    This is my Sangha,
    My Dharma, My Buddha
    I wept for every priest,
    For every nun, for every
    Ordinary lay member
    I wept for my dear wife
    So does the evening
    Dishes because I cannot,
    I cannot because sorrow
    Doubles me over
    From surgery of my brain
    From Gold Exodus,
    To another pain, regardless,
    In my Sangha of the earth,
    I weep for all of us, I weep
    For war, for us, for global
    Climate change, the earth
    Is my temple, the song
    Has changed to
    Relieve me of me,
    This Temple my Earth
    All the World my teacher
    Buddha, Dharma, Sangha
    They are the same, oh my world
    My pain brings more
    My weariness you are
    My temple.
    You are my tears.

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 02-20-2022 at 03:01 AM.
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  49. #199
    Every excise enemy
    Brink of death, again
    Emptiness, child of subway
    Stair where momma brought
    In war your blanket, your
    Home, weakness, I asked
    Poets to come here,
    Weapon oh AK47 is that
    Up in my pain, my fervor
    My depression gone
    Ankur, what of disease,
    Child with needs of food,
    Where will you go tonight?
    World I feel you deep in brain
    Still alive like war or child,
    Child partners and divorce,
    Relieved, I am there fore you,
    The Kiev, Moscow, London,
    Paris, Poland, Warsaw Ghetto,
    The Ukraine under siege,
    My friend in The Ukraine,
    I saw you tonight,
    Child, boy, or girl in plight
    Of war, held belief our country
    Will not see anger, now it comes
    Old oil platform dimpled
    Dumped into sea explode,
    Now out child across sea
    What do you eat tonight?
    Does fear of Archipelago,
    Strain and ponder what
    Becomes papa beloved?

    Does More war shudder
    Defenseless in night air,
    Hear no Sirens, only what
    Will become of milk and tea,
    Cake, ices, coffee, sugar
    White bread, morning glories,
    Impossible no demons,
    Artillery grinding, another
    Ukrainian, Vietnam, Sandam
    Husain is gone into Big Ten,
    NATO treaty, gone astray
    Child where will food,
    Heat in South Dakota
    Winter, the old Barns followed
    Sight distance, war catches
    Up again as daddy cannot
    Make house payment, farming
    Is no only pastime, work,
    Work yourselves into death
    We say no death to children
    Warsaw, Kiev, Omaha,
    Nebraska, if B-1 bombers
    Stay in sky come, refuel
    Into all day, night, all morning
    All afternoon, all believers,
    Night, Air Force, Navy,
    Marines, Coast Guard,
    Decision, unjoining,
    Army, tanks, artistic
    What we need Children.

    Gassho
    sat/lah
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

  50. #200
    South Dakota's Hope

    Masks may come off
    Pandemic gone to work
    Again earth so food on table
    We do not flounder, neither
    Black loam, Yellow corn fields,

    All bring light, white cloud, snow
    Surrender red sun, white grey sky
    Perhaps break in drought, revealing
    Zen like quality, moisture.

    In morning breathe, oxygen
    From nitrates soil for in air,
    Fields ready for soy beans.
    Tractor and disk turned once,
    Come this year's harvest,

    Gassho
    sat/ lah
    Tai Shi
    Last edited by Tai Shi; 02-26-2022 at 05:16 PM. Reason: punctuation
    Peaceful Poet, Tai Shi. Ubasoku; calm, supportive, limited to positive 優婆塞 台 婆

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