Holy Enlightenment

As I see the holiness in things
It occurs to me; what sees?
What perceives?
Not who, not my me,
But the what sunk below
The what that watches
As thoughts drift by (not thoughts)
The one that can see (not sight)
What I feel and touch (not sensation)
And smell (not smell) -- what perceives?

Then I realize that the question
When I see the holiness in things
Is not who or what perceives these
But how? How is the knowing of
The sacred? How do I (what is I?)
Recognize -- wait -- not perceive but
Recognize -- wait -- all is holy and
I, my what, my being then is holy
And now it feels closer
I'm catching the smell

I perceive through my holiness?
No.
My holiness merges with its holiness?
No.
We merge? Holiness to Holiness?
No.
Realize we are not separate.
No.
Not realize -- are, just are.

Slime

Cross-link borates and
Polyvinyl alcohol
ZaZoom! There's some slime!

Some Times

Poetry gets lost
Between the madness and
The boringness
My life struggling to do
Itself.

Vicious fear clawing into
My gut squeezes it out
Of me, the impulse to poet
there, out of reach to
My need

I'm lost to myself no
Expression, no feel, no
Way to find my self, no
Way to heal or be
Okay

Help me I am lost.
Finding my languaging
Is the only way that
I can be safely alive
Lost it

Somebody To Love

Can somebody find me somebody to love
I loved a girl and she loved a girl and she broke up all of my heart
And I've got to say can't somebody, can't somebody, can't somebody
Find me someone to love?

Anyway -- As you wish, I love you still

I still love my baby mama, she threw me over forty years ago
She wanted a party life and fast women and I was slow
And she had to find what could make a life so fine
And I was just an obstacle on her way to climb to a
Better life without me and still after all of these years
I want to know,
Can't somebody, can't somebody, can't somebody
Find me someone to love?

Ode to Oatmeal in a Haiku

Oatmeal makes my poop
Clean and smooth -- easy wiping
Flushes right away

In Dream

It all came together in the
Beginning Videography
Course this Summer

Supposed to do a character short
And I made up a sort of me
A truthful me
A me who wanted to skateboard
From age thirteen to sixty-two

A me who wants to do YouTube
Videos for the love and adoration
Of ALL -- Skateboarding videos

A fictional me that thought he could
Get wealthy and famous and buy
Lamborghinis
But he couldn't skate

It was my excuse -- finally to
Buy a skateboard and under the
Gaze of the lens unbox and start
To learn.

The class is weeks gone and still
Timidly
Determindly
I skateboard
I fall
I skate
I get X-Rays
I skate:)

In This Room

In this room
I do tiny scared freaked out and do anyway
I do Buddhism and other delights
I do creativity with
        Music
        Drawing
        Color
        Layout
        Design
        Font choice
        Software
        Fabric
        Metal
        Food
        Words -- so many words
        Words of poetry
        Words of story
        Words of explain
In this room I do yoga
In this room I read
        Stories and
        Stuff about
I do juggling
I do integrity so I must say
I do self harm but
I do a lot of self love
I do medication for mental illness
I do tears
I do rioteous laughter (yes alone)
I do alone

Scars are Beautiful

Your scars are beautiful
They're part of who you are
Your scars are beautiful
They go with you so far

They keep you centered and
They keep you in the now
They chill the pain and they
Make you see just how

You are here right now you
Suffer but you know
That you still've got a chance
To make it even though

Your heart is full of pain and
You don't know if you'll make it through the day
You suffer every day
But every day there's a ray

Of hope and beauty shining
Through your life and
I support you when the best you can
Do is cut to live to make your stand

I support you.

(This poem, while heartfelt, is pretty horrible. Don't judge. I know.)

Kindle

Set me on fire, oh
How I want to feel love, my
Quotidian life is
Bringing me down

Make it a blaze, I'll
Come for you, strong,
Passionate,
Desirous
Needing

Maybe we'll burn in the flame.

I See You

I'm sorry, nine-thirty at night you're
Walking on a semi-dark street and
Out I come fresh from my sangha
Happy that everything is put away and
I'm free to go and I see you flinch

Young. Woman. Alone. And. Here
Pops out a big man (sounds nicer than fat)
And I see you flinch and hesitate and my
Heart breaks for you. I wish you could feel safe.
I know you are right. That's survival instinct.

The neighborhood is not that nice even
Though I just came out of a First Unitarian
Universalist Church building. Nineteenth
Century Historic Landmark but
You don't know that. Go with love.

Namaste

A Bullet To The Heart

She takes care of everyone
She holds and cherishes
And buys the shot and
Just wants
She just wants
She hurts
She can't take care of everyone and
That is a bullet through her heart
A compass rose leading to redemption
She redeems our souls.
She redeems our souls.
She is a goddess
A goddess on
A goddess on Earth
We all worship her.

Have to Find It

There's such a balance here --

Some, to me, make words
Insipid -- Uninteresting --
Amateurist??? (My word)

That sounds bold and
Mean. Doesn't it? But wait!
I don't mean it. I know
That when I judge a poem the
Harshest -- the universe will
Always flock and shower praise
On it -- soaking it's roots, helping me
To see that it is only me. I do not have
Clear vision. If you can love a poem, I
Need to learn, (I NEED IT)
How to stand where
You stand and learn to look at it again and
Find a love of more words
More words
More words
It's humbling
I want to be humble







Love you

Funambulist

Oh! Fun --
ambulatory --
funambulist
What a crazy great name for a
Tightrope walker. When I sit and
I don't think and
I aware at my -- I don't know
My being?
My -- could it be my aware?
Can I aware at my aware?
That's exactly when I
Feel like I'm walking on
A tightrope
Full of awareness
Only a misstep from
Avoiding waking up.
Such a marvel
Finding the way
Step by step
To freedom

Multitudes

I hate to assert copyright on my poetry
It is yours and mine and
The worlds. I
Didn't write it I
Found it
There it was
Waiting, poor baby
I pick it up and cuddle and
Stroke and love it and
I never want it to be alone
Oh -- it's purring!
Will you care for it?
You can take it, even
Say it is yours
I can find a multitude more

Karen Slays Me

I see that Karen posts a poem - sonnet
And Oh, my heart leaps, it's so exciting
She used enjambment and slant rhyme to get
A perfect poem, a passionate poem, a read

Of spell and stillness and ravished spirit
A conceit, spellbound as sudden passion
Images of scent and sight and sound get
Almost too powerful - such sensation stuns

Me, agonizing alliteration
Like all device brings me to sudden tears
Such joy fills my heart I barely think when
I read, reread, ponder, and drink my beer

And sigh, undone, I'm slain by her power
I sip the poem and then my beer and purr

Too Much Support? So hard

There were all these people who
Wanted to support me with backpacks
That represented folks like me who died
Because I don't know. Who knows?

They killed themselves exactly as
I sometimes want to and that was HARD
but there were also people who much
To my amazement did not want to guilt me

Because I am who I am. Maybe you should
Know that guilting someone who is at risk for
Suicide is not helping at all -- it is hurting and
Risking and -- killing and

If someone is suicidal, how could you think that
Telling them about how they would hurt those that
Are left behind would -- what make things better?
You judge and hurt and make things worse. Are you

Trying to help? That is the opposite of skillful. You
Are judging and harming and shaming someone who
Is already suffering and is thinking that, it would be
Compassionate to lay the burden down and to pass away.

But these people really help. They
See me. They accept me. They know that I might die
But it is not because I am in some way wanting to
Harm others -- It is because am mentally ill. I suffer.

They see me. They see me.
Thank you.
Thank you.
If I die still -- thank you.

Why would you make it about you -- about
How my suicide would affect you -- how
My sifting down to death would somehow be
Something about you. -- Something about you.

Let it go. It doesn't concern you. If you
Can't help then, PLEASE don't make things so much worse
Please don't hurt me -- it doesn't have anything to do with you
At all. I am mentally ill. I am mentally ill.

Let it go.
Don't bully.

Where Am I?

Walking down the street
I smile at all I meet
Saying Hi! How you Doin'?
Like them shoes!

People's faces light up
Happy to be seen. To be
Recognized. To be
Admired. Oh how happy.

Inside I nearly die. I'm
Struggling on. And I'm
Hoping to get home before I
Start to cry, and I

See their faces, their
Happy faces and I
Wonder how many want to
Cry like me

drunk jeans

You know when you're drunk
And you are trying to smoothly
Remove your jeans
Quickly sliding off one leg
And then another
And sometimes you have
To quickly put one or the other
Or both legs quickly down?
(Don't fall!)
And you are trying to make a
Good impression even if you
Are the only person in the room?

Yeah
Me too

I'm Late!

NaPoWriMo starts
I'm still fiddling around
Maybe a haiku!

Bodhisattava

 #PHOTOPROMPT44MLKJr.
Martin Luthor King was killed on April 4, 1968. Now 49 years later I think of him and how he changed and how he didn't change things.





Martin decided to be the change that he wanted to see in the world, like Ghandi. He believed that hatred does not defeat hatred, that violence does not bring peace. Along the way he met the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, just two times, but between them they shared a sense of each other's holiness and a shared vision. The year after Martin received the Nobel Peace prize, he nominated Thich Nhat Hanh for the prize. In Vietnam, Martin is considered a bodhisattva, a Buddhist term for someone who has woken up, who has achieved enlightenment, and chooses to devote their life to helping all other beings awaken.

Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hanh

Bodhisattva 

Martin worked to end

The bonds of racism

The scourge of hatred

And bring

Us closer

To a world

Where all men

Could be free. 

The work isn't done. There is still hatred and division and judgment, but there are also people inspired by MLK to continue to work for peace.

Isn't It Odd?

Isn't it odd how
You can see a stranger
Across a room
And feel such tenderness
Feel such love
Feel such compassion
As if they are yours?

MMA Buddhism vs Magical Truth

Sometimes it seems that the touch of maze
Gloss, freedom, marriage, daemonhood is
More than the touch of today -- now -- is.

I am torn between delight in the power of myth
Of love, of heritage, of the power of mage
Mythology, irish, scottish, welsh, truth at large

And is, now, no story, being without delusion
Without story, true to now, without extra
Descriptions of something that doesn't exist

Do I reject the loss of mystery and mythos
Or reject the delusion of nothingness and story
Or can I join them into love and magic and truth

I don't know
I can't choose
Love and myth and delusion

Flying

People flying
Out they go
Flying out
Flying out they go

Out they go
We see their
Encountering

Out they go
Out they go
Love. Out they go
Out they go.

So Sorry

I see that you like him
But for him it is more.

You want to be what he
Needs or wants or –
I don't know ...

I really don't know, but he
Isn't the thing that you need
And you like him and
You wish that you
Were everything he thinks he sees but
No!

Even if you
Want to be what he wants
You aren't.
Sorry. So sorry.
So sorry.

Wish you could
Feel
What he wants.
But that wouldn't be you.
Would it?

Heart

So many folk in a bar
All with their particular motive
But all the same.

See me. Know me. Love me.

I am the same.

I want to be seen.
I want to be admired.
I want to love, to be loved.

Beautiful lesbians –
Love me.
Artists –
Love me.
Sports fanatics –
Love me.

We are all the same.
Lost on our own,
Needing reflection.

See me
Admire me
Love me

Now!

Please.