Monday Poem

“Many (ancient) life forms are so hard to categorize that (scientists) call these organisms the ‘Problematica.’” —from: Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, by Annalee Newitz Other Problematica.Here we are, never still, casting linesupstream like fly fishers toward sourcesteeming with what came firsthooking what we can, reeling it inholding it…

Monday Poem

Built by Thought all that we are arises with our thoughts,the Dhammapada says, with our thoughts we make the world ………. one, tour the foundation………. scraping down it’s roughness………. with the edge of a hammer head………. dissing the mason who left behind a lumpy job………. who forgot what a trowel is for………. who was halfway…

Monday Poem

That's It I’d mowed and cut and weeded tips of fingers inked with earth I’d heard our cardinal calling I’d heard our engines down the valley groaning coming up, distant, moaning hands between dry stems of garlic moving, like my mother kneeling, devout, but not in church I’d yanked contentious weeds, insisting, grabbing, pulling —this…

Monday Poem

Composting.this wonderstuff of natural declination that'll grow my beets & beans and other rations browner than the mere idea: good earth archetypical as second life and virgin birth more promising than the phantom wealth of nations more essential than human beings of highest stations shoveling this wonderstuff into my wagon sifting it through hardware cloth…

Monday Poem

fireflies.every time a new intersection’s builtaround meit winds up bristling with cameras omniscient light poles sprouta cornucopia of lenses spills out a thousand robot retinasrecording everyday ephemera the little things we do in carswe might not want the world to know about all snagged, digitized and set in a binary log for some bureaucratic loutto…

Monday Poem

”Civilization” is the soothing notion that, in it, naturalcallousness has been successfully quarantined. …………………………………………. —Roshi Bob. Civilization.A cat on the pillow of a couch, on the point of a spear, looks out through windows facing south with the fierce frustration of an indoor cat who preys through glass. The squalor of first spring just after…

Monday Poem

—on the occasion of an unexpected email from an old friend who'd abruptly withdrawn from conversation some years earlier without explanation Rapprochement Just wondering if worlds seen from a distancereally are smaller than they are.Could it be that when we sleepthe world we leave goes on without us.Maybe you remember the old dayswhen greenhorns multiplied…

Monday Poem

Bibliophile They say Hitler housed 16,000 booksin Berlin and Obersalzburg—his dark jewels In Obersalzburg and Berlinhis books did nothing for his soulbut drag it through the muck of his mindso that in the end he became as much a victimof his own immurement as Fortunatodid of Montresor in Amontillado Predisposed, he heaped word upon wordbuilding…

Monday Poem

The Buddha’s doctrine is thus proven:nothing in this world is created.……………. —(Octavio Paz, per Dharmakirti) Same DifferenceNothing in this world is created,said Buddha looking into a lotus bowl Nothing is created In this lotus filled to the brimis nothing which has been created Nothing is created From the bottom of this lotus brimming with nothingbut…

Monday Poem(s)

3 Small Poems A Good Poet's Boots a good poet's subversive—not to the point of blood in the streets…………………………. necessarily but to the point of burrowing beneathhis garden of conceits like an insistent voleand killing those weeds at their roots everyone in this waycan walk in a good poet’s boots ~~Cabin Fever besides the Biblethere…

Monday Poem

Who made you? ,,,…………….,, God. What else did God make? …… God made all things.Why did God make you and all things?………………. —Catholic Catechism for Small Children Catechism God made the worldas much an open seweras a blazing emeraldin space Why did godmake the worldwhirl, was itgrace? And why me,part darkpart bright Why did godconcoct…

Monday Poem

Actions always planned are never completed.……………………… —Democritus Carpenter's Shoes Yesterday I told myself I’d finish on Sundaythe project I started two years agobut I can never trust myself to carry throughwhen it comes to carpentry, soI swore an oath this time and pricked my thumband smeared a blood spot on my forehead like a tilak,faced…