(11/24/05 12:33 am)
Reply
confindential II
last time we spoke
she called me blue
though i told her i was colour-blind
and the colour wheel of her words
a blur of off white
off black
was nothing to me
but
all grey
.
.
three days of fog
baffle day and night with cloud
a fog-horn
hours from the ocean
abruptly sobs a warning
from just around the corner
as if lost
here
in its own sound
surrenders a last moan
and mist precipiates the finest sieve of quiet weep
the atmosphere thickens with muffled theives
.
.
come back to the well jezabel
since i'm so blue
complement me with your oranges and pomagranets
let me feel your tenseless face
texture of grace
sheen like patina on the jug
swept from your veiled head
cradled in your arm as you bent
to the bucket and filled
.
.
but rest
steal a moment
tell me what kind
how deep
delicate?
and taste?
like violets
it makes no sense
the way sound to a deaf man is a measure of dense
fog
tense?
she pinches air as if to pluck
fog from cloud
cotton from a wound
seperate the two
exposing a nerve
ending at a finger tip
too much touch
burnt
culls what she doesn't need from what she doesn't want
and bandages it up
drops the damages into a fractured willow pattern cup
stems and leaves
seeped
sipped
dumps it half-drunk in the sink
opens the tin-lined tea chest takes out the green
just a pinch into a jade cup
says to me now you;re green like a un-ripe manderin
just how hard is that
i ask
nerves of steel she says
and offers her arm as an example
but it feels like the same old blue to me
only deeper and warmer
i walk my fingers over her skin
down her forearm to her wrist
every step
a little
nerveless
theft
confindential II & one
i love these both / it's me imagining
you in the store / & these people coming
with questions / stories / /
such nice rythym / both of these i & ii
thanx for checking in on me / / i still haven't made
it back to the coast / / but when i do / i'll be coming
your way / /
thanx / as always nat
Re: confindential II
It was like you though wasn’t it
To leave me there
On my bicycle
with a knife in my pocket
On a chilly winter day now going cold
With sunset. The shadows going longer,
That odd little family in the snow,
All chunky and rectangular in their pastel snow-clothes, pushing
A toddler on a single squeaky swing.
The shadows grew so
Long an ant could spend his
Life just walking down one.
The stubble field snow, lifted grizzle
Of dead grass irradiated gray, broken
Stick crunches underfoot, go to
Check the mail / go to make coffee.
The black cat which you later killed.
Call the you a he.
Call the he a she.
Her love for incomplete beings,
The dayglo horsie on the lunchbox sticker,
The seahorse frozen fossilized in her palm,
Small Siamese cat formed of globs of glass;
Go to him,
His fascination with ships-in-bottles (how did
They get them in
There?) -- do you remember
(“Do you remember” --
Already an admission of loss -- )
Living in a cave in back of Nashville
Subsisting on Benzedrine and thermoses of whisky;
Sitting in your flannel shirt, back to black cave wall,
Plucking out acoustic guitar melodies to
The shadow of the echo.
His teeth hurt. Women defray
The vision of the finish.
Someday, perhaps, you will resemble
The mountain monks and ascetics
Who so often are your heroes.
Although,
There are different ways of drowning,
For instance, Jim Morrison chasing a
Photographer around her loft in New York
Is like another form of monastic removal, I mean,
It imposes as much separation from his girlfriend in L.A.
As if like Johnny Cash he’d run off to stay in some cave
In back of Nashville with a backpack full of uppers.
Friends will come to you with needs.
There will always be a need behind their
Inflections of gentleness, concern. This
Is not evil or greedy but human nature. There
Is an illusion, common among humans, that the
Other person, the “you,” is somehow doing a little
Better, is a little less afflicted, than the one over here
In this bag of skin, the “I”.
So you will always come asking me for something, for a favor --
For after all while your life is burning, mine is secure.
Right?
I’m sorry talk louder this cave has some echoes
You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you'll sweep petals from the floor.
Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say "I'm old,"
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.
-- Han Shan, piece number 750.
I might be in Colorado,
Or Georgia by the sea
Working for some man who may not know at all who I might be
If you ever see me coming and if you know who I am
Don't you breathe it to nobody 'cause you know I'm on the lam
Wanted man by Lucy Watson,
Wanted man by Jeannie Brown
Wanted man by Nellie Johnson,
Wanted man in this next town
-- Johnny Cash, “Wanted Man.”
Limpid ocean, clear sky,
and moon-reflecting snow;
this is the realm
without a trace of
the holy and sentient.
At the opening
of the diamond eye
flowers of vanity fall.
The whole universe
vanishes into the realm
of extinction.
-- Han Shan
Hanshan came specially to see me,
Shihte too, a rare visitor.
We spoke unaffectedly and with without reserve
of the Mind,
How vast and free the Great Emptinesss,
How boundless the universe,
Each thing containing within itself all things.
-- Han Shan‘s pal Feng Kan aka “Big Stick.”
“In the entire history of Chinese culture, no other poet of
singular stature has managed to preserve the veil of mystery
concerning his true identity as well as Cold Mountain, and I
propose that this was not literary conceit but a matter of
life or death.”
--Red Pine speaking of Han Shan.
Quiet and of few words, he does not desire glory or profit. He delights in study but does not seek abstruse explanations. Whenever there is something of which he apprehends the meaning, then, in his happiness, he forgets to eat. ...
His house with surrounding walls only a few paces long is lonely and does not shelter him from wind and sun. His short coarse robe is torn and mended. His dishes and gourds are often empty, yet he is at peace. He constantly delights himself with writing in which he widely expresses his own ideals. He is unmindful of gain or loss, and thus he will be to the end.
Photo of Red Pine
The self-imposed isolation and voluntary poverty of the hermit and ascetic came to be considered opportunities for spiritual richness.
We cannot but believe that there may well be other hermits out there in similar crises, perhaps incarnations of ourselves all struggling in the same direction, to whom these confessions may be in some measure useful.
The term wabi-sabi suggests such qualities as impermanence, humility, asymmetry, and imperfection. These underlying principles are diametrically opposed to those of their Western counterparts, whose values are rooted in the Hellenic worldview that values permanence, grandeur, symmetry, and perfection. ...
Wabi-sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical world that reflects the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual world. It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things.
well, i don't want to have to correct you after all that evidence of the emmenseness of your brain, but i have it on good authority that wabi--sabi is a pastey condiment - green - with horseradish, clears your sinuses right up.
cheerfully,
n
