Be Here Now, Or Don’t Be
Think about this, now:
being here right here, there is no
being somewhere else.
What you “want” doesn’t matter;
wish in one hand, as they say.
If you choose elsewhere
as the place where you must be,
you’re not here at all.
And where does that choice leave you?
Just where did you leave yourself?
Take a minute to check:
you’re either right here and now,
or you’re not, at all.
If you think too long about it,
you’ve wasted another now.
25 JUL 2024
Becoming A
Have you ever seen
someone become, in this life,
a bodhisattva –
I mean, who wasn’t one yet
when they started on their way?
If you can become
a thing you’re not already,
how is that trick done?
Not through potential or work –
that gets you Somewhere.
When your salt doll self
measures the ocean’s suchness,
the shore melts away.
What could be left to become
when you’re only here?
28 JUN 2024
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The Same Breath
So many choices
in a moment’s tiny span;
is it destiny?
No matter your direction,
the path will stay beneath you.
The door is open.
You stand at a great threshold;
which way do you move?
There is just air on both sides.
Never take the same breath twice.
27 JUN 2024
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The Presence of Today
We either seek to view the world today
through some past generation’s worn and tired lens,
or try to filter what is past and gone
with some new, modern sensibility.
In either case, the picture loses sense;
we only see with skewed perception what we like:
a world that suits our purposes as is,
or one that our reforming might make right.
And while we fight and scrape to prove our case,
what happens to the time that is?
The Now, the only time that is, is lost
and gone before we live its span.
What is the point of living in denial?
The world is what it is; each second’s span
is neither from the future or the past.
It slips away like water in your hand,
and your contention neither gives nor takes
a jot of weight to yesterday’s long gone
nor to tomorrow’s not yet been
if you neglect the presence of today.
24 JUL 2017
06.26.17
Go Ask Alice
Do without doing,
make something from nothing;
recycle, repurpose,
revise on and conquer.
Gather resources,
interpret instructions;
imagine assembly
as other-directed.
Practice inclusion,
leave nothing untended;
let symmetry guide you
off-balance at times.
Do, or do not do,
remake while unmaking;
there is no old recipe
for what is baking.
Music and dancing,
bring drums for the solstice;
plug in the instruments,
join a new party.
Practice at something:
being and nothingness.
Wake in the morning;
the coffee is on.
for Alice Guffey Miller
26 JUN 2017
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Wake Up: sonetto rispetto
Wake up! The dawn is rapping at the shutters!
There is no time to lose, nor waste away;
you must begin to clear out all this clutter
that gives you an excuse to sleep all day.
Believe this: if the end is really coming,
you won’t hear marching feet or feel the drumming.
Defeat will slip in silent, like a thief.
Your struggle will be pointless and kept brief.
Remember that you asked for this convenience:
demanding automation of all things,
expecting everything be had for free.
Forgive the mindless drones; they know no lenience,
nor any song except the one they sing.
You know the words: we wrote them, you and me.
01 JUN 2017
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Call It Madness: mad song
You gawk and call it madness,
a sickness that afflicts
the weak of mind,
the poor, the kind;
by gods, you’re such a prick.
You practice looking sideways,
avoiding the fool’s eyes:
a damning mirror,
where you see clearer
your own decay and sad demise.
You laugh and offer insult,
never a helping hand.
Why bother trying?
If purged by dying,
so much improved is noble man.
You ferment malice with no reason;
no one is truly mad.
What’s real takes practice,
beyond mere praxis,
what’s done and been had.
Your own mind wavers
from sane to madness:
one minute’s level,
the next, the Devil.
A shallow life of mostly sadness.
6 APR 2017
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