My Diamond Sutra

My Diamond Sutra

My daily activities are not me
I am not what I do
What I do is just a harmony
Of action in the world

Neither am I this or that
Or any of the roles prescribed
I am a free being
Drawing water, carrying firewood

Watching the moon because
I can, I grasp for nothing and
In a way I discard nothing
I’m a marvellous activity

Of loving the universe that created me
That is my true function
The wind won’t settle
My mind won’t rest

The birds will sing
The sun will shine
I will be ignorant and simple
The mind of the past is ungraspable

The mind of the future future is ungraspable
The mind of the present is ungraspable
So I learn slowly to
Stop grasping at things and people.

Untitled zen poem

On observing the P r e s e n t s t a t e

There is an error in thought
That does not recognize silence
Or witness the unity behind everything
Unwilling to see the page of nature

We believe our agency to be separate
But our thoughts are rather
Manifestations of nature

We are part of this design
We lack the trust of instinct
Separating, labeling, judging

Living in a cost-benefit duality
Our intelligence is quite limited
So we search for the coin
In the river where we lost it

But time does not function like that
Memory is no longer accurate
The moment it is recalled
And self is a poor approximation of destiny

Destiny is a non-dual experience
It is the Tao of fundamental reality
So empty your body of illusions

And throw away the madness of attachment
Freedom is not to approve anything
For reality is a gold and dung phenomenon

If we stop pursuing things outside of ourselves
Then might we be able to witness
What is actual and what is essential.

On The F r i n g e s of E n l i g h t e n m e n t

On The F r i n g e s of E n l i g h t e n m e n t

I am the beginning’s mind
In love with many possibilities
So I became a poet
Without accepting the fact

That everything changes
We are impotent
We cannot find perfect composure

Life is a koan ready to be experienced
Transience is that nature
And nurture of the game
Art is like the discipline

Of creating a reoccurring situation
Where the world is its own magic
And we are visitors, it’s that simple

So won’t you stay for a while?
Everything is perfect
And understanding yourself
Allows you to understand everything

And ultimately, we must exist
Right here and now
I am the beginner at love

For only recently
Did I recognize her everywhere.

Amorphous

Amorphous

We were a spark conceived
From the scope of ether
Rift of dreams that
Navigated separation, changing worlds
I could not seduce you

Amorphous, you were like
Waters through my hands
The ache of happenings

Unreachable, impenetrable
The bubble of too many lifetimes
Your papaya body would be
For others to touch, your tomato kisses
Would be for other lips to suck

The sweetest offers were fleeting
Amorphous, you are, you were
Like a gentle breeze on my back

That I could not reach or sleep inside
A plum tree with forbidden fruit
How sweet the fragrance of your need
Out of those hairy recesses where stood
A triumphant mound of flesh

Free from martyrdom and servitude
Free at least and for what
Soul beneath all kisses and wine

Night-long and aching across distances
I as if with old passion must depart
Too intimate the rose-bush
Too immediate those heaving breasts
We are a spark conceived to alter
The sense of touched destiny.

Reconnaissance

Reconnaissance

The only way I could
Make love to you was through poetry
Everything else was forbidden
We were spirits in transit

At the ends of nostalgia
Ready to be idealistic again
And yet one arrives somehow
For dance lessons, a psychological encounter

In the strange bedroom
Of intimate dialogue
And it occurred to me
I’d never know you completely

I’d project and I’d compensate
And I’d only reach a part of you
That was, how it was with language
All these approximations

Emotions that go three ways
Timing that is rarely serendipitous
So I followed your lead
Not knowing the name of the bud

Where I would hold your flower
In its sweet smell of soulful freedom
And let nature suck me in
To her passionate eternity.

The Golden heart of the two of us

The Golden heart of the two of us

My soul’s weight is in thee
Thoughts that stray in the dead of night
And morning lest the rise I come
With dresses of spiritual

Vegetation to bury me
And all that I once was or might have been
My want is to pull the garments
Of the cosmos over us

So that we might choose a body
To inhabit and a heart to hold
As strangers who hold hands
But do not know why, in that

Appointed hour, how it comes to pass
Or how the goddamned sea will kneel
When all the life on Earth has passed
I have lips unused to thee

And bashful knowing nods
And Handel in my ears
It’s a long road to freedom
But a short road to witness you free

Shall we blush the eternal blush
And face the fervent and feverish muse?
Together as a fine distraction in May
To enthral the life-force from our

Glands and organs like biological magic
And find tempestuous civility
In the weight of our need
A delight in the disorder of our sense
The hope too precise in every part?

Unmentionables

Unmentionables

Come slowly, into my life
Like a tail wind of all the charm
I always wished for, but never found
The church of my faith is dim

I could submit so easily to the right person
Reaching late for a flower
Round my heart that hums
And lost in balms I’d be

A secret for you to savour, dear
Lost I am lit for this
Counting stars and nectars
In solitude, but not alone

I would be united
In every drop of blood
With something of life’s mystery
Eros to harrow in my looks

Wild winds to sweet my fears away
Uprooted yesterdays, I’d be
Vengeance of all the thrift
You saved in your years

Of places you never went
And intimacy you always craved.