...

@rookie54 said
Leaning on my staff, I summon the recluse,
Since ancient times this wild road has lain here.
The cave in the crags is bare of criss-cross beams,
But among these hills is the sound of a singing lute.

- Tso Ssu (306)

I take a piss, but not on the ancient road.
I wish I could find a cave in all this geometry
and jabber. Maybe I have become the cave,
full of nothing but my own nonsense.

-- Ezra Hazmat (2019)

@rookie54 said
Just as water flows under the ground
So those who seek it find it,
Without thought, without end,
Its effective power all-pervasive,
Buddha knowledge is also like this,
Being in creatures’ minds;
If any work on it with diligence,
They will soon find the light of knowledge.

- Avatamsaka Sutra

"water flowing underground"
-- The Talking Heads

@rookie54 said
All Buddhas and all ordinary beings
Are nothing but the one mind.
This mind is
Beginningless and endless,
Unborn and indestructible.
It has no color or shape,
Neither exists not doesn’t exist,
Isn’t old or new, long or short,
Large or small,
Since it transcends all measures,
Limits and comparisons.
It is what you see in front of you.
Start to think about it and
Immediately you are mistaken.

- Huang-Po

All this verbiage
in the service of an untestable assertion.
Just another
arbitrary point of view.
Bah!

-- Chao Chao Pao

@hakima said
What the Day Gives
by Jeanne Lohmann


Suddenly, sun. Over my shoulder
in the middle of gray November
what I hoped to do comes back,
asking.

Across the street the fiery trees
hold onto their leaves,
red and gold in the final months
of this unfinished year,
they offer blazing riddles.

In the frozen fields of my life
there are no shortcuts to spring,
but st ...[text shortened]... form of courage,
to be happy.
~

God bless everyone...
No exceptions.

Nice one!

@rookie54 said
Mind now a twin to stark late autumn trees
while eyes delight in the flowering of spring.
I inhabit the constant and wait out the end,
content to dwell at ease in all change and loss,
in this regret there's no kindred spirit here
to climb this ladder of azure clouds with me.

- Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433)

Very nice.

Beneath the seas the Dead One dreams --
Some say that love lies bleeding --
Filling our minds with unholy chimes
And a glimpse of Night's Great Gleaming.

I hearkened to a sparrow crew
Whose marrow was delicious.
But now I've et my dingo, too.
It seems I am pernicious.

@rookie54 said
A thousand words,
Ten thousand explanations;
I just want to tell you not to be ignorant.
If you wish to meet the deathless one
Within the hut,
He’s no different from this skin bag here and now.

- Shi-tou Xiqian (700-790)

A monkey man is full of words
And words are full of nothing.
I wish I had a suitable word
That also rhymed with nothing.

@rookie54 said
A Chan hut beneath a pine;
Moss lush, paths indistinct.
Green mountains:
Seen at spring’s end;
Flowing water:
Heard in deep night.
He’s not sitting
On a gaze-at-the-mind-rock;
Perhaps he’s followed
Roused-from-concentration clouds?
Monkeys and apes can’t be asked where he is:
Cliffs and valleys alone in empty twilight.

- Qibai (847-860)

This one just seems to be bragging, "Ooh, I'm so enlightened."

@caesar-salad said
A monkey man is full of words
And words are full of nothing.
I wish I had a suitable word
That also rhymed with nothing.

Do not stop your potential and linger in thought over these lines using your conceptual mind and inbred biases.
If you do, the more you explain, the farther away you get.
Thus it is better to study the living phrase.

- T’aego

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

Maya Angelou

@Ghost-of-a-Duke

Watch it Now Ghost! I read that some people had very shady opinions about Maya Angelu.

Watch it!
Watch it there !! Might be a cult.

@sonship said
@Ghost-of-a-Duke

Watch it Now Ghost! I read that some people had very shady opinions about Maya Angelu.

Watch it!
Watch it there !! Might be a cult.

This is a poetry thread,
so kindly halt,
no more from Lee
or his crackpot cult.

Anon

@Ghost-of-a-Duke

Okay, I'll make it poetic.

When I was in Wintson Salem,
A storm of a controversy came like a tail wind.

Mayou Angalu was stirring up a stew,
Conservative students at Wake Forrest U.

Protested that she should not be exalted.
Two vocal students wanted her halted.

"She brags about having been a madame."
But great poets write also about what saddened.

Others defended her writing as quite good.
Some said "Nay, she's bad for the campus neighborhood."

How I remember that storm.
Why of this poet am I SO WARNED ??

If you want to be happy
There’s no way better than the hermit’s
Flowers in the grove, endless brocade
Every single season’s colors new
Just sit beside the chasm
Turn your head, as the moon rolls by
Yet though I ought to be at joyous ease
I can’t stop thinking of the others.

- Shih-Te (~730)