ZEN AND NOW

At last I am leaving:
I pass as all things do
over withered fields.
Listen to the voices
of pines and cedars
when no wind stirs,
life is but melting snow;
in rainless skies, a cool moon…
I have said enough about moonlight,
ask no more.
Since time began, sixty-six times
these eyes beheld the changing scene of autumn.
On a journey, ill: dew on the grass.
Pure is my heart. My dream goes wandering.
The dead alone know peace.
Farewell…

Lines taken from: Ryonen, Senseki, Banzan, Basho and Nandai

YOUR TWO CENT(O)S

I’m just stuck wanting to say something.

I wonder why I lived so long in dimming light,
the earth is in shambles;
life was a bumpy road filled with potholes.
We’ve been through such dubious times before,
what is the last thing that goes?

I heard a voice, perhaps my own…
left me sounding like a cooing dove.
Decisions must be made; the end is in sight.
Is this fire consuming?
Billows of smoke amidst the staccato drone of distant sirens,     
it seems the only way out.
And you take one last good look around.

I’ve been here for decades,
leave behind unbridled ache.
He has managed to find someplace safe to stay,
on a dead-end street with railroad tracks; hardly budging, hardly moving.
Nothing to do now, but placidly stand alone in sodden ash.

POETIC ASIDES poets lines used (somewhat in order): Brewer, Walraven, foodpoet, Hed, Niedt, Kreider, Posey, Mystical-Poet, Windham, Braedenholm, Brewer (again, it’s his toy box!), Wojtanik, Jackson, Moskowitz, posmic, Good, Harker, Clark, Sarett, Prilik.