A winter dog-walk
The little bag of his turds
briefly warms my hand
January 2019
yet more haikai
by
Okami
Caylus, France
||
||
Any time of year
full moon is like a disc of
pitted human skin.
Fluttering fly-past.
That old raku bowl is a
pleasure to drink from.
楽 raku = enjoyment, fun, entertainment, comfort…
Small smile in the sky:
the cosmos is amused by
the planet of pain.
From a far cuckoo
comes a disyllabic
ventrilo-haiku.
Watching my dog shit
I learn that content is more
essential than form.
Stormy winter night;
in between the isobars
last breaths of the old.
A winter morning:
the soap is crenellated
by the teeth of rats.
Snowflakes dancing down
on the men who are digging
another mass grave.
The summer dahlias…
The autumn chrysanthemums…
The world full of bombs.
Disliking people
I enjoy the cheerful caw-
cawing of the rooks.
Puma in the zoo-
bleak world of her cage – and Spring
is worse frustration…
Feeding my sadness-
there is no other meaning
to my existence.
Seventy-nine years old!
Shall I now start going out
to dance with the moon ?
My rural dwelling:
anywhere I choose to piss
resplendent with plants.
A piss before bed
looking up at the night’s bright
navel in the sky.
Every bedtime
I look forward to dying
even with my dog.
A snakeskin dangling
in a cobwebby window –
another poem.
Butchery-counter:
I am reminded of dying
red camellia flowers.
Relentless blue skies:
the smug sameness of
hundreds of haikai.
My mother: her grave
and the neglected churchyard
sprayed with Paraquat.
Fantastic offer –
Western Values:
two for the price of one.
Amphisbæna:
making love is not an act
– but an animal.
It is night beyond.
The fat, yellow-bellied moth
batters the window.
Sa vieille maison;
le loup-garou derrière
arrosant une Pensée.
ON READING YET ANOTHER COLLECTION
OF HAIKU POEMS (2004)
Floods in October.
I don’t ever want to read
another haiku.
more haikai by
Okami
Reedlake
Stormy winter night;
in between the isobars
last breaths of the old.
.
A winter morning:
the soap is crenellated
by the teeth of rats.
.
Snowflakes dancing down
on the men who are digging
another mass grave.
.
The summer dahlias…
The autumn chrysanthemums…
The world full of bombs.
.
Disliking people
I enjoy the cheerful caw-
cawing of the rooks.
.
Puma in the zoo-
bleak world of her cage – and Spring
is worse frustration…
.
Feeding my sadness-
there is no other meaning
to my existence.
.
Sixty-two years old!
Shall I now start going out
to dance with the moon ?
.
My rural dwelling:
anywhere I choose to piss
resplendent with plants.
.
A piss before bed
looking up at the night’s bright
navel in the sky.
.
Every bedtime
I look forward to dying
even with my dog.
.
A snakeskin dangling
in a cobwebby window –
another poem.
.
Butchery-counter:
I am reminded of dying
red camellia flowers.
.
Relentless blue skies:
the smug sameness of
hundreds of haikai.
.
My mother: her grave
and the neglected churchyard
sprayed with Paraquat.
.
Fantastic offer –
Western Values:
two for the price of one.
.
Amphisbæna:
making love is not an act
– but an animal.
.
It is night beyond.
The fat, yellow-bellied moth
batters the window.
.
Sa vieille maison;
le loup-garou derrière
arrosant une Pensée.
Breathing
is a religion;
there is no simplicity.
Asking myself
how to reach acceptance
I ruefully reply
There is no way.
In a world where nothing true is valued
I am almost happy to be not worth knowing.
“The sound of one hand clapping”:
The amputee applauding war.
“The sound of one hand clapping”:
Masturbation.
Zen is
what you’re sure it’s not.
THE UNMEANING OF LIFE
is that culture
is merely a distraction
from being.
RECENT RELAXING HAIKAI
2014
Even in winter
I send pictures of my garden
electronically.
Mouldy winter straw
makes me remember
old politicians.
Mothering Sunday –
hazy sweet memories
of bluebell woods.
Wind swings a window
and the countryside swerves just
before the rain comes.
Swallows from the shed
scythe through the gloaming to catch
the last daylight flies.
Fighting each other
old teazels and new poppies
embrace in the breeze.
In the bare meadow
after they harvested, the
hay-smell still lingers
They’re firing stubble.
Thus burn brief ambitions of
policy-drafters.
Gazing at brown leaves
perhaps I have understood
what haikai don’t say.
Breathing
is a religion;
there is no simplicity.
Asking myself
how to reach acceptance
I ruefully reply
There is no way.
In a world where nothing true is valued
I am almost happy to be not worth knowing.
“The sound of one hand clapping”:
The amputee applauding war.
“The sound of one hand clapping”:
Masturbation.
Zen is
what you’re sure it’s not.
THE UNMEANING OF LIFE
is that culture
is merely a distraction
from being.
RECENT RELAXING HAIKAI
2014
Even in winter
I send pictures of my garden
electronically.
Mouldy winter straw
makes me remember
old politicians.
Mothering Sunday –
hazy sweet memories
of bluebell woods.
Wind swings a window
and the countryside swerves just
before the rain comes.
Swallows from the shed
scythe through the gloaming to catch
the last daylight flies.
Fighting each other
old teazels and new poppies
embrace in the breeze.
In the bare meadow
after they harvested, the
hay-smell still lingers
They’re firing stubble.
Thus burn brief ambitions of
policy-drafters.
Gazing at brown leaves
perhaps I have understood
what haikai don’t say.
Breathing
is a religion;
there is no simplicity.
Asking myself
how to reach acceptance
I ruefully reply
There is no way.
In a world where nothing true is valued
I am almost happy to be not worth knowing.
“The sound of one hand clapping”:
The amputee applauding war.
“The sound of one hand clapping”:
Masturbation.
Zen is
what you’re sure it’s not.
THE UNMEANING OF LIFE
is that culture
is merely a distraction
from being.
RECENT RELAXING HAIKAI
2014
Even in winter
I send pictures of my garden
electronically.
Mouldy winter straw
makes me remember
old politicians.
Mothering Sunday –
hazy sweet memories
of bluebell woods.
Wind swings a window
and the countryside swerves just
before the rain comes.
Swallows from the shed
scythe through the gloaming to catch
the last daylight flies.
Fighting each other
old teazels and new poppies
embrace in the breeze.
In the bare meadow
after they harvested, the
hay-smell still lingers
They’re firing stubble.
Thus burn brief ambitions of
policy-drafters.
Gazing at brown leaves
perhaps I have understood
what haikai don’t say.
*Orchids! The most liberating
admission: that you don’t
really like sex.
.
*The name of these flowers derives from the Greek for ‘testicle’,
which their bulbs resemble. Similarly, the Mexican Nahuatl origin of the
word corrupted by the Spaniards to Avocado (‘pear’) meant ‘scrotum’.
.
haikai
from
ILLUSIONS
IN THREE PARTS by
IN THREE PARTS by
Okami
Journal of a Twelvemonth, 1998
 |
The Northern Lights:
the old dog shakes himself.
.
A damson falling
brings leaves and wasps
down to earth.
.
After the Sauna
night-breeze on our nipples.
The Northern Lights.
.
Huge and friendless
above McDonald’s:
the Harvest Moon.
.
Pond beneath a moonless sky:
Start and finish of everything.
.
Every year the leaves
are deported by the wind
to the camps of rot.
.
Its last blood-red leaves gone
how stiff the creeper
on the graveyard wall.
.
Hoar-frost on the hair
upon the hot chests of the
[magic] mushroom gatherers.
.
In my autumn groin
mist and rain and river
are indistinguishable.
.
Dead tree slanting athwart the stream:
Ivy-stems entwine my life.
.
After the storm, apples pass
from wasps to slugs to me.
.
Another robin in my mousetrap:
few of us fail to give humanity
a bad name.
.
Superhuman sound:
a rat gnawing the steel grille
with snow-white teeth.
.
Wagtail on the roof:
the wise man combs his beard
with a fork.
Seeming to do little
the fossil has survived
a hundred million years.
.
Full midwinter moon –
a new coalescence of
an ancient coldness ?
.
A winter morning:
the soap is crenellated
by the teeth of rats.
.
Snowflakes dancing down
on the men who are digging
another mass grave.
.
December foghorn:
yet another beckoning
from beyond the grave.
.
The weather forecast.
Millennia of wind and rain
– and now people shave.
.
Snail-trails in frost:
‘A painter should study
the stains on walls.’
.
The crotch of a winter birch:
love, like the Unicorn
is conceived here.
.
The skin of the wino
is a beautiful silk palace for lice.
.
Locked ward
and sunless winter day:
Home is where the mind is.
.
Neat path. Neat lawn.
Neat visitors.
Neat concentration-camp.
.
The moon in a veil
as if it had coldly evolved an ego.
.
Frost Kings were crowned
again last night: my garden
is bedecked with lace.
.
Digging: a fine red worm.
Wisdom: to see everything
as from the grave.
.
Thinking about my death
I enthusiastically clean out
the septic tank.
.
Dogshit on pavements:
the unconscious calligraphy
of prisoners.
.
Rotting leaves
lie on each other lovingly
in hecatombs.
.
Morning. My erection
does not belie regret
at my father’s.
.
The day in silence.
At night the telephone rings.
It’s a wrong number.
.
Winter solitude: gorse-bush
flowering in a muddy field.
.
Red sky at morning:
the blood of global greed
has reached the very clouds.
.
Between life and death
I am always hoping to climb
Out of myself.
.
Winter sunlight:
trying to pull my shadow
out of the shade…
Water on the knee –
Water on the brain – and now
Water on the moon!
.
With my dog: a cold wet day
is an oceanic experience.
.
Our lives intertwined,
Oscar and I check up on
each other’s fæces.
.
Community of luxury:
I drink the wine
while Oscar chews the cork.
.
Quiet rain. My dog expresses
so much silently – why must we
make so much noise ?
.
Every night, before
we go to bed – a brief
strip-show for my dog.
.
Ice on a puddle:
the brittle transience of wisdom.
.
Richly-ploughed field:
its beauty makes me weep
for the earth’s flaying.
.
April in Ireland.
A field of mud. A black calf
licks a beige bull’s balls.
.
Zen of orgasm:
the not-having is more
sensual than the having.
.
‘Soul’ is integrity.
Thus few humans – but all
animals – have souls.
.
Torn old coat-lining.
The April wind also nests
in a stained pocket.
A haiku: so what ?
So many haikai –
So what ?
.
Headless chicken:
creatures just as maimed think they’re
masters of the world.
.
Fighting for comfort
in front of a screen:
The American Dream.
.
Security camera
shows me my Other
going the other way.
.
Bluebottle in confessional –
not proclaiming its sins
but dying to escape.
.
An icy puddle:
It took me fifty years to realise
how shallow people are.
.
Moon – those who walked over you
are half in darkness
half in blinding light.
.
Full moon naked
above the naked tree
O for a naked mind!
A piss before bed
while admiring the night’s bright
navel in the sky.
.
The silence between wars:
The science that is false.
.
Visiting the psychiatrist:
like intimacy with a fridge.
.
Disliking people
I enjoy the cheerful caw-
cawing of the rooks.
.
Milky Way.
Stretching to infinity
the spaces between people.
.
A raindrop twinkles –
Betelgeuse upon a bush
for just three minutes.
.
Hunchback woman
with long wattle wistfully
appraises my long beard.
.
Our comfort: measure
of our disrespect for many creatures,
many things.
.
Amphisbæna:
making love is not an act
– but an animal.
.
“Aggressive Begging” –
a hundred times more gentle than
aggressive wealth.
.
Pulling June nettles
it is I who am living
in the wrong context.
.
In my summer garden
my only feeling:
how much longer.
.
Check-out. Capitalism:
the religion to end
all religions.
.
Miru tokoro. Places to see.
Kita michi wa The road I came
Hakkiri chigairu. Is clearly different
.
The joy of breakfast.
The best Java coffee-beans
pass through a feline.
.
Summer-night party –
the vomit on the grass re-
flects the Milky Way.
.
Renewing themselves
in spite of all they know
they gulp down the stars.
.
A trembling poplar.
A hen shakes out her feathers.
I think of winter.
.
Yesterday’s picnic –
only a bite away
from the grave.
.
Suburban evening:
the full moon in a frog’s eye
squashed by a jogger.
.
Autumnal thicket:
shitting on fresh-fallen leaves –
‘natural painting’.
.
Cobwebs in fog.
I can’t tell my end from my beginning.
.
An old man ploughing:
the blade cuts the last furrow
and his faint shadow.
.
Cotoneaster
berries fall in the moonlight :
blood-drops of winter.
.
Full moon, December…
pale men in a sauna look like
ice-creams ovening.
.
December mud:
from it the old potter will
create his last pot.
.
Dying: no longer
missing the boat in the dark
night of the soul.
Non-haiku postscript:
The Internet:
the greatest triumph
of form over content ?
The snow falling
tells me to stop thinking…
WEEDS…FALLING RAIN
a selection of Zen Haikai by
Taneda Santoka
new versions by 
the poetry-wolf
Santoka, Taneda lived from 1882 until 1940, and his life hinged around the moment that he was rescued from the path of an oncoming train in a suicide attempt, and brought to a nearby Zen temple. He duly became a Zen monk and devoted his life to moneyless pilgrimage (“walking Zen”) throughout Japan, existing in complete poverty and often in some squalor. Apart from a towel and the clothes he stood up in, virtually all he possessed was just one bowl: the traditional begging-bowl in which he received alms of food or perhaps money, and from which he ate and drank. Such a bowl would have been the most intimate friend and companion. Committed to Impermanence and Solitude, as his haiku indicate, he had a continuing, deep relationship with sakè, the rice wine of Japan.
It is noteworthy that the near-totalitarian régime of pre-war Japan tolerated a man who in the West would now be pumped with mind-numbing and body-deforming drugs at the very least. His haikai were greatly appreciated by the many lovers of poetry. Sent to grateful friends and acquaintances on postcards, they were never worked on or edited. He believed that they should spring freshly from the awareness of the moment.
They are nothing like the pretty pastiches, the smug pseudo-Zen observations, that pass for haiku in the West. Santoka’s haiku are spiky, raw, Stoical. Some (printed here in italics) even criticise the militaristic government of the nineteen-thirties for its annexation of Manchuria and invasion of China prior to the Second World War.
Unpleasant days:
days I don’t walk, days without booze,
haikuless days.
Sakè for flesh, haiku for soul:
sakè is the haiku of the flesh
haiku is the sakè of the soul.
Walking on and on –
my only course.
So this is what
he calls his “tea grove” –
one miserable bush!
No water but that
trickling from
the farmer in the dry rice-field.
The thistles –
fresh and sparkling
after morning rain.
At the mountain-foot
many graves resting
in the warm sunlight.
This road straight –
and empty of company.
Going deeper
and still deeper
into green mountains.
The sunshine freshly
reflecting from
my freshly-shaven head.
Begging: I accept
the burning sun.
One pot is enough;
I wash the rice.
Shining brightly in the sunshine:
my little bowl of rice.
Within life and death
snow ceaselessly falls.
I have no home;
autumn gets bleaker.
Worn and torn daily
and falling in shreds:
my cloak for travelling.
The giant camphor-tree:
the dog and I
completely soaked.
Nice road
leading to a nice building:
a crematorium.
Rain in my eyes:
I can’t read the signpost.
The sky at sunset –
a little alcohol would taste so good.
The long night:
made even longer
by a barking dog.
The louse I’ve caught
is warmer than I am!
Nonchalantly pissing
off the road
soaking the young weeds.
Winter rain clouds –
soldiers off to China
to be blown to bits.
Marching together
on the ground their feet
will never pound again.
Leaving hands and feet
behind in China:
Japanese soldiers come home.
Will the municipality
stage a banner day
for those brought back as bones ?
Baggage I can’t throw off
so heavy front and back.
In the calm stillness
after the rainstorm:
flies.
Slowly but surely
I adopt the vices
of my dead father.
Sweat:
collecting
in my navel.
Today’s lunch:
just water.
Breaking the dead branches
thinking of nothing.
Today again
no letters.
Only butterflies.
At last!
The mail’s arrived.
Soon ripe fruit will fall.
The leaves fall.
From now on
water will taste better and better.
A little woozy,
leaves fall one by one.
My begging-bowl
accepts the falling leaves.
Hailstones also
drop into my begging-bowl.
If I sell my rags
and buy some alcohol –
will there still be loneliness ?
Twilight – the sound
of a sad letter
dropping into a postbox.
Goallessly
I walk amongst tombstones.
Slowly, slowly
falling apart:
my final autumn.
I’ve become a real beggar now:
one towel.
The few flies that remain
find me familiar.
Pissing blood –
how long will I be able
to carry on ?
Coughing, coughing –
and nobody to slap my back.
No money, no possessions,
no teeth –
all alone.
My heart’s exhausted –
the mountains, the sea
are too beautiful.
Mountains I’ll never see again
fade in the distance.
When I die:
weeds,
falling rain.
Some life remains:
I scratch my belly….
.
SANTOKA’S BUTTOCKS
on the ground, staring up
and facing down the moon.
[Okami, 2015]
.
.
A COLLECTION OF HAIKU BY SANTOKA
TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BY JOHN STEVENS
UNDER THE TITLE MOUNTAIN TASTING
IS PUBLISHED BY WEATHERHILL, NEW YORK AND TOKYO.
Here is a famous poem by a contemporary of Santoka,
Kaneko Mitsuharo (1895-1975)
(translated by Anthony Weir)
OPPOSITION
When I was young
I resisted school,
and now
I resist employment.
What I most hate
are property and hygiene.
There’s nothing so inhuman
as law-abiding cleanliness.
Naturally, I contradict The Spirit of our Nation.
Duty and Social Function make me vomit.
I’m against all governments everywhere
and wave my smelly cock
at the cosy cartels of
Accepted Writers.
When I’m asked what my ‘Purpose In Life’ is,
I answer: To oppose.
When I’m facing Eastwards
I go Westward.
I do up my coat and shoes the wrong way round.
I wear my trousers back to front,
and likewise ride a horse.
What everyone else hates I like.
My greatest hate of all is
consensus, unanimity, received opinion.
So I believe that to oppose
is the only splendid thing in life.
To oppose is REALLY to live.
To oppose is to connect deeply
with the spirit within.
THE ZZzEN OF POETRY …… THE ZEN OF NON-ENLIGHTENMENT
.
‘The mind is the idea of the body.’
– Spinoza
‘A man can do what he wants,
but not want what he wants.’
– Schopenhauer
.
There is no-one who’s enlightened.
Thinking is a rotten tree.
Truth is thinnest of thin air.
Poetry is Look-at-me !
If your mind was like mine
I’d be yours.
Your mind is like mine
and I’m yours.
My mind is like yours
and you’re mine.
Only death can make us perfect.
There is no such thing as time.
I wasn’t born.
I wasn’t there.
The revelation
of the world is wildness.
Breathing
is a religion;
there is no simplicity.
Asking myself
how to reach acceptance
I ruefully reply
There is no way.
In a world where nothing true is valued
I am almost happy to be not worth knowing.
“The sound of one hand clapping”:
The amputee applauding war.
“The sound of one hand clapping”:
Masturbation.
Zen is
what you’re sure it’s not.
THE UNMEANING OF LIFE
is that culture
is merely a distraction
from being.
RECENT RELAXING HAIKAI
2014
Even in winter
I send pictures of my garden
electronically.
Mouldy winter straw
makes me remember
old politicians.
Mothering Sunday –
hazy sweet memories
of bluebell woods.
Wind swings a window
and the countryside swerves just
before the rain comes.
Swallows from the shed
scythe through the gloaming to catch
the last daylight flies.
Fighting each other
old teazels and new poppies
embrace in the breeze.
In the bare meadow
after they harvested, the
hay-smell still lingers
They’re firing stubble.
Thus burn brief ambitions of
policy-drafters.
Gazing at brown leaves
perhaps I have understood
what haikai don’t say.
.
“Poetry in the Anglosphere seems to be taught as a medium carrying within itself deep meaning,
deep imagery, and abstract symbolism.
As a man who grew up in a Buddhist culture, it is quite counter to my inclination.
Intricacy in poetry seems to me to glorify attachment to meaning, imagery and abstraction.
Buddhists are realists. They say ‘my right hand is my right hand’ and ‘my shit is just shit’.
There is no meaning in meaningfulness.
There is no beauty in the merely beautiful ordering of words.
Fortunately, some poetry outside the Anglosphere seems largely to be free of this tendency,
often displaying admirable qualities of bare-bones realism.” – Suchoon Mo
You have read nothing before this.
.
|
|
more zenpoems by anthony weir
.
A would-be disciple asked Teaching Wolf:
Please help me to still my mind.
Teaching Wolf replied:
OK. Just bring me your mind and I will calm it.
After a while the would-be disciple complained:
But I can’t find my mind!
There you are, said Teaching Wolf.
You have quietened your mind all by yourself.
IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO FIND
THE REAL THING
I had a friend
who had a friend
who had a stone
for a friend,
for a teacher:
a master
of silence.
HORTUS DELICIARUM
Unemployability is Religious Vocation
I, a priest of egregiousness
cursing miserable wisdom
met the Buddha of Hairiness
as we loafed together in saintliness
in the Garden of Togetherness.
Some claim to have heard the Spirit
even to have seen the Spirit – but I have
smelt the Spirit in the Garden of Togetherness.
Spirit is smell of connection,
genderless but not sexless
odour of earth, beyond tired, trite
worlds of words.
I said to the Buddha of Hairiness:
The only people who know wisdom
are those who have never imagined
that wisdom existed – and those who have not
succumbed to consciousness
but conquered it.
He showed me twins floating
silently, helplessly
in a womb beyond world,
and one was the Buddha of Hairiness
and the other was the melancholy priest.
This was the answer:
Flow beyond language, the barrage of consciousness,
flow is in smell and (naturally) in noses.
Flow is a nose as well as a smell,
and flow is breath, and stone, and death,
and orgasm needs neither friction nor fountain –
and enlightenment is a cell.
MIND
is rind around desire
Passion:
ration of our fire
Soul:
a hole of consciousness
Life:
a knife to carve the emptiness
zenpoems
HYMN TO DIOGENES OF SINOPE
Mystical experience is
chemicals in brains.
God is dogshit on your shoe.
What’s so wonderful about living ?
Nothing that we’re told is true.
SATURN REFLECTS
How wonderful
are spectacles –
obstacles
so magical
they let us see
other obstacles
(which may not be).
Spectacles
like testicles
are usually a pair.
But spectacles
are appendicles
you can choose
not to wear.
GRAND STYLE (TRUE OLD STORY)
Millionaire
Gordon Bennett
bought a restaurant
on entering it
And before he left
he gave it to the waiter
as a tip.
THE QUEST FOR CONVIVIALITY
Many people look for
happiness
[and some for
‘enlightenment‘]
who don’t know how to like
their best friend.
Unhappiness comes
Like sperm,
from the pursuit
of happiness and comfort.
Reality is just
a little crack
in the façade
And the façade is made of cracks.
Control birth.
Combat normality.
We are as sperm
dying in
the rectum of reality.
Mind activates awareness
Insight transcends mind
Wisdom’s a puddle, decease is catharsis
Men are honest only as they
wipe their arses.
Love
is Soup Dream,
Life
is Dream Soup.
Enlightenment
is really knowing who you really are:
an animal with pretensions.
Words are
the darkness speaking as light
pretending that comfort
is other than night.
TANTRA-MANTRA
Once you have understanding
throw that understanding away
and look for a new one,
like breath after breath,
for having is clinging.
True happiness comes
when you no longer hold on to happiness:
for the spirit needs desolation
as much as the body needs death.
AFTER A POEM ENTITLED “SLAVE BOY”
by Yusuf ibn Harun al-Ramadi (died 1022 CE)
They shaved his head
to make him unattractive,
for his beauty made them
mean.
They kicked out the night.
They abandoned him to dawn.
HOPE
Language is the opiate
from which the most
addictive drug is
manufactured by the brain.
MIDNIGHT AT THE CROSSROADS OF AWARENESS
Wisdom is the road to wisdom
The dust upon the road is love
The road is made of dust
Is unimaginably short
Wisdom unimaginably brief
Deep upon the road love lies
Burying the corpses of the almost-wise.
THE TRIUMPH OF CONSUMERISM
Now here:
nowhere.
In the sixth-floor café
of the Museum of Used Condoms
(run by the Anti-natalist, Anti-vivisection Society of Vegans)
(admission free – schoolchildren get a present from Santa)
I thought:
Every lament is merry
and every hurrah is sorry.
FOR SALE
on eBay
antique soul
travelled half-way
to hell and back
unwanted gift
no reserve
supplied with shadow
LIVING
is mystery.
Insight
is misery
as living is
for those and every
living thing
that suffers from
Man’s insightlessness.
PEACE
is the lull
between the lightning
and the thunder.
Language is
evolution’s greatest blunder.
Words
fall,
fail.
The happy bonobo’s unhappy cousins
gazed at god-droppings
and called them planets and stars,
then, ever tortured by restlessness,
decided to colonise Mars.
EK STASIS
In the soulzone
Conscious in the
Ancient armpit
Of the Unconscious
At every moment
And the beginning
And the end of time
Any tree is more wonderful
Than any work of art
And all that matters
Is awareness
That nothing matters
And fulfilment is
To fall apart.
zenpoems by anthony weir
‘You are what you eat.’
So much dead meat.
THESE ALSO
Are the Rights of Man:
To wear no clothes
To be illiterate
To have no name.
THE ZEN OF GRAMMAR
all objects are subjects.
COMPASSION
with thanks to Brekena Smajli
Compassion is flame
and the ashes of the fire.
Compassion is crossed fingers behind your back
as your shoulders hunch like a crone’s.
Compassion is the corpse floating in your eyes.
Compassion is the burying of stones.
THE NEAREST TO JOY
The nearest to joy
I have known in my fog
of awareness
was seeing
the happiness
of a dog.
HELIUM
Our planet is running
out of the second
most common element
in the universe.
ALONE, BY THE RIVER AVEYRON (after Tu-Fu)
The pain that beauty brings to me might seem to you
ridiculous, but I’m not half-crazed – not
with alcohol or cannabis, and not by madness
or by love. Springtime is frightening
as the biosphere ploughs on so pluckily to its doom.
I am lucky, I will die soon – none too soon –
but this gorgeous river and its bird-filled banks
will die slowly, become an ooze,
a miasma in its gorge.
Little buds, open carefully! The whole planet
is a grave already and will become another grave.
Stratum on stratum, grave upon grave the earth;
and we in our vainglory think our species is significant –
because we have dreamed up significance and worth.
NO PITY FOR THE YOUNG
My foreskin is a
cap upon a pen that writes
unbridgeable sighs.
Most texts are greater than the writer.
Moon-Man
BETWEEN THE CANDLE AND THE WALL
I walk among ghosts
for whom cleverness,
the lies of history
and education
are worth a whole world
more than wilderness
or mystery
or revelation.
DAYS
are for getting through
and then
forgetting.
THE WHOLE WORLD IS A
HOSPITAL
In memoriam Osho
Connection is the door
to the perfectly gentle sore.
Religion is a luxury and not a leap:
“You need a Master when you are
asleep.”
A PAGE FROM THE HANDBOOK OF HEARTBREAK
“Men have lovely bums,” you said.
Yes indeed, lovely bums,
hairy bums…
and their hearts aren’t far past
the diaper stage –
which is why I gave up
lust and rage.
BIG BANG
In the Beginning
God burst like a Balloon
Showering the World
With dirty shreds
Of indestructible Hypocrisy.
Full moon above the landfill-site:
Rubbish displays intelligence as trash.
Remaining perfect,
my dog failed to see
two butterflies on his bone.
A teeming ant’s nest –
mind, examining itself,
finds only matter.
ABOUT WISDOM
AFTER A PRAYER BY TJAGARAJA (1767-1847)
sung to the Rag Shri Ranjani
O wisdom – enchanter – was I greedy for fame?
Did I lie and deceive to gain reputation
as your greatest servant ?
Did I stoop to currying favour with worthless
people of position and power ?
Did I worry about status or money ?
For those who wish to retain their integrity
the only place to be is under your feet
and whether we wash or not, walk clothed or naked,
live or die
is of utmost irrelevance.
postscript
I studied seven years with
my Zen Master.
I learned the secret of life
as easily as falling off a log.
I learned to play
tug-of-war with a yard-brush.
My master was a Bodhisattva.
My master was a dog.
Santoka’s buttocks
on the ground staring up and
facing down the moon.
.
Knowledge comes in bottles, wisdom in a dirty cup.
HAIKU
Winter and summer
up their well-worked arses:
the haiku-writers.
Barbaric Work in Barbaric Progress.
NAM POESIN QUÆ ADMIRATIONEM NON HABET NULLAM IUDICO
|
“The more conscious we are, the more mechanical we become.” “You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Because ‘intelligence’ is little more than self-flattery, “School is ruining my life.” – Sam Agar-Francis, aged 5. _____________________________________ 13b². ‘POETS’ who spend their time The poem I dislike the most . 3. TERROR Happiness is . 5. WHAT I know about beatitude . INNER AND OUTER health-tip for men: . 497². OUROBOROS WHISPERS There aren’t enough zeros. . ¾. TAKE THIS APPLE There is surely no religion . COBRA Eye to eye . THE MEANING OF LIFE It is enough The revelation of the world
Bibulous crocodiles, . THE SECRET OF CIVILISED LIFE is to choose the right drugs,
Hot steel on a heifer. . Mystery . CHOOSE A TITLE . 11. ON WAKING UP I never can get used Everyone else I run the risk I wish they’d all join . Dogs are the best in bed,
23. Of the states of happiness . A COMMENT ON MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS OF SELF Even if I had a soul, Silence. . 347. We are the only species Is this intelligence ? . MIROIR-MOUROIR Never Though I’m a . 13. LOVE is what we long for when we lack it Hence the love-racket.
IN MEMORY OF FERNANDO PESSOA A poet is not respected .
999. The cleverest people If there have ever been any… for stupidity constantly . MADE TO FEEL If you haven’t a house you’re made to feel homeless . 33. SELF-PORTRAIT I am not a person, but a place . LIVING BOOK-TRADE The Human Library who quietly cheered
Ijo li moku e mi. Tenpo ale la pimeja li lon. . A NEO-BEKTASHI POEM We saints reject immortality
36. BECAUSE we have language . 19. HYMN TO DIOGENES OF SINOPE Now I’m 66 and I have a travel-pass and family and riches and career Alcohol’s a tender friend Man is the cancer of the world
55¼. BACK IN BED When I called the Speaking Clock . to Clive James in memory of Leoš Janácek and WB Yeats The late sublime . « Il est plus facile d’écrire un mauvais poème que d’en comprendre un bon. » . 2. HOMELESS God lived in a hotel He died in his bed. Jesus said The kindest cut . OVERCOMING CONSCIOUSNESS Against Nietzsche’s . 55¾. RUEFUL Torturers get . PROTEST SONG Hey X (Hey Y, Hey Z…) – Damn you!
1309. Those hackneyed lines about . The art best cultivated is the art of waiting or for the strength of clay . 0.12341. All the world’s Great Art . INSPIRED (?) Poems . 21. THE BIG step to freedom . Since we outbred the Neanderthals and insatiable. . WE KNOW ONLY -2% OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING The Gap Between the Worlds . 20. SOME HOPE II Enlightenment is just an From the oppression of optimism . This planet is an amazing . 666. MY REVENGE against my unknown father
7. THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA OF NOTHING Work also is a drug The workless The less-perceptible dealers encyclopædias of emptiness all with caves beneath their skin . 8. SOLITUDE IS A GREAT RESOURCE Of all renunciations Winning
Apart from dogs, less than a handful of people that I’ve met . JUST ANOTHER RAPE ? In waste-pain of ruin the lost jerk and squirm The best of Man is his ruins. Sperm doesn’t care Those who believe in gods or a god and paradise God knows: I saw God again
135. SOME HOPE I I do not wish Death is the greatest gift to the living. . Non-penetrative ‘sex’ is to the cruder kind . 26a It often has been . 1. How wrong that people . 13. AFTER ADORNO Novels are anecdotal. . 46. LINES TO SÉAMUS A poem is a kind of rumour
333a. The only human artefact The forests have gone, . LIBERATION SQUARE It might be called Liberation Square It might well have been . Education: When the blind How futile . DAYS My correspondent wrote: Days are often good to me. But am I good to days ? He’s dead now, There is no Truth And the One True God is . CHILDREN OF AFRICA There is more variety in vegetables than in people Hyænas love tanks . SELF-PORTRAIT IN A WARDROBE a rag . ALL BLOOD TASTES THE SAME Men’s armpits in their natural state though maybe not to dogs.
CHRISTMAS The illusion of giving. . THE UNDERWHELMINGNESS OF EJACULATION Sexuality and I have had The surrender of autonomy . HISTORY To a greater . OXYMORONIC Poetry . A MAN IN JAPAN conducted his without his and received Japan also has who conduct their lives . THE IMITATION OF DIOGENES Avoiding breeders For this I am grateful . THE SECRET OF LIFE Le secret de la vie We define ourselves The secret of life . THE TRIUMPH OF CONSUMERISM Now here
TRUFFLES There’s gotta be a reason . A WASHING POEM The best thing about the Tuareg My brain remains unwashed. . UNWASHED At this point I will say But I keep well (and my lovers love my smell). . IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF CONFUCIUS ? At 20 I wanted to be a Philosopher. If I live to 80, alas! I will not have got the guts . POETIC ESSAY In Ancient Greece In Ancient Greece Why cannot unwanted babies now ‘Because they might be used for sex’ . THE GAP BETWEEN THE WORLDS is the great consciousness between is the universe . 789. I dreamed I asked Diogenes You mean, apart from . WRITING HOME IN 2058 Nothing . I’M ALWAYS HAPPY when I feel I’m dying. . HAIKAI White Chinese Dragon White Chinese Dragon * Winter and summer
Humans are horrible. |
more in my blog >>>
.
PERHAPS…
a poem to be read aloud
before a crowd
.
PERHAPS
truth is the first casualty of culture.
PERHAPS
a truth is a truth
only until it is
accepted.
PERHAPS
what we call ‘intelligence’
is Enhanced Stupidity
(or do I mean cupidity ?) –
for if mankind was better than dysfunctional,
had true intelligence,
and was not obsessed by gain,
he would have devoted it entirely
to sensual pleasure and being beautifully
happy, rather than
to trashing a world
that he truly filled with pain…
PERHAPS
the most wonderful
word I know
is
I N T E R I M
PERHAPS
sharing
is better than
just caring.
PERHAPS
I am because
you are
and I don’t know
who you are.
PERHAPS
I am not a person, but a place
of thistly thought.
PERHAPS
a poem’s a small echo
heard through deadly noise.
PERHAPS
the most destructive liberty
is calumny.
PERHAPS
a good sexual partner
is someone who can do and enjoy
more than two things at a time.
PERHAPS
it is only when people are out of harmony
with themselves and others
that sex assumes grotesque importance.
PERHAPS
we are hungry ghosts,
all equal
in our emptiness.
Perhaps
‘enlightenment’
is elegantly-doing
nothing.
PERHAPS
what the hungry ghosts call
life
is merely virtual
for the very few who
live.
PERHAPS
the more you know
the more you do not know.
PERHAPS
marriage is the ashtray
of romance.
PERHAPS
their ‘crimes against humanity’
are nothing compared with
our crimes against nature
every day.
PERHAPS
true soldiers
shoot themselves.
PERHAPS
the most terrifying cliché
is
“while / where there’s life there’s hope”.
PERHAPS
the greatest achievement is
stillness.
PERHAPS
we are our genitals
(to a large extent).
Men— rigid, wilful
driving home intentions,
points and arguments
to prove their prime;
Women— pliant,
generous, fluent, subtle
(at least some of the time).
PERHAPS
love is the most
expensive way to learn humility.
PERHAPS
to love solitude
is to know happiness.
PERHAPS
respectability
is the worst kind of
corruption.
PERHAPS
gentleness
is preferable to
kindness.
PERHAPS
‘god’ is in each of us,
armpit and arsehole,
foreskin and vulva,
cancer and pustule,
dandruff and fæces –
while ‘the devil’ is in
words and theses.
PERHAPS
religion is
at best
the politics of the supernatural,
and
at worst
the economics of superstition.
PERHAPS
the best thing about the Tuareg
is that they never wash.
PERHAPS
education
acts on the mind of a child
as a Trojan virus does
on a computer.
PERHAPS
the logical materialism of our civilisation
owes much more to materialism
than to logic.
PERHAPS
progress should be measured by
the diminution of the self,
not the world.
PERHAPS
poetry is not ‘the best words
in the best order’,
but the tautest expression
of the fiercest thoughts.
PERHAPS
life is
piles of trivialities
until the last supper
intravenously
way beyond hope.
PERHAPS
as knowledge of minutiæ increases
wisdom declines.
PERHAPS
a tombstone
is attachment
petrified.
PERHAPS
the earth was formed
from the smashed womb
of the Angel of Suicide.
PERHAPS
in the Beginning
was no word,
for words
are outcry
of absence.
PERHAPS
the hair around my heart
was always grey.
PERHAPS
a genius is someone
born with exactly the right psychoses
at the right place
at the right moment.
PERHAPS
people who miss people
really miss themselves.
PERHAPS
the only vacuum
is the space between people.
The rest is connectivity.
PERHAPS
deep down
most of us are
shallow graves.
PERHAPS
only cruelty is more despicable
than self-promotion.
PERHAPS
the culture of capitalism
is the decoration of greed.
PERHAPS
because humans
live like humans
inhumanely,
animals
can’t live as animals.
PERHAPS
the most liberating freedom
a person can enjoy is
the freedom from wanting
the approval of others – an attitude
which, of course, depends on
freedom from oppressive family
and the fear of solitude.
PERHAPS
in the end
everything is food
and death.
PERHAPS
the personal
is the political
only
when the personal
is just for show.
PERHAPS
‘the intelligentsia’
is a mafia because
none of them is
intelligent enough
to be dissonant
or dissident.
PERHAPS
purpose is the last religion,
(whose chief and murderous god is money).
PERHAPS
no philosophy
is worth expressing.
PERHAPS
even the poor
have more money than sense
PERHAPS
it is enough
to picture blind conspiracy
of molecules – of stuff
and anti-stuff.
PERHAPS
consciousness
is a wound.
PERHAPS
the first step towards wisdom
is to cut off your feet
PERHAPS
it’s not what’s going on that matters
but what’s going off.
PERHAPS
nothing that is guarded
is worth having.
PERHAPS
without God
or gods
we would still be in Paradise.
PERHAPS
silence is the truest
depth within us.
PERHAPS
opprobrium is more
trustworthy than praise.
PERHAPS
it is a blessing
to gain the hate
of the hateful
who are legion.
PERHAPS
obedience is
not humility.
PERHAPS
thinking is not doing
but refracting.
PERHAPS
thinking about thinking
is becoming.
PERHAPS
the Evil Empire is not capitalism
but the family.
PERHAPS
some of us aren’t born
with a vacuum inside.
PERHAPS
happiness comes
not when the unfillable hole is blocked
but when the wound is healed by licking.
PERHAPS
the core of confidence
is humility.
Or, to put it another way,
true confidence is humble.
PERHAPS
poetry is not
‘the best words in the best order’,
but the tautest expression
of the fiercest thoughts.
PERHAPS
philosophy is distraction
from distraction
by distraction.
PERHAPS
it is because anger
is the most genuine emotion
that it is the one
least countenanced.
PERHAPS
time
in the toilet of the restaurant
at the end of the universe
is very sick.
PERHAPS
the only art
to have much improved
since prehistoric times
is the art of war.
PERHAPS
the most addictive video-game is
sex.
PERHAPS
sex is better on your own,
since nothing that you do is false.
PERHAPS
what most people think is
social harmony
is just inertia.
PERHAPS
optimism
is never more than
shallow.
PERHAPS
most human activity is needless –
– except the prevention of human activity.
PERHAPS
the finest human achievement
is the undoing of human achievement.
PERHAPS
the best of man is his ruins.
PERHAPS
Life is
Death masturbating.
PERHAPS
dying is when everything has gone
except the feeling of going.
PERHAPS
every opinion is smug
– even this one.
PERHAPS
marriage is the ash-tray
of romance.
PERHAPS
testosterone
has wrecked a million
times more lives than heroin.
PERHAPS
the most destructive drug
is work.
PERHAPS
we were all ‘Best Before‘
we were born.
PERHAPS
the worst thing
that can befall a writer
is to be published.
PERHAPS
the Coca-Cola of love needs to be tasted
before the wine of friendship can be fully appreciated.
PERHAPS
it is kinder
to be a pædophile
than to be a
meat-eater…
PERHAPS
…kinder still
not to have children.
PERHAPS
the keenest Christians
and Muslims have always been murderous.
PERHAPS
what is sacred
is secret –
which is perhaps why holy books
are no more
and no less
than literature.
PERHAPS
success
is a lead balloon
for airheads,
while failure
is the comfort
of philosophers.
PERHAPS
children don’t know they are
plans
and adults don’t know they are
ruins.
PERHAPS
the object of Democracy
is to ensure that everyone
practises
‘decently’
the same hypocrisy.
PERHAPS
the greatest evil
is its celebration of itself.
PERHAPS
the greatest evil
is the most basic
desire.
PERHAPS
the world is ruled
by strengthless dead
in dodgem cars.
PERHAPS
the greatest power is
no-power:
a molecule of air.
PERHAPS
love is the other side
of a coin.
PERHAPS
‘soul’ is just a fancy name
for misery.
PERHAPS
Osama bin Laden
was a most interesting
latter-day fusion
of Agamemnon
with Odysseus.
PERHAPS
the best that one can be
is useless.
PERHAPS
wisdom
is dark.
and stupidity
is blinding light.
PERHAPS
mind, too
is shit.
PERHAPS
it is the trivial people
not the serious
who need to ‘lighten up’.
PERHAPS
every ‘middle-class’ value
is false.
PERHAPS
the basic Human Problem
is that human imagination
is not compatible
with possibility.
PERHAPS
sex is silly –
though sometimes it seems
majestic.
PERHAPS
the biggest mistake
one can make
is to take
oneself
seriously.
PERHAPS
Anglophones
are good at catching shoplifters
because they are always looking sideways.
PERHAPS
shadows
are the illuminations
of the secret.
PERHAPS
desire is what the Mummy-Lords decree.
PERHAPS
Christian Heaven
is as sterile
as a hospital
without a single animal.
PERHAPS
Never
is where most
people live.
PERHAPS
The Good Life is
doing nothing
disgracefully gracefully.
PERHAPS
there is nothing to understand
because meaning
is meaningless.
PERHAPS
who is dead, and who’s alive
is often mere opinion.
PERHAPS
war can be abolished
only by abolishing armies.
PERHAPS
most people would rather
be entertained than wise
– or happy!
PERHAPS
the only humility possible
within our culture
is anonymity.
PERHAPS
the only good property
is the property nobody wants.
PERHAPS
only nihilists
can be happy
in an urban culture.
PERHAPS
words corrupt
everything they seem
to describe.
PERHAPS
you are an egg
waiting to be hatched.
PERHAPS
the madness
of mass-murderers
is unexceptional.
PERHAPS
even the brightest
of us do not know
what to do with
our intelligence.
PERHAPS
to call someone ‘negative’
is a fairly negative thing to do.
PERHAPS
only some beggars
are not corrupt.
PERHAPS
all frontiers are sordid.
PERHAPS
the most powerful word
is not Exterminate!
but
but.
PERHAPS
our minds are ruled by stories,
and perhaps every story is false.
PERHAPS
the process of embalming
starts soon after birth.
PERHAPS
the brain and the heart
are houses without air.
PERHAPS
for those who are into self-harm
and guilt,
Jesus is a Godsend.
PERHAPS
more love is involved
in planting trees
than ‘having sex’.
Why do human babies cry ?
PERHAPS
because human life
is such an outrageous
imposition;
or because human consciousness
is a kind of
continual drowning…
PERHAPS
I am
a bubble of being
outside the bubble
of breeding, of meat-
eaters – almost
a ghetto of one.
PERHAPS
knowing
is just another form of
having –
a substitute for
being.
PERHAPS
the more that humans achieve
the emptier they become.
PERHAPS
apart from our turds
(which dung-beetles like)
and our corpses
(which vultures value)
and our blood
(which nourishes leeches)
and our bones
(which dogs love to bury)
the only good thing that humans produce
(and which few other animals appreciate
is music.
PERHAPS
Grace
is stone, fur, fruit
catastrophe.
PERHAPS
God is disease
of idea.
PERHAPS
God is a tree.
PERHAPS
life is
the cheapest thing on the planet.
PERHAPS
the only freedom from
is the freedom from desire
(including the desire to live)
– and the only freedom to
is the freedom to die happy.
PERHAPS
religion
is Jihad
against sanity.
PERHAPS
Original Sin
is taking yourself
seriously.
PERHAPS
terrorism
corrupts terrorists
just as consumption
corrupts consumers.
PERHAPS
the only desire
not trivial
is the desire for death.
PERHAPS
the world is turning
into desert
and cities.
PERHAPS
we are encyclopædias
of emptiness.
PERHAPS
‘intelligence’
is just a fancy word
for ‘pathological cunning’ –
and against it we
and the world
have no defence.
PERHAPS
life
is a knife
in dying air.
PERHAPS
dissidents
are just the few and only people
who dare – or bother – to think.
PERHAPS
war
is peace on the rampage.
PERHAPS
what unites most people
is the refusal to see
the pity of things.
PERHAPS
memories
are the scabs of consciousness.
PERHAPS
truth
is something more lost
than gained.
PERHAPS
music
is in the instrument not made.
PERHAPS
for a dog
god also is a smell.
PERHAPS
oil, not tears,
issues from the eyes of Islam
(which perhaps is pissing blood).
PERHAPS
every institution
defeats its purpose.
PERHAPS
you are truly alone
when you have no-one
to say Good-bye to.
PERHAPS
God and Love
are disease
when joined together.
PERHAPS
evil prospers
because comfort corrupts.
PERHAPS
the Garden of Eden was
WILD.
PERHAPS
passion
is the friction
between doing
and being.
PERHAPS
death
is the
Museum of Enlightenment.
PERHAPS
‘enlightenment’ is just an
extreme form of resignation.
PERHAPS
sympathy is just a little
more than an extension of
self-pity.
PERHAPS
of all renunciations
the most difficult is loss.
PERHAPS
this European culture that we treasure
is just the gulag of our pleasure.
PERHAPS
the secret of life
is to hate it
and be happy.
PERHAPS
death is the greatest gift to the living.
PERHAPS
housework
is better done in the dark:
it’s so much easier
and leaves the day free
for sleep or the tending of plants.
PERHAPS
the same is not so true for sex.
PERHAPS
the worst invention of all time
(apart from writing
and the measurement of time itself)
is the Water Closet – the start
of a sewage treatment system
that wastefully, expensively
breaks down, disperses
our excrements, thus squandering
one of the world’s
most renewable resources.
PERHAPS
as rare as the Unicorn
is the believer of good faith.
PERHAPS
the stupidest thing
about The Only Stupid Species
is that, unlike really
successful animals like rats,
cockroaches, spiders
and many other beasts
of true distinction,
we refuse to eat our dead.
PERHAPS
depression
is a trick
of consciousness which
we take too seriously.
PERHAPS
God has a terrible defect:
like Stalin, He hates intellect.
PERHAPS
rot is not death
– but life everlasting.
PERHAPS
because I talk to Death
and not to God
the latter says I am a fraud.
The former kisses me
on bended knee –
I hold my breath.
PERHAPS
marriage
is an early symptom
of senility.
PERHAPS
’empowerment’
is just an easier kind of
enslavement.
PERHAPS
everything human
is corrupted with desire.
PERHAPS
only through grief
will happiness emerge.
PERHAPS
in wishing the worst for humanity
I wish the best for the world.
PERHAPS
to be single is not a curse
but an accomplishment.
PERHAPS
it is way too late
for us to have a future.
PERHAPS
it’s not ‘love’
that ‘makes the world
go round’ –
but the seizing
and abuse of power.
PERHAPS
those who most complain
about rain
are those who are trashing the planet.
PERHAPS
the meaning of
catastrophe
is the catastrophe
of meaning.
PERHAPS
humility
is really knowing
that you are
the only kind of animal
that sneers.
PERHAPS
real people
don’t shave.
PERHAPS
true intellectuals
have no friends.
PERHAPS
life is a foreign language.
PERHAPS
death is a smile.
PERHAPS
we each live in a nutcracker
between the outrage of employment
and the insult of entertainment.
PERHAPS
religion is
more an attempt to
justify the unjustifiable
than to explain the inexplicable.
PERHAPS
love is
estrangement’s
distorting mirror.
PERHAPS
description
turns ‘reality’
to ‘fiction’.
PERHAPS
a true atheist
is truly hard to find.
PERHAPS
to loaf
is the secret
of life.
PERHAPS
Western democracy
is the dictatorship
of hypocrisy.
PERHAPS
the morality of conformity is immorality.
PERHAPS
the poetry of government
is the fear of revolution.
PERHAPS
if ‘Free Spirit’ came with a T-shirt
there would be no T-shirts.
PERHAPS
what for you is squalid and nasty
is the beauty of my life.
PERHAPS
between the breeders and the homos
and the home-owners
are those who
might be the
independent few.
PERHAPS
money makes no-one happy
because it is only a means
to the impossible satisfaction
of infantile desires.
PERHAPS
happiness is unconsciousness,
and the nearest thing to happiness
is an erotic dream.
PERHAPS
Zen is
what you’re sure
it’s not.
PERHAPS
the purest poem
is the humble
mumble.
PERHAPS
in a society
where nothing true is valued
I am not worth knowing.
PERHAPS
my writing suffers badly
from my lack of imagination.
(‘All my words come back to me
in shades of mediocrity.’)
PERHAPS
yet
but
so
then
and
though
nevertheless
PERHAPS
you write a poem,
stop. Then silence.
Perhaps the silence is
a better poem, and
the rest
(as Verlaine wrote)
is merely literature.
.
.
poetrywolf 
