Drinking coffee during the night,

sick, dizzy,

when I should be in bed,

but there nightmares enter the sleeping mind

and to strange dimensions guide our thoughts.

To die in a nighmare,

to never wake

and to understand it was a dream

and that a greater dream is ending

- not the fate I want,

I dread to think

of what my loved ones felt.

No, I shall linger here,

awake and tired and ill,

but master of my thoughts,

with a cane driving them through this darkness

until the morning comes.

Now fear is the shepherd that best

keeps my flock together. 

31.03.2015

Advice to the Seafarer

Forget to take your medicine

and you become a creaky ship riding huge waves

in your own home, a raging ocean

where the bottom of the floor

calls for the unwary mariner.

So go steady, cross small paths of the sea

like those who first tamed the waves,

from island table to islet chair to the continent of the bed

in small, brave moves when the weather is at it's best.

31.03.2015

Love is pain

not yet felt,

 the first touch

of the blade

on the skin

before it cuts.

30.03.2015

Coming up with riddles,

riding them into nibbana

- what kind of wisdom is that,

the enlightenment that strucks

like the abbot's cane!

29.03.2015

That moment of looking back,

the dead being lost again,

turning into a statue

- the gods telling humans

do not look bad, do not feel regret

and do not be a human being,

be like a god, unfeeling, distant.

29.03.2015

To hate "America" is to love humanity,

to be "anti-American" is to embrace humanity,

to call "Death to America" is to protect humanity.

Death to America!

29.03.2015

pauper poets and wandering bards

all those poets

going around as vagrants

begging or just settling here and there
in an acquitance's home

to enjoy hospitality

(let's forget the occasional theft)

leaving poems behind them

scribbling fictions in notebooks

about the landscapes

experiences

because that's art

the erasion of what is

replaced with what should be

one face of it, art

zig-zagging around countries

through the centuries

restless

to be called sages

dozing off under trees

bridges

in railway cars

in river boats

as the rain hammered

and civilisations

were lights being turned off

sleeping away

drunken

with words

falling scattered leaves

snowflakes

in the soil where we seek

their footprints

28.03.2015

Ad me ipsum

I heard you were

happy, once

and that now

the memory

is like a dream

barely remembered

or a faded photograph

betrayed by time

the presence of the lost

the loved like the light

that then shine

upon them and you

23.03.2015

under azure sky

the monks in yellow and red

drink and gossip

in the warmth of the spring sun

and nibbana

is as far away

as the night and the stars

and the cold moon

hovering over their sleep

23.03.2015

To lovers

Oh lovers,

you are just machines of flesh

made for reproduction,

to pass on the genes

to their immortality.

All those sweet words,

all those kisses, embraces

and the rest,

all just there

to lead to the act,

to the future

through another human bridge

for our past to pass on.

23.03.2015

Night, cold shivers,

coffee and a few pills;

the lavatory where

a book of poetry waits

sees regular visits

and outside, one

unbreakable darkness.

23.03.2015

Christian compassion in white-and-blue colours

We will cut funding to the World Food Programme

if our government recognizes Palestine's independence

declare the US Congress members

so proudly Christian and Zionist

these millionaires

who think that power is justice and weakness is guilt

that poverty is god's punishment

and that like a camel goes through needle's eye

one hundred percent time

so shall they march to Heaven

under the flag of Israel

23.03.2015

Blaming the wife

You waited for me

says Ulysses, amazed

I never

expected

Penelope

I thought I would just

have to kill one man

but now

look at all these

dead suitors

are you happy,

my love?

23.03.2015

Young poet Gary Snyder in Japan

The poet, a small man,

in a shack - so the text says -

looking almost scared

abandoned

eyes black dots question

the photographer

beside a picture

of some fat jolly old deity

or holy man laughing

to the world, religion

and all those

who pursue them seriously

in this fleeting world

where in a second or two

a person can turn

into a black shadow

on a wall in Hiroshima or Nagasaki

 23.03.2015

 The Firing by Gary Snyder

To John Chappell(1931-1964) and Les Blakebrough

The still living poet visiting the two potters

on a motorcycle

and on motorcycle the dead potter would die

the next year in the last continent

and now on my monitor

the living one a withered old man

skin more than flesh over bones

speaks of his art

paints a pot with shellac

after having left Tasmania behind him

the dead one in an old photo from Japan
(or New Zealand, we don't know)

part of history now in white-and-black

wary

the eyes looking at us

seem to have known the spread of time

awaiting

and both live (and the dead lies dead,

remembered)

in the poem written by the poet

on that long ago gone day

whose fires have gone cold

fifty-two years ago

the art remains, crisp

23.03.2015

Words, growing into sentences

liberated us

from the confines of the mere everyday

struggle for survival

in those long gone African days,

so much more could be shared

and our speech, remembered

and repeated,

could reach so far,

farther than our burgeoning imagination

could carry us,

through two million years

in ever-growing sphere of knowledge,

understanding and wonder.

18.03.2015

 

Expedition heading to the wreck of the HMS Erebus

Ice diving on the wreck of the Erebus

seeking linen pages with words

to give voice to dead men

who mad with lead poisoning

and in pain from scurvy

might have left a message

to pierce the shroud of time

tell us who died when

and whose hand wrote the last note

whose dead flesh was submerged with the ship

16.03.2015

 Global warming

spring is coming

the sun is caressing the naked branches

streams sing their little songs

last autumn is revealed from under the snow

fallen leaves dead grass

but it's too early mid-march

this should be the landscape

sounds of mid- to late april

changed world so many weeks

before first buds appear on leaf trees

a second autumn

under the bright sun of the late lost winter

16.03.2015

The are five different aspects

to take into account

when considering buying a book:

Who wrote it,

the subject,

if it's well written,

the covers

and the scent of it's pages.

Old books have the last

in their favour,

character

that can be enjoyed

again and again

unlike old wine

once un-corked.

15.03.2015

The joy we felt in the past

shall never return,

the spring that

fed it has dried,

to find a source of happiness

to sustain the years to come

we must leave it,

go and wander, seeking

what the world will give us,

to try to create ourselves

what others can't.

15.03.2015

Reading The Gateless Barrier,

easy to see what the Zen monks wanted

when you apply a little bit of physics

about quantum tunneling.

There is no Gate in the wall

that guards the Truth,

but stand beside the wall

and one moment

you may find yourself

on the other side.

Breaking the standard rules

and getting to the essence -

even unlikely events

will come true,

The Gateless Barrier

pierced and unbroken.

15.03.2015

When I look into a mirror

I see a machine

breaking down

13.03.2015

Brief, everlasting

single life

in years, in effect

beyond last breath

a ripple spreading

forward from your deeds

13.03.2015

Opening, closing

the world

greeting, leaving

us

13.03.2015

Stars in the sky

that deep well of space

where dropped

we never reach bottom

09.03.2015

Broken lines

missing words

the emptiness

that devoured

became you

o Sappho!

09.03.2015

Sick of Australia

We are sick of Australia,

Tony Abbott,

we are sick of your coal,

we are sick of your drowned refugees,

we are sick of your offshore detention centres,

we are sick of your refusal to confront global warming,

we are sick of your support for nasty regimes

in Israel and Sri Lanka,

we are sick of your indigenous people living in poverty,

marginalized

we are sick of your whining,

we are sick of your temper tantrums,

we are sick of you wrecking the Great Barrier Reef,

we are sick of you,

Tony Abbott,

we are sick of Canberra.

09.03.2015

Apamea, Calah, Hatra

ripped apart

thousands of years

of civilisation, culture,

history, ordinary life

destroyed, stolen

the roots

digged up and torn away

memory

identity

bulldozed drilled hacked

Year Zero

Weep for the loss

of generations past

to all generations to come

us, our self-created iconoclasts

weep not for us

in anger

comdemn these two halves

of the same evil

the colonialist

and the iconoclast

feeding from the same

twisting body

09.03.2015

Dare to disturb the world -

if necessary,

kick it in the groin.

08.03.2015

Climate Change On Early March Afternoon

Murky day,

the winter flows away in ditches,

reflects trees and clouds in pools,

and birds, confused

sing on branches

where no leaf shall bud

for months to come.

08.03.2015

nature as geologist

the river flows

between the mountains

spears of rock

from the past

it flows

through time

deeper and deeper

farther into the past

uncovers destroys

flowing flowing

08.03.2015

The good part in pre-literate societies

living without literate neighbours

is that the names of their tyrants and despots

and their henchmen

have been forever lost,

a damnatio memoriae.

08.03.2015

Terrorist is only

a statesman without

a state to use as a tool

for violence.

08.03.2015

You know it's time to start thinking

about your own mortality when it hurts as you pee

(and have to go the WC every hour)

but what's the point, I remember

her in the hospital bed,

sorrowful eyes

and know all about death

from that memory of my mother.

07.03.2015

We are the ashes of stars

fading embers

of nuclear fires

once blazing at cores of stars

still we briefly

shine bright

radiant

in the cosmic night

07.03.2015

 After Enlightenment

Was it really worth

to sacrifice all those decades

to seek inner peace

when the knowledge

is but for a few

fleeting years,

oh Master?

Sought, and found,

fifty decades, sixty decades

spent -

who can remember?

Knowledge holds firm in the mind,

but life is now a candle

flickering in the wind.

07.03.2015

You can't beat wisdom

into a person,

but you certainly

can beat it out.

07.03.2015

All those Zen masters

caning their pupils

beating them purple

probably just liked

the sound

of wood hitting flesh

07.03.2015

 Outside Bodhidharma's Cave

If the price of wisdom

is an arm,

consider cutting off

the hand of the one

holding the wisdom,

not yours.

After all,

it might not be

worth it.

07.03.2015

Too late we understood

we were never going to

inherit the Earth,

just left watching

as the keys changed owner,

locks were replaced

and newly painted sign

"Private Property"

was put on the yard.

07.03.2015

We who don't have potential,

nor capability

anymore

but have oceans of anger

swelling inside us,

we must remember

that it's sometimes enough

to just give a nudge

to the first domino in the line.

06.03.2015

Knowledge does increase pain

- your pain in this world of sorrow.

Ignorance increases the pain

you cause to others.

06.03.2015

There's only one great cause

to fight for in this world,

the cause which includes

all important struggles:

The fight against injustice.

06.03.2015

Flipping between spring and winter,

rain and snow,

always under gray cloud skies

a landscape painted black and white,

and you, human, that

black dot added off-handedly.

06.03.2015

To live

is to lose

to change

Either you

lose so much

you stop cease

Or you change

transform

into someone else

Who looks

back at your life

with a stranger's eyes

01.03.2015

Into the Wild

You wandered off

in the hills

in the ever-green forests

going up and down

their slopes

now you are

the hills

their old stones

the trees darkening

in the fading light

the sound of the stream

caressing mossy stones

ever one

with the birds calling

the wind that

comes crisp

smooth like stones

from the bottom of the stream

sculpted by the water

the ages

somewhere

faraway

among the pines and the firs

melting into the night

your voice

still echoing

01.03.2015