Just Wrought

Seattle Star Publishes "316"

Wow, The Seattle Star published my new poem "316".  Kind of thrilling for me, frankly.

St. Peckinpah

 
"Come" she told me, "with your shame and your gringo." I looked up & stepped toward
the old woman, black habit
standing under the sun-white arch of the church.
She was called Agatha, mistress of God.
And I would be called graverobber, trapped in a movie
trapped in Mexico, some hundred & eight miles from the border,
with a man's head in a Scotch plaid hatbox. Fucking flies. And not a whorehouse in sight.
This is a dirty old town without clear pavement markings
& I drove right into the doorway of the little apostolic house of Jesus
before I noticed the labored eyes of Our Lord looking down on me.
I parked the sedan. It purred raggedly, panting exhaust
like a hole in a lung. Then the engine stopped altogether & I took my cue to get out
& get religion. Head, I'm taking you with me.
There's nothing sacred about a hole in the ground. The Church
cuts off lips, fingers, the petrified genitals of saints made merchandise ...
but me I'm seventy miles an hour
out of midnight, the village cemetery in Jalisco,
men shouting in Spanish on brown horses, women on horses
shouting & everybody's got a gun.
Hypocrites, double-crossers ... Head, you're the only one in this country who's not trying to kill me
& I appreciate that. Bygones are bygones, the past is the past & the past
wants us all to be happy. I'm going to stagger into the confessional
& stagger back out. Then we'll go see Mr. Big
& his boyfriends. So don't touch anything on the tables. So stop looking at me
with your goddamn fucking eyes.

David Penn
1995

 

“peckinpah”
by Omar Willey

 

 

Winter Implicit

Consuming days like communion wafers
Awaiting the theatrics of the stars
Burning dead illusion somewhere beyond
These swamping atmospheres.
Suffering through the wrung-out salt-
craving of the season’s seventy seventh hangover.

That tree is also an outcropping
of the dumb earth, but it can crown
itself again from its own skeleton.
Don’t look at me.  I’m meat bound.  Graying.
My sons are my blossoms and their daughters lost summer.
And what does Ikkyū say? “Chop open
the cherry tree.  You’ll find no flowers. 
But the spring breeze brings forth. . .”
Baseball cherry pop grilled steak and mojitos.

Winter implicit. 
Winter be damned.
Winter come again.

The Poem that Started All This*

 
 

Simple Sympathy

Bill calls because you’re still
angry, not at him, but everything.
Bill wouldn’t call if you were just angry at him.

So, instead of walking to the water’s edge to sit
zazen on the spot on the bench someone carved PAUL
into years before you appeared with your dumb ritual

-- bowing once before it, turning, bowing again to the sound,
then sitting, bowing again and then sitting
maybe fifteen, eighteen minutes in all weather--

you rant over the wind’s blow into the cell phone and Bill,
like a patient boxing coach with sparring mitts gives
you just enough flat punchback to keep you  swinging, bleeding

off just enough of your blockheaded hate
for feckless actors and administrators in a rag doll
death dying theatre and mostly yourself

for writing another play to put on a shelf
over and over putting yourself
here, in front of these waves strangely

luminous, ominous, heaving the sound
in sympathy,  or so it seems,
to your simple mind.

 

 

 *The create date on the Word file containing this poem is Monday, October 26, 2009, exactly a year ago today.  Obviously, I was stuck in a very frustrated place.  I had just learned that the theatre in Southern California that seemed so eager to premiere my farce Gossamer Grudges had suddenly, unaccountably and irrevocably lost interest. We at NewsWrights United were also starting to realize that a certain “nice” leader within Seattle’s regional theatre echelons was not, in fact, going to come through on his glad-handing promises of resources and good will for the first edition of our Living Newspaper, It’s Not in the P-I.  I was feeling fucked, frankly, and very deeply sorry for myself. 

Anger has always been a part of my life.  Twenty years of Zen practice has not changed that and I doubt the remainder of a lifetime will.  Anger is part of who I am.  On the other hand, anger is not always inappropriate.  Certainly when it comes to Seattle’s current theatre situation, the old hippy adage applies: “If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention.”  And, of course, anger unshared is absolutely no fun at all.

I didn’t know it then, but within a few weeks of howling out this poem, I would begin planning the essays that I started posting here last December.  I suspect Bill Salyers is glad that I now have this place to vent.  For my part, I am grateful too to have Just Wrought, but much so much more grateful that I have my Zen practice, friends like Bill, and the wide open daunting weather of the Puget Sound in autumn, vast enough to humble any marginally sane human being.

Full disclosure:  I reworked the poem a bit since I first posted it on Face Book a year ago.

 

blue yonder

 

Falling is good falling is fun falling is
natural it will kill you some day today
South San Francisco is fog-ended through
the morning but the afternoon will break
deep and clear like you always get
at least once an autumn even
though it’s August and it's warm it’s
autumn just the same.

You’ve seen these skies before broken
only by fighter jets screeching circles
around the city smoking on its end
beauty is woven into everything
horrible maybe so we know to let it in.

“The model could be throttled back” someone
says on the conference call poets unaware

Ikkyū

Recently I was having some drinks with some of the NewsWrights United team after a rather intense creative session. Somehow the string of topics led to haiku or Zen or something that put me in mind of the great whore-loving, haiku-scribing Zen Master from the 15th Century, Ikkyū. I mentioned him. Everyone laughed. They thought I was making him up. I wish I had been. I wish I had that kind of imagination. But no, once again, the truth outshines my paltry attempts at fiction. To follow is an essay I wrote about Ikkyū some years back for a text-only proto-social networking site called Everything2.com.

here I am simply trying to get into your head
you think you were born you die what a pity¹

 

Zen masters are infamous as a group for their peculiarity and iconoclasm, so to set yourself off as peculiarly iconoclastic among them is quite a feat, and yet such was the attainment of Ikkyū Sōjun, the abbot of Kyoto's Daitokuji Temple, who called himself "Crazy Cloud".

 

sin like a madman until you can't do anything else
no room for anything more

 

Ikkyū was born in 1394 A.D., the bastard son of Emperor Go Komatsu and his favorite lady-in-waiting². When the Empress got word of the pregnancy, she banished Ikkyū's mother to one of the poorest sections of Kyoto. At six he began his Zen training as an acolyte at Ankokuji Temple. He would strain sorely at the reigns of temple discipline for the rest of his life, but it was there that he began quickly mastering the dual arts of poetry and calligraphy. (The modern Western disconnect between composing verse and physically placing it on the paper would be as absurd to the medieval Japanese mind as dancing having nothing to do with choreography.)

 

I've burnt all the holy pages I used to carry
but poems flare in my heart

 

After his first master died, Ikkyū sought another in the legendarily severe abbot Kasō. His new master lived up to his reputation, leaving Ikkyū to wait outside at the temple gate for five days and then pouring a bucket of water on his head before admitting him. Some ten years later Ikkyū achieved enlightenment upon hearing a crow's caw. He went to Kasō with the good news, but his master scorned: "This is only the enlightenment of an arhat. You are not a master yet."

The disciple replied. "That suits me fine. I despise masters."

Kasō barked out a laugh. "Yes! And with that, you are a master."

 

one of you saved my satori paper I know it piece by piece you
pasted it back together now watch me burn it once and for all

 

Kasō died when Ikkyū was thirty-five years old.

 

my dying teacher could not wipe himself unlike you disciples
who use bamboo I cleaned his lovely ass with my bare hands

 

Astounded with grief, Ikkyū spend the next four decades of his life bouncing around from temple to temple, whorehouse to sake bar.

 

ten fussy days running this temple all red tape
look me up if you want to in the bar whorehouse fish market

a crazy lecher shuttling between whorehouse and bar
this past master paints south north east west with his cock

when I was forty-seven everybody came to see me
so I walked out forever

don't hesitate get laid that's wisdom
sitting around chanting what crap

 

At age seventy-seven the fiery monk fell in love with a blind teen-age girl named Mori.

 

I was like an old leafless tree until we met green buds burst and blossom
now that I have you I'll never forget what I owe you

your name Mori means forest like the infinite fresh
green distances of your blindness

I'd sniff you like a dog and taste you
then kiss your other mouth endlessly if I could white hair or not

 

Five years later, two years into his ninth decade of life, Ikkyū was appointed abbot of Daitokuji Temple, his beloved master Kasō's old job. This particular Zen lineage would, two hundred years later, produce the famous master Hakuin as just one of its important dharma heirs.

 

if there's nowhere to rest at the end
how can I get lost on the way?

Ikkyū died at the age of 87.

 

long life
the wild pines want it too

 

It's the keenly direct, contemporaneous feel of Ikkyū's verse that stands out for me. Compared to him, other prominent figures in the Zen canon feel like constructs, mouthpieces-- important, but not intimate. Ikkyū is unquestionably a person, talking to you, not 600 years ago, right now.

 

don't worry please please how many times do I have to say it
there's no way not to be who you are and where

fuck flattery success money
all I do is lie back suck my thumb

all koans just lead you on
but not the delicious pussy of the young girls I go down on

why is it all so beautiful this fake dream
this craziness why?

stare at it until your eyes drop out
this desk this wall this unreal page

nature's a killer I won't sing to it
I hold my breath and listen to the dead singing under the grass

don't wait for the man standing in the snow
to cut off his arm help him now

the crow's caw was okay but one night with a lovely whore
opened a wisdom deeper than what that bird said

self other right wrong wasting your life arguing
you're happy really you are happy

only one koan matters
you

 

 

^{********************************************}

 

¹All translations of Ikkyū’s verse are from Stephen Berg's excellent Crow with No Mouth. If you're at all intrigued, buy it. You'll read it for the rest of your life.

²When his mother died, she left behind this brief note:

To Ikkyū:

I have finished my work in this life and am now returning to Eternity. I wish you to become a good student and to realize your Buddha-nature. You will know if I am in hell and whether I am always with you or not.

If you become a man who realizes that the Buddha and his follower Bodhidharma are your own servants, you may leave off studying and work for humanity. The Buddha preached for 49 years and in all that time found it not necessary to speak one word. You ought to know why. But if you don't and yet wish to, avoid thinking fruitlessly.

Your Mother,
Not born, not dead.
September first.

P.S. The teaching of Buddha was mainly for the purpose of enlightening others. If you are dependent on any of its methods, you are naught but an ignorant insect. There are 80,000 books on Buddhism and if you should read all of them and still not see your own nature, you will not even understand this letter. This is my will and testament.

³Even as a young boy, Ikkyū exhibited some of Zen's cagier instincts. His master owned a rare and precious antique teacup, which one day a fellow acolyte of Ikkyū's happened to break. When the master showed up, Ikkyū took the pieces from the other boy and hid them behind his own back. Facing the master he asked: "Sensei, why do people have to die?"

The master replied, "This is the natural way. Everything has to die having fulfilled its allotted time to live."

Ikkyū showed his master the pieces of his precious cup: "Sensei, it was time for your cup to die."

 

Sources:

Berg, Stephen. Crow with No Mouth. Copper Canyon Press, 1989.

Stevens, John. Masters: A Maverick, a Master of Masters, and a Wandering Poet. Kodansha International, 1995.

Reps, Paul & Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tuttle Publishing, 1985.

To Kill Yourself with a Cannonball

 

To kill yourself with a cannonball
Requires a grim determination;
A devotion quite beyond the norms
Of self-extermination.

Contrary to more mundane means,
It's important that you show
A knack for holding on to things,
As opposed to letting go.

To drown oneself with a twelve-pound shot
Takes physical precision.
It's not the sort of thing one tries
If prone to indecision.

To grasp the sphere with both hands firm
Is an easy proposition,
But to lift it clear and cross the deck
With a hangman's erudition,

Then scale the rail's see-sawing height
With both hands occupied,
And take your leap into the swell
Before your mates have spied,

Well, it's really quite a trick to pull.
I can't blithely recommend it.
Though truth be told, there's poetry
In such a strange, stark way to end it.

So hold on tight for as long you're able
While you watch the heavens recoil.
Only drop your weight when it's too late
To hope your plan might spoil.

Lost Alamos

we knew it was going to be a long winter
          snow swallowed      a mud sucked boot
     and yeah we knew that we'd get through      but still 

     lose something somehow      like a bad bet won 
     on a dumb dare      wiser      but wondering
          why survive what you don't have to?      what's it prove?

and what now?      what would jesus do?      hell he'd
          go to the desert      las vegas      los
     alamos      some place bets are happily lost

      to the flat pan      the mesa      the hugeness      the
     bone-bleached and blueness      a place to bake
          back into something fresh flaky and      true

      a body of christ
              why not?     
          amen      again

2002

Under the Weather - Seattle Solstice

Is it a how or a why that you're here again
at the bottom of the year again?
What's to be done with your frustration, your fear again?

Driveling sickness, nagging notion
of a marriage fading to fondness and resent?
What's to be done?
                                         – hark!
                                                            hear the bells

Spring is implicit, one supposes, in the swim down
into darkness, but there should be a deeper,
soberer, more permanent name than "patience"
for what you need ("grim grit?" that's not it)

For the faith not only to believe
that the days won't keep shriveling
forever but that there's even a sun still
somewhere above that blanketing lichen sky
                                            (no, that's not it
more like a ugly gray breaker
punishing you down, naught to do
but give up and hope you don't drown under
               (Sweet silver bells)
                                        no, not quite-- heavier...

leaden-- pummeling dimly shimmering molten cold--
that's the sound that spreads to the West
beneath your high-rise conference room illusion)

And it's not an old glory that whips in the sound wind
And it's not the wind that whips either,
and, no, it's not your mind, clever, but nothing moves

except that one forlorn electron
back and forth through time,
infinitesimal pin-prick nose-so-bright.

Drink to that!
Three Maker's Marks for Mister Quark!

                            Hark.
                                                The herald angels sing glory
            Sing, bourbon, glory

                                                                Hallelujah

--2005