Follow these steps and tell me what you see.
1. Don't be afraid to feel deeply.
2. Love is never too strong a word.
3. Your life is your great work--like a book, dedicate it to someone else.
4. Trace every detail back to its infinite source.
5. Swim breast-deep in Buddha nature.
6. Inhibited energy will explode on its own.
7. The lightbulb flashes brightest before it goes out.
8. Every answer is a vortex.
9. Do whatever you can to stop thinking.
10. Don't forget that you're going to die.
11. Familiarity breeds content.
12. Don't be too cool to get red in the face.
13. Faith and doubt flow in and out of one another.
14. Throw out your watch; you know it's now.
15. Politics are just literal fantasies.
16. Listen to the ringing of silence.
17. Sit at the back of the boat and watch for mermaids.
18. Engage in silent exhortation until you drop down into the psalm-place.
19. It is your moral duty to perceive beauty that exists around you.
20. You can fit the whole world in your heart.
21. All roads lead to roam.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
4th Excerpt from Seoul Sonnets
All I do is daydream.
Showed up 70min before
work starts. Spaced
out. Automatic in the
morning, – all I do is walk
and melt into the
staggering reality of souls
filling the small spaces
between bodies.
The day gets stranger
as it goes. The more
the sun moves through
its motions, the more the
normal morphs and twists.
Am I the only one who heard
about the end of the war?
The guns are still going off and
nothing has been decided,
armoured baby carriages
patrol the brown-grassed
park, and the names of lost
children are engraved on a
marble memorial that nobody
reads—eyes always skyward
and hands clutched to breasts,
or to crucifixes, and the only
ones who know the truth
don’t tell those fighting
Me, too busy scribbling;
Avalokitesvara staring up
a skirt in Myeongdong while
the screaming grows louder.
Walls up, truth time,
monster stomping the city,
bones, wolves coming
over the hills to terrorize those
below, but I’m too busy
to tell them it’s not real.
Martha Wainwright keeps
wailing over the guitars;
the voice of the torture,
that I was supposed to end
For the good of living beings
in the confusion who
must remember, cursed with
memory! The joy of frivolous
forgetting will soon be your
only passion. More than
candles in Arabia, this story
is about the flying mystery and
the man who saw the angel
who said he came from Allah
with the word: the prophet’s
prophet – such perfect
faith that turns doubt into
a victorious wrestling match
Leaving the victor with
a blessing instead of
the chokehold of unknowing
suffering the sting of an
ungrateful god—Is it only me
who sees the sun? I’m the only
one who goes out
into the yard to feel the warmth
on my face, arms, legs—
doesn’t anyone else
long for a beautiful day
this late into autumn
when birds don’t sing—
the boughs are in mourning.
Showed up 70min before
work starts. Spaced
out. Automatic in the
morning, – all I do is walk
and melt into the
staggering reality of souls
filling the small spaces
between bodies.
The day gets stranger
as it goes. The more
the sun moves through
its motions, the more the
normal morphs and twists.
Am I the only one who heard
about the end of the war?
The guns are still going off and
nothing has been decided,
armoured baby carriages
patrol the brown-grassed
park, and the names of lost
children are engraved on a
marble memorial that nobody
reads—eyes always skyward
and hands clutched to breasts,
or to crucifixes, and the only
ones who know the truth
don’t tell those fighting
Me, too busy scribbling;
Avalokitesvara staring up
a skirt in Myeongdong while
the screaming grows louder.
Walls up, truth time,
monster stomping the city,
bones, wolves coming
over the hills to terrorize those
below, but I’m too busy
to tell them it’s not real.
Martha Wainwright keeps
wailing over the guitars;
the voice of the torture,
that I was supposed to end
For the good of living beings
in the confusion who
must remember, cursed with
memory! The joy of frivolous
forgetting will soon be your
only passion. More than
candles in Arabia, this story
is about the flying mystery and
the man who saw the angel
who said he came from Allah
with the word: the prophet’s
prophet – such perfect
faith that turns doubt into
a victorious wrestling match
Leaving the victor with
a blessing instead of
the chokehold of unknowing
suffering the sting of an
ungrateful god—Is it only me
who sees the sun? I’m the only
one who goes out
into the yard to feel the warmth
on my face, arms, legs—
doesn’t anyone else
long for a beautiful day
this late into autumn
when birds don’t sing—
the boughs are in mourning.
Monday, February 28, 2011
3rd Excerpt from Seoul Sonnets
With time, with mind
little things swell and
disappear or stay the same,
making infinite time-stamped
copies of themselves in the
infinite number of moments
making up reality – but
I can’t let you know,
because the lie is better,
sweeter than truth
with its funhouse mirror twisted
refractions hateful to the
eye – warped lightwaves
worming through the retina
In the centre of the black hole,
o what dreams may come
when even light
cannot escape, and all is
infinitely dense and just
as frustrating as before, –
Maybe love is nothing more
than the beating of single
hearts in unison longing
to return to the infinite whole…
Rattling, hip-hop pounding
out of the speakers and
we’re heady with red wine
and time outside of time
From the pills we took
or didn’t take, and our
thoughts flying through
the air, texts we send
drunk and don’t remember,
so heavy in the head
and dizzy with lights and
gibberish and cigarettes
to bring us back down—
I tried to spend the night in
silence, but the phone
wouldn’t stop – “struggling
war desperate suicidal”—
why did she send those words
Flashing through the cold ether
after dark on a February night?
Just to
keep me awake
and on the road—
it worked – she got drunk
on warm cranberry juice and
almost cried over her life—
“What am I doing here?”
I could ask
the very same question, with no
answer to satisfy.
What was it?
a flash of something
Cornered my eye in
the confusion, the
sadness at the end
of the night when
the booze is gone
and you forget why
we got together in the
first place. You’re
sleeping – that’s okay –
I’m awake because
you’re sleeping and I
forget what it means
to kill the monster
in dreams;
I sit in envy of your peace,
your tranquil acceptance
of the conflicts
things that
tie us to the world
and promise rebirth;
Are you just tired
of sleeping alone?
I am too – it’s not
a stab, it’s
just about the only
honest thing
I can say at this moment
when no one can hear.
little things swell and
disappear or stay the same,
making infinite time-stamped
copies of themselves in the
infinite number of moments
making up reality – but
I can’t let you know,
because the lie is better,
sweeter than truth
with its funhouse mirror twisted
refractions hateful to the
eye – warped lightwaves
worming through the retina
In the centre of the black hole,
o what dreams may come
when even light
cannot escape, and all is
infinitely dense and just
as frustrating as before, –
Maybe love is nothing more
than the beating of single
hearts in unison longing
to return to the infinite whole…
Rattling, hip-hop pounding
out of the speakers and
we’re heady with red wine
and time outside of time
From the pills we took
or didn’t take, and our
thoughts flying through
the air, texts we send
drunk and don’t remember,
so heavy in the head
and dizzy with lights and
gibberish and cigarettes
to bring us back down—
I tried to spend the night in
silence, but the phone
wouldn’t stop – “struggling
war desperate suicidal”—
why did she send those words
Flashing through the cold ether
after dark on a February night?
Just to
keep me awake
and on the road—
it worked – she got drunk
on warm cranberry juice and
almost cried over her life—
“What am I doing here?”
I could ask
the very same question, with no
answer to satisfy.
What was it?
a flash of something
Cornered my eye in
the confusion, the
sadness at the end
of the night when
the booze is gone
and you forget why
we got together in the
first place. You’re
sleeping – that’s okay –
I’m awake because
you’re sleeping and I
forget what it means
to kill the monster
in dreams;
I sit in envy of your peace,
your tranquil acceptance
of the conflicts
things that
tie us to the world
and promise rebirth;
Are you just tired
of sleeping alone?
I am too – it’s not
a stab, it’s
just about the only
honest thing
I can say at this moment
when no one can hear.
Friday, February 25, 2011
What Love Means (fiction)
[For Mia Pak]
“What does it mean to be in love?”
she asked sipping some sort of angry candy out of a cocktail glass,
“Nobody ever bothered to tell me or show me—My parents just shouted at each other until long after the divorce…”
I shrugged politely and I said I didn’t know – she didn’t want to hear what I had to say, only wanted a dance partner for her cynical little ballet, so I said as little as possible and continued to pay for her drinks, which go by a name too obscene to print.
“I have never met a man who didn’t drop me like a hot rock as soon as he got what he wanted—”
I was beginning to see why. Within five minutes it was glaringly obvious – if you don’t believe in love, then people will stop trying to love you, and if you expect to be treated badly, people will always rise to the occasion.
I wondered where her friends were – I looked around subtly. Usually this would mean that I was preparing to make a move and looking around to make sure that I didn’t get blindsided, but this time it occurred to me that I was hoping someone might take her off my hands. I had lost my mercenary mentality and I was just sad to listen to her. She was whiny and empty-headed, but I didn’t want to be the next page in her album of disappointments.
How could she not see that I was trying not to listen to her?
Is this the trade that she is accustomed to making? She finds a man, he buys her drinks and listens to her sad disaster of a life story and in return she fucks him and then also gets to call him an asshole for never calling again, thus strengthening her convictions and lengthening the rant that she gets to dish out to the next man in line.
“I’m sorry, you must be bored – I’m sure you didn’t sit down here just to listen to me bitch…”
And there was the opening; she may as well have said “Kiss me”, but I couldn’t do it. I told her
“I know how you feel – I really do. I was in a relationship for three years and everything was perfect – I thought it would be forever, but it never is. It was love though. I can’t explain it but I know how it feels. I don’t think the heartbreak ever goes away until you find that love again. That’s why really old couples die like six months apart – There is not enough time to find that love again – no hope, no reason to go on – the body shuts down—”
Then she kissed me, leaning in with sweetness of vodka and pineapple on her tongue. My insides moved – that sort of sinking feeling in the organs when the brain triggers the release of adrenaline and switches from cold logic to something more instinctual, and my lips and tongue started moving on their own, and my mind started to wander.
I thought about the way no two women in the world kiss alike. Every woman’s way of kissing seems to me to be an analogue to her essential self, – with fears, hopes, insecurities, pride, strength, weakness – all revealed in the movement of tongue and lips. A woman who seems crazy will usually erase all doubt by doing something odd and unsettling like sticking her hole tongue straight and tensed into my mouth and gyrating it while running her teeth across it. Some shy women will avoid opening their mouths altogether and try to focus on the tame interplay of lips, which perhaps seems more proper. When a shy woman does relax a bit and lets her mouth open, I’ll gradually work my tongue in gently – but more often than not I’ll have my tongue nearly bitten in half as the shy woman closes her mouth quickly in order to return to the monotonous rhythm of lips.
Some women like to kiss and some don’t. Some fear the intimacy of it, the vulnerability it invites, but some women seek it, knowing that therein lies their power. This woman liked to kiss, and she kissed rhythmically and without hesitation—if we were dancing, her hands would be on my hips – firmly in the lead; she kept her hand on the back of my neck, keeping my head in place, while my hands rested open-palmed and slack on her thighs. She kissed with the confident rhythm of someone who took pride in being a good kisser—she did not need to be told that she was good. She took her hand from my neck
“Not here. Let’s go out back for a minute.”
She took my hand and led me out the side door of the bar into a small alleyway. She grabbed the sides of my shirt where it was open below the collar and pushed me up against the fire escape. She kissed harder this time, almost with an edge of desperation. She was drunker than I had realized.
Though my mind was relatively clear, all thoughts seemed to travel from a haze to reach my conscious mind, seeming to crop up unsummoned from the deep. They floated up slowly and easily, thanks to adrenaline’s ability to seemingly slow down time—It was as though I had time to hold each thought in my hand and turn it over until I understood it. I thought of sunsets in the fall, I thought of the girl I was trying to forget…I thought about how hungry I was – tried to remember when last I had I eaten.
My hand began to travel up her skirt routinely, my earlier misgivings about her having entirely vanished. She gripped me tighter, already beginning to convulse a little bit. My hand went down the front of her nylons and she began to breathe heavily, pulling her mouth away from mine to take in more air. I kissed her neck as she reached down my pants and gripped me purposefully. This went on for what felt like a wonderful eternity, but was more like thirty seconds, and then she pulled away suddenly, with an unplaceable expression on her face, blending anguish, fear and loneliness, and she began to cry.
“What’s wrong?”
I asked – my voice had turned deep and husky.
“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…”
I smelled her perfume over everything in the cold alley, and my insides did that sinking thing again, but this time it was something different.
“Hey, shh – you don’t need to be sorry, it’s okay –”
I put my arms around her and drew her into me, stroking her hair and whispering to her like to a baby, which is the only thing I know how to comfort. Something had changed. I realized that I now cared about this girl. I didn’t want her to be sad.
She cried, I whispered. I lost track of time as adrenaline subsided and was replaced by something else, making me feel slow and queer all over. The busboy stuck his head out the side door and started hauling out cardboard. She pulled away, makeup streaming down her face and smudged where she had left it on my shirt.
“I’m sorry.”
I felt like a mushy idiot as I hugged her again, then handed her my handkerchief.
“It’s okay.”
We went back into the bar. My friends were gone. Her friends had found a group of guys and were leaving. She asked me to come with her, but I told her a lie to excuse myself. I got her number without even thinking about it – I knew I wouldn’t call her. As she left with her friends I said
“Don’t be sad – Time heals all wounds.”
And I swear that I believed what I told her. Looking into her puffed up eyes that to everyone else would seem destined to repeat the lonely cycle of heartbreak and hollowness, I had faith that soon she wouldn’t need to cry anymore.
I walked out into the night alone, past the prostitutes and street food vendors all looking bored and underworked, and I tried to remember what love felt like, but I could only think of pictures of me smiling and staying up late just to feel her close to me.
14/02/11
“What does it mean to be in love?”
she asked sipping some sort of angry candy out of a cocktail glass,
“Nobody ever bothered to tell me or show me—My parents just shouted at each other until long after the divorce…”
I shrugged politely and I said I didn’t know – she didn’t want to hear what I had to say, only wanted a dance partner for her cynical little ballet, so I said as little as possible and continued to pay for her drinks, which go by a name too obscene to print.
“I have never met a man who didn’t drop me like a hot rock as soon as he got what he wanted—”
I was beginning to see why. Within five minutes it was glaringly obvious – if you don’t believe in love, then people will stop trying to love you, and if you expect to be treated badly, people will always rise to the occasion.
I wondered where her friends were – I looked around subtly. Usually this would mean that I was preparing to make a move and looking around to make sure that I didn’t get blindsided, but this time it occurred to me that I was hoping someone might take her off my hands. I had lost my mercenary mentality and I was just sad to listen to her. She was whiny and empty-headed, but I didn’t want to be the next page in her album of disappointments.
How could she not see that I was trying not to listen to her?
Is this the trade that she is accustomed to making? She finds a man, he buys her drinks and listens to her sad disaster of a life story and in return she fucks him and then also gets to call him an asshole for never calling again, thus strengthening her convictions and lengthening the rant that she gets to dish out to the next man in line.
“I’m sorry, you must be bored – I’m sure you didn’t sit down here just to listen to me bitch…”
And there was the opening; she may as well have said “Kiss me”, but I couldn’t do it. I told her
“I know how you feel – I really do. I was in a relationship for three years and everything was perfect – I thought it would be forever, but it never is. It was love though. I can’t explain it but I know how it feels. I don’t think the heartbreak ever goes away until you find that love again. That’s why really old couples die like six months apart – There is not enough time to find that love again – no hope, no reason to go on – the body shuts down—”
Then she kissed me, leaning in with sweetness of vodka and pineapple on her tongue. My insides moved – that sort of sinking feeling in the organs when the brain triggers the release of adrenaline and switches from cold logic to something more instinctual, and my lips and tongue started moving on their own, and my mind started to wander.
I thought about the way no two women in the world kiss alike. Every woman’s way of kissing seems to me to be an analogue to her essential self, – with fears, hopes, insecurities, pride, strength, weakness – all revealed in the movement of tongue and lips. A woman who seems crazy will usually erase all doubt by doing something odd and unsettling like sticking her hole tongue straight and tensed into my mouth and gyrating it while running her teeth across it. Some shy women will avoid opening their mouths altogether and try to focus on the tame interplay of lips, which perhaps seems more proper. When a shy woman does relax a bit and lets her mouth open, I’ll gradually work my tongue in gently – but more often than not I’ll have my tongue nearly bitten in half as the shy woman closes her mouth quickly in order to return to the monotonous rhythm of lips.
Some women like to kiss and some don’t. Some fear the intimacy of it, the vulnerability it invites, but some women seek it, knowing that therein lies their power. This woman liked to kiss, and she kissed rhythmically and without hesitation—if we were dancing, her hands would be on my hips – firmly in the lead; she kept her hand on the back of my neck, keeping my head in place, while my hands rested open-palmed and slack on her thighs. She kissed with the confident rhythm of someone who took pride in being a good kisser—she did not need to be told that she was good. She took her hand from my neck
“Not here. Let’s go out back for a minute.”
She took my hand and led me out the side door of the bar into a small alleyway. She grabbed the sides of my shirt where it was open below the collar and pushed me up against the fire escape. She kissed harder this time, almost with an edge of desperation. She was drunker than I had realized.
Though my mind was relatively clear, all thoughts seemed to travel from a haze to reach my conscious mind, seeming to crop up unsummoned from the deep. They floated up slowly and easily, thanks to adrenaline’s ability to seemingly slow down time—It was as though I had time to hold each thought in my hand and turn it over until I understood it. I thought of sunsets in the fall, I thought of the girl I was trying to forget…I thought about how hungry I was – tried to remember when last I had I eaten.
My hand began to travel up her skirt routinely, my earlier misgivings about her having entirely vanished. She gripped me tighter, already beginning to convulse a little bit. My hand went down the front of her nylons and she began to breathe heavily, pulling her mouth away from mine to take in more air. I kissed her neck as she reached down my pants and gripped me purposefully. This went on for what felt like a wonderful eternity, but was more like thirty seconds, and then she pulled away suddenly, with an unplaceable expression on her face, blending anguish, fear and loneliness, and she began to cry.
“What’s wrong?”
I asked – my voice had turned deep and husky.
“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…”
I smelled her perfume over everything in the cold alley, and my insides did that sinking thing again, but this time it was something different.
“Hey, shh – you don’t need to be sorry, it’s okay –”
I put my arms around her and drew her into me, stroking her hair and whispering to her like to a baby, which is the only thing I know how to comfort. Something had changed. I realized that I now cared about this girl. I didn’t want her to be sad.
She cried, I whispered. I lost track of time as adrenaline subsided and was replaced by something else, making me feel slow and queer all over. The busboy stuck his head out the side door and started hauling out cardboard. She pulled away, makeup streaming down her face and smudged where she had left it on my shirt.
“I’m sorry.”
I felt like a mushy idiot as I hugged her again, then handed her my handkerchief.
“It’s okay.”
We went back into the bar. My friends were gone. Her friends had found a group of guys and were leaving. She asked me to come with her, but I told her a lie to excuse myself. I got her number without even thinking about it – I knew I wouldn’t call her. As she left with her friends I said
“Don’t be sad – Time heals all wounds.”
And I swear that I believed what I told her. Looking into her puffed up eyes that to everyone else would seem destined to repeat the lonely cycle of heartbreak and hollowness, I had faith that soon she wouldn’t need to cry anymore.
I walked out into the night alone, past the prostitutes and street food vendors all looking bored and underworked, and I tried to remember what love felt like, but I could only think of pictures of me smiling and staying up late just to feel her close to me.
14/02/11
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Seogwipo, 23/02/11
How long has it been?
I have a heart that I will not give up to the whirlwind,
I will not wrong the reality,
I will not meet the Buddha on the road and let him live,
I will stab the Buddha through the heart and stop the horrible dreams,
I will love furiously until the sun burns out,
and -------, you're not too old, I would have married you
and we could have been swept away lost and bound to the easeful whirlwind,
hold me again because I can't wait until the next life.
I have a heart that I will not give up to the whirlwind,
I will not wrong the reality,
I will not meet the Buddha on the road and let him live,
I will stab the Buddha through the heart and stop the horrible dreams,
I will love furiously until the sun burns out,
and -------, you're not too old, I would have married you
and we could have been swept away lost and bound to the easeful whirlwind,
hold me again because I can't wait until the next life.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
XXV –
April I’m staring into the sawed-off shotgun barrel 7:30 am Tuesday no answers celibate hole in the sky,
lips dry face dry heart strung out on the line starched stiff as a board – only thinking of you, the womb, – of wonder the traps the hooks the web where you found me
cutting up prose
in uneven rows cascading rows – the rose – that morphs into multiple mazes the anagogic liminal metaphysical storm drain lay down laughing soused too sad to see that the wind is the rain’s accomplice,
April, save me, tell me you hear me you see me in your dreams too – it has to mean something – you look upon me and I know you,
soft red – pale hair – green eyes, innocence of Candide smiling auguries of strange but possible worlds,
always more fantasy than fiction – all stories begin “who am I?”,
The problem: these thoughts go nowhere – Tuesday ends and I haven’t left bed – shaking to thoughts of – April –
Every room a womb – a tomb a shrine to the merciless divine mother – April –
Worlds tumble into order as prayers rise and make it so,
so comes love marriage honour redemption mansion on the hill or bumming down deserted highways of Lethe to Elysium Omaha,
– still in the Bastille – bed in Toronto – cold for the sake of cold warmed by dreams of April …
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