MK 93 - Blindness

Blindness, a jazz poem. 

Middle Kingdom podcast #93.

https://soundcloud.com/leonardtm/blindness-22-dec-17

One Sunday Song - Ice Girl

Chapter 11.

cambodia is a funny place. ha, ha, ha.

what do you see, asked Leo.

i see a man carrying one red brick. he’s looking for a place to put it down. he is confused. he had no idea his day would involve carrying a brick AND making a decision. he needs a woman to tell him what do. this is rare because men, in his culture, are the boss and tell women what to do. they tell them to lie down and get ready for the big thing. he is confused about accepting loss forever. his wife wears the pants. she is the now.

i see an exuberant extraordinary solid particle cow patty land-mine in the middle of a red road. it’s a steaming green mountain.

it smells like an art project.

it will be discovered by a speeding SUV leaving a trace of aroma past sweeping weeping women. it will spread itself over olfactory landscapes.

it will create new tomorrows.

welcome to a new reality game show called

Watch Women Work

or evolution of the species and social organization (+-).

log on, log in, log the forest. yeah, yeah. i am mr. monosyllable, your crème-filled hostess cupcake for this week’s exciting program. yeah, yeah.

contestant #1. a housewife in a rural village. her task is sweeping dust into piles of dust outside her bamboo shack. she has all day to complete this arduous task. repeat. dust to dust. dawn to dusk. poetic ramifications in the theatre of the absurd.

contestant #2. a housewife. she has a house. she is a wife. she has 10 children. having children is her DUTY. sex for her is nothing but a DUTY. she is a duty free outlet. her price tag has expired. everything must go. many children gives her mother and extended family someone to love and play with and yell at. yelling at kids here is abNORMAL and healthy. it nurtures their self-esteem and neurotic stunted emotional prolonged adolescence with punctuation marks.

her husband sleeps. he loves sleeping, eating and making tool babies. he doesn’t have to carry them around for nine months and experience hormonal feelings. he sleeps forever dreaming of a hammock in a bamboo forest. their children are naked. they play with trash and sing a song, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. they burn down the forest. fire is their funny game besides yelling and whining, feed me, feed me.

contestant #3. a housewife. she mills around without attention, focus, plan or direction. she teaches by example. she hopes lazy boys and girls grow up with initiative. she knows many won’t and don’t. she pounds an anvil all day. she is a worker, a tool of production in life’s assembly factory. a simple person, she spits out many well educated clever children. this is her duty.

contestant #4. a housewife. she works. her lazy adult son watches her. he is bored watching her. he stares at the long winding dirt road feasting his small beady soul window on dirt. his eyes are pure clean red dirt. she sweeps him into the river. swim, little fish. bye-bye baby, bye-bye. he floats away.

contestant #5. a housewife. she has a diamond in her mind. she is calm and focused. she exhales beauty, truth and love. she sings all day long.

pick one to emulate with incentive and initiative and win BIG prizes.

what’s the prize? a broom, a brick, an SUV smashing a green cow patty and a garish monster home shaped like a wedding cake surrounded by a moat, walls, silver barb wire and iridescent colored candles.

anything else?

a year’s subscription to your favorite illustrated color glossy advertising magazine: “Dreams, Lies, Wishes, Hopes, and Great Expectations While Driving a Blue Dismal Diesel Dump Truck Loaded with Ice Needing an Overhaul.”

cool prizes. let’s play.

Offstage Socrates said, my quest-ion is:

How do you live a good life?

Quest-ions gathered to discuss this.

destiny’s child disguised as a black and vermillion butterfly nurtured red and orange hibiscus above a wide flowing river.

see you next week on watch women work.

*

  Away from Ice Girl’s eyes new wet season life shimmered green rice paddies.

Beauty, creativity, dance, and music described sensations.

Sensations rested between an object and a concept.

  Stimuli engaged disquiet between notes.

  How do you manifest this waking dream, said Ice Girl.

  It’s all process with mindfulness said Leo.

Ice Girl in Banlung

Wisdom Seeks Wisdom

In Brave New World

You shift from truth and beauty

To comfort and happiness

I ate civilization

Aha ha

A new notebook deciphers emptiness

The fisherman

In a long blue boat

Cuts the engine

Drifting with current

Cool cornflower silk red ink

Slashes memory's fascination

With forgetting

All the letting go

Becoming silence inside the labyrinth

Dancing shimmering red

Blazing wisdom seeks wisdom

In a Lao motorcycle culture

Wats glow golden

A sleeping Buddha

Dreams of compassion

Direct immediate experience

I am twinkling 

Fujian, China

Beauty's Mirror

I’m broiling on the balcony of my Oregon tree house.

Getting down and dirty after 1,001 years away from the typewriter.

Covered in construction dust needing oil it’s a small portable dangerous machine.  It’s capable of transforming life energies and weaving adventures. Threads follow the needle.

I am a peripatetic traveler, literary outlaw, photographer and journalist.

I’m lucky to get it down now and make sense of it later.

I’m a mirror in the mandala of my labyrinth. I am Labrys, from the Greek for a two-headed axe. I write with passion and vision. Short fast and deadly.

Punctuation is a nail.

My mirror reflects everything.

Beauty needs no tongue.

I’m confidant and self-reliant. I explore the human condition. Visual storytelling.

Human energies, frequencies and vibrations reflect languages, lives and attitudes.

I absorb being, joy, anger, jealousy, ignorance, desire, fear, greed, passion and suffering.

Hurl your thunderbolt unto death.

Meditate on the process of your death.

Suffering is an illusion.

The world is an illusion.

Grasping is suffering.

Values, attitudes, joy, belief systems and dreams evolve in my mirror.  

Your mask eats your face.

My mirror is free of dust.

I evolve emotional trust, wisdom, peace and love with truth and compassion.

I experience forgiveness with emotional honesty.

Creativity dances in language.

These truths don’t surprise you after 1,001 years of wandering.

Everything you know is a lie.

Keep a diamond in your mind.

 

Listen to wisdom and beauty

I am a person who listens for a living. 

I listen to wisdom and beauty.

Hold your space.

Listen deeply.

Zanshin - "the mind with no remainder." The mind is completely focused on action 

and fixated on the task at hand. Be constantly aware of your body, mind and surroundings

without stressing yourself.

- effortless vigilance

- live your life intentionally and act with purpose

- the act of iving with alertness

- awareness and focus.

You arrive in a village. So long, so far you are a stranger to yourself.

Your mask eats your face.

Eight red monks dance through a walking meditation.

Silence feels the gentle rhythm inside labyrinithian joy.

Play the blues harp on the back of a motorcycle.

Your journey is shorter than a breath, in-out.

You have arrived.

Poetry is in the street. It goes arm and arm with laughter.

Words are insufficient.