dead sunday

I learned from Ankara students how they were tired.

They loved being addicted to their phenobarbital phenomenon reality altering life, taking anti-depressants by mouth. I processed their fear and anxiety. 

A national Turkish problem according to a psychiatrist I met one day by chance on purpose my second week is anxiety.

It was a dead Sunday.

Clinking a small musically inclined silver spoon dissolved square sugar cubes made in a factory where the hygiene conditions were abysmal.

I sat in a tea house filled with artifacts. Iranian carpets, blue amber oil paintings and thick deeply embroidered cushions near a well thumbed Tarot deck. Fortune telling is an art and science depending on the suspicious, auspicious way. I gifted them the State of Relaxation. The Zen Tarot. Reading, feeling, absorbing the future.

We are all extras in someone's film, said Sappho.

Tomas Transtromer - Noble Prize Literature

The Half-Finished Heaven

Cowardice breaks off on its path.
Anguish breaks off on its path.
The vulture breaks off in its flight.
The eager light runs into the open,
even the ghosts take a drink.

And our paintings see the air,
red beasts of the ice-age studios.
Everything starts to look around.
We go out in the sun by hundreds.
Every person is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.
The endless field under us.
Water glitters between the trees.
The lake is a window into the earth.

The Tree and the Sky

There’s a tree walking around in the rain,
it rushes past us in the pouring grey.
It has an errand. It gathers life
out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear nights
waiting as we do for the moment.

The Couple

They turn the light off, and its white globe glows
an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet
in a glass of darkness. Then a rising.
The hotel walls shoot up into heaven’s darkness.

Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,
but their most secret thoughts begin to meet
like two colors that meet and run together
on the wet paper in a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer
tonight. With its windows turned off. Houses have come.
They stand packed and waiting very near,
a mob of people with blank faces.

Tomas Transtromer

rumi

When the ocean is searching for you, don't walk
into the language-river. Listen to the ocean,
and bring your talky business to an end

Traditional words are just babbling
in that presence, and babbling is a substitute
for sight.

-Rumi

To Chiba

Namaste noble warrior of the Zen path,

Your haiku writing is inspirational. 
Farewell little French traveller someone whispered.
The father asks me if I have a (wi-fi) signal. You have three signal children and a beautiful signal wife. 
You don't need an electronic signal. He laughed with this small realization.
 
The crazy anxious German man insists on knowing the cremation cost.
I don't want to die, he said, The water is too dirty.
He needs medicine. He needs to slow down. His energy is a violent fireball. 
It consumes his desire. 
He creates his personal cremation ceremony in public places.
 
In dawn light women inspect orange and yellow flowers.
Men haggle over chickens for the new year sacrifice.
The chariot collided with a wall. Wooden wheels are pinned to stone. Towers shift toward gravity.
Boys play with tower brass bells, women offer fire flowers.
Men discuss future engineering projects.
 
Your Sakura cherry blossom are sublime. 
Seasons bloom with love, beauty.

Metta.

Just One Breath

Greetings,

Here is a fine article on Poetry and Meditation by Gary Snyder in Tricycle. Beyond wild.

Teasing the demonic 
Wrestling the wrathful 
Laughing with the lustful 
Seducing the shy 
Wiping dirty noses and sewing torn shirts 
Sending philosophers home to their wives in time for dinner 
Dousing bureaucrats in rivers 
Taking mothers mountain climbing 
Eating the ordinary

Metta.