mind

March 20, 2023

HUP TWO

He grew fed up with the Army. He had put in 25 years, but the last five had been totally discombobulated, one snafu after another. Everything was FUBAR and he grew wholly disgruntled with it all. He knew it was time to go, to bail out, and no one tried to stop him, to change his mind. He shipped his uniforms off to Goodwill, grew a beard. He learned to speak vernacular English again, not the military version with its own weird argot. He would be happy, he knew, with this new life. But he wanted more, he wanted to be gruntled, to be fully combobulated, to hell with Merriam-Webster who said he couldn’t because they didn’t exist.

March 18, 2023

UNDER THE BED

There was a ghost
or two for a short while,
that lived under my bed
when I was three or four.

My mother said they
were not real, she couldn’t
see them when she looked,
so they were all in my mind.

I had to tell her that you
don’t ever actually see ghosts,
you just know they are there
because you sense their presence.

Mother’s ghost visited me
last night in my dreams, but
I reminded her that she didn’t
believe ghosts exist, and returned
to the dream she interrupted
and she . . . oh I don’t know what
she did, but she wasn’t there
and I suspect will not return,
which is entirely fine by me.

February 12, 2023

GOOD RIDDANCE

I still marvel at the way
the mind can rewrite
the narrative arc of memories,
taking away sharp edges,
eroding or erasing some
too painful to relive, and
bringing others out
from deep storage, some
largely forgotten, to be
battled with in dreams,
demons wrestled to submission.

In my dreams I have had
a final conversation with
my step-sibling, who
told me of my father’s
death in a text message,
who never delivered my
nominal share of either
parents estate, who made
it clear I did not matter,
and in the dream I
pronounced him
dead to me and buried him
in a place my memory
can and will not visit.

December 21, 2022

NO BOIL

Not so much watched
as casually gazed at, and
not a pot but a smartphone,
which had best not boil.

No ring, not this day
lost in what, an absent
mind, thoughts of self,
not unexpected but wanted.

Distance real becomes
distance virtual, empty
later explained, words
of apology, forgiveness

but a lingering scar that
will recede, reappear
that laughter may cover
but never fully erase.

November 21, 2022

NANSEN’S CONTENT AND CONTAINER

Bring me your mind
but leave the body behind,
this is what you must do
to attain enlightenment.
You may sit where you are
in total silence, or
you may come over here
and sit quietly at my feet.
Both paths lead
deeply into the way.

A reflection on Case 64 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)

November 14, 2022

TOZAN’S DISCLOSING MIND

Many would say
I think therefore I am
and it is only death
that takes away all thought
and so to walk deeply
along the Path, all
that is required
is to truly live the Way
by allowing
the mind to die.

A reflection on case 62 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)

October 15, 2022

STET-US QUO

The mind can be
a brutal editor, revising
history, rejecting memories
without a substantial rewrite.

My step sister, many years
dead remains five, that
young face engrafted
on the woman ravaged
by unrelenting cancers.

My first wife of 30 years
is mostly faceless, the
mental pictures and dreams
edited until only she
is unrecognizable.

And in moments of reflection
I am no longer adopted,
the step-siblings were,
but they are now
just like family, almost.

August 9, 2022

ALL THAT JAZZ

The magic of jazz
is not what you think,
there is nothing random
even in the wildest, in
the acidest of solos.

Cacophony is randomness
and the key to jazz
is to see the
invisible logic,
read the mind,
be the mind
of the musician.

It is zen, but only
if you stop searching
and just be in its
moment.

July 14, 2022

MORNING

In that moment
when the gentle chirping
of a small bird
resounds as a pounding
spring deluge, washes away
the creak and thrum
of passing cars, when she sings
only to you, her small voice
drawn in to your ears, your
mind, until it fades
slowly like the bell
and you wait for it
to strike again, to feel
it seep down your spine,
ooze into your fingers
and toes, pool in bent
knees and elbows, folded hands.
In that moment
the gentle chirping
is your voice, and you
are perched in the weeping
cherry tree in the garden
preening in the morning sun.


First published in Creatopia, Issue 5, Spring 2022
https://creatopia.studio/creatopia-collection-magazine/spring-2022-renewal-magazine/

June 10, 2022

ANCESTRY

Children have an innate sense
of their ancestry.
I was a child of the city
it’s streets my paths, always
under the watchful eye
of my warden – mother.

Dirt was to be avoided
at all possible cost,
so I never dug my hands
into the fertile soil of my
village in the heart of Lithuania,
or tasted the readying harvest
that dirt would remember.

I never stole a nip of poitin
only the Manischewitz which,
in our home, masqueraded
as wine fit for drinking. It is only
now in my second childhood
that the ancestry very deep
in my DNA has finally found
purchase in my mind and soul.