• KEMBO’S TRANSMIGRATION 鐵笛倒吹 六十七

      Awakening in the morning when you first see the sun and the dew resting on thee leaf which eye are you using. When you stare into the mirror through what eye do you see, and what eyes stare back at you. When you see the deer lying in the road which eye do you…


  • NANSEN’S REJECTIONS 鐵笛倒吹 四十四

      If you come before Master Nansen, will you come holding the posture of a monk or a lay person, and when Nansen turns you away, how will you exit the room? Nested hands and gassho hands – both are so easily manacled – why leave the room at all? A reflection on case 44…


  • ARRIVAL

    Twisted strands tell a strange story – acid, a trip you never intended to take – amino pairs that walk you into a world that is yours alone and universal, a foreign place you now must call home.


  • BODHI VILLANELLE

    Sitting beneath the Bodhi tree I wrestle with passing thoughts in an unending struggle with me. The true face of the pain I see results from what I have wrought sitting beneath the Bodhi tree. I grow tired, wish to flee– above all, to avoid being caught in an unending struggle with me for a…


  • TAI YRA MANO MOTINA (THIS IS MY MOTHER)

    It’s odd how your stature has grown as I dream of you occasionally staring at your yearbook picture. It was only four years ago that I knew you existed, but hadn’t the faintest idea of who you were, anything about your life, why you gave me up, and, therefore who it was I might have…


  • NOW LISTEN UP

    I read a poem today, about a cat and it reminded me, actually the memory of my last cat came to mind, that cats have an innate sense of people, that people utterly lack. It may be that cats are completely unfooled by the masks we wear, or simply that they could care less how…


  • AWAITING THE WAVES

    “Describe yourself,” she said “that I might capture you if only for this moment a footprint left once you have departed this place and time.” I am, I should think, biologically plausible though straining the bounds of reason once and again. I tend to philosophic androgyny hovering on the fulcrum of paradox. I am the…


  • RESURRECTION

    In the picture he is young, wearing a uniform that fits him, has his name over the breast, but his hair is longer. The picture is a bit askew, there is a clock on the wall but the time does not matter. He knows it was the radio studio but others would not, the mic…


  • ABIDING

    Do not look behind you to see if the Emperor is following, for if he is, he will not see you. If he asks nothing, tell him that there is no truth, that everything is true. He has no teacher and looks at each passing person to find one. You should not be worried because…


  • KANNON WAITING

    The hermit lives in the shadow of the great mountain listening to the symphony of the bluebird and the wild Rose engulfed by the sky, the meandering stream his constant companion. I live in a city in a sea of city dwellers each of us prisoners marching from cell to cell, with passing nods we…