screenshot (poem 013-2021)

who are you

wanted: dead or alive

a fly on the screen

is that wind

or life

trembling wings

wavering legs

show me a sign

sneeze or something

wink or rub

your appendages

in ancient ritual

pose or perish

fly away

there's my answer

you never needed one

 

mental pencil sharpening

I say I am awake. I got up around 10:15; late for many, but when do The Many go to sleep? I am awake, but it's not the prime hours of the day for me, the starter minutes, the limbering up orally, visually, aurally, et ceterally. I strive to be awake, to back up my claim of same.

But am I?

Who is?

I look around. Glance and browse with my eyes. If I were to close my eyes right now, could I name five objects in this room at this coffee shop, name five smells, five sounds, five textures? Could I describe colors, voices, fixtures, flavors, tastes, walls, floors, doors, customers, lighting, ceiling, temperature, odors, fragrances, air flow?

But who could? Who does such a thing?

To be fair to myself, and to anyone reading this (all 18 people), if I knew I'd be queried as queried above, I'd be able to practice my observation skills. I'd be able to sharpen my mental pencil, or mentally sharpen my metaphorical pencil. Something like that. I am confident I would achieve better results, as would anyone else.

Is it an acquired skill or a discipline, this acute awareness? Can anyone do it with practice over time? Are some people born with talents and powers and skills that aid and abet this adventure?

Detectives and priests. Writers and car salesmen (not gender-specific). Hustlers and thieves. Politicians and pontiffs. Pitchers and batters. Poets and magicians. Who among them exceeds at seeing/hearing/tasting/touching/smelling/thinking/feeling? Again, is it practice or innate talent, or a hybrid of all those things?

Are females or males better at this? I suspect babies and toddlers are the most advanced in this arena; they simply lack the ability to articulate it. Are some cultures better than others at it? Has technology dulled the knife of perception, the blade that cuts through the cloud?

So, you're reading this, and you say, So what? Who cares? What's the point? What's the big deal?

The big deal is the small deal. The small deal is the only game in town. It doesn't take a meteorologist to know which way the rain is falling.  

I want to know enough to get away from the train on the tracks. But I don't want to know so much that I can't tell the difference between a train and a titmouse.

Hymn to Heavy Metal

Crumpled metal as if sculpted. Dangling wires. Sagging wires with frayed skin connected to transformer. Weeds growing from cracks. Rust. Graffiti. "Hence False" on the nearby rolling freightcar. Fissures in skyscraping iron structures. Cogen plant. Dead. Unburied. Absence of steam, vapor, exhaust, particulate matter. Wind-rippling silence. Clarion call of afternoon sunlight. Solemn parade of dead turbines in the foreground. Failed saplings spawned in heavy metal. Groaning background freightcars. Hum of paper recycling plant to my back. Trucks delivering gypsum. Drooping sheet metal. Unround holes. Swallowing silence.

walking with coffee

The deep, wide-brimmed ceramic cup wobbled. Not true. It didn't wobble, not that you could see. The coffee in it swayed. Medium roast. Half 'n' half. Swayed not even up to the alabaster brim, east or west, north or south. The birth of a wave. A false tsunami. No spillage.

He gets to the table, dry, slight swirl subsiding.  

"They say it's easier if you don't look at it."

"I've heard that."

"It's true."

"I don't doubt it."

He looks across the table, studiously avoiding a glance at the cup as he lifts it toward his lips. He recoils from the hot coffee, flinches, spills a dollop onto the table.

"See? I didn't look but look what happened."

"I see."

"So unlooking only steadies you if you're walking?"

"Something like that. Maybe. I don't know."

"Some kind of crazy metaphor?"

"Who knows, right? For what, I couldn't say."

He reached for the cup again, looked straight at it, lifted it, coffee waltzing, and leaned forward, trying to meet the cup halfway. His lips found the brim; he sipped.

"Ah. Success."

"I see that. Congratulations."

"Thanks. This time." 

hole in the donut

Waiting to board an Adirondack Trailways bus bound for New York from Syracuse, I spied a sign in the distance at the Dunkin' Donuts in the regional transportation center. 

The sign read, "DO A DOZEN."

Or did it?

Now picture a doughnut, or donut, if you will, in place of each letter "O."

"D A D ZEN." 

I pointed out this oddity, coincidence, novelty, or providential message to the prospective passenger sitting in front of me on a metal bench.

"I've never been on a bus," she felt compelled to confess.

"Never? How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"How about a train?"

"No."

"Plane."

"No." Self-conscious chuckle.

"A school bus?"

"Yes."

What Dad Zen wisdom could I impart to this brave-new-worlding daughter of her dad?

A smile, a reassuring voice.

"I wonder if it's late. I'll check," Zendad offered.

What is Dad Zen? you might ask.

If there is no self, wouldn't that rule out Dad Zen, as well as Mom, Son, Daughter, Brother, or Sister Zen?

Having no self, do we become the hole in the doughnut? 

But in doing so, are we made whole?

In Step Three of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill Wilson observed that someone, especially a fledgling seeker, might be afraid of taking a leap of faith, a surrender to Somebody or Something. Such a BraveNewUniverser might be afraid of becoming "the whole in the doughnut."  

Becoming a doughnut hole isn't just a clever Dunkin' marketing ploy.

Willing to risk becoming the hole in the doughnut takes a leap of faith, as Soren Kierkegaard put it.

Who wouldn't be afraid to take a leap of faith? Where do we fall to? Who or what catches us? Are we bruised? 

And what or who are we after The Fall?

There you have it.

It?

Alan Watts says, "This is It."

So be it.

Later, having arrived in NYC, I see In front of La Mode cleaners on Broadway near 109th Street, an Asian man wearing a black baseball cap emblazoned with the word "DAD."  

Was he practicing Dad Zen? 

(Or subliminally advertising DO A DOZEN?)

I've been staying with friends on 108th Street.

There are 108 mala beads.

A baseball has 108 stitches.

It's Opening Day.

I'll have a bagel with a schmear.
 

particulate matters

before the next step pavement sparkles a starry day constellation advancing with each footfall between tire tracks imprinting transit blaring snow islanded coal wet dry wet trumpeting clarion sun white melt Rorschachs but you roadway glitter diamonds pixels pinpricks flame pinnacles piercing into my eyes where have you been all my life

crickets

How many times had you passed this way? How many nights, long past vespers and veering toward matins, did you slowly stride the sidewalk leading from the parking lot to the apartment entrance? The numerical answer is irrelevant. More to the point, did you listen? Yes, you listened. But it was background music. Not static, not a distraction; but not in the aural foreground. On this night, south of midnight (you once had a friendly debate with your beloved about whether that means before or after midnight; you postulated post-midnight, she pre-; you settled, cordially, on the notion that one can argue either case with conviction and persuasion), you were arrested. No -- wait -- not so; you did not halt; you did not pause. Your steps continued whatever the antonym of apace is. A barely discernible hitch. Or that was all in your head, because in your head, you mused: I know I have heard the chirping of the crickets many times this summer. Ah, just listen to those crickets on this sultry otherwise quiet night. Of course, you don't discourse or self-narrate in parsed, grammatically correct sentences. Nevertheless, on this one night, as you returned home, the nocturnal chorus of males caught the frayed edge of your attention-surplus interior self. You do not know why this night. The crickets were chirping at a good clip; it was still hot, hovering in the humid 80s (unlike a week later, when at the low of 54 degrees forecast, the chirps would slow to a slur). It's impossible to describe the sermonette you delivered to your self. Something along the lines of what a privilege to hear these creatures, a blessing not so much of hearing but of alertness, attention, the gift of observation, not the absurdity that they were performing their mating songs for anyone but their females and competing males, more the suchness of getting it, the gratitude of appreciating them, giving them their due, their natural homage. People like to say "crickets chirping" to denote human silence, when a question is returned with stony blankness. This moment of this night underscores the raucous hilarity and fecund frolic of their stridulated symphony. Seize on this in February. 

And after having written the foregoing, as August calender-paged into September and then October, on the nights (as well as the days; despite our being informed that crickets make their chirps nocturnally) I walked into my building, the crickets' songs steadied me, salved my soul, and mellowed my loneliness, hunger, restlessness, or any other malaise, for which I was and am grateful.

   

king, or queen, of the road

As I idled at the stoplight, I watched it balletically maneuver in and around vehicles making a left turn, essentially a U-turn to head back from whence they came. The performance lasted less than a minute. I say "it" because at my distance I couldn't discern whether the performer was male or female, and since there was only one of "it" I am choosing a singular, indeterminate pronoun.

Danger filled the air.

It could have been hit by one of the turning vehicles. I suspect such a collision would not have been fatal to it, but who can say? A collision certainly would not harm any of the drivers or their vehicles.  

It danced and swirled and weaved artfully and gracefully, avoiding any contact with windshields or metal. Its sense of smell and vision were life-savers. 

Was it aware of the risks, the potential dangers and threats, as I was? It had no time to think, just react. 

I winced a few times, as if to say to myself, "Uh-oh, careful, watch out, ouch, no, yikes."

It performed proudly and regally, I dare say majestically.

And with impunity.

Harmlessly.

Before I knew it, it was time for me to turn. I lost track of it. It was gone. Or I was gone from it.

I saw no milkweed nearby, but it could have been growing in the median or on the side of the road.

Was it tired from its flight from Mexico?

This solitary Monarch butterfly splendidly survived, for that moment, that day.

No regal decrees were issued.

It fared better than five of the six wives of Henry VIII. (The last one survived him.)

"My" Monarch had nothing to prove, no obsession with heirs or riches or lineage or royal puissance.

Just flight.

Just Monarch-ness.

I, your loyal and humble servant, bow before you.

save it for a rainy day

We've been having summer showers today. They make for a delicious invitation to nap. I declined only because I slept so late into the morning, not that that eliminated the possibility of napping. We need the rain. People seem to say that when it rains, whether it's true or not. It's just part of the script. Like, in old Westerns someone would mutter, "It's a good day for a hangin'" and some tumbleweed would roll by across the parched main street of the town where the gunfight was supposed to take place. A good day for a hanging? That's rough. You would hope most think the opposite, as if no day were good for a hanging. Not if you were the hangee, that's for sure. Rarely, if ever, would the black and white movie depict a hanging. And if it did, the execution would be sanitized and visually bowdlerized so as not to acquaint viewers with anything resembling the real act, for fear of ruining that line about its being a good day and for fear of having viewers throw up and just maybe walk out of the theater, or the living room, opposed to the death penalty. The sound of rain on the metal roof of a car while you sit inside and watch the rivulets form on the windshield and wonder if there's a pattern to it, and then you don't care but just enjoy it. The Beatles had a song about rain, eponymously titled. Bob Dylan wrote and sang "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35," but the words "rain" or "rainy" never show up; "stone" and "stoned" appear about 347 times. The Beatles song derides those of us who shun direct contact with nature, be it rainy or sunny. Has there ever been another song about rain itself, as opposed to rain involving romance or remorse or love or love's loss? When it rains it pours. Then it's pissing down, in the United Kingdom. If you want to get biblical about it, "...for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matthew 5:45). Save it for a rainy day. Save what? The sunshine, allegorically? Save the rain from the last rainy day? No, save money, they say. To mean: in halcyon or sunshine-imbued times, sock away some cash for the less-sunny, the rainy, times. As if people do. Most don't in American society.  I have read that Germans are adept at saving it for a rainy day. Save it for a rainy day doesn't quite work for attributes of beauty, fertility, pleasure, or luck. It's not as if you can horde it, whatever the "it" is, until a time comes for splurging. But we try. I do. As if that one great time, thing, event, person, episode, or instance can be cast in amber and later melted or have its DNA reconfigured for later cloning. Like those rivulets on the windshield and the saturating symphony on the car roof. 

nature bling flash

A shock of yellow. Is it yellow? What's a canary? A winged flash. Swooping amid the green branches. Is that green? Reeds, meadow, shrubs. Brilliant yellow. Here and gone. Goldfinch. Into the sky. Is it cerulean? A vision. A blessing. Mirabile visu.

living color

Shards of robin's eggshell on the sidewalk brick. That robin's egg blue, so called: a teal of bright sky with speckles sleeping. No remains of the egg. An incomplete mosaic. Shrapnel of life, as well as death. On Plum Street. By Solar. Remnants of rain. Beads on windshield. Hint of the hint of sun behind dusky cumulus. The suggestion of buds on branches. This day.

the dancer and the dance

William Butler Yeats asked it, as did Leonard Cohen, and the novelist Andrew Holleran, each in his own way. As have many others. How can we tell the dancer from the dance? And naturally, when immersed in the doing, the experience, the act, the being, the living, we cannot distinguish the one from the other. (Obviously, this extends well beyond dancing to Anything.) The dancer and the dance are one, serving as a model of zen purity, mindful living, and oneness. Yes.

what I heard today

• the chink of glasses
• spoken prayers
• unspoken prayers
• knife cutting turkey with gravy on white plate
• Manuel and Junior, servers, and their accents (Central American?)
• the whirr of my 2007 VW Rabbit engine
• the hum of acceptance from the insertion and pullout of the plastic hotel room key
• the elevator's churning
• tires on pavement
• heating fan in room
• football on the car radio (Seahawks score TD against 49ers)
• family voices on the phone
• family voices, including my own, in person
• a door closing loudly in a hallway
• ice machine making ice
• ring tones of messages on a cellphone
• keys on a keyboard being tapped, not all of them, mind you, but some of them, selectively
• gratitude

beautiful solid free

In my reading today, Thich Nhat Hanh said he vows at the outset of the day to make each moment beautiful, solid, and free. That is a worthwhile goal, is it not? Even moments that embrace one of those elements are valuable. Amen.

the faster the slower

During the NLCS of 2014, a reporter asked Buster Posey to explain his, or even perhaps, the team’s success. “Just slow it down” was the gist of Buster’s answer. I heard that sentiment more than once in the playoffs. Slow it down. It reminded me of hearing John Wooden, the famed UCLA basketball coach, say in an interview: “the faster the slower.” At first glance, it doesn’t make sense. But it does upon reflection. Don’t move too fast, or else you will get ahead of yourself. You’ll be out of the zone. You also hear athletes say, stay within yourself. I’m not an athlete. I never was the athlete I fantasized I would be or could be. In these early-latter days, I am content with that. However, I can relate to these maxims as metaphors. Zen teachers such as Thich Nhat Hanh speak or write about the value of “stopping.” I suspect it’s a similar concept, or notion, as slowing it down. It means being here, being now. Sounds simple but it takes me practice and discipline. After his win in game 1 of the 2014 world Series, Madison Bumgarner was asked about the excitement of being in the World Series, the biggest stage of practicing his art and craft. MadBum’s answer went something like this, “You can’t really enjoy it like that. It’s a great thrill being here and all, but I just need to make good pitches.” There you are. So if I say these are metaphors, what does that mean for me? Slowing it down, stopping, the faster the slower — for me they mean: restraint of tongue and pen, don’t react, find solidity, breathe, HALT, pause. All that stuff. I’m really not very good at any of those things, not even after all these years. That’s why it is so easy to preach about it.

Waiting for the Street Sweepers

On Sunday night I was fortunate to find a parking space on 107th Street, yards from leafy Riverside Drive and down the block from Broadway and West End Avenue. The space -- so close to where I'd be staying for the night -- was a surprise, and free.( Isn't this what we mean by gratuitous?) The only condition, so far as I could discern, was that my comfortably wedged-in vehicle had to be moved from this sanguine-spurring spot between the hours of 9:30 and 11 a.m. Monday, to permit and facilitate the cleaning of that northern side of this east-west street. (Manhattan's street grid is eminently logical.) Being neurotic (now, we like to call it OCD; for a decade or so it was anal-retentive), I checked the sign about parking permission at least three and four times and surveyed other cars to confirm further the legitimacy of this piece of vehicular real estate. A car in back of mine seemed to have one of those anti-theft attached to the steering wheel. So Nineties, I thought. Things looked safe and secure, but I'm not naive. Gotham is surely not free of all crime, nor is your hometown. I was very tired, so awoke as late as I could Monday. Blaring sunshine and body clock had votes on this matter. I purchased a Times and read part of the lead story on the Zimmerman acquittal and realized the demonstration I had encountered Sunday evening on First Avenue might have been the same one that converged later onto Times Square, as pictured. I was hungry. A bagel shop on Broadway looked appealing. I went in. Long lines. Slow progress. It was already 9:10. I pictured my car being ticketed and towed. I left. I went up the street to the Manchester Diner. I started to order a bagel but grew more nervous about that concept we call time. Just give me a corn muffin, please. And a tea. Breakfast tea. With cream. no sugar. I walked to my car. still there. Everything fine. But already people were moving cars to the opposite side of the street. A few may have been sitting double-parked in their vehicles. The promised furnace heat was only simmering at this hour. Picture a stream of cars lining up double-parked on the non-street-sweeper side of 107th Street. Perhaps influenced by the Times story and current events, I mused to myself about law. We pay attention to  -- or ignore -- laws as they suit us, do we not? There is obviously a social compact here. I am fairly certain double-parking in New York City is illegal. Imagine if your car was curbside and had to get out but was blocked by a double-parked car. But I did not see such cars ticketed. (Maybe they are, all the time. I don't know. I suspect these folks -- some perhaps paid to do so -- jockeying the cars are ready to move them.) And does the city want hundreds or even thousands of cars driving around during the street-cleaning times? What purpose would that serve? I dutifully moved my car to the opposite side, near but not blocking a driveway. I rolled my windows down. I ate my corn muffin, crumbs falling all over me. Who made this corn muffin? Where? When? How many were made? I drank my morning tea, as is my wont at home. Sitting here, you hardly hear the traffic in back, on Broadway, or anywhere else. Hardly any cars come down 107th. I perform my Times fetish ritual of reading all the articles on the front page, if nothing else. I browse through some of the Sports section. A disembodied hose is watering the plants at the base of a tree to my left. I do not want to get sprayed and close my window. The watering over, I reopen my window. I put the paper down and close my eyes. Starlings. Sparrows. No sirens. The road in front, which is the Riverside Drive before Riverside Drive, is quiet. Am I in the country? Where did all the sound go to? A hint of a breeze. Be mindful of breathing. And breathing out. As suggested by Thich Nhat Hanh. Offer myself and the world the hint of a smile. Try to smile. Try to hear your breathing. Feel it. Be it. Open your eyes. Turn the car on. Close the windows. Put on the AC. Turn right and follow Riverside Drive all the up to the Cross-Bronx. A brand-new vista offering the GWB and the Palisades. A brand-new road. Just for me.