Dolores

Only fully realized 
    in final passing. 
All sentient beings 
    have something to teach. 
 
The longer a part of one’s life 
the more revelatory the lesson,  
if we but listen.

words in the absurd

(a stream of consciousness poem)

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Liver goes down to Texas and has tea with a maid. 
She says “Thanks. Let’s move on.” 
Meanwhile, angles dance on pigeon wings and lift spirits on high. 
Local teens run in streams of ever lasting byes. 
Sentences steam and puke up yesterdays bile and kings and queens on satin beds read newspapers from the Nile. 
Greeks midst pantheons, with noses turned up high. 
The Shah in Persia-Old buried beneath the tide.  
Plague creeps down city streets freeing up many beds. 
Blunt edged swords sever from the shoulders up, leave empty heads. 
Cinnamon, salt, pepper, thyme on bread sliced by time. 
Music plays unheard, books open unread. 
This  year spring proceeds summer as fall’s a corpse in the gorge. 
“My name’s May” she says. 
The Oolong will do fine.  

L’amour Vainqueur et la Vie Opportune

Melancholic melody
Played in the key of flat D,
Somber  metered masquerade, 
Times the harlequin charade  

When the span of 'man is past,
Promenade emptied of parade,
And passed, the one that shall  be last,

When clock-springs  at last unspool, 
And history long forgotten,
By reckoning celestial, 
A drop unexceptional 
In infinity's pool

For whom shall it then mournfully play?
What doleful dancer shall its tune sway?
When all built lies in desolate ruin, 
Who shall listen to “Clair de lune?

“Clair de lune” (Moonlight)

Suite bergamasque, Third movement by Claude Debussy

Clair de lune (French Poem)
by: Paul Verlaine

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres
Translated by: Gibran

Your soul, a landscape of choice made
Where charming masquerading dancers parade,
Playing the lute as they promenade ecstatic,
Sad beneath disguises fantastic.

While singing a minor key tune
Of vanquishing love and a life opportune,
They are incredulous of their own boon,
As their song blends with light of the moon.

From that light of the moon, happiness flees,
While the birds sleep dreaming in the trees,
It bathes sobbing fountains inconsolable,
While svelte water streams among statues of marble.

A Universe in a Glass of Water

Were a glass of water to represent
State of perfected attainment,
    It would not be perfected,
If not the whole of it, 
    including every drop of water,
    were part.

And so the whole and its parts
Can be considered perfected. 

“… without exception, all phenomena are empty of substantial self-existence and do not exist independently…”

Prajnaparamita