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Failed project

Failed project

You can’t write yourself a friend or a wife or a healthy democracy.
And the system and its associated wisdom memes aren’t fixing you from the inside out.
The project is a failure.
But what else is there?

Well, let’s at least resolve
to not force unpleasurable pleasures onto ourselves.
I mean
remembering Epicurus’s theory of pleasure:
Natural necessary pleasures like drinking water, eating something, sleeping: You have to do these.
Natural unnecessary pleasures like eating something particularly yummy or taking a stroll along the harbor in the evening cool: these can add zest to life.
And then
Unnatural unnecessary pleasures like needing a specific piece of cake or building statues to yourself
Those pleasures are more for the ego than for anything else
So they aren’t really pleasures at all — they’re lonely ego-trips
Unnatural unnecessary pleasures — also known as vainglories — are to be avoided

Too much of my life is spent chasing unpleasurable pleasures
Getting annoyed, angry, outraged at others
Looking down at, clucking my tongue at, shaking my head at others
Begging for satisfaction rather than looking for love
Feeling sorry for myself
Bragging to myself
Spending yet another Saturday alone drinking wine and watching TV

And then there’s the textbook vainglories:
‘I need that piece of pie; that hot babe; this grand power and great sway; to be applauded and fawned over; for monuments to be erected to me and my glory; IIIIIIIIIII”

Let’s at least resolve
to stop choking ourselves on fun that isn’t even any fun

Let’s listen
And open
Make a list of tasks that must be accomplished for health, success, and joy at life
And put one foot in front of the other
talk to other people

Love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind, and our neighbor as ourself
And rest on impermanence and interconnectedness
And practice opening up, letting everything go, and experiencing what comes of such pauses in our gathering up and slicing and dicing of experience into “information”.
Let’s open up to the Love beyond being and nonbeing, breathing that Kind Joy in and out, letting our daydreams of self and other, of inside and out, of real and not real, of being and nonbeing — letting all our daydreams forget themselves

the project
ah the project
so lonely for so long
let it be
let it ride

Authors: BW/AW
Editors: AW/BW
Copyright: AM Watson

wisdom meme

wisdom meme

I love you.

By accident I caught a glimpse
of your smile
as it shone out your heart and into the wider world where we —
hollowed-out corpses for a moment animated by the Light of Godbreath —
congregate.

Life is like that.
Dead bodies stitched together by the miracle
just long enough to stroll together
through the park in spring.

God is giggling.
We call this giggle creation.

Turn us, God, inside out.
Let us, we pray, become the Light that shines inside and outside —
that there no longer be a space between inner and outer Light:
turn us inside out; explode the Light into and out of
this shell of mind/heart/body,
this corpse of a clickity-clack dancing, hard-shelled beetle

Help us to hear
ourselves,
one another,
and the gentle joy
misting through everything,
empty of anything like “inside” and “outside” of “me”

How do we all together accept the gentle careful relentless loving kindness,
without which none of what we feel, think, say or do means anything to any of us,
and with which
everything we feel, think, say, and do
is
a way forward
for us all
alone and all together
now and forever
?

How do we giggle along with God?

Author/Editor: BW/AW
Copyright: AM Watson

slant wisdom meme

slant wisdom meme

Of woman born and formed to stride the waves
so rugged. Driven, chanced or fated, he
would find on naked shore his native babe.
What holy glue of youth’s passion in sweat
would bind two souls in clarifying Love?
What rights two hearts when wisdom they forget?
What laces him, dissolving push and shove,
in her — madcap gobbled, but now fully loved?
A worm he carried, house to newfound home.
When down it dug into her flesh it shoved
her underground. So he wept all alone
upon the virgin sands he’d made his own.

What crime is pacing this distant line of surf?
Kind joy melts meanness wherever it lurks,
but rash hands thoughtless leap past Love to love,
and men find always the violence they seek.
Look ye God, look please down from up above.
Please catch and burn that in us that’s cruel and weak
with the Love that chooses everyone
and works through ’til everything is done,
’til every mind heart and soul is won.

But never mind
Old alligator
Yellow eyes disappear
Again he slowly sinks
‘neath dark still waters,
too hungry to think
or feel. He will bother
us only so long as we believe he’s right —
that Love is less than love
and kindness a false and silly light

Hmmmmm

Is this any kind of a wisdom meme at all?
We have our doubts
and the ferryman shouts
come down to the dock
’tis but a short walk
to the other side
as now so low the tide
in no time I’ll take you home
where God with souls can roam
My body is a skeleton
but my heart beats true as ever
I’m sure you’ve felt me in
your bones when try you tell her
what you cannot say nor be
So come, sheathe your soul in me.

Author: Bartelby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andy Watson
Explanation: Little to none

home run

home run

Every weekend it is the same thing
Escape
Write the project that will spring you
from this pointless
chasing of your tail
around and around
exhausted
and
going nowhere

But the project isn’t just money
though there’s supposed to be
money
It is most of all supposed to be
fix yourself
help democracy think clearly and act wisely
set yourself and the world on the right track

A grand slam
A slam dunk
Wondrous salvation
Escape
from dukkha

What if instead of escaping suffering, discontent, loneliness, frustration, dissappointment, dissatisfaction, and other broken longings
you escaped attachment to your own longing?

The vague longing desires in all directions vaguely
You attach it to specific desires so you can pretend you can answer this vague never-ending ever-gnawing root desire
And on and on it drives you on

What if you accept that the vague longing is too vague to be resolved with any specific good?
Except you can’t help but note that an infinite longing could be adequately answered by an infinite satisfaction of the sort provided by infinite Love.
Or could it?
Infinite Love would overwhelm all longings, including the vague longing; It would make them seem like insignificant ripples in a deep abiding pool of calm kind cool-and-collected delight.

We have a problem
Every day we get up and say
oh please no
please not this
please
leave me alone
set me free
let me think
let me breath
let me be
Don’t hassle me
with pressures
that have nothing
to do with me
Don’ pester me
with catastrophes
that I never even
needed to know about

What does God think?
What should we do?

And the country seems to fall apart at the seams
And the Hurt scoops us out from the inside out as if with a dirty jagged ice cream scooper
And we feel
like failures
lost causes
jokes on the water
floaters in the toilet
troublesome flies that’d be swatted were it worth the effort, and will be, if we stumble into the potato salad, thus making our swatting worth the effort

Why are we here?
What should we do?

….

I have this great idea
Swallow this poison
And seal off all exits
Let the poison spread deep and wide
Let it grow with you
Until you can’t say
what is you
and what is the invading evil

Then all you need to do
is dig down
into your pit
face the poison
resolve the Hurt
untie the knots
release the broken soul
And let the Light do the rest

Don’t you see?
I’m helping you
I’m giving you a gateway
to great enlightenment
All you need to do
is not choke on the gift
How hard can that be?

….

What is the freedom poem?
What is the magic song
that lets us live and stops us dying
our every day away?

Where is the freedom poem
that rings from crest to crest
And echoes through the valleys rough
with scratches in the dirt wood and stone?

….

I can hit a home run
I can knock it out the park
I can fix everything
with one perfect touch

….

A wisdom meme
is an irresistible formulation
of Something Deeperism:
A continuous self-critiquing & -improving
organization of one’s feeling/thinking/acting around
and a
poetic (not literal, but still meaningful and essentially True) interpretation of
Pure Love —
Infinite kind delight / Joy in suffering-with while giving always more and more wondrously

The wisdom meme
will make both individual enlightenment and shared wisdom
impossible to dodge

So beautiful will that meme be!

A home run
is a wisdom meme
that lasts forever
but
I still want my baby
And our nice little life
by the seashore
safe and sound
And I want the Hurt
to leave me alone

Salvation does not guarantee
a happy home
or
the end of swallowed evils

Salvation guarantees not happiness, but joy
Salvation brings only itself
It will be
what is best for everyone
in the circumstances it finds

A home run
includes movie rights
and your soft hand on my taut belly, telling me I’m
safe, loved, appreciated, home
Salvation
includes only Love,
and its proper consumption, use, and realization

….

Where to now,
Jesus & The Saints
?
What’s the way forward,
Buddha & The Sangha
?
What’s a man to do,
baby girl and my reason for living?

These cords wrapped rough around your neck
they remind me of old twisted roots swerving out
like shoulder blades in the dusty summer earth

Long ago along the wharf walked wailers under oil
A barrel burdened on bent back, leaning to the toil.
What whale had hurt and spun in rage within a salted water
that men might stand in dignity before their wives and daughters?

Was I wrong to be what I was when young and supply strong?
Now a softly mounting self-collecting python fat and long
becomes a pillar in my innards, claiming all my space its own.
That’s what I was asking for. That you would take me home
Free me from these evil errors that never leave one alone.

….

When Master John impaled young Walter Jones
upon a flattened dusty basement shag
The boy fought but lost to the alter stone.
So hide you a while in yourself gagged.
When Walter Jones grew up a man at last
he laughed and drank and twirled with witty words,
forgetful the sacrificial past.
But all he’d ever known, felt, seen or heard
as mist spread through the space he called
himself. And wetter darker stormier
it grew writhed cut. From inside out it mauled.
Would shut him down as he’d feel more for her —
whoever he longed to be a man for.
Now how to let love in? To ope wide the door?
I see him clutching dagger cross-legged nights
stooped over the killing stone.
I hear him blather sacrificial rites
to no one, pretending he’s not alone.
It’s a sticky predicament. What God
would sully Godself on such sordid stuff?
The problem is old. The danger still odd.
Through wood and rock, the valley jostles rough.
He prays for his woman while preying on
a dream of her who’d sanctify his song
his song so creaky broken cruel and wrong
obscuring a heart that stays oddly the same as ever
Another tadpole sloshed by God and/or the weather.

….

Much we tried; all manner of art and trade plied
to be our magic selves.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson

What is Love #1

What is Love #1

What is love?
What kind of joy
I’m searching at
What kindness will
bring me there?

Who is around,
What is within,
The angels they
Cannot say.
A cold fogs in,
settles down
Mists on out.

Sunlight shouts
Through our haze,
beach burns clear
Water sparkles
impossibly,
lapping happy
Skipping free
from side to side.

I’m just a man,
I’m but a boy,
I’d be a friend
I ask your heart:
speak now with me,
Sing for us please
Tell us all please
Where we could stay.

We cry like gulls
Adrift on a draft
Held up aloft
Caught in the sky
Waiting to see
What is right
For you and me.

AMW/BW

Needle Down

Needle Down

Needle down
Twist around.
Now you’re talking.

Saw whirring
through the bone.
Keep it rocking.

Wrists tied twice
to the stone
Drop it down,
yank the moan.

We’re monsters on safari
In ill-fitting
pin-stripe suits
In ink-stained
dirty collared
dress shirts.

We’ve mastered every combination
And watched down every lane.
We’re pulling up the rear boys
There’ll be a show tonight boys.
For sure.

A single malted whisky
with scotch to rub it down.
Now gather ’round my pretties
we’ll whoop and spin the town.

I’m berserk for all this
Just crazy for the win.
The answers they’re all falling
like manna safely in.

Poem BW or AMW depending.
But copyright must fall to AMW, for being real as day

Our great escape

Our great escape

We stole a lightning raft
and floated on our way.
Down the slick blue stream
that turns and glints the day.

We snuck beneath an arch
between fields that front a sea.
There a god apportions life
to hopper, fly and bee.

We ran our motors loud
and called the moon beside
to beat the blazing sun
and jump the curving tide.

And so we get away
and I escape the curse
of always wanting more
and being just the worst.

New York – A Worrier’s Requiem

New York – A Worrier’s Requiem

Shiloh – A Requiem – Poem by Herman Melville

Skimming lightly, wheeling still, (7: 1, 3, 5, 7)
The swallows fly low (5: 2, 4)
Over the field in clouded days, (8: 1, 4, 6, 8)
The forest-field of Shiloh — (7: 2, 4, 6)
Over the field where April rain (8: 1, 4, 6, 8)
Solaced the parched one stretched in pain
Through the pause of night (5
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh–
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there —
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve —
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.

…..

Opening wide, rolling round,
that cloud from jostled frames
–that billowed cauliflower–
blooming now where just before,
sure and pretty, towers tall
as steel as glass as glint
will reach
funneled passion and her minds.

Through the pause of light
that followed the secret fight
’round the folk of New York–
a folk so rich in towns and creeds–
who’d echoed together in good in bad.

Their natural prayer
ignored by cinch-down certainty
that bade the core evaporate
and edges melt to scream.
Oh lie us low, let it go–
the discussions radiate
all through a forgiveful heaven.

AMW’s writing exercise

I know

I know

I elephant eye long looking past
with the twitch-limp in my long-lip smile.
Walking across the lawn in flip-flops,
in nylon bag-around shorts,
in faith and style.

With the sunlight in my eyes.
Early in the mornday sun.

That’s when I know.

I hoot-a-nanny with the bass
thump bumping in the scatter
and the crowd jit jiving
in the move-fast lights

While the fire burns me from
the inside out, whirring my
frolic across the smooth top floor.

And so I know.

Talk to the girl with the itch
in her eye.
Talk to the bird with the hop
in her flutter gait.

Rolled up in sheet leaves
and the look that wraps my own.

So then I know.

Longtime now, playing basketball
in the second grade.
Longtime now, up and down the
squeaking plastic-top floor.

Longtime now, lurking by the creek
looking for another dart
beneath the tilted planes.

Longtime now, knowing all I know.

God who splits the pavement.
God who herds the cattle.
God who crumbles the edging.
God glint my eyes–
the highway rearviewed.

Getting along, unable to stop the flow.
Getting along, unable to stop the plain
clothesman watching signs from the shade.
Getting along, can’t stop the end
from circling ’round,
mixing in my blood,
overtaking the song.

Still I know,
even though
I won’t
outrun the fireplace.

Still I know, so something rests
easy in the place between
the caulking and the Listerine.
Amidst the hurt we didn’t stop.

What should we have done?
Why didn’t we manage?
And what to say now?
The loss coats our hearts.
I cannot believe in anything.

And yet I know.

Hold me when I cross the stage.
Hold me when I burn the temples.
Hold me when I cannot win
and must not fail.
Hold me today when I’m scared.

There’s a place between.

So we know.

But what do we do?

Poem copyrighted by Andy Watson, who takes a walk with Bartleby Willard, the two of them forgetting the themes and losing their shoelaces. I’ve not heard them. I’ve not seen them. I’ve not known the way to fix the boat, to rig the sail or anything.

By the ashes

By the ashes

Here is “So we’ll go no more a roving” by Lord Byron:

So, we’ll go no more a roving (8)
So late into the night, (6)
Though the heart be still as loving, (8)
And the moon be still as bright. (7)

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

…..

I’ve lived then in this earthen jar
on the mantle ‘bove the fire
As a cobweb keeps the corner
and a full womb her sire.

For the pace of life has blurred me
and the angels shouted out
that all my fight is silly
in this light cast long about.

Though a life is there for living
and a hero soldiers on
Still I cannot help but give in
to the dragon fall’in down.

…

A writing exercise by AMW

Puh.