Gogyohka 6.30.09

What moves you most?
The poem
with the ghost prints:
The poet's hands
most moved by masters.

Every week
he sends me pictures
of what grows up
from the seeds we planted
in the garden together.

All Dylan's songs
are protest songs
and Basho
never ain't wrote
no death poem.

Gogyohka 6.29.09

A prayer for clearer weather:

If a raindrop
is the world
then right now
we are storm clouds
in a rainy season.

Inspired by Emily Dickinson's "The Brain--is Wider than the Sky--" and the idea of Buddhism to make the mind the sky.

Gogyohka 6.28.09

Love songs
say these two
forever things:
"My man, won't you stay?"
"My girl, won't you lay?"

Mont posted this one:

About 100 Japanese
kill themselves everyday.
It has been continuing for 11 years.
Japanse society
has become abnormal.

日本人の
だれも
いいわけできない
日本現代社会の
暗い事実


So I posted this one:

Samurai suicides
were from honor.
Today's suicides
are from loneliness.
Both alienate Self from self.

Gogyohka 6.27.09

The photographs
of stars living
la dolce vita
don't interest her;
she wants to be one of them.

Gogyohka 6.26.09

Learning
to survive
death
means learning
how to forget.

Gogyohka 6/25/09

The corn tassels
blowing softly
in the wind of the Plains
grow higher
on the bones of the buffalo.

Gogyohka 6/24/09

In Tehran
they are dying
for my same ideals.
I wish I had more to offer
than the swelling of my heart.

I once saw
a field of fireflies
thousands upon thousands
blinking on and off
and thought, "Yes! My mind!"

Gogyohka 6.23.09

When you're young
it's I know, I know!
then I don't know...
then I think so, maybe, to me--
once old you just say it.

Getting to the moon
should provide perspective.
But I wonder
If it wasn't the moment
we lost sight of ourselves.

Gogyohka 6/22/09

A silly one:

They call him
a fly ball pitcher.
I call him
a home run pitcher,
or a bum.

Gogyohka 6/21/09

If you can't
reach your well
or think
it's run dry--
I'll give you my bucket.

The New World:
If you are Eastern,
it is east of you;
if Western, west of you--
curved around to nowhere.

More from 6/19/09

I wake up
and fight all day
against the night
I wish I didn't
But it was taught.

When I tell people
what they should do
usually
I'm telling people
what I'm not doing.

This one's courtesy of Bo Diddely:

Before
you accuse
me
take a look
at yourself

Guilt
and
preaching
are the
same fear

I want to ask
my country:
Why must everyone
else be wrong
before we're right?

Gogyohka 6/19/09

The antibiotics
take hold
and I clench my teeth
until my jaw hurts--
my mind is carbonated

Gogyohka 6/17/09

I wish there was time
for everyone
for their wisdom, joy,
sorrow, uncertainty and love.
I want to sing their song.

Gogyohka
is the moment
between
the camera's beep
and the flash.

Manhattan
is the buildings
but
Brooklyn
is the bricks

He says
he doesn't know
how to dance.
I think he just likes
dancing in darkness.

Gogyohka 6.16.09

John said he liked to think the speaker of this first one was moss:

whenever I think
on my death
I wonder if I’m dwelling
because I like
to live in shadows

The statue says
all we want
is freedom from want.
All we got
was freedom to want.

I read
Ginsberg’s Kaddish
to them
until the sun went down.
We sat in darkness.

We gave him a camera
in Adair, Iowa
and said show us your life.
We never saw him again
until pictures came in the mail.

A dream
of a life
without machines
is as dangerous
as an American dream.

Gogyohka 6/15/09

You can't
beat me
can too
Oh yeah?
hence, skyscrapers

A virtual life
where only
dwells next to online
lies in the neighborhood
of virtually dead

Many in my country
live on GPS headsets
in their cars.
They are innocent
and they are lost.

Gogyohka 6.14.09

Possa wrote this one:

You could live on
without Car, TV, PC,
though, so humbly
so unworldly
and so cynically

And then I wrote these three in rapid succession:

I wonder at the reggae DJ
who lives next door.
I wonder about the connection
between his giant speakers
and concrete backyard.

China has bought the Hummer.
Now China will drive fast
into the wind,
dripping with nectar.
China's cheeks are fat and red.

Sweeping the back walkway
I unearth a worm.
It stabs and slides
and I repack it with dirt.
My nature is to undo my nature.

Gogyohka! Now with mini-rant! (6/12/09)

This air!
It's a damp towel
impossible to dry.
It turns the honeysuckle
into honey.

The Japanese gogyohka writer Mont wrote this one,

The essence of the universe
is repetition.
But all the same one
is nowhere in a universe.
Tomorrow is always all new.

Which I really liked, and so wrote this one,

Nothing belongs
to anyone
We all
just capture
cosmic expressions.

Which /he/ really liked, so he wrote this one,

we just borrow
from the earth
from the universe
from the Creator
if you exist.

(!)

Also, I like Paul Newman's cookies, the ones called Ginger O's. However, they list their flavor as "ginger and créme." Now, ok, I know they're marketing to the young and presumed sophisticated, but, really, "créme"? You're gonna do that? With the accent? Créme.

Having said that, it didn't stop from eating five today. Woo-hoo!

Gogyohka 6/11/09

You can
go to the doctor
but only
you can
fight the disease

Nobody
knows
the hour
of
their death

The blues isn't
in the words.
The blues isn't
in the strings.
It's in your song.

Whenever I describe
New York
I immediately
want to say
the opposite

Goyohka 6/10/09

I have the exuberance
of youth
and the wisdom
of experience
It's all I know

The shad tree
catches
the wind
and smells like semen.
Oh! Fecund Spring!

We are all travelers
in this country
playing Twister
with other lands:
A pretzel of a culture.

If you want
to travel
to foreign places
go to New York
and walk eight blocks.

Gogyohka 6/8/09

America!
I love you dearly
But you are
full of pity,
pills, and promises.

Wherever
you are
/that's/
where
you're going.

Human nature
is wonderful.
The question remains:
To wonder why
or wonder at?

Gogyohka is
a ledge
on a window
on your thirtieth floor
Jump!

Americans
are a dull idea
But the Rockies!
They are majestic
and we are generous

Gogyohka 6/7/09

Tomorrows
march in
as yesterdays
costumed in
today's newspapers.

Gogyohka 6/6/09

To Didi I say:
Being alive
is first about
trusting yourself
to be awake.

"I am the
smartest person
I know," he said.
Then he ran into
the bathroom and puked.

The sunflower seedlings
from winter dressers
gathered from crowns
of dead November stalks.
It goes on.

Gogyohka 6/4/09

A burst!

if you want
to go higher
you have
to go deep

My dream
is of sixty
daisy petals
surrounding the sun
dripping with dew.

If you kiss
my lips
hold my face
or my head
might fall off.

What's left to learn
can be measured
by how much more
each talks
than listens.

And two by ripple, the first of which popped up in response to the last one above:

We have
a mouth and
a pair of ears
So listen twice as much
as you talk

I can tell
by the heaviness
of my head
that it would rain
before long

That last one's for Sienna.

Gogyohka 6/3/09

I know
you know
how to see
but what are
you looking at?

Gogyohka 6/2/09

The hammer head
is for nailing
and the hammer tail
is for prying--but
it didn't build the wall.

When the rain stops
and the rose withers
and steams its Cadillac
car petals down--I know
summer in Brooklyn.

Masters will make
the future, as
poets shape dreams
to be surprised
out of Prophecy.