1. |
SAUNA
10:00
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Out past beyond the field
inside the birches
under rising steam:
a small room.
To prove I don’t exist,
to show that I am beyond
this animal form
and this lost mind.
Or am I?
The wood heats up
and cracks and pulls apart
the way a body groans.
I transform
and the stars show.
I don’t think the world
still exists.
Only the room in the snow
and the light from coals
and only
this
breath.
I annihilate all sensation
(abandoned breath,
hanging in the branches)
with the glowing core exposed,
head first into the frozen lake.
(Into the lake, mid-winter
cutting through
all waking thoughts)
In rain and wind
and blanketing night
(shown at last)
standing under steam rising.
My life is a small fire
I carry around.
(coming into a clearing)
Glowing coals
on the wet ground.
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2. |
TURMOIL
01:50
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In the morning it feels like coming into a clearing
and the disorientation lingers only for a breath.
I hold the thought,
a coal glowing
on the wet ground,
not long enough
to stay
in
this vision of crawling
out between the cracks
in understanding
that permeate the day,
and tomorrow.
So I make coffee while
looking out the window
and notice that I can’t
remember when
or if
I woke up.
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3. |
DRAGON
03:15
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There is a veil between me
and the bottomless sky.
Cloud or a sheet billowing,
the edge of my mind.
Standing on the street
in the rain,
(unnamed and unknown)
only sound,
assuming nothing.
Seeing the echoing shape
of the mammoth that tore
through the brush here
(A tractor idling
two blocks away
in the fog, unseen.)
and the dragon that roars now.
For all I know,
lost in the weather.
Petals blow. Is this a river?
In a palace of water
nothing is familiar
and the ground always shakes.
I dive into
a pool of uncertainty.
Going into the basement again,
I reach down
beneath the human.
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4. |
EMPTINESS
03:23
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“More emptiness” I said,
“and more, and more.”
When someone asked me
what was in my bag
I said “More emptiness.”
Where the house is not
is where the room is.
The rest of the volcano
is sky.
“More emptiness” again
“and more, and more.”
“But what about the lives
that we have lived
and all the buildings
and poems we made?”
I see you.
We are two black holes
in a vast night.
A van in neutral
rolling down a hill
unoccupied.
“More emptiness” again
“and more, and more.”
I stood next to the river
and threw a large sheet
of glass
as far as I could in.
The way the water
was cut in two,
the sword in sky
was mind only
forming this one thought:
emptiness
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5. |
(something)
02:16
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6. |
BOAT
02:13
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I was born
out of nowhere
and back to nowhere
I’ll return.
But for now
the river next to the house,
the river inside the house,
and a person’s form.
Disconnected and drifting
in my boat.
I built this boat on the shore,
pushed it into the waves
and was born.
In this boat,
blown across the north,
another island appears
and then goes.
Mind only
plus the ocean
and my boat.
There’s no way I will be able
to ever step outside of
my boat.
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7. |
PLANETS
01:24
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As long as I am
drawing breath
the world still exists
but when I die
everything will vanish.
The two of us are planets crashing through
separate lives.
With my eye,
every shape created.
I don’t know you
and you never will know me.
From inside my bubble
I think I see you
while you smile and yawn.
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8. |
PUMPKIN
05:12
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In the middle of November
smashed on the rocks
at the edge of the island
a bright thing caught my eye
it was a pumpkin half.
I walked to the bookstore
in a rain that silently
filled the air.
All the lights were off or dim
and there was nothing to do
but walk to town and back.
In every ordinary moment
looking at trash on the ground
by the bulldozers in the dusk
I forget myself
and see universes forming.
Pulled back out
from a dream
of rolling landscapes.
I face the moment.
Looking at garbage
pretending the wind speaks
finding meaning in songs,
but the wind through the graves
is just wind.
Crawling over
the wet rocks
with dark sand in my shoes
to where the orange
pumpkin I found
cracked open in the waves,
its emptiness
loose.
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9. |
SPRING
13:21
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Mind like a flower,
a flower falling.
A candle in the basement.
Nothing is real
but there is a spring inside.
Waves breaking
still reflect the moon.
I erase myself
and songs echo.
Mind is an ocean.
Thoughts are its
waves breaking.
Awake at dawn,
thoughts unformed,
(before I remember
where I am)
the clear universe is shown.
A spring opens up.
Mind like a flower falling
blooming only to be blown
borne across the sky
unknown
living life as if it’s not
a passing animal dream,
a poem,
a brief shelter
seen as home.
Mind like a falling flower
like a wide ocean
reflecting whatever
on its dark waves
in rows, unclear,
unending thoughts
distorting the only moon
the light from nowhere.
Beneath all this,
the liquid stone
beneath the fountains
and the road
all solid things I’m shown
a pool of placid water
pours in the windows
and nothing is impermeable.
The basement’s flooded.
The walls are
groaning in the wind.
I leap beyond all this
into the water at night.
The spring keeps
opening wide.
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10. |
BOOKS
03:30
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Awake again
returning to this
where I am
with my finger
in between pages
where, written down
one thousand years
before now:
I tear the north sea.
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11. |
THIS
03:18
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“I tear in dreams
across the north sea
or
I travel mentally wild
through
all million thoughts
the mind sings.”
No.
Only THIS
and from each “this”
I crawl entangled
into
this.
“Pulled out through window”
I blink and I’m gone again.
Leaping beyond this
while still alive.
“This candle glowing.”
Shrieking across the dark sky.
“I see you through the snow
and I’m gone.”
Into the spring,
all in my mind.
Back to this
specific spot
in the river
in spring thaw.
“With all dreams burning off,
as if lightning has struck
here,
I hold
this.”
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12. |
YOUTH
05:27
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I look through the big
windows at the airport
again,
far from home
in 2014,
disconnected and young.
In my bag,
a book of zen poems
that I read and re-read.
They all say:
“Don’t worry.
Dreamed dust
is always blowing.
All this is a veil.”
The veil of youth
is lifting in me constantly.
Far from home again
while everything is
born by my eye.
Only now and this
airport window and
whatever I see.
The dissolving
youth of things
is shown as emptiness
dressed up as spring.
All million colors
and everyone I’ve known
passing through a mind
and it’s this same mind
that was born,
wild and empty,
wailing in electric lights
since birth.
Far from home at last,
and I’m still trying
to let the spring emerge
from beneath
every thought
unknown and vast
but my youth and
self assurance fill the sky.
“There’s no moon”,
my young mind thinks,
“in a totally black night sky.”
But there is a moon.
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Mount Eerie Anacortes, Washington
on Lummi, Samish, Klallam, Tulalip and W̱SÁNEĆ land
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