Practicing Presence

To empty your mind 

of all contrivance

get your body still

then will to want not

a thing in the world

but the world thou art 

when you let go that

self you seem to be

yet are not apart 

from what not, thou art.

Leave your mind alone

but look while it weaves

its web of worry

and flurry and want.

Keep thy focus still,

thy intent composed,

then relax in thy

repose.  Resist not

your wobbly focus

or your tired intent.

Accept whatever

your mind may offer

except the one pose

that will do you in:

sleeping at the wheel.

Thou must be present

to practice presence,

constantly aware—

whether awake or

asleep or dreaming.

When you see you are

sleeping at the wheel—

not at one with what

be arising—just
return to practice . . .

which does not make you

what thou art always

already, but is required

by your forgetting

who thou truly art.

From Me to We to All

We all begin as a me—

self-centered, ego-manic.

Barring some sticky wicket

“me” evolves to embrace “we.”

From being bare, unsocial,

we grow to care, some, craving 

not-me . . . our family, faith, 

race, country, corporate tribe.

Most of us do get stuck there, . . .

leaving our blood, sweat and tears

there.  But a few, not so rare, 

enlace the expansive all

of be-ing, bearing witness

to the emptiness of yore.

These cling not, not even to 

not-clinging, by relaxing,

dying to own self-being

afore their allotted time.

Then they call all to follow 

some practice of the presence.

Facebook Mirror

You do get a rundown of 

current affairs, politics,

and the latest music scene.

This very morning I am 

awestruck by the sheer volume

of friends’ creativity.

Photos and paintings galore

deck the homepage with such rich

color for my poor insight.

I am struck, too, by the fact

that most of my close friends live 

away—so I do wonder . . .

is it: a word I did say? 

simpler to abide at bay? 

No need to comment, okay?

’Tis not that I’m overly

sensitive, only I am

my world . . . that seems far away

today.  Still I remember

that mirror—in which objects 

are nearer . . . than they appear.

Weathering Heights

Facing a blank page

awaiting a word to rise

the feet will to dance

but the forefinger 

keeps shying away from my

opposable thumb.

Wind swishes through trees

like the belle of a grand ball 

waltzing with sorrow.

Leave No Poem Unread

One morning over coffee

four writers joined up to talk 

of writing and its sway on 

all under the bless-ed sun . . .

when they could have been writing.

Classic complications got 

taken up and more or less 

addressed and yet one was left 

dangling, the edge of my mind . . .

when I could have been writing.

Words dwell in dictionaries 

till worders order them to

come alive but where they go

to die, comes up while writing . . . 

words die in poems unread.

Hang Son Doong

World’s largest known cave

happens to be in

Vietnam, you know,

where all that napalm 

got dropped in our name.

Just goes to show, we

homo sapiens

will not keep nature

from her balancing 

light act: plight, delight.



http://www.sondoongcave.org

From A Porch I See

Some unsettling news:

man loses his head 

to a sword;  with help 

airplane falls from sky;  

gulf shore waters yet 

reel from five-year-old 

oil spill;  house fire kills

family of four.

All the while, all round:

tied to fan whirring 

high above my head

chimes sing; as dove roosts 

in the ligustrum 

robin is nesting 

in the camellia;

on the porch I sit 

making a poem.

Will of Words

Little words do come

to me in my wake

from my sleep, my dream.

Together they haunt

me till I put them 

in order their will.

Dictionaries do keep

all distinct, none 

in the least discrete.

The particular

derives its meaning 

from ev’ry other.

Sleep Wordiness

Once upon a time I slept 

eight hours a day, so a third 

of life got spent unconscious.

Even in daylight I walked 

around unaware, just like

a corpse . . . but I was moving.

At some point in time I slept 

a mite less.  Even when I

got to bed I would not sleep

soundly for nightly heartburn,

a few trips to the toilet,

little words begging to be.

The time came when I did deign

to sleep on my left side and

the acid reflux vanished.

With the Kegel exercise

I suppressed the bladder’s need

to be relieved at bedtime.

Still, no matter what I try,

the little words persist in

having a mind all their own.

They appear in my sleep and

pellucid dreaming serves but

to bless their rage for order.

Utter Kinship

Observe an event in your life right now.

Then imagine how many events must

happen in order for the prime event

to occur at all as your life—here, now.

The true answer is, ev - er - y other.

All events happen as any happens 

by glad virtue of the integral din 

of all that do rise and all that do not.

Some events have turned to dust (come the past)

to make room for what now must and will yet

come into being, that state of be-ing

always already in utter kinship.

All the scriptures say the same, {A, ~A}.

All Things Apposite

I sit to put some words in 

order, all rising to mind 

randomly.  Yet  afore I 

can get on them a handle

a nagging thought arises,

what all else has to happen 

for this poem to be born?

Directly I see clearly,

what must happen is, 

all else.

Passing the Buck

The less of me that

comes to be, the more

I see my great faults.

However vague, each

from my ignorance

begs my remembrance.

I cannot say I 

was but unaware,

least I knew better.

Take the time that plagues

the most, when I hurt 

my father’s feelings.

He’d borrowed from me

some money that I

asked him to repay.

The sum I did not 

need, I just had to

set right the ledger.

So he took from his

wallet the money

and threw it at me.

It was the only 

time my dad and I

had a falling out.

I had insisted, 

he had resisted —

we both well knew why.

Mom, the love of my Dad’s life had just died.

Older, Happier

The older I come to be 

the happier I sure am.

’Tis not because I have more,

though I have more than enough.

’Tis not that I know more, since

I forget more than I learn.

’Tis not for family . . . friends,

yet god knows I love them all.

If happiness comes not from

my belongings, my knowledge,

or my most intimate kin,

then where is its origin?

Beneath the skin, where I feel

in relation I belong

to all that I am not, . . . no

longing, no clinging, no thing 

separating me from that 

which is my birth, my own death.

The older I come to be

the less me there comes to be.

Human Capital

Why do you guess so many 

great businesses were started 

inside somebody’s garage?

From outside you can induce

others to work faster and 

more reliably by just

offering them more money. 

To inspire others to be 

more innovative you have

to reach them on the inside, 

letting the work be more fun.

Saying the Unsayable

Monkpoems are expressions of a felt integrity

lying at the deep end of things, their innermost be-ing.

There, all things are apposite with their utter opposite.

This is an apperception, not a refined metaphor.

From contemplation this view rises clear, self-evident.

It can be replicated, likewise, by contemplation.

From the direct perception by persistent focus and

consistent intent, relaxed notice comes, effortlessly.

Saying this unspeakable occurrence, necessitates

an odd logic of its own, the grand gesture: {A, ~A}.

Like any software you might download from the Internet,

this gesture must be unpacked.  That begs some hermeneutic.

Which must line up with direct apperception of what is,

intuited in living waters of experience.

No thing has own self be-ing.  Each thing is, by virtue of

being related to all it is not, a rad kinship.

We can then posit this jewel, every thing is distinct

(as an individual) yet not discrete (separate).

The grand gesture points thus, the empty set of empty things, 

each thing at once at one with its radical opposite.

This poem is influenced by Harold H. Oliver, “A Theological Paradigm of Perichoresis,” in Metaphysics, Theology, & Self: Relational Essays (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2006), ch. 5.

April 15

Why would anyone mind paying taxes?

How else will we get what’s coming to us

from the government—clean air, fresh water,

sound roads & bridges, good schools for children,

right retirement for elders, like me, now.

All of this and more, not for profit but 

for the common wealth. I mean, imagine,

depending on some big conglomerate

to sell us what we need, so it can get 

rich. I would really mind that, a great deal.

In fact, that defines the worst deal ever.

You never want your needs to be met by

those whose sole need is to profit from yours.

Big government best meets common needs in

a democracy where you, I govern. 

Self-reliance? That’s why we pay taxes.

Afore Yore

In the beginning is that 

word with god which is god and 

through which all things come to be.

To get to that beginning,

there from the get-go with god,

there can be no self semblance

no separateness aware.

No discrete thing has yet to 

go there for none is let to, 

but still, all things still, get to.

Bread

The bread sits still, unmoved and unmoving

on the counter in the corner yet thinks

not and not thinking it remains plain there.

Without thought the bread rests deep and silent

like the smile on a stone buddha and like 

a stone buddha’s smile it feeds my hunger.

The bare thing is what it seems and in its

seeming abounds without belief or grief

but dwells in bliss a reverent matter.

The bare thing conceals more than it reveals

my longing for things pleasant but it does not 

exhaust or extinguish my true craving

to quit all craving and accept what is.

Pointing To What Is

‘Tis hard to tell the difference between 

monk poems and others. I do sense this.

Poems draw out feeling, monk poems still 

all emotion, point to a thing’s true birth.

True birth is what a thing is, as own self

slips away — if we let go our grasping.

Right now, look around you.  What’s there to see?

If blind, what to hear? If deaf, what to touch?  

Then go inside to sense what you feel, think 

or will there. What you can sense, you are not.  

Taken to its utter end you are what 

senses.  And to sense is to be aware. 

You are the awareness that lets you sense 

anything at all.  That Which lets all be.

All things void of own self being swim in 

consciousness, itself empty, at once full 

of all that swims there, naked. And yet in 

relation, these naked things do make up 

an ocean of emptiness. That is sheer

generosity, for from this comes life

that is full of grit, that is full of grace.

From the grit we do find ground to grow on.

Bare All

At the foot of my bed hangs

a painting of a bald monk, 

bearded and heavily robed.

The monk does not move yet moves 

me to notice the fat staff 

resting on his right shoulder,

steadied by his right-hand grasp.

The still monk holds the staff still,

disturbing nothing at all

yet knowing its good use as 

a weapon, were need to rise.

The monk directs his gaze as

two dragonflies swim mid-air

surrounding the staff’s forward,

one above, other beneath.

Now mirrored in the framed glass 

of the sumi-e painting:

the bare face, a bare poet.

All One, One for All

Homo sapiens be in a pickle.

We upright beasts are facing a  heap of 

hardship and eventual extinction—or so it appears.

Witness: there are too many of us at 

any one time, on a spaceship that’s

more like a hot potato heating up.

D-day is coming when each of us has 

a smartphone that can be linked to any

WMD to match our ADD.

So it may appear.  On the other hand,

did you see the game between the Barons

of Birmingham and BSC Panthers?

At first blush it looked like a rout, and yet

what potential those youngsters did show when

confronted by insurmountable odds.

That is what the future is all about,

our latent capacity to grow up,

and we are moving in that direction.

We can wake up and make peace with ourselves

or end it all tomorrow.  Either way

the heavens are full of experiments.

Still the true solace is not in knowing

the cosmos does not depend just on us;

it is in seeing the true face of That 

Which alone is, yet is never lonely.

You Alright? She Asked

Leaving a baseball game, seventh inning,

to avoid toes of people in my row

I go to hurdle my stadium seat.

My shoe gets caught in the slats of seat's back

and I take a tumble.  On the way down 

I see a woman’s face, sheer agony

from fear I might be undone by the fall.

The woman shows empathy for a true

stranger, without knowing that in falling
his mind is calm, nonresistant, grateful

for her caring concern and compassion.

In flight he loses his purchase, all sight

of self, as though he were but a witness

to the event without an interest 

in the outcome . . . oh, only the slightest.

St John’s Gospel, A Riddling Point of View

Once upon a time I gave to my sister a riddle,

“If God made the world, what made God? “ 

To which she did reply,

“God is Love Unborn, always forever 

in the world but before it, and not of it.”

I pressed her, “So where is Love?”

She gave me back a riddle,

“Without Love, nothing you see could ever be, 

but you will never see Love, just its sign.”

Whereupon she hugged me nigh unto her.

Today, sixty years after,

I recall sister’s riddling 

response to my cleverness

whenever I see people 

who seem to love each other

shamed by others for sharing 

very Love.  My heart screams out,

Fret not, for you are so loved, as the world.

Homeland Terrorists

Some of us believe other

people have no right to act

contrary to our beliefs.

Yet under democracy

all of us have rights just as

persons, no other reason.

Unless you can show that your 

other is not a person, 

you got to quit your terror.

None gets to hold one’s own faith 

against any other in

the name of supremacy.

Unless of course you are on

the Supreme Court and believe 

corporations are people.

Peaceful Uprising

Waking up dripping

with words

like a cool sweat from

a walk

I must do something

to still

the living waters

that stir

so I scribble down

the words

in order of their

uprising.

Once Upon a Time

I sat the sunset 

admiring Mount Hood

then came down off my 

dreamy high horsey

bemired in this, that

hundreds of thousands

of contractors all 

make a living from

your, my taxing pool

at the Pentagon.

Now it’s enough I

wake up with these words.

If ‘tis all a dream

I stand for balance . . .

come April fifteen 

ev’ry blasted year.

Humdrum Matters

Making a grocery list, I sit at a desk that rests

in front of a window from which hangs, as a thin curtain,

a faded pastel cloth, once used to cover a table

that served a listening post.

Said table would be adorned with bread from a bakery

and grapes from a grocery, with a book for me to read 

while I sat there waiting for no thing in particular, 

ears attuned to passersby.

Located in a hallway of a student center of

a large university, my job for an afternoon

each week was to be an ear for any passing by who

sought to unburden a self.

I provided this service for eight years and overtime

I met friends for life, from one who was my first customer,

on the way to take his life, to one who had found hers as 

a faithful Hindu swami.

The first, I talk with now and then, as we walk the same streets.

Of the swami I’ve lost track, as she moved on from serving 

the post with me to holy matters other side the earth, 

leaving me a pastel cloth.