known

Stairs to the Coast. Oregon. Image, my own.

October Bowery

when fall begins to crystalize, like any change,
the first real storm front moves in,
the leaves which scudded about yesterday
are frozen to the sidewalk, gathering in
browning-yellow scrolls, little edicts of
what is to come, they thaw and scatter
again across streams and gullies where
the thin water still wants to feed the living
thing before being silenced in ice, or
leave monochrome sepias on pavement,
the Hunter’s moon, high and bright illumines
the grass, reedy wisps along the midnight walk,
the dusty path where the air cools, snappy,
crisp, that breath of winter’s coming, flora seized
red in its death, clinging to branch and vine,
each day more dried and dead, ruffled and flurried
by immediate breezes, sounding like Japanese
paper fanfared by a round and excited toddler,
portents of the next season soon to fall
in golden droplets of summer’s dreams
the ocher aspen leaves, in sheets and
flakes of fiery autumn light dazzling and
freshly disconnected from their source right
before they meet the dust and decompose

Sun, Sky, Beach, Life. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Strength

Growing is a season of its own, one of loving kindness rooted in faith
one of far-seeing vastness, while standing in sacred spaces. For whatever waves,
winds, and ways that will ever-continue to toss and take their course, stand
in your gifts and rest in fullness, plentitude. Delight in bounty and abundance.
Move from ire to the rich roundness of the good in all living things–
circles of true compassion and empathy which connect all creation– human,
animal, plant, living, all animate with atoms as the entire universe speaks the
soundness of its existence, the tenor of being, the voice of living and the lived

Ocean, Tide, Tree, Coast. Oregon. Image, my own.

Point

when i am in my
brain and heart i realize this
is the goddamn point

Conscious Living

What is it to be alive?
In the rich, abundant world
A sterling jay’s deeply
Decked sapphire feathers
crested head
nestled in the magnolia bush
outside my window
the air as thick as dew,
yet moving as if on an
unheard music suspended
by the wind’s unseen breath

and ocean spume, spurl, churn
TO be part of Earth’s respiration
tide, current, wave, flow, coast
where Earth’s breath meets
land-sand, rock, tree, stone
every piece of physical
particulate of the confirmation
of all alive and breathing
beings, being moved
smoothed, rocked, waved, rolled
over and over in the sea’s bosom

Stones and Seal Carcass. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Ocean

I used to think I wasn’t an ocean
person. But these rocky, cliffy,
craggy knobs of sea-shorn trees,
smooth stones and crusty conglomerates
crab shells, jelly-fish skeletons, strips of
kelp carcass, and clings of driftwood
really wrap me into the rhythm of
the tide

Magic. Foam, mist, spume, churl, splutter. Oregon, Coast. Image, my own.

Know

I know what I am
doing, I don’t know any
thing other than that

I don’t know what I’m
doing, I don’t know any
thing other than that

Rock, Tide, Rush. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

People. Suh See Ok. 1988. On view at The MET Fifth Avenue. Gallery 233.

Kiai!

Kiai! is a real thing
A Japanese word
A shout– ichi
A battle cry– ni
A spirit focus– san
Not just protracted
Onomatopoeia or a yell in
Comedy-action sequence

Kiai! is designed for real life
Try it on– shi—
Go! A holler that signals
Attack– jou-dan
Assault– tsuki
Let’s make it noble– roku
For purposes of this poem
Make it count– rei

Don’t hurt someone
undeserving– youi
What’s something in your
Life that you wish would
Dematerialize
Infinity in a kick, jab
What would you like to caterwaul
Into counter-offensive– gedan

Just know that when
You chop their solar plexus– chuudan
The center, they may be
More fragile than you imagine
Just a human heart– shinzo
In a suit of skin, sometimes
No breath returns–shichi
Hachi- Yame

Fumi Yanagimoto. Contemporary Artist. Painting.

Sushi

Get in my bell
You gorgeous cut
Of perfectly raw
Snapper and White tail
You delectable rolls
Of seaweed rice
Naked salmon
Perfectly nicked
Lemon save that
horrible cream sauce
For another palate
The best advice
Ever received regarding
Sushi is that if it’s good
No additives are the
Way to go
No unnecessary dressings
If it is perfectly toothy
Scrumptious sushi
Undecorated ditch the
Wasabi and Ginger
Eat it by the mouthful bare

Buddha, Chinese, early 7th century. Probably Amitabha. On view at The MET Fifth Avenue, Gallery 208.

Kali

She cradled my head in her hands
a portal opened to my heart

My body silently convulsed
at the chaos

The truth was I needed love
more than I needed life

I needed touch more than I
needed bread.

I needed tears more than I
needed water.

I needed someone who understood
breath, meditation, muscle, sinew

Connection, bodies, I needed
someone who understood

What being left felt like
I wasn’t yet beginning

To believe I would survive yet, I wasn’t able
to process the complexity

All raw edges and terrifying depths of memory,
I didn’t know I’d return from death

I’d come back into the sunlight, warm and
buttery on my chest, all senses awake

Full Moon, Partial Lunar Eclipse, Pisces, September 2024

the earth comes between
the moon and the sun do you
feel energy shift

Lunar Eclipse. Ryan Moat. January 20, 2019.

Eschatology

Life took us to the edge of the known universe

this brink, this precipice, on a red dirt plateau,
all rust-verged and jagged,
like a tear in heart tissue,
like broken bone projecting through soft skin.

skin, bone, sinew often don’t break cleanly
so there, on that terrifying cliff,
we looked out into the blackness
and saw that it was our own

dotted with infinite, swirling stars,
nebulous arms of our galaxy, folded across
that night, that nothing. we realized
the instant we stepped to the fathomless limit

all the light we carried in our core could somehow
save us, from this end. So into the starry,
inky ebony we leapt, being careful to be
sure that we crossed over the boundary between

everything we’d known, into every
night we’d ever feverishly dreamed.
this jump, this real act of
self-preservation flung us into

the heart of the unknown cosmos
and there we were to greet ourselves
at the gates of our unknowing.
we opened the tiny, golden latch on the

impossibly large, swinging metalwork gate,
stepped slowly, quietly over the threshold of
revelation, everything open and waiting
for us in that pitchy gloam still had

to be sensed– felt, touched, tasted, smelled–
not physically, but by the fingers of
the formerly known soul that now
bore this greater knowing. this

was not the end but the beginning.
a larger excursus on the limitless
infinite than we had previously
known. we’ll never know if there

was only one way to this beginning–
the ledge, the leap, the jump–
our tiny, finite, blink of a guess gives us
the idea that, no, there are

many precipices, many pinnacles, many paths
to the infinite edges of the unknown into
new reaches of galactic consciousness–
seeing and knowing more than we

could possibly have imagined yesterday