Eyes and Nose

Climb the highest peak
Run through the deepest vale
Still the mystery remains
Your eyes stay horizontal
Your nose runs vertical

Eyes Open

The sky clears, the sun alights
The clouds form, the rain falls
Patterns forming on our horizon
Who notices our lives changing

A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a little witch. She was a pretty little witch living in a fool’s world. She lived in the woods outside of town with her mommy, a servant woman, and daddy, an ogre, and her brother, the half-orc. And lived is what she did, because her parents ignored her and let her do anything she felt like. They did not have good parenting skills. So the little witch grew up in the woods and she taught herself to misbehave. Misbehaving got attention. Soon she found other bad little warlocks and witches, just like her, and they became friends. She envisioned herself as a leader of her friends, but she wasn’t. She was never a leader. She was a going-a-longer, which is not quite as bad as a follower, but almost. Anyway, she would sometimes sound off, stick in her two cents worth and then she would go along with whatever the others did.
One day she discovered her friends had been seized by the town leaders and accused of terrible crimes, oh dear. They were accused of being bad evil witches and warlocks and anarchists. But worse was, that when she discovered the accusations, she knew the charges were true. The girl waited for the town leaders to come for her too but they never did. They wanted the leaders, not the going-a-longers and followers. She was scared and decided right then she would be a better person.
She started acting somewhat normal and doing better in school and she found new friends. Life at home was hard for the girl. She did not get along with her uncaring parents and her brother was becoming more orc-like every day. He was mean and scary. Her mother was always tired and her father was still an ogre. Eventually she left her neglectful parents and half-orc brother and went to live with another family. Her new family was loving and caring. She had a hard time understanding life there. They tried to teach her hard concepts: respect, responsibility, affection, ethics and morals. She resisted. She claimed her life had been fine and her ways were best for her. She could not see her own flaws. But she wanted to fit in and didn’t want to be sent away. She was scared and decided right then she would be a better person.
The family found a good school for the witch to go to. In order for her to go, she would have to study hard and do well. She would work harder and try to be all the things her new family wanted her to be. So she went to the new school. She was scared and decided right then she would be a better person. But soon she was back to her old going-a-long ways and she found people who were different, misfits, outsiders, malcontents, and dropouts and started to revert to her old ways again.
One week she was a witch, the next a vegetarian. She was into the stars, then the market, then something else. She had a new friend. The following week another new one and the old one was gone, only to be replaced by a coven of new ones. The pattern was established and intensified. She fell in love, she fell out of love. She fell in lust and out again. She was scared and decided right then she would be a better person.
Then she discovered the world of the Darwinian castoffs and she was sure she was home at last. These were rejects even rejects could reject. How much better did the world get? She cast aside all else and threw herself into the Darwinian pot. She even tried to make Darwinian stew herself. However, like with everything else in the life, this too proved to be too much and the stew failed to materialize. Eventually the Darwinians found she was not really one of them (they were very retarded) and she had to leave. She was scared and decided right then she would be a better person.

She moved back with her mother and the ogre and the half-orc brother and tried to find herself. The witch had spent so long pretending to be many different things, she was not sure what she really was any more. Life went by one day at a time and she was sometimes bored, but one thing she was sure of. This time, she was not scared and she was going to be a better person.

Our pasts

Pasts are lived forever
Played over in our minds.
Soon we cast aside the bad
And grasp onto the good.
Gentle smiles and sweet kisses
Touches soft and smooth to feel.
These we remember well for time
Passing on as we cling to them.
But the memories are still strong
In our minds long after they're
Long gone from our doings, yet
Sweet breezes hold no touch
And light scents cannot last
As long as people we have loved.
May the thoughts linger long and
The love endure longer for those
We have had in our pasts.

Autumn

If you cannot understand
Look to the autumn and
Search the leaves of red.
Watch the wind blow across,
And the grass wave as it does.
Hear the crunch as you walk.

Sacred

I see a world of ordinary
In which nothing is sacred.
As I look at the sacred,
I see only the ordinary.

Such is Life

The moon is cold and the wind is strong. Still I move closer to the fire. When the rains start, i huddle. When they roar, I cringe.I open an umbrella for dryness. When the fire dies, I am cold. When the umbrella folds, I get wet. Such is life.

The Valley

The valley lay out before me,
Carpeted in lush shades of green.
The grasses so thick no sound heard
As I walked through the vale.
Bright bushes surround me everywhere,
Buffering the trails and pathways.
Overhead dense foliage nearly block the sun,
As trees press into one another.
Joy is a day in the life.

The Moon

The moon is out tonight
And it is cold on me
I freeze under its' orb
It is so hot down here

Needlessly Toil

We rack our brains
We struggle at work
We needlessly toil
Yet for what in the end
Our eyes are still horizontal
And our noses still function

Dirt and Ashes

You can gather up the dirt
And sweep up the ashes
But the wisdom of the universe
Is like ashes and dirt
The more that's swept
The more there is

Dirt and Trash

There are those who speak
Of sweeping away the dirt
And ridding us of trash
But the simple truth of time
Is that dirt and trash
Have always been and always
Will be a part of our lives

The Waters

There is an ancient pond
Whose waters run deeply cold
And people come from miles around
To taste the spirits of the waters
But water is water after all

Lessons

They talk to us and they just talk
And when they have finished
We still believe so little
Yet we follow like sheep
And we pay the price of serfs

Walk

Tom and Sam were walking in the woods one day. Tom spotted a leaf along the path and bent to pick it up. Holding the leaf, he turned to Sam and said, “Behold the maple leaf. One it was part of a majestic tree, providing foliage and shade in the forest. Now it is just a leaf, lying on the ground, waiting to become compost.”

Sam held up his hand, bit s corner of his nail off, spit it on the ground, and said, “There is a fingernail. It is debris. So fucking what? Can we please just walk?”

Envision

Envision the scene; a small wooded area with a pristine view, a small pond perfectly formed fed by an equally small stream. The entire scene is tucked back in an untraveled, uncharted area. Then one day a young man stumbled upon this beautiful place and made it his.

Once a month, he would come here to sit and contemplate his life and his problems. He knew enough to come by a different path each time so that others could not follow and find this place. He understood the sanctity of the place and the need to maintain the holiness of the environment.

In the ‘other world’ the young man was playing at stocks. He got to step on people and take money from others and destroy individuals. He made tons of money and was extremely good at what he did. He was very unhappy and miserable all the time. He could not find any happiness. None of his friends were very happy either.

Whenever he came to his hideaway, the world changed. He was happy and at peace. He found the cares of the world around him were gone and he was at peace with himself. His mind cleared and he could think much more logically. He began to meditate on his own, considering his life and the direction his was going. Soon he was coming to the place every two weeks.

One weekday, while on a lunch break, the man ventured into a small bookstore. While glancing around, he found a tiny book filled with stories called koans, life stories. They intrigued him so he bought the book. As he read the stories, he found they were confusing. They were philosophical but did not seem to provide any ending, no moral, no conclusion. They were riddles almost. The more you read one, the worse the riddle became.

Still, he kept the book around. The next time he went to the place, he took it with him. Here, he began to contemplate one of the koans as he mediated. Now he found he could concentrate better. Clarity was enhanced. Still the story was confusing and he failed to grasp it fully.

Many months passed. Now he was coming to the place weekly. Still he contemplated the koan and still he was unsuccessful in ‘solving’ it. Still, he continued to study the story and to think upon it.

One week, as he approached the pond, he found an older man sitting, waiting for him. Puzzled, he approached. The older man spoke first, “I’ve awaited you. Please enlighten me as to what you have learned.”

Though finding this odd, he did respond, “I have been mediating and studying a story. However, I fail to grasp the meaning of the …” Just then the older man interrupted, reached out, and hit the other one in the forehead with his open hand, very hard. In so doing, the younger man suddenly understood what he had failed to grasp in the story and he was enlightened.

They both remained.

Wilderness

To be in the wilderness
Is to find oneself immersed
In the depth of world
In the height of nature
Yet to be set free of restraint

A Pond

A pond in the summer,
So quiet and silent.
It opens a path
That can be followed.
How can anyone state it?

Freedom

Unless one frees oneself
Of the nest of common thought
And prevailing ideas; then
One is caught in the mundane.
Freedom is a singular path.

Finding Our Way

When the light is seen
The darkness vanishes
Confusion goes away
When wisdom does arise
This is how we find our way
On the path of life

Wind and Rain

When the wind blows
The grass bends
The leaves fall
The water ripples.

When the rain falls
The rivers run
The lakes flow
The oceans rise

When they don't
They don't
Yin yang