Silent sensei

original poetry
with reading

weeping-willow-3109571_1920 3.jpg

---Listen to me recite---
-------"Silent sensei"-------
---on @dsound below:---

---► Listen on DSound---

--► Listen from source (IPFS)--

I.

I know I befriended Emptiness
Because it speaks to me like a lover
That takes everything away, and smiles.

Its words of tenderness
Are the spaces
Between.

Its yearning is
My terror:

Its absence,
My glee.

And yet until It visits,
Life is filled with only smoke.

I fall through the floors of this world,
And below them is coals.

There is a furnace
That churns forever
Where Emptiness lives.

Its vibrating fumes coalesce
Into ribbons of planets.

Its vulcanism peers through void
Through a trillion sun-eyes.

Its singeing lips
Form syllables that
Echo through eternity

All the way from the nexus
Of infinity looping into whispers
That enter in my ear and make me weep.

II.

In the shade of the willow my soul took a knocking;
The shade of my sorrow my heart shadowed o'er.
The fading delight of my youth, she had perished
To me, with my fancy, and fervor, and life.

An endeavor to salvage was started by breezes
That shifted the leaves and the sky's fawnish hues.
It carried my crumple-worn hopes from the leafbed
And ushered them upwards to wingward unwane.

In the fiery span, I aloft, I bestrewn
Saw my pride burn away in a puff, a bright plume.
Through the smoke many-colored a sweet smile I saw
Of lush Emptiness come to instruct me in law.

Notes

When you practice any art form daily, you begin to see many repeated themes and patterns emerge in your creations. I have a feeling it is this tendency, in part, that leads to the creation of the concept of "writer's block" (which, from my experience, I do not subscribe to.) However, I do agree there is a certain existential weariness that can emerge and imprint itself upon one's art. To a degree I discuss that seeming Emptiness (which is really a Fullness) in this two-part piece. Again, we are back to paradox, an artistic fixation of mine. The first part is rather free form and exploratory, and the second is a more formulaic and romantic verse. The recitation is very plain today.

On writing itself

I was pondering today, and think it meaningful to comment that the reason why I am able to consistently write poetry every day with relative ease is that I have little to no expectations of the result. This is in direct opposition to other creative outlets I have pursued such as music and sport, where I often have unrealistic expectations of my performance. For some reason, I do not have much concept of myself as a writer. It does not much concern me what the result of my daily practice session is. All that matters is the feeling I get when I quiet my mind and feel the peculiar lucidity of tuning into language: and that I follow the exquisite bliss that arises to where it is intending to lead me. It is such an experience that keeps me coming back to the empty canvas, day after day, to tap into that mimicless expanse. It is a pure enjoyment that amazes me in a world in which it is all too easy to feel joyless and bitter. Wishing you the same sanctuary of serenity, wherever it is that you find it.