Michelia Champaca

Michelia Champaca

We look for insights in your words,

your words, sometimes ripe plums

falling from before the Empty Aeon

feeding entire universes.

Is this primordial

                                or is that

                                                primordial?

It’s not like there is going to be an answer

& it is not as though there isn’t going to be

an answer.

Who is this answer?

Walking à

                                just        

                                                |WALKING|

All my pants are dying

lost right here with holes in my thighs

dreams falling through cool breezes

lifting dust motes right here

where this Buddha from before

the Aeon of Emptiness alights

telephones salt & pepper coffee cup

napkin stainless steel cream pitcher.

All of them they are arriving

this is where I find myself standing

all of them arriving from

going to…

Extinction rises and vanishes

each moment calling

the cool breeze  your voice

echoing across calling to be

gone all gone all ways

rising nothing

returns.

Emerging whale eyes barnacles brains

distraught chemicals appear as

this world of colorful emotions

nothing ever removed nothing

ever returns only turning

in this stillness the silence

of loons across lakes of dreams

complete utter darkness of

intimacy.

This is my work and no one else’s.

John Bailes, Kotatsu Roko           

Prospect Hill                 

Thursday, 2 February 2012

Words...

Your words…

We look for insights in your words,

your words, sometimes ripe plums

falling from before the Empty Aeon,

feeding entire universes.

John Bailes,

Kotatsu Roko

San Francisco Airport

Monday, 30 January 2012

From Alice Notley's, Culture of One

Excerpt from: Mercy's Teeth Defaced

“…But, Mercy is fucking wicked I tell you.

What are you going to do when you are let off the hook?

I like that: I paint a hook, one of her hands is a hook you

Fall from into a vat of creamy sudsy compassion. There

You are swimming in it, with your happy curled mouth

And little X-eyes. Is it like that? ...”

Alice Notley

Great River Zendo Zazenkai Too

Great River Zendo Zazenkai Tooà

Twitching – seek ’em hold ‘em

inward torrent burnt turn

ramble rout.

A light snowing cold day clear and crisp birds, squirrels and chipmunks ate at the bird feeding platform some atop some below receiving the rain of blessings and burrowing in the snow.

Amaryllis, unknown to most of us, reached up all the way from Boston. Lofty thoughts, aspirations heart felt, rose and crumbled and took off again midst mind’s eddies. 

Manjusri’s sword invisible swiftly dispatching attachments leaving us alone with our grasping longing selves until we tired and allowed that leap, really almost a fall, into Mercy’s arms, those arms which none of us can deny we know and are but which sometimes get lost until Manjusri helps us touch our heart.

Kotatsu Roko

Great River Zendo

West Bath, Maine

21 January, 2012

Great River Zazenkai

Great River Zendo Zazenkai à

Twitching – seek ’em hold ‘em

inward torrent burnt turn

ramble rout.

Kotatsu Roko

Great River Zendo

West Bath, Maine

21 January, 2012

Life Elsewhere

Life Elsewhere

Steamboat tether whispers cuts like jagged glass or dust across time. Water in a black hole or next to it (whatever that means.) But more water than all the oceans of the earth and frozen way frozen. Beyond Mars: billions of trillions, googolplex ice particles reflecting light being rings around planets.

I’m chilly now and I haven’t begun to think about the planets and moons encased in ice – the comets and asteroids made entirely of ice winging their way through space.

Soon our time of moisture will evaporate as this other ice becomes water: moisture and life elsewhere.

Proximal is relative.

Whenever it happens it will still be too soon.

John Bailes/Kotatsu Roko

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Prospect Hill

Flying Chinese bus...

Flying Chinese bus…

Arby’s: somewhere in Southern Connecticut off 91 north of New Haven,

Lucky Star…the smell of fried chicken.

On a river of stars, a seeming brush stroke of dreams through heavens gazed upon. Crossing galaxies, answering this call of heart, on the road to Elberon, riding with Francis Cook, raising an ox.

Expression of faith: you have come.

Completion: you have appeared here.

I wear black.

I am living alive, stylish, compassionate, open.

I even dream.

Please walk on a beach with me at sunset.

Where is Ava Gardner when you need her?

Probably having a fight with Frank Sinatra in Porto Vallarta.

{FB: become a fan of Eva Gardner.}

Nervous he sometimes wonders: what is the true color of gratitude?

Standing before his departure, he can’t…

(bring himself to leave).

John Bailes, Kotatsu Roko

Friday, 6 January 2012