Spinozablue

Caves of the Thousand Buddhas

February 8, 2019 Spinozablue

Inspiration from Cao Jun’s

Volcanoes are ancient teachers
Rising up from the magma
Core of planet earth
The effluent bringing forth
All the swirling elements of life
Choking out gaseous
Fiery energy and chaos
Creating oceans and rivulets
Mountains and savannas
Landscapes for the tiger
Spewing lava and ash
For the delicate lotus
To break through
Reaching to heaven
Painters and poets
Are modern interpreters
Of universal truths
Written in calligraphy
Hidden deep within the
Caves of The Thousand Buddhas
All of humanity
Reaching toward the sky
With brush in hand
Creating their own reality
On blank silk canvas

by Doreen LeBlanc

Doreen LeBlanc lives in Massachusetts and spends time in summer and fall at her cabin in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where she was born. Inspiration bubbles up out of the river and sea, streams down the mountain, and comes through family

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Enthusiasma Giganta Comedía

January 18, 2019 Spinozablue

I dove like Gilgamesh
Into the deep
For the youth plant
The one that got away

The snake shed its skin
Thousands of years ago
Thousands of miles
From great-walled Uruk

Would this happen to me?
Would I forget the gift
Lay it on the ground
To be snatched in a flash

Like youth itself?

There is no suspense
To the journey
We know how it ends
But we act as if

This time
Because it’s me
And not that fool Gilgamesh
Everything will be different

New Poems by Clyde Kessler: The Young Child’s Breakfast

September 17, 2018 Spinozablue

AT THE PRIMITIVE CAMPGROUND IN THE GORGE

A ghost cannot gather itself
inside a tree, or a peregrine,
or a creek, or heaven. It cannot
draw stars through the window
of a building in Beijing, or
on a cabin near Woolwine with
spring peepers chorusing music
to fit the sky. It cannot revive
its mind in a trout lily, as much
as I wish. I can’t tell it my name.
I can’t share one flapjack, smoke,
or a sip of bootleg. I rummage
in a poke of cornmeal, and ask
hungry? The campfire won’t say.

TELLING LIES ALONG THE MONKEY RIVER

Clouds tease my boat down the Monkey River.
The sun slips past me with a jabiru on a mudflat.
I enjoy every lie I tell. One of them is a boat,
and another is Monkey River, and one more
is this jabiru staring at me, owning the river,
placing the sun in its wings, because my … Click to continue . . .

This is Not a Poem

August 14, 2018 Spinozablue

The Monkey Climbs a Tree

With words come the square, the block
Of sound, time and space

With words, you fill the square
And we bounce you hither and yon

The block of time and space, ex nihilo
Becomes something you see, touch, hear

Smell if you’re advanced
Taste if you leap beyond the possible

II.

An image does more, because it is
The thing in a sense
A copy of the thing at least
But words can never be

The thing itself, the vessel
Or its roiling contents

III.

Words, like music, are embodied dreams
They float until finally seized
By hungry, desperate vagabonds
Cast off from the one true earth

Cast off, ironically, but still alive
Waiting for a dirt-filled muse to lead
Them halfway home

I wish I could make ten
Make ten before I die

Another time

— Douglas Pinson

Understated Angelic Choirs in Cynicstan

May 11, 2018 Spinozablue

Some things are meant to be in pairs. They’re meant to be twinned, coupled, one and one. Not because dualism wins. Not because we’ve lost out to dualism, in all of its permutations. After all, it’s dualistic to think in terms of the pairs and us, of the pairs not existing and us. Even of the need for pairs in this world, as if it isn’t already that way, and so.

Fix You and Run, by Coldplay and Snow Patrol, respectively, form such a pair for me. They belong to a category I’ve just invented, stolen from myself, stolen from a non-dualistic sphere, or from someone within it. No. It’s no one’s category, really. As long as no one grasps, it’s no one’s.

Fix You is a song of rescue and healing, ostensibly. But because we live in Cynicstan, that can’t be. It’s not allowed. It has to have loud guitars here and there, to make up … Click to continue . . .

Original Zen

January 30, 2018 Spinozablue

When Einstein was asked
Do you believe in God?
He replied
I believe in Spinoza’s god

And who is that, one wonders?

All that is and ought to be
Now and forever
Blue waves without end
Stars and green mountains and red rivers

Dark roiling matter without end

The eternal reunions and disbursements of Nature
As it is and ought to be

Though we can’t see it
Blinded by this and that
Preset premade chain/anchor
On rational thought

III

Augustine poisoned us all
By saying we were all already poisoned
From conception on
By a toxin he felt and universalized

Save us from all individuals
Who seek to make their own experience
The law of the land
The world

The Impression of Peace

November 14, 2017 Spinozablue

Carcassonne. 2007. Photo by Douglas Pinson

It’s something we really don’t know much about at all. In our own lives. The absence of war. Even to the extent that we’re not involved, we see it elsewhere, hear about it, note its presence on the news, in books, in history, on film. It surrounds us, this absence, this lack of the presence of anything remotely akin to peace — again, whether or not we’ve ever experienced its opposite.

In. The. Air. It’s with us wherever we go. Perhaps it’s like the knowledge of an impending storm we know is ready to dump flotillas of hard rain on us from above. Dark skies. More than that. We’ve internalized this and it’s why we do whatever we can not to think about it and escape.

Escape into buying things. Stuff. Escape into, ironically, stories and films and documentaries and songs about war, violence, overwhelming aggression, death. In many ways, this escape is … Click to continue . . .

Anonymous Within Bright Lights, Big City

September 17, 2017 Spinozablue

Gary Clark Jr. is one of those guitarists other guitarists, and musicians in general, just love. Just love to be on stage with. Born in Austin, Texas, in 1984, he quickly gained a reputation as one of the finest guitar players of his generation. In 2011, Rolling Stone named him “Best Young Gun.” Extreme skills on that instrument, even after some 60 years of Rock N Roll, still carry a great deal of weight. And when they’re Bluesy and Root’s based, they tend to garner even more respect.

The lyrics for the above song, from his 2012 album, Blak and Blu, seem to contest their own ground, with an ironic subtext of famous people singing about anonymity, demanding to be known by name, assuring they will before the night is through. The cool confidence and self-assured performance deepens this contradiction, and the edgy belief in the power of one’s own skills cuts across many realms.

The protagonist … Click to continue . . .