Buddha-piece

I've just discovered that what I've been
doing all these years as a painter has
a niche-name, NARRATIVE PAINTING
(who knew?) Also it might even count
as VISUAL POETRY, imagine!

This is a poetry blog, but given my
fall into cursed CATEGORY as above,
I can even post the words on paintings,
right? They count? Please say yes.

Here's the language on one Buddha-piece
currently under construction:

SOME WANT, SO DON'T HAVE

SOME HAVE!

SOME ARE JUST ANNOYING

a tiny poem

Months go by (what else can they do?) and
the blog is neglected. But today something
(zazen?) urged me to offer a short poem
on zazen.


GREEN HAIR

Roshi, this sitting, so hard! Please say,
are enlightened people different from how
I seem to be?

"Oh yes: some chant mantra 'me, me!'
Some whine less loud than you,
some with green hair."

something to Blog-about

Hello Dear Readers -- with the thought
that my poor blog, which has suffered
such neglect, deserves a more frequent
replenishment, here's today's post in
my long-running timed poem-exchange with
the young New York poet Jordan Rome.

15

11:05 a.m.

FIFTEEN MINUTE POEM

In the first three minutes,
with nothing, really, to say,
I'll breathe, seek aspiration,
hope to pass as someone somewhat loveable.

Along about minute four
there will gather a certain trepidation
(since words -- given time-scheme -- must shortly arrive)
and so will stir, strive

through two full minutes of my Fifteen Minute Poem:
note how I grew, studied, married,
suffered, divorced...
God-awful stuff to score through at once,

and in the next six minutes write
furiously as dark chords resound
my default Fifteen Minute Poem
which yet again will praise

wu wei, guys, doing nothing, letting it be,
living in my socks, no sweat, faking
enlightenment
in my as-if way.

11:20

- b
---

MEANDERING POEMS

As a kind of exercise I've been experimenting
with light-hearted poems that slide from one
notation to another in pursuit of play on
sober "commentary."

I think such poems are likely the work of my
heteronym ZAYRE KASERLA, whose single
publication -- THE COMPLETE POEMS OF
ZAYRE KASERLA BY BARRY SPACKS --
may someday appear.

An example:


WATER

What is this thing about water? it's all over the place.
When they worry about Mars it's always
"Is there water?"

Consider how everybody would lighten up
if they'd hush about the sea, la mar
touched by moonlight,

or just stopped saying
"Much of our bodies are water"
or "Water finds its own level." This is true,

and there's washing of various body parts
to account for the stuff's popularity,
plus, come to think of it, cataracts

and wells and rafting
and have I mentioned kayaks?
all of these would go unsung, so maybe

it's asking too much to shut up about water,
for it's hard to imagine a single comment
about Hawaii surviving if we went that way.

do playful poems count?

A SEAGULL

Let's say you brought a seagull home for a pet
and your mother said Watch out, they'll eat your eyes.
She sort of tosses that off on her way to work
but without the smirk that means she means it cute.

Okay, she has you worried -- you like your eyes.
This makes you think you'd better feed that bird
(You'd named her Erma, God know why)
so you open her a can of tuna fish --

hoo-boy, the way that gull goes at that fish! --
the can bangs through the kitchen spreading grease,
the gull beak-pecks it like a nail-drive gun,
you even thought she'd (Erma) eat the can

and hey, she tries! Watch out, the jagged edges!
That's you, forgetting birds are ignorant
and brutal. Is she gazing at your face?
Dessert? Or is she grateful, feeling love?

Admit it, you had feared she'd eat your eyes
but now you're mooning eye to eye with her.
Erma, you say, you're such a crazy fuck,
and here's the crazy part: she starts to coo.

She rubs her yellow beak against your cheek.
She hops up on your head and waves her wings.
She defecates white tuna-waste upon you
and damn it, shit, she goes and eats your eyes.

Somebody Stop Me

This is the sort of poem it's hard not to write,
I guess because it gets the endorphins going
and you have the brief illusion that others
will be as tickled as you are while the words
do their thing.

WHY IS THAT?

"Why?" Now there's a question.
Why this cancer of the spleen,
this palmetto branch where the white moths hover,
these particular bangs and scrapes
from the recycling collectors?

Why this romance of Tim's with the albino girl,
why that particular Brenda of the pink eyelashes
among all the albino girls he might have chosen,
and why, come to think of it,
why the Albigensian Crusade?

Plus why is a dawn song called
an "Alba" in Spain
but an "Aubade" in France
when it's just a question of a few miles between,
and what to do about that?

And what to do
with the pressure within Tim
to get so far into shy Brenda
that he'd reach the chocolates and reds
she hides beneath her whiteness.

Or what to do
about my own distaste for Wonder Bread
(still thinking whiteness)
as if this made me
somehow special?

Just asking.

Brenda, on the other hand
has put up with one hell of a lot
during her 23 years on earth,
and is hoping she and Tim
might have conversations, like in the movies,

pert and sassy: he'll do Hugh Grant
and she'll reply in Monica -- no,
belay that, what was I thinking?
Reply as Jennifer, as Jay-Lo, whoever,
but Monica's no proper name

for a romantic stand-by.
Brenda would never fantasize herself
as a Monica, believe me,
and -- here my questioning goes a bit deeper --
what do Brenda and Monica share?

The two girls, what do they have in common?
Lust, of course, and an instinct for a nice profit,
also ecstasy while wandering the aisles
at Sur La Table, all those swish Espresso Machines,
the ceramic roosters, the little medallions

for placing round the neck of wine bottles,
telling them, in effect "You're white." "You're red."
And those gizmos measuring amounts of pasta,
this much for one, this much for two,
depending upon the number of guests to be fed.

back after a rest with 50 WORDS

Hey, world-out-there, It's closing in on a year
since I last posted, shameful. Reason: I'd run
out of odds and ends of poetry items and
could only imagine pasting up my own
work, but today thought, well, and what the
hell, why not do that until something more
engaging came along.

So...a recent short one that seemed
appropriate for breaking a long silence:

50 WORDS

I gave up argument some years ago
along with cigarettes and misery,
but the words still hang around...
gotta cut down to a daily ration

always saving out a few
in case comes along a pressing need
to compose a bit of loveliness
to whisper to a lovely lady.