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I am a practicing Buddhist. I have been for 25 years.

quote by Tina Turner
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Art Of Heartbreak

Music: j. allen
Lyrics: hall/s. allen/j. allen
Try to ignore the twisted side
We kiss and we hiss at the same time
Dont you know some things just dont blow away
Youve been this way before, but the cuts just seem to hurt me more
Could be a reason for the difference...
Youve been practicing
The art of heartbreak
Practing
The art of heartbreak
Anticipating what shes aching for
Im being edgy leave her wanting more
Anyone might think wed rather be alone
Yeah, shes been cut before by sharp things Ive been saying so long
I cant believe the way she takes it
Ive been practicing
The art of heartbreak
Practicing
The art of heartbreak
Why do we make it hard, been hitting back and forth for so long
What are we aiming at, theres no score in love
I bet a million bucks she knows but wont let up on me, so
Ive just decided to stop
Practicing the art of heartbreak
Practicing
The art of heartbreak
Weve been practicing

song performed by Hall & Oates
Added by Lucian Velea
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Biting Those Lips

Why are you biting your lips?

'I am practicing.'

So you are learning to keep your mouth shut?

'I said I was 'practicing'.
And as far as keeping my mouth shut...
That is a learning process.
And I did say I was practicing.
I did not say I was learning anything...
Yet! '

Practice makes perfect,
You know?

'Who said anything about wanting to be perfect?
There are too many rehearsing that right now.
With questionable results I am sure will be delivered.
And I am practicing biting my lips,
In the event 'that' becomes a necessity.
And once that becomes discovered as one of my skills,
Well...
Only 'then' will I begin rehearsing perfection,
To overwhelm those disbelieving...
I have yet revealed another talent no one can deny.'

I see.
Well...
You keep biting those lips,
Okay?

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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The Perfomance Of Stars For The Coming Boastful Election?

[Today I touched a different type of book? 'One Night's Shelter/From home to homelessness, autobiography of an American Buddhist monk Bikkhu Yogavacara Rahula.He was born Scott Joseph DuPrez in Southern California in 1948.He grew up during the hippie revolution and entered the U.S. Army for three years in 1967, spending ten months in Vietnam.In 1972, he began a long odyssey starting in Scandinavia, and ended up in India and Nepal.In Nepal he encountered his first spiritual teachers, Tibetan Lamas, at a month long meditation course, by the end of which he was converted to being a Buddhist.His search brought him to Sri Lanka where he was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1975.Since 1987, he has resided at the Bhavana Society forest Monastery in West Virginia, USA.]

Aries: 'I do not mind who comes to the power and I am on his side give my full support to him or her?
Tarus: Somebody must win and someone should lose.But I would like to have a friendship with both of them.
Gemini: I don't care who wins or loses as they never reach us.
Cancer: O the damned politics a cancerous growth.
Leo: They may have superpowers but close to our dens they hide their short tails?
Virgo: I am not scared to tell the truth they're henpecked!
Libra: Nobody rules in this World a balanced way?
Scorpio: They rule like scorpions but at last just spiders?
Saggatarius: They are not good marksmen.
Capricorn: Their promises are like honey but when it breaks really bitter.
Aquarius: Ocean is big but you cannot sip the water a bit?
Pisces: You do not want to teach them, the fish to swim and likewise cheating is their heritage?

To Dale Breckenridge Carnegie for his book
'How to win friends and influence people? '

poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
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Five Years

Pushing thru the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying
I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and t.v.s
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought Id need so many people
A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadnt a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that
I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, dont think
You knew you were in this song
And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, youre beautiful, I want you to walk
Weve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
Weve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, thats all weve got
Weve got five years, what a surprise
Five years, stuck on my eyes
Weve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, thats all weve got
Weve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
Weve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, thats all weve got
Weve got five years, what a surprise
Weve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Weve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, thats all weve got
Five years
Five years
Five years
Five years

song performed by David Bowie
Added by Lucian Velea
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The four Monarchyes, the Assyrian being the first, beginning under Nimrod, 131. Years after the Floo

When time was young, & World in Infancy,
Man did not proudly strive for Soveraignty:
But each one thought his petty Rule was high,
If of his house he held the Monarchy.
This was the golden Age, but after came
The boisterous son of Chus, Grand-Child to Ham,
That mighty Hunter, who in his strong toyles
Both Beasts and Men subjected to his spoyles:
The strong foundation of proud Babel laid,
Erech, Accad, and Culneh also made.
These were his first, all stood in Shinar land,
From thence he went Assyria to command,
And mighty Niniveh, he there begun,
Not finished till he his race had run.
Resen, Caleh, and Rehoboth likewise
By him to Cities eminent did rise.
Of Saturn, he was the Original,
Whom the succeeding times a God did call,
When thus with rule, he had been dignifi'd,
One hundred fourteen years he after dy'd.
Belus.
Great Nimrod dead, Belus the next his Son
Confirms the rule, his Father had begun;
Whose acts and power is not for certainty
Left to the world, by any History.
But yet this blot for ever on him lies,
He taught the people first to Idolize:
Titles Divine he to himself did take,
Alive and dead, a God they did him make.
This is that Bel the Chaldees worshiped,
Whose Priests in Stories oft are mentioned;
This is that Baal to whom the Israelites
So oft profanely offered sacred Rites:
This is Beelzebub God of Ekronites,
Likewise Baalpeor of the Mohabites,
His reign was short, for as I calculate,
At twenty five ended his Regal date.
Ninus.
His Father dead, Ninus begins his reign,
Transfers his seat to the Assyrian plain;
And mighty Nineveh more mighty made,
Whose Foundation was by his Grand-sire laid:
Four hundred forty Furlongs wall'd about,
On which stood fifteen hundred Towers stout.
The walls one hundred sixty foot upright,
So broad three Chariots run abrest there might.
Upon the pleasant banks of Tygris floud
This stately Seat of warlike Ninus stood:
This Ninus for a God his Father canonized,
To whom the sottish people sacrificed.

[...] Read more

poem by Anne Bradstreet
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Allah supports Muslim in Burma.

Those martyrs are bold and brave,
Allah! You are only One who can save.
Send your angels to sustain,
Courage, courage is to obtain,
Allah sends volcanoes, tempests, earthquake,
You have a superpower, It's quick,
Muslim in Burma needs support,
The fact can abuse and distort,
Buddhist are terrorist,
Heartless, slaying are the worst,
Allah you are the fair,
Buddhist can't deserve to breathe the air.
The Massacres are carried out,
Allah! for Buddhist! wipe them out.
Allah sends the angels to demolish,
The cries of mother can't finish.

poem by khaled Elbalishy
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King Solomon And The Queen Of Sheba

(A Poem Game.)

“And when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, . . .
she came to prove him with hard questions.”

[The men’s leader rises as he sees the Queen unveiling
and approaching a position that gives her half of the stage.]

Men’s Leader: The Queen of Sheba came to see King Solomon.
[He bows three times.]
I was King Solomon,
I was King Solomon,
I was King Solomon.

[She bows three times.]
Women’s Leader: I was the Queen,
I was the Queen,
I was the Queen.

Both Leaders: We will be king and queen,
[They stand together stretching their hands over the land.]
Reigning on mountains green,
Happy and free
For ten thousand years.

[They stagger forward as though carrying a yoke together.]
Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred oxen.

Congregation: We were the oxen.

[Here King and Queen pause at the footlights.]
Both Leaders: You shall feel goads no more.
[They walk backward, throwing off the yoke and rejoicing.]
Walk dreadful roads no more,
Free from your loads
For ten thousand years.

[The men’s leader goes forward, the women’s leader dances round him.]
Both Leaders: King Solomon he had four hundred sweethearts.

[Here he pauses at the footlights.]
Congregation: We were the sweethearts.

[He walks backward. Both clap their hands to the measure.]
Both Leaders: You shall dance round again,
You shall dance round again,
Cymbals shall sound again,
Cymbals shall sound again,
[The Queen appears to gather wildflowers.]

[...] Read more

poem by Vachel Lindsay
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The Booker Washington Trilogy

I. A NEGRO SERMON:—SIMON LEGREE

(To be read in your own variety of negro dialect.)

Legree's big house was white and green.
His cotton-fields were the best to be seen.
He had strong horses and opulent cattle,
And bloodhounds bold, with chains that would rattle.
His garret was full of curious things:
Books of magic, bags of gold,
And rabbits' feet on long twine strings.
But he went down to the Devil.

Legree he sported a brass-buttoned coat,
A snake-skin necktie, a blood-red shirt.
Legree he had a beard like a goat,
And a thick hairy neck, and eyes like dirt.
His puffed-out cheeks were fish-belly white,
He had great long teeth, and an appetite.
He ate raw meat, 'most every meal,
And rolled his eyes till the cat would squeal.

His fist was an enormous size
To mash poor niggers that told him lies:
He was surely a witch-man in disguise.
But he went down to the Devil.

He wore hip-boots, and would wade all day
To capture his slaves that had fled away.
But he went down to the Devil.

He beat poor Uncle Tom to death
Who prayed for Legree with his last breath.
Then Uncle Tom to Eva flew,
To the high sanctoriums bright and new;
And Simon Legree stared up beneath,
And cracked his heels, and ground his teeth:
And went down to the Devil.

He crossed the yard in the storm and gloom;
He went into his grand front room.
He said, "I killed him, and I don't care."
He kicked a hound, he gave a swear;
He tightened his belt, he took a lamp,
Went down cellar to the webs and damp.
There in the middle of the mouldy floor
He heaved up a slab, he found a door —
And went down to the Devil.

[...] Read more

poem by Vachel Lindsay
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Something Real

words and music by emily saliers
I've seen the sun on a funeral, the full moon in a midday sky
Tactician politician hold his head and wonder why
I'm always struck that much harder by the power of suggestion
By now I know the answer's always in the question
Now that we're done with that why don't you warm the car
All of the fields are filled with fresh boys playing football
More than the weather chills, the bands practicing their drills
I've got to get back to something real with you
I had to call your parents to get your number again
I was either gonna be the prodigal or the banished friend
We were standing against an outside wall, I was afraid of what you'd say
It took me ten years to call you back but here we are today
Now that we're done with that why don't you warm the car
All of the fields are filled with fresh boys playing football
More than the weather chills, the bands practicing their drills
I've got to get back to something real with you
So life has brought you this: two marriages and three kids
And me life as slick as ice that finally hit the skids
You're as sweet as you ever were
A slight sickness of regret washes over me
And in the end that's all I get
Now that we're done with that why don't you warm the car
All of the fields are filled with fresh boys playing football
More than the weather chills, the bands practicing their drills
I've got to get back to something real
I've got to get back to something real
I've got to get back to something real with you

song performed by Indigo Girls
Added by Lucian Velea
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Recollections

I.

Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken
Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.

Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.

Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and sicken,
Yearning for love that the veil of death endears,
Slackens not wing for the wings of years that quicken -
Years upon years.

II.

Years upon years, and the flame of love's high altar
Trembles and sinks, and the sense of listening ears
Heeds not the sound that it heard of love's blithe psalter
Years upon years.

Only the sense of a heart that hearkens hears,
Louder than dreams that assail and doubts that palter,
Sorrow that slept and that wakes ere sundawn peers.

Wakes, that the heart may behold, and yet not falter,
Faces of children as stars unknown of, spheres
Seen but of love, that endures though all things alter,
Years upon years.

III.

Years upon years, as a watch by night that passes,
Pass, and the light of their eyes is fire that sears
Slowly the hopes of the fruit that life amasses
Years upon years.

Pale as the glimmer of stars on moorland meres
Lighten the shadows reverberate from the glasses
Held in their hands as they pass among their peers.

Lights that are shadows, as ghosts on graveyard grasses,
Moving on paths that the moon of memory cheers,
Shew but as mists over cloudy mountain passes
Years upon years.

poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Divergence

Don't concern yourself,
With my activities.
They are unimportant!
Just keep paying my fees...
And I guarantee you,
Your life will be enriched.
You have my promise...
Your life will never be the same.
Ever again!
That you can count on.
Just keep your focus,
On the dancing bunny.

'Aren't you practicing divergence? '

Practicing?
Who's practicing?
I am implementing.
But don't worry about it.
You are going to fit right in.
It is going to captivate.
More than your fascination,
With that rabbit.

Your life will never be the same.
Ever again!
That you can count on.
Just keep your focus,
On the dancing bunny.
I'll keep you informed...
When that reform comes.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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We All Have Different Approaches

Why do you climb the stairs,
To then intentionally fall down them.
To repeat that over again?

'I am practicing rejection.
I like to believe I am being pro-active,
About these things.
You know...
Reaching the top!
To then fall down.

Well...
Perhaps it was best,
You did not seek from anyone their advice.

'I want to learn from my own experiences.'

I took a different route.
But we all have different approaches,
To achieve similar results in the end.
I use to bang my head up against the walls.

'I'm not into that kind of pain.
That's too melodramatic.
I don't wont to be emotionally attached,
To my rejection.
That's why I am practicing not to be involved.
Hopefully I will experience less traumatic affects.'

Well...
Keep practicing.
I'm sure you will learn something,
That will eventually be suitable and life changing for you.
If you should live through your 'rehearsals',
Without breaking your neck.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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II. Half-Rome

What, you, Sir, come too? (Just the man I'd meet.)
Be ruled by me and have a care o' the crowd:
This way, while fresh folk go and get their gaze:
I'll tell you like a book and save your shins.
Fie, what a roaring day we've had! Whose fault?
Lorenzo in Lucina,—here's a church
To hold a crowd at need, accommodate
All comers from the Corso! If this crush
Make not its priests ashamed of what they show
For temple-room, don't prick them to draw purse
And down with bricks and mortar, eke us out
The beggarly transept with its bit of apse
Into a decent space for Christian ease,
Why, to-day's lucky pearl is cast to swine.
Listen and estimate the luck they've had!
(The right man, and I hold him.)

Sir, do you see,
They laid both bodies in the church, this morn
The first thing, on the chancel two steps up,
Behind the little marble balustrade;
Disposed them, Pietro the old murdered fool
To the right of the altar, and his wretched wife
On the other side. In trying to count stabs,
People supposed Violante showed the most,
Till somebody explained us that mistake;
His wounds had been dealt out indifferent where,
But she took all her stabbings in the face,
Since punished thus solely for honour's sake,
Honoris causâ, that's the proper term.
A delicacy there is, our gallants hold,
When you avenge your honour and only then,
That you disfigure the subject, fray the face,
Not just take life and end, in clownish guise.
It was Violante gave the first offence,
Got therefore the conspicuous punishment:
While Pietro, who helped merely, his mere death
Answered the purpose, so his face went free.
We fancied even, free as you please, that face
Showed itself still intolerably wronged;
Was wrinkled over with resentment yet,
Nor calm at all, as murdered faces use,
Once the worst ended: an indignant air
O' the head there was—'t is said the body turned
Round and away, rolled from Violante's side
Where they had laid it loving-husband-like.
If so, if corpses can be sensitive,
Why did not he roll right down altar-step,
Roll on through nave, roll fairly out of church,
Deprive Lorenzo of the spectacle,

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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Sunday at Hampstead

I

(AN VERY IDLE IDYLL BY A VERY HUMBLE MEMBER OF THE GREAT AND NOBLE LONDON MOB.)

This is the Heath of Hampstead,
This is the Dome of Saint Paul’s;
Beneath, on the serried house-tops,
A chequered luster falls:

And the might city of London,
Under the clouds and the light,
Seems a low, wet beach, half shingle,
With a few sharp rocks upright.

Here we sit, my darling,
And dream an hour away:
The donkeys are hurried and worried,
But we are not donkeys to-day:

Through all the weary week, dear,
We toil in the murk down there,
Tied to a desk and a counter,
A patient, stupid pair!

But on Sunday we slip our thether,
And away from the smoke and the smirch;
Too grateful to God for His Sabbath
To shut its hours in a church.

Away to the green, green country,
Under the open sky;
Where the earth’s sweet breath is incense
And the lark sings psalms on high.

On Sunday we’re Lord and Lady,
With ten times the love and glee
Of those pale, languid rich ones
Who are always and never free.

The drawl and stare and simper,
So fine and cold and staid,
Like exquisite waxwork figures
That must be kept in the shade.

We can laugh out loud when merry,
We can romp at kiss-in-the-ring,
We can take our beer at a public,
We can loll on the grass and sing.

Would you grieve very much, my darling,

[...] Read more

poem by James Thomson
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VII. Pompilia

I am just seventeen years and five months old,
And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks;
'T is writ so in the church's register,
Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names
At length, so many names for one poor child,
—Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela
Pompilia Comparini,—laughable!
Also 't is writ that I was married there
Four years ago: and they will add, I hope,
When they insert my death, a word or two,—
Omitting all about the mode of death,—
This, in its place, this which one cares to know,
That I had been a mother of a son
Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace
O' the Curate, not through any claim I have;
Because the boy was born at, so baptized
Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:
A pretty church, I say no word against,
Yet stranger-like,—while this Lorenzo seems
My own particular place, I always say.
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,
With half his body rushing from the wall,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man—
(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)
An ominous sign to one baptized like me,
Married, and to be buried there, I hope.
And they should add, to have my life complete,
He is a boy and Gaetan by name—
Gaetano, for a reason,—if the friar
Don Celestine will ask this grace for me
Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was
Baptized me: he remembers my whole life
As I do his grey hair.

All these few things
I know are true,—will you remember them?
Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,
To count my wounds,—twenty-two dagger-wounds,
Five deadly, but I do not suffer much—
Or too much pain,—and am to die to-night.

Oh how good God is that my babe was born,
—Better than born, baptized and hid away
Before this happened, safe from being hurt!
That had been sin God could not well forgive:
He was too young to smile and save himself.
When they took two days after he was born,
My babe away from me to be baptized
And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,—

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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Canto the First

I
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

II
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.

III
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
Were French, and famous people, as we know:
And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,
With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.

IV
Nelson was once Britannia's god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd;
There's no more to be said of Trafalgar,
'T is with our hero quietly inurn'd;
Because the army's grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concern'd;
Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.

V
Brave men were living before Agamemnon
And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
But then they shone not on the poet's page,
And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,
But can't find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan.

[...] Read more

poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
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The King of the Vasse

A LEGEND OF THE BUSH.

MY tale which I have brought is of a time
Ere that fair Southern land was stained with crime,
Brought thitherward in reeking ships and cast
Like blight upon the coast, or like a blast
From angry levin on a fair young tree,
That stands thenceforth a piteous sight to see.
So lives this land to-day beneath the sun,—
A weltering plague-spot, where the hot tears run,
And hearts to ashes turn, and souls are dried
Like empty kilns where hopes have parched and died.
Woe's cloak is round her,—she the fairest shore
In all the Southern Ocean o'er and o'er.
Poor Cinderella! she must bide her woe,
Because an elder sister wills it so.
Ah! could that sister see the future day
When her own wealth and strength are shorn away,
A.nd she, lone mother then, puts forth her hand
To rest on kindred blood in that far land;
Could she but see that kin deny her claim
Because of nothing owing her but shame,—
Then might she learn 'tis building but to fall,
If carted rubble be the basement-wall.

But this my tale, if tale it be, begins
Before the young land saw the old land's sins
Sail up the orient ocean, like a cloud
Far-blown, and widening as it neared,—a shroud
Fate-sent to wrap the bier of all things pure,
And mark the leper-land while stains endure.
In the far days, the few who sought the West
Were men all guileless, in adventurous quest
Of lands to feed their flocks and raise their grain,
And help them live their lives with less of pain
Than crowded Europe lets her children know.
From their old homesteads did they seaward go,
As if in Nature's order men must flee
As flow the streams,—from inlands to the sea.

In that far time, from out a Northern land,
With home-ties severed, went a numerous band
Of men and wives and children, white-haired folk:
Whose humble hope of rest at home had broke,
As year was piled on year, and still their toil
Had wrung poor fee from -Sweden's rugged soil.
One day there gathered from the neighboring steads,
In Jacob Eibsen's, five strong household heads,—
Five men large-limbed and sinewed, Jacob's sons,

[...] Read more

poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph

Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The White Cliffs

I
I have loved England, dearly and deeply,
Since that first morning, shining and pure,
The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply
Out of the sea that once made her secure.
I had no thought then of husband or lover,
I was a traveller, the guest of a week;
Yet when they pointed 'the white cliffs of Dover',
Startled I found there were tears on my cheek.
I have loved England, and still as a stranger,
Here is my home and I still am alone.
Now in her hour of trial and danger,
Only the English are really her own.

II
It happened the first evening I was there.
Some one was giving a ball in Belgrave Square.
At Belgrave Square, that most Victorian spot.—
Lives there a novel-reader who has not
At some time wept for those delightful girls,
Daughters of dukes, prime ministers and earls,
In bonnets, berthas, bustles, buttoned basques,
Hiding behind their pure Victorian masks
Hearts just as hot - hotter perhaps than those
Whose owners now abandon hats and hose?
Who has not wept for Lady Joan or Jill
Loving against her noble parent's will
A handsome guardsman, who to her alarm
Feels her hand kissed behind a potted palm
At Lady Ivry's ball the dreadful night
Before his regiment goes off to fight;
And see him the next morning, in the park,
Complete in busbee, marching to embark.
I had read freely, even as a child,
Not only Meredith and Oscar Wilde
But many novels of an earlier day—
Ravenshoe, Can You Forgive Her?, Vivien Grey,
Ouida, The Duchess, Broughton's Red As a Rose,
Guy Livingstone, Whyte-Melville— Heaven knows
What others. Now, I thought, I was to see
Their habitat, though like the Miller of Dee,
I cared for none and no one cared for me.

III
A light blue carpet on the stair
And tall young footmen everywhere,
Tall young men with English faces
Standing rigidly in their places,
Rows and rows of them stiff and staid

[...] Read more

poem by Alice Duer Miller
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A Koan Catalogue

A new catalogue has arrived. It sells everything in even numbers
from hampers to visors to worry stones. Da-Ren moves
his thumb across the face of the angel carved into his jadeite piece.
That was a birthday present from the curator with the cellist.
Da-Ren wrote him a masnavi in return, about a mythic river
that had dried up into a periglacial lake. It’s now retrofitted,
a parking lot, where the maroon and mango-yellow Volvo resides.
“It comes in other colours, ” Da-Ren recalls the other cellist saying,
afraid the chess master wouldn’t like the brown-tinged green.
But Da-Ren sees the tree of life in it like a forest in India
and all the bloodstone it can afford, the martyrs within forgotten.
“Take this Caravaggio and follow the splash zone, ” Da-Ren says.
“Reach the foot of the water-logged mountain in Montenegro,
and there, a box poem at page bottom, left and right of centre.”

Author's Note:

This poem's earlier version was one installment within a chapbook sequence chosen by Mary Jo Bang as one of six finalists in the Noemi Press Poetry Chapbook Award. The poem is the premise of a hand-sewn 'Da-Ren' Kelu, a soft sculpture created by plush artist Nana Pong of Roomism. 'Da-Ren' Kelu was given its own micro e-chapbook at Roomism with its own backstory: 'This fruitarian microbat lives in the Tree of Life, and only leaves its roost on the first full moon of every leap year. Little more is known of this mythical-mystical bat. On its last sighting, tourists said it now has the tree emblazoned on its tiny lips, in criss-crossing band-aids, as if to offer an eternal apology for its self-imposed seclusion. Sometimes, it manages to speak. When that happens, the utterance sounds something like 'différance' in soft and cooing echoes.' Other limited edition items based on the character including a pouch, badge, and handmade silver chain have been created, to be exhibited at Fab Fibe Show 2009, an exhibition that brings together showpieces of fabric and paper artists from around the world.

Koans are statements made by Zen Masters, often in response to questions about the teachings themselves. As mentioned in Zenkei Shibayama’s Zen Comments on the Mumonkan (New York: Harper & Row,1974) , novice monks in Rinzai use koans as objects of meditation to overcome dualism while the Soto school studies koans in reference to one’s own life and training. “Koans serve both to teach and to test the aspirant, ” Koller and Koller state. “As teaching devices, koans are used to lead a person beyond intellectual constructions to the direct and immediate participation in the living, whole and complete reality. Used as a test, they reveal whether or not the zazen efforts have succeeded in reaching a given level of concentration and enlightenment.”

In the book, The Silent Dialogue: Zen Letters to a Trappist Abbot (New York: Continuum,1996) , David G. Hackett’s 12 October 1974 journal entry makes note of his meeting with Hirata Roshi, Abbot of Tenryu-ji Temple in northern Kyoto. It seems, all those years ago, the discussion was couched in a general pessimism regarding the impact of Zazen and Christianity on each other. Hackett poignantly quoted Heinrich Dumoulin then in saying that “the dialogue can only fruitfully begin on a spiritual plane”, that “there can be no doubt about the common ground of all religions, but it cannot be grasped in words”.

In the book, For the Sake of the World: The Spirit of Buddhist and Christian Monasticism (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press,1989) , Patrick G. Henry and Donald K. Swearer offer a story on Thich Nhat Nanh, citing James Forest of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, about the way Nhat Hanh responded to the scorn of a man during his 1968 United States tour: “Then Nhat Hanh began to speak – quietly, with deep calm and a sense of personal caring for the man who had just attacked him. The words seemed like rain falling on fire: 'If you want the tree to grow, ' he said, 'it won’t help to water the leaves. You have to water the roots….' Nhat Hanh stood on the sidewalk struggling for air…. He had wanted to respond with anger so he made himself breathe deeply and slowly in order to find a way to respond calmly and with understanding. But the breathing had been too slow and deep, and he had to excuse himself in order to restore normal respiration. For the first time Forest realized there is a connection between the way one breathes and the way one responds to the world.”

“It takes two eyes to perceive three dimensions, ” Henry and Swearer mention later. “But as what we see becomes more rounded, the mystery becomes even more tantalizing.” In discussing how discourse between Buddhist and Christian monks and nuns about difference interestingly unveils their “undeniable and inexpressible unity”, the authors highlight a project in interreligious understanding titled ‘Dialogue of Silence’. They write: “Our own work on the comparative study in this book has brought us time and again, and finally, up against the truth in a couplet by Robert Frost: ‘We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.’ ”

poem by Desmond Kon Zhicheng Mingdé
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