Silence is no response

but contains every response.

Miss You

please

mercy

i love you for leading me deeper into the darkness and loss and grief

into myself which is disappearing as i go deeper into you

throw me a crumb

trying to find the perfect way to surrender to you makes me so high

maybe i am most happy when you are denying me

(silence, the impeccable response)

when you are made so happy by my suffering

my suffering brings you peace

and your peace calms my suffering

you lead me through the cycles of suffering merely by existing in the clouds above

On the Path

It's no good to continue following the path
i'm on, but there is no other path
and if there is, i wouldn't follow it

What brings such quiet small despair
is that the path will not leave me alone
to simply follow it

It sings to me of gifts
that if i had followed it more wildly or wisely
i would have received by now,
or will still receive
if i continue to follow it, or if i turn
and follow another path entirely before it's too late

The promise is imprisoned in silence

This is not complicated but is the most simple thing ever

Wait for nothing
from anyone or anything

There is no protection from the promise
or the gift
or the failure

The last infinitesimal knot in meditation
will not loosen simply because i will it to
It will loosen, open and fall away
only according to some mysterious surrender,
surrender of the most cherished mystery

i will follow the path, then,
increasing my light by lightening
the weight every day
even if by only that one single thought
that i capture and torture no longer, but let go free
like a dry leaf in an unforgiving windstorm,
the most important thought of my entire life

Why Write in a Time of Such Madness?

(To the good thing in each life that evil would love you to stop doing,
to find futile, to see no point in, so take heart...)

The bewilderment lingers and bursts forth without warning and recedes once more....

At a time like this I can't remember why I write.
It feels useless and pointless in the face of such hatred & fear & evil....

But I'll never remember why I write by thinking about how I should be writing. Just as I can't enjoy getting the blood going by thinking about the treadmill....

Unplug Mr. TV, open that file, and get back to work, son.
The work that by miracle soothes the terror and transforms the absurd
into a kind of insane serenity. The work that will allow me later today
to be a human being with other human beings who are suffering through this much more than I am....

If I want to vanquish the haters, if I want to restore justice
to the country and the cosmos, open that file and write, friend,
write as if your life depended on it, though I write about something
as seemingly inconsequential as an angry girl going into Trader Joe's
for a smoothie, because I know my life, in the deepest sense, in the most
spiritual sense, the sense of joy, does depend upon it.

HOPE!

It's not that you lose hope. Your relationship with hope just calms down & you almost forget about it. Hope is not looking forward to getting what you want. It's looking back at all the times you did, all the times you didn't, all the times you got something different than what you wanted, and seeing the whole glorious mess from a heightened perspective, from a quiet stillness like space. So that you can come back to earth and wash the dishes, or carefreely send something out again into the world. It's taking a little step that affirms life, affirms being, without having anything to do with the past or the future.

Notes for a New Novel.

female protagonist
no sarcasm
the simplest book ever written
don't repeat anything
overestimate the intelligence of the reader
(i.e., the reader is smarter than me
and can figure it out much better than me,
i.e., the reader is not as slow-thinking as me)
unassuming
straightforward
uncool
no childhood, no psychology
(more to come...)

can't sleep

her hand curled
on my chest
in the dark

my heart pounding
in my teeth
still

in the corner
near the ceiling
a small boat

rocks,
its light
coming & going

When they say write what you're most afraid of

why does the mind go to the sensational,
the violent, the anarchic, vengeance, perversion,
the stuff of the shadow and the id?

But these days aren't the most frightening things
of all to write about . . . loneliness, silence,
kindness, listening, believing, stillness,
understanding, tenderness?

"Writing Will Not Save Your Soul."

"Writing will not save your soul.

The only act that will save your soul
is creating simple daily kindness for others.

However, being who you are, you must write
(as near to daily as you can)
in order to be able to go into the world
in a state of mind that will allow you
to create simple daily kindness for others.

So, after all, writing will save your soul."

-Ishii Ougourou

"Could You, Bob Hill" (my story in The Greensboro Review)

Could You, Bob Hill