While the Snake Unfurls

Morning is busy, all these visitors, but then is not, and suddenly there is this quiet, so you write poems, trying to find a way to talk about the weather without using the words “gray,” “drizzle” or “cloud.”

 

Drummer Hoff, thank you - thank you for firing it off.

 

Ritual exchanges designed to expose our unhelpful reliance on commerce.

 

She asks will I visit Mexico and I say no, try to explain how travel is not my path, is actually the opposite of my path but she doesn’t understand, Mexico is so beautiful, the people so lovely.

 

Far hills obscured, kind of like the way good intentions don’t matter the way we think.

 

Imperfections on the moon I cannot see but know are there – did I really write that back in 2000?

 

Praying with all my heart, let me not hurt another person, nor another creature at all, nor even a blade of grass or falling leaf.

 

Rarely deleting but frequently rewriting, you can’t make a mistake is basically the art.

 

Night swimming.

 

You forgive everyone – every last oppressor, what a journey – and something still stands in the way of peace and you realize you have not forgiven yourself and then you see it: the actual journey and that which blocks your way and then you realize even shoelessness will not be enough.

 

I drank hard in my early twenties, fought a lot, got hurt a lot, did some stuff I wish I hadn’t done, but mostly I just sat in dark rooms upending bottles until I blacked out, it wasn't romantic, wasn't sexy, wasn't tragic, it was more like how a mouse frantically cleans itself while the snake unfurls.

Games we play at the behest of nature.

 

They took him in the garden, he had to be at least briefly frightened, knowing exactly what was going to happen next.

 

I remember my one dokusan, being confused at how angry Roshi seemed, I just wanted her to like me and  Buddhists seemed so nice.

 

This pressure now on the back of my neck, my throat narrower than I remember, each breath working harder than the last to find its way out of the body.

 

Please, no more language about how we’re all saints, all sinners.

 

Sunflowers fill the cosmos, my heart expands to say yes again.

 

Why did the United States fight a Civil War, how did that war begin, who won, what happened next, how confident are you in your answers?

 

Jasper wonders if I’ve bothered to reflect much on the image in terms of pornography, and I tell him no, it’s always been about intimacy in a different register than porn is meant to manage.

 

He died, he is still dying, and I am dying too.