Quatrains #5

Islandman,
We have dived as deeply as we can,
And all our diving takes us back to where we began.

Jim, my Hai was declared to Tom confidentially.

Hi, Rudyan. I mean Hai.

Jenni, you talk as if you take me seriously.

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You made me laugh there … ok, I respect your privacy but would like you to reconsider posting it anyway  … unless of course you always want to be a private hai ;–)

Jim x

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It was an initiation with a sacred mantra.

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and we're not allowed to know what sacred?

Jim x

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You already know. Ram, the immemorial mantra of Mother India.

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As for me, the other day I heard it and was enlightened
– must be someone else's hai. What matters source?
We take our enlightenment where it finds us.

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Get it?

Private eye … private hai?

Jim x

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Hey thanks Ramsses. Did you do that? That is much better, for now anyway. Of course I take you seriously. Why wouldn't I? I am wondering now.

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Stay right there with that wondering. It will take you to the highest realization.

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So you're saying you Hai is not the word it … hmmm … a mantra is one thing, but a Hai is another I think, but will have to consult Master Tom on this …

Jim x

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You're going to like this Islandman …. take a look here for what a Hai is … it'll tickle you two ways … one as a poet and two as an intellectual … it has it's own place of honour on the discussions page and you need to spend a little time reading it to discover those of us who already have a Hai … I do believe that Tom has conceived of a new type of poetry and given it a name …

Jim x

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Good job with the new thread, Big R.  & quit teasing poor Jenni.  Meanyhead.  :0)

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She is my disciple.

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My Ram Dass friend was exuberant like a little boy. He told me Ram Dass had visited the gallery the other night. He must have come to see you, I said. He did, he admitted. Ram Dass had just spoken at a large retreat held nearby by his good friend Wayne Dyer and had stopped in at the gallery afterwoods. That's quite an honor, I said. My friend admitted that it was. What did Ram Dass think of the art, I asked. The only art that had interested him had been the surrealistic art of a Russian painter who is a devout Christian. When Ram Dass first looked at the huge original painting of Christ, he joked with my friend that he had liked his description of it better than he liked the actual painting. Then he looked at more of the pieces and warmed up to them. Of course. Ram Dass is a bhakti. The painter is a mad monk.

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Jim

I read up on Hai
And you're so right
It's as open as the sky
on a  plane flight

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Hi, I'm high. This is my Hai. Ram it.

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(just) so

:)

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Ahhhhh.

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Deeper…deeper…

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that's what she said

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I'm so Hai, I'm going out of my mind!

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Mortality sneaks up on you like the most patient and deadliest of enemies. It's been a long time since I've been to a doctor. My meds were getting low, so I finally got around to making an appointment. I don't want to end up like Ram Dass. There is the resplendent warrior in him that takes it as fierce grace. There is also the regular guy in him who wanted to believe that such minor ailments could be neglected if not transcended. One stroke and you're in a wheel chair for the rest your life. I'll take my meds. I found myself offering condolences to the receptionist who was still in shock. The doctor had been found dead a couple of days ago. After much frustration I was finally able to be get through to a local clinic and was given an appointment the same day. I am to take cholesteral tests. Why? Because you're a 54 year old male with a history of hypertension in your family and you could have heart disease. And how do you treat heart disease? Actually, you already have it. That's what high blood pressure is. We can treat it if it gets worse. It would help if you quit smoking marijauna. Really? That's easy for you to say, dear lady. It's a major reason why I am still alive at all. But thanks for the reminder. I know it's not good for me. I can feel it. It's what it does for me spiritually. I need it. No sooner do I buy a twenty pound bag of bird seed for the sheer joy of feeding the bird that eats out of my hand than I neglect my sweet friend, merely tossing the seeds over the balcony to the birds below. What did I do? My bird is gone. I hate this.

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As always, Ramsses, I love your bits of prose that spike through the Quatrains. I'd love to collect them all and put them somewhere else, unburied by the rest of the thread.

They ( the prose pieces ) seem to offer a window to bits of life that I do not live, (at least not in this particular dimension of mine) - flashes from a movie, bright and shining and sometimes terrifying as well. I feel more alive with I read them, while reading the some of the Quatrain threads it seems as if I skim the surface, but here is a pool that I can dive into.

Love,
Sandra

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To skip by Quatrains
while passing through the poetry thread
would be like peanutbutter and jam
without a piece of bread

(stretch a little and prounounce jam “j-ay-m” and it sounds even better)  :0)

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Ramsses had us at hi or whatever from that movie you know.

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The quatrain thing.  Wasn't that some indie movie we watched in Brazil when we were all out of our minds on ayahuasca? I can't remember whether we had a good trip or a bad one. It must have been a bad one. I have the worst memories of Brazil.

Iambic pentameter is a tad bombastic, as befits its origins in Marlowe and Shakespeare. Shall the garb of the threatre mask the poetry of the pure speaking voice? No, I say! Let there be no more quatrains! It was the absurd posturing of a deluded and failed actor. He must atone for his sins and speak words that will please his Muse, the radiant Goddess and bright beacon to our Diving Deeper.

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When a man or a woman express their sexuality too boldly it is no longer attractive. Sexuality has spiritual origins. If these aren't respected it loses its authenticity. Men do not seem as naturally verbal as women. It has to be significant that the originator of English blank verse, Christopher Marlowe, was homosexual and that Shakespeare himself for a time seems to have enjoyed flirting with his notion of how that sexuality might be expressed. He was obviously captivated by the female voice. It did not prevent him from speaking authentically. That was his genius, to marry the exaggerated speech of theater to poetry.

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This comes by way of apology to my post above, which, it seems to me, might be be seen less in the context of a rudeness by Henry Miller and more in the context of a rudeness by Sam Miller, the perv at the end of the bar.

It was meant as a Henry Miller rudeness.  Sorry if anyone was offended. 

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Islandman -

i would be much more interested if you wrote a 'piece' or a poem that expresses what you feel/think, rather than slip it in as a comment. Then we can all 'comment' on your work as 'writing' rather than connecting it with you personally ( see On Giving Constructive Criticism)

i have already written to you that I think your last paragraph is inappropriate on Diving Deeper. But for now, for the purposes of why we are all here ( i.e as writers) I will comment on the writing: ( with apologies to Ramsses as this really should be on your own thread, Islandman.)

For me, 'conclusions' without the path that led towards them seem to have the effect of pushing me away. I  seem not to 'believe' conclusions - I'm not let in to discover for myself. I'd be very interested in reading about the process or circumstance which lead to the conclusion.

I sense something hard and angry underlying this piece, and this I want to know more about.

Sandra

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Thanks for the clarification, Islandman. I'm still interested in your own work, i.e. something running underneath your writing, regardless of who it was meant to sound like.
Sandra

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Shakespeare referred only to his sonnets as poetry.

His plays are simply – plays, and not poetry.

 They are dialogue (sometimes blank verse and sometimes prose) and are meant to be spoken on stage with other actors. There is not a single forsooth or O or Alas that is unnecessary they are all parts of a character, and each word informs the actor of character intention. All the dialogue is to be spoken and accompanied with body language. That's the other 70% of his language, and is interpreted by an actor many different ways. I've never seen one Hamlet that anything like another Hamlet … forsooths and all :)

Jim x

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Ramsses.. I know you are playing (or are you?) - I do not mean you should not write Quatrains. What I meant was there is something in the prose pieces which I am looking for here on Diving Deeper - which is exactly that - diving deeper; something more, something that gives voice to something inside the writer that is perhaps not what the 'writer' plans, expects, tries to control, manage, have ideas about etc etc.

While I enjoyed your Quatrains, my sense was that you had reached the edge of your own personal envelope in terms of expression - in terms of your writing. And we are here because we consider ourselves 'writers', yes? I have to presume that anyone who is on Diving Deeper is here to explore, learn, expand, unfold, leap, jump, dive, take a risk, listen, read, learn.

All of these things mean totally different things for each of us. As  I recently wrote on the Tree House ”on poetry” thread each time one of us takes a risk with our writing, it supports us all. I loved it when you started to write more prose pieces, for me this was the  'next step' for you, and I'm not saying you are not a poet, not at  all. I expect the prose pieces will inform your poetry.

Some of the comments on your pieces and the dialogues do not seem to have much to do with  the craft of writing, or the deepening of self-exploration for the most part - they are more a kind of community gathering  which I'd prefer to see on the Tree House – and, I don't  want to rain on anyone's parade, but well, I've got my monocle out and am taking a look at what is going on here on Diving Deeper and how I can support it, yes, to go deeper.

Personally, I'd love you to now write longer prose pieces, if doing an assignment is too much, then simply just write whatever for 20 minutes or whatever is about double the time it takes you to write what you have been writing as prose. And in the end, only you know what would  push your own envelope in terms of writing.

My sense is that the Quatrains have developed into a place of  encouragement and appreciation for you and your work, which I'm very  glad about. And what is next, for you and your writing here ?

Love,
Sandra

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Hotel California has officially moved to the Tree House. Forgive me for saying that you are all welcome. You don't have any choice.

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Islandman, thanks for this. Yes I totally agree about Ramsses prose/prose poems and I love that you are encouraging him in this.

v. important:
If the comments here inspire you Ramsses, to write your prose pieces, then I'm all for it, please don't stop and move to the Tree House just because I 'said' so - I was not referring to your pieces, they should be either here on the Poetry Board or on the Blogazine ( or if you should ever try an assignment… on my or Alex's optional assignments board).

Islandman - I'm all for relaxing with our friends, which is what the Tree House is for, and of course, often this relaxing will sometimes happen on a writer's 'writing' thread, of course it does.

For me personally, my 'mission' if you will, is to is to support the writer and his/her writing. Relaxing and chatting we all can do fairly well, but sit down and write 'something'? Face the blank page? Now this is for most of us, not easy. Hence my gentle (I hope) directives towards this end.

And Yes, the community factor here absolutely supports the process of writing, so, I'm not saying no to light / fun comments, I do them myself ( yes, believe it or not!) that have nothing to do with writing, (or looking within the self as I believe the two are complimentary).

It is because I believe in Ramsses writing and of course, whatever supports him as a person towards this end, that I wanted to tune in here.

I also wanted to spread the energy a bit, as I notice many of the poets seem not to post anything anywhere else on the pod other than the poetry board, and I think it's is important for the 'community' factor, that we open our sights a little to other people's work and process. I know the poets have lots of support for the prose writers and vice versa. (See also my Notes Along the Way that touch on poetry)

Love all,
Sandra

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Just wanted to add that I'm not ignoring the many wonderful pieces of writing/poetry that other people add to the Quatrains - I  sense that some of them might get more 'attention' as pieces of writing if they were copied onto their own thread. Ron mentioned to me the following, and I think he has a point:

Many people respond to a poem with a little poem of their own.This, in the face of only coming up with a thought or two when presented with the idea of “writing a poem” from scratch.  As long as they don't think of what they are writing as “their” poem they aren't afraid. It's cloaked as a comment.  This is prevalent on the poetry side obviously because of the economy of words. So we have fear of commenting coupled with fear of writing.

S.

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God had given me a dick that would never be appeased. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark. When I read Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey, it was the most subversively sophisticated assault on the sick religious environment around me I could ever have imagined. Here was the ultimate rottenness of homosexuality enshrined as the high cult of esthetic worship. If God was going to put his foot in my face, I would put my dick in his. I was that angry. I was a pretty blond boy. I found I could do an utterly convincing fag imitation. It was viciously unjust both to myself and others. Something essential was missing in Wilde's revelatory book that might have spared my foray into hypocrisy: morality. Wilde was wrong. Morality is truth.

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Disclaimer:

Anything Tom says in a Quatrains pod is not his fault, so don't blame him. The words made him do it.

I don't know where to start. Reading this thread is an education in itself. I love Diving Deeper so much. Room for everything, I guess. And a lot of deepness and personal truth. Certainly a relief to see somebody else doing the disagree-ing though, as much as I enjoy a disagreement that is not acrimonious.

This is a good lesson to me in fear. Fear kept me away from the quatrain poetry threads, because every time I joined one, I pissed somebody off, creating an unnecessary emotional ruckus in our blessed pool of zen-like spirituality and artistic beauty. And I have missed so much, I know.

Ramsses my friend, I'm sorry to see you belittling your quatrains. Using this example, every time your art takes a leap, you will disparage the step that came before and thus will end up despising your entire life's ouvre except what you write right before you die. Which would make it a hai, of course.

is

Major juju dude. Especially since is isn't.

Brilliant, like almost all your poetry and certainly your prose. You do understand that the hai form is generally considered a rhyming unilet, since every word naturally rhymes with itself. And then there are some experts who don't even deem it poetry at all, and would consign the genre to the prose stacks of the library. Shorts. But let the literati jabber over tea, in DD 'tis not to be literary, but to be.

Islandman, all I can say is thank you. Inappropriateness is precious to me, little valued by others in general. And I know you don't blame our beloved and quxiotic cat-herder for trying to create some order out of this growth of wildness. It's her world, we're just learning in it. The gardener must garden or the landscape reverts to its natural state, which in our case would be a chat room.

I see a seed that sometimes grows
To places past the earth it knows
Into a sky so far away
You can only see it someday.

Looking forward to Hotel California.

Love,

Tom

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We've all been waiting for you at the hotel, Tom. The party can't start without you. Isn't that Islandman down there at the end of the bar getting quietly plastered? Bring him with you before we have to carry him. He's feeling sorry for himself because Sandra smacked a little sense into him. That shouldn't last too long at the hotel. Notorious party animal stumbles drunkenly into Shangri-la. Ecstatic cry of amazement. Never heard from again. You had better go round up the rest of the guys, too. I'll never hear the end of it if one of them gets left out. I'll take care of the girls.

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<<sigh>>
I love you both.
(the sigh is one of delight).

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I already knew that a rat or a mouse had got into my apartment. I had heard it rooting around in the garbage one night under the sink and had been too sleepy to get up. The next day I put the sliding screen door back on its tracks where there had been just enough space for it to get in. I was meditating on the balcony that night in the darkness when a persistent metallic tearing sound was followed by the horrifying sound of scuttling. I was not alone. A wave of terror came over me. It could be anything. Because I am deaf in one ear I never know where sound is coming from or even sometimes exactly what it is. I turned on a light. Holes had been chewed into the bottom of the screen door. Just inside was a big bag of bird seed. The next night I was ready for my intruder with a flashlight. He stood up on his hind legs and looked at me incredulously. How dare I? Reluctantly he moved into the darkness. I leaned a big box fan up against the screen door and turned it on for further discouragement. Then I turned out the lights and went to bed. Sleep did not come easily. A menacing image of a crouching rodent jumped into my mind's eye like a psychic invasion. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, a crash and a bang signalled his invasion. I got up and turned on the lights. A rat tail slinked behind the drying rack. “What are you doing here?” I exclaimed. He jumped off the counter and ran into a side room. I moved the fan away from the door and opened it. Then I followed him, turning on more lights. “You have to get out!” I cried. Out he went. I hardly slept.

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Ram, I love this piece. The way night creatures can intrude upon our sleep. All that skittering and quick glimpsing leaves a lot to the imagination. I especially like the one-way conversation with the rat. I 've talked wasps off the ceiling and out the window, or so it seems.

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Thank you so much, Ron! I literally spent hours working on the blasted thing. A rat story.

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Dear Mr. Kuitert,

Please accept my humble apologies for eating all your raisins last Saturday. I feel as though I must explain my pilfering- not to excuse myself but rather to allow myself the opportunity for honesty.

Three days ago, while you were in Bermuda, I came upon your raisins carefully hidden under the microwave. I left them there at first- but the strange location plagued and haunted me. Why, I wondered, would you have left them under the microwave? The first answer I could think of was that you did not trust me to leave them uneaten during my visits to feed your cat and two dogs. Then I realized that you would never have such acrimonious doubt in your kind head. Surely, you suspected that I would clean your kitchen while you were away and thusly find them. A reward, the raisins were, surely.

I devoured the raisins immediately.

Then I became thoughtful again- and my ratiocination led me to question my motives in this case. Much like the question of the chicken and the egg, I began to ponder the significance of the order of events. After much experimentation, I determined that rather than reasoning preceding desire, desire quite often precedes reason. And since multiple if not infinite reasons must occur for any given event, it is quite possible that I invented the entire raisin-reward ideology in response to my desire to eat them.

This quite shamed me, but the damage was already done- the raisins eaten. And so, I find myself writing this apology to you.

Yours,
Captain Bizarro.

Dear Captain Bizzaro,

Thank you for your kind apology but I must assure you that I have not boughten any raisins in several decades. You must have eaten something else.

Yours,
James Kuitert

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So why did they come out the other end purple? That's what I want to know. They couldn't have been raisins.

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(laughing ass off)

musta been VERY shriveled beets!

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We get mice every spring for some reason. I always know because I find droppings in the silverware drawer of all places. I have to wash all the stuff in there and leave it out somewhere safe until they are caught. Traps are set out. We caught seven last spring. yuck. For the longest time we kept hearing noises coming form the dogfood bin. There was a mouse in there too. One time I went on a vacation in Lake Powel, if that is spelt right out in Arizona or Nevada or Utah or where it is. We rented a houseboat. I felt like I was on the planet of the Apes. Mice crawled up the gangplank while we were docked in a cove and we had mice the whole time. The kids spent the evenings trying catch them and we all had to sleep on the roof of the boat because they were in the bunks too. luckily it iwas so damn hot there it didn't matter.  I went to a house party saturday night. Our entertainment was watching a mouse run around. I am kind of used to them by now. just not in my bed. If you have one sided hearing loss and your other ear is in pretty good shape, you might be  a candidate for a BAHA which is a bone anchored aid that is sits behind your ear. It is very effective for unilateral senso-neural hearing loss..pretty straight forward surgery and your nice long hair would cover it . Just something to consider, if you already haven't. I look at ears all day.

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Thanks, Jenni. My good ear isn't all that good. I'll mention it anyway to my doctor.

My bird is back. I sat cross-legged and didn't budge until he had eaten his fill.

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It was Yogananda who had opened up for me the world of Catholic devotion. It had been an English Literature professor who had opened up my heart. She was twice my age and it was hopeless. I was so far beneath her radar. But that voice. I was not to hear it again until listening to the tapes of Yogananda's nuns. I no longer cared for his teachings. I wanted to hear that voice. It was in the writings of St. Theresa of Avila and St. Therese of Lisieux. I read nearly everything either of them had ever left in print or in recorded speech. St. John of the Cross had burned all his letters from Theresa because he was too attached to them. I hated him for that. Another monk had gone mad with amazement and joy over his letters from Therese. I understood.

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I met Jesus in a narrow lane. We put our arms around each other and walked some ways in silence. “I'll see you at Gethsemane,” I said. “Sure,” he answered.

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It is not that Thou art my Savior. It is who Thou art. It is Thyself.

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I keep forgetting that this is Paradise.
It is the birds who have not forgotten.
Could there be a Paradise without birds?
Sooner a tree without leaves or flowers.

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When you reach the end of the universe,
You'll be alone, and nothing will be there,
Nothing but your own judgment of yourself,
Which opens doors and windows everywhere.

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I can't tell you how much I have missed this.
Thank you,  Ramsses

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It took me by surprise. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you.

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We were married by a Thai Buddhist monk
Who had found enlightenment in a cave,
Meditating where they left dead bodies,
Until he was lost in that state for days.

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I loved that Rams this sweet little Q5
 inspired me a little bit to play
dont know what Quantrain #5 is cant find the other 4?

She was presented all nicely like a church hymn
But she was wanted to be free
Don’t entertain any gods then
They will point you in the wrong direction

 Tao version:
Cultivator tends the meadow
Neither meet with success

 maya

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The other threads should be back there somewhere buried in the compost.

We're all gods.

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Drifting on a lost lake, sometimes on fire,
Sometimes sinking, resting on the bottom,
Carried up again, raging infernos,
Calm coves and submarine caves beckoning.

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I met the lovely Lady of the Lake,
Bright Faerie Goddess singing of Presence,
And sculpting clay birds from the lake bottom,
Fluttering to life in her upheld hands. 

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I love the clay birds so much. 

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Thanks, Jenni. Check them out: http://nitya.zaadz.com/photos

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I have visited those birds before. I didn't realize that they were clay. I love them. Thank you

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Not clay. That was poetic licence. Some kind of sculpting material. More coming.

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It's better to shut up and just be there,
But no one can stand the silence for long
Who hasn't gone all the way into it
And learned not to say anything at all.

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It's like converting water into wine,
This notion that I can reform myself,
Or a volcano blowing its lid off
And becoming a tropical island.

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There never was any hope for the world,
Dinosaurs roaming for millions of years,
Apes evolving into human beings,
Half angel, half devil, complete hybrid.

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Pouring formaldehyde across the pages
of a history book she likens that
wretched man peering into mailboxes
on her street to St. Thomas Aquinas

(searching for God).

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A handfull of feathers tossed in the wind
pitch like noodles in soup then spill themselves
on the wet grass by the widow's front walk.
Her den curtain parted for just a wink.

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Sometimes I get lifted above this place,
As if on a deck above the ocean,
A parallel world infinitely calm,
Where the colors are completely different.

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Particalized shadow fingers crushed fine
as moondust brushed on a dark blue canvas
with green glass ground to invisible rose
shards, all parched in filtered sunlight.

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On the table is a vase and the vase
is full of strange things: a stick of incense
bearing a pawn ticket leaf, a golf sock
shoved on a clutch of chopsticks, loose wire strings

sagging like dead baby's breath from its mouth,
a yellow smiley-face sucker circa
1975
a plastic Jesus on a stick.

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Seven beds are made for seven patients,
each sheet stretched firm, each brown blanket folded
at the pillow's edge.  The night's patients, not
yet chosen, are hunting in the desert.

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Nalukataq,
May I suggest you start your own thread? Your writing has no relation to mine and is inappropriate to this thread. Your consideration would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Ramsses

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I can do this thing because I have to,
Because the door has been opened for me,
Because it is what I always wanted,
This ascension into the space beyond.

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They must have depressed, the Indians,
To meet their final end in alcohol,
Some dark depression of the wilderness
That found such great relief in drunkeness.

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They must have been depressed, the Indians,
To meet their final end in alcohol,
Some dark depression of the wilderness
That found such great relief in drunkenness.

Been. I missed been. I was depressed. Two n's in drunkenness. I was also drunk. I can't do that anymore.

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I wasn't even drunk & not only missed the misspelling but thought the been had been left out purposely!