Im Memoriam: Robert Heffernan

Pablo, He wandered barefoot to feel the sand across time with a cigarette like someone on his way to catch a bus i first saw him in a sari sitting on a boulder with the light behind him like a halo watching the masses pass beneath him with their packs along a trail in Allegheny Forest in single file. The hand that held his smoke resting casually so it touched the ground like Buddha "my debt is paid" The sun was warm, so I laid down my bundle and sat beside him the conversation followed the moon and swayed like the tide it had no beginning or end first silent, then set to music, then silent again or over coffee and laughter or sad nods and regret still it continues somewhere he is still lost in Amsterdam 7 days late for his plane.

Poems on Nature and Solitude.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think... you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

--Emerson, the oversoul

"...our life might be much easier and simpler than we make it; that the world might be a happier place than it is; that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth;...Nature will not have us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds and wars. ..We pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive...Let us draw a lesson from nature, which always works by short ways. When the fruit is ripe, it falls.

Emerson, Self Reliance

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer 
by Walt Whitman

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

668

"Nature" is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.

Emily Dickinson

Vanishing point

In the far distance all lines converge
at a point in the haze that is infinitely small

too small to be seen.
too small to matter
too far to be heard from,
no matter how loudly I yell

so I just keep on walking,
satisfied with persistence,
and that I cover terrain.

And when I looked back in the distance
where I was in my youth
where all lines emerge
I strain to listen
for somone or something that mattered.

But the truth rests too silent in the haze to tell.

Appian way

Appian way

Countless feet have worn the stone
That went to war or back home
That raced to lovers in the night
That ran to chase the wasting light

They made their mark upon this road
That like all others led to Rome
That laid where placed a thousand years
That afterward laid two thousand more

But i fight no wars and burn no oil
I have no lover, plough or toil
My steps are on the fields of clay
That bend like waves and wash away

I'll leave no ruin like that of Rome
And leave no scar upon the stone

Pieds innombrables ont érodé la pierre
qui mène à chez soi, ou à la guerre
Qu'est monté aux amants bonheur
qu'ont chassé la lumière du jour

ils ont laissé une marque dans le sentier,
que comme toutes les routes, à Rome sont dirigés
qu'est resté là bas douze cent ans
qu'est resté par la suite deux mille ans pendant

Mais je n'ai pas de guerres, et brûle pas d'huile
l'amour et le travail sont inutiles
Mes pas sont dans les domaines de l'argile,
que se plient comme des vagues océaniques faciles

Je laisse aucune ruine romaine derrière,
et aucune cicatrice sur la pierre

In tune

I am refined by darkness

that stills my pounding heart and slows my breath

against detection, against the scent of fear

so that I may act without hesitation

yet with skill like a speeding dart that carries death

to the target wherever I will to send it

Hunter or prey I am both 

i see in shadow, hear the breathless hush

Resplendent in chaos that knows without knowing

bounding step to step, stone to stone unerring

in tune with the haunted night like I was here a creature born

with burning eyes that pierce the moonless pitch

but this is not my home or native land

where they are I cant recall, nor do the faded memories

seem to fit what I've become.

I am diminished in this light of day 

where my sharp prowess is out of place

like an animal on display, to be confined and pointed at

by the few curious visitors who still stop by

who watch me from a safe distance.

They might well wonder 

but will never know

how I was in the wild

in the dark

I'm at home in the fearless dark.

I walk fearless thru the night

shadows made me who I am

I don't need sight to find my way

or the part i'm bound to take

chanting leaves predict the fall

they sweep around in rasping pools 

at my feet, But that's a passing thought, 

like broken tools of little use to me

Knowing doesn't need to see

there's nothing to console in me

And as the clouds put out the sky

I'm at home in the fearless dark.

I'm at home without the light.

there is a place where my mind plays

there is a place where my mind plays

full of tomorrows, maybes and yesterdays

I will not call it a land of ghosts 

for in it are those that I charish most

my friends and lovers, mentors and foils

a town of shades that sees me toil

and all the frenetic distracting vices 

that burn away depressive crises

I know them all, and they know me

though they lack my stark reality

dolls or totems, archetypes or fetish

they are all my family that I have left

and if by act or cruel neglect 

should I starve in my dark cave

I'll do it bravely among my own;

Among the ones who care to save me.

"Demon or Bird (said the boy's soul)

Rejoice in letting go of being lost in appearances.

*"...do not doubt that your mind is basically pure... at the appearance of spirits, demons, or divine beings...neither respect nor fear them. All appearances are illusions. Don't hold on to appearances. Don't hold on to any appearance whatsoever, and you'll succeed. . . . Devils and demons possess the power of manifestation. They can create the appearance of that which is holy, but they're false. None of them are buddhas. The buddha is your own mind. Don't misdirect your worship."

------Bodhidharma (c. 440 AD - 528 AD)*

Source: The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, p. 25-29

Rejoice in embracing your truth, and finding your way.

"Demon or Bird (said the boy's soul)

Is it indeed towards your mate that you sing, Or is it really to me?

For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I have heard you, now in a moment I know what I am for and I awake...

Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,

Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before.

What there, in the night, under the yellow and sagging moon,

The messenger there arous’d—the fire, the sweet hell within,

The unknown want, the destiny of me."

Walt whitman, (paraphrased)

Before I go, By PAUL KALANITHI

Most everyone's lives are lived in the middle; the comfortable space far away from the margins that spill off the map into darkness. Some of us, by misadventure or lot at birth aren't as fortunate, and we try as best as we can to swim against the currents that work despirately to carry us away. Wanting only to live "normal" lives, we wunder if scratching each moment to survive is just a distraction, or if it is the pretense that we are not growing weaker at each stroke, and that the lives we aspire to aren't drifting indefatigably away.

What's worse is that the further one drifts, the more our perspectives bother others. Words begin to fail, and a silent wall grows. But I've learned not to care so much anymore. This is what I see, and value, and I don't care if you appreciate it as I do. Even at midnight, I am surrounded by fearce and wonderful things.

" ...Sometimes the songs we sing, are just songs of our own."
-----Grateful Dead

How Long Have I Got Left?
NYT By PAUL KALANITHI JAN. 24, 2014

"I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live..."

"What patients seek is not scientific knowledge doctors hide, but existential authenticity each must find on her own. Getting too deep into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water. The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.

"I remember the moment when my overwhelming uneasiness yielded. Seven words from Samuel Beckett, a writer I’ve not even read that well, learned long ago as an undergraduate, began to repeat in my head, and the seemingly impassable sea of uncertainty parted: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” I took a step forward, repeating the phrase over and over: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” And then, at some point, I was through..."

Before I go,
By PAUL KALANITHI
Stanford Medicine SPRING 2015,

“...Our daughter was born days after I was released from the hospital....I hope I’ll live long enough that she has some memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters — but what would they really say? I don’t know what this girl will be like when she is 15; I don’t even know if she’ll take to the nickname we’ve given her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.

That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing...”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Ozymandias.

I MET a Traveler from an antique land,
Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings."
Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Tibetan book of the dead for Americans,

I thought I'd translate a 7th century classic into modern American English. Here goes

Tibetan book of the dead for Americans,

O nobly born, the test pattern you are experiencing is your neuro net shutting down. you are not alone. But because it is based on projection of your own mind, what you see is what you want/need/expect to see. This is why hindus don't see jesus, Muslims don't see malcom x, and atheists, well atheists see cspan2 no matter what. It's basic cable.

Don't wig out now! It won't last long. This will help you get thru to whatever waits you on the other side.

the first thing you saw was a flash of light. That was the last train to nirvana, you missed it. don't worry, no body catches it. It's a cruel inside joke by buddha and the rest of the enilghtened who really don't want you as a member of their club, but don't want to come off as arrogant, elitist assholes. O nobly born, shake it off. you're not alone.

the next stop is disco lights. White smokey tunnels, colored lights, thumping hypno-rhythms in dark halls, it does what disco did, which is distracts you from getting a good look at your corpse flailing around in embarassing postures, or ill fitting, out of style clothes. o nobly born, do yourself a favor and don't look back. Some things are worse than death.

At this time you will see the favorable gods. Which include pets, favorite relatives, Jesus, and anyone who let you stay up late as a child. If you haven't figured it out yet, this is a delusion. Fluffy was recycled, your favorite relatives are complaining about the rap music, and jesus has better things to do than shake the hand of the 10,000 plus christians that die everyday. Unless you still believe that santa can still go down every chimney in the world on xmas eve, you probably figured this out on your own. see it for what it is, and move on.

It is a projection of your own mind. If you don't care that it's not real, you'll stay in heaven until you realize how boring getting everything you want when you want it can get. Then it turns into the Wrathful Gods. Fluffy scratches up your wings, uncle elmer stinks up the can, and jesus won't answer your text messages. o nobly born, couch surfing in the afterlife isn't cool. It's a good time to sing your favorite song to keep focused; move on, move on....

now you can wander the earth as a spirit. Until you get bored, and then all you see is people screwing (it really says that; lol) When you see something that turns you on, you go into the body of the unborn baby and you are reincarnated. O nobly born, you erase all your memories due to the trauma of being turned on by watching your parents hump each other. lol.

Unless of course, you're so hooked on sex, violence, crack or pasta, that you sink down into hell and become one of the "hungry spirits", they have big bellies, big appetites but only tiny mouths so they are always hungry/horney/strung out. There is rehab, but it's the shitty court ordered kind, not the paris hilton, i'm sorry I was caught on camera kind.

that's it, the book of the dead for dummies. have a happy afterlife.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2009

everything that is flying,

Charles Park

May 18, 2010 · 

everything that is flying,
everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything
that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is
and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be
drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be
continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

The brightest light in life

The brightest light in life

I see, hangs at night 

farthest away in the cold sky

but I did not come to earth to shine

I came to burn,

to warm my muddy feet

and though I wonder why

men do the things they do

It is enough to see heaven from here

and count it as my alibi

Understanding billy collins

everyday objects and events

described by quirky choices of words

like so many gears of a watch that was,

pieced together from mismatched models;

operating as designed, still not quite right.

Am i supposed to behold his profound insight?

Am I supposed to awake the buddha in my soup?

Is this wisdom, or is it an ink blot?

No, it's just a poetry assignment.

Billy Collins is somewhere out in Brooklyn,

never even aware of how much my professor admires him.

No one can gather what has spilled

In my 13th year the streets were brick on Holmden Hill
near 14th street over the Steel Mills where my father worked. The sparks belched out from the furnaces that choked the light at dawn with the smell of sulfur and a thick haze of red.

But these were the only stars I knew in Cleveland. At night I'd hear the roar
of traffic and the clank of metal. Children's songs and stories of twinkling stars and Magic dragons were my lullabies, as I sleepily beheld its lair and the wonder of the milky way spread out and over the industrial valley; a most magnificent sight to my young eyes.

I remember the warmth of Summer and conspiring with any strange kid who'd wander across my path to entertain and unburden us of our endless hours. Any distraction was welcome, and when we saw the crowds walk away from their houses and down the street, we followed at their heels. There at the brick apartment house on Holmden and 14th were the flashing lights; bull horns of police who held us back and made us cross the street to pass.

I squirmed beneath the pressing crowd up to cordon beyond which no one was allowed. And there he was, not 10 yards away, a dead man in a pool of blood half pulled out the door. Someone whispered he was shot by a man who could not pay his rent. The building manager, face down. The police hung back to assess whether the murderer was still dangerous. And then a woman lurched forward "My Dad! you son of Bitch!" was tackled and taken away.

I scanned the faces of the crowd. They caught up with gossip and socialized. The only thing to do was to wait, and some spread blankets on the tree lawns and ate. In time there was no shoot out but only an old man, fat and lame who came out with the cops at his elbow as he walked with cane. The whispers were that he had no place to go, and made a gun from a pipe and a rubber band.

The crowd dispersed after the body was carried off. But I lingered on. I touched the doorway and the stone. And watched what no one else did: the janitor who mopped the blood up off the small white tiles, off the floor and rinsed it with a hose. To his credit there was no stain. And given time the stories came and went and were forgotten. But I still look to see if they left a mark, now as I drive by. I remember the dragons and the stars, and how suddenly they fade.

everything that is flying,

everything that is flying,

everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything

that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is

and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be

drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be

continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

BROMANCE

We slept together on the floor like hounds
from the time we could walk and piss standing up
you were always around, not just for the meal but
for work that had to be done moving into my
new apartment five flights up
knowing we'd be laughing and poking at each other
for being a stupid fuck up 
getting kicked out, again 
i'd hook you round your neck 
and slap you in the nuts
and always be the friend who'd understand the joke
from way back when.
If I had a brother he'd be like you
of course, I'm only saying because I drank a few.

WRITER'S BLOCK

nothing, I said, nothing nothing nothing nothing
then a piece of shit, more nothing
followed by frustration and starring at even more nothing
a sigh then nothing but a limp dick nothing
I think i'll get a job at mc Donald's, at least I'll get paid serving shit
nothinng works,
nothing feels right
no talent nothing
without anything to say worth shit
anyway, I'm a worthless nothing deluding myself and staring back at my nothing life
i hate myself for the angry nothing fraud i've become
a nothing if i ever was something
but now i'm a no good loser nothing
sigh,
there is no god
nothing nothing nothing, done!
I hate not being able to right about anything but my limp cock nothing writer's block

you are my television

you are my television
a passing fad
a vast wasteland
a waste of time
that weakens my mind
an expensive appliance
that takes up space in my living room
still around after 60 years
bigger, flatter more colorful
with a 1000 channels of nothing on.