The Great Wave

Hokusai Says
by Roger Keyes

Hokusai says Look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.
He says Look Forward to getting old.
He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it's interesting.
He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says every one of us is a child, every one of us is ancient, every one of us has
a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.
He says everything is alive --shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.
Wood is alive.
Water is alive
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.
He says it doesn't matter if you draw, or write books.
It doesn't matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn't matter if you sit at home and stare at the ants on your verandah
or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.
Contentment is Life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength is life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.
He says don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid.
Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.

Young Fellows and the Like

There was a young fellow of Leeds
Who swallowed a packet of seeds.
In a month, silly ass,
He was covered in grass,
And couldn’t sit down for the weeds.

There's nothing like a limerick to put a smile on your dial.
To read some more visit Jeanette Winterson's poetry page.

No-one Belongs Here More Than You

the wonderfully tangental, gentle

and poetic

miranda july

made a film

and wrote a book

she makes loads of art too

and a website written on a fridge top

and a stove top

as you do

Goodness Mr Auden

Base Words Are Uttered
Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood;
But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that's genuinely good
From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

WD Auden
Written 1940.

Haiku Heaven

For fellow wordsmiths this site is heavenly! hotcrosshaiku.blogspot.com

Noise In Church

The last time I went to church, one Christmas day with my family I had to sit on my hands to stop myself from raising one of them to question the pontificating priest and engage in debate about hypochrisy in the church. It would be fun to create a ruckus in the cold stony cathedral. I complied and sat silently perhaps afraid I would be carted off to the Ship of Fools for causing mischief. Mind you, not practicing what you preach is another folly so I'd be joined there by most of the clergy.

Written in 1494 Das Narrenschiff, or The Ship of Fools is a long poem of morality, a catalogue of medieval vices give facinating window into how people lived. It was illustrated with woodcuts by Durer depicting 110 assorted follies and vices, each undertaken by a different fool, devoting chapters to such offenses as Arrogance Toward God, Marrying for Money, and Noise in Church. Some of the chapters are united by the common theme of a ship which will bear the assembled fools to Narragonia, the island of fools.

Winter Solstice

At our parallel, in December, light
dims. To blue. Our star is moving

on the other side. I believe
there is a woman holding the world

like a little girl holds an egg
she finds in the grass in springtime:

from Éireann Lorsung’s book of poetry Music For Landing Planes By

Music For landing Planes By

The following is a poem from Music for Landing Planes By by Éireann Lorsung, published by Milkweed Editions.
Being
A letter is holy. A story
is holy hands reaching out into the world.
Birds come home
across distance I can’t conceive

and live in their bodies.
Ash in the air. Every place I’ve been
is on fire with words.

One day
I throw away all my love letters
without noticing. Mountains

in the heart. What belongs
to me? I leave the world
all the time. These arms, these

fingers, this tongue, these feet,
and their bent wings. I know
it will be dirt, the prayers

now in marrow will retake
earth. I will live inside whatever flies.
Burning, the brink of all things.

Languisity

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

(Image by McKenzie )

Journey to the Bottom of the Garden

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

(T.S.Eliot - Little Gidding from Four Quartets)

All Wrapped Up

The celebrated Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Tich Naht Hahn has written beautifully of the interdependence of all things by reference to a sheet of paper. In a piece of paper, he suggests, if we look mindfully, we can see sunshine, water, clouds, the river, heat, wheat, the logger and the logger’s mother. Without any of these things, the paper could not have been made. He concludes, ‘As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe within it.’

Balls for Breakfast

A remarkable doyenne of humour sent this email response to my recent shout out telling people about this very blog (and that if they didn't pass it on to 10 friends that I'd have their balls for breakfast). Her name is Madame R.

I have no balls
as you can see,
there is no need to shout
i've seen your blog and
loved to read
what it was all about

to 10 friends I will not send
your email that I read (reed)
because my friends who
do have balls
those same balls they will need

but what I'll do
in case their dreams
they wish will all come true
is mention you
and of your blog
that I can surely do

so please take heart
Talisa dear
as I've no doubt at all
that when they read all you wrote
they'll get an extra ball

that will cause a secret smile
to flash upon their face
and that is all just because
of mrs. tulip's space.

you can see from this pome
articulate I am,
it's not a load of rubbish
to delete as spam

so treasure this
as one day,
it will become clear
that these same words
that I writ
will live as of Shakespeare

Make Room for Rumi

To find a pearl dive deep into the ocean

don't look in fountains

To find a pearl you must emerge from the water of life always thirsty.
Rumi

Another Westminster Bridge

go and glimpse the lovely inattentive water/ discarding the gaze of many a bored street walker/
where the weather trespasses into strip-lit offices/ through tiny windows into tiny thoughts and authorities/
and the soft beseeching tapping of typewriters/
take hold of a breath-width instant, stare/ at water which is already elsewhere/
in a scrapwork of flashes and glittery flutters/ and regular waves of apparently motionless motion/
under the teetering structures of administration/
where a million shut-away eyes glance once/ restlessly at the river’s ruts and glints/
count five, then wander swiftly/ away over the stone wing-bone of the city. (written by Alice Oswald )