Janus Poems, 2022

 

Arch of Janus, Rome

At the threshold of a new year

I pray to the ancient god of beginnings.

The ancient god of doorways.

Janus. 

Before me the vista is fresh,

A complete transformation of landscape

Totally dissimilar from the previous landscape

In which I lived. 

I have departed the jungle of Puna Hawaii, 

Have left behind me the lava flows of Kalapana

And the turquoise waves of Pohoiki,

Have left behind me all the hard times

Of my nine years in Hawaii,

Have left behind all the good times, too.

Have left behind heaven and hell.

Never will I forget the demonic entities

That swept out of the astral plane

And attacked me in Hilo. 

Long torturous hours, weeks of onslaught

During which I could not sleep

And was forced to listen to their conniving stories,

But survived them, though they tried

To kill me. 

Now I wander the Mojave Desert of Nevada

And gaze upon the surrounding mountains,

Steep and barren, blazing in winter sunlight.

The Sheep Range and the Las Vegas Range.

Their austere beauty is consoling.

The terrain before me

Is one that I have mapped out 

Over the course of many years.

Long have I envisioned this course of action.

In so doing,

I have given over my life

To chance.

Long ago I gave it over 

To faith. 

I rest my fate in the arbitrary hands 

Of the ancient Roman goddess, Fortuna,

A goddess who has become for me a tutelary

I now supplicate daily.

How could it be otherwise?

I bounce and roll like a pair of dice

Thrown by the blindfolded goddess.

I come to a halt

Inside the doorway where I stand

In spirit with the ancient god, Bicephalic Janus,

Who looks in two directions at once.

I too project myself into the past and future.

I examine both intensely

For misunderstandings and delusions.

My sense of things, however, is split.

In the present I am confused and ambivalent

About the course I have chosen. 

How does Janus see things?

What I see

Fills me with a deep sense of uncertainty

And at times, trepidation. 

It is a huge change to leave Hawaii

And I am taking a huge chance

To come to this dessert,

The Mojave,

And this city,

Las Vegas. 

Though I will survive somehow

It is not clear during the brief time 

That I have been here

That I am on the right track or in the right place.

At times I feel such a deep-seated feeling of uneasiness here.

Nevertheless, I will forge onward

As best I can for as long as I can

In the desert of Nevada.

This time of my life called for a bold new direction. 

Today, New Year's Eve, 2022

I pray to the god of beginnings

And pray to the goddess of fortune,

Two uniquely Roman gods

Whom the Greeks had no counterparts for

Whose origins arise out of the mistiest realms

Of Roman history, the age of Roman Kings.

I dwell in those mists

And I dwell in their eternal munificence. 

The door to tomorrow and a new year

Is cracked open.  

The light of the future pours in.

The wheel spins. 

I stand at the inflection point

Between one place and another,

At the inflection point

Between one age and another, it seems.

The curvature of the world is changing

In ways that I find chilling.

The entire shape of the world

Seems to be transforming in so many places

Into a broad-based tyranny.

I see the horizon darkening

For what a human being can think,

For what a human being can say. 

I see the horizon darkening

For human freedom. 

I see the children confused, deluded;

Their teachers madder than they are. 

So many bad ideas are being taught.

So many bad ideas are being spread

By "tarantulas" who have spun their webs

In institutions of all shape and size,

Tarantulas that need to be crushed

And the hold of their tricky webs swept away. 

The bastard child of Marx,

Identity politics and cultural revolution,

Bawls like a wretched brat

With its erroneous critique

Of Western civilization,

A critique fueled by the curdled resentment, deceit, and arrogance

Of psychopaths. 

They claim to champion the marginalized, but

They espouse hatred for competence and merit,

The only things that can raise a person up.

In the name of their so-called justice

That masks their tyranny of revenge

They demand conformity to their lies.

Sordidly, many of the "tarantulas" state

That there is no truth.  

They have little regard for reason.

They are enemies of both truth and reason.

All thought stops when the tarantulas speak.

They have usurped power

Through subversions, perversions, and inversions

Of the Truth,

And people quail before their accusations.

People succumb to their faulty assertions

In the face of the demanded conformity

Of the "tarantula" mob who have infiltrated

Many institutions and taken control of

The wheel, pulleys and levers of those institutions.  

A fight is on for the soul of the country,

But not just the country but that of the western world.

All of Western civilization is under attack

By these psychopaths.

It's beautiful and noble soul

Assailed by these barbarians. 

They must be rolled back.

I see the boorish, aggressive, bellicose behavior of China, 

A place I once lived for three years

And came to loath. 

I traveled widely there, lived in 6 cities

And saw many more.

It is not a pretty place nor an honorable and noble one.

It has much in common with the tarantulas.

It too has usurped power.

It too specializes in subversions, perversions, and inversions

Of the truth. 

It lies, it cheats, it steals, it commits tyranny on mass scale, 

Then it claims victimhood when it is called out.

It whines, it snivels, it has temper-tantrums

Like them, too. 

By the CCP the sovereignty of the Chinese individual 

Has long been under siege. 

The ruling regime has an enduring history of internal genocide

And its tyranny and totalitarian oppression

Are like the fangs and maw of a titanic monster

No longer satisfied to feed upon its own people

But now wants to devour the rest of the world. 

The world, they think, is to be crushed by China's hammer

And cut down by its scythe.

They must be rolled back.

And I see the oligarchs, all the oligarchs of the world.

I see that the world is in many ways a huge oligarchy

Operating successfully in the shadows

And probably always has been,

Or has at least always been menaced by them 

From their wealthy, dark hiding places.  

All freedom, opportunity, and justice

Is and always has been obstructed by the oligarchs

Of this world. 

Their immense greed for money and power

Is inhuman.

They must be rolled back.

I see that humanity stands at the inflection point

Of a world subverted, perverted, and inverted by these 3 tyrants,

But there is a strong hope that all them

Can still be vanquished. 

I have faith that this can and will happen.

The soul of humanity will be perfected

In building the pyre for these tyrants.

In needs to do so or the course

Of the remainder of this century 

Will take horrific directions. 

Through all this, I envision a better life and world for myself.

I see myself improving, becoming more

Meritorious, more competent, more spiritually fit.

I see humanity becoming so, too,

But only if the horizon can be reclaimed 

From these liars and tyrants.

Much is at stake in this coming year. 

As I enter the final years of my life

I am committed to the perfecting of my soul

In the fire of struggle and strife

In what time remains for me. 

I am indomitable in the face of tyranny.

I am indomitable in the face of misfortune.

I shall survive and more. 

I am immortal. 

I have nothing to fear. 

Sinking Boat

 

The teaching of this temple,

No longer a boat of compassion and wisdom, sinks.

Deluded monks guiding this boat grasp at its oars

As if they were demons who would grant them powers.

Each lay hold of the filthy end of a defiled stick

And call it the 3 Jewels.

This boat with rotten moral keel and broken compass

Is swiftly rowed to hell.

Meritless, these horned monks think

They will be saved at its gates

And blindly call it nirvana.

The revolution of their oars knows no limits.

This boat is rowed by fools who do not see 

That the fetters of their identity 

Chain them to this sinking boat.

They think their determination to be 

Determined by an identity, 

Which is but the shadow of a phantom 

That evilly haunts their minds,

Is a mark of virtue,

Think their deranged map that tears the land to pieces

Will guide them to Awakening.

Arrogantly, they call themselves bodhisattvas

And corrupt the Dharma with evil politics.

How far astray they have gone with 

Their fixation on an identity that befouls the temple

With dark and noisome politics masked as virtue. 

When the temple goes apostate and schismatic

Where will a new temple be found?

Will this boat of the teaching ever carry the moonlight again? 

It may have sunk too far. 

Note: This poem is in response to my former sangha, the San Francisco Zen Center, having adopted a Neo-Marxist agenda. Identity politics, which have nothing to do with Buddhism, are now central to the culture of the temple and have usurped in primacy the ancient teaching of Zen, which eschews any notion of clinging to an identity, and certainly not a politicized one. 

Return to Tomorrow

 

The night sea beckoned…
Beside the tide you stood,
Strange…supernatural…
 
Looking into the sea,
The sea looked into you.
The silver scales on its surface
Balanced.
 
With faraway eyes
Before a spectral stage
You parted the curtain of waves,
Dream entranced…
 
Consanguine with your arteries
An artery of moonlight bled
Into the unconscious,
A silver vein of infinite regression
Within and without,
An eternal chain of intimate kinship
Returning to tomorrow.
 
Undressed down to a whisper
Your body a mirage,
Lucidly you plunged into the impossible current
That perilously carried you far out to sea,
Pulled you suddenly into the flood of pulsing blood
Pumping lethally beneath the surface.
 
Fearless in the dark
Your body was liberated
Into a fish, then a bird.
Your entire body was hands and eyes,
A change happening
So quickly.

You gained direction from the night,
Learned and understood your destination.
 
And you had a long way to swim,
Just like papa’s seed
To the womb of she who birthed you.
And you had a long way to fly
Along a magnetic ray to conception.
And now you have a further journey;
To return to tomorrow.
 
No one remembers
How perfectly naked they were
When they were born.
No one remembers
How even more naked they were
When they were unborn.
 
It’s no wonder that you have no memory now
Of where you come from.
No one can see that far
Across the ocean.
No one can remember such a dream.
Do you wonder now, in another dream,
Who you really are?
 
Someday you will return to these shores,
Someday in a waking dream
You will return to tomorrow,
Someday.
 

Steppenwolf

Tonight a man and a wolf
Padded warily home through the biting cold,

Icily split in two,
Storming in polar fragments.

Inside the confusing cage of their room
They starved like a ravenous beast in the dark,

Starved beside bowls slopped with false human tyranny.

Condescension and manipulation crudely filled these bowls

Strewn with human deceit, imposture, and cruelty.

The affront of this nightly fare consumed them.

Scattered across the floor of their psyche,

The ulterior design of this sordid hash

Bared like fangs, its moon-like gleam 

Pouring maliciously throughout the room.

Painfully, the man and wolf curled up on the floor,

Wasting away, crippled by this mendacity.

Agonized, they hungered for the end 

Of inhuman deception, hypocrisy, and power plays.

Excruciated, they hungered to be freed from this freezing cage.

Reluctantly, the man gnawed this wretched fare, crunched it hard,

And finally swallowed these putrid lies,

Lies he had grown so accustomed to, yet he stopped

When  the wolf refused to take a bite. 

"Man is still my captor?."
"Man is my master, still?"
"Man is still my tormentor?"

Squealed and yelped the man to the wolf within him,

The wolf let out but a long, low, vicious growl

And began to pace.

They lunged at the prey of their own shadow
Which eluded them outside the cage.
The man's brain, the wolf's heart

Together howling,

Their bloody muzzle smashing into

The obstinate bars of cold moonbeams,

The vague glow of unspoken truth that forged this cage.

The unattainable moon in the sky through the window

The mirror of their freedom. 

 
The man and wolf could no longer endure
The stars and fire that throbbed in their head,

No longer withstand smashing their skull against

The unyielding spokes of moonlight every night.

They wanted out. 

The man desperately sought for the agents 

Of his constraint and entrapment.

The wolf searched for his own agency, night after night,

Its instinct for freedom prevailing over all.

Turning Word

 

“

“Ah, the emptiness of the great blue sky,

The flowing of the vast ocean.

I have not yet attained these utmost depths…”

12th century Chinese Zen apprentice

The wave the turning word

Of a koan

On which the wind and sky pivot

In the Ten Directions

Throughout the Ten Ages.

 

What the wave points to!

What the wind and sky dance upon!

 

The wave breaks-

The subtle Dharma Gate

Opens.

The wave spills-

The subtle Dharma Eye

Expands. 

Tathata.  

 

It is unusual for me to provide notes to my work, but I thought that in this instance it was appropriate given the use of Buddhist terminology that might be foreign to the reader. They are, of course, longer than the poem.

Turning word; a word or phrase that ignites insight into a koan. One may have encountered the koan many times previously, or perhaps for the first time, but on this occasion a revolution in understanding of it, and of thus the Buddha way, occurs.

The Ten Ages are: the Past within the Past, the Past within the Present, the Past within the Future, the Present within the Past, the Present within the Present, the Present within the Future, the Future within the Past, the Future within the Present, the Future within the Future, and Now.

A Dharma Gate; a place to enter a fresh and broader understanding of life, a more authentic one freed from previous delusion.. 

The Dharma Eye; one gains a glimpse of life's dream-likeness, its unsubstantiality in the moment, that is, its emptiness.. It is after this apprehension of emptiness that the Dharma Eye opens. It brings the vision that doesn't cling to the dream-like emptiness but returns to the here and now of ordinary mind and ordinary reality, which is extraordinary.  Further, the dharma eye specifically refers to the realization of Buddha's awakening that is not contained in the written words of the sutras.  

Tathata, or suchness. The true, concrete essence or nature of things before ideas or words about them. It is often best revealed in the seemingly mundane or meaningless, such as noticing the way the wind blows through a field of grass, or watching someone's face light up as they smile. 

The Wand of Time

A huge bubble

Blown from the wand

Of time,

And so many tiny bubbles, too.

You gazed at your reflection

On its rainbow surface

And watched it break

In air.

There had been someone there. 

You went clapping at the air.

Clap, clap, clapping

And the past broke,

And the future broke, too.

But the present-

That never broke

But remained forever constant,

The one thing to persistently celebrate

With all your clapping.

The mirror moment

Of these delicate spheres

The only thing that ever seemed real,

And now that you have aged and grown old

You have seen so many bubbles pop

From the wand of time-

The past a dream and the future, too.

But in this present moment

You are like a child on holiday

From some timeless realm that awaits you,

And you clap yet after all these bubbles

Blown by the wand of time.

Hole In The Sky

 

Streaming down,

The raw universe;

Twisting prism of one long memory

Streaming for light years

Through the air of dreamers.

 

Attenuated reflections of faces and stars

Inside the union of mirrors

Stretching for millions of miles-

The concreteness of space

The abstractness of rock

The transient eternal

Streaming mad and naked

Within the diaspora of reflections

 

Barreling down and down

Through an enormous hole in the sky,

An avalanche of infinity

In which the stars have nowhere to hide.

 

Moonlight in mirrors

Imploding in a vacuum of silver,

A long tornado of mirrors,

The great mirror of the present moment

Become one vast window.

A whirling funnel of dream and existence

A centrifuge of mind    

Uncoupled from reason,

Volute navel

Of the pregnant heavens,

Absurd womb

From which my very first cell was fed

Inside that labyrinth.

 

My torqued soul

Screwing in the astral winds,

Unlocking the first gate

Shrieking

With the birth pangs

Of my mother.

My torqued soul

Screwing inside the wind-blown skeleton

Of existence

Unlocking the final gate

Shrieking

With the death pangs

Of my body.

 

The silver and violet fabric of space

Torn wide open,

The garments of the soul burst and rent,

The All naked before sight,

The flesh of day, the flesh of night.

Nude stars doffing rays of light,

Their holy vestures unraveling in threads of fire.

My soul raving in rags 

Of thought and speech,

My head singing

Amidst all these sparkles of one brightness

 

An invisible assembly of a trillion beings,

Gods, demons, angels -

An ocean of Spirit where spins

A cyclone of whirling souls

As flies lay eggs

In the carcasses of lizards

That ants carry away to their nests.

 

                          II

Far in the desert, one broken signpost

With nothing written on it.

In a dream you understand anyway

The direction you must go.

You knock at the door of a house

Assembled from a myriad of contradictions.

On it is inscribed in a frenzied hand,

“Paradox”.

The wind kicks up.

All at once 

You have an epiphany of being

Aroused by the commonplace of dust.

Your knock goes unanswered.

Back into the desert you wander

Lost inside a dream. 

 

At the nexus of chaos and order.

You are their bursting limen

Where mantic galaxies scream prophecies

Contained in the Book of the Muses.

An automatic script

Written on the clay tablet of Earth,

An ancient lullaby

Beside the orphan cradle of civilization,

A bawling infant

Raised in poverty of understanding

By the hopelessly tragic grandmother

Of strange mystery

 

Your thought like a runner after a race,

A dancer after an exhausting dance

Here

Your mind is a very small cog

In a vast machine

Which assembles atoms into the universe,

That eternally manufactures wonder and pain.

You labor for a lifetime

Covered in the sweat of celestial madness.

In the divine economy.

This sweat is your capital.

You own the universe.

You consume it in illimitable privacy.

 

In this tornado of dream , 

In this whirling funnel of existence

Faith you have, and intuition too.

Both beyond reason

That is perfected by reason

When it surrenders to the absurd,

When it leaps into the window beyond 

With faith

And the tornado which never ceases, 

And the centrifuge which never cools

And the hole in the sky

Which never closes

Are all only a mere intuition of perception

As body and mind are dropped.