Poetry – KNOMO CHOICIUS

Arrow

Yesterday, I finally got back to my Mid Michigan Word Gatherers Writing Group after quite a while. It was great to see old friends and meet a new person. It was interesting to write creatively, after my long stretch of non-fiction. Here’s goes!

Gravity’s arrow points downward.

While Motion’s follows a forward push.

Entropy’s arrow flies away, always away.

But Mystery shrouds the arrow of time.

Outer and Inner

Apple paints itself red outside.

Meat bleeds red from within.

Leaf makes its own green, which

Caterpillars ingest and excrete,

eventually the Monarch’s color their chrysalis with the green tint.

Noon sky from inside is blue.

Tiny dots pierce the black night sky.

But from inside or out?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Flammarion.jpg

AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The anonymous author is of the photo. The original artist for the engraving was French astronomer and writer Camille Flammarion. It is from his “L’atmosphère : météorologie populaire,” published in 1888 by the . Wikipedia

Candlelight

One pink candle pokes its white helices

out of the baby’s cake, while the flame

eats downward and the family sings.

One red and one green candle stand proud

on the table. The autumn evening calls for

mother to strike the match.

One white candle sputters.

The old woman gasps, glazed eyes close.

Her niece holds her hand, and whispers

Good-bye.

Consequential

Consequential damages
emerge like weeds
at the side of the road,
sometimes bursting into bloom.

Spring Is Here

Even though we just got more snow, the birds announce that the season is changing. These views were from my back window. There were at least 20 robins hopping around for hours. There were some sparrows who later joined them, and then a crow started strutting around!

And a hawk circled

over the snow spotted ground

then flew off, northward.

And the rain having

melted the snow,

the robins party, party big.

I do not know if Spoonbills are migratory, and this photo is from March of 2020 in Assam, India. They are pretty amazing birds! These two were courting.

Epistemologia

How do we know what we think we know? The first step is realize that we need to figure out how to evaluate the reliability of our thoughts. 30% of the USA has fallen into a massive, delusion, pulling everyone into the vortex of confusion. How do we start to climb out of it?

The First

In the Now, is the Known.
In the Now, is the Unknown.
In the Now, is the Knowable.
In the Now, is also the Unknowable.

For the Now is what’s known.
And of the Unknown, it may be Knowable or Unknowable.

Today’s Known may be tomorrow’s Unknown, just as
yesterday’s Unknown has sometimes become today’s Known
and other times, been recognized as the Unknowable.

The Known, the Unknown, and the Knowable, are Children of Time.
But the Unknowable is eternal.

The Second

Even as the Unknowable is eternal, it changes,
One day, we may meet some other who knows,
or figure it out for ourselves,
thereby changing ourselves.

Yet even at that meeting, the Unknowable will laugh,
as one who knows itself eternal, always sowing
a new crop of questions.

For there will always be a mystery, and it’s name is the Unknowable.
In the past, we hid the mystery, as we were the babes of eternity.

But now we are bold enough to hold the truest mystery up
as our lamp, whether it attract the demons or repel them.

We have walked enough roads to renounce the pseudo mysteries,
in favor of the real ones.

The Third

If we look with quick eyes, we will find the revealed truths of another.
A steadier gaze is required to find our own self evident truths.
All sons and daughters of the Known,
we must remember that even if
the revealed truth seems to walk with a steadier gait,
our own truth may be more reliable.

In either case, for good results, we must properly define
the conditions in which we found our truth.
That’s the hard part. Harder than finding the truth in the first place.

An always imperfect process, always leaving a piece of the
Unknown for someone else to study.

Because self evident truth is not available to the casual observer.
And no truth worth the name is everywhere eternal.

Then and Now

Back in Time; Retroactive was a prompt at a writing conference I attended in 2017. I just found this and thought it was cute. A change of pace from the recent India posts. And maybe newly loaded with more layers of meanings. This could be my “higher self” talking to my mundane self….

How you sounded then,
and how you sound now.

How you walked then,
and how you walk now.

How you looked then,
and how you look now.

But what you know today,
and didn’t know then.

And how you now think,
but wouldn’t back then.

And how you now see,
but couldn’t before.

Oh, how you shine
a different light
now.

An unrelated question: Do you love mushrooms?

November 8, 2017

Choose Confidence over Humility

We act humble when those motivated by lower chakra energy impose their will on us. Usually, the imposers work categorically NOT for our own true good. Our own true good comes when we experience the consequences of our own decisions, and can thereby learn from them. In order to do this, we must work to overcome the “humility programming” we are given. How else may we remove the obstacles to confidence? I can find no other way to take the bushel out of the way of my shining light.

Embracing confidence over humility allows us to store up our treasures in heaven. Treasures of a spiritual nature (social capital) are no easier to earn (and maybe harder to earn) than financial treasures. But the interest accumulates automatically. We don’t have to waste our time seeking out the best 401k.

This little piece was written in E Prime. It avoids use of forms of the verb “to be.” Humility does not serve as the opposite of arrogance. Rather confidence does so. Confidence is deserved when earned through study, practice, or experience!

Don’t try too hard to understand. Just listen and enjoy the artwork. The audio is a different version that is not E-prime. I had missed 5 ises.

Pandora contemplating the now empty box. — Pandora’s Box Courtesy National Gallery of Art (USA)

Tarot Koans

THE MAJOR ARCANA

You may see the classical images for the Rider Waite deck at Wikipedia. Scroll down to Major Arcana. Arcana means secrets. The major arcana are meant to represent the entire human experience in an abbreviated, symbolic way.

Story Number 1: The Magician
After the thought, manifestation.

Story Number 2: The High Priestess
Before the thought, knowledge.

Story Number 3: The Empress
She glowed.
The fields flowered wherever she walked.
Bringing fruit out of season.

Story Number 4: The Emperor
His authority radiated from every pore.
He no longer required the uniform.

Story Number 5: The Heirophant
The attention rejuvenated his soul.
His sister had claimed it was his ego, but he knew better.
The eyes had followed his every move.
But now, he was tired of it all.
Performing the same rituals day after day.
Only the thoughtless cared.

Story Number 6: The Lovers
Loving lovers loved lengthily.
Do you remember?
Always remember.
Remember.

Story Number 7: The Chariot
Your chariot awaits.
The work you have done has its own reward.
Enjoy the ride.

Story Number 8: Strength
The Goddess radiated light.
The lion lay down in submission.
Truth and goodness flood the thought field.
Justice has become mercy.

Story Number 9: The Hermit
The old woman closed the door of her house behind her, and latched it.
Her cloak fastened at the neck, she headed up the mountain, holding nothing but a lantern.
She would go up as far as she could. She knew how to put one foot in front of the other. She knew how to struggle toward the heavens. She had done it all of her life.
There, she would breathe her last. Her knees would never let her return to lower earth, and that was just fine with her.

Story Number 10: The Wheel of Fortune
The monkey raced around the mulberry bush.
So did the weasel.
Which was chasing which?

Story Number 11: Justice
Jane bowed her head. Justice was slow in coming. Very slow.
A thousand times now, the sun had risen and set.
Jane lifted her head. Now she understood.

Story Number 12: The Hanged Man
Everything is upside down now.
The hummingbird has consumed the eagle. Ganesh rides a mouse.
Mist obscures the ground,
above the hard black bowl of the sky.

Story Number 13: Death
Ring around the rosie,
pocket full of posie.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Story Number 14: Temperance
Silver wings fluttering in the breeze,
the angel plodded on,
toward the approaching dawn.

Story Number 15: The Devil
The image stared back at him
from the depths of the blackness.
The sin looked out at the sinner.

Story Number 16: The Tower
Ground shaking, tower leaning.
Maybe this was not such a good idea.
We’d better jump now.

Story Number 17: The Star
She dipped her big right toe in
the river of time, while chewing
a blade of grass.

Story Number 18: The Moon
Over and over and over again, they had endured the
reign of terror.
Once, the wings of mercy had shielded them.
What goes around comes around.
The moon waxes and wanes.

Story Number 19: The Sun
Bright shining as the sun, the child’s smile.
Crickets start to chirp in the heat.

Story Number 20: Judgement
Dem bones gonna rise again, Ezekiel eventually proclaimed.
But is that really what you want?
The streets of heaven are paved with gold.
The alchemists’ stuff, not the end result of
two neutron stars colliding in
far away galaxies.

Story Number 21: The World
No longer at my fingertips.
Where are my fingertips?
Who am I?
What is I?
Boundaries dissolve.
The world is.
Is.
Isness.
Isness is.

A Story: The Master
I watch the lord comb the lady’s hair.
The rest is untold.

Story Number Zero: The Fool
Innocence and isness
make no claims.

I hope you liked these little poetic reflections. If you have an artistic bent, and would like to collaborate on illustrations, please let me know by the comment feature.

Barefoot

Barefoot. I rarely do that anymore.
Too many thorns and sharp spines.
It takes too long for the little itchies to heal.
And drives me nuts at night.

Last year it was January
before the scabs finally stopped reforming.

No. And rarely even flip flops.
I remember when my mother stepped on a bee.
She had to soak her foot in a bucket for
what seemed like a long time to a seven year old.

But in India, on my first trip back in 2001,
I was taken to a mountain. Walking up
the rocky trail, I passed
scores of women walking down, huge bundles of
wood on their backs, their feet protected only
by cheap flip flops. Mostly blue and white rubber.
Not that they needed them, I remember thinking.
The soles of their feet protruded outward a bit.
Almost like hooves.
Years of hardening.
Their feet told the stories of their hardened lives.

Later, riding in my Ambassador tourist taxi,
we passed a woman, bundle of wood on her back,
sitting on one of the short tapered concrete
cylinders used to mark the outer edges
on the switchbacked mountain roads.
She was taller than average. Young. Well,
younger than I was at the time. Maybe
thirty. Stronger than average. Built strongly
with robust bones and muscles. Maybe our
eyes met.

She sat on the edge of the road. I will never
forget the look on her face. “Is this all there is?”
She, nameless woman of north India, probably
remains one of the biggest factors in my belief
that even if all of us don’t get reincarnated,
some of us do.