Downtown San Francisco (from the 38 Geary)

This side of the street:
a playground full of children,
laughing in the sun.

Cross over: LIVE NUDE GIRLS,
palace of porn, dark doorways.

A brief letter of thanks to Sinead O' Connor


Ms. O' Connor, Sinead if I may be so bold, I have not exactly kept up with you past your first two albums (The Lion and the Cobra, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got). I don't know why. Each of those albums maintains a special place not only in my CD collection but in my heart. Really. Your talent amazes me. Your voice awes me. Your heart of fire and love as revealed through your art and "politics" is an inspiration to me.


I have been aware of the controversy that has swirled around you. I didn�t see you rip the Pope in two but, I must say, I would like to. I admire the courage you have displayed throughout what I know of your life and your career. I admire the convictions from which that courage springs.

Through your music and your conscience you have made an impact on a world that needs more of both. Real music. Real conscience. You are an artist of the truest stripe.

Your desire to retire from the ever hungry public eye is understandable. I can�t imagine the fame you have known. It seems that it must be strangely liberating and suffocating to be so famous. For all that, you were never a Celebrity. Those convictions and that conscience I mentioned above precluded that for you, I think. You were and continue to be a real person with a beautiful heart and a voice like a heavenly choir.

Step out of the spotlight now if you must. May blessings light your way off the stage and on through life.

Thank you for singing your songs.

Singer Sinead O'Connor says she will retire in July

Thank you Blogger Control.

Inspired, perhaps, by my most recent publication in Short Stuff or, maybe, my happy finding of a Mead composition book just waiting for it's college ruled lines to be filled with my mad scrawl, I have recently begun keeping what I refer to as - for lack of a better title - a haiku journal.

I have kept a running notebook - in which I scribble poems, stories, odd thoughts and varied mental detritus - for more years than I could tell but this is different. How? While I have written haiku in my notebooks for years now, they have shared the pages with other works from my head such as metered rhyme and free verse dabblings in poetry and prose. I have never kept an exclusively haiku notebook - or, as I really prefer to call my experiments in the ancient Japanese art, haiku inspired forms (or HIF's).

My motivation in keeping this haiku journal is to keep a record in words of specific moments from this tiny life of mine. Scroll through the last four posts below and you will see examples from four different days. I aim to make regular entries, two or three a week at least. I have resisted imposing too strict a deadline on this as I have found that to be a creative burden in the past.

I have discovered in the two weeks since I started this experiment that, beyond a mere exercise in writing, this journal is becoming something akin to a meditation. Yes. My long time enthusiasm for zen and haiku has brought me at last to this ideal form of meditation (at the moment and for myself, anyway, who can never sit still long enough for Zazen) . The Way of Poetry.

Of course, this way is not new and is, in fact, well trodden. Basho, the father of the haiku form, laid this way long centuries ago and describes best what I, aspiring for unity, can only hope to achieve through the vehicle of poetry.

What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and, returning to the world of our daily experience, to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry.

- Basho, quoted in Matsuo Basho and Zen Haiku, brought to you by The Minnesota Zen Center -

Indeed! Every moment is Holy and through the awareness which the capturing of the haiku moment entails, one is made increasingly. . . well, aware of that single line of poetry that runs through everything. And I do mean everything.

Coughing up his soul,
our neighbor across the street.
Every day
a new piece lost. . .

- the first entry from my journal, 4/9/03 -


spin cycle rumbles
washing machine shakes and rolls
unbalanced load

- 4/13/03 -

From the life altering mundanity of illness to the daily chore variety, it is all worth something more than we can imagine. My goal in working with HIF's is to realize that and, what's more, to remember it every moment.

Inland

Beyond our window

The rush of cars through the night -

WHOOSH

WHOOSH

WHOOSH


It is not the sea

rolling white capped waves to shore.

Long shadows gather

in the empty schoolyard -

overhead, a crow. . .

"Homeles and hungry" -

A shabby sign in thin hands

beside this busy road.

Epitaph for the living

in cardboard and black ink.

a Siamese cat

staring from a black door mat. . .

"go away"

Under the Patriot Act, librarians and booksellers are required to open their records to the FBI so the feds can trace a person's Internet activities and the books he's been reading and buying. Since these investigations are conducted in secret, the librarians and booksellers are bound under a gag order not to divulge one word of what the FBI is after, nor, indeed, even mention that they have received a visit from the FBI. Librarians fear criminal prosecution should they talk. . ..

-from Throwing the Book At Us by James Ridgway, The Village Voice-

Hmmmm. . . I'm a bit confused here. Who, exactly, is the patriot described by The Patriot Act in the above situation? Is it the librarians and book vendors being victimized by shadowy Federal Agents? Or is it the shadowy Federal Agents conducting secretive searches and seizures, often not only of information but of people as in the case of Maher Mofied Hawash:

Friends rally to free Hillsboro man in federal custody

Maher Mofied Hawash, a U.S. citizen since 1988, has been in federal custody since March 20, and authorities refuse to say why.

There's no public record of his arrest, the search warrants filed on his Hillsboro home or office are sealed, and a federal judge has ordered defense lawyers and prosecutors not to discuss it.

-MARK LARABEE, The Oregonian-

Or, perhaps it is people like the oft quoted of late Sgt. Eric Schrumpf of The United States Marines:

"We had a great day," said Sgt Eric Schrumpf of the US Marines last Saturday (April 5). "We killed a lot of people."

He added: "We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do?" He said there were women standing near an Iraqi soldier, and one of them fell when he and other Marines opened fire. "I'm sorry," said Sgt Schrumpf, "but the chick was in the way".

- As reported by by John Pilger-

I'm really not sure about the others - the harrassed librarians and secretive Federal Agents, I mean - but a marine unafraid to kill innocent people sounds like a real patriot. And don't be modest Sgt. Schrumpf! A few civilians? The marines are better shots than that.

U.N. Condemns 'Incredible' Civilian Deaths

The rising number of civilian deaths in Iraq - caused mostly by heavy U.S. firepower - has evoked strong protests and condemnation by senior U.N. officials and global human rights and humanitarian groups.

. . .the 'New York Times' said Thursday that the number of civilians killed will never be known. . .

-Thalif Deen, IPS-

It's true that we will never know how many innocent people were liberated in the ultimate sense as a result of Bush's invasion of Iraq, but the folks keeping tabs at Iraq Body Count figure at least 1,160 individual lives have been given the freedom of the grave at the time of this writing by the U.S and it's allies.

And we're Cheering.

New Yorkers Gather to Rally US Troops

As many as 15,000 New Yorkers, mostly union workers, gathered Thursday at the site of the devastated World Trade Center, known as Ground Zero, for a rally in support of U.S. troops in Iraq.

New York Governor George Pataki led the flag-waving crowd in roars of approval for U.S. troops. Mr. Pataki reminded the crowd of the significance of the rally site.

"I am proud of all of you, not just because you are here today," he said. "But for many of us in New York, the war in Iraq did not start when the bullets started in March. The war started right here on September 11, 2001."

Don't you mean the war on Iraq, Mr. Pataki? Or, perhaps, The war on Democracy? The War on Morality? The War for profit? Are our eyes, yours and mine, really possessed of such different vision that you see Good where I see Evil? That you see Saddam Hussein as a villain where I see him as a villain, yes, but also a convenient scapegoat and old friend of fearless Donald Rumsfeld?

The Saddam in Rumsfeld's Closet

In 1984, Donald Rumsfeld was in a position to draw the world�s attention to Saddam�s chemical threat. He was in Baghdad as the UN concluded that chemical weapons had been used against Iran. He was armed with a fresh communication from the State Department that it had "available evidence" Iraq was using chemical weapons. But Rumsfeld said nothing.

-Jeremy Scahill, Common Dreams-

Rumsfeld said nothing, indeed. Well let it stand on the record that I am saying something. This war is wrong no matter how right it may seem in ridding the world of a despotic scoundrel. With every bomb that drops we are sowing seeds that will bear poisonous fruit while their roots burrow deep and spread cancerous tendrils through the ground beneath our feet, honeycombing the planet 'till we are standing on shaky earth undermined by our own worst qualities.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

"He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,"--in those who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease.

"He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me,"--in those who do not harbour such thoughts hatred will cease.

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.

-from The Dhammapada, Chapter I: The Twin-Verses-

"I can remember with perfect clarity Robert Creeley telling his students in 1968, 'If you don't have to write poetry, for God's sake don't.' And I loved it. I follow in a long line of Zen fools who love poetry and feel compelled to write it."

- Sam Hamill recollecting Creeley, from an interview in the Winter 02/03 issue of Rain Taxi -

I haven't written much poetry lately. But not for lack of love, or need. More accountable, I think, for the paucity of poetry in my pen (!) is a general malaise of the spirit - a product of the dark days we are wading through. Or, it could be my idle nature. I'm in love but I'm lazy as Paul sang so long ago. I am enamored of Poetry to the depths of my soul but she is a demanding mistress and I am a lazy thinker.

Is it my lazy ways that have led me in recent years to the reading and writing of haiku and tanka and an appreciation of the short and sweet in general? No, I don't think so. Haiku is not a lazy man's art. It is a sharpening of focus and an exercising of keen awareness which, paradoxically enough, is absolutely no work at all when done right. The lazy, however, will never know the essence of inaction that the haiku inspired poet or the Zen master channels into his or her "work" and life.

I don't claim to write haiku, of course, but what I call haiku inspired forms. I make this distinction because I take many liberties with the rules of traditional haiku, and perhaps with the modern form as well, while remaining true, I think, to the sense of moment that is the essence of haiku.

In any case, the folks at Short Stuff seem to think I'm doing something right. They've accepted two more pieces of my short poetry and brought them to light in the April '03 edition. I will, no doubt, add the link to the My Words on the Web section to the left but, until then, you can read them here if you, like Mr. Hamill above and myself, love poetry and think you might have a place in your heart for mine:

Two from me to you, Short Stuff (April 2003)

Congress moves quickly to give administration nearly $80 billion for war costs

80. . . billion. . . dolllars. . .

And that, no doubt, is only the tip of the tip of the financial iceberg that will be floating Bush's Iraqi adventure. Probably doesn't even account for the billions that were spent in deploying the troops to the gulf before they stormed Saddam's oil rich shores. It can only barely account for the relief and restoration that must follow in their bloody footsteps (if and when this war ever ends).

I'm no economist, it's true. I can't even tell you how many zeros there are in 80 Billion. Quite a few, I reckon. I do know that is an awful lot of money to be spending in foreign lands when one's own home is crumbling around one's ears.

State budget gaps soar

The deteriorating situation could prompt more cuts in a wide range of programs such as elementary schools, health care for the poor and more. Additionally, it will increase pressure on state lawmakers to raise taxes.

State budget deficits may mean health care cuts and worse

The budget deficits now looming over state governments will likely reach $60 billion to $85 billion in state fiscal year 2004 and constitute the largest state budget gaps in half a century, a Washington research and policy group reports. This worsening of state fiscal crises could force deep cuts in programs for low-income working families and especially in health care coverage. . .

108,000 U.S. Jobs Lost in March

The job market continued to deteriorate in March as the economy lost 108,000 jobs, the government reported yesterday, raising worries that the United States is closer to slipping into a recession than it has been for more than a year.

Fellow Americans, I don't know about your fair state, but here in California we can't even keep the school's running.

More school jobs slashed

In this most recent round of job slashing, the board voted to eliminate 37 full-time and 17 part-time positions.

School Programs Cut, Teachers Pink-Slipped

District officials are considering new cost-cutting measures that range from a reduction in elementary school library services to, in a worst-case scenario, the closure of two elementary schools and the elimination of school busing.

Dozens of educators may be laid off

Layoff notices have been landing all week on the well-worn desks of anxious teachers, counselors and principals across the Napa Valley.

$80 billion. . . One more reason why I will be marching tomorrow against Bush's war of aggression - it is a financial as well as a moral and spiritual disaster.

March and Rally in Oakland - April 5 -
No war on Iraq / No war on us