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Topic starter
26/04/2017 10:20 am
Dear All, I have been working on these ideas, partly prompted by koan 55 of the Blue Cliff Record with the line "Is this life or is this death?"
Any responses and suggestions welcome.
crisp and still
the dry narcissi
alive in my eyes
the entryist who
liquidised your innards
drinks of death life!
dawn on the Common -
many greens shine
in one's heart
broken shell hatched
or plundered and a loud rustling
hidden in shrub
I am not needed
in Spring sunshine
slack sea smoothly
squirrel and squirrel
unconcerned about
my weariness
light green the leaves
a light breeze ripples
a light heart
Topic starter
26/04/2017 10:26 am
Also, a long one-liner specially for Stuart:
impersonal the glow one feels in the light along Chesil to the hazy Bill
26/04/2017 9:20 pm
These are wonderful George, I really feel they capture a moment of permeability between the viewer and what's viewed, if that makes sense. The only one that I can't access is the second one, I'm not sure I understand its meaning. The Greens one has a real feeling of nostalgia attached, and the Squirrel, Leaves and Narcissus ones feel to me about a moment of connectedness. I wonder if that's what you think they do?
26/04/2017 9:21 pm
... actually, I'd also say that they're about a moment when the self dissolves! It occurs to me that this is what all haiku are, perhaps?
Topic starter
27/04/2017 10:15 am
That's wonderful if they give you the idea of a dissolving self. The weird one about an entryist liquidising your innards (!) was based on an enthusiastic woman scientist I heard on radio describing how she is using killer bacteria to enter other bacteria and hopes to cure cancer. The killer entryists have propellor fronds and whizz into their prey at the equivalent of 400mph, squirt some poison that liquidises their innards through a defensive membrane, and consume the prey from the inside. This is going on all the time, all over the place. It occurs to me that it may be more representative of what 'life' does on this planet than voting for Brexit is. And it is the purest image of life-in-death and death-in-life.
