(A new haibun: prose with haiku poems)

 

scraps of someone’s life interview

pass on the breeze

and thistledown too

Emperor Wu asked who he was (“Who the hell do you think you are?” perhaps, after their first unsatisfactory exchange) and Bodhidharma answered, “I don’t know,” which probably did little to improve the atmosphere.

 

footsteps approach –

the sound of bootscraping

a door clicking closed

What he did know, we all know, is that he was one of a few thousand generations of upright-walking beasts that grow, eat, shit, fuck and die.

 

the sheep are in bliss

and high overhead the vast

cool minds of red kite

But beyond that? My personality, for example, is measured medium on an Extroversion/Introversion scale, medium for Conscientiousness, “soft-minded” on the Psychoticism scale and low on the Agreeableness scale (that does not mean that I am disagreeable! No! Just that I’m not foolishly indulgent like most of you). I have some fixed habits and strong opinions, excellent artistic taste, the usual values, and I admit that I’m rather proud of my modest achievements. I have a life narrative from a loveless childhood to love (though my mother would not agree). I want to help my family, and perhaps some other people too. But I’m afraid you can’t actually see any of these things because they are in my imagination, whatever that is, or my mind, whatever that is, and can’t be verified. Bodhidharma is entitled to think that none of these sorts of qualities actually have any substance at all. If he were in a browned off mood, or, let’s say, disengaged, he might go further and assert that the whole personality is a rickety construction of flimflam, fantasy, out of date junk stories about the past and puffed up ego nonsense.

 

woodland full of song

and here’s a fallen nest

with empty shells

 

We are going to do a thought experiment now. Just suppose  – indulge me, please – that you agreed with Bodhidharma-in-a-huff and you decided to pitch the whole of your so-called personality into the bin. Before you turn the page, make two guesses. Ready?
Question One: What would happen to the world? Question Two: Who would you be?

Don’t read on until you have had a go!

 

 

ANSWERS

Question One: The world would be perfect! There, you did not guess that, did you? Any logical process would lead you to think that in order for the world to become perfect all those anxious fools, hamfisted inadequates, strutting bigheads, crackpots with half-baked ideologies and criminals with violent reactions ought to empty their personalities into the bin. But no, oddly enough it is me and you that have to do it.

 

in the arms

of the old silver birch

its fallen neighbour

Question Two: You would be one of a few thousand generations of upright-walking beasts that grow, eat, shit, fuck and die. And build nests. How far does that take us into, “Who the hell do you think you are?”

 

Tomorrow I’ll give you a test on the meaning of the moon. Toodlepip.

 

coming to gaps

between trees

the moon

low in the sky

faint in the haze

a big pink moon