Dark rock

Lightning flashes
Limestone hills bright
Exploding into
Being
Leaves no trace
A dark rock
Unmoved

Laughing life

I prepared myself for
A life of service
So I began to laugh
Leaving no
Trace in
Heaven

Love is here

Poor moon
Poor victim of poets
Let's come off it
Who wants a woman
With a cloud between
Her thighs?
Love walks the earth
The moon up high
Is here

Human confusion

The world is vast
Incredibly vast
But there is nothing strange
In being human
Eyes wide open
It's a gentle confusion

Dog burps

A dog stalks moths in
Florescent light
Walking away
Burps with her
Whole body

Speechless

Bodhidharma has no beard
And I am without words
The moon is neither rising
Nor sinking
All this space
And no room for self

Petals guffaw

Bending over in
The garden
I nearly fell over
The flowers laugh
Very
Very slowly

Hesse as a Chinaman

“Therefore the music of a well-ordered age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The music of a restive age is excited and fierce, and its government is perverted. The music of a decaying state is sentimental and sad, and its government is imperiled.”

— Hermann Hesse, Glass Bead Game

I am often taken aback by the sheer misery expressed in popular music. Even the club jams seem borne of and appealed to an unstable mind. The radios play only longing under the guise of endearment and human interest. Couldn't the art form also express simple joy, much like classical art?

Perhaps it is supposed to be cathartic. But catharsis is unnecessary for a peaceful heart.