Recent Poetry, January 2025

Mike Leigh (1943-    )
You taught us that
By not turning away
There is much to be learned.
And what a rare thing it is
Not to turn away.
In all of your films,
On our behalf,
You never turned away.
We learned so much.

Sin
Greed and ignorance. Blessed hate,
Are all that we have on our plate.
But that’s enough, and that is true,
Those cover all the sins we do.

Greed is wanting stuff so much,
That we’ll do all to have that crutch,
Whether it’s girl, or car,  or boy,
Getting it will bring us joy.

Hate’s quite like it: we don’t want it. Boy.
If we just cut it out all will be joy,
But it is all delusive too, I say.
Get rid of it, and we will be OK.

Ignorance is in the mind,
Not-knowing, but the painful kind,
It’s like we’re surrounded by wisdom on all sides,
But act as though we’re not. And this abides.

And so all our various, painful, stories,
Fall into those three broad categories,
They are the ways we generally sin,
If there’s another please do clue me in.

The Surprise of Noduality
There is no strict dividing line,
‘Tween mine or hers or even thine.
Thus great joy is always near,

And, what we seldom also hear,
Is: sorrow, that’s our birthright too.
Like all us animals in the zoo.

Compassion
We’re swimming in compassion every day,
And being smart’s not all that far away.
They’re both our nature—that’s some great good news.
We think ourselves unworthy, sing the blues.
Love and intelligence will have their blessed say,
If we just learn to get out of their way.

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986)
Your films: some were masterpieces,
Like “Stalker,” “Mirror,” “Andrei Rublev,”
Some not.
But whether they were good (and some
Were indeed miracles) or not,
You showed in them that you knew the sheer power
Of a visual image, in a way that’s seldom understood, and that’s made miracles of them anyway. 
And I  know I’m not the only one,
Who sees in the first few minutes of
“The Sacrifice,” (one of your failures, as I see it),
A corrective to Bergman’s “Virgin Spring.”
It only makes sense.

Love 3
We have to learn to love. And that is all.
It’s all in First Corinthians by St. Paul.
‘Twas in that thirteenth chapter that he taught,
If love’s not learned the rest is all for naught.
Learning physics counts, and Arab chatter,
But learned at the expense of love don’t matter.

William Wakes Up
The future’s only speculation
There is no place to hang your hat.
And not a final destination,
It don’t exist yet. That is that.

The past is not itself much better,
As a place to haply dwell,
Just check your mem’ry to the letter,
‘Gainst another’s. Laugh  like hell!

This present moment’s all we’ve got,
But even that is going away,
It becomes the past a lot,
While we’re watching. Every day.

It ends up we’ve no other road,
But sitting quietly and still,
Accept whatever comes your way.
You might become enlightened, Bill.

Stroke II
I had most unusual stroke.
It was cerebellar, bloke.
Cerebral stroke is much less rare, you bet,
That is, in fact, the kind most people get.

Most of  those who cerebellar suffer,
Drop dead, without getting a whit tougher,
So here I am alive, though by and by,
My life is hard to figure, Doctors sigh.

But it was always thus: farmer or dancer,
Life is always koan: there is no answer,
At heart. I cannot easily deny it. Wow.
This stroke is just my koan flavor now.

P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)
You are the only writer (So far),
Who’s made me laugh out loud,
Even on the bus,
Which is high praise indeed,
Because with humor,
They don’t let you get away with anything.
No matter how wildly and wonderfully,
Literate your writing shows you to be.

Brian Boland (1942-2012)
When  you were a kid,
The Abstract Expressionists
Had a big effect on you,
And you dragged your mother,
to a show of their work  in L.A.
You saw there an elegant black guy looking at a particular Canvas, and next to him,
“The most beautiful negro lady” you’d ever seen.
Suddenly, you felt your mother’s hard hand against your face. She said,
“THAT’S Duke Ellington.
I want you to remember that you saw him.”
And  it worked.
You never forgot seeing him.
And you told it as long as you could tell stories.
Now I’ve told it too.
Extending its life just a little bit more.

New Year’s Day
So now it’s 2025,
Perplexing time to be alive.
Suffering always does persist,
Though birth and death do not exist.

Paradox
I sometimes think I’ll die at night,
And that would be quite good, alright.
I also want to live, you see,
Those  thoughts can coexist in me.
I’ve recently just learned this, too,
No paradox? Then nothing’s true.

Remnants of the Stoke
My body won’t do what I want it to,
Nobody’d like that, even if t’were you,
The thing is, all it’s surprise I say,
If t’wern’t surprising, all would be OK.

Vincent Van Gogh  (1853-1890)
You took the role of artist-prophet,
Though there wasn’t really any other choice,
And you hated it, as prophets usually do.
You died, young, by your own hand,
But not before painting Starry Night,
A canvas all of us, even ordinary Joes,
Could understand. Your most prolific period,
May have been in the insane asylum.
May we all be insane in that way.

Anna Magnani (1908-1973)
Mamma Roma is possibly your best film.
And Pasolini’s too, though that’s because of you.
You taught us what it’s like to be a genius,
In an overcrowded field. In this case, acting.
It can’t be that hard, right?
So many of us want to do it.
You taught that it is indeed hard if done right.
Then you went ahead and did it right.
Ignoring the overcrowded field as you went.

Spiritual Practice
We dwell in it: smartness and compassion,
In every moment, it’s never out of fashion.
We just decide to be part of that movement,
Practice ain’t some form of self-improvement.
There is no self to be improved
There is no other choice when we see real.
It’s very ordinary.  No big deal.