Block

Don't write, don't think it
Don't wonder why you can't
Don't breathe, don't be still
Don't beat the dog, don't tease the cat
Don't worry, though, don't be concerned
Someday you'll feel again.

Bliss

I had a memory today of a beautiful boy
Who was a friend of mine
In a time when having a beautiful boy
For a friend was not somehow OK

Or at least acknowledging that friendship
But now 40 years later I recall him
Sunning on a rock in a beautiful north woods lake
And I have never forgotten the radiance I felt
From him that day

I don't think he ever saw me
Or knew that I was watching
But I was, and I still see him today
As he was
As I was.

Silence 2

In my rooms silence is not possible
I can not make silence happen
In my rooms, in my head
Counting over and over again
Trying too hard.

Interrupt, the day happens
We read poetry and talk about it
I open gifts for father’s day
A ream of paper a book and a lego toy
Fun appears in the form of a bionicle

Deadline, gotta be silent
I drive myself to silence
High on a nearby hill
On a stone bench beneath a spreading live oak tree
I sit

I sit straight palms on thighs, eyes closed
Counting slowly with each breath 0ne to ten
And back again and focus easily on focus
I am surprised it took so long to get there
And how good it feels

I am hopeful, finally, that perhaps I can be silent
Amidst a child’s voice and a barking dog
A siren, the thump of something falling from a tree
A crow and the slow purr of a car motor
I scratch an itch and count again.

Not Today

No poetry today
or yesterday
or the day before
unless by an arrangement of lines like this
poetry happens.

My son is graduating from Middle School
my daughter
preparing a greek feast
for her 6th grade compadres
I go back to work today
with two new knees
after 3 months of blissful unproductivity

I will be sitting silently
soon and contemplating
imagining what silence sounds like
looks like
what deceptions can I find in it
silence which leads to poetry
which starts in a place of nothing
and everything

The Bubble Lady

She appears before me, dressed in black,
A cap of indescribable oddness
Covering her head as though it was born there
Her presence announced long before
In a cloud of soap bubbles
That drift aimlessly down the street
Posing as the poet’s messengers

She holds out a small book, her picture on the cover
Poems she has written about the avenue
The souls that stumble there from block to block
Chanting, raving, ranting, sitting, washed unwashed
Attending to the never-ending routine of living
The warp and weft in the fabric of life

I will buy her description of my existence
For five dollars in return she gives me the book
So that 20 years from now
I can find it again and relive that life
Grieving for its disappearance
And grateful to be gone from it.

Being

I sit among them eyes closed doing nothing
I am somewhere being somebody
In a space that does not belong to me
I have a book about ecstacy and laundry
Read about nothingness and allness
Absorb some and become neither all or nothing
A crowd of people sit whispering sighing weeping

I sit among them eyes closed doing nothing
The footsteps of dissinterested children swoop up behind me
Then disappear in erratic zigzaggy rhythms across the stone patio
Someone stands, an older person groaning slightly, joints creaking
A child rises high voice not yet broken into adolescent croaking
A woman speaks from a high bench along the wall reads poetry
A gong sounds and waves of pure tone bathe us clean

I sit among them eyes closed doing nothing
Incense fills the air a cough a slow chant begins
Space glows with the spirits of the whole and the broken
Adding voices to the droning song of despair and celebration
The gong and the chanting and the incense meet
In an explosion of sense and satisfaction
That our friend who is gone will be forever here.

I stand among them eyes opened saying nothing.

Assignment 2

The instructions read ask a question of the Dharmakaya
Some think of her as mother
What have you done with your Startrek royalties, I think
Startrek, mother, that show from the past about the future
It seemed to incorporate bits of your soul

I know little about Dharma and kaya and buddhism
My wife tells me that it is a non-theist religion
She has just graduated from seminary
It is the first time I have had a "theistic" discussion with her
It seems to incorporate bits of our souls

I am seeing poetry in places I don't know
I am describing places that don't exist
I am witnessing the explosion of spirit from emptiness
I am contemplating the invisible as visible
I am wondering where it comes from as I see nothing

[Copyright 2005 E. Bond Francisco]

Void

I sang in a church choir once
I like to sing, but I don't get God, really
9/11 happened,
They talked about God and I listened
Bodies fell from the highest floors
Caught on tape
The scream the terror the emptiness
A woman spoke
"There is no emptiness," she cried
"They fall through God's grace."

[Copyright 2005 E. Bond Francisco]

Found

I start to write as I am instructed to do;
I do not know where these instructions come from.
They materialize before me, expressed in a vast emptiness
Unseen, unheard, felt like a whispering breeze is felt
As though someone were passing close behind me.

The purpose of this writing I do not know
Letters appear one beyond the other
As footsteps show in the sand
They emerge from a storm of dark swirling dusty nothingness
And order themselves un-selfconsciously on my blank pages.

Who are you, I ask them, where do you come from.
We were always here, they say, puzzled. Always
Here, where you were, following you, watching you
Wondering when you would find us. It was dark and we were scared
But we are happy now to be free, we trusted you.

[Copyright 2005 E. Bond Francisco]

Knock

I heard a knock.
Who’s there? Who’s there?
Nobody here, a soft voice whispered, nobody.
Why the knock?
Just wanted to warn you.
Warn me?
Just wanted to warn you.
Go away.

Days later, I heard a knock.
Who’s there? Who’s there?
Somebody you’d like to meet, a soft voice whispered, somebody.
Are you the somebody I was warned about?
Yes, that’s me.
You?
Yes, me.
Go away.

Days later, I heard a knock.
Who’s there? Who’s there?
It’s me.
You?
No, me.
Me?
Yes, me.
Come on in.

Copyright 2005 E. Bond Francisco

Thoughts

Poetic, I thought, the words I wrote,
Yet some felt changes should be made.
I agonized and re-revised, took the pen and spoke
Felt the altered words softly fall upon the page.

Later, thinking once again on meaning and allure
It came to me what first I wrote was really what was meant.
I re-agonized and un-revised, restored the thoughts so pure
Thanked her who had mentioned it and stamped the letter sent.

Bipolar Express

Disbelieving, disheveled, unshaven, and spiritually distant
I arrive in the rooms where everything said remains.
It is good for me to be here, I say, softly.
I said IT IS GOOD FOR ME TO BE HERE.
I think. Why?

No one is listening. The windows are open.
A train is going by, loud and distracting.
It stops, just for me, for I am powerful.

I continue, attempting a connection.
"Yesterday, I spent a breath foolishly, cursing a pedestrian.
So what if they have the right of way.
I have coffee and I'm in a hurry."
Strings are pulled, heads nod, a leg is crossed in agreement,
Others have had coffee, their hurriedness hampered in similar ways.

Someone is connecting. A mind is open.
The synaptic haze is thick and distracting.
The mind closes, just for me, for I am powerful.

(originally written Sunday AM, 5.15.05)
(rev 6/3/05)
Copyright 2005 E. Bond Francisco

Interrupt

In a life of constancy and way
When no way appears
The struggle to regain it
Makes it hard to persevere.

Yet beckoned on by unseen will,
Despite the dark of change,
The path is lit and so aligns
The constancy of way.