the birthday of the sun

by Kiyo Murakami

I declare today to be the birthday of the sun,
and I declare tomorrow to be the birthday of the moon.
Bake the cakes, wrap the gifts, and then check
To see if we have enough candles to blow out.
These are now the birthdays of the sun and moon,
Days of my choosing. Why? Because my son is dead
And I am ripped up like an old newspaper. That's why.
No more birthdays for him. This time I get to choose.
Celebrate with me. Please, I deeply need it.
Celebrate the birthdays of the sun and the moon.

-for WLJ, 1991-2017

james lee jobe 

Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain't this and that at all?

Jack Kerouac

by Kiyo Murakami

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A man with a pistol took aim at the truth.
Words were hanging in the air. He shot down
those true words and immediately he disappeared.
He had killed the truth which had created him
before he had been created. His pistol was silver plated
and ended his existence. If one could slow down time,
then one could see it all; the muzzle flash, the bullet
slowly going through the words like they were brittle.

james lee jobe

LINK: Poet & translator David Hinton's webpage.

Just to read his 'samples' is awesome.

WILLIE DIXON: Sittin' & Cryin' The Blues

Sixty-six summers pass, and I am still a fool. I do admire consistency. All is illusion and duality, and still I walk myself into positions of opinion. This and that. Yesterday and today. It's foolishness, I know. This is the wheel of meat, Saṃsāra. As I write this, it is afternoon. From the park across the street I can hear a mockingbird. It lives a life, yet it needs no name.

james lee jobe

by Seung Park

Embodied presence is an invitation, again and again, to soften, to settle, to relax, to open up to what’s here. When we’re driven along by our habitual thinking patterns, we’re holding those tensions. A free body is a relaxed body, an open body.

Martin Aylward

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jlj