The Tragic Comedy of Zen

Tea

John G. Young, M.D.


In the beginning was the word
St John, the Divine

In the beginning was the word(play
st) john, the not so Divine

teaanim 

receptive

The teacher said, “That’s it.”

But there’s more

.T

.

The T)ea)cher then said, “En(lighten up.”

The no)vice took the right angle

between the lines and purely replied ,

“It fits me to a T.”

Afraid to choose.

Afraid to(o) lo(o)se.

We all know the sound

12g12q18

of one hand clapping–

a big wave,

no)thing

is so tragic

as a poet who lacks

whimsy.

 

My patient with an IQ of 30 or less,

drinks her tea saying

to everything

that passes her notice,

“That’s it.”

“That’s it.”

Tough

balanceanim

between sense and non-sense.

At cross purposes,

I never metaphor or five or six

I didn’t like.

meta4

I’m a many headed hydra,

fecund to the core.

Cut off one,

there’s more

to choose

between A)

richness and complexity

That’s it

or B)

simplicity and unity.

That’s it.

That’s contradictory.

That’s i(T.

 

 

 

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130818 Sonnet and Approach

Sonnet august 18

I wonder where I wandered
before I came upon
this sonnet of sixteen lines
reminds me of updates
complex answer to that question
misplaced inside my head
squandered much the same as sometimes
replaced by jargon instead traced

misread limits of harmonic progression
and linear regression a muddle of memory
based upon rhymes, rhythms and the like
suggestions not quite conscious ramblings
of something I might write

 

New Approach

I have become a language poet delighting in the wonders of language. Words are not just signifiers. Other words might signify the same thing. What they denote differs in what they connote. It is also more than what words suggest as in metaphors or symbols. Words have a specific sound, shape, rhythm, potential rhymes and near rhymes to play with to discover what possibilities that lie [in both senses] beneath in our Creative Unconscious.

I have become less interested in surface meaning or emotion, but rather in the pleasures of sound itself. Words themselves with their potential rhymes and near rhymes become the source of new associations.  I use randomness in discovering connections like John Cages’ use of the I Ching.  Even the random mistakes a cellphone dictation might make becomes an interesting discovery as well as as annoyance. Randomness produces possibilities, but as the artist, I get to choose which ones to use.  Also like the abstract artist or the nuclear physicist, I believe is good to look below to see the structure beneath.

Poetry give us little unless it surprises us in some way. This is why I enjoy John Ashbery’s poetry: It is not the meaning of his poems but his method of surprising and delighting us and his play upon the contemporary scene. The delight is in seeing something in a new way thereby enriching us.

 

 

 

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Cabin 9, Poem published in Kaleidoscope

I finally got my copy of Kaleidoscope, Number 65 with my poem, Cabin 9, on pg. 21.  The poem was written as part of the one man art show at the EllenKathyrn Gallery which can be seen on youtube, Poems at an Exhibition.

 

Cabin 9

I pushed your wheelchair

up and down bumpy sidewalks

venturing into Carmel’s sixty plus

art galleries and pastry shops

past flowers and more flowers

looking for happiness

and finding it

mornings with mike

talking painting

and relaxing

at the end of the day

in cabin 9 with you

 

 

 

 

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Outside the Dushanbe Teahouse

Wonderful innocence of childhood and other play at the Dushanbe Teahouse in Boulder CO with free improv piano music also recorded on my cellphone at the end of July 2013

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New Music and Video from Note 2

I have been having fun creating with my cellphone.  There are two new pieces of music recorded placing the phone on the grand piano.  The videos, of a visit to Diane’s cousin in Breckenridge, CO and Sophie our guard dog were taken, edited, the music recorded all on the Note 2.

Listen to 130729a and 130729b

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Recent Watermedia Abstractions

[nggallery id=1]

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New Header Image

cropped-DSCN0012crop.jpg

I created a new header image for this blog cropping from a recent abstract painting.  Can you guess which one?

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Asian Elephant

Screen shot 2013-07-18 at 5.52.47 PM

The elephant in the room
stands there quietly
understanding he won’t be there
if we don’t do something to save him
from ourselves.

No room in the inn for him,
they call it “habitat loss.”

Not possible to overlook if
we would only wake up:

Try not to think
of that elephant in the room

dying.

We can not not think of him,
or not,

but we do.

We do it easily.

It’s the big things we ignore:
no one talks of death,
our own,
or that endangered species
which is worshipped and tusked.

No conspiracy of silence,

not golden,
but silence of the silence to come.

cf. Elephant Parade 

Related Posts

Footnote on “Footnote to Jaspers”

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Freddie and the Buck

Though two feet away

You, my five pound Yorkie,

Faced him off,

His five points

Pointing to y(our face.

You stood there

Barking,

While Death

Seemed amused,

And the fence gave protection.

But there is no fence

Around the corner.

Related Posts

The above poem is from my recent book of poetry,  Odds and Ends.  Freddy died several years ago.  Now we have Sophie, see Guard Dog: Sophie and the Deer.

See also Buck Buckling

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Buck Buckling

You push through the gate
Into our front yard.
And Freddie comes
Up to you,
And I wonder with no fence
Between you
Just what will happen–
You greet him
Nose to nose
But Freddie backs off
And barks
As is his wont
When he gets afraid.
Death comes
Not as terror
But as sickness
To our Krankenhaus
On the hill.
You must have known,
With patients every afternoon,
My daughter, Amy, quite deaf,
Freddie mostly blind,
And my wife, Diane, with M. S.
Dying piece by piece.
You look so gentle,
Not Death but dying.
But I should have known
With magpies,
Those black and white birds,
On your back
And you just lay there
In the sun.
Then when I tried
To take your picture
You got scared
And jumped
But halfway
Over the fence
In a single bound
When in the past
You would have
Cleared it easily.
Later Diane
Saw twenty magpies
Dive-bombing your back,
Pecking mercilessly at you
And you never lifted
An antler to protect yourself.
What once was proud
Now buckles within.

Related Posts

The above poem is from my recent book of poetry,  Odds and Ends.  Freddy died several years ago.  Now we have Sophie see, Guard Dog: Sophie and the Deer.

See also Freddy and the Buck

 

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