For the inner ear, the voice of the ves­sel of silence is an embrace
felt by an infi­nite num­ber of scribes.
It is my wish to offer here an oasis of present day poetic
pens.

Each month i shall invite new poets to breathe with, and they in
turn will bring guests of their own.

Poetry Cor­ner at TIFERET has evolved out of Donna Stein’s
enthu­si­asm to nur­ture the spirit of beauty in all its forms.

silent lotus

June 2010 Silent Lotus’ Selected
Poets’

G. Drew Hunter

and his guest Tsultrim Serri

Tony Brown

and his guest Melinda Lee

G. Drew
Hunter

Which Hand on the Sweet Flowers

It seems the army of lies
out­num­bers the troops of truth
and yet the bru­tal casu­al­ties mount
on both sides

If God is the gen­eral of both forces,
what a strange visit He
must make to the
grave­yards to pay
His respects …

Which hand lays the sweet flow­ers
and which closes over
the weeping?

Ele­gance of Driftwood

The ele­gance of drift­wood
grace­fully incom­plete
the trac­ing of curve
and spine by wind
and rain
no start
no end

slowed
to a wait

my bleached soul
among beached souls
one foot in the waves
an arm touch­ing the sun
before the next
turn
of
the
tide …

G. Drew Hunter was born and raised in Vestal, NY and cur­rently lives with his part­ner, Joe, and dogs Amber and Gra­cie in Palm Springs, CA.  A seri­ous poet since 2000, he is cur­rently work­ing as a hos­pice vol­un­teer to lis­ten and try to bet­ter under­stand life being lived on the edge. You may con­tact Gary at [email protected].

Tsultrim Serri

After Hear­ing Gretta’s Song

I have heard them chant in the monas­ter­ies of Tibet
With the drums pound­ing, and the bells and damarus
I have heard the horns wail at the tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion
The sacred men say­ing the sacred words i have heard
In another land in another time
Trans­port­ing me to the mind’s essence
Like the lyrics of Gretta’s sim­ple song
About the nature of the all and none
The words sim­ply and sweetly sung
About what has always and never been
About the unseen ways of real­ity
Down from the words of the Bud­dha
Through the char­nel grounds of the mahasid­dhas
To the Tibetan caves of the cot­ton clad
Telling insis­tently the only truth
Of noth­ing­ness and its riches
But to hear them sung in my native tongue
So sim­ply sung, the logic unfold­ing, unforced
To hear the per­fec­tion in Eng­lish spun
The words of the Bud­dha in an Eng­lish tongue

Tsultrim Serri is a retired physi­cian liv­ing in Col­orado. Thirty five year Bud­dhist prac­ti­tioner in Zen and Tibetan Bud­dhism. Poetry mostly con­fined to Bud­dhist realization.

Tony
Brown

Every­thing I have learned

That I am nothing.

That as noth­ing, I am exalted
to be noth­ing. Deli­ciously
incon­se­quen­tial, a part of the Machine
of Stars/Necklace around
the Throat of Creation.

That I mean so lit­tle
any­thing is free
to hold me.

That I am peer
of leop­ard and dysen­tery,
of coconut palm and stray wrapper.

That the pat­tern of rejection/containment
is the warp of my woof. Woolly headed
and slubby as a pilled cardi­gan
on a grandfather’s back, only here
for the warmth.

That I am song
under shower breath.

That I will be
for­got­ten and this glad­dens the non-ego
that fights my stick-wielding cave­man heart.

That love and rob­bery holler equally
in the alley of my elbows as I grasp
the always com­ing always reced­ing days
I bore through in anger and dread and joy.

That joy itself is movie writ­ten by another
but I imag­ine myself as grip and gaffer at once
upon its set.

That the skin I’ve stretched
and the blood I’ve pres­sur­ized will look awful
when I go, bow­els a roar­ing ghost
of past indis­cre­tion, face a sagged char­lie horse
in the leg of a loved one long after my bur­ial,
putting a hitch in their walk.

That every bark­ing tree limb in a for­est
laden with ice knows its place bet­ter than I do
and I am happy to lis­ten and learn.

That a man’s
no more human than when he is a tin can on a heap of worms
and that the whine of a bomb is the nat­ural song
of the city of God.

That I am happy
and noth­ing, since all is nothing,

and since all is every­thing
and noth­ing at once
it must be so that noth­ing is impor­tant and
noth­ing stands out,

impor­tance itself
is the Ganges of my fierce greed
and I will burn myself to ash and crackle
in the con­sum­ma­tion of The Wheel
as the last thing I say to another
is swal­lowed in the Great River
and I am lost to the sun and the voice
and the Neck­lace that hangs upon Cre­ation
will be my shield against the long night
of what comes after this life,
the night of know­ing how small I was
and how much I offered to Com­ple­tion
by sim­ply being the petty ani­mal
I was born to be.

Why I Stay

I don’t love
this life

as much as I love
those who make me feel
as though it’s worth another try
at liv­ing with love for it
and all its fascinations

This after­noon I saw
a tiny slug’s fine line
drawn behind its body
across the sidewalk

a his­tory of where it had been

I thought it was a trail of slime
but then a friend pointed out
how from the right angle

it shines

Por­trait of Tony Brown ©Mike McGee

Tony Brown, of Worces­ter, MA, has been writ­ing and pub­lish­ing for over thirty years. His most recent chap­book, “Flood,” was pub­lished in July of 2009 by Pud­ding House Pub­li­ca­tions (Colum­bus, OH). He reads his work fre­quently in the New Eng­land area and also per­forms with The Duende Project, his poetry and music duo with Steven Lanning-Cafaro on bass and gui­tar. http://radioactiveart.wordpress.com/

Melinda
Lee

Grandma III

when god lifted
his fin­gers
and touched my grandmother’s lips
goose­bumps
took root
in her wrinkles

a salty tear found her tongue
and kissed it.

she lit an incense
sent a prayer toward her dead hus­band–
his cheek­bones
that of a fighter
(jaws clenched, you could tell he was
afraid of the light)

my grand­mother died
with Bud­dha dan­gling from her neck
his smile,
almost gone from his lips

at her funeral
a sin­gle monk with his eyes shut
pressed two fin­gers against her fore­head
and cried.

today,
at 4am,
a fire­fly found his way
into my bed­room and watched me
sleep.

later, I woke to find a hum­ming­bird,
star­ing straight at me, from
across the city

glad to know I was alive.

Por­trait of Melinda Lee ©Mike McGee

Melinda Lee was born and raised in Long Beach, CA. She has been writ­ing now for five years. At 19, she is a senior at Worces­ter State Col­lege and works as a drug treat­ment coun­selor. Her efforts are aimed at even­tu­ally becom­ing a full-time artist.

Poetry Cor­ner Monthly Archives

POETRY
CORNER by silent lotus … MAY 2010