[Image: “Seeing In,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

NOTE: An evening at the theatre. It occurred to me that there is something weird about someone wanting to be someone else. And even more so about someone sitting down for a couple of hours to look at someone they don’t know, pretending to be someone else, talking to someone who is also pretending to be someone else. A dialogue, furthermore, invented by somebody who imagined they were pretending to be each of these in turn.

(Alan Fletcher [source])

…and:

Enlightenment is a Gamble

Time to cash in your chips
put your ideas and beliefs on the table.
See who has the bigger hand
you or the Mystery that pervades you.

Time to scrape the mind’s shit
off your shoes
undo the laces
that hold your prison together
and dangle your toes into emptiness.

Once you’ve put everything
on the table
once all of your currency is gone
and your pockets are full of air
all you’ve got left to gamble with
is yourself.

Go ahead, climb up onto the velvet top
of the highest stakes table.
Place yourself as the bet.
Look God in the eyes
and finally
for once in your life
lose.

(Adyashanti [source, in different format])

…and:

Surely you remember

After they all leave,
I remain alone with the poems,
some poems of mine, some of others.
I prefer poems that others have written.
I remain quiet, and slowly
the knot in my throat dissolves.
I remain.

Sometimes I wish everyone would go away.
Maybe it’s nice, after all, to write poems.
You sit in your room and the walls grow taller.
Colors deepen.
A blue kerchief becomes a deep well.

You wish everyone would go away.
You don’t know what’s the matter with you.
Perhaps you’ll think of something.
Then it all passes, and you are pure crystal.

After that, love.
Narcissus was so much in love with himself.
Only a fool doesn’t understand
he loved the river, too.

You sit alone.
Your heart aches, but
won’t break.
The faded images wash away one by one.
Then the defects.
A sun sets at midnight. You remember
the dark flowers too.

You wish you were dead or alive or
somebody else.
Isn’t there a country you love? A word?
Surely you remember.

Only a fool lets the sun set when it likes.
It always drifts off too early
westward to the islands.

Sun and moon, winter and summer
will come to you,
infinite treasures.

(Dahlia Ravikovitch, translated by Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch [source])

From elsewhere:

In the past people criticized me for being too intellectual, but study and reading and the exchange of ideas has not only made my life interesting, they have also been the source of my values and actions. I am what I am because of my ideas, and I don’t apologize for enjoying the life of the mind and imagination. Intellectual people have also criticized me for being too much in the heart, being too involved in people’s lives and not maintaining a distance proper to a writer and thinker. They also accuse me of being lightweight in the realm of ideas, but I think they may be reacting to the interests of my heart and my attempts to make rich ideas attractive to all kinds of people. Some want me to be more of an activist, some want me less easygoing, and some want me to be part of a movement or an organization. Meanwhile, in the din, I play my piano and write. It isn’t always easy to practice the virtues of wisdom, compassion, skillful means, wonder, and serenity. Especially serenity. The world might like you to do something else.

(Thomas Moore [source])

…and:

The Convert

When in nineteen-thirty-seven, Etta Moten, sweetheart
of our Art Study group, kept her promise, as if clocked,
to honor my house at our first annual tea, my pride

tipped sky, but when she, Parisian-poised and as smart
as a chrome-toned page from Harper’s Bazaar, gave my shocked
guests this hideous African nude, I could have cried.

And for many subsequent suns, we, who had placed apart
this hour to proclaim our plunge into modern art, mocked
her “Isn’t he lovely?” whenever we eyed this thing,

for by every rule we’d learned, we’d been led to discern
this rankling figure as ugly. It hunched in a squat
as if someone with maliciously disfiguring intent

had flattened it with a press, bashing its head,
bloating its features, making huge bulging blots
of its lips and nose, and as my eyes in dread anticipation

pulled downward, there was its navel, without a thread
of covering, ruptured, exposed, protruding from a pot
stomach as huge as a mother-to-be’s, on short, bent legs,

extending as far on each side as swollen back limbs
of a turtle. I could look no farther and nearly dispensed
with being polite while pretending to welcome her gift.

But afterwards, to the turn of calendar pages, my eyes would skim
the figure appraising this fantastic sight,
until, finally, I saw on its stern

ebony face, not a furniture polished, shellacked shine,
but a radiance, gleaming as though a small light
had flashed internally; and I could discern

through the sheen that the bulging eyes
were identical twins to the bulging nose.
The same symmetrical form was dispersed again

and again through all the bulges, the thighs
and the hands and the lips, in reverse, even the toes
of this fast turning beautiful form were a selfsame chain,

matching the navel. This little figure stretched high
in grace, in its with-the-grain form and from-within-glow,
in its curves in concord. I became a hurricane

of elation, a convert undaunted, who wanted to flaunt
her discovery, parade her fair-contoured find.

Art clubs, like leaves in autumn fall,
scrabble against concrete and scatter.
And Etta Moten, I read, is at tea with the Queen.

But I find myself still framing word structures
of how much these blazing forms ascending the centuries
in their muted sheens, matter to me.

(Margaret Danner [source])