-
APRIL NEW
POEMS
Scott Watson
-
Copyright 2015 Scott Watson
all rights reserved
[email protected]
-
reaching this way from
horizon sea morning
sunlight glimmer,
another time, another
angle, sea is emerald, turquoise,
winter grey metallic.
cupped in hands
there is no color. from
such a sea, arriving.
-
COSMIC KISS
It takes all that has
or hasn't happened--ever--
for us to be here.
communicate's
too big a word for
skin to skin silence
-
heart listener
this moon's
you
an apple
picked,
set on a ledge
keeps
to itself
a tree's
life and
more
-
SUMMER NIGHT NEW ORLEANS
Preservation Hall
sit and sweat in a
stuffy outer room
this side of doors
that smother the
real thing music
that through walls'
flaked gray paint
and plaster a
pitted decrepitude
booze out with us
to a genuine Bourbon
Street lady wrestler
wanting money to
watch her maul
other women.
-
see how darkness
holds stars as if it
understands
the child within.
the baby within.
the fetus within.
the artist we are
before being
anything at all.
-
PRAYER
Too old to breathe,
hook me up to
a poem. No
artificial
respirator,
please. Let me breathe
poems, let poems
breathe me. Let light,
darkness, settle
as all-embracing
clarity. Let
there be song when
there is no me.
-
MORIE
Wood flooring replaces carpet that's
rotting up a living room. Cracks in walls
are papered over. It's a surrounding
that holds us. For now. We call it home.
Walls speak a silence that says this is us.
Its sound is us holding onto each other.
-
Beyond measure
as a poem is
silence
Poetry will
get you nowhere
(now/here)
Returning to earth
a cherry blossom dissolves
like a word in your heart.
-
spiritual being
animal being:
Are both really
mystery being?
Now hear this
spring wind's gusty
contemplation.
Early spring bug
without even a name
tutorial
-
Life set free to have no meaning words sing like birds
Spring at sixty:
it's all in the greens and an eye never too old.
Full moon
doesn't know we have
no home.
(from "Radiation Sutra")
-
In this warm sun take off my
shirt, expose my underarms
thinking only of you.
Being outside like this.
Sky blue, trees' new green
and flowers cuing me in
how it all gets to be so
overflowing, but I retreat
into myself only it's all
there too being me new.
Old cat his eyes are weak his hips stiff
still gets in fights half his facial fur hangs
from blood hardened gashes.
-
IN PREPARATION FOR LOOKING AT AN A-BOMB
[Why was Hiroshima chosen?]
600 meters above
on a mountain's peak
a Buddha bone--or
tiny piece of one--is composed.
Innumerable scenes
are collected here.
[No flash photography]
Eternal Flame.
A sudden enlightenment
burns away
rational. Irrational too.
[Why was the A-bomb made?]
This life we are
given took eons to evolve:
incinerated blink
-
of an eye gazing
Namu Amida Butsu
Mercy, compassion--
fire blowing winds
prevail
nothing can be done
and it rains
back
human myth
reasons
skin drips off mama melting river flames.
I move with you
through this exhibition
seeing slowly
as a lifelong
teardrop
death
to know,
touch, feel
how this can be.
-
There must be something wrong with me
that is me too
wanting to
forget.
Reduced to this.
-
YANG WAN-LI
To realize death
through a poem
get rid of words
get rid of meaning.
Life is all there is.
Opening
shutters
to dawn.
A thin snow
smiling
your song
is here.
-
Reading
poems
I lose
my way
finding
There was a simple time of thinking things are solid.
There was a home, a family who were
about each other. Home had a soul.
A town had a soul. There were citizens,
hardworking, responsible people.
Conscientious people believing in goodness
because they were flawed and knew it.
Being flawed made them solid.
Then, for more and more (until it became as mass),
things came to be about money.
Now no one can breathe.
-
HER HOUSE
With darkness surrounding,
illuminated somehow are
stairways rafters beams
and corridors:
A suspension of presence
things grow of, grow to.
There are few rooms.
These appear asymmetrically,
like "chigaidana" shelves.
There are emptinesses,
silences
things grow of, grow to.
A flowerless cherry branch
rises out of its vase
-
in a room
on a shelf
in a heart.
Stars on a
clear night
give pleasure.
They are not
forced to shine.
-
Here now with earth sky bird rock cat
tree listen to their quietude being me
PRIVACY
I beg your permission,
budding persimmon, to
use you in a poem,
to share with those
who can appreciate your
sweet and tender silences
-
No one here
to hear me piss.
Ahhhh quiet spring
OCCUPYING MYSELF
I am preoccupied by
the way things are
before there was a me.
The world and not the
world. It does as I do,
lives as I live, dies.
-
NATURAL
light becomes dark.
dark becomes light.
loyal to no cause.
Realizing
that our
being here
means
ever more
deeply
less and
less
finding
more.
-
Poetry asks nothing, needs
nothing. its all here as we are
at depths too quiet to believe.
Effortless
this moon
solitude
fallen leaves
blow away
all at once
how I am
-
Into winter wind
full moon's light
denying nothing
cat likes
full moon
milk too
Moon and you
the way a poem has you
in the light.
-
persimmon
tree
leaves
gone
last
fruit
weighty
without a doubt--or
belief--morning light
THE COLD
as if there is
forever
bones shiver
-
even a bodhi
carved is warm
summer breeze
CHERRY BLOSSOMS
A song says "life is
but a dream" as each day song
dreams life away
moonlight
revealing
your light
thanks to
a poem
-
If we listen closely
life will strip naked
Garden of Eden.
Mountain lake mist
mountain lake mist.
Voice of mountain
lake mist.
gracefully
she bows
and with
deeply
felt
quiet
pours
water
for
tea.
-
at the
end of
all selling
begins
real
telling
Early
morning
somewhere
in a fog's
thickness
so clear
to find you
here.
-
Coming out to
maple's new green
feeling greener
Nothing to affirm.
Nothing to deny. Green leaves,
blue sky.
