Butt of the Joke

A million monkeys typing for a million years DID produce the works of Shakespeare when you think about it.  Because every “monkey” chatter and every “monkey” action led to that point.  Shakespeare was merely a biocomputer synthesizing everything that had come before, no more significant or insignificant or self-created than a rogue wave. Cause and Effect.  Action and Reaction.  The very definition of Karma (not the childish fairy-tale that if you do something “bad” something “bad” will happen to you.)  This is literally evolution.  It’s why free will is a joke, the illusion that your binary choices come from anything other than every quantum blip that led up to that moment.  Everyone’s life is the butt of that joke in the hologram of past-present-future.   The more this upsets you, the more you unconsciously perceive the truth of the matrix in which you are enmeshed.

The Bee Gees song “I started a Joke” might well be a modern Creation Myth:

I started a joke which started the whole world crying
But I didn’t see that the joke was on me oh no
I started to cry which started the whole world laughing
Oh If I’d only seen that the joke was on me

I looked at the skies running my hands over my eyes
And I fell out of bed hurting my head from things that I said
‘Till I finally died which started the whole world living
Oh if I’d only seen that the joke was on me

I looked at the skies running my hands over my eyes
And I fell out of bed hurting my head from things that I said
‘Till I finally died which started the whole world living
Oh if I’d only seen that the joke was on me
Oh no that the joke was on me

And the subsequent joke is that upon discovering this truth, some fall into despair, feeling dis-empowered, not getting the joke, and that others, realizing the truth, are liberated by it to simply enjoy what is.  What is… what simply is.   “Do what Thou wilt,”  the most misunderstood phrase in all of occult history.

In the face of this realization, do you feel liberated to live joyously and freely without attachment or aversion, finally relinquishing your obsessive control to the flow of creation, or do you rail against the prison of your life, the meat suit you were born into, and all the conditions and circumstances around this birth and life?  Do you get the magick of laughter, the ONE non-dual thing in the universe that has no opposite?

HEXAGRAM OF SATURN

HEXAGRAM OF SATURN

 

The minds of men are unraveling

frail yarn strands of reason and compassion

loosened and fallen

from winter’s wool caps

 

re-knotted at the groin

like a failed vasectomy

 

impregnating the world

with madness

 

–Radiant Spleen, Nov 9, 2018

Sestina: Yoga

We come together and unroll our mats to breathe
for a bit, to move our bodies in a flow
of shapes.  . tree, rabbit, moon, and experience
collectively the ways that consciousness can bend
and fill any container and in this way blossom
our connection to True Will

Yoga is an adventure, we can’t know where it will
take us as we move, meditate and breathe
ourselves along a radiant flower blossom
path.  Flowers also wilt and die, and so our flow
is itself a conscious surrender to the fullness of truth, to bend
in winds of both the pain and bliss we experience

Yoga is sometimes said to mean “union” or the experience
of connection to all things, a practice that will
connect us to ourselves, and a method to bend
all our energies, movements, and the way we breathe
into a single pointed intent, to flow
Shakti’s evolutionary force upwards into the lotus blossom

at the crown of the head and in this space we will
find deepening levels of samadhi, an experience
that’s not at all elusive if you only flow
each day with the light, the way a delicate blossom
tilts towards the sun in order to breathe
its shine. A stem, like your spine, can bend

and dance with both breeze and storm, bend
without breaking. A strong and flexible Will
symbolized by Fire, Manipura chakra: breathe
your intentions into Manipura, yet soften the experience
and karma of conscious action with a kind heart, blossom
into your fullness through elemental balance, flow

the way the Waters in a gentle river flow
your feet on solid Earth as you bend
exhaling Air as you fold inward,  where you will
once again expand into the Ether and blossom
your hands to the sky, fingers experience
a constellation of mudras.  You breathe

the essence and flow of your life, and as you blossom,
your light begins to bend other flowers towards the experience
and the golden chain will grow. Together, the world learning to breathe

Sestina is a specific form of poetry where six words are repeated through six lined stanzas (six of them) ending with three envoi (ending lines, each containing two of the six words, so that all six words are used one more time.) It’s a fairly complex and challenging form to write in.  After a month of doing tiny, simple haiku, my ambition was stoked to do something difficult.  Whether it is good or not is a question I can’t answer, but it was a lot of FUN, and why else do we do anything?

Words and image: Radiant Spleen 10-29-18

Haiku a Day #30 (Last one in the Series!)

Reaching the summit
out of breath, the horizon
rushes to meet me

(Photo taken a little north of San Francisco)

Thirty haiku in thirty days!  It went so fast, wow!  As short a form as haiku is, it was really challenging to come up with something new EVERY DAY.  This really helped establish a routine of daily creativity and writing, and though I’m not going to continue daily posting, I hope to keep the flow of poetry coming on at least a weekly basis.

I’m considering playing with some other formal structures like sonnets, or sestinas.  We’ll see what comes next!  Thanks to those of you who have been following along for the ride.

Haiku a Day #29

Streetlight, and a half
smoked cigarette glow the room alive
mingling our shadows

Haiku a Day #28 (of 30)

Rustle of pages
turning, old fragrant paper
Story’s almost done

Haiku a Day #27

Pulling sweater’s string
bees and insects disappear
unraveling the world

Words Radiant Spleen, Image unknown

A rare news inspired haiku:  Insects Disappearing at Alarming Rate

Bye bye world, and good luck on those fantasies of Jeebus swooping down from outer space to save you from what’s coming. Radiant Spleen is a little more spleen than radiant today you might think, but not really. Things just are what they are.

Haiku a Day #26

Gazing eye to eye
in mantra meditation
the whole universe

Haiku a Day #25

I recall family
Christmas mornings, food, laughter
wind through iced branches

Haiku a Day #24

Haiku a Day #24

 

Tired of haiku yet? The project is almost over, six more days to go. I suspect we’ll all be glad.

 

I have found it beneficial in writing and poetry to explore darkness, but one of the things I love about haiku is that it usually brings out my lightness and appreciation for beauty, and for beautiful moments. Sometimes in haiku there’s also the hidden melancholy or tragedy inside the beauty, but speaking to that is still elevating in the way it unites us in the complexity of the human experience.

 

Doing this every day, there was bound to be one of those days, and today is that day. During the course of this project, most days have yielded more than one Haiku, even though I’m only sharing one a day. Today I couldn’t find my warm and fuzzy no matter how hard I tried. So I warn you, don’t read on if you don’t like bummer material. I decided it would be interesting to just post today all six of this morning’s Haiku. Most of them are quite bad, as well. But sometimes that’s the process. Like falling out of Half-Moon balance pose in a yoga class, you just have to be present with what is happening that day, and keep on making your best effort without attachment to the results.

 

The very first haiku is about feeling creatively drained, and it just gets worse from there. A nod to Monty Python’s The Holy Grail and the film Amadeus. And an ugly old watercolor doodle that appropriately fits in with the rest of this crap. Surely you didn’t expect diamonds every day? Enjoy, friends!

 

Maggots in the meat

wine is corked, milk expired

well is running dry

 

Like guitar solos

mid-opera, or Mozart told

he’d too many notes

 

Rapists rule the day

fisting the halls of justice

SHE can’t stop screaming

 

Poison our water

murder hibernating bears

Nature’s Threnody

 

Bring out your dead, I

don’t want to go on the cart

I’ll go for a walk

 

Bloody Mary bar

swords of celery and bacon

weekend mutiny

–Words and image Radiant Spleen 2018, more spleen than radiance today