In the time or
in and out of the space or
elsewhere I wandered,
I clasp myself alone,
but no perception of bliss of joy.
Many rebirths I conceded
Many samsara I roamed
I clasp myself alone,
but no perception of bliss of joy.
In the day or the light
In the night or the gloom
In and out of the universe
I explored with earnest
everywhere in the earth
but no perception of bliss of joy.
Can I retrieve it elsewhere?
While it’s as the brightest
as the gleaming star
in the chaste gloominess
inside the spirit of my own mind.
Attha devo bhava*
The brilliance lies indeed
in me and mine for ever
Illuminating all the world.
My body, speech and mind
Attain the mindfulness of Nibbana
Within me and mine.
*
Samsara – the material world in which the beings live.
Attha devo bhava (pali) – I’m the master of my own.
Nibbana (pali) – Nirvana (Sanskrit) .The literal meaning of "blowing out" or "quenching". Nirvana is the ultimate spiritual goal in Buddhism and marks the soteriological release from rebirths in sa?sara.
Categories:
pali, allegory, allusion, feelings, freedom,
Form: Free verse
Let me pass under the tunnel of trees
While shrouded in mist in tropical breeze.
Let island mysteries slowly unfold
As customs remain from centuries old.
Let me rise up to the Pali so rare
As I feel it's strong winds lash my long hair.
Honor ancestral spirits that surround
This beautiful 'aina and sacred ground.
A place where spirits of dead still abide,
Where a battle took place and suicide.
A warning to those who visit at night,
You'll meet with oddities causing great fright.
Viewing stunning Kaneohe below
Where with fierce tenacity trade winds blow,
My view from Pali I'll never forget...
That Time, too fleeting, I'll ever regret.
© Connie Marcum Wong
Nuuanu Pali:
“This is the last major battle that Kamehameha fought. This united all of the islands other than Kaua‘i, and, from this point on, for the next 20-some odd years, there was peace, other than the preparation for the battle of Kaua‘i.” Kaua‘i ceded its sovereignty peacefully to Kamehameha in 1806, without that battle ever occurring.
Categories:
pali, culture, history,
Form: Couplet
And if ever you don’t see
Exodus,
dig in the soil like a fruit
worm
and lift the stone of yourself
heavier,
to find a word
harder than Maya.*
And if you ever demand for more,
dig the sky.
* Maya or Maya (Sanskrit ???? mayaa[›]), a term found in Pali and Sanskrit literature, has multiple meanings and can be translated to mean something of an "illusion"
Categories:
pali, remember, , literature,
Form: Free verse
I sat with rum and Joan Baez the other day
Writing up three poems in Bombay
One short another crooked
Yet not quite a disaster
The other long and sad
Not very bad but still not much more
Than a chinchilla whore
In her teens, plump, with baby fat
Still around her cheekbones, shoulders, waistflesh
Trellised eaves
A tooting car on Cadell Road
Dusk falling, friends out on a binge,
I alone in the darkening flat
Joan Baez on my knee her voice from the cassette recorder
Blurring the border between voice and flesh
And letting them enmesh
Wafting out over lonely streets
Climbing the Pali Hills
Sidling in stealth by private yew hedges
To caress like silk the legs of a party
Falling to pieces at only six-thirty
Prosaic, proselytizing like Diogenes in the bin
Beard straggling all over an obdurate chin
Breathe in the voice let the pictures go by
Looking for a conjuror in the sky
And confused, return
Dreams back to ashes, ashes to the urn
Quiet in the knowledge that ashes don’t burn.
They say some poetry
Is coming out of me
Juice wrung out by iron teeth
From the tender heart of a slender tree.
Categories:
pali, nostalgiavoice, voice,
Form: Free verse