If what keeps you up nights
are poets
make no mistake
you may be one,
if poetry
possibilities increase–
The one way to know
is let words
keep you awake
and never give you peace.
Photos by Rayn Roberts ’19
Category: Poets & Writers
6 Poems by Rayn Roberts @ the Seattle Star
6 Poems by Rayn Roberts / The Seattle Star
The Seattle Star is a Neutron Bomb
“Look deeply at the big picture beyond revenge to compassion / We are broken or someday will be, but still beautiful, broken / Kintsugi, it all depends on we put the pieces back together.” ~ from “These boys, These Men” by Rayn Roberts
Buseoksa Moon South Korea
Enough meditation, three a.m. earbuds Dream # 9
reading Merton’s Seven Story Mountain in stillness,
the temple bell shakes the universe, calling monks
to save all beings in hell, a cock crows in darkness.
A half moon spins the stars in a black pool forming
on land in sea the spirit dance unfolding nonetheless.
Do not count the cost, no one, nothing is ever lost.
In fitful sleep I wake to the apple autumn morning
dressing herself in crimson, grey, brown and gold.
There’s a bus to nowhere, somewhere I think home.
I feel the half moon human mind moving to fullness
asking clearly, “Will you stay with the solemn monks
Or return to mad electric nights of paradise in Seoul?”
Sleep walking dreamer that I am, I hesitate, can’t wait
To go back to a circle of friends, lovers I know, my bed
a dream-pond of incarnadine leaves sinking to rest,
the bell is tolling, calling, shaking me awake, I think
but it’s just the glaring city moon tapping on a window.
Rayn Roberts 2019
Rayn Roberts 2019
Korean Buddhism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXf_V18wQUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXf_V18wQU
Buesok Temple
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWpX6Rf_JuY&spfreload=1
“Dream #9” is the song by John Lennon
Dreaming The Old Man
Through slanting doors and broken windows
odd furniture in dim rooms
old books and roses rotting with age
I follow you,
charts and crumpled maps and paper
glitter like a lost hope–
Sudden sky and wide water
reeds along a shore
under a silver willow you call to the other side.
No limb or vine to hold my feet
my boyhood swept away
to a green recess of memory
nothing to pull me back
only rock and sand, sky and air bathed in amber light,
Peace, I am with you
looking in your old eyes, stretching out a hand
sinking in a river of night
transparent stones on the bottom of a lucid pool
I glide in bright shadows
fish swimming
in and out our one and separate selves
All Photos by Rayn Roberts
Apparition by RR
The Seattle Star is a Neutron Star
http://www.seattlestar.net/
Neutron Stars:
If a star has between 1.35 and 2.1 times the mass of the Sun, it doesn’t form a white dwarf when it dies. Instead, the star dies in a catastrophic supernova explosion, and the remaining core becomes a neutron star. As its name implies, a neutron star is an exotic type of star that is composed entirely of neutrons. This is because the intense gravity of the neutron star crushes protons and electrons together to form neutrons. If stars are even more massive, they will become black holes instead of neutron stars after the supernova goes off.
This is a neutron star. The rings around the star represent the high intensity magnetic field lines. Neutron stars are typically only about 12 miles long but contain more density then a hundred suns.
Gun Violence and Other Madness
The cat chases its tail, the dog whimpers in sleep,
The heart skips a beat…
It’s not a nightmare, not a movie, a TV show.
Wake when yoeu will, but where will you be, in bed alone,
In the den, your unknowing hand holding a gun,
At your desk starting at nothing?
It doesn’t matter— Looking deeply matters:
Unless you turn it inside out, look long at what you find
The mind eludes the eye of reason.
Recall the flowers of betrayal and delusion with merciful disregard,
Struggle all your life to save this dying thing
This beaten, bloody thing called love.
For the tail is chasing the dog,
The cat is barking in sleep, the heart is cracking
Hope is a Gypsy song rising over the ash of Auschwitz
Mad Men rule the world—
And if they wake from a coma of hate, will they give a vision truth?
Will they feed the poor, give up peace?
When will your heart slow to a murmur and hiss into silence?
I want to say the cat is calm, the dog is happy,
Humankind is wise and kind,
But the cat is gnawing the cage, the dog is humming a dirge,
The good flower columbine was never a flock of doves:
Littleton, Kosovo, Dachau, Wooded Knee, Santa Fe, Noblesville, Dayton, El Paso, Odessa,
Large extensions of the fist we use to abuse the children.
Where next the murder of the day, massacre of the week?
The heart is failing, the heart is failing, there are no known donors
Spring is an Empire
Photos of Leaves and Trees by Rob Kashey.
