FROM OF THE CYCLE OF CHAPBOOKS #7
STANDING JUST OFF SCREEN - The inception of the Bodhisattva Underground
MAITREYA CYCLE ONE : OPENING THE HEART OF COMPASSION
A CHAPBOOK OF SOME SAMPLE POEMS
from a very special Project
THE HUMAN TIDE
This is The Field Hospital
seen in a dream,
built along every boarder,
knitting the World together
- a barbed wire fence
lined with hungry children
like a seam.
First your eyes meet one child's eyes.
But then, soon others
will close over that one
like desperate waters.
And across space, over time
and across time filling space
that one will become so many
- an ocean and a tide
coming in from every side
carrying wounds on face and limb
and filled with pain inside
want for provision,
want for medicine and
want for a teacher and mentor
in their eyes.
Where are Heaven's Angels?
Where is an Answer from the Sky?
Whose heart can then grow large enough
to face this Human Tide?
MY SONG FOR THEM
From heaven earth looks like heaven
the green of trees
that fan the shade
that cools the path
of gentle beasts
that breathes out the air…
...that sweet and scented with green
is good to breathe.
From heaven earth looks like heaven
her great womb seas
that wing and hoof and paw
and hive and hand
all share as the origin
of their mysteries.
But, Earth she crouches on a cloth
at the crossroads of Man's vanities
hollow eyed and hollow cheeked
one arm gathers a sad eyed doll, her baby
to a drought and famine flattened breast
the other thin arm outstretched
from her wedding dress
in a desert oasis - her dust covered tongue
moving to those ancient prayers
mothers have always prayed for their children
in a cursed season, in a season
when neighbor falls upon neighbor and
man falls upon woman.
This disease of reason
spreads like a blight
from farm to farm
and in time, in time
from nation to nation.
You will find this woman
in all of them, that doll-like child,
her anguished face,
and outstretched arm,
in time, in time
in all of them!
She will cry out for her children
in all of them.
From Heaven Earth looks like a heaven
with a girdle of ocean
and clouds like scarves
she seems a sweet diva
dancing across a jeweled heaven.
She seems like a jewel, like a promise,
like a Vision.
From heaven - Earth looks like a heaven
Men have long abandoned.
This poem is for the girls and women of Afghanistan.
an After Note:
REMEMBERING THE BLOSSOMS
Remembering the blossoms of the garden
bring to mind the lot of baby-girls, girls
and women and make this wish:
“May each and every one of them,
never be separated from their dignity,
their rights or the safe-keeping of
their beloved ones” until that day,
(when life done), an angel comes to
heal them back to Heaven.
May this good wish prayer call forth a remedy
so that the violence of the fist and the World
be sucked like venom from a bite, and
all that is wholesome and what is whole
is restored to them and made secure.
•
SOME MORE SCENES FROM THE PURELAND OF THE VOLCANOES
Now that the morning geese of our famous days no longer
ring loud enough to wake us
and now that the days of war are at our door
the drought has come from hell with pestilence,
fire, ice and storm...
Leonid Temple
Between the final Nirvana two and a half millennia ago of the Siddhārtha Gautama and the descent of the next Buddha, Maitreya, into his last womb, it is said in the tales that are told that 5.6 billion years must pass. But what human society is simple enough be passed on in mere whispers, yet strong enough in moral tensile strength to so long endure without a Buddha in the World?
This is the tale I come to you to tell…
MAITREYA CYCLE TWO : The Assembly of Bhodisattvas Arise
IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE DHARMA
A Prophecy for our time being a True Prophecy
having as it does the Three Parts of a True Prophecy:
A Prophecy of the Past, a Prophecy of the Present
and a Prophecy of the Future!
THE PROPHECY OF THE PAST: A WARNING TO THE NATIONS
For some Nations, like it is for some Men,
dark deeds breed bright joy.
Consider the True Dharma
and the value a people place on self tamed
upright women and upright men
who speak not to manipulate but
but from good-will's revelation. And
has not the World passed into the days
in which every new Winter leaves the Spring
with less of the truth and fewer good men
and women? Just think
back to that Nation that
in ignorance of tolerance and love of spite
blew up the statues of our Teacher, his acolyte
and with that flame raised a torch
wicked enough to invite
the dragons from over the Horizon
and the serpents down out of the Night!
For some Nations, like it is for some Men
- dark deeds breed bright joy.
THE PROPHECY OF THE PRESENT: THE GOOD KINGDOM
1. DHARMA GOES INTO THE NIGHT
When a Great Evil is done
and Good People
go to their beds
to cover their
heads
in doubt and
hesitation,
Bad Men
will hear
the crow on the wire
call to crow on the wing
“This is a Season
one can do such a thing!”
and howl hails to their
were-wolf Nations.
2. THE THREAT ON THE HORIZON
From lands North and lands East, two Nations, each
at the end of a story that was but war after war,
having eaten every neighbor, eyes dry, without Law
like two bully brothers on a playground that seeing
a stranger see opportunities. Their Game, please?
One to menace, the other to stifle
a giggle and kneel behind knees. These
International Bullies are eager for profit
and casual about cruelty.
Fate brought wind. Fate brought thunder.
Two armies - two rivers pouring together
into a vein full of venom marching
for the sake of plunder.
In the West was a king and kingdom
that remembered still Heaven,
that empowered by blessings
and a strong store of merit,
went out of its walls
to confront and to face them. When
Evil reared, Good fought back, and
- when Good fell back, Good then
rallied to halt, break and march them
- these men with vile intentions
to the wilds of wilderness
where exile is prison…
… until the Evil season when
again they quicken.
3. THE BIG PARTY
The King, flushed with triumph,
rushed to celebration
of his reputation
and burned up his merit
in a minute
as he danced a jig
to his gathering friends
assembled to welcome
their King and Legend! Then
the King invited monks, nuns
his sponsors among the rich,
laywomen and laymen
of every sect. Of every tradition.
He poured them together
like treasure of every hunt and harvest
tomato, plumb and potato and squash
into one pot - he stirred them!
But like cats forced together
in to one box, the guests were
soon given to bumping purrs, like curs
bearing teeth and growling
- but yet, yes he stirred them!
Like old men from old wars
rounded up with
drums and bugles
to listen to politicians
to divide and conquer, who
reopen old wounds to remind
them of old rivalries. So soon
the Hall rocked with revelry,
with rough courtesy and
the fistfights that accompany
alcohol with and alcohol’s
troop of careless and vulgar
assertions.
The pot boiled! The pot spit soup!
The whole Hall boiled! The pot spit soup!
Hit! Hit!
Beat! Beat!
When the pot spat soup it spat hot meat,
hot knots of bone, hot sauce
and spittle of hot, hot grease!
Hit! Hit!
Beat! Beat!
Beat! Beat!
And to boot…
a rock was thrown! An old monk,
(the best of them), fell down.
Stood, bloody, then
fell down again, he
the most humble, most lauded
most pious of them.
Hit! Hit!
Beat! Beat!
Hit! Hit!
Beat! Beat!
And as the melee poured
boiling from the pot
blood flowed out, more -
monks, struck, fell down
and nuns were drowned!
The whole room fought
from wall to wall
and Hid by War
the laymen and laywomen
snuck out the door!
Hit! Hit!
Beat! Beat!
Soon rumors fled like crows
from every tower o'er
the kingdom in an hour,
with horror and the rumor
and painted red
all sides were slaughtered
when some one said
- THE LAST ARAHANT IS DEAD!”
THE PROPHECY OF THE FUTURE: A NEW BUDDHIST INSTITUTION - A GUILD OF MALE AND FEMALE LAY BODHISATTVAS, [GṚHAPATI]
With the Sangha ended
the Dharma bled out
of its corpse like heat.
And the lay folks in their
houses meet
to pray:
“The time of a Buddha
had seen its last day.”
And as the lay folks in their
houses meet
to pray to collect their books
like Dharma bones,
they met to plan a path
to endure to the last
of an AEON OF A WINTER
- as it is said:
“…until Maitreya’s mother
cries out
from her birthing bed!”
i Based on NATTIER, Jan. Once Upon a Future Time - Studies in Buddhist Prophecies of Decline. Asian Humanities Press, 1991.
