Delicacy Of Devastation

And so the project begins....

To Be with a Koan

"To be with a koan,"
said the Zen Master,
"has nothing to do with Hamlet,
those old jokes about small pigs
or tiny villages,
bees and bee keepers. No,
to be with a koan,
you must get inside it
without forcing your entry.
It’s like you’re lemonade powder
dissolving in water.
Something other than you
does the stirring,
but there’s nothing other than you,
and after awhile, nothing stirs."

DICK ALLEN

Silence

The act of donning silence confuses me
it's like putting on two different socks
or a suit of purple chain-mail.

Many people choose to dress this way
leave their house as if nobody will notice
their underwear is on the outside.

At least Madonna had the balls to arrive 
on stage, bra pointing at the crowd as if to say
A-ha! - belted out a song as if to smash

silence like a pumpkin thrown from a roof.
These veils that cover the mouth, these
speaking holes in the bank glass

these choices we make to stop 
everything from disturbing the peace 
I ask you -

has a bird ever chosen not to sing
come daybreak?

Pretty

drunk she arrived at his door.

Through the tiny window glass

she could see both of them.  He was

brushing her hair, a tortoiseshell

cat loving every stroke, the blue

of her dress so post Lewinsky.

Deleted from his life unpredictably

had been like being cut from the grade

six volleyball team for being too skinny

even if she could serve.

This new player was shapelier, younger

with big greedy eyes, tongue ready

to lap up his ultimate spills.

Who said vodka has no taste?

Or that it goes down smoothly?

Nothing had ever been so rough.

Except possibly

the new girl’s pretty tongue, tasteless

and full of backwards-facing spines.

Margaret Atwood - Heart

Some people sell their blood. You sell your heart.
It was either that or the soul.
The hard part is getting the damn thing out.
A kind of twisting motion, like shucking an oyster,
your spine a wrist,
and then, hup! it's in your mouth.
You turn yourself partially inside out
like a sea anemone coughing a pebble.
There's a broken plop, the racket
of fish guts into a pail,
and there it is, a huge glistening deep-red clot
of the still-alive past, whole on the plate.
It gets passed around. It's slippery. It gets dropped,
but also tasted. Too coarse, says one. Too salty.
Too sour, says another, making a face.
Each one is an instant gourmet,
and you stand listening to all this
in the corner, like a newly hired waiter,
your diffident, skilful hand on the wound hidden
deep in your shirt and chest,
shyly, heartless.