THE WAY IT IS No. 1

Those whose spirit
is not near
cast at seekers
an ironic sneer.

THE BUDDHA No. 2

What the Buddha taught
is what I've always sought...
To peer into the heart of things;
Remove these goddamn
Angel wings

THE WAY IT IS No. 2

("Nibbana" is the Pali pronunciation of
the more familiar Sanskrit word "Nirvana")

Blood & snot.
Everything
Nibbana's
not.

LESSON PLAN

Sow the seeds of grief
they will blossom in their time,
sow seeds of equilibrium
& you will harvest rhyme.

O!

I am already
enlightened.
O!

I had forgotten.

MOTE

Smoke
gets in
your

I.

THE UNBOW

All the Buddhas, in all the Buddha fields,
in all the universes, through all the kalpas
known to time, this time and all other times

bow and in their
bowing touch the earth,
recreate it

and demolish it, continually, like the
loud, strong hum of a great gong,
their foreheads hit the earth

and sunder it.
Each becomes a universe,
each becomes a time, begins again

the time out of mind
from which a Buddha springs,
whose head when it touches the earth

shatters it again,
until all striving, all seeking,
all wanting, all hearing, touching, hurting

in an infinite regress of bows and foreheads
collapses into the space
of this sentence's

final period.
So the bow continues and we
are forever waiting for the Buddhas to bow

forever bending over
to touch our foreheads to earth,
so in dust

we may find
where we were born,
find the place

where we give up bowing.
So we may finally
realize there is no realization

there is no Buddha, no bow,
no earth, no sound, no touching,
no feeling, no hearing, no hurting

just the justness of the bow
in the act of
uncreation.

THE FIRST SIX POEMS ABOVE are from a 1997 self-published chapbook by Douglas Imbrogno, titled "EPIGRAMMAR: Short Poems and Epigrams for a Post-Dow Industrial, Anti-Delusional Age." The final poem, "The Unbow," is from a forthcoming chapbook of Buddhism-inspired poetry titled "The Buddha Was Not a Buddhist and Other Internal Formations & Meditations." The limited edition, 35-page "Epigrammar" chapbook is available for a small cost. E-mail: hundred@newwave.net Or write: Hundred Mountain Media, 141 Hazelwood Place, Huntington, WV, USA 25705

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