OUR ENEMIES SUTRA

by Laurence Musgrove

AI generated graphic from Shutterstock

This evening, the Buddha and I 

sat and scrolled through our phones

before retiring for the night.

I read to him about the latest

retaliation strikes in Syria and Iraq,

and he read to me about our deportation

flights of refugees deep into Mexico

designed to discourage their return

and the hopes of those now streaming

to our razor-wired border.

“It was Thich Nhat Hanh,” he said,

“who wrote our enemies are not people,

but our ideologies, fears, and attachments

to views that justify our ignorance

of cause and effect with absolutely

no guarantee of freedom or peace.

The fires we spread always burn us, too.”

Laurence Musgrove is the author of three poetry collections Local Bird, The Bluebonnet Sutras, and A Stranger's Heart. He teaches creative writing and literature from a Buddhist perspective at Angelo State University in West Texas.

THINGS EASIER THAN MARRIAGE TO IKE

by Elaine Sorrentino

Sprinting across the I-30
in the dead of night 

the leggy legend 
with infectious charm 

 

turned trauma into triumph, 

swapped bloodied and beaten
for surviving and thriving
in an act of self-preservation. 

She dared to be the needle 
that pricked the heady
Love Team balloon,
indestructible Tina  

in leather and denim
scrubbed toilets
scaled the Eiffel Tower in heels
unearthed her pain 

instead of maintaining
her 16-year limelight lie,
transforming thirty-six cents
and inconceivable drive 

into the Queen of Rock,
self-love, that second-hand emotion
had everything to do with it, 
Buddha offered nirvana.  

When the shine was off the penny
she was at peace slowing down,
asking her devoted public 
not to disturb her before noon. 

Elaine Sorrentino has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Global Poemic, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, Agape Review, Haiku Universe, Sparks of Calliope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Your Daily Poem,  Panoplyzine, Etched Onyx Magazine, and at  wildamorris.blogspot.com. She was featured on a poetry podcast at Onyx Publications. 

HEADLINES

by Howie Good

“Springtime” Claude Monet 1886 Fitzwilliam Museum (University of Cambridge), Cambridge, UK

Baby dies in attic fire. 400 dead in floods and landslides. 3 killed, 6 injured in New Mexico shooting. “All of life,” the Buddha said, “is sadness,” as if he’d been reading the same headlines as me. Cops seek masked gunman. Ukrainian attack looms. 12-year-old charged with murder. Every day the mirror held up to existence only darkens further. Then the spring melt reveals there’s been grass alive under the snow this whole time. Birds return to the marsh from the hot countries full of excited chatter. Sunshine grows brighter and more frequent and falls like a benediction on old bent trees and fat buds and us who don’t even deserve it. 

Howie Good's newest poetry collection Heart-Shaped Hole which also includes examples of his handmade collages, is available from Laughing Ronin Press.

BLANK SIGNS

by donnarkevic

Anti-war protesters in Russia are being detained by police for holding up blank posters as part of demonstrations protesting against President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. —Newsweek, March 15, 2022

Perhaps they believe 

we did not overcome; 

we did not give peace a chance; 

we did not live up to the Beatitudes; 

we did not heed the Buddha 

and keep our hearts free from hate. 

 

Perhaps they know no words 

for the pain of hunger  

on their children’s faces, 

for the lies that gather 

like flies on dead neighbors’ faces, 

for the quiet noise of fleeing refugees. 

 

Perhaps they had enough death, 

enough war, 

and they are left 

with nothing left  

to say. 

Nothing. 

donnarkevic: Buckhannon, WV. MFA National University. Work has appeared in Rattle, Witness, Jewish Currents, Blue Collar Review, and many other literary magazines and anthologies. A Best of the Net and two-time Pushcart nominee with over 300 published poems. Main Street Rag published the novella of poetry After the Lynching, in 2022. 

MINDFULNESS

by Mary K O'Melveny

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, was one of the world’s most famous peace advocates, philosophers and poets. He developed the concept of “engaged Buddhism” and worked actively to bring an end to the tragic American war against Vietnam and bring aid to its victims, without taking sides in the conflict. He lived in exile in France for many years and returned to Vietnam in 2005. He wrote more than 100 novels, books of poetry, short stories, essays and religious philosophy treatises, including Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, and The Miracle of Mindfulness. He died on January 22 at the age of 95 at a Buddhist temple in Hue. Kham/Reuters photo accompanying January 23, 2022 “Thich Nhat Hanh obituary” at The Guardian: Thich Nhat Hanh at the Non Nuoc pagoda, north of Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2007.

is the light that shines through

each thought, each act, each breath,

each miracle that makes our world

alive    present   comprehensible

 

each breath forms a bridge

between our body and our mind 

heart and touch   sight and vision

knowledge and understanding

 

if we sit  as Buddha might sit

inhale   exhale   inhale    exhale

we learn from each leaf  each egret

each flowing river  each drop of rain

 

if we walk as if our feet

seeded flowers  our earth transforms

each day is the only day given

to make our peaceful pathway

 

each part of us  is part of all

each idea   each action    bears our name

hope will make each day bearable 

then we can begin to save each other

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

BUDDHA HAD IT EASY

by Michael Mark

The Bergin University of Canine Studies Puppy Cam

It was so much easier
to become enlightened then.

They didn’t have the
Puppy Cam to deal with.

Buddha could spend all day under
the Bodhi tree with no thought
of puppies wiggling and
tumbling.

So cute.

Puppies sleeping in piles.
Puppies waking up.
Puppies blindly crawling
over each other to get food.

Each move updated in
real time,
to your phone, iPad, laptop
right to your HDTV!

Puppies peeing.
Puppies’ eyes opening.
Puppies barking and
scaring themselves.
So cute.
Puppies being licked
clean by mom.

That’s how he was
able to concentrate with
such precision, for so long.

Cobras encircled Buddha.
Elephants charged him.
Mara sent his sexy daughters
to be his concubines.
He didn’t blink.

But Buddha didn’t have
the Puppy Cam.


Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer and long distance walker – his latest journey was the Camino De Santiago. His poetry has appeared or is set to appear in Angle Journal, Awakening Consciousness Magazine, Empty Mirror, Everyday Poets, Forge Journal, OutsideIn Magazine, Petrichor Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, Ray’s Road Review, Scapegoat Journal, Spillway, Red Booth Review, Red Paint Hill, Sleet Magazine, The Thing Itself, The New York Times, UPAYA, Word Soup End Hunger, Wayfarer and other nice places.

HE LEFT CONGRESS ATWITTER, BUT HE'S BACK

by James Cronin

                       
                            “Mr. Weiner has once again upended popular conceptions
                            about him, vaulting to the front of the race for mayor.”
                                                            --New York Times, July 9, 2013

                              “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”
                                                                                           --Mark Twain

Does foolish scandal have a “use by” date?
Weiner hopes so; he’s on top of a poll,
for mayor. Does victimless sin conflate
with time served to grant a type of parole?

Talking heads, in the past, his sins did bare
and hid their joy.  For hot ratings, Weiner’s
folly was just the stuff they loved to air.
Forget policies, his misdemeanors

were desired: the wry dirt, the sexy tweets,
photos of bare chest and tumescent briefs.
For all the smoke, no fire, no dirty sheets;
it was a mating dance for all its grief,

a bunny hop of humiliation
for the cocksure.  But Twain is not correct.
Like rutting sheep, the rep of the nation
banged his brain blue with no blush to detect.

Recall his nervous, callow demeanor.
When he bared all to the media crush,
remorse only left a sallow Weiner.
Foreplay, not shame, creates the rosy blush.

It can be light, even the slightest touch
can pink the cheeks of an Austen jeune fille
or it can be heavy, even too much,
Yeats’ laid back Leda in feathery glee. 

The risk of exposure will not suffice.
Rumpole’s author knew he had to stick to
the law, but prized sex outdoors for that spice—
cold assets in flagrante delicto.

The need to record is poetic writ.
Anne Carson sings of her little behind,
red with desire, baboon-like, to do it,
finding her soul between bawdy and mind.

Buddha knew pain was rooted in desire,
we want and it hurts, it holds us in thrall,
but we need that rush of blood, that fire.
Unlike the beasts and man before the Fall

we know the grim dance that’s after the ball.

 After a four decade career in the law, James Cronin has returned to his first loves, literary studies and writing.