Wednesday, April 21, 2010

april 21, 2010


 Robert D. Wilson's
The Wonderland Amusement Park

"In the sky, there's no distinction of
east and west; people create
distinctions out of their own minds
and then believe them to be true."
Buddha

the egg
inside her, has
no shadow

robert d. wilson
©2010




"One can not reflect in 
streaming water.  Only
those who know
internal piece can
give it to others."

Lao Tze

to absorb,
listen,without
       illusion . . .
the graceful waltz
of a lily's blossom

robert d. wilson
©2010

When one is not satisfied and uses deception to obtain satisfaction, his illusion becomes delusion.  The world is full of actors and actresses, users, who play a role to get what they want.  When they see that you're hurt,depressed, or unsatisfied, they come to you posing as a someone who genuinely cares. With open ears, they radiate compassion. They use your weakness to their advantage . . . but like any good actor, they prepare for the role, do their homework, memorize lines, and have the ability to read an audience, sensing response or lack of response, they adjust their acting to gain the desired result.

And who's fault is it that we allow this to happen?  When we want something badly, impatience becomes our worse enemy, the con artist's best friend.  We need to seek our own answers as to who we are, because to others we are simply illusion they only think they know.

"You are your own teacher.
Looking for teachers can't 
solve your debts.
Investigate yourself to find
the truth --- inside, not
outside.  Knowing yourself
is most important."
Buddha
the wind
on the trees . . . a white
butterfly
robert d. wilson
©2010

I am. You are.  The products of what we think, we are artists . . . what some people like, others do not. What others think of us are lessons to be studied but not to emulate. We are in a constant state of metamorphosis . . . the less we talk and the more we listen, the wiser we become and the wiser we become, the less we know.  Like Issa, the Japanese haiku poet, we are on a journey.  There is more to life than what is  or has been spoken.  We've all experienced pain, depression, and other harsh teachers . . . now is the time to ride above the ashes on the wings of no one's whispers . . . empty your mind, toss the preconceptions, and be . . . be what?  Be.  I can, you can only be who we are . . . they can clone a man but not his soul. Imagine a world of soulless creations.  

        summer wind . . .
old egret and other
pressed petals

robert d. wilson
©2010

What is time? What is ambition? A million "whats" and the only answers to these questions and more come from our thoughts . . . our thoughts are paintings painted in
our cerebral cortexes via brushes dipped in imagination.  I can choose to be mad at a person who I considered to be my enemy and seek revenge or make myself sick thinking about what she did or didn't do, but for what? Am I making my life better?  Am I making another's life better or worse, as if the enemy gives a damn, or feels remorse.
My anger, sadness, however I choose to express and paint my thoughts, are just that, thoughts; illusionary to anyone else as they cannot fathom or enter my mind or know why I think this way or that, kind of like a freeway jam, people going in a thousand directions, all in a hurry to go nowhere, heavy traffic, weaving through a poorly engineered maze, or one designed by an engineer on LSD, missing turn-offs, going in circles, and thinking, thinking, thinking, Pablo Picasso on Meth.  What to do? Honk your horn? Blow your top, mumble to yourself, your heart beating faster, head throbbing, fingers stuttering?


      "The mind is everything. What you think, you are."

        Buddha

what others
think wading through
       rice fields . . .
the ruffled feathers
of a white heron

robert d. wilson
©2010

to absorb,
listen, without
illusion . . . 
the graceful waltz
of a lily's blossom

the egg
inside her has
no shadow


flashback . . . 
i won't follow the
white heron
until tomorrow when
the ground stops trembling

tired woman . . . 
searching for the
right mirror


incoming 
rocket, the shrill screech
of a peacock,
plucked of his feathers
for an old woman's hat


crawling on
my tongue, the words I
couldn't say


i didn't
sleep last night, your
dreams bathing
me in words i
just now understand


no longer 
homeless, a brother
to the moon


my slate?
to rake today into
a corner
and cough, spilling words
into teacups


dried fish . . . 
nanay sings arched
back ballads


will i 
get to breathe deeply . . . 
inhale the
universe without 
turning pages?


summer breeze . . . 
a song bird preening
her feathers


will she
remember the dress
i bought her . . . 
when her skin formed
adam between seasons


look, workers 
are laying down
their hoes!

zilch when it
comes to common
interests . . . 
a black push up bra;
ma haiku; stoic herons


I write long free verse poems too:
the better the meter the more memorable


it 
will
take
lifetime
to fathom 
the 
why 
or 
how 
we met
and
fell
      in 
 love
each of us
song birds
from
different 
paddies
the air thick 
with the scent
of 
ulam 
and 
       angst . . .
the sky 
thick
with portends
from east and west
buddha and gods
our field 
of vision
blinded
at first 
by
a
flash 
from another's
rifle
and 
when the
smoke clears
we 
are 
wearing
each 
other's 
wings

heron, to
dive deep and stand still . . . 
morning prayer

the river
behind our home, reads
til dawn . . . 
when bamboo fronds
tickle the clouds

  
summer breeze . . . 
a song bird preening 
her feathers


in a
tomorrow turned
upside down . . . 
no second hands
or black spiders


the cockroach
scurries through changes . . . 
steadfast


we merge, our
minds making love with
thoughts we breathe . . . 
the daily news folded
into paper cranes


i'd love to
paint inside your mind . . . 
curled ferns


only the
moon knows how we
feel at night
when dreams come alive
and wait, wait for me


robert d. wilson
©2010


Monday, April 5, 2010

April 5, 2010

















Robert D. Wilson's
"The Wonderland Amusement Park"

will the
cheshire cat smile at
me like a
leftover moon
on leave from his senses?

robert d. wilson
©2010





i feared the
darkness that cradled me,
and listened
to teardrops sweep
away the sea

robert d. wilson
©2010

"Be kind, for everyone
you meet is fighting a
hard battle."

Plato

The other day on Facebook, I asked a well meaning question that, to my surprise, lit the embers of a woman who made it her mission then and there to chastise and deride me publicly, even those she's never met or spoke with me publicly. I'd read a chapter in the 1970's in the book, Utopian Motherhood, that has plagued me ever since. The author talked about the public's perception of artists. He said many non-artists, those seduced by the media into following the herd to feel a sense of belonging and safety, think of artists as mentally unsound, oftentimes disturbed, rebellious, abnormal (whatever that means) and eccentric, if not teetering on the edge of madness.  


Most artists, those not using this year's popular colors or colloquialisms, are free spirited people who view life differently.  To them, if everything were black and white, there would be no need for art, as art is not black and whit. It sets no boundaries. It's akin to being a crew mate on the  Starship Enterprise, exploring an eternity without end, never knowing where it will lead them  Picasso could never do what he did at the turn of the 20th Century when he followed Nietzche's advice, destroying beauty to create a completely alien kind of beauty, in life and in his relationships with women, as one of  Cubism's pioneers. What he did in the beginning of the 20th century was light years away from anyone's norm, then or now. At first he paid the price for his so called social deviation, the object of ridicule and ostracism, selling few paintings, and thought of as an insane young man. Yet he was secure enough in his ability to see and feel what most do not sense or see, that he continued what most called a downward path, yet he forged a new path for the art world, and his paintings before and after his death cost millions of dollars to purchase, and crowds at modern art museums but tickets in advance to attend showings of his original works.  In a period of 12 years, beginning at the age of 14, he went from painting Primera Comunion to Avignon. Picasso left home and went to Paris, a haven at the time for intellectuals, poets, writers, open minded artists, and rich people , who if you were lucky to have one as a fan, could support you until you made it on your own.  I don't believe in luck.  You have to go after it and make it happen. Some people sell their souls, like a dance teacher lover of a relative who lover in order to survive had to do sexual favors for the woman who was elderly.  We've all done things that weren't kosher to get what we wanted.


   "We live in illusion and th


   appearance of things. There is a 
       reality. We are that reality. When 
      you understand this, you see that 
          you are nothing, and being nothing 
    you are everything. That is all."


Buddha

I used to compare myself with others and felt inferior because they in a way were my gods.  I started surfing after I graduated from middle school (Grade 8).  It was a great summer and I had a lot of good friends.  People introduced me to other peope who in turn introduced me to others who were popular. I dated a lot, was a weight lifter, and enter the local dance contests, won at most, and even danced in contests on the Sam Riddle Show.  That summer was over before it started.  On my first day at High School (9th grade) I hung with a crowd of surfers who literally worshipped a guy in the 12th grade who who was a top surfer, owned a woody wagon, and had a way with the girls.  I did this for a few days until I heard him talk to a buddy in a low voice, "I wish these wannabe leeches would stop following me."  I learned a lesson that day:  to be myself and never walk in another's shadow.  And to be yourself, you has to be true to your heart.  I can't be you and and you can't be me. Each of us are who we are. Hanging out with a popular person is like
allowing someone to choose a cologne for you.  Every cologne a person wears will smell different on the next person.

The dilemma: follow the herd and be someone you're not in order to be liked by insecure people who need a mirror OR be true to yourself and face the consequences.  What others think of us is illusionary. They can never know us because they don't have the rite of passage through your soul.

"Throw your dreams into space like
a kite, and you do not not know
what it will bring back, a new
life, a new friend, a new love,
a new country."

Anais Nin

my mind's the
sea you sat under,
basho, when
you stared across the
sea at sado island

robert d. wilson
©2010         
it's cold
she tells me, pretending 
it's a joke . . .
an open window
with the shades drawn
















timeless, her
voice a changeling . . . 
summer night


the circus
today was usurped
by rain . . . 
the clowns on our floor
watching cartoons


ahead . . . 
the half life of dusk,
shading trees


why she played
god and wrestled 
the wind,
i'll never know . . . 
canyon echoes


the moment
between codas . . . 
breeding words


i am at
times unlike the bible
i don't read . . . 
a man trapped inside
the bathroom mirror


can stone and
dew share a petal?
fencing words


i prefer
the solitude
of calm . . . 
a theater of
song without thought


your mind . . . 
plays vibes in a pasture
of egrets


bent over,
she listens to the 
cadence beneath
the soil, singing it'd
way to the ocean


ipod and
bird song; sweet the
empty minf


my fee
love the caress of
wet fingers . . . 
just a dream,
chides icarus


wind, you
flatter me with touch . . . 
those thoughts!


a fool to
think you could love me,
an old man . . . 
inside a circus mirror
writing poetry


paste this words, 
sun, into your
reflection


am i in
dali's painting of the
toreador . . . 
erasing memories
with rainbows?


dragonfly . . .
carry my dreams across
the ocean


who's real
in the volcano's
bowels . . . 
brown skinned children
bowing to the reeds


laughter . . . 
tiptoes past a 
reticent moon


her feet,
like the egret's,
a still life
painted with breath
on a bamboo screen


our puppy
visits in the dreams we
can't remember


one more time,
the tic tock of dali's
twisted clocks . . . 
erasing the fence between
dreams and reality


at dawn,
when dreams rest . . . 
our breath


in the 
kitchen at dawn,
stirring the
puzzle's missing piece
into a cup of moon


shed your leaves,
tree, i want to see
all of you!


will the moon
dance tonight when
wolves howl . . . 
their pitiful songs;
the sky pouring milk


cicada,
is she worth dying for?
windsong


pigmy deer 
trod through the meadow 
of my dream . . . 
led by a shaman
shaking a sage brush


walking 
past lantern fish . . .
short night

she feeds me
fish and rice on the
day she
returns to the church . . . 
wearing blue denim jeans


starless night . . .
i close my eyes, sifting
silence


robert d. wilson
©2010