Instruction Pieces - No. 6

INSTRUCTION PIECES
No. 6

1.
Peddling a broken heart is an indescribable waste
of life energy and time.
Learn to become a mountain;
a mountain always seems to be at peace,
even in the most tormenting environment.

2.
Try to nourish, without striving, like water does.

3.
Securities are imaginings – to hold onto
wishes for a secured life
is living within a dream of life,
and not a real life.

4.
Expect thunder from a quiet sky.

2001
© George H.E. Koehler, 2010

Daily Resurrection

daily Resurrection by ~Rektozhan on deviantART
2008 © Image by Ray Rubeque

The above picture is an expansion of the following senryu poem:

As life slips away
Let us dance towards our next
Spring in the morning

© 2008 George Henry Etnea Koehler

Taken from POEMS YOU SEE BEFORE BEFORE YOU DIE, my haiga book collaboration with the artist Ray Rubeque.
For more check out our joint Glutton Group site and Poems you See site, as well as the online gallery under deviantart.com.

More pictures and poems from this project under Rektozhan on deviantART

Instruction Pieces - No. 3

INSTRUCTION PIECES
No. 3

1.
Repetition is - allegedly - the mother of wisdom.

2.
Are you busy being born? No?
Then you are busy dying.
To be born again and again,
Step forward from where you stand.

3.
Sometimes only ruthlessness reaches truth,
You insufferable dreamers.

4.
Always go too far - truth is always beyond:
Beyond words, beyond gestures.

5.
Never be afraid to go too far, in order
To transgress human nature and its myriad duplicities.

6.
The damaged receive.

7.
(Well, all candour can eventually make us sorry.)

2001
© George H.E. Koehler, 2010

Sigh of Relief

Sigh of Relief by ~Rektozhan on deviantART
2008
© Image by Ray Rubeque

The above picture is Ray's extension of the following tanka poem:

A warm breeze blowing
Shivers over the skin of
A pond, girls in bloom
Like May flowers, shaking off
The bleakness of winter's gloom

2008
© George Henry Etnea Koehler

Taken from POEMS YOU SEE BEFORE BEFORE YOU DIE, my haiga book collaboration with the artist Ray Rubeque.
For more check out our joint Glutton Group and Poems you See sites as well as deviantart.com.

More pictures and poems from this project under Rektozhan on deviantART

Memento

MEMENTO

A mist of rain
Hides the Autumn moon
Like a stream of promises
Obscuring true desires

I sit in an empty bed
Cloaked in the sound of steady dripping

I close my unread book,
Switch off the lamp
And turn to sleep alone

In the middle of the night
I get up and sniff
The breezy sleeve
Of the Spring shirt
I wore as I once walked with her

Hoping to steal some fragrance
To soothe the Autumn thoughts
That press in my chest
Till all hours of the mornings
Until the sky grows light again

Only her promises remain
To stretch the empty bed months even longer
As spiders weave their webs
Above my head

2001
from: October Meditations

© George H. E. Koehler, 2010

Clutching at Tradition

CLUTCHING AT TRADITION
(INSTRUCTION SONG #7)

Clutching at tradition is like
Leaning on a crutch,
Even when you can
Walk by yourself

Walking unsteadily alone
Is always more fulfilling
Than leaning on whatever
For support

What we lean onto for comfort
Will develop into the first prison bar,
The nucleus of our self-constructed prison,
If support is maintained too long

That spark of creativity, the courage
To satisfy your curiosity
Whichever impetuous guise it may adopt,
Is the beginning of all possibilities,
And the start of the usurpation
Of the individual prison
Of perception each of us maintains

Whenever you poke your head
Out of your snail’s house
To take some hesitant breaths
In regions you normally never tread,
You are risking being corrupted by the new,
You are risking the loss of the grip
On your view of the world

Now, are you going to say “Wow!
Infuse me with all this new stuff!” – even
If it means throwing your old values overboard?

Or will you withdraw
Into your snail’s house,
Into your brittle eggshell-mind
That you have nourished with
Your inconsequence till now?

These are the daily decisions
You must learn to make,
And to make gladly.

2001
from Instruction Songs

© George H.E. Koehler, 2010

Aquarium Blues

AQUARIUM BLUES

A few more drops of succour
Drawn from the well
Of an oblivion poet

Or a small slice of perception
Cut from the reality sandwich
Of a Nirvana salesman

Just edges of reality
Like ignored breadcrumbs
That pepper the floor

Polite goodbyes
In an isolated
Fishbowl of fear

Where everyone swims in
Year after year

And the waves
Of all our oceans finally die

2001
from Undressed Ideals

© George H.E. Koehler, 2010

Permutation Poem No. 30

PERMUTATION POEM No. 30

“Life has to kick you in the face
before you have a story
on your instrument.”
-- David Murray, 1995 interview

The best answer is without sound
Best answer without sound is the
Answer without sound the best is
Without answer the best is sound
The best sound is without answer
Sound without answer is the best
The sound is best without answer
Answer best without sound is the
Best the answer without sound is
Is without sound the best answer
Best the answer is without sound
Sound the answer is best without
Best sound is the without answer
Best sound is the answer without
Best sound answer the without is
Sound the answer best is without
Best the answer is sound without
Without sound is the best answer

2001
from: Old Honey from a New Tomb - A Selection of Permutation Poems

© George H.E. Koehler 2010

Scrapyard Lullabye

SCRAPYARD LULLABYE
(Limerick)

Acres of old cars piled up ten high
In rusting tiers, clouds wafting by,
With newspaper pages
And their unread ages,
Like diaphanous dreams in the sky

1988

© George H.E. Koehler 2010

Choose Something Worthwhile

This is from a cycle called Instruction Songs.

CHOOSE SOMETHING WORTHWHILE
(Instruction Song #9)

If in doubt, choose teachings of voyagers, that are neither patriots,
nor servants of any idea or idea of community.

Choose something worthwhile that resonates with the agendas of discoverers,
forever propelling you into the unknown.

Always be suspicious of communities of any kind, especially religious communities,
for it is there that personality rackets are hatched, seductively draped around nothing.

Words are thought dust, clouding tongues and clogging up minds,
they are a fog, shrouding souls in cloaks of wishes.

Neither male nor female, human nor non-human, servant nor lord, pupil nor teacher –
nothing should you be, but a curious mind.

I am nothing but a wandering mind.

© George H.E. Koehler, 1999

Negotiating With The Dead

from my "October Meditations" cycle of poems.


NEGOTIATING WITH THE DEAD

As the morning light approaches,
Once more, my bedroom is peopled with ghosts
In discourse with the birds outside

Nights and days are pillowed
On my never ending stream of desire --
A maze of lingering echoes:

Anniversaries are fallen blossoms
Strewn upon the ground,
Sticking to the soles of my feet --

Tendrils of memories
Reliving the last of their lives, but
Another negotiation to turn my weak blood into wine

2001 + 2005
© George H. E. Koehler, 2009

My Ship Of Death Has Set Its Sails

This is from a collection in the making currently titled Senryu Lake.


MY SHIP OF DEATH HAS SET ITS SAILS
Four Senryus

I.
A waking up that
You can’t reverse , ending in
A dream of waking

II.
A further hymn of
Death and dying, where my ghosts
Turn to flesh and blood

III.
In windows opened
By countless books, dead poets
Wait expectantly

IV.
Now the dead have come,
Looking to me, a cripple,
For their completion

2000
© George H.E. Koehler, 2009

Dying Embers

Taken from the collection "Haunted Lives".

DYING EMBERS

The clock moves on – a metronome
Of this quiet hour in the gloam
The firewood crackles suddenly
The flames twist on their feeding spree

The fire leaps a haunting dance
My mind bristles – another chance
To dive into a paradise
Of childhood feelings, throw the dice –

Feelings flare up, course throw my veins
Dead memories relive their pains:
I had forgotten, now they burst
And mingle with my newer thirst...

© George H.E. Koehler 1986, 2009

Prisoner of Life

This one's taken from my cycle of poems called "October Meditations".


PRISONER OF LIFE
(Morning Meditation I)

The broken cobwebs in the staircase
I pass underneath each day
Float above me into empty months
Stretching into nothingness

Trying to shake echoes to life
Dry leaves blow from my avocado trees

My cut toenails
On the bathroom tiles
Lie like the cold shells
Of crickets from yesteryear

Like dead insects crushed
Between the pages
Of my notebooks, damned to become
Part of an unrequited museum of the future

Trying to shake echoes to life
All clocks have stopped

Fallen blossoms scatter in the backyard,
Crumbs lie beside my bed --
Lingering echoes
Of songs yet to be sung

The skylight in the stairwell
Cuts a slice of sky into the roof
I walk up the stairs and I walk down
I come and I go

But I come no nearer each day
To cutting some sky into my roof

In our lives, this patch of blue
We prisoners know
As sky, becomes the strongest pull
Of all our days

Days go by
In a blur --
Jungle rivers cutting their way
Toward their seas

2001 + 2003
© George H.E. Koehler 2009

Blast From The Past

This is from the Travelogues poem cycle, to be found in Haunted Lives.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

I'm waiting at the train station ...
Lofty windows lurch into perspective,
High ceilings collect spaces still reeling
In my stomach, the mirror of my squealing mind:
The waiting hall's an echo of past times,
And memories won't coax my soul
To celestial heights any more –
Our parting is still rippling through my mind

I want to sit in an empty room
With just a candle burning,
And strum some strings and sing a simple song -
I'm waiting, waiting for my train ...

© George H.E. Koehler, 1985 & 1986, 2009