z — Narrow Road > Deep North

Creaking of birch or the sound of the bell? When does sitting begin and end? Alone out here it's hard to tell.

Braced against Winter, the tall pine creaks above us.

Roots entangle weathered bones. Bulbs sprout, grasping for life.

Even now, I am torn between the clouds and these living stones.

the year winds down

conditions cut across my body

“not mountain sermons”

A sentient being studying the impurity of self. How steep is this solitary teaching? How many years to climb it? ◇

I study my no-idea, preaching to an open hall. The most astute of monks, listening all winter, spring, summer, autumn.

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Practicing my no-dharma is certainly not the way. I am only a fool on a mountain, preaching to an assembly of birch.

my zen cuts ************! clear across the mountains!

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my no-dharma strikes the granite bedrock! hopeless!

◇

exhale! my not-poems are dashed against the cliffs!

This Whole Sky (2020, 7 page typewriter zine) Words by R.a.Szy

Narrow Road / Deep North (2020, 17 page typewriter zine) Words by R.a.Szy

Flat Mountain (2020, 14 page typewriter zine) Words by R.a.Szy

That old hermit, his appearance is of a priest who has abandoned the self, yet he comes round my woodshed daily to complain, telling me,

“There is no place I can travel, and not still hear about the bitterness of the world!”

A shame! He refuses to budge! Stubbornly carrying his mortality — a burden heavier than any pack.

Up the mountain, down the mountain, even here among the winds blowing down through the pines.

I tell him over axe swings,

“This decadent age is in your bones!”

KWATZ!