TAOING

The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.

Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.

So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.

Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

"While the 40-hour work week is still officially in place, employers are permitted to require staff to work up to two unpaid hours per day for a limited period in return for more free time."

THE BALLAD OF STEVEN SLATER

Ain't we all had a day
When we just had enough
Ain't it true each one of us
Has been battered, worn, and rough
Ain't you never felt irate
And won'tcha get irater
Well, my friends, we have a hero now
I speak of Steven Slater

It ain't that easy to ride the skies
Laboring for JetBlue
A man's got to keep widened eyes
For terrorists or shampoo
And worser still are the passengers
They turn a kind man to a hater
Won't nobody stand up to this?
One man: Steven Slater

There was a particular day
And a particular customer
Who grew abusive to Steven
when he instructed her
She was endangering herself
And he didn't care to debate her
And all at once she struck his head
She struck at Steven Slater

Some will say he made a scene
Or it was a crime
But Steven he had had enough
And if he has to, he'll do time
Perhaps it's great to keep your cool
But sometimes it is greater
To bid one final fuck you too
As did Steven Slater

He cursed her on the intercom
So that everyone could hear
And he then bid his adieu
And he grabbed himself a beer
And threw open the JetBlue door
With an escape slide and its inflater
And he slid down, drinking, shouting fuck you
Our hero, Steven Slater

The police they went after him
They caught him in his bed
He was supposed to finish work but he was
In flagrante delicto instead
A hero and a lover now, not a
Circumnavigater
Say what you will, but tip your hat
To a man who had enough
A man named Steven Slater.

nickleback

Some people who have trained themselves
to have their emotional
catharsis
through sophisticated art

get annoyed at untrained people
having an emotional
catharsis
through unsophisticated art.

Count Eberhard’s Hawthorn

Count Eberhard the Beard
From Wurttemberg’s domain
On a pious journey fared
To the shores of Palestine.

One day as he was riding
A woodland path in spring
From a hawthorn bush
He took a little cutting.

In his iron helmet
He placed the hawthorn spray;
He carried it off to war
Over the flowing sea.

And when he was back home
He set it in the earth,
And soon the leaves and buds
Into life were stirred.

The count, faithful and true,
Each year came to the sprig;
He was filled with joy
To see it grow so big.

The count shrank with age,
The sprig became a tree.
Beneath it the old man sat
In deepest reverie.

Its high-arching limbs,
Its whisper in his ear
Remind him of the past
And of the distant shore.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Yellow Bittern

Yellow bittern, there you are now,
Skin and bone on the frozen shore.
It wasn’t hunger but thirst for a mouthful
That left you foundered and me heartsore.
What odds is it now about Troy’s destruction
With you on the flagstones upside down,
Who never injured or hurt a creature
And preferred bog water to any wine?

Bittern, bittern, your end was awful,
Your perished skull there on the road,
You that would call me every morning
With your gargler’s song as you guzzled mud.
And that’s what’s ahead of your brother Cathal
(You know what they say about me and the stuff)
But they’ve got it wrong and the truth is simple:
A drop would have saved that croaker’s life.

I am saddened, bittern, and brokenhearted
To find you in scrags in the rushy tufts,
And the big rats scampering down the rat paths
To wake your carcass and have their fun.
If you could have got word to me in time, bird,
That you were in trouble and craved a sup,
I’d have struck the fetters of those lough waters
And wet your thrapple with the blow I struck.

Your common birds do not concern me,
The blackbird, say, or the thrush or crane,
But the yellow bittern, my heartsome namesake
With my looks and locks, he’s the one I mourn.
Constantly he was drinking, drinking,
And by all accounts I’ve a name for it too,
But every drop I get I’ll sink it
For fear I might get my end from drouth.

The woman I love says to give it up now
Or else I’ll go to an early grave,
But I say no and keep resisting
For taking drink’s what prolongs your days.
You saw for yourself a while ago
What happened to the bird when its throat went dry;
So my friends and neighbours, let it flow:
You’ll be stood no rounds in eternity.