Whatever is born
Whatever is born is subject to decay
Whatever is born is subject to decay

A farmer who lived on a mountain near the water
Was coming down the road along the cliff
Where he found a tree had fallen
It was night, and the man thought that the tree should be moved
Because it was an unexpected danger on the otherwise clear path
A sister and her brother came around the turn
Startled to see the farmer
Whose face was painted to blend in with the reef
His teeth flashing in the light of the lantern he carried
They slipped over the edge of the cliff
Where ships were docked below

Their bodies made splashes that looked like clouds
Plumes of white salt water pulling the children below
But the farmer was right, there was an unexpected danger
But where he was wrong is that the danger was not the tree
But himself, unable to recognize that he was the lusus naturae

His followers walked behind him, the unselfish scabbards
The grass rustled as the corpses dried
They busied themselves, collecting shells into rope nets
They cleared the coral to make a pallet
On which to carry them while he spoke
The path belonged in a young lie
The true nature of reality is wrong
Their collective jawline, shoulders, clavicles
The upward slope to the breasts are not real
Breaking the burial tradition
A naked leg stuck out at the wrong angle
Equilibrium, he dabbed at his eyes
With a handkerchief that smelled of strawberries
To keep his eyes dry
One of the followers said to him
This daughter and son that we carry are in some ways quite lucky
Having now learned the impermanence of life
He made no answer as they continued toward the growth
That rose in the distance like a temple
There are several others to whom this lesson has come
These children are of many who have felt
The unleashed aggression of an unknown figure
He left his wife and family
To try and understand the nature of suffering

One hour after he arrived with seasickness
The canteen was already hot
A few of them were witnesses to the tests
The consensus was unanimous
All of them agreed the form coming up out of the atoll
Was an object of fetish
But they couldn't understand the fantasy
Like a statue beneath the water
Forgotten by the families of its sculptor
He could see where the river emptied into the sea
The cloud came up out of standing water
The burst of light ricocheting inside the bloody nose
Fission's dawn

The men talk and smoke cigarettes
Debating what they witnessed
The new shape, the indescribable giant
The height of the cloud
And the sun-face in the ripples cleaning the bodies
Mentally, he did not break entirely
And was sent into the Peleliu bloodstream
His first "stream-enterer" threw it all away
And stripped him of everything
A door covering a city
The wooden planks were rotten and he fell through
It was more intimate that what he had experienced before
Prostitution
What is movement?
Is it the smoke frantically running away
From flames inside a wood stove?
Or is it the knife edge cutting
And preparing diligently the family meal?
No, it is the adjacent birth and life of disturbances
The movement of the mother casting the die for her child?
The stones of a gambler who suffers the debtor?
No, it is the unforeseen space between desire and suffering
Called "The Tree"
It is how the saw moves and pauses
Sliding toward the trunk of the tree
The enthusiasm of the saw escalates until the blade breaks
The men smoking, the observers, the lazy ones
Their daily preoccupations may cross out the future
The twisting turbulence underneath which they are voyeurs inside
It is rain that moves toward black waves

The cloud below the flame is reflected on the chrome surface
The happy bomber
Descending in the current
Its enamel decals are quiet
Wind flails down the side of the mountain
And stops at the first signs of land
The upside-down man
Now he leaves the earth in cotton rags
We have turned this world into a painful place
But it doesn't have to be
Imagine a lotus that begins life under the dirty water
But rises above the surface pure
Blown into the past while dancing upon the filth of the present
This world has turned us into someone not yet born
Or someone who never will be
Neither of whom can understand

This is our life
And our relation to life involves losing it
You don't get beyond these things
It is how we know the world
How we live inside the world
When the world stops working, we really live
It may be after I'm gone that some of you will think
Now we have no teacher
Let discipline be your teacher
All individual things pass away, including discipline
Along the reef, the crossing is short between Tokyo and Hawaii
Under the pink lotus
The meridian is imagined between Nagasaki and Hiroshima

A flame cuts the sky in the distance
And then the tremendous cloud
Rising above the black grass
An unknown figure