poetry of jon wesick
Bamiyan
Black Wings
Bowing at Chogye-sa
In the House of the Eternal Now
Mahakasyapa
My Teacher
Dilettante Zen Poem
Buddha's Face
Waiting For My Lover
Another Zen Poem
Jake's Room
biography
Bamiyan1
With every strike of hammer to chisel
the workers recited a verse.
Clink - Homage to the Buddha.
Clink - Homage to the Dharma.
Clink - Homage to the Sangha.
It must have taken years
of flying rock chips stinging eyes,
sweat, and aching forearms.
Yet the builders persisted.
When they finished,
their devotion measured hundreds of feet.
They had not only carved
two Buddhas into the mountainside.
They had transformed their hearts.
For 1300 years the Buddhas
offered peaceful smiles to all.
Now black-listed by the Taliban
the Enlightened Ones gaze with pity
on soldiers, who gouge them with pickaxes of hate.
Explosives, with the contempt
of a Storm Trooper on Kristallnacht,
blow tolerance to atoms.
Maybe the destruction will release the love
stored in the statues, and the dust of compassion
will settle on the widows forced to beg for food
and their daughters, who can’t attend school.
I fear humanity has only lost a doorway to liberation.
This month the light went out in Afghanistan.
March, 2001
Black Wings - September 11, 2001
The clock stopped at 8:46 Eastern Daylight Time.
I overslept and missed my plane to Jerusalem.
Hoping to catch a later flight
I called for an airport shuttle.
TV newscasts showed footage of rescuers
searching rubble for corpses and severed limbs.
Sitting on my living room couch and sipping jasmine tea
I faulted my leaders for their lack of understanding.
I clicked the remote. Worshippers in neckties and tight collars
stifled yawns, while gothic ceilings echoed organ music.
An old preacher confessed he didn’t understand evil.
Those who had bought the twelve-volume Life of Jesus felt comfort.
I sharpened a two-inch knife against a gray whetstone
and carried it to the bathroom to trim my moustache.
With thin bloodless lips, a cadaver’s pale flesh,
and eye sockets black as Auschwitz smokestacks
Mohammed Atta’s face stared at me from the mirror.
I recalled piloting my fist into a teenager’s sneering face
the day I quit my job. I’d hoped that bastard’s mouth
had swollen like a deformed eggplant.
Someone had removed the muffler
from the olive drab Lincoln Navigator
that pulled to the curb an hour later.
Its engine’s thunder echoed from nearby skyscrapers’ walls
with the sound of cruise missiles detonating in Afghanistan.
The driver unscrewed the cap from a bottle of Black & White,
took a swallow of whiskey, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand,
and pronounced rush hour traffic evil.
“You go ahead. I’ll catch a later ride.” I backed away
then locked myself behind my steel apartment door.
I haven’t left. Unable to understand my own heart
I slump in a chair at the thought of dealing with others.
I stare at the white-painted drywall and wait for insight.
If you come by, leave some food on the porch,
but don’t knock. I could take decades.
This poem appeared in The Poetry Conspiracy.
Bowing at Chogye-sa
Seoul
Lunar New Year’s Day
Hundreds crowd the Main Hall
to face the multitude of Buddhas
painted on the Wall of Heroes.
Strings of beads entwine fingers.
Brown cotton mats
insulate shoeless feet from cold linoleum
and cushion bowing bodies.
Worshippers kneel,
touch foreheads to floor,
and rise;
only to lay themselves flat
again and again.
I sit in the corner
my back straight with reluctance.
Would I, a foreigner, create a spectacle?
In my hotel room the next morning
I realize the truth is all around,
only I choose not to see.
I’ve known this all along.
I make three prostrations on the plush gold carpet,
using my body to place truth before selfish desires.
Oops, wrong direction!
I meant to face the temple.
Three bows north. Might as well
tick off the other points of the compass.
The words of a tour guide come back to me.
“We believe in five directions, not just four.”
I pause
then bow to the center.
This poem appeared in the Three Treasures Zen Community Newsletter.
In the House of the Eternal Now
Faith and doubt
shelve books in the library.
Famine and gluttony plunk down plates
on the blond wood table.
Lust wrestles nude with celibacy
on starched white sheets in the master bedroom.
At dawn the landlord lights incandescent bulbs
saturating the living room with darkness.
At midnight saints and murderers
hold hands in the brilliance.
Touching this instant
a wind from before the universe began
breathes life into stones, rivers, paperclips,
and the coffee cup on the desk.
In this place beyond time the dead arise.
Their limbs glow with radiant pink flesh.
This poem appeared in the Three Treasures Zen Community Newsletter.
Mahakasyapa
I held up a flower, but did not wink.
You smiled anyway.
I'm curious. What Buddha did you see?
What will you say I taught you?
This poem appears in Volume 2 Number 2 of Heron Quarterly in the spring of 1998
as well as in The Three Treasures Zen Community News, Volume 6, Number 1 in March - May, 1999
My Teacher
The Zen master died
leaving me alone
more vulnerable than before.
He was supposed to go quietly
sitting in full lotus,
but he screamed
and begged for morphine.
He was supposed to make me a hero
free from fear and vacillation.
Life frightens me now,
and worry steals my sleep.
Maybe my teacher wasn't any good,
and I should look for another.
I tire easily now, so I remain
on these worn tatami mats.
The Zen master died.
All that green tea won't help me now,
because he left me naked.
These few Sanskrit words
my only protection.
Gate! Gate! Paragate!
This poem appeared in the Three Treasures Zen Community Newsletter, Volume 6, Number 2, June-August, 1999
Dilettante Zen Poem
The real Zen students were sitting in full lotus before dawn
wearing their black robes and rakusu1.
I stayed up too late watching TV.
Real Zen students don't have TV's.
Eventually I wake up,
light a candle on the altar,
and kneel on my meditation bench.
A gasoline powered edger begins its serenade,
and a lawnmower joins in the chorus.
By now the real Zen students are constructing monastery buildings,
working with the dying, or reaching out to the homeless.
I drive to my wrong livelihood job,
where I'm harassed by my wrong livelihood boss.
Real Zen students call this "good training."
I call it a pain in the ass.
Real Zen students vow to return to this world of patience
for countless lifetimes to save all beings.
I wonder how I'll get through another day.
I've given up trying to be a real Zen student.
I think I'll become a dilettante instead.
If you'd like to be one too,
we meet at 7:00 most nights in the meditation hall.
1. A rakusu is the bib like garment worn by Zen teachers and students.
This poem appeared in The Thinking Post Anthology of Haiku and Zen Poetry in October 1998
and in The Three Treasures Zen Community News in December 1998
Buddha's Face
A six inch replica of the great Buddha at Kamakura
sits in full lotus on a stand in my bedroom.
Green bronze, eyes downcast.
Flowers bloom on his right,
and a candle illuminates his left
the side of his heart.
How did the artist sculpt this face
that is sometimes warm and smiling
sometimes wrathful,
as if to say no feelings are separate from enlightenment
or to ask why I am angry?
Outside my door there are
male, female, red, white, yellow, brown, black, and gangsta rapper Buddhas;
but tell me what to do with the murderer and rapist Buddhas.
If you don't know how to deal with these,
you don't know anything about Buddha,
you don't know anything about anything.
This poem appeared in the Three Treasures Zen Community News Volume 5 Number 3 in Fall 1998.
Waiting for My Lover
She was supposed to be here hours ago.
Restless,
remembering the warmth of her hand on my inner thigh
and its silent promise of more.
No sense trying to write.
She's bound to show up soon.
Can't get interested in books.
I flip through the TV channels,
but don't find any love, only bickering.
Why do people watch this crap?
I turn off the TV,
put down the books.
The afternoon sun paints vertical bands on clean white walls.
They sway with the movement of the blinds in the ocean breeze.
My anxiety thanks me for the hospitality,
promises to return later,
and leaves to search for entertainment elsewhere.
It's quiet, safe,
and I am all alone.
This poem was published in the Magee Park Poets Anthology 1999, Diane Quintrall Lewis, Editor, December 1998.
Another Zen Poem
In awe of the mountain, disgusted by the toilet.
Buddha is far away.
Bowing to the toilet, bowing to the mountain (still slightly in awe).
Hung-jen presents a robe and bowl before dawn.
Holding Buddha close.
The world becomes a toilet with no mountains to be seen.
Bodhidharma leaves town, saying he's heading somewhere out west.
This windbreaker's full of holes, and the Tupperware's stained.
Bowing to the world (still slightly disgusted).
A tattered jacket hangs in my closet,
while the microwave warms lunch in a plastic container.
Nothing else to do now but
bow to JC Penney
and Tupperware,
bow to silk
and Tang dynasty porcelain.
An earlier version of this poem appeared in the Three Treasures Zen Community
News Volume 5 Issue 1 in the spring of 1998
Jake's Room
Two 6' 5" speakers stand
like twin monoliths from 2001
connected to an audio amplifier
via impedance matched cables
thick as your forearm.
All this for blasting out
140 decibels
of deafening silence.
This poem appeared in the Three Treasures Zen Community News
Volume 4 Issue 4 in July-August of 1997
biography
Jon Wesick has published close to a hundred poems in small press journals such as American Tanka, Anthology Magazine, The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Edgz, The Magee Park Anthology, The Publication, Pudding, Sacred Journey, Slipstream, The Three Treasures Zen Community Newsletter, Tidepools, Zillah, and others. He’s published eight chapbooks, including two that have been honorable mentions in the San Diego Book Awards. His latest chapbook is Nowhere to Soar. The Aphelion Webzine recently published his novelette The Last Abbot.
