Tim Buckley Cancer Poems
John Bailes accompanying note at bottom of page.
Tim Buckley cuke page
'Tit Jean grew a moustache and his mother said
"Oh
No! Take it off!" "Aw Ma I was just
having a
little fun"
Hakuin
Hakuin is everywhere, on everybody's mind
parsing canned fruit on the supermarket shelf
and someone said "He looks just like Hakuin"
I finally chose Libby's Premium Fruit Medley
The Chinese waiter in the Japanese restaurant
probably had visa problems on his mind
or his girlfriend or no-girlfriend and his lousy
pay or maybe his china goddess of mercy
having fun playing around with the blues
He had cropped hair brought fresh water
eels and rice eels were all skin and fat
no meat. Ate it and
asked for tea
he said I saw Hakuin today and he says hi
His paintings grew on the floor like fungus
He read the Heart like the funny papers
while I was just minding my own business
shopping for what i wanted next. Peaches or pears?
Put a can in the fridge eat them cold, drink the syrup
Hakuin was sick a long time.
He could not even see
the blind leading the blind and so on until
he got better. He painted with stones and tree trunks
wrote short letters like "Death" and added
postscripts:
"The shortcut to life" Old, he told everyone
Just pray to the goddess of mercy 300 times a day
Finally picked chard from the garden
and had a nice supper, 7pm
***********************
how tender in the light filtered
between great storm clouds--
the pale green leaves,
young magnolia in the dooryard
***********************
for Suki, Tracy
old man sitting on the stoop
with his death, a cup
of coffee, a forbidden cigarette.
trees are full-leaved
but they are falling
red oak, red maple, white pine
birch, the suschh of wind
no sound he can name
pervasive. His uncle died
like this, in beauty
rising through the forest
the clear blue dark sky
autumn high pressure
wind northwest, rising
green to blue rising, breathing in
the crisp morning air
***********************
The Argument
North Atlantic Basin
theater of
life and death the rocks
run out green from Campobello
scatter me
here
ashes.
Snyder's right
think of
pterodactyl bones
spider mites, forget
the
hopeless invocations
of monks in coracles
The Bay of
Fundy stands steep
over Grand Manan banks on the ebb,
wind
southwest,
heavy helm in a hardnosed boat
Island
stones might run out
speckled white and aimed
at the
horizon, but let them go--
Irish monks, Northern, Basques,
slaves in
chains, the Italian
Keep the stink of cormorant shit,
keep the
breakwater, Point Judith
Harbor of Refuge down Little Rhody
good hole
on a night like this.
Standing on the stoop watching the orchard again
big apple
trees
coming down
one by one bark
beetle
they rot
from the bottom up this
morning
two more
ready for the fire.
Winter by
winter
a small square meadow opens
and I am
desperate
for anything to leave
to replace
what I have taken.
I don't need these stories
going
round in my head
just tell it plain as possible
like old
Sarge said
--I was a kid, drinking--
"Get
out" just flat
Trees fall buck
'em up
stay warm
another winter.
Mizzen Head, the Skelligs, up past the SHetlads
down to
Sorlandet:
on Skjernoya cairns raised up old
granite
rain polished white
broad-based sea marks, Viking times
Terns dart
through long summer days
red-mouthed, agape.
Maybe there, maybe across Biscaya, in Galicia say
or on the
Algarve you see a conch
somebody's souvenir:
polished
ivory lip
pink depths swirl away beyond the sill
where it
sits on the edge of fall
in morning light
Or you see
(past
Porto Santo, Isla Graciosa, Sao Vincente, Barbados)
a thousand conchs covered in growth slime
worm
ridden
meld to sea garbage
subside on
Vieques'
coarse sand, rotting
coconuts
like skulls in windows
brown fronds
kelp
plastic sandal and a five gallon oil jug
bleaching
at tide line,
old stories under palms
tangled as
plague Come home,
old net float hung for a swing
orange
going pink in the sun,
Rockland, Maine.
Well, that poly' line gets scruffy
but it don't break.
As The Crow Flies poems
Tim Buckley 2011
*********************
The vivid lives of
insects
so complete and purposeful
Parachute spiders ride the afternoon breeze
back-lit by sun, they sparkle silver.
One sails below a roof corner
casts his thread and swings
like a buccaneer, going exactly
where he's going, above grasshoppers
patrolling the sidewalk cracks
systematically, others flying
on double brown wings, striped
and surprising. Wind-riders,
hoppers that go like butterflies,
the little nameless bugs bright in sunlight
we might have missed
if their bigger kin had not
drawn our attention,
our admiration
*******************
"This will not do!"
damp chill on his shaved head
: the dog digs for bone intently
Daylight
is sound music is light and God really loves you
mostly green and wet bushes
GRIEF
CAUSES LUNG CANCER
(the old man's stick strikes,
strikes again
o tears of Kannon)
remembering high seas the waves
traveling and not
--more like stone rows from on top
of one
you can't get there from here
* * *
That about wraps it up for the day,
boss
canned tomatoes
or it's all a mess! Want to go
fishing? That ain't the half of it
I'll
just sit down here and not do anything
(the grey car was backing out the
drive without him)
until
I know what to do
"or hemp oil or a Tibetan herb
doctor. Acu
puncture"
because
the shore is gone
**********************
this
this
the tumble
insects
sweet magnolia
heaving breath
kaleidoscopic
ocean peace
jumbled heart
red
swamp maple
leaves falling
**********************
Three Men Dancing on a River Shore
Three Men Dancing on a River Shore
(Ch'ing
Dynasty Serving Platter, Blue-and-White Porcelain)
for Tim Buckley and Tracy McCallum
In
the background, you can see the city they left behind
when
they crossed the river to dance on this shore,
three
gentlemen in mandarin robes and scruffy beards
now
jigging on the sand under pines and willows
accompanied
by hired musicians on trumpet, flute
and
drum, and one plying a squeeze-box of some kind
for
these scholars waving their hands above their heads.
This
was the dharma field of their friendship, their
getting
to the other side, however briefly.
Three
men dancing. Not drunk, just immensely
amused
knowing
that soon enough there would be only the wind
shushing
its sad music through these pines on empty shore.
John Bailes writes:
Here are the entirety of Tim's "Cancer Poems."
We performed a Memorial Ceremony befitting Tim's stature. Peter Schneider, Joan Amaral and I were a Doshi trio.
Seventy
or so people attended: family, friends and Buddhists. Everyone to a
person to a person, Buddhist or not, offered incense at the altar kobaku
after the ceremony. Service was followed by a social gathering
whereupon, after some snacking and drinking, sharing of memories and
experiences of Tim took place. Jorunn, Tim's wife started things off,
followed by Jesse, Tim's son. John Balaban read a couple of his poems
that were inspired by shared experiences with Tim and Tracy McCallum
(who was married to Fran Keller for a long while), a brother to Tim from
the time they were in their early twenties (before Zen Center) read a
long poem entitled "The Argument" from Tim's self published book of
poems "As The Crow Flies Poems." I also attach one
of the poems that John Balaban read: "Three Men Dancing On A River
Shore."
Love
John