February 2018
Paul Hostovsky
phostovsky@gmail.com
phostovsky@gmail.com
I live with my wife and two step-children in the Boston area where I work as a sign language interpreter and Braille instructor. I think I may be the only person on the face of the planet who reads Braille while driving to work, left hand on the wheel, right hand on the dots, eyes on the road—eyes on the road. I also play a mean blues harmonica. My ninth collection of poetry, Is That What That Is, is just out from FutureCycle Press. For more info, please visit my website: www.paulhostovsky.com
Note: Last month, I read all the V-V tributes to Dick Allen with much interest and admiration. I never met or corresponded with him, but I do remember, years back, that he judged a chapbook contest in which I was a finalist, and the press was kind enough to send me his comments on my manuscript, which were generous and encouraging and quite the consolation prize. So I kept sending out the manuscript, and eventually found a home for it. Here are some poems on the theme of Karma, in Dick's honor, for the month of February. They are from my book A Little In Love A Lot (2011, Main Street Rag)
The Self
It was a Buddhist lecture on the Self.
There must have been fifty people
in that room with the eight Vicissitudes,
six Stages of Metta, four Noble Truths,
three Kinds of Suffering and two
ceiling fans spinning, spinning. She was
sitting on the other side of the room,
touching herself. I couldn’t help staring.
She was twisting a strand of her long hair
round her fingers absentmindedly,
listening to the speaker, holding it up
to her lips, sniffing it, tasting it,
eyeing it doubtfully then letting it go.
She caressed her cheek, her forehead,
the palm of her hand cupped her chin, fingers
drumming. It was a pensive attitude
lasting a few moments before her hands
grew restless again, and she started hugging
herself, her left hand massaging her right
shoulder, her right hand making excursions
to the hip, belly, armpit where it moored itself
with a thumb camped out on the hillock
of her left breast. I couldn’t help wondering
if she could feel my eyes on her body the way I could
feel her hands on her body on mine. “Don’t
attach to anything as me or mine,” the Buddhist
speaker who was Jewish before he was Buddhist
was saying, “because attachment is the second
arrow.” That’s when I realized I had missed
what the first arrow was. And then, as in a dream,
I was trying to raise one of my two hands lying
in my lap like two dead birds, belly-up, to ask.
Hand Cream
If you look up Messiah it says
something about being anointed.
If you look up anointed it says
something about smearing or rubbing
oil or unguents. If you look up unguents
it says they’re like ointments or salves.
Jesus Salves would be a great name
for a hand cream, I believe. And I believe
hand eczema is one of a dozen
skin diseases that got lumped together
under leprosy in the New Testament.
I believe a little hand cream every day
goes a long way toward healing dry skin.
And if you squeeze the tube a little too hard
and too much unguent squirts out,
you can do what Jesus did: spread
the wealth around, anoint yourself and
others, rub some on your forearms
and their forearms, on their faces and tired
necks and shoulders and backs, the whole
body of Christ. If you look up holiness
it says something about being set apart
for sanctification. If you look up sanctification
it says something about being set apart
for holiness. One hand washing the other
just like in Jesus’ day. But if you look up
salvation, surprisingly it doesn’t say anything
about Jesus, or salves, or the Messiah.
It talks about our liberation from clinging
to the world of appearances and illusions
of sickness, pain, and death. A final, joyful
union with ultimate reality. Really good stuff.
Miracles
Spiritual texts are the most boring books in the world.
None of them mentions a bicycle
or a Ferris wheel, or baseball, or sea lions, or ice cream.
They just lump them all together into “the world.”
The “world of appearances.” The “world of illusions.”
You can walk through this world and not
believe it for a minute. You can get to the end of it
and not believe that either. The miracle is seeing
right through the world to another
world that’s right here, right now.
But you have to let go of everything.
You have to let go of everything—you can
start by letting go of these words, just let them
go. Let them fall through the air, skim
your knee, spill to the floor. How to read these words
when they’re lying on the floor face-down
like bodies? That is the seeming difficulty.
You can sit in a small room all alone with your body
and not believe it for a minute. You can
don the humble johnny that closes in the back,
and when the doctor comes in with his numbers
which are your numbers, you can
not believe them either. You can let them fall from his lips,
skim your ear, pool on the floor where your eyes
and his eyes have fallen. He won’t
mention the bicycle, or the Ferris wheel which is
taking up a lot of room right now in the little
examining room where a sea lion has clambered up
onto the table and is barking, and the baseballs are flying,
and the vendors are hawking ice cream—because he can’t
see them. He can’t perform a miracle.
The Self
It was a Buddhist lecture on the Self.
There must have been fifty people
in that room with the eight Vicissitudes,
six Stages of Metta, four Noble Truths,
three Kinds of Suffering and two
ceiling fans spinning, spinning. She was
sitting on the other side of the room,
touching herself. I couldn’t help staring.
She was twisting a strand of her long hair
round her fingers absentmindedly,
listening to the speaker, holding it up
to her lips, sniffing it, tasting it,
eyeing it doubtfully then letting it go.
She caressed her cheek, her forehead,
the palm of her hand cupped her chin, fingers
drumming. It was a pensive attitude
lasting a few moments before her hands
grew restless again, and she started hugging
herself, her left hand massaging her right
shoulder, her right hand making excursions
to the hip, belly, armpit where it moored itself
with a thumb camped out on the hillock
of her left breast. I couldn’t help wondering
if she could feel my eyes on her body the way I could
feel her hands on her body on mine. “Don’t
attach to anything as me or mine,” the Buddhist
speaker who was Jewish before he was Buddhist
was saying, “because attachment is the second
arrow.” That’s when I realized I had missed
what the first arrow was. And then, as in a dream,
I was trying to raise one of my two hands lying
in my lap like two dead birds, belly-up, to ask.
Hand Cream
If you look up Messiah it says
something about being anointed.
If you look up anointed it says
something about smearing or rubbing
oil or unguents. If you look up unguents
it says they’re like ointments or salves.
Jesus Salves would be a great name
for a hand cream, I believe. And I believe
hand eczema is one of a dozen
skin diseases that got lumped together
under leprosy in the New Testament.
I believe a little hand cream every day
goes a long way toward healing dry skin.
And if you squeeze the tube a little too hard
and too much unguent squirts out,
you can do what Jesus did: spread
the wealth around, anoint yourself and
others, rub some on your forearms
and their forearms, on their faces and tired
necks and shoulders and backs, the whole
body of Christ. If you look up holiness
it says something about being set apart
for sanctification. If you look up sanctification
it says something about being set apart
for holiness. One hand washing the other
just like in Jesus’ day. But if you look up
salvation, surprisingly it doesn’t say anything
about Jesus, or salves, or the Messiah.
It talks about our liberation from clinging
to the world of appearances and illusions
of sickness, pain, and death. A final, joyful
union with ultimate reality. Really good stuff.
Miracles
Spiritual texts are the most boring books in the world.
None of them mentions a bicycle
or a Ferris wheel, or baseball, or sea lions, or ice cream.
They just lump them all together into “the world.”
The “world of appearances.” The “world of illusions.”
You can walk through this world and not
believe it for a minute. You can get to the end of it
and not believe that either. The miracle is seeing
right through the world to another
world that’s right here, right now.
But you have to let go of everything.
You have to let go of everything—you can
start by letting go of these words, just let them
go. Let them fall through the air, skim
your knee, spill to the floor. How to read these words
when they’re lying on the floor face-down
like bodies? That is the seeming difficulty.
You can sit in a small room all alone with your body
and not believe it for a minute. You can
don the humble johnny that closes in the back,
and when the doctor comes in with his numbers
which are your numbers, you can
not believe them either. You can let them fall from his lips,
skim your ear, pool on the floor where your eyes
and his eyes have fallen. He won’t
mention the bicycle, or the Ferris wheel which is
taking up a lot of room right now in the little
examining room where a sea lion has clambered up
onto the table and is barking, and the baseballs are flying,
and the vendors are hawking ice cream—because he can’t
see them. He can’t perform a miracle.
© 2018 Paul Hostovsky
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