From the 2020 Collection "War Bread"
#jmartindean #warbread #zenpoems #zenpoetry
Forget shoplifting, not pushing your cart back to the cart-corral is the true crime. Amazing,
Ten days secluded now, improper and unshaven inside a black and gold hole, dope den of sultry sound and opiate mood.
In your gut is an empire— Spells, tug of war, Holy Days, ascent, decline.
A Sacred Site, to my mind, is the last place you’ll ever stan… Such a place reveals hypocrisy without shaming,
Just leave the fucking flags at ha… Or half-staff. Or whatever it’s called. Just fucking leave them there.
I have this sensation when remembering the poignant noteworthy moments, Lovers, the Dead, crimes—
The moon lulls me as I wade through poppy fields, dragging limp hands behind me, catching each pod long enough before it snaps upright again
Praise those who sit and wait for nothing. Who sit still and know they are owed nothing. On the mat each inhalation
Yes, it’s a famous song— “Unbroken Chain” by the Grateful Dead, a good band name as an aside,
Therein are the spoils of sorrow, the fruit of hardship, where wind snaps and prevails. Death whispers a hollow secret and I still a shiver
At a certain point in your ordeal, it isn’t your ordeal that bothers… It is the fact that everything is… That’s what really bothers you. Because what happened is not OK,
I’ll give you what I got, I can part with it all. I have gifts— A silk tongue,
The Rock made me to see each month as a day. The Rock implored that I be patie… with a patience so radical it slips into renunciation
The moment you flit by my ear, my strings are severed, I droop like a marionette— I remember I know nothing.
Every once in a while, when my bunkmates are asleep (or at least I hope they are), and the jingle of the keys fades to the end of the hall,