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Poems
by Greg Heathcote ...
Gregg Heathcote's poems are already well-known to members and friends of the Hongwanji Buddhist Mission of Australia and we are pleased to be able
to present his poems for the first time to a wider readership.
Void avoiding
No suffering and no end to suffering
Joy arisen and empty
Living out this inbred life in the Land of Bliss
'My' 'Amida' daily dying by inches
Non-dual is the great kindness and shame
A tear overflowing happiness and grief
Crying Namo Amida Butsu
Namo Amida Butsu
(© Gregg Heathcote, 30 July 2002)
War crime
Locked into my incendiary chamber
Furiously fighting fire with fire
Tortured and torturer taking turns
Applying coals to Newcastle
But 'friendly fire' wounds very well
And free the foregone conclusion
An ashen space for Amida's stage
A plain at pains for purity
To the ground my burning indignation
Equal all on this sweeping level
Yes, even here is Pure Land plain
Plain as our cruelly stupid complicity
(© Gregg Heathcote, 3 August 2002)
T-time: a poem unfinished
Annihilating despair again blisters within
My bitterly corrosive shadow
In its impotence raging and writhing
On the boil under this skin
Not to belittle your hell my dear demon
But I seem to be your stormy cup of tea
Through your teeth some sweetness, old boy?
Midway meeting now to taste if we can't finally be friends
Brutally bullying is our past together
And our home world's fate is everywhere fouled
So deeper refreshment is presently in order
In this poisoned cup of ours, one good drop
(© Gregg Heathcote, 2 September 2002)
Gyo odori - dancing practice
Move
Be deeply moved
Move on more
With integrity, connection, ENERGY
Let go
Let's go
Gently, wholly, bodily
Go down
Go down deeply
Go down where we are now
Go down where we're going to go
Living light
Yielding weight
Settling into sliding
Falling about all over the place
A shadow caught with his pants down
Molten on the ice
Dark substance skating
Frozen in DANCE
(© Gregg Heathcote, 14 September 2002)
Home birth
Soiled seed
Radical earth
Internecine symbiosis
Co-evolution express
Wild culture
Native life
Ended meanness
Equilibrated excess
Beauteous, bounteous, sensuous
'Competition' in original sense
The naturally Selected Vow
Nembutsu of naturalness
(©Gregg Heathcote, 26 October 2002)
Speculum
To the west of the centre
Reflections in infinite recession
Illusion's grand procession mirrored through life
Grooming the vanity of 'my' Namoamidabutsu
Yet focussed within the living eye
Space everywhere emergent in perfection
Dharmas upon dharmas fallen through and through
Seeing naught but ways clear
(© Gregg Heathcote, 1 April 2003)
Ultra vires
I thought I wasn't really evil
But to Mara's mockery I truly do attest
Being powerless to protect those I love
I hatefully empower that with which we are most sorely oppressed
Still, cruel though the standing trial
Bereft of wisdom to self-acquit
Life's sentence is naturally just nembutsu
And for that my impotent evil is, albeit painfully, fit
Bitter time served in the blameless face of such freedom
What an ultimately wholesome but bloody pill to swallow
Mugeko as a massive last meal made of light
The cell's openness bursting my aching heart's hollow
(© Gregg Heathcote, 1 May 2003)
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