Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Zen Clown

i've fortified the devil
i've liquefied your god
i'm resurrecting death
by fornicating the sod

i've broken wings of angels
i've rusted halo's gold
i'm the crown of thorns demanding
you do what you are told

i've twisted vows of marriage
i've aborted views of youth
i'm burning all the books
that promise you the truth

i'll leave you on your knees
praying for a sign
i'll lead you into confusion
where the void is all you'll find

i'll break the hands that offer
relief from all your pain
i'll destroy your belief systems
until you’re born again

i'll level your sweet home
there'll be no place to go
you'll blindly move thru darkness
until you face your soul

take a ride with me, my friend,
beyond the worlds you know
i'll show you drunken bliss
outside your damned ego

i'm the path to liberation
i'm freedom born from love
i'm the womb of the universe
the light of light from above

i'll blind you with my brightness
you'll never be the same
stripped of all conditionings
you'll see from where you came

free from wrong and right
there is no up or down
be at one with all of nature
become a big zen clown



Cecil aka mtmynd
(written in 2002)

2002 ? - ya ol' paleontologist you !

snappy little number, I could hear a blues song in my head

the mingo wrote:2002 ? - ya ol' paleontologist you !

you young whipper-snapper... that was only 13 yrs ago! I'm not into scratchin' around old bones. Give me some young bones that haven't seen the ligh o' day.

saw wrote:snappy little number, I could hear a blues song in my head

Gracie, Steve... would love to hear some zen blues about now.

One load of zen blues for ya Cec, courtesy of the Atomic Rats - hope ya enjoy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fsts194vE8

I like the poem----make no mistake about that. It is expressive. The rhyming works----maybe a little too predictable at times but overall it works fine.

Problem---maybe with the philosophy. It seems like you have to go through hell to get to paradise. The poem changes in these 3 stanzas.

i'll level your sweet home
there'll be no place to go
you'll blindly move thru darkness
until you face your soul

take a ride with me, my friend,
beyond the worlds you know
i'll show you drunken bliss
outside your damned ego

i'm the path to liberation
i'm freedom born from love
i'm the womb of the universe
the light of light from above

With all the negativity and horror in the first part of the poem it seems cavalier to revere the Zen Clown. Job? I have trouble with all the needless suffering. I view red claw nature as a given and a flaw in creation (if there is a God or benign and not indifferent Being).

That transition just doesn't work for me. But I do like the expressiveness of the poem. For example this is so expressive but to me it seems cruel. Not the poet but the Zen Clown entity.

i'll break the hands that offer
relief from all your pain
i'll destroy your belief systems
until you’re born again

the mingo wrote:One load of zen blues for ya Cec, courtesy of the Atomic Rats - hope ya enjoy

Gracie, el mingo! That slide work hit the spot... loved it and the tour of junkers in all their naked glory. a perfect match.

theirishsea wrote:I like the poem----make no mistake about that. It is expressive. The rhyming works----maybe a little too predictable at times but overall it works fine.

I appreciate that, TIS.

Problem---maybe with the philosophy. It seems like you have to go through hell to get to paradise.

Often times that is exactly the case. What we conceive to be "paradise" requires a inordinate amount of pain to achieve that which we hope that paradise is.

The poem changes in these 3 stanzas.

i'll level your sweet home
there'll be no place to go
you'll blindly move thru darkness
until you face your soul

take a ride with me, my friend,
beyond the worlds you know
i'll show you drunken bliss
outside your damned ego

i'm the path to liberation
i'm freedom born from love
i'm the womb of the universe
the light of light from above

With all the negativity and horror in the first part of the poem it seems cavalier to revere the Zen Clown. Job? I have trouble with all the needless suffering. I view red claw nature as a given and a flaw in creation (if there is a God or benign and not indifferent Being).

That transition just doesn't work for me. But I do like the expressiveness of the poem. For example this is so expressive but to me it seems cruel. Not the poet but the Zen Clown entity.

The poem for me is/was a lot of tongue-in-cheek and not meant to swallow whole. Meaning the honest basis of Zen is what the word itself is - meditation (ch'an in Chinese). Zen philosophy boils down to not allowing any 'thing' to hamper the flow of meditating, i.e. to achieve the state of "empty mind". My utilization of "fright-like" phraseology was metaphorically to enforce the idea that mind is not the end and be all of our True Self. Dispel with all things to achieve the perfection of "no thing", the womb of all Creation from which all 'things' become and every thing returns. Such is the power of "no thing"...

i'll break the hands that offer
relief from all your pain
i'll destroy your belief systems
until you’re born again

"... until you're born again" equates to achieving that oneness with nothingness.

Thank you for your comment, my friend.