The Past is Always Here Copyright 2001

9/11 Memorial

Diggey Degger’s Dike

1972 Jazz Poetry by Barry Lebost

Copyright2007

(A witching spell, shhhh! Must read with drama and passion)

Waxed boxes

Dishing soxes

Eating brooms by the stoom

Shallowed noxes

hatched stokess

Martled by tee early tomb.

Winters bargled

Body’s fargled

Fragged, freathered, frothed thru soon

As I slig a slaggy sledger

I slipped it off a slash too soon

An saw my Diggy dag a degger

Bigged it off by “Oh My Moon”

How did Sordid ever clever,

Frantic Forrel’s forest foons?

Aye saw May flourish flawny flowers,

Filtering fromage, fraggering fright,

Frawly showers, cinnamon cowlers,

Racing prowlers and floomering trite.

Abe bragged his brimming breaches

Brawning brail his bowling bowers

Bicked it’s gun from Browler’s bright

Hitched it,

Back up,

Sent it flawnding

"Dawn Diggey Degger’s Dike"

I Was There

by Barry Lebost 2015

"I Was There"

What do these words actually mean?

We would like to think that this statement has concrete unquestioning truth behind it.

But the truth may be very far from this.

Who is "I"?

What was "I" at the time

"I" was there?

Was I conscious?

Was the body of "I" present but the mind somewhere else?

What was gained by the experience of being there?

Have...Has "I" remembered all the sensations of being there?

Suppose "I" cannot remember very much. Was I still actually there? Can I count that as being there?

Suppose my friend over here to the right of me was also there. Suppose this friend remembers a thousand fold of what "I" remember- but suppose my friend only remembers a particular narrow subject about what it was like to be there...

Maybe I had a bit too much to drink that day? No- I think I may have had a cold with my head stuffed and my eyes tearing.

Suppose...

Just suppose that my brain works differently than my friend's brain. Suppose he saw a thousand fold of what I saw and remembered a thousand fold of what "I" remembered- but suppose I only saw one thing that day and it turned out that that one thing was infinitely more important than anything my friend had seen or remembered...Was I there more than my friend?

The Narrator

by Barry Lebost 2015

When the Narrator finally spoke he said:

"You missed what was actually said because you were busy listening to the noise in your head..."

"You said that you discount what this person says because this person is a nobody."

"How will you learn if you already have all the answers?"

"How can you learn if you don't care to listen?"

"What if this nobody has thought for many years about this subject and her thinking could change the world for the better?"

"But it requires that people listen."

"It was not you..."

Sadly, it was not me.

The Bamboo Bouquet Outside 

My Window

by Barry Lebost Costa Rica 2015

Dancing with the prevailing winds...

Yellow green poles maybe a hundred or more...

Reaching up toward fifty feet...

They sway to and fro but not in unison...

Choosing to bow in their own direction.

Clashing clacking cataclysmically...

Sounds beyond human comprehension...

Responding to the gusting breezes...

Like French horns out of tune...No

Like a creeking ghost ship drifting through the night...Lost upon the open sea...

Or perhaps more like surfboards lined up upon an ocean wall suddenly scattered by a giant wave...

The winds pick up and a wooden freight train thunders square wheeled down a wooden track through my studio resting place...

A light breeze comes and an alien mother coos to her infant child...

Click clack stretch strain scraping and caressing gently..

Carving deep into my brain forever the sounds of a bamboo bouquet in the warm prevailing winds.

The Lesson of the Fossil

by Barry Lebost

Graphics by Paxdora

TO MAKE THE COLOR GREEN

(2010)

The sun shines brilliant yellow

When it meets the bright blue sky.

Just add clear water

Winter’s Brave

by Barry Lebost 2012

Here’s to the brave heroes never to get credit

Who, like squirrels that hide their acorns in autumn

Check their plows and split their wood With visions of howling wind and snows relentless fall

Prepare

Not from fear of nature’s might

But rather from an inner sight

That whispers one with the universe

A smile

Brute cold gray days to come

Entering the dark tunnel

That turns clocks backwards

That makes skies blacker

Quiet but for wind chimes

Fireplace safe and warm inside

Partners share and bond together Chanting to the candle light

Time seems forever still

Until the melting snow

The sun's returning glow

Brings warmth upon the cheeks

Water filling streams and creeks

And then one day thought

Never to arrive

A robin sings to say goodbye…to winter

Enlightenment-

The Bodhisattva Strives For…

(By me) 1/30/13

Being grateful for gratitude

Living gratitude and reverence for my life

To all and everyone and everything that

made and makes it so

Pure unadulterated appreciation

Understanding the odds to be here now

Assuming the burden of all historical truth

Assuming responsibility for universal

calamity

Creating value now

Crying for all the pain of the living

Crying for all who have died

Rejoicing for all happiness

Loving all- including hatred

Seeing yourself in all that is outside self

Seeing all of outside within yourself

Seeing a connection to all of life

Past, present and future

Seeing life’s connection to everything un-living

Contemplating all, listening to all, speaking to all

Being one with the universe

Doing all of the above- All in one moment of time.