rubai: "the lingering smile"

Nāgārjuna's rabbit from Derrida's hat?
the selfless itself a magician at that
Nāgārjuna hatless & Jacques sans a head?
the lingering smile belongs to the cat


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for Rajiv Mudgal

rubai: "what are words?"

Back to words from silence once again
back to sunlight in the wake of rain
what are words? can anybody say?
back to something words cannot explain

sher: signs of the times

Diminished grandiosity   increased sophistication
by valuing velocity   we've slighted contemplation

A Century City ditty

By Avenue of the Stars   I enter a building
they dub this half-mile of earth   Century City
everybody works!   to such imperatives yielding
I apply for a modest job   Ganesh have pity!

"An exquisite piece of meaningless versification" [villanelle]

An exquisite piece of meaningless versification
is this a description of what I generally do here?
it's hard to explain without noting reincarnation

is poetry culture's placebo? what information
is purveyed by the mumbo-jumbo we oft' pursue here
in exquisitries of meaningless versification?

nirvana (mutually assured destruction)'s relation
to moksha (freedom's release) isn't spankingly new here
it's hard to explain without noting reincarnation

say you're riding a train & passing many a station
with your nose to the window lost in the scenic view here?
an exquisite piece of meaningless versification

say you're running on empty striving for integration
what's the context wherein the pieces at last congrue here?
it's hard to explain without noting reincarnation

the finger that points to the moon is an indication
denoting the obvious like what we oft' review here
an exquisite piece of meaningless versification
it's hard to explain without noting reincarnation

=============================

poem occasioned by this paragraph:

From the very start, the American reception of yoga was a blend of rhapsodic spiritualism and harder-nosed skepticism. In 1857, inspired by the burgeoning Orientalist intellectual movement, Emerson published a poem titled "Brahma" in the very first issue of the Atlantic magazine. Emerson's poem played with the yogic idea of nondualism: Everything is god; difference is illusory. "Sunlight and shadow are the same," he wrote. Prefiguring mainstream impatience that remains to this very day, the New York Times called the poem an "exquisite piece of meaningless versification." Needless to say, that didn't impede the transcendentalist fascination with the mystical East.

from this article: Why Americans Love Yoga [at www.Slate.com]