Year of the Metal Rat 2020-2022 Losar New Year Poems according to the Tibetan calendar COMING SOON

Behold the brazen strut 

From high-minded bigmouths

Amid sharp-shooters

And illusory masters of material gain

Smart know-it-alls before lesser peers

Beware that molten hook of unkindness

The sting of your indifference

Your bold lies

As visible as your ratty tail

Take a moment and mingle your mind

In the vast expanse of openness

Simply forget yourself and take

A leap into the greater good

Text by Jacqueline Gens

Illustration by Ingmar Pema Dechen

In Praise of Mediocrity

In Praise of Mediocrity
     for Reggie

Didn’t it used to be part of the Golden Mean —that balance
Between heaven and earth
The phi of perfect harmony
It’s distance measurable to acquiring pentagrams
A magic lintel betwixt and between lacking in status
All perfections linked to the median
Between becoming and completion
That naked cipher of valuation
Among worldly configurations
No worries for me walking down streets
To the hoots of male orangutans
Or jealous vixens wishing me dead
Clinging sycophants wanting my money
Stabs in the back
The queen of mediocrity is hardly noticed
Her paucity a mantle of invisibility
To the ultimate zero
A sublime nothingness
The simple fact is
Genius prefers a C minus like Einstein
With freedom to ruminate unwashed
And unwatched in heavenly exploration
Playing every angle
Then stand bewitched before elemental fractals
If beautiful, everyone wants to own you, have a piece
Or circle in for the kill for standing out sublime
But ordinary is profound too
When lit from within
A brief glimmer
It’s luminescence  spreading

They will always love you for your mind
My mother said........




2011 with some revisions 01/5/2020

Vipassana Scribbles

Forbidden Scribbles**

on a Ten Day Vipassana Retreat

Lying in Buddha posture

Outside I hear geese

Like me flying home

*

First Buds of Spring

Bird rustles in the underbrush

Can you ask a poet not to sing?

*

Old lady nods off

Drooping head signals torpor

Lion awakes without fail

*

Are clouds sky--sky clouds?

Where are you mind?

I looked everywhere and can’t find you 

*

Cars rush, Ocean of Dharma***

Squeaky door, cat’s meow

What’s real?

**Generally one is discouraged from writing or reading on a traditional Vipassana retreat. These mostly composed in my head outdoors during walking meditation, then jotted down on scraps of paper later
***Part of my Bodhisattva name

Great Clips

The following poem draft was written for my poetry group based on Gary Snyder's "Bubb 's Creek Haircut," one of my favorite poems

Great Clips Mohawk Trail Plaza 

hair salon in Greenfield, MA next door to Big Y

a uni-sex cut arises out of shorn chemo curls

carpeted in arcs on linoleum floor

I may not spit like a man but I got me

a man's haircut still burning with shame

silent chants of Tare Tare Tare to calm 

my already bad day worse

deemed an ugly visage staring scornfully back at me
earlier check up at Valley Medical

blood glucose higher than usual

blood pressure ok

looking forward to Mississippi trip 

practice with Ingmar and Sergio

moderate meals eaten same time everyday

thinking of snakes awakening seeking reprieve

from winter cold

can they really come into the house 

through plumbing to curl up

under toasty bed covers

sneaking about a common feature 
of Mississippi life

I read on the internet

now, I'm decades back 

at Tara Mandala siting on the banks of San

Juan river naked with the Methodist mom

Rocketeller wife as we watch our friends

across the river squealing in joy playing with Ute mud

said to be healing

then a snake swimming upstream towards 
the embankment with ladies its flat torpedic head

hideous sensing targets

crackling twigs behind us as two men 
with heavy boots stand above us

while we cover ourselves best we can

then evaporate into the bushes

were they real or another snake vision

Pondering all this jumble

snakes real or not

as I tip Jesse at Great Clips Hair Cuts.

February 2, 2019
Revised May 21, 2019
Highland Village
in Shelburne Falls, MA

Vajra Poem for These Times

We are the flame that melts conceptual mind 

 We are the flame that protects the indestructible mandala 

 We are the flame that dances in the fire 

 We are the flame that kindles endless compassion 

one candle at a time 

 OM 
 AH 
 HUM 

Written by Jacqueline Gens following a fire puja on Khandroling

Photo courtesy of Rosemary Rawcliffe