Tim Buckley Poetry

Tim Buckley Cancer Poems

John Bailes accompanying note at bottom of page.

Tim Buckley cuke page

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'Tit Jean grew a moustache and his mother said

             "Oh No!  Take it off!"  "Aw Ma I was just

             having a little fun"

Hakuin

Hakuin is everywhere, on everybody's mind

parsing canned fruit on the supermarket shelf

and someone said "He looks just like Hakuin"

I finally chose Libby's Premium Fruit Medley

The Chinese waiter in the Japanese restaurant

probably had visa problems on his mind

or his girlfriend or no-girlfriend and his lousy

pay or maybe his china goddess of mercy

having fun playing around with the blues

He had cropped hair brought fresh water

eels and rice eels were all skin and fat

no meat.  Ate it and asked for tea

he said I saw Hakuin today and he says hi

His paintings grew on the floor like fungus

He read the Heart like the funny papers

while I was just minding my own business

shopping for what i wanted next.  Peaches or pears?

Put a can in the fridge eat them cold, drink the syrup

Hakuin was sick a long time.  He could not even see

the blind leading the blind and so on until

he got better. He painted with stones and tree trunks

wrote short letters like "Death" and added postscripts:

"The shortcut to life"  Old, he told everyone

Just pray to the goddess of mercy 300 times a day

Finally picked chard from the garden

and had a nice supper, 7pm

***********************

how tender in the light filtered

between great storm clouds--

the pale green leaves,

young magnolia in the dooryard

***********************

for Suki, Tracy

old man sitting on the stoop

with his death, a cup

of coffee, a forbidden cigarette.

trees are full-leaved

but they are falling

red oak, red maple, white pine

birch, the suschh of wind

no sound he can name

pervasive.  His uncle died

like this, in beauty

rising through the forest

the clear blue dark sky

autumn high pressure

wind northwest, rising

green to blue rising, breathing in

the crisp morning air

***********************

The Argument

North Atlantic Basin

             theater of life and death       the rocks

run out green from Campobello

             scatter me here

ashes.

Snyder's right

             think of pterodactyl bones

spider mites, forget

             the hopeless invocations

of monks in coracles

             The Bay of Fundy stands steep

over Grand Manan banks on the ebb,

             wind southwest,

heavy helm in a hardnosed boat

             Island stones might run out

speckled white and aimed

             at the horizon, but let them go--

Irish monks, Northern, Basques,

             slaves in chains, the Italian

Keep the stink of cormorant shit,

             keep the breakwater, Point Judith

Harbor of Refuge down Little Rhody

             good hole

on a night like this.

Standing on the stoop watching the orchard again

             big apple trees

coming down

one by one     bark beetle

             they rot

from the bottom up  this morning

             two more

ready for the fire.

             Winter by winter

a small square meadow opens

             and I am desperate

for anything to leave

             to replace what I have taken.

I don't need these stories

             going round in my head

just tell it plain as possible

             like old Sarge said

--I was a kid, drinking--

             "Get out"         just flat

Trees fall         buck 'em up

             stay warm another winter.

Mizzen Head, the Skelligs, up past the SHetlads

             down to Sorlandet:

on Skjernoya cairns raised up old

             granite rain polished white

broad-based sea marks, Viking times

             Terns dart through long summer days

red-mouthed, agape.

Maybe there, maybe across Biscaya, in Galicia say

             or on the Algarve you see a conch

somebody's souvenir:

             polished ivory lip

pink depths swirl away beyond the sill

             where it sits on the edge of fall

in morning light

Or you see

             (past Porto Santo, Isla Graciosa, Sao Vincente, Barbados)

a thousand conchs covered in growth slime

             worm ridden

meld to sea garbage

             subside on Vieques'

coarse sand, rotting

             coconuts like skulls in windows

brown fronds

             kelp

plastic sandal and a five gallon oil jug

             bleaching at tide line,

old stories under palms

             tangled as plague      Come home,

old net float hung for a swing

             orange going pink in the sun,

Rockland, Maine.

Well, that poly' line gets scruffy

but it don't break.

As The Crow Flies poems

Tim Buckley 2011  

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The vivid  lives of insects

so complete and purposeful

Parachute spiders ride the afternoon breeze

back-lit by sun, they sparkle silver.

One sails below a roof corner

casts his thread and swings

like a buccaneer, going exactly

where he's going, above grasshoppers

patrolling the sidewalk cracks

systematically, others flying

on double brown wings, striped

and surprising. Wind-riders,

hoppers that go like butterflies,

the little nameless bugs bright in sunlight

we might have missed

if their bigger kin had not

drawn our attention,

our admiration

*******************

"This will not do!"

damp chill on his shaved head :  the dog digs for bone intently

             Daylight is sound music is light and God really loves you

mostly green and wet bushes

             GRIEF CAUSES LUNG CANCER

(the old man's stick strikes, strikes again

o tears of Kannon)

remembering high seas the waves traveling and not

--more like stone rows from on top of one

you can't get there from here

*           *           *

That about wraps it up for the day, boss

canned tomatoes

or it's all a mess! Want to go

fishing?   That ain't the half of it

             I'll just sit down here and not do anything

(the grey car was backing out the drive without him)

             until I know what to do

"or hemp oil or a Tibetan herb doctor.  Acu

             puncture"

                           because

the shore is gone

**********************

this

the tumble

insects

sweet magnolia

heaving breath

kaleidoscopic

ocean peace

jumbled heart

red

swamp maple

leaves falling

**********************

Three Men Dancing on a River Shore

(Ch'ing Dynasty Serving Platter, Blue-and-White Porcelain)

for Tim Buckley and Tracy McCallum

In the background, you can see the city they left behind

when they crossed the river to dance on this shore,

three gentlemen in mandarin robes and scruffy beards

now jigging on the sand under pines and willows

accompanied by hired musicians on trumpet, flute

and drum, and one plying a squeeze-box of some kind

for these scholars waving their hands above their heads.

This was the dharma field of their friendship, their

getting to the other side, however briefly.

Three men dancing.  Not drunk, just immensely amused

knowing that soon enough there would be only the wind

shushing its sad music through these pines on empty shore.

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John Bailes writes:

Here are the entirety of Tim's "Cancer Poems."

We performed a Memorial Ceremony befitting Tim's stature. Peter Schneider, Joan Amaral and I were a Doshi trio.

Seventy or so people attended: family, friends and Buddhists. Everyone to a person to a person, Buddhist or not, offered incense at the altar kobaku after the ceremony. Service was followed by a social gathering whereupon, after some snacking and drinking, sharing of memories and experiences of Tim took place. Jorunn, Tim's wife started things off, followed by Jesse, Tim's son. John Balaban read a couple of his poems that were inspired by shared experiences with Tim and Tracy McCallum (who was married to Fran Keller for a long while), a brother to Tim from the time they were in their early twenties (before Zen Center) read a long poem entitled "The Argument" from Tim's self published book of poems "As The Crow Flies Poems." I also attach one of the poems that John Balaban read: "Three Men Dancing On A River Shore."

Love

John