Worlds Of Words Poem by Josh Terpening

Keen and scouring for hours
In Between a visionary cipher clean,
The banal wisps striving like scratching bubbles.
Yet this swirling ink text must evince squalor,
Amid flyleaf or fresh canvas,
Innocently shining immaculate
In their most beautiful blankness.
Thus dismissing words and worlds
As intruders of languor unclean
If indeed the artist is in love
With the Pristine Palace of Perfection.

To labor in the fertile fields of language,
Surrender the scythe,
And uproot the brakes and briers
With a dull hand
If indeed the artist yearns
To know what lush, verdant Soul Crops
Yield from the ineffable
Lands within.


I am cultivating
The hushed lands of Tathagata.
Pulling the gray binds
That baleful words have entwined.
I see thick, golden fruits
Hanging, suspended
Against a creaseless azure sheet.
And silver spices
Twinkling after melon-sky sunsets.
O blessed Flora!
Open swells keep holding
Firmly planted feet,
Whether on or off levitation,
The Leviathan holds still
In awe
Convinced of freedom
In season ripe
For plucking the sweet fruit!