Poem: The Automatic Words of Others

With apologies to D.T. Suzuki, whose museum I declined to visit

*

For so long now I have listened

To the automatic words of others

Drilling and droning and drowning out

What I have or at least thought 

I had to say though sometimes

It gets so very hard to recall 

So here it is yet another piece

Of writing on not knowing 

What to say anymore no that’s 

Not true at all what I want to say

Is that if you meet the Buddha on

The road then you must kill him

For his words are also the

Automatic words of others

And in the silence of the aftermath 

Of his slaying you must breathe 

Ever so quietly so quiet that you

Can hear the sound of your own

Genius whispering in the wind

And echoing across the canyons

That separate each and every one

Of us from that part of us that

Has something to say or at least

To feel yes that’s it it’s okay

If you never say it but just

Understand that this precious feeling

That is and yours alone be it 

Of love or hate or fear or acceptance 

Will never surface out of the

Automatic words of others

Even if I have attempted 

Otherwise here invoking as

I have the Prophet of Lowell

The Sage of Concord and the

Zen masters wherever they be found

M. Bogen, Kanazawa, Japan, Oct. 2025