read these words,
and those alive now
will sweep them from the streets.
The writing of our time most
likely to survive is graffiti.
It survives war.
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What language does the mind
speak before thinking, before
thinking gives birth to words?
I tried to write without embellishment,
to tell no lies while keeping death in mind.
—Chase Twichell
There is no number, no end, no barrier, no beyond to this empty fullness of where and what we are and have always been:each thing is marvelously singular (no number); this seeing through the barrier of the self is ceaseless (no end); this mysterious self is actually transparent to all that is (no barrier); and being here, awake in this mortal body, is complete (no beyond).
—Susan Murphy
NOTES
—“No is not the opposite of anything” stated by Melissa Myōzen Blacker, Rōshi, a Sōtō Zen priest with the Boundless Way Zen Temple, discussing the Mu koan.
—Top: Chase Twichell from her poem Skeleton in Dog Language (2005)
—Above: Chase Twichell from her poem How Zen Ruins Poets in Horses Where Answers Should Have Been.
—Susan Murphy, A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen koans for facing the climate crisis. Teachings on Earth, Mind & Not Knowing (2023)
—Below: Julia Hartwig-Międzyrzecka (1921-2017), In Praise of the Unfinished: Selected Poems (trans from Polish, 2008)
—Photos: Words Appearing in Public, Eugene, Oregon, Jan-July 2026, Douglas Beauchamp.
It Is Also This
Art casts a spell summoning life
so it can continue
but its space extends to the invisible
It is also an intelligence reconciling
discordant elements and similarities
It is brave
because it seeks immortality
by being—just like everything else—mortal
—Julia Hartwig-Międzyrzecka
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