“Without bitterest cold that penetrates to the very bone, how can plum blossoms send forth their fragrance all over the world?”

Winter garden, the moon thinned to a thread, insects singing.

Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom.

When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.

Come out to view / the truth of flowers blooming / in poverty.

Fresh spring! / The world is only Nine days old – / These fields and mountains!

Collecting all The rains of May The swift Mogami River.

Spring rain conveyed under the trees in drops.

The basis of art is change in the universe.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things-mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white.

Friends part forever wild geese lost in cloud.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

Felling a tree and gazing at the cut end – tonight’s moon.

Poverty’s child – he starts to grind the rice, and gazes at the moon.

Winter solitude- in a world of one colour the sound of the wind.

Most drag queens, they put on music like it’s a costume. It’s not in their bones. It’s not in their background.

The Indians said the bones were those of a race of people three times the size of a man.

Love me to the bone beneath the nerves beyond my mistakes beneath my veins and even as my heart breaks. Love me entirely or not at all.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, someone comes into your life who’ll take up a place in your heart that no one else can fill, someone who’s tighter than a twin, more with you than your own shadow, who gets deeper under your skin than your own blood and bones.

Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.

I learned that the world didn’t see the inside of you, that it didn’t care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.

Your words were cold. I felt them as they crashed through my bones.

Day after day, the echoes of losing you resonate in my bones.