“Every moment of life is the last, every poem is a death poem.”

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.

Come, see the true flowers of this pained world.

Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.

He who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who attains to completes ten is a master.

Why so scrawny, cat? Starving for fat fish or mice… Or backyard love?

Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water – A deep resonance.

An autumn night – don’t think your life didn’t matter.

How much I desire! Inside my little satchel, the moon, and flowers.

Clapping my hands with the echoes the summer moon begins to dawn.

Around existence twine, (Oh, bridge that hangs across the gorge!) ropes of twisted vine.

The universe and its beings are a complementarity of empty infinity, intimate interrelationships, and total uniqueness of each and every being.

The moon is brighter since the barn burned.

Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock.

Spring rain leaking through the roof dripping from the wasps’ nest.

How exhausting it must be to fear death, when you can simply howl at the moon.

I’ve noticed that about your people, Doctor. You find it easier to understand the death of one than the death of a million. You speak about the objective hardness of the Vulcan heart, yet how little room there seems to be in yours.

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

Justice is the handmaiden of truth, and when truth dies, justice is buried with it.

The spirituality of wonder knows the world is charged with grace, that while sin and war, disease and death are terribly real, God’s loving presence and power in our midst are even more real.

It’s pointless to cry. One is born and dies alone.

The truth is that we simply do not know what happens after death.

After much soul searching I was able to renounce my past Islamist ideology, challenging everything I was once prepared to die for.