Tormenta (Storm)

Impercussion….

the waking up and coffee…

memory of it all there somewhere

in the morning before the major pieces

are back in place

ready for the day.

Yes, it takes a coffee

to get up….a drink

to come back from

uncertainty…no matter

how True it might Be, no,

the coffee and maybe a bagel

before life starts again for the

predictable Tuesday, Thursday,

whatever day…for, hopefully,

enough time ‘til enough has

happened and you can retreat to

your den ‘til the end of time….

your time….at least…at last,

Armagedonboredom

I’m having a nice time,

I just can’t see past next Thursday…

and I spend as much time as I can in bed…

a Ripped Van Winkle…

it’s ok, I guess…waiting for the end, calmly,

in great sheets,
but…

I would like to raise a little hell…

aw, heck….been there done that.

Poems can be boring too….

…like the end of the world…

“not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

Dancing In An Earthquake

Usually, people in an earthquake are just

trying not to fall down. My team, “The

Earthquake Dancers”, are a lazy bunch of sots….

but, always in rehearsal.  If an earthquake

hits, we’ll be swaying with the shimmy,

if only because we’ve had such practice
trying to stand up.

Shopping Maw

Like walking into a carnivorous plant,

the mall doors glide silently open, and

one is slapped gently in the face by music

meant to lower one’s blood pressure

ten percent, the chocolate and coffee smells,

the large tract one follows that digests one’s

money.

Beefheart Poem #2

“Give up cannibal meat dream

learn to breathe, sip wine…”

don’t loose poem in computer like

I just did…yeah, ya can get it down fast

but ya can loose it easy…wanted to

shoot my apple with a shotgun, instead

another shot of gin…I hate loosing one,

can’t re-create, never the same moment…

it’s no-brainer quantum physics…

so, now this clone will go on, for a while,

like a clown without a punch line…

(cornball highballing it through low-tech space

of taco stands, soccer moms,

Flockhearts in Wonderland,

whatever cliché he runs into or over is collateral

damage of the Truth:  the junk yard dog, the man

behind the wall, the flower, the disaster, the cloud,

the blood, the mirror you ignored yesterday.)

Growing Up In The Fifties

I was born in Chicago, but my family moved to
Winfield, Illinois when I was about 4 years old.
Playwrights of that era, Eugene O’Neal, Edward
Albee, were actually writing about my family…
the nightmare inside the American Dream.

I have a few images of those first three years on
Keystone Avenue. I remember sitting in a chair on
the second floor, looking out a window at the rain…
I remember the lilac bushes that lined our driveway,
and the beautiful smell. On Mother’s Day, when I was
three, I fell down a pile of bricks and cut my head. A
little girl put a dirty rag on my head and took me home.
I remember, as we were driving to the doctor, asking my

parents if I was going to die.

My father was the manifestation of The Dream:
took care of his family during the Great Depression…
served honorably in the army…went to night

school and became a well known lawyer in Chicago…
knew the famous politicians of Illinois during that time.
He was a social Darwinist and a hedonist. He was a
good man and kind to his children.

Of rest of my “nuclear” family,  my mother, an intelligent
and psychic woman, was schizophrenic….my brother
was schizophrenic…my mother’s father, who lived with us
till he died when I was 18, was an alcoholic. Because of my
mother’s condition, we rarely had any guests…I grew up

in a pretty closed container. When I was about 8 or so, my
mother went away to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.
She received shock treatments. When she came home, she
was not the same person. The treatments had solidified her
paranoia. My father seemed, at that point, to have given up
trying to find a way to help her. From that point on, until the
drugs that treat schizophrenia got better, it was just mom,

wandering around the house, talking to herself and crying.
It was living in a loony bin.

My father would pontificate at dinners about his exploits
in court. We were a captive audience. He was always extolling
the good life we had…how you had to be tougher than others
to live in the world. I sat there, silent, absorbing. It seemed

to me there was a glaring contradiction in my father’s philosophy:
yes, we lived in a nice house in a bucolic setting…ate great food,
ect.,  but we weren’t happy. Even at a young age, the message
was clear: material wealth had nothing to do with happiness.
This idea was reinforced throughout my childhood.
You could say, I was born with a silver koan in my head.

But, actually, where and when I grew up was great for a kid….
our house was in an oak forest that was being gradually tamed
into a suburb…we kids would run around in the woods, built
forts; in the trees, on the ground, under the ground. That part
of it was great. As my brother and I grew older, we began to
fight a lot. He was 20 months older, and he would win. He
would also start the fights. I developed a strategy, where, if
I knew the fight was going to happen, I would first hit him in the

face as hard as I could, then run into the bathroom and
lock the door until my father got home. That seemed to work
pretty well. I hated my brother. There was a situation where
my brother had fallen out of a tree, and was helpless for a short
time. I actually contemplated killing him. I thought of the suffering
he was causing the family. I finally came to the conclusion it
wasn’t my decision whether he lived or died….

that was a turning point in my life. I was about 12.

  

"Reality Television" : Oxymoron For Morons

If you record an event, it automatically

changes the nature of the event…it’s

no-brainer quantum physics.

The old plumber in his underwear

on his lazy-boy watching millionaires

on T.V. flailing around in trumped

up emotions…”It doesn’t get any

better than this….Thank God for the

54” plasma screen…it’s almost as if

I’m not here…" cracking a Pabst.

Mirage

Every moment I get up and go out

into it, the market, cocktail parties,

just sitting in the coffee house and

seeing the same faces that happened

to have  been there for so many years

as I find myself with them, which,

over the long run, makes me feel

unbodied    as if we were all a dream…

but, of course, that’s just me not really

there.

And What The Heck Is An Outlier Anyway?

Yes, sophisticated wordage at the moment

of an extinction level event, an E.L.E., is more

than rather absurd, unless you live in Manhattan,

where these civilization threatening events are

shrugged off like bad fireworks, bad coffee…

bad theatre…bad Japanese movie...

…or Mexico where extinction is part of life and

is part of the understanding of life here….

and still breathes the air… and is the breath, itself,

of life. The last one, like, remembering at the time

of death:  “And what the heck is an outlier anyway?”

Guest Poet: Thomas Liphard**

Gate*

Constantly looking for the
waiting might as well relax
waiting for the
the shoe
the shoe two dollop three
dollop four dollop five
coming out of a methorexate
down listening to the desolate
screaming howl
that spoke of unending
deserts of lonely
particles of dna strands that
line the streets in search of
my self It must have
fallen down the well again
the stupid fucking thing
the mangey old dog have
you seen it
can't walk he is
dying to howl it fell
somewhere far from the
other place my self ish gonetoday
here tomorrow all day
waiting for the shoe
the shoe
the shoe two dollop
three dollop four it could
make a comeback stranger
things have happened it's
still fucking gone constantly
looking for the waiting for
the shoe two dollop
three




* gate (GA- TE....as in the Heart Sutra, meaning: "Gone")


Thomas Liphard: multi-versatile artist and teacher, my dear friend, Thomas,
(don't call him Tom, 'cause his mother did) Liphard, just got sight in one of
his eyes for the first time at 60. He was a one eyed artist his whole life.
Now, his mind is completely blown

Hieronymo’s Mad Again

unleashed like the chaos of Yeat’s gyre,
there is no place on earth undented

by the actions of this time, predicated
and predicted for thousands of years

like the end of a Hardy  Boys movie.

and all the visions in the media res media
are beacons of hypnotic gesture, flapdoodle
lace emplacements hoping to distract the
razor sharp, bloodyreality forthcoming and
preeminent, like the Mayor of Tokyo melting in

front of you at a news conference, like the
Wicked Witch of the West, but, ‘til the end,
saying that “Everything is OK!” 
(Must have got that from the USA) .

Summer Illinois Hot Teen

Driving at night, drunk or not,

through Illinois like all the corn

states, humid, testosterony fertile

frenzy fueled by the radio beat and

wind of speed…we had fun and

some of us went too fast and died…

but that didn’t stop the rest of us, no,

it took getting older and seeing that

our freedom was a myth to do that.

The Hulk: Frankenstein’s Monster For Our Time

Let’s make this quick and easy…..Mary Shelly’s

Frankenstein was about a monster created through

science, or, as well, the monster that Is science….

The Hulk is the update: can still be human, but

subject to uncontrollable outbursts….sort of like

the confused popular opinions towards atomic energy,

or…..: UFO’s, Global warming, and a host of other

hot buttons…boiling down to the endemic confusion

in society about whether we’re smart enough to save

ourselves from destruction, or, too stupid to avoid it.

In Memoriam: Chris Keyser

Some of the faces you remember

only when you hear they died, and

Chris had a face I never forgot, I don’t

know what it was about it…so alive?

The Killers

The killers came early
dressed in the rags of their reckoning...
they came...
shivering with delight
of the action they perform:
daylight, to them, was another trigger.

1974

Subliminal Propaganda in "The Avengers"

All these quotes take place within the first forty minutes of the film. Nothing like them after.

"Until the time the world ends, we will act as if it intends to spin on."  Fury


"Freedom is life's biggest lie. Once you understand that in your heart, you will know peace." Loki


Captain A.:  "Aren't the Stars and Stripes a little old fashioned?"

Agent Coulson: "With every thing that's happening and things that are about to come to light,
people might need a little old fashioned."


"It's the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation and were made to be ruled." Loki


Oh, and if you think these characters are, like, on different "sides", which means their quotes are from different
points of view, you're wrong. All the quotes wind up in the same place after the characters have been forgotten: in your subconscious.

And the characters  quoted, Fury, Loki, and Coulson are the main ones that
are the most forgettable.

Can I have that drink now?

Surreal Koan

If you only have half a glass
and it's full...
what is the sound of a fish?

Pain In The Glass

The mirror is bleeding…

It cries out at the distortion of truth…

“Look  in  me! Look in me!” it wails…

...but the conjurors continue conjecturing,

painting what’s already there with overlay

of lies,  Oz illusions, fantastic fabricated

distractions, mental manipulations, colorful

confections, anything they can get their

deluded hands on to bias perception….

‘til mirror shatters screams of shards

that emanate from the last true hearts

and send their clarity streaming to the stars.

Amazing (probably) # 1

Getting older, one gets over

many things more quickly…ok,

not sickness….not change….

life itself, I think…like Marlon

Brando said when he died:

“What was that?”

A Word to the Wise

"The higher density positive entities are light beings. The
higher density negative entities are "light eaters".  Love
is light is knowledge. When they induce belief against
what is objectively true, they have eaten the light knowledge
of the person who has chosen blind belief over fact. When
you believe in a lie you have allowed the eating of the energy
of awareness,"    Michael Tupper

On The Beach

Listening to Beach Boys

endless sand

still civilization echoes

in my ears, in my head…

as the horizon surfs out

eternally

I’m changing my name

to John Toe Tag Tootsie…

(occurred to me dragging

my toe in the sand…the

whole world is then my

name.)

No one left to share…

(true for most oldsters

anyway)…no one else

knows. Of course, at

best, back then, there

were but one or two.

“My Stingray is light,

slicks starting to spin,

but the four thirteen’s

really digging in….”

“Oh, that magic feeling:

nowhere to go!”

It was all worth it, not lost,

it’s all so vast a magic carpet
rug burn ride through time
and space and matter…
the only punch line
possible is forever.

Over Reactive

Oh, I’m worried about Fukushima #4

Even more than I am Iraqi war…

People die there, I know it’s true,

But if  #4 collapses that’s the end of me  and you….

It’s an over reactive situation, can’t you see?

It ain’t me that’s over reacting, no sirree…

It’s #4, the “gourd of doom”, waiting to fall

Over reactive reaction…goodbye to us all.

Forget the sports page,  political process too…

if #4 goes there’ll be nothing left to talk about,

let alone lips to do the talking, when the world

becomes dead men and women walking.

Over reactive?

How can you tell?

Do you know the truth?

Can you tell me as well?

Tim Tebow, Hillary,  Kim Il Un….

put all the names in a hat….

stir them around….

pull one out…

doesn’t matter which one….

All’s One in One God State

Where God is Really One and

Life is Really Great….there is

nothing in a name….Ono….
(think "Help Me Rhonda" to a
Reggae beat)

And if #4 goes, the only good

your name will be will be for

your toe tag, Tootsie.

Slop Can

I remember being in Chicago, before we
moved out to Winfield…at the oldest, I
was three….but I remember the kitchen
table…chrome chairs...the faux marble
pattern of the table top popular in the Fifties.

And I would always knock over the glass
of milk, or, whatever it was, so, my mother
got to calling me “Slop-Can”. I got glasses
when I went to school a couple of years later,
which, now, leads me to believe I knocked all those
things over because I couldn’t see very well.

But my mother’s actions gave me a great
sense of humor and turned me to poetry...
just in time before she went crazy.

"Even my sadness perhaps has changed..."

“Even my sadness, perhaps, has changed…” *
dissolved in the crucible of practice**, or, I’m
kidding myself and it’s really dissolved in
alcohol and toxins gleaned from the plumbing
trade…the drain bamage…. and, believe me,
a Black Hole is nothing more than the Universe
going down the Drain…know what I’m saying?

So NO….I’m not sad no more in the usual way…
…the way I was in the usual way, gain and loss
the gauge I saw…only. I’m sad you all are not
here with me on this point on the journey…the
journey we all are on and realize eventually…
the journey to move….MOVE….past the self
to see bigger movement we’re all part of,
but no need to take it personally…”as if I were
not my own, forgotten, even by me.”

Meaning, what, exactly?

"Oh, Nicky, You’re such a tool!" ***


* Quotations are two lines of a poem by Savadore
Quasimodo, Sicilian poet,
winner of the Nobel Prize for poetry.

** “Practice” In my case, meditation practice,
meditation in action practice…
but it could be yoga, tai chi, Karate, Sufi dancing…
i.e., any training that causes the inhabi-tint to awaken
from the delusion of ego...."reification", if you like,
any notion that there is anything really existing
anywhere anytime ever....got it mate?

*** Firesign Theatre..."Nick Danger, Private Eye"

Gourd Of Ashes

At Fukushima
a gourd of ashes
sits atop building four….
the containment of
spent fuel rods (ashes)
in a pool of water (gourd)
which if spilled will be
the end of life on earth
(for now)….December
2012 is coming quickly….
Laugh at the Maya,
the Hopi, while you can,
Monkey Boy.

Captain Beefheart

Don't know why I haven't posted this before.

This is what we are all still fighting for: (W)Ry Cooter on lead guitar...Beefheart in Grey Top Hat...UFO's swarming above in the second song.



Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)

Formal education: 1/2 day of kindergarten...I could say more, but, why bother? He is my hero!

Poem to: A.

Did a temezcal, Mexican sweat lodge, with some sweet folks...
I'll sleep well tonight.....
which is all I care about now......really, believe me,
I mean, what would YOU do if success (fame, wealth, sensual attachment)
suddenly came to you now?
I think I would laugh....
like that guy sentenced today,
in Colorado, to 600 years....
but not for the same reason.

Unbiased Heart

Buddhists always talk about compassion…about cultivating
compassion. But compassionate feelings many times feel at
odds with our likes and dislikes. How to cultivate compassion
when it’s mixed up with conflicting emotions? Here’s a
possible contemplation.

We can love without liking…anyone. We can understand that
underneath the attributes that we dislike about a person, that
person has the same properties of life that we do…the same
issues, struggles, and fundamental disappointment.

The ability to love….to love other people, to love what we do…
is one of our greatest treasures. Love always projects outward
and is infinite in nature. Likes and dislikes hover around
the self-observing reference point called “me”….and are it’s
sustenance.

Unbiased love is the reason why there is art, music, culture at all…
unbiased love is why the soldier throws himself on the
hand grenade to save his friends…it’s how strangers treat each other
after an earthquake or other natural disaster…it is an intuitive and
natural function of human existence.


To cultivate unbiased love, we have to look at things differently
than we are used to. We can realize that we don’t have to like in
order to love….that we can be critical, yet have sympathy because
we all work in the same direction….that feeling superior, (or inferior),
or any self judgment, for that matter,is just the creative action
of likes and dislikes.

Jesus threw the money lenders out of the Temple….does that mean
He didn’t love them?

It’s unbiased love that paints stripes on the tigers and causes them
to nurture their cubs.

Unbiased love is natural selection…it’s “tough love”….
it’s even cosmically romantic:

“When our hands are alone,
they open like faces:
there is no shore to their opening.” Bill Knott

Unbiased love is opening of the heart. It’s going into experience
where the film of likes and dislikes is not strong enough to cloud
our vision….where our interest points outwards, to
look, and from that, to see what is really there…and to act
accordingly.

Late Night Shiver

I was the Deus Ex Machina in the final scene
of “As You Like It’ By Shakespeare,
in college. I was wheeled out on stage in a cart…
a nod to the way many early plays were presented
to the public before theatres…but there was also the
notion of “heavenly machinery’ embedded in the
culture of the time…in alchemy.. the hermeticists…
that the Deus Ex Machina represented…..also there
were indications that celestial visitors were
known under a variety of guises throughout history
throughout the world that the Elizabethans
were supremely aware of.

Now I sit in my comfortable, secluded casita in
Tepoztlan having watched a video by a doctor…
Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Helen Caldicot,
laying bare the disaster of Fukushima and that
there is a distinct possibility that, if there is
complete collapse of containment, that life will
end on earth for now. Well, that’s what I got out of it.

I’m listening to a radio show I was on called “Late
Night Musings.” I feel like I’m in the movie: ”On
The Beach.” That movie takes place in Australia,
about the last people living during a nuclear Holocaust.
Dr. Caldicot is from Ausralia…which is where she
says she’s going if containment at Fukushima collapses.
She’s in Boston now.

So, what about the Deus Ex Machina? Is there a brighter
race of intelligent beings that have been “out there” all
along…..guiding us? engineering us? And what about now?
Now that we’re on the verge of self destruction: how can they
let us waste a perfectly good planet? There must be a Cosmic
Orkin Factor that we can’t see the magnitude of….
….or, they’re waiting to tell us the big joke AGAIN, and
that’s why we got the Marx Brothers in the first place….
that humor is the real benefit of evolution…of intelligence….
where intuition meets reality. ….like when the detective puts
the clues together…only…it’s fumy, which dissolves the
whole thing.

http://archive.org/details/scm-30754-drhelencaldicottwhatwelearnedf

Eggtooth

By Kottke. Although it's actually a medley.

So it's more like an omlette...

April 4, 25 years after parinirvana of VCTR

April Flower

I was one of your worst students….actually,
I was one of your best students…
actually, I was a bit of marmite on the edge
of the English muffin that was your mandala….
just a little smear, a slight taste in the feast…
the ginormous meal of every moment of your
life for the people around you. Even many that
met you didn’t understand you were and are
the Buddha.

Dumbo

Don’t be afraid of death…
be afraid of your next life:
the seeds you plant now
will grow.

You don’t know how you
got here…you don’t
believe in another life,
but you’re here now…

You think your actions
don’t have consequences,
yet you wonder why you
were born with one arm.
a woman, black, white.

You dumbshite, closing
your eyes on the edge
of a cliff...your beliefs
are destroying you.

A Finite Tonight

Contemplating my life
as a life in a stream of lives
we call “my generation” or “era”
and we did all fly through history,
following each other through time
like a flock of birds in the sky…
becoming extinct as a movement,
as they all did…not a species….
a temporary adaptation, perhaps
that served it’s time and displayed
it’s feathers and went out like a light.

Which is why humans shouldn’t be
so proud of themselves… how many
bridges they built or wars they won…..

Maybe the genetic marker…fuse…
comes through language, so we find
ourselves marching to a particular drum.,
together with the cultural context…what
you believe in …

...until you learn to look
and thus see ….the only ones that train
in that…the Buddhists, the Taoists…had
their temporary flowering in time, they
also have timelessness, which most can’t
fathom.

You Want More

You visit me
because you want more.
I want to whet your appetite
out of your heart.

Do you want more?

Burma Shave Poem

I see you there

But, where am I?

I may be looking

from the sky.


The Police

The Three Tells Of Existence

A “tell” is an instinctive physical reaction
by a poker player that “tells” his opponents
information about his hand. The movement
of an eyebrow, touching the shirt in a certain
way, when observed as a repeated act, can
clue the observer into whether the opponent
has a good hand , or is bluffing, for example.

Reality itself has three “tells”: facets or functions,
that point to the true nature of experience, but,
despite their universality, are seen as the major
hurdles of life because what they point out is that
the game is rigged, that it can’t be won, and
that we’re all a bunch of suckers in thinking it can be.
Nobody wants to see things
in that way, so we keep coming back to the table.

Impermanence. Nothing lasts….even the universe
itself will cycle back into the void, This is clear,
yet humans bet their money on creating empires,
fortunes, at the expense of others’ suffering, not
realizing that as circumstances change, so do fortunes…
that we’ve been playing the game for so many lifetimes
that we’ve already been dealt all the hands possible…
that we’ve won and lost so many times,
yet we’re still hooked by the game.

Suffering: We win…we feel good…we feel the
opposite when we lose. But the “tell” of suffering,
if we examine existence, is that no matter how
much we win, eventually we have to give it all
back and start over. Even if we don’t believe in
reincarnation, at some point, we lose everything,
and the suffering we feel at that point is directly
proportional to what we think we’re losing.

Egolessness: No matter how well we play,
there’s always someone better… or, we have an off
night…or we forget how to hit the golf ball.
Whomever we think we are is constantly being
challenged, is constantly changing. Much
time is spent supporting our idea of ourselves….
whether we think badly or well of ourselves is
irrelevant. And the idea of ourselves, itself,
is ultimately shown to be unreal. Ego is the
perfect con because it’s always adjusting to the
information it receives in order to justify itself.

If reality was a life-or-death poker game, we
would want to have all the information we
could about it. The way it stands for most people,
rich or poor….powerful or oppressed….no matter
what station, the house always wins.

Available Space (for Leo Kottke)

You always provided space in your music
in the tiny moments between notes,
in the catta-tonic pause between phrases,
the patta-tonic overlay of rhythms…
you broke my heart.



this sound from "The Book Of Tiny Dancing."

Autonomic Nervous Society

who needs robots when you
can force humans to be that…
am I beating a broken mould?
am I beating a broken record?
….cows getting together could
proclaim themselves as such…
bearing placards to the
slaughterhouse…

What Sound Do You Hear When A Bonsai Tree Falls?

"Tiny TIMBERRRRRR!!!"

Alternate:

"Banzai!!"

Rave Dharma Song

Sing in the great equality
Dance in the great equality,
And we meet in the great equality,
Eh Ma Ho, isn't this Dharma wonderful!"


Khenpo Tsultrim Gyatso

Just Do It

I just did it and then,
after a while. I found
I couldn’t do it anymore…
so then it was done, and
it seemed in retrospect
that having done it made
very little difference…
that whatever had seemed
so important about it was
just a myth that vanished
like smoke into space….
the only point seeming to be
that, having done it, I never
had to do it again.

End Game

Not much time left…
the life, the age…
not much time left
unless I want to continue,
keep the body going
the way power pumps
prozac into populace
to keep the game going….
no…
I’d rather go out, explode,
the way explorers took a
chance and found the world.

Reality Is Paradox

…because of the dualistic nature of the binary
construct formula of evolving being….making choices
through the maze of time, space, and incarnation to
reach a point of intelligence where the whole can
be groked as seamless experience and related to in
each vibrant illusory moment with utter precision.
The "unified field" is none other than perceiving
reality as paradox.

Impersonating What's Left Of Myself

I still do things the way I used to, just,
not as well…the hologram has holes
in it…fuzzy logic…sometimes sharp
as always, but not as often…

I don’t have enough medals to think
that I might have been something,
someone, once…which is fine with me:
just one more thing less to loose.

I hold up an “Anonymous” mask…
when I pull it down
I don’t see anything
in the mirror.

I can smell your house from here…
I can get to my house from there, or,
So it’s said…listening to a version of
“Wharf Rat” impersonating the Grateful Dead:

So It Goes…
in warm corn or
blue bayou…
hungry, fed,
fed up, almost dead,
I’m laughing because
this is the joke, as
Trungpa said.

For The Broken Record

Play it again
the joy the pain,
oh, you will….
because you can’t
help yourself, Sam.

Misunderstanding

did I say something wrong?
did I say nothing?
did I say nothing wrong?

Pick Up Styx

Moving along at the speed of
lethargy. Picking up coupons
for the next life…speeding at
the pace of oblivion,.. the lotus
leaves of material wealth tearing
voraciously at the flesh of our minds.

You There

You there...
who reads this…
Why?
What’s the connection?
Are you bored
alone
desperate
looking for something?

Is the truth in front of you not enough?

Or, is it possible you don’t see
the truth, and you’re looking for it?

Yes,
It’s possible…
It’s likely
It’s true.

It's Official: The U.S.A. is a Fascist State

On March 3, the day before my birthday, the
Defense Authorization Act takes effect, meaning
that after that date, the United States Government
is authorized to detain American Citizens indefinitely,
for no reason, without trial. At that time, the transition
from Democracy to Fascist State will be complete.
What an irony that the first black President would be
the person to eliminate the freedoms of all American
citizens. What the world must think of the U.S.A..
As for me, I never intend to go back there. The biggest
problem with this Fascist State, is that it is not a
dictatorship of a few: the whole society is corrupt
from the top down….from the corporate shills that rob
the country, to the stupid, obese, brainwashed masses
that allow them to do so. As Richard Dreyfuss said
decades ago: “The reason why there are no
revolutionaries in the U.S.A., is that they would be like
spoil sports at an orgy.” Well, the party’s over, the jig is up,
and it’s possible that all hell might break loose very soon.*

*http://www.darkmoon.me/2012/america-the-worlds-newest-dictatorship/

This article appeared  May 6, 2012

Words

Words do a thing to me
dance, ping-pong off each
other in my head.

Power of word
Power of mantra
Power of art…

“See no future, pay no rent,
all the money’s gone,
no where to go,” Beatles

O

(3 stanzas of a poem written
an understanding of where
I"m going...new phase...
drunk and stoned as fire
It all becomes clearer
the clearer it becomes....
but don't take my words for it...
I'm a moron....
(more on that later)....
and so it goes.....
Kurt Vonnegut's favorite phrase)

Oh yes, whatever…I’ve been there
STRONG before by now.
So words continue, you see, like the sea,
do they mean anything…does the water
mean anything as it burbles down the stream?

Words mean anything
you just have to put them
together right like a spaghetti
dinner, a pound of flesh,
a proclamation of freedom.

Plumbing Story

I was a plumbing apprentice in Boston, circa 1972,
I worked for a company that was going down,
because the smart partner died. They were reduced
to selling pornography and stolen goods from the shop.
One morning, one of the plumbers came into work
soaking wet. He had driven his car into the Charles
river early that morning. I was assigned to work
with him that day. We went to the building he
had been installing a new heating system in. He went
into a room and said: “I’m going to sleep…make sure
no one bothers me.” I waited there for however long.
When he came out, he got a call for a stopped up toilet
in the building. We went to the apartment, and he
started working on the toilet. The plunger and toilet auger
didn’t work. He pulled the toilet, and snaked it
from the outlet, which yielded no results. In desperation,
he got a hose and stuck it in the toilet. The bathroom was
tiled halfway up the wall, with a floor drain, so he wasn’t
worried about water. He wrestled with that toilet and hose
for a good twenty minutes. Suddenly, a gigantic turd slithered
out like a snake. We looked at each other in a primordial
state of mind, because seeing the turd we were so shocked
that anyone could have produced it. It was a true moment
of awakening.

Going Along As If Nothing Had Happened

Going along as if nothing had happened..
Going along as if you never were born.
Going along as if life has always been this way.
Going along as if your assistant had never
fucked that boy in the shower.

Going along…only seeing what you need to
right in front of you…plowing ahead
regardless of the consequences…

Sleepwalking in your favorite dream
till the accident….ravishing America
with greed till what you’ve gained
becomes worthless.


“Don't ask me about it…
I know nothing about it...
Nobody else knew either…
So, I went on in a fog, thinking
That nothing had happened.”

Pablo Neruda: "Don't Ask"

Perfect Timing

Too late...shouda been
there…uh…here…
as they used to say till
now became suburb of
when?

Here I am again…
every time.
Sometimes
I think I’m late…
lately the synchronicity
is catching up to me.

Sometimes I think I see:
“Capture that light in a
prism, Spock, before it
turns to ash!”

The only perfect time
is now.
The only time is now.

letter

Winter continues unabatedly beautiful weather-wise
in Mexico. The murders have slowed down for the holiday
season. The market abounds with toys from China. The
indigenous don't have much out on display so far in the
Zocalo, the center of town. Two blocks of the main drag,
Calle Cinco de Mayo, are torn up by large machines to put
big pipes in them. As a former plumber, I observe what they're
doing, and I'm left with a surrealistic impression....the pipes
are necessary as an image is necessary in a dream. Their work
does not follow formal logic or utilitarianism, from a
gringo plumbers p.o.v.. I was walking to my friend's house yesterday
for dinner, about a mile and a half away, down a main street that
leads to Amatlan, a bedroom-of-this-bedroom-community,
Tepoztlan. As I was walking I saw, and smelled my life's-blood,
sewage, a river flowing from some residence or posada, for at least
a half a mile, in the direction I was walking. It eventually found it's
way into a gully and hence to a riverbed. So, yes, surreal
infrastructure...what more could a plumber-poet ask for?

Holidays and New Year...and what a new year! 2012, when, for once,
all the flakey prophets might be right. I've had too many personal visions
and waking dreams in my life to ignore the larger signs....which are, actually,
prophesies from all major religions coming true when they said they
would....like, now. 2500 years of prophesy from Buddha....look it up.
You want to go on reading Harpers, the Atlantic, NYTImes, ect. and
roil in the culmination of intellectual prosperity inherited from the
"Awakening", Renaissance, Whatnot, go ahead. Rational
Mind, like the dinosaur has had it's time of dominance. What did it
accomplish? The imminent destruction of the world....hey, so long,
and thanks for all the thesi!

Occam's razor...the simplest explanation is usually the closest
to the truth. The Jacarandas will bloom in January, trees full of lavender
blossom. My survival paradigm will work as long as the current world paradigm
continues. That's why I drink everyday. Why look for a future when
you can't see one? Yes, a slightly negatory
p.o.v., however, it's just one life...it's just one world.

Doing Time

Wasting time
making time
schtupified

waiting for any shoe to fall.

It was nice earlier, when I was busy
in seemingly meaningful made up realities.

Now it's just me and the landscape,
pen and paper as an excuse
that something is actually happening.

When Trungpa, Rinpoche was alive
and we were young, crazy eyed,
overflowing with hormonal glee...

It was magnificent and terrifying
and everything else all at once.

Now it's just a still life in nature
punctuated by belch and butterfly,
humming bird and fart.

Smokey, The Bare Wood

Cement truck coming at ya fast
now what…
maybe not even that much time.

Shedding Confusion

The world humans are born into is a
confused world…it’s nature is confusion.
Humans are born with a blank slate, onto
which is written their experience.
But what’s doing the writing is not unbiased…
we learn from our parents,
teachers, environment. Those aspects are
biased towards confusion. As
a result, we grow up as confused beings.

The mechanism that creates our confused
world has three aspects: passion,
aggression, and ignorance. We build our
world by grasping what we want,
rejecting what we don’t want, and ignoring
everything else. This mechanism,
while somewhat efficient at survival, is not
interested in anything else. Because
our minds are not trained in anything but this
instinctive reactiveness, our lives
are lived at it’s mercy.

But there is something more. There is the
“I don’t know” component to our
experience. This “I don’t know” is experienced
when we try to learn anything,
but it is deeper than that. There is a fundamental
“I don’t know” that haunts us
our whole lives.

As we build the edifice of our lives,
the fundamental “I don’t know”,
sometimes expressed as “what is reality?”
is put in a closet of that edifice
and the edifice is built around it. Because
the edifice seems so real, the
fundamental “I don’t know” is hidden.
The world that is built around “I don’t
know” overwhelms it, but it never disappears.

The more solid the edifice seems, the less
concern there is about the “I don’t
know.” in the closet. If “I don’t know” rears
it’s head in experience, we either
quickly throw it into the closet, or, we try to
paint it with belief, concept, and
hang it on the wall of the edifice as an enhancement.
When our life reaches it’s
conclusion and the edifice we’ve built inevitably
crumbles, what we’re left
with is “I don’t know.”

This “I don’t know” is the key that unlocks real
reality, the unconfused world.
To use that key, we have to look into the “I don’t
know” itself. The means to do that is the practice of
meditation. Through the practice of mediation and the
cultivation of awareness, the fundamental “I don’t know’,
the question “What is reality?” answers itself. At that point,
confusion disappears.

A Flurry Of Mirrors

Mirror of my mind
So called reality
Space with a tinge of
Something called
Experience.

No more substantial
Than a rainbow, yet,
Seeming so.

So very….very, yet,
Always constantly changing,
Like a cloud of smoke.

Even a mountain
Is very slow smoke.

Our thoughts are
Nothing more than smoke….
That’s why we smell
Rubber burning….
A pipe dream…
(dream on)

Nothing more than
Light reflected in
A teardrop
Dewdrop
Drop of blood
Ruby
Diamond
Emerald
Lake
Ocean
Mirror.

Holiday Cheer

It’s beginning to look like Armageddon…
Everywhere you go…..
The bombs are going off,
Global warming makes us cough,
And all the chemicals in the air….

Radioactive white snowflakes are falling….
Everywhere you go…
Chernobyl wasn’t enough,
Fukushima was hanging tough,
Till’ an earthquake was right there….

It’s beginning to seem the Mayans were right
Everywhere you go…..
Time is speeding up,
Information is catching us,
And World Economy in the air.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,
and gums that do not bleed….

(Hey, Kids! Add your own verses!!
Make this an "Occupy Poem"!!!
((nudge, nudge, pass it around!)) )

http://youranonnews.tumblr.com/post/13784338017/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-nazi-germany

(Is The Mike On?)

Dear Rita,
we’re not all equal (egalitarianism not the same as equanimity) (x Democracy)
and people tend to form classes naturally (natural hierarchy). (x Classlessness)
“democratic values” is almost an anachronism already.
spiritual power…or, in this case (Occupy World) whether positive or negative
now
is what will change things
societal realities are moving more into their elementary particles
so even the phrase “social change” falls…”clunk”.
there’s no time and it’s getting to be a bit too much.

Marching Into The Future With Great Teeth

It’s getting to be a bit much
It’s getting to be a bit much
Marching into the future with great teeth

It’s getting to be a bit much
It’s getting to be a bit much
Saluting the policeman as you get out of the cab

It’s getting to be a bit much
It’s getting to be a bit much
Fighting over discount underwear you have to have

It’s getting to be a bit much
It’s getting to be a bit much
Looking for life everywhere but in front of you

The Algorithm Is Reaching It’s Five O’clock Shadow

The algorithm is reaching it’s five o’clock shadow,
and Billy hasn’t yet returned with the dumplings…
… don’t cha know you can go anywhere from there?

…the most significant piece of modern art is a urinal,
and I told my mother a thousand times we weren’t in trouble…
the people in control can’t control themselves, so,
“What’s eating you?” takes on a new dimension.

“Mandelbrot This! Cosmic Charley!”
was the headline….there were just too many pieces
to identify anything….but, at least, the hotdog stand
was still functioning…

Compassion

Look at it this way…you’ll understand
if you have children or parents…
you Love them….which doesn’t necessarily
mean you Like them. Look at all sentient beings
that way, because they ARE your family.
That is compassion.

The Purge Of Evil

For everything there is a season.
This is the time of hell on earth.
This is the time of the flowering of evil.
The Lords of Materialism have seized power…
It is their time.

The karma they accumulate from their evil deeds
Will rid the world of them for a long time….
They will not be reborn as human.
It is the time of the purge of evil.

Remain human!
Don’t get sucked into their trip!
This has to happen now!
Remain human! Remain human!
Don’t give into their bloody game!
What goes around comes around!
Cultivate compassion!
The leaders are lost in lust!
Their self-destruction is inevitable!

It’s Done With Mirrors

Must be…
if movies seem real reel,
i.e., done with mirrors…

All perception is experienced
in the mirror of your mind….
must be…perception of what?
Reflection…radar…

Clay-mates….we all are…made of the same…
genetic material mirror flashes…
memory beyond time,
cosmic meme…otherwise we wouldn’t
know to get lost.

Sitting In A Bus Terminal, Minneapolis, 1969

Tripping on acid….
Blowing bubbles with one
of those plastic wands…
grumbling from across the room…
the Ticket Master comes over,
says: “Stop blowing bubbles.
The old people don’t like it.”

Endings:

1.We knew it was the end of time…or, close.

2. We spent a week just thinking about that.

3. A Mandelbrot of endings.

Three D Poem

Panic at a pic-a-nic
reaching over the ants
for the cornbread
my stomach doesn’t need this
blurting out from my tee shirt…

…in mists of dawn no one thought
they’d ever see again, the shattered
landscape flowering with determination,
a possibility of balance once more…

…at the café on Rue Bouland,
perfect jour de printemps, her hair
in the breeze, the whistle from a
potato cart, bad news from the East.

Day of the Dead 2011 Tepoztlan

They’re here
Ready to party
Because that’s how they died…
That’s how they lived.

Fiesta is their religion…
That’s what’s with all the flowers…
That, and the dead live on and in the scent…
A trail of blossoms leads to their old home.

The dead are here
Ready to be alive…
Like the live are ready to party
And die.

A Thousand Glass Eyes

A thousand glass eyes were staring
Hands limp at the sides
As the Leader pulled the lever
No one cried.

A thousand glass eyes were staring
At the incoming tide
Standing in place
Mouths shut tight and dry.

A thousand glass eyes were staring
Away from the sun
Looking at the light
In the glint from a gun.

A thousand glass eyes were staring
At the flag that was still there
The wind had no will to unfurl it
In dawn’s rabid red glare.

Wholemind

Great minds think in holograms
Not paradigms
Struggle of a plant to green
Struggle to hologram
Manifest the whole in part
Unfolding the lotus beyond
Rational mind.

2 Arn/John

Which way will you go after death?
Do I have a choice?
Discretion is real it seems.

Somehow, perfection is cracked.
Lost in such possible dream
I guess I’ll go with door number two.

Having Fun Going Down

Face it.
No one depends on me
except me and,
as far as I can see,
what’s in front of me
is the denouement, the
going down, just a natural
part of life of this ephemeral
organism…this is where the
prism of light becomes clear
digesting the past so the present
dance has the meaning of it all
but not the plodding weight
of mind, of baggage, what we
carry that has no meaning.

Having fun going down….so fun
So very …very…of things as they are…
playing on a blue guitar.

Anal Mucus

Only the best…
Wake up now, Fuckers…
It doesn’t get any other than this…
Buck up, Spunky! We got more chips!

Ars Poetica: Pool Analogy

I write with the intention that I play pool:

I don’t care if I win a lot…just give me

one good bank on the eight ball,

because that's what they'll remember.

Raw Meat

Do you see it?
Can you taste it?
It’s only words
Did you react?
How’s about I say…
Anal mucus….
Yes…negative
Reaction by many…
Only words…
The association
A memory…
A personal meme…
Only words.

So numbarded are we
Everyday by words
We live as a pack of
Over stimulated
Over reacting
Slathering dogs
Howling silently
Through malls

That’s why I don’t
Learn Spanish…the
Silence is getting louder…
Peace is rearing it’s
Gigantic space.

I’m just a peace
of raw meat
in an open place.

Not Enough

Not enough, no, the night
That flames it’s darkness
And knows that all the tells
Of what is known
Don’t seem to be enough,
No, the heart is still the tell…
The heart is always the tell.

There's More Now

Why?
If ever…..
Jeeze, you get up
and more is expected

for me, getting up is enough.

More now is because there is more now

Of everything….even in Mexico….Cost Co
Sam’s Club

Everything is everywhere

Now and forevermore….

Suckers…..

Not me, because…

I got up.

Bad News

I’ll give you what you want if I have it,
which I don’t, so, if you’ll forgive me,
which you won’t, I must say this night
is too vivid and too long because it must
be for some insane reason which must be
me.

Blogdonovitch

Poem For Blog

Here, Blog, fetch my mind as it is now,
tendrelized, yes, sweetly, like anything
constructed, like a night, like a palace,
like a prison so beautiful in the now,
in the tension between the music I hear
and the words I write like Hemingway
tripping on life and death…..but let’s not
talk about that now…let’s wait till the
extreme shivers begin to call.

Selfone

Who needs a chip in the head?
There’s already a broken record
up there twenty four seven…the
monkey needs to be tamed.

Tepoztlan Story

“Thirty five years ago, there were no cars in Tepoztlan.
There were taxis, but most of their work was in Cuernavaca.”

Jerry had come to Tepoztlan in a busload of clowns, real ones,
from San Francisco about that long ago. They left and he stayed,
working for local bands, and later as a massage therapist. He was
a colorful character, but his Spanish was excellent, and the locals
took to him. He dropped out of Yale. He dropped out of everything.

“One time, back then, a taxi driver from Tepoztlan picked up a fare
in Cuernavaca at night. He didn’t get a good look at his passenger.
While they were driving, his passenger asked him if he was from
Tepoztlan. The driver said: “Yes, but how did you know?”
The passenger responded: “That’s not important. What is, is that
I have a message for the people of Tepoztlan. When the great
sorrow comes, Tepoztlan will be protected. You can let me out here.”

The driver stopped the car and let the man out. It was the middle of
nowhere. When the driver turned to collect his fare, the man was gone.

Evidently this story has been lore, since then, among the local
people. And the local people, the Tepoztecos, are not New Age
flakes.

They Know (A Fantasy)

The gutting of the US economy with no response
from the justice system… two wars that Obama
said he would stop still going on after four years….
2.3 TRILLIONS of dollars lost in those wars.…
for ten years the building of underground cities
across the USA….

The truth is where? Hysteria, fear and panic
promoted by media…information, dis-information,
misinformation blended into a confection of
confusion desensitizing the public to the truth.

If one looks at these phenomena coldly, one comes
to the conclusion that what seems to be happening
in the world is shrouded, hidden. No one’s
trying to save the world economy…in fact, power
is doing everything it can to steal as much as it can…
right now! And no one in power cares what
ordinary people think about it.

This smells of an end game. It’s no secret that the Illuminati
want to eliminate about 5 billion people. The strategy?
Hope that the prediction by scientists of a world destroying
solar flare happens in 2012, keep the people you
want safe underground, and let nature take care of
the problem.

A fantasy? Maybe…but simple logic and observation
show that people in power are acting as if
it could very well be true. Clinton got impeached
over a blow job. Bush did not get impeached although he
allowed torture. There are no standards anymore…
there is no truth that people can see or follow.
It’s a side show where the Carnies take the Rube’s gold
and flee town knowing that soon the town will be ablaze.

(In Huck Finn, by Twain, it's called: "The Royal Nonsuch")

Driving To Boulder

I didn’t think it would end
in my hot car, great sound,
driving to Boulder to the
Tribal Electronic Gaia Fiesta…
whatever...

but it did… all of it forever…
no problem…I have the music
like snapshots in my mind…
a map into the universe, like
coming off thirty six and
slowing down as you start
to head north…
and all that happened so
many times in the flash of
light that were those years,
arriving as we did into a place
so familiar, so beautiful,
so strange, to be branded
on the brain like first love.

The Wind: for VCTR

The wind makes the difference in your flesh.
The hammer-ring of birds and clouds.
Anyone can say anything about it.
Your speech embedded with natural truth
is the wind
is the salt of the sea
and the salt of your flesh.

1971-2011

Beginning to see the light...

I'm so glad I found this.

I first glommed onto this song when I was beginning to see the light.

If Ikku ever did a rock song, it would be this one....or, maybe Blake.

Late Summer Poem

Late summer when the grass is high
and the afternoon barbecues, screened porch,
Uncle John’s fat belly…Aunt Bertha’s wisdom…
sweet corn, screaming kids and dogs, a great
big Yellow Family Jello….mellow with the
timelessness of complete temporary pleasure

Story Of My Life

When things got too good,
I would create pain, because pain
was all I knew.

Pain let me see through the illusion
of my father’s world, success and
pleasure…pain welded me to the truth.

It was a crude technique for keeping
my head above water: fear of drowning
in victory….or any other promise.

I saw western civilization in my family…
I was able to translate that into what was
going on…at all….it didn’t look good.

It seemed that we were all on a runaway train…
towards the future…towards progress.
It looked as if the runaway train would go on
forever…I didn’t believe it. I was right.

Fragment of an E Rant

I mean, Charley, how many scenarios do I have to pull out if my (soul)
to get you to love me again?

Your magazine did this to me...oh yeah,,,,that and the drugs...which
saying makes me feel about 20. Oh and the music I'm listening to,
the place, the air,
el tormenta, This is like gold finding itself.

I don't do windows.

J.

Afterdeath

Afterdeath hangs on
like an Afterthought
of Afterbirth called life
of all of them awhile
while their life is fresh in
this life, like you saw
them yesterday but
didn’t get a chance
to say goodbye…
or you remember them
ten years from now…
an Afterlife if ever there
was one.

Lisa Says

I would listen to this song by the Velvet
Underground before my dramatic last scene
as the son in Albee’s play, “All Over”.
It would screw me in right into the right emotion.
I had a stage hand tap on my shoulder to cue me.
But I never did it better than when I did it at the
first rehearsal after I had practiced it at my parent’s
home in Illinois. Those were real tears.

Nothing Matters

…because what you think of as
“matter”, “stuff”, is just
condensed energy…so….Nothing
Matters, i.e., turns into “matter”….

…which is helpful so you can…

realize you turn thoughts and emotions
into things that “matter”, i.e., seem to
have some vague substance….”matter”
when….nothing really matters….becomes
matter or, equally, is something that matters

Some things are important….
But that doesn’t mean you
have to make a matter out of it,
or else you do.

The Points Don't Matter (for Drew Cary)

…like puberty to a girl’s voice
...like government to the Republicans
…like the Fall of America to Darwinists…

hey…I’m getting pretty pissed off here!!!

…like my anger…

One Day Of Life

One day of life is a miracle.
Novels have been written
about one day of life.
So many days strung together…
a progression of miracles…
this day a pearl, glistening with
nacre of time.

I Got A Line On A Whiter Shade Of Pale

Death is the new life…
greed the new standard of morality….
survival has replaced retirement…
the future does not look far away…
the build-out is almost complete…
the train is running out of track…
a world frenzy is beginning to build…
this time was predicted a thousand years ago….
karma is inevitable.

Pyro

Burning with the light of the life left
in me…flame of passion flaring up
to love all sentient beings though it’s
beat me down before…I’ll go to ash
before I give up on you bastards.

No More Questions

I don’t have any more questions.
A few more answers would be nice.
I mean, I joined you on this Mystery
Tour…without question, and then, yes,
we all had a few….some exploded…
some had a strange taste left in their heads…
OH YES, MR. SPACE MAN VCTR*….
Any questions?

*VCTR= Vajracharya Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

Mind Fish

Poems like mind fish
surface but don’t take the
bait unless I’m quick enough,
meaning alive,
to catch them in the act of
becoming…to hook them
and boat them so they can
gasp their last breath of….

I can do two more fish…that’s the
number that came to me just now
this moment…so this is the first fish.

The second fish is Earnest Hemingway…
a quote I can’t quite remember, or, catch,
if you will…so…this is the objective correlative,
the fish that we’re after….(I catch a lot of T.S.,
they’re like sardines…) No…he was the big
one that got away…..(which reverberates
in so many mirrors)…oh, no…oh god, I’m done.

Mind Stream

Crystal clear
roiled by flow and light
landscape of riverbed
embedded debris of life
waterfall emotions…
reaching the sea entering
vast peace.

Cliché Is A Déjà Vu You Already Had

Cliché is one of phenomena’s’ in jokes,
Cliché is a déjà vu you already had.
Cliché is one of phenomena’s’ in jokes,
Cliché is samsara not coming up with
something better.
Cliché is every family meal after twenty years.
Cliché is every politician that ever lived.
If you live day to day, year to year the same,
you live a cliché.
Cliché is not living, it gives the appearance
of life.

Often confused with phony, cliché is not phony
because it believes in itself…..contributing much
to the general chagrin.

Los Donas

The old mothers that gave birth
to all without exception…
Christ, Buddha Hitler and
everyone in between…
walking the streets wrinkled
and shrunken, love for their children
and their childrens’ children carve
permanent faint smiles into their faces….
they carry a living ancientness of the
meaning of life written into their bodies,
their bony hands and sagging breasts,
the aprons they wear as if to say
they can do another day.