Monday, December 31, 2012

Cafe At The End Of Time


I was meeting with my editor in that sad
café near the theatre district…the one where
those going up start out and those coming
down wind up. It was any other night. I had
an advance on a piece I was writing, and he
wanted to check on the progress. Hell…even
writers need a prod now and then…lazy bunch
of sots…

So, we were meeting and we both knew why
and we both knew the routine. We’d managed
to crank out several volumes together, so, why
should tonight be any different? But, it was…
it was very different.

“I don’t get it, Frank….we’ve been through
this so many times.  Why is it so difficult this
time?”

“Because I can’t write what you want me to.”

“What? You can’t find the words? What is it?”

“No…it’s because it would be wrong to put it
into words…because words cannot recreate
experience….because an oral culture…oral
learning…can only happen in person. A
description in words could only be a travesty”

“Words do the best they can. You’re a writer.
Why can’t you do the best you can?”

“Because I was told not to.”

The evening lingered, Our table became a confluence
of conversation, congruence and coincidence…
…it was like all the other evenings.

My editor….that sturdy intellect of steel…ambition
of purpose beyond personal gain looked across the
table at me and asked:  “What is it?”

I looked at him. I saw a man looking into a mirror
for his reflection. As I was ready to leave, I turned to
him and said:  “And never use the term ‘unpack’
in my presence again!” 

“Look, Frank, just think about what I said.”

“I will…but I’ve had enough of this for one night.”

I went to one of my favorite after hours joints…
“Save The Robot” I didn’t need any more advice…
I just needed to add more vice.

The joint was down by the docks, but not where
the sailors and other local traffic would find it easily…
those that knew where it was knew about “the door”.
There was something new on the door every day…
paint, chicken blood, (sometimes the whole chicken),
motor oil,  grease paint,  makeup, Crisco…you just
didn’t know what would be on the door, but you
knew that that door was the one you had to
go through.  Made them hesitate every time.

It was late or early, depending on your point of view.
There were a few customers…regulars, although
no one there would admit to being one. The place
had the usual stockpile of booze on the walls…it’s
what you couldn’t see there that was interesting. 
Manny was on that night. He was one of my favorites.
Great sense of humor and impeccable timing when he
thought somebody needed a taxi. And he could
work the crowd.  I looked around the room. It was
decorated in anonymity…a perfect place to sort ones
thoughts. …and I had an assortment.

How could I write about what had happened to me
in that prison? I’m not even sure that’s what that
place was, though it sure felt like one. No….this was
going to take some time to sort out.

“Heavy thoughts tonight, Frank?  What’ll it be?”

“Hey, Man…. Give me a half carafe of dirty martini
with a shot of absinthe and infusion of opium.” (I had
things to think about, but I didn’t want my brain to
work too hard. We had a deal.)

“Sure, Frank….”
“Have you heard from the Skipper?”

“A postcard from Montauk is all…
not much info.”

Manny made the drink….the place was
so quiet…he brought me the drink, nodded,
and went back to his station.

Joel was a great friend as well as being a
top notched editor. I never would have been
a writer except for him. I got by with style
and humor….but there were some subjects
I never told Joel about…I never wanted to
touch them…until last week….until I realized
I had to.

                            ****    

I was sitting at the bar on the beach….a wooden
table and stools under palm trees…another perfect
day.  People walking in the sand or swimming dotted
the landscape. My Crown Rum and coke was
strong. The Miami Herald  I was looking at had no
headline….the space where it should have been was
blank. It was obviously a misprint….but when I
saw it,  it had a curious effect:  all the news was there,
the main stories, the sports, foreign news…but no
headline…as if nothing that had happened that day
was of any significance…just some things had
happened.  I looked out at the horizon of blue on aqua.
I was going back to New York to a promotion and
a corner office.  I didn’t want to go.

                             ****

I was driving along in a car with my father when
I was eighteen. I made a big choice, or, rather, a big
choice came over me, like, I knew what I had to do,
that I would succeed, but that I also had no idea how
it would happen. A peace came over me.

                              ****

“I had a course in college my senior year led by
a Buddhist monk and scholar from Tokyo
University. We’d meditate every morning for an hour,
the teacher would tell a funny story…and that was it.
The only academic requirement  was that we kept a
Journal….yes, it was a piece of cake, but I was really
interested in meditation and what a so-called Buddhist
Teacher was like.  I observed him pretty closely. Well,
the crescendo of that was his going away party at the
end of the trimester,  to which his students were invited.
Sensei got really drunk. He gave a rambling, tear filled
oration in which he expressed, among other sentiments,
that he had only hoped in his time at our college that he
had been of some benefit to everyone. The Midwesterners
and sturdy Americans of Norwegian ancestry were stunned,
not knowing how to react.

My reaction to that scene changed over the years, and,
ultimately, it became a profound teaching lesson for me.
Sensei had completely confronted, in an outrageous yet
completely kind way in which only he could be blamed
for a lack of skill, the very frozen fabric of the American
established middle class. When it happened, it shocked
me…but years later I realized the skill. And that’s just
one story on my spiritual path,  How could I possibly
explain the complexity of working with one enlightened
teacher for fifteen years?”

Joel nodded and sighed. He raised his glass and we
toasted.

“Just tell me more stories.”  He said.

“Imagine that you are the straight man….in fact, you
are one of many straight men of one comedian. Now this
comedian is helping you by showing your foibles with
humor and sarcasm. And anything you say is likely to be
the straight line for another one of his jokes, which hurt
because they make you feel, rightly so, like a fool. And
this comedian does this only because of great compassion,
but, after a while, you know what’s coming, and you try to
avoid it as much as you can, even though you greatly
appreciate it, see it’s value, and have only respect for the
comedian.”

“OK….so?”

“That’s what it’s like working with an enlightened
teacher.”

“Well….that wasn’t so hard to put into
words, was it?”

“Look, that’s finger painting, not
photography!”

“Just get it on paper or put it into electrons
and send it to me!”

































Sunday, December 30, 2012

Higgs Boson?

The latest discovery at Zern has identified
that the "Higgs boson" is actually made up
of two other bosuns: the "Pigg" boson and the
"Hogg" boson. Scientists think it's quite
likely other  bosons will be discovered.

As one Zern scientist put it:
"It looks like it's bosons...
all the way down."

Friday, December 28, 2012

Koanversation

It's not that something is always here...
what's here never really arrives...
what's here is always arising....
arising is the only here there is.

Eisenhower


Eisenhower gave us eight
great years of Daddy Joy
knowing we had won!

Yet, that Eisendaddy warned
us when he left our lives that the
Military Industrial Complex
was still the bogey man under
our beds…..bad daddy…
couldn’t stop it, could you,
daddy?

I remember when you said:
"Everything is more the way
it is now than it ever has been."
And I believed you, daddy....
heck...It took me ten years to
understand what you said.:
that you were a good cause
that had won but became lost.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

The Children Of The Successful Velveeta Eaters


“Shall I grapple with my destroyers
In the muscular poses of the museums?
But my destroyers avoid the museums .”  
Wallace Stevens

The children of the successful Velveeta eaters
listen intently and properly to Beethoven,  Haydn,
Liszt, in their suits and dresses, grey and desiccated
in the academic venue from which they still suck 
life…. the zombie factotum class spawned from the 
Velveeta lotus eaters of postwar success and yawning 
hope for the future.

These are Anonymous…anonymous in spirit unto
themselves…cultural cultists programmed to see
smell, feel and think within the lines, high on the
opiate of alleged security…rows upon rows of them
in theatres, malls, offices, schools, churches,
basketball games… fitted like bed linens to the vast
social landscape….docile, obedient, convenient…
expendable…..lost in their own lives…imprisoned
in convention.

The successful Velveeta eaters were good people.
They just didn’t realize the kind of cheese
they were being handed until it was too late;
it snuck up on them one slice, one aerosol can
at a time…and their children became processed
like the cheese itself; manufactured, packaged,
blended.


This is where we are: in or affected by

a cheesy landscape of manufactured consent…

mutual twisted agreement, if you like…

the only heroic action being to get out for

the sake of oneself and the others....."get
out" meaning freeing the mind from conventional
social perceptions.






Saturday, December 22, 2012

End Of The Road


I went down where
The dead tree stands
An owl on a limb
With a cold blue stare.

Nowhere further to go
I stood there looking
In my socks, shoes and hair
My skull a bare wire.

Nowhere to go, that magic
Feeling,  as the greenscape
Begins to come in, as the field
Resolves itself in perception.

That there really is nothing to
Look for except what’s in front
Of you.


 
SFÂRŞITUL DRUMULUI
 
M-am dus în jos acolo unde
Se afla copacul uscat.
Cu o bufniţă pe ramuri
Cu o privire rece albastră.
 
Nicăieri nu-i de mers mai departe
Am rămas acolo privindu-mi
Şosetele, pantofii şi părul
Craniul, o sârmă goală.
 
Nicăieri de mers, acest sentiment
Magic, precum trunchiul verde
Care începe să se interiorizeze, precum câmpul
Care se rezolvă pe sine prin percepţie.
 
Căci într-adevăr acolo nu-i nimic
De văzut, în afară de ceea ce este
În faţa ta.
 
FINAL DEL CAMINO
 
Fui allí abajo donde
Hay un árbol seco.
Con un búho en rama
Con un azul frío.
 
No hay ningún lugar para ir más allá
Me quedé mirándo
Mis calcetines, zapatos y pelo
Cráneo, un cable pelado.
 
No hay donde ir, este sentimiento
Magico, como la trompa verde
Que empieza a interiorizarse, y el campo
Que se resolva si mismo a través de la percepción.
 
Porque en verdad no hay nada
A ver, aparte de lo que es
Frente ti.
 

Translations into Spanish and Rumanian by Daniel Dragomirescu
 



Friday, December 21, 2012

What I Think


You don’t want to know
what I think, because
what I think is so different
from Dallas Cowboys
sales at Best Buy
shopping spree mental
breakdowns at the mall…
So:
Don’t ask.

Spontaneous 12-21-2012

Hello!

Is it today again?

Does the sun still shine,
does the moon still glow,
do flowers still seem to bloom?

Well......do you think we could....
maybe....

APPRECIATE THAT NOW?

....maybe that IS the Eschaton....

(a double "eschatondre" ?)

(meaning a double take of the eschaton....
for those that need help)

(which most of you unfortunate
pieces of robotic future trash....
nothing personal ...are  )

(meaning.....maybe....nothing personal
.....but....maybe......you should be careful
crossing the street.)

Doug Patterson


I just remembered his name.
I was a sophomore in high
school when I knew him.
He used to tease me, call me
“Leonard Leech”… he looked
like  Zippy the Pinhead
physically…big soft body and
pointy head…he played second
fiddle to Dick Teichen (Teichen/
Tischer) who teased me harder but
somehow looked like me so I got
confused………

Monday, December 17, 2012

Happy Nuclyear!


I lost the preceding poem
because of drain bamage
and nuclear holochaostrophy,
extending McKenna’s word
to something he couldn’t see
because he was right about
novelty, but, as he said in his
last interview, “novelty” does
not mean necessarily something
you would see as “good”…. It
just means “change”….so…
Fukushima is included in the
paradigm…You can open your
present now.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

A Green Leaf On Grey Cloth


Harless Uthnorth    (Guest Poet)

A Green Leaf On Grey Cloth

I see all the plates crashing
stubborn daggers dragging
at the social occasion you
prefer to call your lives
and your loves, Mon Dieu!
I shiver to reflect on the
unintended paths and their
outcomes falling like Pachinko
balls in the random parlor of
bright lights and distracted
wisdom,

But green words on the grey
cloth  of having to write always
rips me into forcibly putting my
ink to the cut on the bull’s neck,
boxer’s eye, because, simply,
they need someone to see and
tell others…because theirs  is
where the truth lies.




Friday, December 14, 2012

Matrix, Maze, Magic


Matrix…maze…magic…
Hinayana…Mahayana…Vajrayana…
Ground…path…fruition…
Hand to mouth to…
You think history can’t end?
You think that all the political
intrigues of the twentieth century
mattered even a little?  OK…
tell me how?
Now, brown cow, the same mistakes
of the past are still here and exponentially
worse….as well as the possibility of a last
second transformation of a different
dimension….  So…
(Pardon me, but your institutions are showing..)

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Written In My Cabin


Are you when we need you?

I’ve listened to “Cream Puff War”
over 600 times like a paleontologist
trying to see where rock meets bone
meets mind…my roll top desk and
satellite computer connections seem
luxurious…the whole ship is astonishing
in it’s opulence….but I only crave the
simplicity and complex codes encountered
at the interior pub…wood paneled…limited
seating…demure lighting…where something
real could be said…where the bartender knows
my bar tendencies…this year cruise around
the world a true miracle and coincidence,
(let alone a fantasy)  Although what I propose
to engender: A documentary, a new play, could
offset some of the inevitable unenviable damages…
so…that’s why I’m here….because for once in
your unenviable lives up to now no matter how
much money you have you can see something
good and react positively…. Just a thought….
I could even do a radio show once a week....
of course there's more.



D-Day


I Died On D-Day

On the beach…in France…then I was
re-born in Chicago….Ravenswood hospital
1949…raised in suburb…Winfield…Dad
was a lawyer….mom a schizophrenic…
perfect beach to land….scrambling to find
cover…or what the war of my new life was
about…I found the same old enemies; power
and control…but my karma was clear and
propelled me forward to help establish a beach
head of Buddhism and peace and brilliance and
knowledge and wisdom in the United States,
which we have done, albeit the degenerate
times hinder our light.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

1913 1933 2012


Berlin 1933:  from: “In The Garden Of The Beasts”
by Erick Larson;

The trams moved as usual, as did the pedestrians
passing on the street: everything about him had
“an air of curious familiarity, of striking resemblance
to something one remembers as normal and pleasant
in the past—like a very good photograph.”

Mexico 2012:  12.12.12 Day of The Virgin of
Guadelupe…the Padmasambhava of Mexico…
even the weather seems to be holding its breath…
the whole planet leans forward seriously and says:

“Take a good look.”

Monday, December 10, 2012

Letter to A.

that talking to you and playing around with words
increases my tendency to think in terms of lyrics...

...I'm just saying....

...it's probably an osmotic aesthetic process....

or, it could be a truck load of empty oak barrels...
or an elephant at the zoo who's cripple, but can't complain....
Orville and Wilber were able to fly because their craft
was light enough and they had plenty of gasoline and whisky...
...same for Timothy Leary....

...I'm just say'n...

what's the difference between a crock of something and a load of something?

Well, at least a crock of something has a crock around it.....(slightly more respectable?)

...I'm just say'n...

I like those ceramic jugs of whisky...now, there's a crock of something...
when you drink from one, you know you're drinking and have no shame...
(suddenly my mind went back to 3; the earth smell in the alleys as we
walked to the candy shop)

(Now that candy sky is filled with needles)

(It only takes a song or so for the words to flow...
but when I listen to Randy Newman, I know I'm finished.)

I just realized...
(I'm just say'n)
when you left I couldn't see the world...
but now I know you're gone
everything is clear

(Not that I didn't have a mother of a time  and 
crush an ass of hampsters, drive my car into a truck,
just jump off an effing mountain...oh yeah...oh yeah...)

so, play the record backwards, bastard, and see what
I didn't forget to say....

drop me a line,
throw me a grenade,
kick out all my teeth,
then give me lemonaide

...it's all gooooooood.

(End of message)

December 21: T.G.I.F.T.E.O.T.W.A.W.K.I.


T.G.I.F.T.E.O.T.W.A.W.K.I

2012-12-21 falls on a Friday, which revises the famous
slogan to: “Thank God it’s Friday, the end of the world
as we know it”…..fitting for any Friday…really.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Rock Meets Bone


My heart left home…
I was bad, bare, alone…
I found myself there
Where rock meets bone.

I went out on the road
With another load, hoping
Never to be known….I
Couldn’t forget, but I could
Try not to remember.

Truck stops, steaks and chops,
Stares and  trash talk, wading
Through just to keep going, trying
To see where rock meets bone.

Turtles And Titanics


At a dinner party, a woman was in conversation with
George Bernard Shaw:

Woman:  “Surely, Mr Shaw, the theory  of evolution
cannot be correct. Everyone knows that the world is
balanced on the back of a turtle.”

G.B.S.: “Indeed, Madam? Then what does that turtle
rest on?”

Woman: “Why, on the back of another turtle,
of course,”

G.B.S. “I see…..and beneath that turtle?”

Woman: “Oh, Mr. Shaw, it’s no use….it’s turtles all
the way down.”

The world economy is a Titanic….
The environment is a Titanic….
Seven billion people is a Titanic….
The New World Order is a Titanic…

It’s Titanics all the way down.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Frontier Mentality


Little boxes….the frontiers
shrank, even as the mentality
grew and life was removed from
the streets, sequestered in manage-
able units, Daddy in his Laz-E-Boy
in front of the T.V. holding a loaded
shotgun.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Hammer: A Poan*


Looking into the mirror
the poem gives itself
birth because that clear
mind, our nature, can do
fantastic things if given
space. 


* A "Poan" Is a poem that is also a koan.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Alligator (For Bill Knott)


poet waiting by
the side of the road
in a café…some bank
to sun on where prey
will show itself in all
it’s social splendor and
raw meat perfume which
calls the predator out to
find its masterpound
of flesh.

Poem For The Repressed


I have fresh grind
of coffee, music,
weed, mind…jump

in

or, just jump in place…

jump for joy…
jump because
you can’t avoid….

Jump because it
suddenly makes sense…
or, jump for nonsense…

out of your skin is the thing….
jump clear out of your skin…
into the clear blue
where you belong.





Saturday, December 1, 2012

December 2012 Haiku


How will it be in
three weeks? Will I recognize
the world? Do I now?

Party at Barry’s:
pre-“whatever” party…
plenty of good food.

Every day from now
the coffee will taste different:
each morning the last.