Don’t Waste That Drunk…Hand Me The Pliers

Oops…here I am again in that “special” way

that bards and PTSS sufferers seek for  solace or

inspiration…where the muse and intuition hang out

together at the bar at Juanita’s in Boulder with

William Burroughs, on the railroad tracks all night

wth a bottle of sacramental wine burgled  from the

Northfield Catholic Church, Saturday night with

the son of William Bundy…don’t waste that drunk,

the one you’re in, or, the person over there propped

up against the doorway, either case something cosmic

important, don’t you see? 

Trungpa  Rinpoche was being driven in San Francisco.

He was driving by a place where there were many drunks

in the doorways with paper bags...alone, or in small groups.

Someone in the car asked him: “Who are those people,

Rinpoche?”  He responded something like: “Oh, they’re

all great enlightened beings…mahasiddhas!”

Don’t make me bring out the pliers…trying to drink myself

into a place that might be where I’m crazy enough to have

something to say that might attract your attention like a brick

in the head is hard enough…you don’t have to make it harder.

But, now I’ve reached that glory space where I don’t really

care about what I care about….like when the crossing guard

takes off her uniform….like when the old man is finished for

the day scavenging cans, and sits down to his plate of beans.

It’s all there in all the written words, what those people who

wrote about it went through…waking up on someone’s floor

and trying to figure out who you were, that person there, alive,

breathing ashes of last night’s Xanadu,