Koan

How can you know?
smelling a piss bottle
half full…half empty?

Old Days

Hey! Thanks for the calendar!
I remember Goodhue dining hall
in 1968, when my plate of spaghetti
turned blue in front of me....
I knew, then, that was the start
of a very creative period for me...
that lasted the rest of my life...'til now....

Bill Knott Poem

"Goodbye"

If you are still alive when you read this,
close your eyes
I am under their lids....growing black.

Bill Knott

Digital Chimera

Oh, the dreams we pursue....
oh...the dreams...
the music....the visions
dressed in silk and feathers...
and, then, shall I presume?

Oh the days and nights leading
one into the next like mini eons...
oh, my body wasting on the couch.

...just a whimper left
to pay the cable bill.

A Drunk With A Wand

That must be God….

how else can you understand the mess we're in?

"God's will…."

Well, yes, that makes perfect sense….

….if you're a drunk.

Simple Poems

That's what we need now

to remind us of life in the

complexity of who knows?

That is all.

A Nice Doggie

I met a nice doggie

as I was coming home,

with my cigarettes,

from the tienda.

He was white with black

spots, or, black with a lot

of white territory.

The dogs are territorial

in my, or any neighborhood.

The dogs here know me….

how could they not?

I smell different…

even to myself.

So, a doggie welcomed 

me, that was nice.

I like being part of

the environment.

Whattya Gonna Do? (song)

Whattya gonna do when 

you don't know what to do?

Don't know what to do…

don't know what to do.

Whattya gonna do when you 

don't know what to do,

don't know what to do.

Whattya gonna say when 

you don't know what to say:

"Have a lovely day!"

have a lovely day…

don't know what to say.

Whattya gonna think when 

you don't know what to think

mind is on the blink

don't know what to think,

don't know what to think.

Whattya gonna do when 

you don't know what to do….

don't know what to do?

(1971  Madison, Wisconsin)

.

Message

It seems pretty clear now that humanity
has become unworthy of this planet. Even
if one ignores what's happening in Japan,
the principles on which decent peoples depended,
honesty, truth, egalitarianism, democracy,
are increasingly no longer practiced. Because of
Fukushima, the ambitions of corrupted world
leaders have no chance of being realized. Yet,
instead of seeing a dire situation that includes them,
they continue to pursue their plans with ignorant
determination. What good will world dominance
be, in, even five years? It will be like playing
"king of the hill" on a pile of corpses. Luckily,
life transcends existence. Increasing awareness
and facing the reality that is, is the only alternative
to going crazy. Many will go crazy very soon.
and, in the USA, Homeland Security...even the
entire USA armed services....won't be able to
contain it.  Humanity has had it's chances....
but, it's been deaf for a long time. A blogger who
was active about injustices just posted his last blog....
it was about Fukushima. He said he would no longer
blog about anything. He is Canadian. At the end of
his blog, he was crying. So was I.

Wisdom

the only thing my father said to me that meant anything

(and it meant everything)

was:  "The truth is the most important thing."

He's Still A Boy

My old friend,

my age, 

used to be a doctor.

Drank too much 

and wasn't paranoid

enough and lost his

license.

Now, he's spent

thousands of dollars

and years 

trying to get "daddy"

to forgive him.

Memory

Signifying particles of pure
intensities screethed across
the rusted gutters of rationality.

Copper tendrils eviscerated the
monopoly of a few golden arches…
the jewels began to shine in their eyes.

Luminosity is seeing that cables
may support the bridge but the metal
itself is a disease…yet, we only want
placebos because we’re hypochondriacs.

(From an early post on this blog  2007)

Sailor's Song

i've learned to sail through these drunk'n waters,

without harming any of the daughters....

I've learned to fish in an empty sea, so,

no flies on me.

A Blessing

I have a new Blessing before I eat supper....

It's from Dick Cheney:

" God told me to eat you now....Amen."

A La Farley

Well, I don't drink so much ANY MORE

and I know how to moderate my drinking

WHEN MY LEGS HURT, and my mind 

seems still cogent WHEN I'M NOT 

BLACKING OUT, and I still write, which 

is good, BUT NOT GOOD, wait…wait..there's 

something wrong with this

computer.

Om Mani Padme Hung Up The Phone And Poured A Drink

No….I'm not going to talk about that now….

let's not talk about that now, shall we?

No, I'm not in denial…in fact,

I see clear enough for all of us…

but, let's not talk about that now…

the old people wouldn't like it.

Cunning Linguist

That would be me…

not that I'm tooting 

my own horn here
…no....

I've been tooting 

for many a year.

I love that dirty water….

"The way to eat a fig…"

Even my Jewish Princess

extinguished her cigarette.

Douche (rhymes with touché)

Explosive fart shit
could be attractive
for a certain slice of
the population.

Hey, two can push
that button.

When the swans came
to the lake, or, is that
when the iron bird flies,
or, is that  when the
rubber duck quacks?

You have no idea
what I'm saying and
there's no telling because
either you get the jokes,
or you don't laugh....

or,  as the comedian said:
"You'd better laugh, folks,
because these ARE the jokes...!"

Love,  Joe Schmidt.

Brains

The human brain is the most advanced
product of evolution that humans know
of. So, why don't scientists study it?
Well, western science is  starting 

to do just that. 

For centuries, since modern

science began, western science has focused
on what the brain puts out: thoughts, ideas,
theories, models about the nature of reality.
These models have changed, over time, but
science has gotten no closer to  understanding
what reality is. What it has done is  achieved a
greater understanding of how reality 

seems to function, and hence, has developed 

sophistication in manipulating those functions.  

But…where do those theories come from?

Where do thoughts and ideas come from? Is
the brain  just a machine of perception, or,
does it actually produce

the reality we seem to experience?

So, scientists are starting to study the brains
of meditators whose traditions have been
examining these very questions for thousands
of years. One thing that they've discovered
so far, is that experienced meditators brains don't
function the same as people whose minds weren't
developed in that   way. They are finding a stable
base of experience in those  brains that is not
confused by thoughts or swayed by  emotions.

Doh!

The development of western thought, from
science to philosophy, was based on the products
of those brains, without an understanding of the
nature of those products. Scientists are no closer
to discovering what reality is. In fact,

the closer they look, the less they see. The
human brain is well capable of manipulation the
relative world; the world that we experience
through the senses. But, without polishing the
mirror of the mind, the experience of humans

is clouded with all that brain output….some of
it helpful, some not. For hundreds of years,
untrained human brains have been putting out
useless, limited concepts, such as:

"I think, therefore, I am." without asking
the important questions, such as, in this case;
"Who said that?"

Western science, the new religion, has turned,
finally, to thousands of year old traditions
to answer questions that it is incapable of.

When Yeast Meets West

The earth is suffering

from a bad yeast infection

that likes to call itself humanity.

Like any proliferation of yeast,

humanity uses up all it's resources

and drowns in it's own excrement.

The earth is like a patient

suffering from a disease…

it's life functions are questionable.

It's ok and natural: even life 

is scaleable. And even the universe

has its cycle. It's just rather unfortunate

that people think they have names.

Wheel Of World Fortune News

In an unprecedented move, Portugal has purchased 
the first letter of it's neighbor country's name for the 
sum of $2.5 billion.  Sportugal  asserts it needs the 
added letter to promote it's 50 world class professional 
sports teams,  and lack of food.

In a government statement, Pain vowed to move forward
without its "S".

Tepoztlan Note

There's a band playing somewhere outside, that 

"1,2,1,2" beat… someone's hitting a brass…cowbell 

or something, deadened, to accent the beat….
as if it  wasn't simple enough…or, they just like
to make sure  all the drunken musicians can hear
something…but it's like one of those comic
two-person fake horses with the silly grins
picking their feet up to the beat,  as if dancing…..
I'm so happy with these people…

they won't hurt you unless they're drunk
and crazy…. but just make sure when you
walk around there  are some old women,
and you have nothing 

to worry about.

Nothing To Koan

Zen Master:  "I've stopped using a chair."

Zen Student:  " I heard Chuck Norris stopped using a chair."

Zen Master:    (silent)

They bow to each other.

Informed Discourse

...like anyone else one chooses to believe

...no matter how erudite they may come off,

the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, as Whitehead coined,

...and I've been drunk for over forty years...

Burma Shave

ADVERT

Oh, Baybay....

It gets hot from here...

That's not a threat, it's a promise....
That's not a threat, it's a promise....

If you wanted to know
you would have listened
long before now.

BLOOEY!!!

Just call it another day...
just call it a life, my dears,
just don't get in my way.

Actually, you can't get in my way,
you can only get in the way of yourselves....
which you call core value...
(expletive deleted)....

Fleetwood Mack : Rumors: 2013

How hearty heart har! har! oh!  it hurts so much!

So bad! So good!   We are all just second hand news!

The pastel music…the good coffee still swirls
in the cups as we wake up in a morning, still
beautiful with the flowers and the croissants
just so without any thought of time.

In now without any thought of now some of
us still alive have experienced that and could
tell but who still alive and trying to make it in
this gone world has any time?

Sleight of hand, sleight of mind, Jesus with
an AK47.   How much do you need to see to
realize what is true? I loved you, I trusted our
truth, now everything turns  around.  The truth
of foible repeats. Anything that can  happen will.

Quantum Dagwood

A quantum Dagwood sandwich
is one that is so tall, it goes out of

the cartoon frame…. but, if you could

see just beyond the cartoon frame, 

you'd see the order of ingredients

repeating themselves.

Serial Lobotomy

First you had posse comitatus,
then you had Habius Corpus,
Then you had, the 1st through 5th
amendments... . "I can feel it, Dave,
the loss of my freedom."

R.E.: Silk Road

dear friends...I know the moral issue here 
is not only that the person was conducting 
an illegal enterprise, but that he was willing
 (?) to commit murder to further his endeavors. 
There always has been a black market for
any activities. Some, like selling pot, seem 
to be morally positive to a lot of people...
murder, not so much. Perhaps, some people 
legitimately need one of these  illegal substances, 
and, albeit, more expensive, this type of venue 
might be a  safer alternative than the street. If 
there is a need and a possibility to fill that need,
as [insert clever] pointed out, "nature will find a way" 
as  Jeff Goldblum pointed out in Jurassic Park.