Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Short Story

I was having drinks with Keith Dowman last night, and,
as I was leaving, intoxicated, I slipped and fell down on
a slope by his house....it was a happy fall into dead branches
and soft earth... I thought.. "I fell into a nest provided by angels."

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Living In Golden Brilliance

What else could you call or  see
in an alki, old, just coming in
to what he should have been,
but, didn’t know how to get there,
so, juked around the obstaces,
anything that got in the way,
to clear field of bare perception?

How’s that for a question?

Handsome Woman

I remember some men calling
some woman handsome, maybe
one of the few word occasions
when men forgot their sexual
misogyny for a brief moment.

They Can't Hurt Me Anymore


I went through their gauntlets,
around some of them…all my
plumbing bosses yelled at me…
I got through that….it was good
to help me understand my own 
anger…

I accomplished remaining human
while the world flailed and twittered
around me in it’s dance of death.

So, they can’t hurt me anymore,
the transparent ogre materialists,
the robotic paranoid rationalists,
the hyperbolic conversationalarialists,
the sand lions,
the empty balloons,
T.V. zombies,
shopping mall corpses,
redundant Emcees,
privileged power junkies,
bloodless buisness vampires,

No, I acomplished more than they did…
I accomplished more than nothing.




Monday, December 29, 2014

Ars Poetica

It doesn't matter what words you say.
It's what they do when they hit your mind.
Natural event... beyond the natural effect,
there is no meaning.

Attempted Suicide

I met a yogi from India who told me
I would die in bed, so, that's where I
spend all my time now.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Easier Said Than Done

I remember listening to that song...mowing the family lawn...

and this incredible cute 14 year old blond

would somehow accidentally often while I was 

mowing the lawn

walk up the street to her house a block away..

maybe three times our eyes met, and she smiled...

I turned on the gas....and mowed furiously.

Acting And Meditating

The path of meditation accomplishes
what acting, the experience of being a
character, does naturally.

Here’s a myth…it’s difficult to experience
non ego…takes hours of meditation…no.
All it takes is the willingness to be a
character on stage. There’s no way that
can happen if you’re dragging the baggage
of yourself along with it. You get into the 
character….it takes a while to see that you
can be that role…when that happens…while
it’s happening….there is no discursive thought….
just the next line....and the person you're
pretending to be, who is as real as the person
you think you are.

Confidence in your role
brings a satori…a rush sometimes.

The problem with acting is that it does’t
dissolve ego….just postpones it.
Harsh example….and I loved Robin….

Did he kill himself because he was losing
his time on stage?

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Father/Son Talk

My father once told me
(he didn’t…I’m making this up)
“If you don’t control yourself,
people will think you’re crazy.”

I said   “But, Dad, if I control 
myself, I’ll be like them and
think I’m sane.”

Announcement

This is to announce the formation of an
organization to quell manspreading.
Manspreading is a psychological 
condition where big, fat male slobs
ignore the society around them and
take up too much space, "spreading"
themselves unconsciously,  both
physically and psychologically,
thus infringing on the space of others

The Society for the Prevention of
Manspreading has been established.
The cause of manspreading has been
determined as what is now being called
“male pattern stupidity”. Containment
teams are being formed, primarily in
urban areas where manspreading has
reached epidemic proportions due to
the overconsumption of fast food.


Help Stop The Spread Of Manspreading!

Support The Containment Team!

Friday, December 26, 2014

Top Ten Questions You Never Want To Have To Answer If You’re Married

10   “Isn’t this the best sex you ever had?”

9     “What would you do if I died?”

8     “Are you almost done?”

7     “Where’s my bracelet?”

6     “Are you happy?”

5     “Do you know where the children are?”

4     “What do you think of Daddy?”

3     “What do you think about seperate vacations?”

2     “Is it OK if my brother moves in?”


1.    “Isn’t this the best sex you ever had?”

Thursday, December 25, 2014

I Can’t Say I Can Love You Now

I’ve always loved all of you, but,
I can say you’re making it more
difficult to like you now.

You’re making it more difficult
for you to like each other now.

Your only fault is that you won’t
wake up to what’s happening now.

Not just you, my children, friends,
so many have been lost.

And, if you think I’m wailing drunkenly
about my personal experience now,


just wait ’till the train runs out of track. 

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

All These Thoughts

Flickerings across my mind
are not amazing by now, just
the juice of what goes on.

Like, it’s not my mind anymore,
not my world, which I realized
long ago.

I realized my mind wasn’t me,
in fact, the me that I thought 
I was was just a mirage.

I still go on, I yak, I eat,
I appear in public on the 
stoop of the coffee house
for moments in the morning,
my public service…

and most of my thoughts dribble
into the gutter like spittle…so much
for the Western World.

sorry, that was something I would
have written if I was a poet….
and that is as far as my heart 
breaks tonight










Do You Have Any Idea How Stupid I Think We all Are?

It won’t take
very many words
because, otherwise,
it would be a redundant 
negative, so, as an 
intelligent yeast that 
proliferates
and consumes it’s 
environment, 
all I can say is
bon appetite.

Sweet Christmas Story

My grandpa told me this sweet little Christmas story.

When he was young, his family was very poor.

One night, his father took his shotgun out side and fired it.
He walked into the house to the sight of his startled kids.

He said

"No presents this year...Santa committed suicide."

Monday, December 22, 2014

The Unexamined Life Is A Big Mistake

This is one of those poems
where the title is the punchline,
which is the goal of all my poems.

Many poems, for me, are just
filling in the lines…of course,
having a boffo ending line is good.
That way, the mirror is complete.

Shades of doing what I’m describing.
Hard to bring theatre into poetry.

Delicious when tears mix with joy.

Babylon Brook

Is what I feel sometimes I am…
hiding in the reeds somewhere
where the gurgle I sometimes
recognize as my voice is sending
somekind of message out where 
there are people. It really has an
ancient feel….earth and water in
proximity and mixed…as the 
metaphor for my mind.

Trapped in a simulacrum of what
I thought I should be, or, a replica
of what I thought I once was.

(That’s a twenty buck phrase there,
Dude, step up)

A brook, with it’s rocks is like a Calder
gazebo, where the motion is constant, 
frozen….like so many people’s lives.

American Professional Football An Editorial

I’m not one of these bleeding hearts that feels
professional football is too violent…in fact, quite 
the opposite. I feel there should be real violence
in the sport to reflect properly the violent nature of
our American society (Well, yours…I moved to 
Mexico…what do you think I am, stupid?) 

Random murder is becoming a national passtime, 
so, our games should reflect that fact. Of course,
ice  hockey is pretty much covered. But, I’d like to
propose a few rule changes for professional 
football to bring it up to date with the American 
experience, while also adding zest to the game 

At the end of the game, the player on the loosing 
team that blew the big play should be sacrificed
to the fans. Of coure, this will take a period of 
acceptance for the viewing audience. It could begin
with a season ending injury, and go further from 
there. The benefit to the sport would be that every
game would have serious consequences…
no more shitty games or unnecessary hand
wringing over standings. And, depending on
fan approval, any limbs that get cut off can be
thrown into the stands as souvenirs.

Another idea I had, I call  “option 45”. In this case,
each team would have one play a game where they
arm any player with a 45 calibre pistol with one
bullit in the chamber. The gun is only used on
offense, and not during the last ten minutes of 
the game. The player would have the option
to shoot an opposing player. The coaching of 
this option would be a bit tricky, because if you 
shoot your opponent's best player, he’s gonna
shoot  yours which adds a delightful gangsta/
Hatfield/ McCoy aspect to the game…
so American!

These are just a couple of suggestions, but, from 
them you can see the possibilities. This kind of
play could be instituted in World Cup Soccer,
where it already sort of exists. Let’s go with the
strenghts of our (your) society!  Too soon?




















Sunday, December 21, 2014

December 21…My Father’s Birthday

No wonder I’m drunk…
I couldn’t remember when it was….
so, I had to be drunk all year long
so I wouldn’t miss it.

My moher would have gottten that joke.
At least, that’s what I’m making up
in happy remeberance of my father…

…who taught me to ride a bike…
..who wouldn’t tell me about the Mafia…
…who told me he would drink olive oil
so he could go out and drink and not get
drunk….who told me of people he saw
get killed on the streets of Chicago 
when he was a boy…who I worked with
digging tree stumps and building limestone
walls outside our house…who didn’t 
understand me when I was old enough
to understand…who told me he loved me
just before he died, and, I him.
No wonder I have any character.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Zen Moment

I saw a sign when I
was driving over a bridge
that read
"Slippery When Slippery".



I had to pull over for a while and get out of the car. 
Suddenly, a white GTO screeches to a stop...a red neck 
jumps out...he's wearing NASCAR clothes...he runs over 
to me, slaps me in the face, and, just as quickly, jumps back
into his car and is gone. 
That's when I realized the world is my teacher.

Three Stooges Zen

Thursday, December 18, 2014

On The Road

They said on the road
but they didn’t say where to.
For them it was the path that
mattered because they were 
in the process of waking up,
and they knew it intuitively.

They showed their generation
what was possible.

Most only rely on ruts.

Truck Dancing

I was a plumber,
drove big trucks.
I used to dance in 
my driver’s seat
from job to job to
the radio music.
I thnk the only ones
that noticed me
were the ones that
gave me the finger.

Meditation Is Work

Many people who try meditation
say they can’t because their minds
are too distracted, not realizing that
the distractedness is the reason to
meditate, to develop clarity of mind.
So, they give up, because they 
expected the heavens to open in
the first half hour. Many teachers
have said that meditation is manual
labor, putting yourself on a cushion
and following your breath, labeling 
thoughts as thinking. The closest 
thing it reminds me of is when my
family would spend an afternoon
pasting S&H Green Stamps into
books. Boring, repetitive, and. in
the beginning, looking at the 
dresser drawer full of stamps,
seemingly endless, times ten
because I was a kid. That’s why
you need to know why you’re
meditating before you even start.
It's a life long endeavor.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Improvising Your Life

Why not?
Anyone that realized
anything did.

When will you take control
of your life?
HEY!

Improvisation means
you have to make it up 
on the spot.

that’s so natural….
HEY! We all do it
in brief moments
when we’re cornered…

Why not take that as 
an anthem?

Tiny Dancing

My first wife was an expert in 
hardly moving when she danced,
which meant you had to watch her
to see she hardly needed to move,
which is all you needed to see.

Amazing what we hear in a whisper,
see in a glance. I fell in love just noticing
her back as she walked up the stairs.




Tuesday, December 16, 2014

No World Order

One more addiction and I’m outta here…

And the next one that says “A man of your age!”

gets a right to the chin.

People are snapping like popcorn in hot oil

all over the USA. Does this really come as much

of a surprise to anyone? And when did you think

you might wake up? Kerouac felt his vision of

America was pure. I believe he was right, for

the short span of innocent time as America licked

it’s wounds and took over the world. There was

a gap when people in power, mostly, didn’t know

what to do with it. When they killed JFK,

the government became made men.




Monday, December 15, 2014

Drag Yourself Out Of Coma

Dance to the music if you can find it.
Give a speech to the public if you’ve
got a mind…take off your clothes and
get arrested covered in flowers…they
won’t taser you for that.

Anything you do in a mall is ok…just
run into a changing room when the 
security guard puffs around a corner.

Uncivil disobedience…but, funny!
There doesn’t need to be a militant
message…the disruption is the
isinglass.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Things Not On My Bucket List

I saw The Doors on acid.
I wrote a poem the first word
of which was “Hitler”.
I met a Mahasiddha when
I was twenty two.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Liszt “Les Preludes”

Hitler listened to this the night
his armies invaded Poland.
This was a leitmotif of Ming.
the Merciless, of the
Flash Gordon serial movies
of the thirties. It’s got legs…
all I’m saying…

My father showed me where
Buster Crabbe trained in
Chicago.

Botoxin

Oh, they left that out,
the warning that whatever 
you do to make yourself
more beautiful has an 
equal and opposite reaction.

Confessions Of An Alcoholic # 1234….

It ain’t so bad, and I don’t know
why you're not all here..now…sorry,
I lied…yes I do.

But, I lost a train of thought….
I guess I’m almost out of track,
not off track, no, I know where
my lines are laid.

I spent a weekend in San Miguel,
where Neal ran out of railroad ties 
to count up.

This was going to be a serial
confession, leading into a serial on
cable, leading to oblivion of the real
lost horizons of people that really
feel they have it made.

Maybe they do, for now, sure they
do…Cosby did. I love you all, but,
you make it hard for me to like you.







Belief

You can believe in Santa
or, the tooth fairy, and, it’s
kinda nice for kids.

When you start getting into
Gods of the various brands,
it ups the ante, to say the least.

Even if you say you don’t believe,
you believe in that…only when
the stakes aren’t too high.

Seeing is not believing, it’s
seeing…

no one ever told you that.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Shed

They used to take some of us
out back there when we were bad,
and whack us on our butts or wherever
so we could learn there were some
bad ideas we should shed.

They took us out back because they
couldn’t take the shame of us, and,
wanted to protect us from our shame.

We’ve all have to shed at least as much
as needed to fit in.

I learned the goal was to shed it all.
After the first few beatings, I didn’t really
need any more. I call the first few beatings
the first fourteen years of my life.

The more you hold on, the more
you will have to shed when you’re dead.




Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Come In Rangoon

Too much static from
the overwhelm..the
message isn’t clear.

Do we even still know
what we’re fighting for?
Or, even if we’re fighting?

I’m in Mexico. There must
be some reason why I’m 
here, not on some front
line somewhere, in the
middle of the whatchacall it,
revolution, jihad, chaos.

Come in, Rangoon…
it’s been so long since
I knew where I am
in the middle of changes
that boggle the mind….
Rangoon…specter of lost
time that could still tune in.





Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Watermelon

I want to finish my life
with the sweet juice
already tasted.

So far, so good, in spite
of all my friends 
abandoning me.

The sweet juice doesn’t 
depend on any of them,
or, even me.

Because, I’m only any
more there, you see, as
the title of a poem.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Late Enough

Like waiting for a ship or a train
two hours ‘till bedtime, the voyage
continues prone because flat is when
the mind continues to digest the life
which old people naturally tend to do.
Don’t let old people fool you by their
silence, seeming lack of attention. 
They know what you will at their age,
and, what will you have to say? 

There’s No Reason To Clean My Kitchen

I want my kitchen to be dirty
when civilization ends, or, when
my life ends, whichever comes
first, although, I bet the odds 
are even.

It’s a beautiful human repellant,
made for those whose noses
stick too high above their upper
lips.

Maybe it’s an excuse because I
don’t care because I’m a drunk….
Maybe it’s part of my Jackson
Pollock outlook, so very, very…
Maybe it’s the only way I can
still rebel.

Certainly not a way to impress,
but, do I want to impress?
Certainly not.




Haiku After Watching A Documentary About The Beats

A minor poet…
I just watched a Beats doc…
poured another drink.

Ten years too late I
met Ginsberg…he said I should
be secret poet.

Living suddenly,
without thinking…the Beats did…
spirit warriors.

Kerouac, Trungpa,
both dead at forty seven…
trains run out of track.

The shock of peace paused
the return of warlock mind….
Beats joyed in heart dance..

.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Was There Ever Anything That Meant Anything?

I know, we all know

the meaning of our personal lives…

or, we don’t know, or, we think we know

or, no…

all based on supposition that we had any

idea about it anyway, based on, as Vonnegut

did say, the bad chemicals in our brains.

There’s so much more to get over than anything

you could learn, in fact, you’ll learn more by

getting over everything…. I mean, children,

no one said it would be easy.  My parents

only showed me how hard it would be to be

myself…the path shown to me was one where

it would have been much simpler not to be.

Too soon?







Saturday, December 6, 2014

Replicas

Of immensities…
Of mundane scenes
of life still going on…
Of what we remember
from our family, what it 
meant to them to be alive…
Of the immortality of some
experiences we’ll never 
forget….of the love, or, the 
real, that will carry us across
the universe.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Last Poem Of An Evening

Yes, the last poem always starts
with yes.

I’m sorry we have to start with yes
at the end of the evening…the rest
was much more interesting.

But, yes is where we start, even if it’s 
the end because we know there will be
another beginning…

..in the morning maybe, no, yes, always
when you get up, whenever that is…
whatever shock, maybe even just knowing
that you can’t sleep anymore…

..and you have to get up, wanting to be in
bed forever.

And your life goes on, even though you’re
not certain you can remember who you are. 

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Stasis

UFOs and the Pilgrims…
the indians couldn’t see
the ships in front of them,
because there was nothing
in their experience that the
phenomena could reference.

There is nothing in my 
phenomina…right now…
that my experience can 
reference.

I’ve never been old before,
(in my memory), and looking
at it, it’s like getting a new set
of old legs…

What? I have to learn how to
walk again? Yes.

Stumbling along like an old
robot falling apart? Yes.

My body continuously tries
to rebuild the Xanadu of 
homeostasis, while my mind
continues to do it’s thing
somewhere…

Getting a new set of old legs
is my being reborn….realizing
the full circle…the cycle….
continuously coming back to
square one…lots of clues in
your past…mine your experience
for the gold of moments when 
you remember you had the 
chance to learn.









Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Slave To The Truth


I'm a slave to the truth....(I know, it's what I think to be true 

in my subjective view, maybe )

but....2500 years of Buddhism can't be that far off.

....and, in my position as a curmudgeon,

I can sit on the front porch of the world and shake my cane,

and say everything you know is wrong.

Monday, December 1, 2014

Xanadu

Is where I live…
in the secret caverns unseen…
you could say it’s my mind.
You could say it’s mind.
Unseen, like when you get
up in existence, the bare light
of knowing where you are
in the brief moment before
your parents and everyone
tell you who you are.

Unseen, brilliant, cavernous,
hidden, life itself, yes, someone 
saw it.

To A Poet I Just Read

I only need to look at his face

to know his poems....

I hope someone will say that about me someday.

The Next Poem

Starts out like all the rest…
a title…a concept like life..
where are you going to go
from square one, 
my little one…my baby, my 
son? Turn around and you’re
walking…turn around and
you’re grown….

(Vers 1)

..turn around and you’re
fucked up in a holel of 
your own.

(Vers 2)

Turn around and you’re
turned around knowing
nowhere to go.

(Vers 3)

Turn around and you’re
famous, with no way
to know.

(Vers 4) 

Turn around and
when you stop you can’ t
remember where you been.

(Vers 5)

This is just the next poem…
I always knew when to stop.
That’s why I’m still here.









Zen Crocodiles

You call your mother…
she picks up the phone and says,
“I was just thinking about you!”
We all know of this experience.

Hippie serendipity worked fine 
when we were aligned properly 
for a while….a pig like that,
you don’t eat all at once.

The Police State wouldn’t be so
police state-ish if it didn’t realize
it already lost. They can’t protect
themselves from themselves.

”A snowflake on a burning stove!”
…the Zen general flicks away his
counterpart’s sword with his fan.

The crocodile sitting in my lap
made me write this.

Poem For Madalina

You’re too young for me….
too beautiful….
those were my first thoughts.

Some say with age comes wisdom…
I say with age comes….age.
It’s a luxury to eschew complexity,
bask in the simplicity of knowing
if you haven’t done it by now, 
you might as well relax.

I wonder what young, beautiful
women think….I have time for
that now….before, the hormones
didn’t leave much time.

I don’t know how to thank 
anyone for anything….so,
here’s a poem...