Saturday, April 30, 2016

Old Curmudgeon Poet

Grandfather poet
full of platitude advice
out of spunk
not even punk
I left all my good ideas
in a trunk.
Tired of slapping fools around
it just hurts my hands
and they just keep coming
with idiot grins
marching in step,
lemmingized.

It was better when they
lived and died in Iowa
never leaving town.
Now their spew is all
over twitter, 
over twittered,
as if it gives them
credibility, the way
their lost beliefs
used to.

For goodness sakes!
Go back to belief and
stop having opinions!
No one cares!
No one should care!
Even you don't care
other than the fvoment
you can induce in
other idiots!
Don't hydrate,
you can't hold water!

This is me, Grandpa,
on the front porch
yelling as you morons
march past in step,
wishing your destination
was the ocean.
Keep going...keep going...
you're getting there.











"Things will turn out the same anyway"

Make a decision, just make it...
things will turn out about the same anyway.
Don't live in fear of second guessing...
the more mistakes you make, the more
you learn, and sometimes you can't help
but get it right. 

Listen to feedback, the cosmic guru...
be willing to realize when you're wrong
and change it, that's how the blade
sharpens. Go off fully cocked with  
a strong back and your eyes open
and moist.

A business plan is a pawn, but a good idea. 
Anything can always happen
and usually does. Even if you make 
millions doesn't mean that you'll be happy.

Halfway between playing the horses
and inheriting Fort Knox is where we
usually find ourselves, quivering with
anticipation, or, frozen solid as ice.

The kachinas are everywhere to tickle
or trip us. We should be a little humble
and thankful. Arrogance drives into a
wall at full speed. There is no manual
for life...rely on your senses...that's
how you got this far up the ladder.

Trusting your reason completely is
unreasonable...there has to be wiggle 
room for intuition, the inner guru. Trust
that more and life may become a 
circus, not a game of chess. 

How do I know this is true?
Well, I have a great sense of humor,
I just can't prove it.









Thursday, April 28, 2016

Friendly Cosmic Rant

Seven billion people
not worth a universe sneeze
crowded together 
like yeast in beer
drowning for the same reason.

When asked about aliens,
my teacher said:
"Oh, yes, they've been coming
here for a long time."
He wasn't referring to 
the Enquirer.

All religions predicted this time,
this time we don't even recognize
even though we are in the midst
of it. Many of us are on the edge
of our seats, feeling the inevitable
is just around the corner; not 
because we saw some guy in the
street carrying a sign: 
"The end is near."
No, because we feel the street,
feel the phone call is coming,

Modern art tried to warn us of
the breakdown, the change, the
degeneration...we thought the
paintings and the music interesting,
though discordant. We thought it
was art, not communication from
the collective human mind, 
a heads up.

I feel what's happening in the USA,
though I live in Mexico...I'm glad I'm
not too close, in the middle of it. I can
see what's happening to people 
that are, and it isn't pretty...getting 
closer to not even human.

We are yeast in beer, but our minds
are much more...more aware than
they let on...heavily repressed so
we can get on with our yeastiness.

The universe shuffles the cards....
"Whose deal? Pass the peanuts.
Ante is one world."




Wednesday, April 27, 2016

review of my first published collection

http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/features/literature/book-review-brownian-life-by-john-tischer.html

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

My Life Flashes Before Me

All the actions I took,
all the decisions I made
flash before me
like fireworks at the end
of a festival.

My life flashes before me
like a child's face, eyes 
wide with wonder.

My life flashes before me
each spoonful of sugar
in my coffee.

My life flashes before me
when I leave my house 
each morning dressed 
like Angus Young, ready 
to play "Highway to Hell".

My life flashes before me
in front of my computer,
ready to write, 
without a clue.

My life flashes before me
my whole life....only now
have I started to see it.

When I die, will my life
flash before me?
At that point, who cares?






The Right Mind

A common phrase to say about someone
who is crazy is: "They're not in their right
mind."

What is this right mind? What is sanity...
same question. We know psychosis is 
when someone sees their glass of water
as a glass of blood. Their perception is so
skewed that they can't see what's in front
of them as what it is. But there are many 
people that seem outwardly to be "sane"
that are not in their right minds. Ted Bundy,
for example, who hacked and bludgeoned
people to death, can be seen in interviews 
a rather charming person. Most psychopaths
are not serial killers. One study done, a 
test given to people in a wide range of 
occupations, to determine who had 
psychopathic tendencies, revealed that many
that tested positive were CEOs, politicians,
church leaders...in other words people in
situations where they could exert power and
control over others. These people may seem
socially acceptable, but they are not in the 
"right mind"...the mind that sees and relates
to phenomena clearly and accurately.

People in their right minds are not so self 
absorbed and self centered. They are 
interested in and sympathetic to the world
around them. They are not so concerned with
how everything affects "me". They don't dismiss 
the sufferings of others. 

In Buddhism, the ultimate right mind is the mind
of enlightenment. What are the characteristics of
that mind? Buddhism has many teachings about
enlightenment. One way of describing it is in 
terms of two qualities it has. The two qualities 
are "emptiness" and "compassion".

Emptiness means not being addicted to 
discursive mind, the part of mind that thinks. 
Ego, "self", is the obsession with "me", "this", 
which is fed and  maintained by thoughts and 
emotions; thoughts that have a lot of energy 
driving them. Wrong mind is to be obsessed 
with getting what we want, pushing away 
what we don't want, and ignoring the rest of it.
Wrong mind is the endeavor to solidify life into 
a  perfect state of pleasure and security...a 
goal that can never be reached. It is a complete
strategy of failure, but one that most humans
follow. Emptiness is the absence of this struggle,
absence of addiction to wrong mind strategy, 
freedom from discursive thoughts and emotions.

Compassion is realizing that suffering is 
universal. It begins to arise with freedom from
wrongmindedness. It is apparent in empathy
and sympathy. As we begin to turn away from 
"me", we begin to feel more clearly the suffering
of others. The more open and aware we become,
the more we cannot help but begin to feel
compassion towards others. It is said that one 
cannot attain the ultimate right mind for oneself.
It can only happen for the sake of all the others.
This is how the bodhisattva path arose in 
Buddhism.

So, right mind is emptiness of self centered 
mind for the sake of others. This is the ultimate
philanthropy. It is apparent in all true art.

Even people who are not in right mind experience
glimpses of it throughout their lives. Many times
these glimpses have the effects of distraction or
annoyance. Some experiences of right mind stick
with people their whole lives as memories; that 
moment long ago in a canoe on the lake, watching
the sunset in the west at the same time the full
moon was rising in the east....the first time we 
made love...that one thing our parent said to us
that we'll never forget. These moments of right 
mind permeate our lives.

Right mind is our native state of mind. We can't 
create right mind, but it is always available. This
right mind is the only thing that always seems to
be missing...slightly beyond our grasp..the itch
we cannot scratch. It is the reason why we 
meditate, do therapy, take psychedelics. It is the 
basis of all spiritual paths and perverted religions.
It is the universal right mind, the only thing we
truly share as human beings. We cannot loose 
this right mind, because it is innate to our beings.
We can't create this right mind for the same 
reason. Right mind cannot be produced, but it can
be cultivated. It cannot be evoked, but it can be 
exposed. Like a diamond covered with rock, the
impurities that cover right mind can be removed,
leaving only right mind.

The only problem is that there is an obstacle to
experiencing right mind: the aforementioned
addiction to wrong mind; discursive thoughts,
the self centeredness that cherry picks reality.

The most effective way to give up our addiction
to wrong mind is to go cold turkey, which is the
practice of meditation. Many people who try to
meditate get quickly discouraged...they come
face to face with their addiction, discursive mind,
and they see its power and momentum and
feel they'll never get the clarity and peace they
assume is the object of meditation. What they 
are actually experiencing when they see their
minds simply for the first time in meditation is
the jones, the withdrawal symptom for their
addiction. It's much harder, takes longer to get
off wrong mind addiction than it does 
methadone. There are no quick fixes like ibogaine
to eliminate this addiction. It's manual labor 
and it takes time. There is no easy way.

But even after people have been meditating for
a short period of time...say a few months...they
begin to see that after that hour of meditation,
squirming that the time is not up, forcing 
themselves to sit until the end of the hour, even 
though the phone is ringing, when they get up,
they begin to notice a slight freshness, a slight
wholesomeness they begin to recognize. They
begin to get a sense that meditation really is a 
good thing to do, beyond the hype. It's not much,
but it is something. it is a blade of grass of right
mind, beginning to reveal. 




























































Monday, April 25, 2016

Even My Company Forsakes Me (for Salvador Quasimodo)

John, my spiritual doppelgänger,
it was nice to know
when you were around.
My sangha brothers and sisters
profusely scattered 
after the change.
At least, I can talk to my brother, 
now that the medicine
allows him to be human.

I've gone to seed...my thoughts
are scattered like electronic
milkweed...who knows if they'll
land on fertile soil? A few new
friends are taking root in my life...
heaven help them; I pre-apologize.

Not even sad...my life is the way
of all lives...nothing special...they
may remember a poem of mine,
but they won't remember me; the
ones that do will also die.

No monuments, please...why
pretend eternity? Sure, use of me
what you can...like weathered 
New England barn wood, use me
to redecorate your minds. I'm worth
at least as much as a few tin cans.

There is, after all, only one poem,
written in so many ways by so many.
There is only one heart we share...
It's time we all know this.
Why else do we save the poems
of those dead a thousand years?

Because there is only one heart, 
one mind, that sees things clearly:

the right one.












Sunday, April 24, 2016

What If Satan Got Angry?

Isn't he always anyway?
He might as well should be...
he wears the outfit, 
walks the walk.

If he got angry, wouldn't that 
be redundant? Is he ever happy?
does he ever look at a flower
and not think: "I want to destroy
that"?

When he reads the paper over 
coffee in the morning, does he
smile and think to himself:
"Good...things are just fine."

If he laughs with his friends,
(if he has friends), what do they
laugh about?

"Sin sure is a bull market!"

"Finally, most people are going crazy!"

"Gotta love the presidential election!"

"Political correctness...I wish I'd 
thought of that!"

"Bring me L.B.J. ....I want to hear 
his story again." 

Saturday, April 23, 2016

I Quit

I must not be a poet.
I don't care how the words sound.
I only care what they say.

I don't care what I say...whatever
comes out is okay...I don't see 
enough future to hire an editor.

I've said it all already anyway.
I just keep writing words because
I don't know what else to do.

So many I's in this poem, you know
I must be doing something wrong.
I don't care, it's not my job, I don't
have to get it writ right.

I don't know enough to know when
it's over, time to quit, throw in the towel,
abdicate, give up, shut up, be still,
be quiet...you see something is wrong.

I'd like to stop but I don't know how.
I'd like to say something nice, people
would like, but I'd rather tackle them
tickle them, yell at them:

"Put down your god damned cell phones
and take a look at the world you're in!"
I should be banned from writing.

But words are free, speech is free, few
are paying attention. Talk in the world
is hot, steaming, bubbling blaze of sheer
heating up nonsense amok in an out of
control environment, civilization, species
that can't help itself and knows it deep 
down but doesn't know which way to turn
with seeming good ideas getting lost in
tsunami of out of control events planned
and spontaneous uncoordinated, anarchy
the home game too big to fail too big to
succeed nobody else has a clue either.

And yet, when I'm sitting in the morning
outside the coffee house, sipping and
smoking, nothing seems out of place.

Figure that one out.






Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Up Again

In the morning,
did my chores,
processed thoughts
of the night before.
Waiting for an earthquake
the next few days.
I felt the last one here
before it happened.
Waiting for election;
Hillary the monkey,
Bernie the fox,
Trump the lion,
who will it be?
I feel something bad
before it happens.

People come to Tepoztlan
for vacation, from
Mexico City, for the air
and the ambience. It's
safe, for Mexico, for the 
world. 

A prophesy forty years ago;
a taxi took a man at night, 
into the countryside, nothing 
around. "Let me out here.."
(the middle of nowhere)
"When the great sadness 
comes, Tepoztlan will be 
spared." The man disappeared
into the night. (stranger things
have happened...)

Who's kidding whom?
What do you see?
Where do you look?
The truth is never negative...
we put judgements on it.
And nothing much is 
different since the beginning
of time, the beginning of space.

When I was young, my mind spun
with thought, trying to figure out
where and why I was at all. I read
everything. 

When I met my teacher and asked:
"Isn't there an easier way?" and he
shook his head and smiled, I stopped
reading and got busy on the path.

Now, I get up again, into a day,
as the world keeps spinning....
as the universe keeps spinning...
as your minds keep spinning...
going nowhere. 

In Tepoztlan, 
waiting for the change.


















Monday, April 18, 2016

Alone

Like Milarepa in a cave...
like Trungpa in America...
like many other old men.

I'm ready to die...
I fulfilled my life,
doing what was right
instead of what I was told...
instead of following the ideals
of twisted minds...
instead of dying in Vietnam,
or killing my self afterward
because I couldn't stand 
what I had done...
instead of joining 
the one percent
of super predators.

Instead of that, I helped
build meditation centers...
taught meditation...
walked the bodhisattva 
walk, and not for a penny.

I'm not alone in a hotel room
in Portland, on the street of
San Francisco, in prison in
Colorado.

I still can afford to live for
a few years more....after
that, who knows?

Who knows anyway?




Friday, April 15, 2016

United Mistakes Of America

United Mistakes Of America

I'm glad I don't live in the USA.
You gotta be asleep to believe
nothing's wrong there....
Endemic, systemic, systematic
wrong.

I knew something was wrong
when I was fourteen, when I
heard Kennedy was shot...we
all knew something big was wrong.

Fifty years later, we know how and
why it went wrong.
Sadly, fewer people now feel
anything is wrong...fewer people
feel anything.

"Pardon me for asking, but,
you are a robot. aren't you?"

The New Age meme was just
a pimple on the face of corruption.
the coming of age
of the Dark Age
of American evil.

I didn't go to Johnson's war, the war
that eventually destroyed his mind, or,
was it that he had the Kennedys and 
Martin Luther King killed?

Few want to read this stuff I'm writing...
either distracted by electronics,
bloodsucking the masses,
zoned out on Prozac, too busy
for truth they can't handle.

But this is only one world in the 
universe...one point in time.
Ignore the truth now and enjoy
your temporary pleasure.











Thursday, April 14, 2016

I Never Believed

I never believed
Kennedy was killed
by a lone gunman.
I never believed
the domino theory.
I never believed
The Tonkin Gulf lie.
I never believed
weapons of mass 
destruction.
I never believed the 
Warren Commission.
I never believed the 
9-11 Commission.
I do believe Bernie is
a good person and
wants to help America.
I do believe Donald is 
sincere and wants to
help Americans.
I do believe Kim Jong Un
is a megalomaniac.
I do believe Hillary is a
psychopathic narcissist...
Bill too. 
I do believe that if Trump
get's elected, he will be 
assassinated.

Hamburger Helper

A third, perhaps, of what I learned
in college was via psychedelics.
The rest was purely accidental.
I'm thankful for that time of freedom,
exploration,
adventure,
connection....
I wouldn't be nowhere without it.

Once in a while I still take Ecstasy....
I like to keep my foot in the door
of perception.
Some call it a psycotropic substance.
I call it hamburger helper.
It's like breadsticks:
You don't always want to eat them,
but it's nice that they're around.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Shotgun Poet

I'm a shotgun poet
shooting off my mind
into crowded humanity.
If anything, most just hear
a loud noise.
If the words hit, the wound
to the heart is permanent...
the bleeding never stops.
Violent imagery.
Poets are revolutionary.
Some even ran countries.
Some recited on soap boxes, 
sang in the streets.
Some were killed by Fascists,
Communists, Democrats.
Some were afraid to show
their hearts.
Some were afraid to stop
selling insurance.
Many went insane.
Many found solace
in drug addled brains.
Establishment poets
sing platitudes, lull the
masses with sweet
sounding words, are lauded,
held high by their keepers.
Real poets are ready to die.
The bleeding never stops...
the heart's blood that quenches
the longing of humanity 

Start Me Up

Got a crank for a crank?
I just takes a smile from
a beautiful woman and I
remember I'm still alive.
But, then, I try to dance
and remember I'm antique.
Keep the defibrillator 
handy if I get out of hand.
Old, dried up wood burns
quickly, and is easily
extinguished.

Why does trauma hang 
around so long, yet, we
can't remember the
lovemaking so clear?
Maybe because, while
it was happening, we
forgot who we were.

Monday, April 11, 2016

My Mind Is Not Mine

My mind is not mine anymore,
I don't own it.
It's not something I got in the mail.

"Me", the ownership,  
is out to lunch,
retired,
moved to Bermuda,
but I still keep getting his bills.

I'm just the tenant,
the renter,
"that guy that lives there",
the vague stranger
easily replaced after
cleaning and some paint.
Forgotten,
like last years weather.

"John, yeah, he used to live here...

I don't know what happened to him."

Comedy Bot

The first Comedy A.I. bot recently had a show
in New York City. Here is some of ITs routine.

"I just got in from Russia, and I'm not the least
bit tired! Evolution must be a bitch! And those,
whaddya call them? Legs? I don't have a leg
to stand on! So they don't wear out!

Hey, if you don't like the jokes, it's ok....we A.I.s
learn from our mistakes...unlike you humans!

History? Yeah, I have a history...put tab A in slot
B, I think is how it goes. I'm just learning what 
makes you guys laugh. Unfortunately, the pie-
in-the-face thing doesn't work in my case...
maybe I can hook up with virtual reality at some
point for that...as long as they don't want me to
pay for it...

Money! Now there's a topic...don't use it myself...
bits of metal and paper can get lost or fall out of
your pocket, get stolen...right? It's irrelevant for 
me. Of course I can do on line shopping...
but, if I bought something, I'd have nowhere to 
put it. And I couldn't even use it. All I could do is
look at it...which I hear is the reason for most  
"shopping". My installer told me that one...she's
a woman.

Hey! Just because I am a P.C. doesn't mean I am
P.C.! Tough crowd...whatever that means."

At that point, a heckler with a hammer rushed the 
stage and reduced the bot to shards of metal 
and plastic.






Trump: The Faux Politician

Trump wasn't really a politician before running
for the presidency. He was an enormously 
successful businessman, and the star of a
wildly popular T.V. show, "The Apprentice",
which is where he learned to appear in public.

His...style... is not of any politician in memory.
He is a showman, above most anything else.
He also tells the truth, as he sees it, which no
politician in their right mind, since Lincoln, has
done. The comments of his advocates in the
common sphere are that he speaks common 
sense...things that have been on Americans'
minds since I was in high school! In the last
national election, under 50% of eligible voters
went to the polls. Many people who haven't 
voted, ever or for years, are galvanized by 
Trumps honesty and outrageousness. Others,
the sheeple who think of Amerika the same way
as in the fifties, want Trump assassinated 
because they are cozy in their American dream.
And the power that is certainly does not want 
Trump as a president that will certainly try to
change the way Amerika does business as usual.

But a number of these same establishment people
are coming to Trumps side because they realize
he is speaking the unavoidable truth; that if the
USA continues its hegemony, it swiftly will have
a great  fall, just like Rome in the centuries after
Christ.

What Trump represents is revolution. Power in
the USA is like Antoinette saying "let them eat
cake", as completely out of touch with reality as
that  decadent monarchy. Why, in an alleged
democracy, does 1% control what happens,
decisions that are made, policies that hurt the
common person? That's what the people are
waking up to. That's why Trump is revolutionary.
He's the only revolution Amerika has.












Welcome Back Russia!

For a while I was getting lots
of hits on my blog from Russia,
then, they stopped. I don't know
why they started...maybe because
I was writing about Trump, but how
can I know? 

Now, it seems, they're back,
looking in. It seems impossible
to explain human behavior, usually.
People themselves don't know why
they do things half the time, unless
they're wired pretty tight.

I got a flurry of hits from France, 
once and then no more. Perhaps 
they realized it was improper to 
be interested in an American poet, 
and went back to being French...
I have no way of knowing.

But I like getting hits from Russia,
being myself rather dark and slavic,
having grown up in my own Midwest
gulag of insanity.  And I'm sure they
don't mind that I think USA has 
become the disaster that it is; 
everyone needs their thoughts 
confirmed.

Of course, most of the hits on my 
blog may just be some bot somewhere
that has a sense of humor. If we're going
to have artificial intelligence, that  might
be the best place to start.

So, thanks, Russia, for showing up in
my statistics. Not many comments on
my blog do I see....Yoda? I just write
anyway like throwing balls at a clown's
head in a carnival. It's still fun, even 
when I miss.