Drag Race

Life’s a drag,

and it’s a rat race.

Dragging your ass to work-a-day…

wondering if life has meaning…

hoping that your plan will work…

disappointment not unknown.

Or, is it?

Rutless, free to roam, taking advantage

of coincidence and intuition, rolling stone…

you don’t know what will happen 

until you try.

Freedom’s just another word

for rocky road ice cream.

Freedom. (guest poet Cacao)

“Nothing terrifies people more than

the threat of freedom” R.A.W.

Freedom means you make the choices.

Freedom means you take responsibility

for your actions.

No wonder we all miss our mommies.

“Inner Okies migrunting 

through the must bowl.”   Knott

It’d be nice to have all the answers.

No wonder there are so many books.

Freedom is uncertainty.

Freedom is openness.

Freedom is free from fixed mind.

Freedom is inner space.

Freedom is just another word

for something we can’t possess.

The only thing you need to free

is your mind.

Guest poet: Cacao

Gears Of Time

“Each spring the chrysanthemum’s astringent

fragrance comes revealing the hidden mechanism

of machine within machine within machine.”

                                                    Wallace Stevens

Grew up in Midwestern thresher basic morality

meat and potatoes, corn on the cob, fireworks

on the Fourth of July…came out confused,

looking for something real.

No one expected the First World War, but once

it started, it didn’t end ’til it was over. The basic

mechanism wasn’t dismantled, so twenty years

later, it was back in gear and, once again, war 

didn’t end until it was finished. No one learned?

When you get on the wrong bus, every stop is

the wrong stop.

Ozymandias, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 1984

all hint that we are enmeshed in a process that

has its Rube Goldberg aspects; many tears and

much flapdoodle signifying the tell of emptiness,

yet unavoidable, unless, somehow beyond time

and space, which is hard to find 

in the marketplace….

…all supreme fiction of mind.

It’s time to unwind.

Woulda Shoulda Coulda

I should have been a wealthy man

except for that one mistake I made…

ok….two mistakes.

“I could have been champion, Marty,

but you made me take the fall for the

cheap money.”

“I shoulda kept my job at the plumbing

company…I didn’t realize how good

I had it.”

I should have been a ragged dog,

scuttling down alleys looking for food.

I should have meditated more….now 

I’m about to die and my mind is berserk.

I…

Muse

Sometimes she just sits there

in the corner

staring into herself.

Apparent yet empty,

not even a concept, just

afterglow of rainbow

in clear air, or,

memory of her standing there 

on the platform

after the train has left.

“This life and death thing,

they got it all wrong….

there was never anything

except “now”,

and even that’s questionable.”

(So that’s where the words 

come from! From the invisible 

kingdom beyond time and space!

Beyond the veils of conditioned

existence! In the room with her

in the corner, drinking gin and
masturbating furiously!)

Euphoria In Wartime

Is the same as at any other time…

it just is for no reason.

‘Life is beautiful!”

as they say

depending on how you look at it.

Our greatest fear

is losing life

despite the fact

that we never possess it anyway.

We get very upset

when someone we know dies.

How is it in war, when everyone

is dying around you?

Humans are very good at

getting used to the status quo.

“Why me? Why me?”

Why not?

You’re the same as the next one.

I see the chaos swirling around me

as I sip my cup of tea.

(3x)