Today’s Installment of Excelsior

 Smoking

I was sitting on the dock behind the kitchen

at the meditation center. I liked to smoke there.

Just then, Kobin Chino, Roshi walked past me.

He stopped, turned around, and came back. He 

stood next to me for a moment, then he asked me:

“Can I buy a cigarette?”

I said:”No, but you can have one,”

and I gave him one. He stood next to 

me where I was sitting for a sublime

moment. Then he walked away. 

It was like the words were part of

the silence.

The Joke’s On Us

Nobody wants to get the joke anymore,

like people took the serious pill. The

comics that toe the party line aren’t funny

(like all Socialist art it sucks)

The funny ones that mock hypocrisy and 

tell the truth are banned, had a “talk” with

someone and suddenly changed, or got

erased.

Social media is walking on scrambled eggs.

Don’t lose your humor!

The Truth Communicates Via Contrast 

The common saying:

“The situation is black and white.”

makes that clear.

That’s why the surrealists, expressionists,

(abstract or otherwise) were so color crazy.

They were depicting the contrasts of post

industrial society, like jazz and rock did in 

music,  like the Beats did with words. 

Black and white.

Day and night.

Wrong and right.

“Fear”  a painting by Yves Tanguy