In Mexico The Birds Grow On Trees

Several colorful young roosters,

free rangers, on my street perched

in low hanging branches of a tree.

At that location, the chickens, dogs,

and a cat hang out with each other

in peaceable kingdomness.

Martial music in the town square where

I’m having coffee, loudspeaker chatter.

I wish the moment would last, but…

you know…

Brand New Mexican flag on a pole…

I wonder how long it will be there?

I’ll have breakfast now, though I’m

tired of eating,

tired of maintaining this losing battle.

I like seeing the happy animals because

they couldn’t care less.

They’re my teachers now.

Time On The Internet

I spend twelve hours a day average

on the internet. How’s about you?

Yes, it fills the time nicely, it’s true, and,

let’s face it, I’m not going anywhere.

But I also consider it doing research 

on the quantum maze as it unfolds…

(pause to put on noir music)

…not just history in the making…

more like watching reality evolve

like a kaleidoscope, a claymation,

into a different, foreign manifestation,

not just polarization.

Perhaps, even, interstellar visitors.

Put that in your paradigm and smoke it.

So, yes, so many clues proliferate on a

magic screen, not that what’s happening 

is truly being seen, more a shadow play,

the truth hidden behind a curtain dream.

Besides, there is so much I see there that

I don’t really want to be anywhere near;

the civil unrest and lawlessness I’m not

around, the craziness of the mob, 

no thanks, I’d rather be gratefully here

with a magic window to the great somewhere.

 

Just There

“I don’t do anything. I just get up.”

from the play: “The Time Of Your Life”

I’m more that way anymore.

We all look back at our lives when we get old.

You will too if you make it that far.

Not many regrets, which many can’t say.

Maybe I did what I was programmed to do

from past karma lives.

Might as well could be that way.

No finish line, no victory parade so I’ll never know.

“ How do we know you’re enlightened?”

one wag asked the Buddha.

“The earth is my witness “ he heard the Buddha say.

At least, he had the earth to hold him up.

Me?

I can’t prove a damned thing.

The good news is, I don’t care.

Interesting Day

Watching Charley Sheen recovered from his

“adventures” with a clarity that only comes

from waking up from being close to death.

It’s a spiritual path, the home game, for sure.

Charley is unlike many that didn’t survive.

I’m 76, so that means I’ve survived so far.

It’s just nice to recognize another human 

being once in a while.

They’re a vanishing breed.

Should I?

That’s a question one has many

times when one is young.

When old, the questions tend to be

“I did.” or “I didn’t.”

Reasons why you shouldn’t usually 

come after you’ve failed.

I read my brother’s diary once.

In it, he wrote that he’d made so many bad 

decisions that he decided to not make

any more decisions.

Shortly after that, he became catatonic.

So, the answer to the question; “Should I?”

seems to be:

You probably should.

11:12 A. M.

Right now.

Today, so far so good,

what’s next is easy and planned.

So, some words,

not to fill in the time, no,

just more of the monologue.

Time continues anyway.

Is time precious?

Maybe time is precocious,

always ending a little too  early,

starting a little too late,

as if it had a mind of its own.

People are afraid of time…

that’s why schedules were invented.

That’s why some people never

leave the house.

You might say that writing something 

is a good use of time.

A Zen monk might say doing nothing

is the best use of time.

Is waiting for a bus waiting for a bus

or something else?

Maybe this poem will never end, but

at some point I’ll stop writing.

You can measure the amount of time

I’ve been writing. 

Put that alongside eternity.

11:27

J.F.K.

I was 14, in high school, and my German 

teacher came into the class crying and told

us that Kennedy had been shot. Everyone

was stunned. The next day, I saw Oswald 

get shot on television. It was the first 

“instant replay” where they showed the video

of what had just happened.

I thought: “Something is wrong.” It was an

existential feeling, something wrong about

the whole thing. Then, Johnson became the

President, I didn’t go to Vietnam, and I became

a Buddhist because nothing else made sense.

Woah

Did you feel that?

Why are people so insane?

What goes on in the brain?

Brainwashing activated?

“Preserve the harmonic field.

Time is collapsing.”

The center cannot hold.

We’re mainly water powered

by electricity, the brain an organic

computer with perception….sturdy,

yet really quite delicately living in

symbiosis with an environment not

long in cosmic time…

now glimmerings of mass hysteria

“bad chemicals” making people do

all kinds of f’ed up stuff? It’s not

the fluoride this time. Too many

things all at once…world in turmoil,

the brink of nuclear war, 3I/ATLAS 

zooming in, no one’s seen anything

like it, people believing the thoughts

in their heads they read on a Cracker

Jack box or heard the same words 

over and over and over on the Telly 

oh welly, it’s alright, Maw, I’m only

bleeding.

Red Alert

Take a leap, Homie! I would…

or would you rather sleep like

wood? (I don’t get it any more).

Look alive and be quick about it,

not dead

between the eyes

between marriages

between jobs

between beliefs

the categories are as endless as

the imagination.

Hurry up every chance you get because

it’s over.

I Gave My Whole Life To The United States

Grandiose, maybe, but I’m a Buddhist,

so, I had to give it away and I happened

to be in America, so that’s what happened.

Arnold Toynbee said that the coming of

Buddhism to the West was the most rad

event of the Twentieth Century, he said 

it, not me, but I was part of that if anything,

and now meditation is more of a thing, not

some strange other culture’s hoagie pokie,

even scientists are taking it seriously.

So, there’s that.

I like the tombstone inscription Kurt Vonnegut 

wrote in one of his novels:

“(Name here)

He tried”

Heaven On Earth

I could never understand why you had to wait

until you were dead to go to heaven, and why

you would need a priest as a go between….oh,

that’s right, it’s a religion.

Even the hippies knew that heaven was in your 

mind, so, I guess, the LSD was helpful after all.

We all know people that are in hell on the spot

when they’re angry. Why can’t we be in heaven

on the spot?

We can.

It’s called enlightenment, which has nothing to 

do with religion.

Heaven is the natural state of mind that is free

from confusion and conflicting emotions.

Who has that?

Buddha, for sure…Christ too, which is why 

they killed him.

Christ taught love and compassion, which the

Jews were never into.

They still like their old, jealous God, and the

money lenders are still in the temple.

Revolutionaries change the way people see things.

Buddha was one as was Christ,

Mohammed not so much.

Maybe a Deus Ex Machina, sent by God, 

is on its way (3I/Atlas?) to set humanity straight.

The way things are going, it might as well could be.

A Tin Can Of Flim Flam

Just because the world is crazy 

about a cheap trick doesn’t mean

one has to go along with it.

Snake oil salesman in three piece

suits selling vile concoctions made

up in their minds just to get control 

of the rubes but the rubes weren’t 

born yesterday. 

Their evil is on display now not subtle 

because it’s not working the way they

thought it would. (I don’t know why

they didn’t get the message from the

previous failures that are the template

for their process that never works) So

they try harder which manifests their

true intent beyond their words: pain.

This is the world we live in not a brave

new one not a renaissance of evolution 

NO everything we thought we learned

by making laws and standards so society

could run smoothly for the benefit of all

is being attacked viciously by barbarians

of the soul / Homosap can’t seem to get 

his evolution on it’s two steps forward 

one step back (except for Buddha the

endpoint of evolution that had its time

but is now out of season.)

Empty Mirror

Look into a mirror and imagine you’re not there.

That’s an analogy for enlightenment; pure perception 

without reference to a self.

That’s the mind of the universe, universal mind.

There is only one mind, if we can even say that.

It’s not born and doesn’t die.

We just hitch a ride with it we call our lives.

When we die, it’s just getting off the bus at the last stop,

which is called space.

How we deal with that is a whole different story.

Corollary:

When we argue with someone, what we’re seeing

is our own dirty face in the mirror.

Cosmic Dust

“Quantum particles are the dreams that stuff

is made of.”   David Moser

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Ozymandias buried in the sand.

If 3I/Atlas brings aliens so what.

Everything’s a fairy tale anyway.

You loved, she broke your heart,

you got over it, now you can’t 

remember the heartache, the pain.

Extrapolate that to your whole life,

to sentient existence, 

and you’ve got the picture.

The heaviest matter is created in

the biggest explosions of the universe.

That fact fits in here somewhere.

Cosmic Fairy Tale

First you had Omuamua comet, about as big as a football field.

Then you have 3I/Atlas, between 8 and 40 kilometers huge.

Since September 11 we have C/2025 r2 (SWAN) they say

is 100x larger than 3I/Atlas. 

I know the earth is in the Goldilocks zone, but what’s with the

increasingly humongous objects zooming in that are weirder 

and weirder? 

And how come now when there were none before and the earth

(coincidentally?) is going though some major human changes?

No wonder ancient history myths (Annunaki ?) sound like mystery.

Ezekiel’s flaming chariot could have been a UFO.

Right now something is happening in the sky, which is space.

Humans have perception extensions to be able to see the space ballet.

Poor scientific method that doesn’t want to jump to conclusions 

but is getting scared shitless.

Maybe all those “I love Lucy” episodes we broadcast into the void

made the aliens want to come to earth and turn off the t.v. themselves.

Is anyone ever ready for the truth?

Asking for my little green friend.

Update: 9/18/2025

Remember, this is a cosmic fairytale.

It’s a fairytale in part because can you

believe any of the videos on the internet?

One video I saw today said that 3I/Atlas

had changed course two days ago and that

it was now heading towards the earth and

that it would be same distance from the

earth as the moon on October 31st. If true,

we should be able to see it clearly. On the

other hand, Gemini A.I. says that the 

consensus among scientists is that 3I/Atlas

is a natural object, and that it hasn’t altered

it’s course, if you can believe NASA (not a

straight story), so, for now, it remains a story

of some sort, whether a fairy tale or not.

That’s the latest chapter in this story. 

If it’s fiction or the truth, we don’t have

long to wait, a little over a month, which

I like personally. The second coming of 

Jesus is just so uncertain. What is certain

is that all major religions have predicted

this time. They’re just stories too.

Clues

Everyone wants to have a clue

about what’s going on; belief

system, philosophy, some strong

thoughts that make sense of it all.

If you’re clueless, you’re either 

a saint or an idiot.

Some people (most?) jump onto

the first bandwagon that comes 

along or that they’re born into.

Some people get creative and 

start their own cults:

Scientology started as a dare.

It all boils down to fear of the

impermanence of existence that

drives the search for a certainty 

that never was there.

There’s your clue.

For your information,

that’s all Buddha had to go on.

Early Riser

I want to be optimistic

lying in bed awake too early 

it doesn’t look good for me 

or the world right now as when

it was the fifties and I was young

and we all looked into the future

with gleaming smiles.

And what I write about always

feels like the same reality only

clearer now because some veils

have been lifted but jesus having 

lived in a world my whole life

now seeing how twisted it always

was by materialism by belief 

system by craved craving and the

direction so dark it’s heading no

wonder Rimbaud wrote so beautiful 

crazy just reflecting like a mirror 

the world he was in.

I wrote like that more before just

letting it all hang out trying to find

out how to write I found out it’s 

just like singing or yelling or laughing 

spontaneous expression of nowness

a joy of being human nature 

that I found out like Holden Caulfield

society/institutional power didn’t want

you to experience/express/be because

it wasn’t easy to control…..control yes

like cattle that’s exactly right…sorry if

I got too serious but it just shows that

I’m not being controlled never was nor

shall be and if I die that’s ok. F’em all.

Victim Of Circumstance

I’d say that’s just about all of us from birth,

genetics, economics, location, just like plants.

Organic, mechanical in the sense of seed 

within seed within seed…or, getting older 

and shit starts falling off and not working 

like the warranty is about to expire.

Not a pretty sight.

“Don’t cry, little grasshopper, we all go this way.”

Issa

So, like Curly of the Three Stooges, we’re 

victims of circumstance and it’s funny because

it’s not and we’re left standing there at a street

corner or nursing a cup of coffee in a seedy diner

wondering what our next move is going to be

and nothing that we see offers any clue.

One Step At A Time

I was thrilled when I first could

tie my shoe…I remember clearly.

I became an autodidact.

I knew I could learn by doing so I did,

using knowledge as vines to Tarzan my

way through the jungle of confusion of

other people’s ideas, learning to be an 

outlaw slip sliding down back alleys

to where I had to go…one step at a time.

I recommend bravery, which many times

only means you have no other choice.

Sometimes holding on seems to be the

logical choice, but many times it’s not.

You can’t hold on and give birth at the

same time.

The Beat Goes On

Heartbeat,

drumbeat of Krag to wake the

sleeping hordes,

pulse of Pulsars on a different scale.

In the beginning was the word…

have you heard? 

The word is love

not created or destroyed .

Have a heart for goodness sakes!

It’s just waiting for you to notice.

The Death Of Charlie Kirk

Forget about the tree.

A leaf falls…

does anybody notice?

Word

In the beginning was the word.

Since then, it seems to have lost its allure.

Reality is expressed any more by video clips,

sound bites,

slogans,

anything small and powerful enough to make

an impression but doesn’t lead to understanding.

Poetry used to be a means to convey condensed

meaning. 

Now people don’t have an inclination to read,

let alone to understand.

The latest stimulus of wild conjecture lasts only

until the next one comes along, stringing folks

along like the last one.

At least they feel something.

They just want to feel something.

Anything.

Is it propaganda if everyone believes it?

Is it brainwashing if everyone denies it?

Luckily, not everyone does.

We are living in a war

for your minds.

Confusion and chaos is a tactic

of this war.

Beliefs have been weaponized.

Words have become ammunition.

Knowing this, you have a chance.

Not knowing this, you automatically 

become a casualty.

Ignorance is no excuse when it separates 

a person from reality.

I could say more words endlessly,

but if you don’t get the idea by now,

you may be part of the tragedy.

3I/Atlas

If it was a movie, it would be the greatest sci fi ever,

if it could even be told the way it begins to unfold,

an object from long ago and far away in interstellar 

space

that,

       the closer it gets to the earth, exhibits qualities

that can’t be mistaken for other than intelligent design,

meaning aliens,

out there

sending something into our solar system…

I think it must have been reruns of “All In The Family”

that made them curious:

“What the hell is that?” I heard one tripod asking another.

But, seriously, folks, haven’t we been waiting for disclosure 

for a long time?

I mean, atom bombs,

UFOs,

science fiction movies

right away.

Then, diversion from the truth,

along with a few well placed assassinations,

William Cooper is one.

He blew the lid off the space alien coverup

before people started thinking about it seriously.

“Behold A Pale Horse.” is he book he wrote.

He predicted 9/11 a few days before it happened.

So, 3I/Atlas.

Whatever it is, it’s going to be hard to hide….

impossible.

That makes it very delicious.

Lights Out

It happens here in Mexico

not infrequently enough.

They’re out, I went out, came back,

thinking they’d be back on by now.

Nope.

That’s not one thing I like about Mexico.

One thing I do like is that, in this town,

the people are not so complicated in their

heads that they won’t say “Buenos Dias.”

in the morning and mean it.

We all want to feel connected,

with it,

in sync,

part of something bigger?

God, social media, whatever you got

that seems appealing.

In Mexico, as in all poor countries,

it’s family.

They have big ones so the possibilities 

are greater.

Some of that decency spills into the environment.

That’s why people I haven’t even met here know my name.

I feel I’ve been accepted as part of the environment.

Try that in New York City, especially when the lights are out.

Waiting

Hiatus between moments of movement, activity…

might as well write…why…because I can.

I thought I could write, felt I had no choice,

so I did a lot at first not good, but, like everything 

self taught, I just kept going ‘till I got to be fair,

if that’s the appropriate Peter Principle point, 

I’m there. I wrote what I did and someone read me,

I apologize that I’m no Shelley or Blake, that I’m

writing now because I’m just waiting for the next

moment.

Does that mean this moment doesn’t count?

Who’s counting?

Maybe we should thank the inefficiency of the power grid.

Imagine no power in a big Americany city…

dazed couch potatoes squinting at the sun, using vocal cords

for the first time in aeons, maybe only remembering phrases

from T. V. shows and commercials:

“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.”

“We’ll always have Paris.”

“What time is it, boys and girls?”

“You’ve got mail.”

“Are you on the bus or off the bus?”

I’m just not moving along,

not ambulatory, stationary,

writing on stationery, words

while I’m still waiting,

waiting still.

A good percentage of time in Mexico

is spent waiting, 

whether there’s power or not.

They call waiting here fiesta,

a party while you wait to go nowhere.

So, they have lots of them, colorful,

loud music, singing, dancing, lots of

drinking, why not, and fireworks, in

case you missed the point.

There were lines around the corner, waiting

to get Covid shots..their numbers numbed me,

but I never got the jab. I wanted to wait to see

what happened to those that got it. I know some

my age that died right after.

Waiting is a valuable skill. Like, when you have

an emotion, don’t react. Wait and watch the energy.

Awareness of emotions’ energy makes the emotions 

change, you see the intelligence behind the emotions,

and that is wisdom.

So, while I’ve been waiting, I’ve given a valuable 

lesson. Tips accepted.

I’m not through waiting, so the seemingly endless

poem continues.

Maybe if you read to the end of this you’ll realize

I had nothing to say.

Or, maybe I said something by accident.

By writing to myself, I’m writing to you, like a 

comedian coming up with jokes.

I’m writing like a comedian that can’t stop telling jokes.

I need help, electricity, something…the pen runs out

of ink but I have lots of pens.

You see what happens when you take the governor off

the gas pedal?

Surrealism had to come from somewhere.

Why did anything arise, let alone everything?

You feel me?

Avi Loeb, the Harvard scientist, said 3I/Atlas, the new

interstellar visitor, could be a manufactured object?

You feel that?

What do you feel?

Just asking…

just waiting.

Not for your answer…

that might take forever.

The Back Of My Mind

Maybe that’s what was in the back of my mind

I was writing about, around it but never realizing

what it was:

The Kali Yuga, what it feels to be alive now, when

it’s happening and so many who are in it, totally 

affected by it but not aware of what’s even happening.

So that’s what I was feeling not because of anything 

happening in my own little world but because of 

what’s happening in the whole world, I feel it, it’s 

become a part of me. That’s why it’s called an Age.

And Another Thing!

Sit up when I talk to you!

Nah, I don’t care..I just thought

that would be a gangster thing

to say, or however they put it 

in the Hood.

So, say you make it out of the

Hood, you got plenty of money,

you don’t need to grift and scam

anymore, what do you do?

And, what do you think about?

What the hell is the whole thing

about, being alive, what’s it about

anyway? Might you think that way?

Would that thought occur if you

stopped always looking over your 

shoulder?

Asking for a friend.

His name is Sidhartha Gautama.

He wants you to pay attention.

A World View

Dark slow sparse melodic sounds

unfold like the beauty of a dreary life

given to industrial drugs and drags and

a dim future not given to sentiment.

But there’s always hope, isn’t there?

The answer is in why you asked.

Just look out the dirty windows of the

dimly lit room, peeling paint and empty

cans on the floor, a few wooden chairs

and an old kitchen table from the fifties.

Look out into the street that doesn’t look

better than the room you’re in. Where are

the trees? Isn’t the sun supposed to be

brighter than that? What happened to 

Frank? I saw him just the other day.

Unwilling Victims

Too many to count…and the ones still walking,

the brainwashed hordes that don’t even know 

what’s in their self interest, babies that can’t 

think for themselves, not seeing how they 

destroy themselves with a hate that has been

implanted, drilled into them, so sad, but that’s 

not me at the tail end of twenty years in paradise 

and ready to die with no regrets something even

their masters will never know to be able to say.

A Painting By Yves Tanguy

Perfect abstract imagery evoking emotions,

triggering deja vu? 

Maybe.

A. I. love sonnets could be.

Surreal certainly, bombarded by coconuts

of this point of view, that bias until our

heads explode or we go into a cocoon or

coma.

Happy Valentines Day, oh, that’s a long ways

away massacre.

Things have to get weirder and weirder to

catch the attention span of the eye of a needle.

Perhaps it was something I ate, or was it

something I said?

In any case, I agree that we cannot somehow 

call exactly extraordinary.

And things do seem a bit out of hand

out of pocket

out of their minds

and a bit beyond the paradigm.

So, as we see here, we cannot expect 

to get an explanation 

from something that is inexplicable 

as the inescapable conclusion,

after which a pleasant bubble bath would

be appreciated.

Emptiness

Your words are hollow, you don’t mean them.

Your expression is vacant, you’re not really there.

“Excuse me, what were you saying?”

You say the same things over and over as if they

still had meaning.

All you have as proof of life

are snapshots from vacations,

a bowling trophy on the mantle,

your diploma that never really meant anything.

You don’t take time to stop and smell the roses.

You and your friends have runny noses.

Is it sad?

You tell me.

Whatever it is it is.

If you look at it, maybe you’ll see for yourself 

instead of singing the same tired song again.

Maybe I should stop writing now, just sit here,

be still and try to look pretty.

Letting Go

We have to let go of many things in life,

including life itself.

Our children grow, we have to let go

so they can be themselves.

Our parents die, we can’t hang on,

no matter how much we want them there.

Lovers, spouses, friendships all are subject

to the fact.

Even success has its time limit.

But the hardest thing to let go of

is our ego

because we cherish our thoughts about

ourselves more than anything, who we

think we are.

We cherish our egos, try to maintain.

If we feel good or bad about ourselves,

it’s ego just the same.

We’re used to it, why would we want

to change?

We have an ego problem.

It’s really the only problem we have.

It does no good, gets in the way from

just seeing things clearly. 

If we saw things clearly, 

 we wouldn’t have a problem.

Even death wouldn’t be a bother.

You can’t imagine that because

your ego longs to be eternal.

No matter what you think,

you have to let go, or get driven

into insanity by thoughts that

won’t go. 

You don’t need rocket science 

to get to freedom,

just a willingness to see,

and let go of what is not there.

Protesting Reality

Like a little kid that doesn’t want to go to bed.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much” Hamlet

The Democrats protest too much about their wrong thinking.

It seems they can’t get out of their heads to look around

and see how they’re missing the point.

Evil people create confusion as a weapon.

Taking confusion as reality leads to serious bad consequences.

The  Unibomber was a perfect example.

It would be nice to live in a golden age of enlightened 

clear seeing…I’m afraid we’re far from that right now.

Will Trump succeed or will the evil hordes?

That’s the play we’re in in which the truth is being revealed.

Jumping to conclusions is not recommended in any case.

Unnecessary suffering is too prevalent at this time.

Take a deep breath at any moment before you act.

Blind Faith

The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is an

Alfred North Whitehead concept,

simply put, that humans place certainty on

aspects of their existence based on false

assumptions…the war of words between

the Left and the Right, evoking behaviors

that are demonstrably insane.

The Minneapolis shooter, for example,

regretted ever becoming trans before he

went on his crazy rampage.

Those that don’t adhere to the truth, we 

can see are suffering the consequences.

Every system where belief is the basis

falls into that category.