Waiting

“What rough beast, it’s hour come ‘round at last,

slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”  Yeats

Waiting for a poem.

Waiting for the end of the world.

Waiting for the Golden Age.

Waiting for 3I/Atlas to be revealed

as soft disclosure.

Waiting for the Bus.

Waiting for tribunals.

Intense waiting,

provocative waiting,

pregnant waiting,

like waiting for D Day,

like waiting for Deus Ex Machina,

like waiting for Christmas when 

you were a kid.

So much seems to be happening.

Draw your own conclusions, but

conclusions are what I’m waiting for.

On the edge of my seat waiting.

If it was a movie, perhaps I’d enjoy it.

Maybe it is, but I’ve never been

in a movie before…

it makes me nervous.

If I had a part to play in it,

I’d feel more involved.

I’m just a spectator waiting,

under a volcano,

for it to blow.

Precarious

One could say that about all our lives,

as uncertain as a May fly’s,

seemingly immortal when we’re young,

everyone feels that way, coming in to

a fresh body, well endowed with strength,

partying all night and working all day…

we see others taking chances;

a selfie on a cliff,

outrunning the police.

We think we’re immune

until we walk into an airplane propeller

because we’re not paying attention.

Lately, I haven’t been able to forget

that I’m made of flesh and blood,

a machine that wears out, runs down.

The algorithm reaches its conclusion.

Only a few are able to see continuity 

of the discontinuity; the eternity 

hidden within the mechanism.

“In the spring the chrysanthemum’s

astringent fragrance comes revealing

the hidden mechanism of machine

within machine within machine.” 

Wallace Stevens

We all walk the tightrope, like the

little Frenchman, even though the

Twin Towers are no more; the poem

that killed three thousand, a surprise,

a shock; he moved between the towers

with confidence…he didn’t fall.

Then, the towers fell,

as if they were us.

Open Your Eyes

“Neo, Social Media has you.” Trinity

The matrix is a maze, constantly reconfiguring

to keep you lost,

away from your senses,

your connection to reality.

Lots of blind alleys,

dead ends,

traps to keep you confused.

Luckily, it’s all just words.

Unfortunately, words control your minds.

“It’s back to the senses,

back to the senses now,

now senses the to back.”

You have to look if you want to see.

The churning of thoughts is what keeps 

you enslaved.

That’s all that Buddha was saying.

Back then, they didn’t have the machines 

that machine our minds.

Back then, they relied on the senses.

The “archaic revival”, McKenna’s idea,

“ecstasy, community, ecological harmony,

egalitarianism” sounds better than what

the Homosap is currently up to.

It’s what us hippies could only finger paint.

But, we did feel it, saw it, heard it, tasted it.

Those moments were more real than any

peddled by propaganda of political ponces.

We’d better wake up now while we’re 

still alive.

Doing Things

I used to like doing things,

but I don’t anymore.

When I have to do something now,

I need a day to think about the thing, 

a day to do it,

and a day think about the thing I did.

This week was overwhelming.

I had two things to do:

see the dentist,

get my clothes that I had had repaired.

I’m done now, and resting gently,

my mind temporarily free from occupation.

 

When I was a plumber,  sometimes I’d do

eight service calls in a day…one an hour.

Think Sea Biscuit in his prime.

In my twenties, my mind was continually 

racing with thoughts and ideas no relief.

Now, it’s up a lazy river,

space fastened to a dying animal.

When I don’t have something specific to do,

I hang out, just in case of emergency.

In case of emergency, break my samadhi.

Cosmic Comedian

Karma chameleon

boffo once every light year

hitting on all cylinders, cycles,

eccentricities, probabilities until

it’s back to empty fecundity, 

the beginning was the word,

have you heard the word is love,

everybody’s talking about the bird,

bird, bird, b’bird is the word,

Penrose’s cyclical universe on all

cylinders, l’i’ll Deus Coupe you 

don’t know don’t know what ergo-t,

Black hole gonna shut you down.

Now, you try!

Soap Opera

“Before you have an erection,

your mind gets hard first.”

White Fang Lama

Soap Opera.

If there’s a term for it, it exists.

Better yet, many have experienced it.

It exists not just as the entertainment 

we know.

It exists as wasted time of people’s lives.

You can’t tell the fiction from the reality.

Colonizing Mars?

Martian soap opera, whether it happens or not.

Wars  always begin as soap operas before the

bodies start falling.

Eight billion characters in massive display 

of soap opera.

It all boils down to one point:

call it soap opera,

call it samsara,

decorate it all you want,

call it a golden age.

Look at history repeating itself.

“There’s nothing new under the sun.”

was written thousands of years ago.

Things only seem new until about

the thirties, when reality begins to 

seems to

repeats itself.

How many situation comedies 

can there be?

Even the Absurdists get it wrong.

Sure, Godot is never coming, but

his never coming is always there.

Poor believers.

There are no rules, except maybe

the Golden One.

There is no finish line, no lasting

accolades, just Cracker Jack prizes,

Crusader Rabbit,

Rags the Tiger,

Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales.

“Help, Cecil, help. Help, Cecil, help.

Help, Cecil, help.”

Tee-rooth

“Teeth to live!” Zappa, Lumpy Gravy.

“The Teeth Mother Naked At Last!”  Bly 

“Remember the the tooth! The tooth!”

Duke Leto Atredies

“We’re going to have to pull that tooth.”

OK.

Waiting for that.

I apologize for writing about this.

It’s trivial and personal and who needs

to hear about it?

Two days until extraction.

(sounds like a Special Forces deal.)

The azitromicen will keep working ‘til then.

Well, heck…

it’s not like it’s cancer,

it’s not the Spanish Inquisition.

It’s a blessing, one could say…

a temporary constant reminder

of something like it gonna be…someday.

Yes, use your good health and senses 

while you have them.

This is your mother speaking.

This shows how crazy I am.

The tooth in question had been capped,

and the cap came off.

I didn’t get it put back on

for eight months

(I wanted to see what would happen)

It got infected, and now it must be pulled.

I will experience the whole thing.

I want to experience the whole thing.

That’ll teach me a lesson!

It’s true that anything can be the subject of a poem.

That doesn’t mean  every poem should be published.

On the quantum scale, every life is worth living.

I want to undercut that truth, 

but I think I’ll leave it there.

Reality’s Latest Victim

That could be any of us, I suppose,

although, 

some are more victim than others,

some float on the waves of the apparent,

some slip-slide through realities;

the mob Boss walking the street in his bathrobe,

Sammy the Bull winding  up with a podcast,

describing his murders in detail,

the pedophiles at Disneyland dressing as Goofy,

me, with the soul of a poet, 

becoming plumber outlaw just surviving.

…victims of being born,

victims of our families,

childhood,

environment…

so many things could go wrong

before we even get off the ground,

let alone accomplish any damn thing,

or learn anything useful at all.

Myself, just a victim of time, 

like all, is all.

One can be King and die a horrible death.

One can be like me, alone, and die ok, 

or anything in between.

I’d like to write a cool ending, but, 

that’s just it…

nothing cool about …

…nothing.

On the other hand,

nothing ever ends

nothing never ends

Signs

I was looking for a sign 

that I was heading in the right direction

Today, I saw a white bird,

I don’t know if it was a dove,

on the ground in front of me.

In twenty years, I’ve never seen

one of those before.

Actually, before I saw the white bird,

I realized my whole life has been a sign

a sign I was a Buddhist

a sign I had been so for lifetimes

a sign that, in this life, I had been in the

right place at the right time.

Believe it or not, 

it has nothing to do with belief.

The signs, the “da”s are always there

for anyone to see.

“Look, and then, you can see.” Trungpa

You see?

(I know…that was a cheap shot.)

Question:

Someone hands you a piece of paper,

and stands in front of you.

You open it, it reads:

“Look up.”

What do you do?

Do you see?

The Whisper of Da, Reality’s Subtle Signs ( in collaboration with Gemini A.I.)

The world is always ready to speak to us,

if only we would listen: a loose thread from

the cuff of the day, a tiny beckoning tear.

The mailbox hangs from its hinges, a minor 

imperfection of wood.

If the mailbox hangs, the postman might be

afraid to deliver the mail to the waiting, empty

space where a letter of fortune could have been.

Our hopes and dreams hang in the balance, 

like the one forgotten button from our coat

that fell off and got lost.

To see the warning written on the wind, 

written on the cap that fell off a tooth,

the subtle script of fate,

is to catch the necessary clue before 

it’s too late.

Friendship with the world means

we have nothing at all to fear.

The Algorithm’s Song

The truth that moves on stage

is how the lines are made.

You have to read between the lines

to see the signs, 

the surface story is too clean,

a stage where nothing has been seen.

We want the truth, or so we think.

It’s different when we see it face to face,

a shock when suddenly we know.

The mirror cracks, the paint runs down,

the neat facade begins to shrink,

the Emperor has lost his crown.

What can we do, pilloried by what’s so?

Let go, let go, nothing to cling to here.

Tomorrow is another brave new world.

The truth that moves on stage 

is how the lines are made.

The Universe Is Cyclical And So Are We

Blue star kachina.

Hopi prophesy signaling the end of the age,

the beginning of the next.

3I/Atlas just turned blue. 

Just a coincidence, maybe?

But other signs are there:

humans losing their connection to the earth,

losing their connection to sanity, common sense.

Koyaanisqatsi.

So much is ending.

So much is beginning.

I/A….A/I….

you have to read between the lines

to see the signs.

Nature has a way of righting itself,

whether humans like it or not.

We have forgotten that we are nature too;

we come from nature, are part of nature.

You wouldn’t think it, looking at Kensington.

You wouldn’t think it, looking at a purple 

haired obese lady with an hundred piercings.

You wouldn’t think it, looking at the fields

in Ukraine strewn with corpses,

Gaza strewn with corpses,

human history strewn with corpses.

At this point, people might be surprised if

you told them there were times and places 

when people lived in harmony.

Harmony, in Japanese, is “wa”.

I was told a story when I was in Japan.

A woman worked for a company. She 

was very innovative, had many great ideas

to change the company to improve it.

I was told she was fired because she

upset the “wa” of the company.

Sounds crazy to us “entrepreneurs”, eh?

Nature has a way of righting itself.

Just another clue as to where we went wrong,

as it seems humans have done many times before.

Don’t worry, though, because there’s no hope.

The Kachinas take off their masks and we’re done.

Their monkey wrenches no longer wake us up.

The sleeping mountains throw open their eyes.

And So It Goes

Human experience hasn’t changed.

Life events, circumstances, concomitants 

are always changing.

People get excited when something new

comes along….excited or horrified,

and so it goes.

If you think about it, there is nothing new

under the sun.

It’s all a re-run.

Sure, it looks new, has that new car smell

that quickly fades.

Even if 3I/Atlas is an alien craft, we’ve had

every scenario of possibility already described 

in all the movies and science fiction novels,

which means it’s more than just a possibility.

Past, present and future are all within the mind.

What can happen and what will happen are

already happening…the clues are already there.

Seeds have been planted long ago.

Fruition is just a matter of time, like the Denver

Nuggets basketball team,

like Communists in the USA,

like Trump and the “plan”,

like where your mother’s drinking, smoking,

bad eating habits will lead.

“If you want to see the future, look at the present.

If you want to see the past, look at the present.”

This is what the wise men say.

Reality doesn’t care whether you like it or not,

like a parent that says it’s time for bed.

Things will work out better if one adheres to the truth.

If not, the inevitable will take a little longer.

In that sense, having cancer is the same as being born.

They’re both what happens.

If you can dig it, neither is a problem.

From beginning to end, it just goes.

Get on the bus, or be left behind,

meaning,

use your intelligence because no one can know

better than you.

Life Span

A bridge between two worlds

so long you can remember things

that everyone else has forgotten.

The time it takes to smoke 

a last cigarette.

A chance, an opportunity, whether

taken advantage of or not.

A journey, a tragedy, a victory

unfolding, a story for the ages.

The time we get when we sign 

on the dotted line

to be born.

Victims Of Circumstance

Every day the world goes on,

the beating of hearts and machinery,

to what end is always questionable.

It’s hard to read the signs….

no instruction manual.

Taken by winds of karma,

life sucks and blows with every breath.

until death, when we wonder:

“What was that?”

Living but not awake…

awake but not aware…

training  the mind itself used to be a thing.

Now training is only to survive and be

productive, like a bear in a circus.

More distractions; internet, social media,

that keep us from ourselves.

Nobody knows why, it just happened, 

fulfilling long ago prophesies.

Elijah’s chariot in the sky…

Ezechiel’s wheels within wheels…

fantasy or description?

Many have seen UFOs, including me.

No one believes us.

You think we made it up, like the Bible?

Give me a break.

It’s time to think a little bigger, or risk

getting swept away by the changes

coming to our relative world.

Algorithm Vs. Evolution

It sped up at the turn of the Twentieth Century.

Einstein’s work made Newtonian physics 

obsolete…science started to be on shaky ground.

Art gradually broke down the norms of the way

people saw the world.

Information distribution became constantly more

rapid and widespread.

The algorithm continually sped up, until 

machines were created (computers) that could

speed it up faster than humans could do 

by themselves.

“We’re entering the fifth dimension.”

“We’re entering a new age.”

“You know that something’s happening 

here, but you don’t know what it is.”

Advances in science that have made life

better happened alongside weaponry 

advances that killed humans better.

On the whole, the algorithm hasn’t made

people smarter or less self destructive.

Musk is a hero (ideal) that wants to colonize 

Mars when we haven’t figure out how to

manage the earth properly…that’s the ape

overreaching…not evolution.

It’s not evolution.

It’s blind survival instinct that will build

a bigger bomb if it thinks that will help it 

live longer.

It’s no more evolved than an amoeba.

Christ was evolved because he taught

compassion, something that the people

of that part of the world, that time in

history, might never have heard of.

They weren’t ready for him.

He scared them so they killed him.

Buddha was evolved and he taught

others the means to self evolve.

He said, back then, that by the time 

we are in now, it would be very hard 

to even hear, let alone understand, his

teachings. He said this time would be

the beginning of the Dark Age.

“Wisdom gap”: “the widening disparity 

between humanity’s rapidly advancing 

technological power, and humanity’s 

lagging ability to use that power wisely.”

(A.I.)

So fascinating, all these gadgets, 

all these possibilities, the shiny objects

posing as reality that distract us from

what’s really going on: the mirror we 

can’t help but eventually trip over.

Nothing happens for a long time, and suddenly….

…everything happens at once

world on the verge of nuclear war 

world on the verge of discovering

(revealing) aliens 3I/Atlas, baby!

Uh…I guess that’s everything.

When Is Enough Enough?

I should probably stop right there.

I’ve been writing for fifty years.

Certainly that’s enough.

Henry the Eighth ate so much that,

by the time he died, his body was

bloated and rotting.

He certainly ate enough.

The war to end all wars was followed

by a worse war, and the wars just kept

happening.

Certainly we’ve had enough of that.

Frankly, I’ve had enough of this life,

although it seems to keep happening.

We keep getting reborn because we

never get enough of what we think 

we’re looking for; separation from

space is the wind up spring that never

runs down and drives us forward

forever.

Even when we’re not, we’re trying to be.

Only Buddha had enough of the circle jerk

called samsara. When he passed into Nirvana,

he became space, our true home.

That’s enough.

Is It All A Game?

Is who dies with the most stuff the winner?

In that case there doesn’t seem to be many rules.

And, there aren’t many winners.

Day of the Dead and people get drunk and dance

in the cemetery.

If life is a game, Mexicans are in the bonus round.