As I was Saying (How many times can I use this title?)

I was taking a stroll, like you do sometimes 

after dinner. An old lady passed me, walking

with a child she was talking to. They were happy.

We are the fractal embers of an electric samsara.

Our DNA is a twisted fragment of the galactic

plane, a letter, rune, written in the ink of the 

Akashic Record. But, on the peninsula, the Gang

of Gangsters tries to redact the text, hoping we 

never notice that the Node we are standing on is

actually an eye opening on the face of God.

“Hurry up, please, it’s time.”

Last drink,

last hand,

last revelation before the apocalypse.

Lost in time or repeated in some other form,

the same tired stories.

If you read a lot, at some point you realize

it’s all been said.

Where is the certainty sought by scientists?

Evidently they haven’t found it yet, still clinging 

to the Philosopher’s Stone from whence they arose.

Waiting for the Second Coming because nobody 

really knows….beliefs to fill in the blanks.

Blank eyed on a street corner or sitting in a park,

jiggling your knees in the rain.

A picture is worth more than a thousand theories.

What will you do in the face of it?

Is it destiny? Is it karma?

It’s best to pay attention or risk falling into the

open manhole of mistaken identity, the fallacy

of misplaced concreteness, the sum of all

doctrines and dogmas that have been leading

the Homosap astray since he realized he could think.

A little knowledge is dangerous, evinced by

the world today.

Get used to it.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Believe It Or Not

Slightly there, here, somewhere I am,

music grounds the soul, I’m a soul man

solo, Man Solo, an Everyman if ever there

was one, (self affirmation….they say that

works/helps) No. Nowhere Man is what I 

am/not. (I really should have something 

to write about.)

 “In the beginning was the Word.”

That’s the strangest line that was ever written.

It’s possible that it has no meaning whatsoever.

And yet, look how far it has gone.

It’s the only inspiration I have that gives me hope,

that my nonsense will make sense to someone.

I’m also laughing very hard now.

And now I shudder to think what people believe.

Unlike the Bible, I can still put words down…(I

almost said “my truth” but how do I know if what

I know is true? I’ve said too much already.)

“In the beginning was the Word.”

Which word? All words? Potentiality?

Sorry, I’m writing to myself.

I always write to myself;

it’s the only way I can talk to you.

Join in if you can find an opening.

Taking a break from the breaking news, 

of the breaking world…breaks my heart.

It hurts. 

It hurts to be in love

and to be helpless.

 

Expendable

At that point like an old man in a room in

a hotel in Portland…whatever he did or

thought he should have done just thoughts

as he sits on his bed in inevitability no trophies

to even remind him what he once was, bleak

yes but no one said the end would be pretty in

fact no one talks about it much what is a good

death? surrounded by loved ones telling you

your life mattered doesn’t make it any easier

does it I’ll let you know on second thought no

I won’t so why write about it because it is a

truth we all will face if we have time. 

Not a subject dear to anyone looking forward

to whatever payday, birthday, victory on the

horizon maybe just another thought and you

just numbly don’t get there which is why belief

is sought after relied on surely there’s a reason

for all this one might think a reason besides just

that that’s the way it is always has been who

remembers the great victories of past wars the

achievements of civilizations long gone and 

aren’t we in similar situations yes we are called

humanity it’s hard to love you your selfish idiocy

not realizing we’re all in the same boat.

“Being alive is like embarking on a ship

you know is going to sink.” Suzuki Roshi

Using Time Wisely

Yes I have to because every day full of seconds is

precious not that it wasn’t before but little time left

so precious grows more at least I know which is better

still “so what?” looms it’s eternal head never mind

I’ll tell you later La dee da never felt so good yes now

is a moment when demise is not evident more breaths

more puffs of smoke sips of juice once you get the old

combine chugging it works pretty well so on into the

truncated future hopefully not for all of us but five years

after the jab more people should be dropping dead soon

not to be a downer but I’ve been down so long it looks

like up to me up to me as it is for all of us what do you

sir for example see walking to work all briefcased and

ready for the next hours stop don’t tell me let me guess.

Having a certain amount of whatever left I chose to put

it into words since I don’t know how to carve rocks and 

bury them for a thousand years to be found again by rock

Hunters’s glee what would he think anyway this guy’s 

obviously from the last time before this time the next

civilization where we try again and get it wrong because

the Golden Age only lasts so long parabled in the Bible 

and in Buddhist texts Ho hum how’s by you check for me

would you that’s the least I can do for you enough about

you we were talking about me it’s my time that was your 

time you don’t have to be quick to live here, but you’re 

dead.

There always has to be three don’t ask me why why ask 

why anyway come to your senses the only place to find

answers at least that’s what the scientists think and the

Buddhists know where we are is always good to know,

rather than have to guess believe surmise without proof

proof of life would be good that we’re actually here not

made up in our minds like our thoughts oops gave it away 

there a little but I wonder how many were actually paying

attention the words drone on like morning raga don’t mind

me folks I just wrote this.

OK, that moment’s over. Now I feel as old as shit again.

Cleaner Of Souls

Cheerful painkiller

caribou gut fail vista

infiltrate shark expectation

invisible bullwhip scores

the fiber of being fierce script.

Next on the agenda we have

magnetic connectivity nebula fantasy.

OK by you, Biloxi bayou?

If I have to explain the joke….ahem!

Destiny solidity? Advisor: “Paradox…suffer.”

No accounting for an earthquake.

All a creature feature waiting for an explanation,

a good used car,

a good five cent cigar.

Hey, buddy, can you spare an eternity?

 

Just Words A Story

Cold sheep amazement “Captain, step lively!”

Useless to analyze the equinox on the archipelago.

Heavyhearted bleakness scanning the horizon,

but the simplicity provides opportunities.

Hostage to hip obesity, the Captain smiled.

He wasn’t about to give in to any white knuckles prank.

You could always count on him, the bedrock of

his arrogance was warm and reassuring.

Meanwhile, a delicious cookie, the last around for

continents, was consumed in front of his crew as if 

to say: “I’m the captain.” 

The ship sunk soon thereafter.

“The Universe Is A Single Note” Zappa

Music cascades in cold air blue sunny skies

vibrations of meaning not words just feeling

anthem of the essence of the universal vibe

from which everything arises and goes back

into never lost because never really was but

the waves resonate on to infinity why not it’s 

as good an explanation as any.

Even words are sounds solidified to give 

semisolid meaning, like feathers on a bird.

If the poem’s not long enough, it’s easy just

to add a few more words,

keep the eternal engine humming,

the refrain returning to the source of a tear,

a glance that changes everything,

meaning, once we get there.

When you read words you travel with them,

destination semisolid until you get there.

You only know you’re there when you look back

and see how far you’ve come.

That gives some indication of the song you’ve sung.

The blues, the entire genre, came about from suffering,

peppered with love because it had to be.

Just a couple of bars of it, and you know the story.

One could look at galaxies that way, if one could see.

A Character In A Novel

Thomas Pynchon’s “V” a character half human half

automaton, mechanical, unrefined, falling apart yet

continuously on, going nowhere faster and

slower at the same time, reminds me a lot of me.

I’m made up too, figments of my imagination became

filaments weaved together through time resulting in

this animated animatron programmed for a banal end.

“They don’t make them like that anymore.”

Sure, not the cars and refrigerators that used to last forever,

nor the truths on which civilizations were built, then lost,

then remembered over and over, came back as a shock.

Death comes as a shock to many who haven’t been paying

attention, who look for their minds to be planted forever 

in some machine, beat the reaper, sidestep the scythe guy,

or give up and hope for the best.

There are so many signs, so much wisdom floating in the air,

in the sounds of birds and bees, in the smell next to skyscrapers,

in a sunset on the beach, in the screech of tires at a drag show,

in the perfume at a drag show,  in the trussed up, buttoned up

automorons telling you how it is, in the old fisherman you know

who just knows, in that one relative you look to for sanity, in

the call of the roosters, the lowing of cows.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

What makes you think you know?

If someone disagrees and you react immediately with anger,

that’s a clue you don’t know shit.

“To know is to get lost.” Sakaki

Lot of that going around.

That’s different than knowing I’m falling apart because

falling apart makes sense in the order of the universe.

Just ask it.

Ask it by looking.

Look at it. Look at it again. Look at it a third time

before you decide to jump to conclusions.

It won’t make you live longer, but maybe,

you’ll find out what life is and what it’s for.

Oops, there went another piece of my heart.

Perhaps notice a slight tinkle as you pass by.

In My Study

My money’s in my study and my study’s 

in my mind!

Who let that doggerel in here! Needs a bath!

At least the music doesn’t disappoint, it’s the same.

Friendly explosions outside, telling God: “Look here!”.

Friendly medicine, friendly food, friendly juice,

not too sickeningly friendly. 

Perfect temperature, I’ll say that.

Some magic, must be, else I’d be screwed by now.

Might as well accept my Xanadu, relax while I can

before the inevitable battle.

I like watching all of history on video implanting

images into my DNA for future recapitulation one

day retrieved by A.I. no doubt, mined for the truth.

I was dead in Denver before, twenty years….it was

the graveyard of the Western World, couldn’t write a lick.

I feel free right here, invisible in plain sight, 

20% Burning Man freedom just don’t be a dick.

That’s why I have words at all to say, nothing personal 

either way, it’s the environment, Dude.

I live in the best tree house a kid ever wanted.

“27 Things the Vatican is hiding from us.”

Wait a minute.

How do you know what they are and

can reveal them on a public forum, 

P. T. Barnum?

It’s true a lot of people don’t want to know.

It’s true a lot of people already know, or,

have a good idea.

Science fiction movies have also been getting

us ready for the truth, a CIA operation too.

Maybe we can’t handle the truth, but my bet

is that soon we won’t have a choice.

Medbeds, maybe.

The Medieval walls are not crumbling…

they’re disappearing.

I Can Do That

Smile once in a while.

Wear clothes that are in style.

Give a seed to a bird.

Say another kind word.

Hang myself by my neck from a pole

in the center of town to surrender 

myself to the mob.

That took a dark turn.

Horror Show (for D. D.)

The living dead walking around 

mummified, preserved in fixed beliefs.

Frightening to see their faces pale with

anger and crazy ideas, the life sucked out

by bad habits, out of control emotions.

What’s the good news?

They’re easy to ignore, go around.

The embalming process took years of listening

to sit coms, MSM, politicians, the usual suspects.

The further from the truth, the more obvious the

formaldehyde coursing through their veins.

The truth is not always pretty, nevertheless true.

Seeing the tamasha…it’s good to know where we are.

Not knowing, we are in danger of becoming like them.

One bite and we’re affected, infected, lost and buried.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

The hard, the difficult truth is the best vaccine.

Not A Sucker Looking For Succor

I figured it out.

It always ends badly.

Even Midas didn’t have enough gold

to buy his way out of reality.

Dictators always wind up strung up

on a lamppost.

“Et tu, Brutis?”

Power makes fools of anybody.

Tilopa ate fish guts because that’s all he had.

“The whole world’s gold to me!” he said. 

Obviously an approach most would consider crazy.

“ Look at the birds of the air who neither sew or reap

or store away in barns.” Jesus. So you see it has been done.

Trust….in what, wishful thinking or

the way things are?

The way things are, if you can see.

To see, you have to look, not falling into open manholes

because you’re distracted by your cell phone,

shockingly common these days.

So much stuff, so little truth.

The truth now is an obstacle to so many fantasies.

A dark shadow creeps and looms over the domain

of the Homosap.

“You know that something’s happening here, but

you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”

Synchronithmancy #2

What have I done for you lately?

Around and around she goes, always

coming back to square one.

“What was that?” he was heard to exclaim

as he lay dying.

“What’s it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the 

moment we live..”

In a moment there is time that a moment will reverse.

Magic is time and precision…you had to be there.

With the right ingredients you get a delicious stew,

a beautiful anything.

Go with the flow.

Swimming up stream is frustrating,

better get out of the water.

These two aren’t contradictory.

You can’t figure things out by thinking.

Who got anywhere that way?

The ones that got anywhere didn’t have much to say,

except maybe “work out your salvation with diligence.”

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

The mind doesn’t die.

Death is merely the final examination.

Synchronithmancy

Across a crowded room.

Outside at night dogs howling and barking

in streets wet with new rain.

Somewhere a far off saxophone plays.

Why does it have to always be far off?

Or have I never left?

Automatons at the automat just about complete

the circuit, the run around, the program to make

the Sheeple, blah, blah, blah. Up to you.

Imagine That

That’s how we remember what we think we see,

though, like Rashomon, we all see differently.

Shocking events prove that time is relative.

How does one arrive with the appropriate words?

When a civilization loses its focus, its foundation 

can crumble like words with no meaning….oh say

 can you see if the Americans that can see the truth

are doing what they can to change the world html?

There was no one to tell me what I was doing was right.

It was “all for one and every man for himself “.

We thought for ourselves more those days. Now there

are problems ( brainwashing) that get in .the way, the v.j.

and the jam, “how seem it is, and so sweet because of that

you don’t have to understand what I’m saying/the words

just go along with it and I promise it will be ok.” the t.v.

series, although I found “Underworld “ deliciously bloody,

why is that or any other thing? Instinct? Genetics holding 

the instincts? Supra-earth beings running the world? A 

universe as simulation, all of us the sum of our algorithms?

Might as well, absofuckinglootly

La La La, always three…careful while being free….they

always tried to catch me but I slipped into Mexico: economy,

beautiful and warm Valley of the Flowers, people not going 

like people going crazy like in the USA, sorry to say…

HEY! I didn’t do it! I’m only trying to HELP! People quick 

to judge, racist but not about race, religion maybe.

Islam is not a religion.

Buddhism is not a religion…

for different reasons.

                 

Terminator Poet

It’s what I do.

It’s all I do,

redux to the fecund minimum.

Survival iffy, loved in vain,

but at least I know what love is for.

If anyone wanted me to continue 

I would have known by now.

Just waiting for a hamburger to grease the machine.

Creaky and leaky like an old jalopy 

they don’t make parts for anymore.

My program is to keep writing because a poem

might hit, strike a chord, a nerve, and never go away.

The world is crazy anyway.

Some may discover diamonds in art that saves

them from the world’s mediocrity, stimulates them

to find what they’re missing.

Stranger things have happened.

A parent’s admonition:

“Don’t grow up to be a poet, an artist, a dancer…

There’s little profit in it.”

…except for the beauty that arises from the soul,

if that can even be.

Food for thought or food for worms, either way

I’m doomed, but I knew that long ago.

I still write because all I can try to do is free the world

from its things, 

a Terminator poet with nothing to cling to except 

my program, my imaginings.

View From Within

Late night, maybe

looking out the window,

neighbors’ apartments, some

dark, some with lights on,

shapes behind curtains, 

Venetian blinds, someone

is arguing, someone is crying.

Jacarandas will bloom soon,

purple flowers on bushy trees

in January, who would have

thought? But always warm in

Tepoztlan, not like Minnesota,

the coldest place I’ve lived,

no more…no more. I’d rather 

die here warm and bored, but

it’s not boring, never was.,

twenty years and I don’t know

why…maybe the people are

real, down to earth, no b.s.,

and politeness is survival not

just a good idea…you can get

away with murder here, so 

you’d better be nice…people

know this, even the stray dogs

chill, part of the environment, 

not like gringos that stick out

in foreign countries because 

from the land of every person 

for themselves except wars if 

a politician convinces them it’s 

a good idea like the latest fad…

America is famous for its fads;

junk that people buy ‘cause 

others do, including favorite 

t.v. shows, home team sporting 

events, artificial happenings to

make people think they belong 

somewhere, not like here where 

all they have is soccer and fiestas

because they like to be together,

one big happy family, although 

of course some of them like to

fight, but only kill if necessary.

Meanwhile mostly poor so have

to toe the line for whomever 

gives them money, no guarantee,

it could break as soon as bill is

paid, no guilt, no remorse, no

recourse, besides it’s the best

usually they can do, but plenty

of music, mariachi, mezcal 

cerveza for joy and fugget

about it, can’t rise too high,

not that far to fall, they give 

up when they start a job so

as to not waste time when 

it’s over. The ladies many 

times have kids when in

their teens and if the father

splits the child is folded into

the family why not, it’s only 

fair…the beat goes on people 

are born and die without the

possibility of face on a bubble 

gum card or postage stamp

though one man painted my

portrait but he was from Chicago.

Unexpected Profundity

Mouth agape, no room for thought.

I remember I was there.

What was it?

Meteorology?

Waterfront kitsch?

Displacement due to new information?

I’ll never forget when she took off her robe.

I’ll never forget when the van went round

and round on the icy road…

when I fell down the brick pile when

I was three years old.

These events didn’t change my life, they

just pointed something out.

Most events don’t change our lives, but

some happened without a doubt.

The UFOs I saw stopped my mind, 

I felt fear of what should not have been there.

Those that were alive at the time of Pearl Harbor,

at the time of the atom bomb,

surely don’t forget the changes that these and

other things brought on.

We can imagine anything, and do.

That pales to reality when reality is new.

For a long time nothing changes, then,

suddenly, everything is new.

2026 I predict is gonna be one of those years.

I can feel it, Dave, can you?

Not an idea about the thing but the thing itself

Steam rises from a ceramic mug,

mimicking a ghost.

We know where the coffee is going,

not so much the day.

The clock face is a silent witness, 

ticking towards a future that refuses to reveal its hand.

“What’s time to a pig?” I heard my teacher say.

He was joking, but the joke’s on us.

The clock on the wall eats the seconds,

but the pig just eats.

Oh! To be a pig like when I was young! 

To have nothing to think about, to just eat in peace!

To exist as a heavy heartbeat in the shade,

knowing only the itch and the scratch!

Scratch that, I’m here with a plethora of sophisticated 

thoughts. 

Once it starts, no end to the poem, just cut it off 

like taffy, await the inevitable ooze.

Quick Synopsis Of Everything

Hopper…..space of sight 

Varese……space of sound

Blank page….space of form

Mind…..space of space.

What goes around comes around,

Ouroboros, nothing interferes with

the nothing new under the sun

because nothing interferes with space,

because space itself is form. Got me?

We fall in love/hate with form…

nothing/space scares us shitless,

yet, these two are one.

I can’t help myself any more than you

can help going out the door to whatever 

you do, well or badly, because space 

doesn’t care what time it is, only we do.

Maybe I write too much because I’ve

written so much and the beat goes on,

the heart, always only the heart.