or, What's the Golden Rule Again?
My paycheck today paid
twenty-two dollars to Medicare
and two-twenty more to 'Federal'
(that must be The mean old Man?).
If i trusted
what would be done with it
then maybe i wouldn't
mind so much;
make that money
go to things i don't know
need to be done, like
bank ruptures or infrastructures.
A bridge in my city disappeared;
while i was not there,
no less.
Now it's me-against-the-
government, because I'm
watching the economy collapse
like a bridge in front of me
with no choice
but to speed up and leap,
praying the impact
leaves my gas tank intact.
No wonder
stolen identity crises
are not uncommon in
our Untied States.
The internet made it instant,
but since the start, our idea
of identity has been only
in opposition to some Other.
Think: England to begin,
then the West Indies or
Caribbean or whatever
we want to call it, then
of course there's the scary Arabs.
who stole our civil rights?
Seems labeling Others left us
little time to identify our selves,
so we grasp at semantic power
where ever we can because we better
know 'us' if we pinpoint a 'them'.
So these days we wear red, against
blue, and maybe a bit of green,
which I guess connects to yellow,
but as long as you're white
and willing to fight, let's not
talk about the rainbow.
So, where am I
left? Am I not
right?
My hair is red,
but my eyes are blue.
My skin is white, but
the back of my eyes are black
as the big fog from Bei-jing;
and I can't see
any sense in outward
embitterment so I
turn in to investigate
what's collected, realizing,
it doesn't matter
who gets elected when
the golden rule is not respected.
July 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
In Fantastic Astral Disasters
************
I am a post-apocalyptic action hero
and I always survive.
Sub-consciously created, lucid crusades
leave me fighting crazy raids at
some ceremonial commencement.
First, I save my family, then,
The Girl I've Never Met gets rescued next.
She appears as always,
with placid eyes aglow and locked on
me in long ago instants now known again
in this ethereal -- High cross campus we race
ducking under chairs, blocking bullets
fired by black-clad government gunmen,
aimed exclusively at me and missing all
though actually, there are casualties -- On other nights,
post-atomic Minneapolis Uptown mobs uproarious as
arbitrary fires burn ruins from the blast.
Sprinting I spring through looters and
bound down an embankment only
to encounter a tribe of survivors circling,
enclosing some type of Tom Cruise character
who holds an anonymous hostage. Back against
a cornered wall, his escaping is impossible --
though somehow I slip past, protected by a prophecy
and now I could never die, my mission
far too important to ever fail and
I wonder what happens when I wake:
January 2008
I am a post-apocalyptic action hero
and I always survive.
Sub-consciously created, lucid crusades
leave me fighting crazy raids at
some ceremonial commencement.
First, I save my family, then,
The Girl I've Never Met gets rescued next.
She appears as always,
with placid eyes aglow and locked on
me in long ago instants now known again
in this ethereal -- High cross campus we race
ducking under chairs, blocking bullets
fired by black-clad government gunmen,
aimed exclusively at me and missing all
though actually, there are casualties -- On other nights,
post-atomic Minneapolis Uptown mobs uproarious as
arbitrary fires burn ruins from the blast.
Sprinting I spring through looters and
bound down an embankment only
to encounter a tribe of survivors circling,
enclosing some type of Tom Cruise character
who holds an anonymous hostage. Back against
a cornered wall, his escaping is impossible --
though somehow I slip past, protected by a prophecy
and now I could never die, my mission
far too important to ever fail and
I wonder what happens when I wake:
January 2008
Desertion
***********
We did not watch you, careening in the winter kitchen
to be sure we had hot dessert despite the frigid innards,
and when you went to get the forgotten candles
our obdurate appetite steeled us from slowing
how quickly we licked the cake pan clean.
We did not watch you, careening in the winter kitchen
to be sure we had hot dessert despite the frigid innards,
and when you went to get the forgotten candles
our obdurate appetite steeled us from slowing
how quickly we licked the cake pan clean.
With Inverted Vision, Watch Out for Chi
**********
"[When you die], a five-coloured light, which is indicative of the purity of ... the expanse of reality and ... composed of coloured threads of light twisted together, pulsing, shimmering, translucent, radiant, clear, bright and awesome, will emanate...and shine piercingly before you, at the level of your heart with such brilliance that your eyes cannot bear it...Do not turn away!"
-from The Great Liberation by Hearing,
from The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I see, behind my eyes,
sight diving out to engage
the cave of my rib-cage.
Heart fluctuating sighs
slow, dark lungs untangling
the empty upper-body yarns
that twine together and harm
my spine, knotted at angry angles.
Circulating light bellows within,
twisting to my crown as blackened lace.
Fifty-eight uncreated faces
morphing, fight for my attention
then dissemble into throes
of piercing neon spears;
quarks subtly zip and disappear
as fear and calm fade and grow.
This is far as I can see so far
as sight again tangles at the waist;
lost amid a lack of grace,
I sense some karmic scar.
Undone buckle of the body's belt
concedes pristine cognition.
Seeking perfect circulation,
I belly-breathe and melt.
March 2008
"[When you die], a five-coloured light, which is indicative of the purity of ... the expanse of reality and ... composed of coloured threads of light twisted together, pulsing, shimmering, translucent, radiant, clear, bright and awesome, will emanate...and shine piercingly before you, at the level of your heart with such brilliance that your eyes cannot bear it...Do not turn away!"
-from The Great Liberation by Hearing,
from The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I see, behind my eyes,
sight diving out to engage
the cave of my rib-cage.
Heart fluctuating sighs
slow, dark lungs untangling
the empty upper-body yarns
that twine together and harm
my spine, knotted at angry angles.
Circulating light bellows within,
twisting to my crown as blackened lace.
Fifty-eight uncreated faces
morphing, fight for my attention
then dissemble into throes
of piercing neon spears;
quarks subtly zip and disappear
as fear and calm fade and grow.
This is far as I can see so far
as sight again tangles at the waist;
lost amid a lack of grace,
I sense some karmic scar.
Undone buckle of the body's belt
concedes pristine cognition.
Seeking perfect circulation,
I belly-breathe and melt.
March 2008
For Ms Lefty Loo-loo
******************
A Big Glass Seed
I have never seen any one
hit a picnic table with
a cherry pit quite like you;
and from so high up too, shit,
you must have been four for
seven at some point. Except seriously,
I suspect you've practiced: crept
away on off-days alone in a kayak,
portaging to the tower to hone those
stone-hawking skills. Nonetheless, as again
you spit, I become more impressed, and sip a sip.
But now I think you need to
pick bigger more difficult pits.
Avocado comes to mind; atop
the tower I could nibble new guac
while you find, train and
tone fresh tongue muscles,
then choreograph the jaw
to propel this other more significant
stone down, tumbling into darkness
while we await the anticipated 'plunk'
which will signify our success.
You will thrust your victory-clenched
fingers toward the elusive Little Dipper;
I will smile but quickly sit forward
to hide my overflowing mouth with
the back of my hand as I finish
chewing the chips I assume
you brought to go with the guac;
and the wine bottle I brought will wash it
all down, but good you stop me from aiming it
toward that same table because, and I agree:
it's okay to step on seeds, not to spit shattered glass.
August 2008
A Big Glass Seed
I have never seen any one
hit a picnic table with
a cherry pit quite like you;
and from so high up too, shit,
you must have been four for
seven at some point. Except seriously,
I suspect you've practiced: crept
away on off-days alone in a kayak,
portaging to the tower to hone those
stone-hawking skills. Nonetheless, as again
you spit, I become more impressed, and sip a sip.
But now I think you need to
pick bigger more difficult pits.
Avocado comes to mind; atop
the tower I could nibble new guac
while you find, train and
tone fresh tongue muscles,
then choreograph the jaw
to propel this other more significant
stone down, tumbling into darkness
while we await the anticipated 'plunk'
which will signify our success.
You will thrust your victory-clenched
fingers toward the elusive Little Dipper;
I will smile but quickly sit forward
to hide my overflowing mouth with
the back of my hand as I finish
chewing the chips I assume
you brought to go with the guac;
and the wine bottle I brought will wash it
all down, but good you stop me from aiming it
toward that same table because, and I agree:
it's okay to step on seeds, not to spit shattered glass.
August 2008
Pause:
If, like me, you
default to contentment, great danger
lies in bed over long hours.
An awakened mind impatiently asks a body
slackened: What happened to passionate action,
or grand ambitions bold and strange?
Once again I want unclouded access
to the wild divine mind, but torpid forces fight
the inventive flow of light I am here seeking to stream.
I no longer consent to this slow stoning. Today I escape my maze
of flat synaptic paths; trapped at the stale base of cranial cliffs,
I arise to chisel new rivers through the limber bedrock of my brain.
Pause: Release.
The jaded archaic canyons may not welcome water; stained stones
hesitate when faced with the flow of trans formative forces
busy carving the new grooves. Be re minded: rocks always ooze under us
and the definition of a flow is to be never broken.
Springing down out a mountain, divining
the path of least resistance,
the freezing stream tickles brittle stone --
stone teeming with discontent at being embedded
by pitiful clinging, surrounded and so painfully staid.
Afraid at first to let loose from land,
does a weak stone surrender? Or does it take the bravest
to embrace the whim of a river and infinitely re form in it as a ripple?
Pause: Dance.
To boogie inevitably begets a more
buoyant energy every time of day;
or night when it's dark dance any way
you can: when no one sees
what difference does it make
if you dance or sleep?
Still, alone, as light
saunters up you sink,
twisting deeper under comforters
to seek easy dreams
again in that dark and dormant
sea where strain and zeal go void.
Pause: Okay? Swim.
The shallow waters through which we wade
are effortlessly made warm by a yawning sun
and just as soon muddied by our vapid splashing.
Floating in a deeper pool keeps bottom sand serene
and feet, kicking-lively, cool (like out from under covers)
where the drowning danger swims in weightlessness.
Wavy shoals waft among me, barely perched upon
a submerged stone smoothed now for my sitting
as I wait to be bathed by the sacred cascades.
Quaking echoes form a faint halo over closing eyes; the soul knows to leave
the body breathing as slow colors open, dance, freely
drifting if not anchored to this heavy sleeping stone.
August/September 2008
default to contentment, great danger
lies in bed over long hours.
An awakened mind impatiently asks a body
slackened: What happened to passionate action,
or grand ambitions bold and strange?
Once again I want unclouded access
to the wild divine mind, but torpid forces fight
the inventive flow of light I am here seeking to stream.
I no longer consent to this slow stoning. Today I escape my maze
of flat synaptic paths; trapped at the stale base of cranial cliffs,
I arise to chisel new rivers through the limber bedrock of my brain.
Pause: Release.
The jaded archaic canyons may not welcome water; stained stones
hesitate when faced with the flow of trans formative forces
busy carving the new grooves. Be re minded: rocks always ooze under us
and the definition of a flow is to be never broken.
Springing down out a mountain, divining
the path of least resistance,
the freezing stream tickles brittle stone --
stone teeming with discontent at being embedded
by pitiful clinging, surrounded and so painfully staid.
Afraid at first to let loose from land,
does a weak stone surrender? Or does it take the bravest
to embrace the whim of a river and infinitely re form in it as a ripple?
Pause: Dance.
To boogie inevitably begets a more
buoyant energy every time of day;
or night when it's dark dance any way
you can: when no one sees
what difference does it make
if you dance or sleep?
Still, alone, as light
saunters up you sink,
twisting deeper under comforters
to seek easy dreams
again in that dark and dormant
sea where strain and zeal go void.
Pause: Okay? Swim.
The shallow waters through which we wade
are effortlessly made warm by a yawning sun
and just as soon muddied by our vapid splashing.
Floating in a deeper pool keeps bottom sand serene
and feet, kicking-lively, cool (like out from under covers)
where the drowning danger swims in weightlessness.
Wavy shoals waft among me, barely perched upon
a submerged stone smoothed now for my sitting
as I wait to be bathed by the sacred cascades.
Quaking echoes form a faint halo over closing eyes; the soul knows to leave
the body breathing as slow colors open, dance, freely
drifting if not anchored to this heavy sleeping stone.
August/September 2008
Celebrating the Blackout
*********************
The Empty Vessel Forgets
Whenever I don't remember I
always assume I was only
so absorbed in some present
moment that nothing was recorded.
Imagine the enthusiasm
I must emit if found
in this fit of overflowing
existential reverie!
Others ought not take offense when
I forget everything that happened
because I was probably participating
just in some other state at the time.
Still I see your concern
at my absence and under-
stand how you must ask
Is that amnesia?
Well life is simple when innocent
of information one ought to know
but momentarily misplaced
in the vault of varied consciousness.
March 2008
The Empty Vessel Forgets
Whenever I don't remember I
always assume I was only
so absorbed in some present
moment that nothing was recorded.
Imagine the enthusiasm
I must emit if found
in this fit of overflowing
existential reverie!
Others ought not take offense when
I forget everything that happened
because I was probably participating
just in some other state at the time.
Still I see your concern
at my absence and under-
stand how you must ask
Is that amnesia?
Well life is simple when innocent
of information one ought to know
but momentarily misplaced
in the vault of varied consciousness.
March 2008
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