Are you seeking to be free
of the burden of sorrow?
Not just your sorrow,
but the sorrow of the world?

Or do you seek to languidly
laugh in eternal pleasure,
forsaking the polar regions,
because that which is bad is bad?

Do you seek originality?
Something that is beyond
the corrupting influence
of rust and moth and time?

Are you like the rest of the human
beings wandering on this world?
For what are you lusting, seeking,
hungering? In wanting experiences --

whether they are ******, intellectual,
of first and last things, within, without --
there can be no fulfillment, no completion.
Always in the background: "What next?"

Sit still, my friend, observe the horrors,
the joys, the pleasures, the pains, the wants,
the needs, and the absence of all these.
There is nothing that can be left out.

The world isn't pretty; it's messy.
Few straight lines exist in nature;
and yet you live in a box, you eat in a box,
you work in a box, you learn in a box,

and one day you will lie dead in a box.

Fear will take shelter
under the rafters of faith.

Allow the building to collapse;
no harm can come from

the liberation of becoming unmoored.
All beliefs must come to an end.

It is okay not to know, so long as
the mind remains open without

hoping for a solution
or fearing a rejection.

That is freedom.

Mischievous How,
always looking for another
to tell you what to do.

But you've forgotten to listen;
forgotten relation to yourself.

Can you sit, silently still,
with your suffering?

Patiently, compassionately,
neither taking it nor leaving it?

Just observe it; it is there!

There's some sanity
in these circumstances
that slide through my view:

"Is it possible to live like you?"
He asked without knowing what
he meant, "because I want to know."

She laughed, still hugging a stranger,
"Inside you're very busy, calculating.
Only alone-ness can give true happiness.

Create some silence within,
for silence is love; and where
there is emptiness, love can flow."

"But how can I love so much?"
He spat his snide remark.
"No love can be inexhaustible."

"For me there is no other-ness;
every one is an extension
of my Self." She smiled.

"All the love I give is returned;
every drop taken is returned to the source.
It is inexhaustible because nothing is wasted."

I've been told to find a teacher, but
no mere mortal who weighs the world
with gilded, golden scales.

I've been told to kiss the feet
of anyone who has walked between
this world and that.

She told me that it's almost winter.
Already, icy fingers claw up my straightened spine.
"Breathe out," she says, "and when you can't breathe in,

you are dead." But still the breath comes mechanically
in out in out in out in out in out in out in out in out in
and I laugh at the absurdity of it all.

After a talk about the moon in a pond, with
its reflection being obscured by ripples,
and only calmed by a tamed mind,

the others rush to the food to fill the void.
But the sky is clear, the moon is full,
and the pond sits gently rippling, waiting to be tamed.

She sparks her vice
and braces for
what happens next –
what has to happen next.

But through the puffs,
her grin betrays the desire
to get lost in the moment
as, above her head,
the last stars start to fade.

Check back soon to resume and consume
every tight-lipped, slack-jawed fool in the room.

See, it's all what you know
as the fires start to grow
and the future burns slow.

Keep your eyes on the ceiling,
and your antenna feelers feelin',
for when your senses stop reeling,
you will finally start believing.

Kick-back to the basics,
not too far from the basement,
and close enough to show
that **** really isn't basic.

It's another mid-west, ******,
******-up freak show.
Another evening drinking whiskey
with the seedling's peep-show.

So, it's time to relax and relapse
into acidified broken synapse.

The lights keep flickering
and the couples keep bickering:
“*****, I am not above homicidal snickering.”

I steer clear of these diversions,
and wander past the sermons,
just to chew up all the crooked talk
and spittle out inversions.

I shovel mockery to hypocrisy,
pin-***** the empty *****
whose passions lack predicates,

and in the background, I'll be complexifying my medic-kit:
ketamine, morphine, ecstasy;
marijuana, mushrooms, LSD.

Watch those ******* jitter-bug college *****
procreate while sloppy drunk,
but keep an honest eye
on the flies that will rise above –

then fall back down in existential angst, like:
“Dear God, why must I be free?
Oh, God! Why is every universal eye on me?
I'm just another acid war veteran,
sneakin' through these gutters
with pestilence and bitter sin.
When they reach the promised land
of golden clouds and holding hands,
I'll be underground with the slugs and the spider band.”

Yet here I sit, sick of sippin' poisons with illiterates.
So, let the skies fall and the buildings crash,
as you stand on the wall with a fist full of cash.

I'll be on the front lawn,
picketing for dawn,
while the night around me slowly ambles on.