This morning
I was outside
sitting
and I thought
that I would do
a few dances,
so the first one
in the back yard
was a dance
to Pushan,
the god of the sun,
but I don't know
if there is any such thing
as a god of the sun,
so I bowed
toward the east
and with my Pushan mudra
began to wave my arms around
in some sort of Tai Chi thing
and walk around,
so then there was
the water dance
and the earth dance,
and finally,
I decided
to do a *** dance
to the woman inside of me,
so with my hands in a mudra
in front of my chest,
I waved around
a little more,
and I must have looked
like some kind of nut case
to the neighbors,
but it's alright
because they already know
that I am.

I come to this blank screen
without any conscious knowledge
about how to write this,
but I have
a sneaking feeling
that I already do know
exactly what to do,
and it's like meditation,
when you start
to meditate,
even if you've done it
a million times,
I always get the notion
that I don't know how
to do it,
but then I go ahead
and do it,
so this poetry racket
is the same thing,
I just sit here
and write it
even though I don't know how,
because actually
I do,
or maybe I don't,
you decide.

This room has a wicker plate with plastic flowers on the wall.
The new computer screen is bright.
Outside this room, it is raining.
This room smells like smoke.
The telephone has ***** fingerprints on it.
There is a long green desk in this room.
The lamp has an orange light bulb.
A piece of paper has numbers of the cycles per second of a circle of fifths.
There is a yellow ottoman with pillows and pieces of blank paper on it.
In this room, on the floor, are wires.
The altar has two orchids.
One orchid was for my dead father.
The other orchid is for my dead mother.
A funky fat Buddha sits close beside them.

I have learned
a good lesson
now, in my later years,
about restraining myself,
and I didn't know
that it was a good thing
to do
when I was younger
and thought
that to go wild
was the best thing,
so I know
that tightening my belt
is painful,
and I like my belly
to be loose,
but holding back
when I want something
or stopping
when it gets too wrong
is an excellent way
that makes me
happier
than going wild
which is only
an illusion
of being
free.

At the Buddha's birthday celebration,
I held my plateful of food
and sat down
at a table
with an odd man,
who said he was an engineer,
and that he
was looking around
for chicks,
so the Zen priest
pointed out
that he had
an enormous pile
of food
on two plates
in front of him,
and then
a young woman
sat down
at our table,
and he proceeded
to hit on her
by trying to impress her
with his intelligence,
and I wondered
if she might have been thinking,
"Who's this *******?",
but I kept my mouth shut.

So a little kid
was searching around
the crowded metaphysical bookshop
and he had
an old unplugged telephone
that didn't work,
so he asked
the lady,
"What's this?"
and she said,
"A cord"
so he asked,
"What does that mean?"
and she tried
to explain,
so he asked,
"What do you mean,
connection?"
and she tried
to explain,
so he asked,
"What do you mean,
plugged in, inside?"
and she tried
to explain,
so I rang
a bunch of small cymbals
that were attached
to the chair
that I was sitting on,
and the little kid
put the telephone
down.

A pleasant May fifth
was the day that my mother
lay dead in her bed.