My mother
was born
twenty-seven years
before I was,
so is that
ahead of me,
or is that
behind me,
so me
being younger
come later
in the sceme of things
so that makes me older,
or does it?

There's this
cigarette
burning to my left,
that I just picked up
and took a puff from,
so then I adjusted it's ash
and took another drag,
and it's got some good qualities
and it's got some bad qualities,
but what I see
is it's quality,
this white paper
smoking round
thing with the line
and lettering
that I just pick up
and smoke.

The man sitting here,
smiling,
is doing so
because he sees
the light
at the end of the tunnel,
which is none other
than this light
which is an illumination
of this perfect now.

As in ping pong, the phrases
of humor in friendly chatter

are of high importance
to those men of wisdom

playing pool
with a beer

down on the old street
where nightlife is common

such as the thief
who goes as quietly as arrows.

So I got
colored light bulbs
for Christmas
and now I am having
interesting lighting
in my subterranean studio
where I do art
and have private parties
so with the radio
on nothing but static
and yellow, blue and red lights
in the darkness
I drink a shot
and go the the pink room
where I *******
until one second to D-Day.

At a Zen temple
I chanted
and blended in
with the Sangha
as though
we were all one being
with one voice,
so another time
I decided
to stand out
as an individual
and chant in my own way,
and then another time
I couldn't keep up
with the group singing
and was kind of
left out of it,
so the world is
one world
with one heart
and one love
as I just read
in another poem,
but this brings up
love and fear
as some think
about the human family
while others think about
One World Government,
and some think
about imagining one world
at peace
while others think about
Business Globalization,
so I think
this is life
and we should embrace
whatever comes
because whatever
will come
and I try
to approach
this one world
with fearlessness
and equanimity.

Love, I think, doesn't exist.
Only loving acts.
They're always.

Music sweet,     happy birdsong
about loving     everyday life

here at home     in nirvana
which is the same     as what this is,

so, mind sings     a Great Dharani
which is the same     as music!

For years
I have been
playing with my brain
trying to find
my old mind
and now it has dawned on me
that my ordinary,
everyday mind
is none other than this
ordinary, everyday mind
that I have right here.
The joke's on me.

There is no silence
in this world of music
the music of noise
and melody

But the mind knows
that at the root
of all this world's forms
is a deep silence

Which I hear
always, through the power
of Buddha-Dharma

Which tells me
that all of this firework
every-which form
is none other than nothing

And my eyes
see the Earth dissolve
into a blankness
which is not happy or sad

So back to the circus
of every-which form
where my computer hums
out of the silence.

I was eating peanuts
when I noticed blood
and found that my lip
was cut
so thinking about Babylon
and how the poet was freed
I tried ways
to heal it
and when I tried sleeping
it bled worse
so I decided
to wake up
all night long
although I probably won't.

I have a peculiar and eccentric style.
I am a peculiar and eccentric person.
My life is peculiar and eccentric.
I have always admired peculiar and eccentric artists.
I haven't seen a movie in a theater for twenty-one years.

My old pen
has been retired
and a funky new one
has temporarily
taken its place
because it seems to me
that I shouldn't stick
with the same old things
or else
I will get stuck.

I was in
a bar
a few years ago,
talking to a man
and a woman,
and the woman said
that the man made
fancy, expensive pens,
so I said that I had
a woody
and they both laughed loudly,
so I said that really
I had a pen called a woody
and they said that
a woody is another word
for *******
and I said oh
and the woman looked down
at my crotch.

All alternative therapies
and all religious practices
may be placebos,
like we might as well
drink sugar water,
but we shouldn't forget
that a placebo
sometimes is a cure,
simply because we believe.

Buddha doubts wisdom.
Buddha loves quiet.
Buddha's very polite.
Buddha radiates x-rays.
Buddha tells truths.
Buddha's ***** blasts.

Submitted
one poem
to "The New Yorker"
at age seventeen.

Rejected.

Submitted
one poem
to "Stinkface"
at age forty-two.

Accepted!

Drinking morning coffee
at night
something makes my brain
split open
and the thoughts
spit out venom
from the reptile mind
about an experience
of peculiar pain
which happened
about forty years ago
and after awhile
it closed up again
leaving its traces
in the form
of sadness
so here I am now
with my broken head
scratching its back.

Looking at history
I see the power
traveling west
around the world
and it seems
like the United States
is losing it
and China
is gaining it
so I think
that power
is not so great
and the happy states
are the ones
without much.

I became celibate
quite a few years ago
only in part
because of religious reasons
but probably mostly because
the *** was so bad
so after I became celibate
and after much meditation
I experienced a new kind of ***
for me,
these internal *******
from kundalini flow
and to me,
it is better than regular ***
and I have it
much more frequently
like entire days of ******
so that sometimes
I think that I am not celibate
but actually
have become
a bit too promiscuous.

She had to put
her dog down,
the dog that she took
on many walks
on many mornings,
the dog who was so pretty
that people always commented,
and when she had put
her dog down,
she felt like a killer
and our hearts
were torn.

I recently acquired
a small digital recorder
for making music
and after I recorded
my toy instruments
and figured the machine out
I finally put the music
on the computer
to hear that I had unintentionally
made the music soft
and since I delight
in mistakes and accidents
which don't hurt
I left my music that way,
a quiet, soft, little music.

There are rare people
who thrive
in disaster experiences
who find new love
who find a new way
who find that less
really sometimes is more
who find something spiritual
in the midst
of all the great suffering
that most of the people endure.

Rattle my yolk control, baby.
Give me a turbulent flow.
Squeeze my needle valves, baby.
Insert your directional valve.

Come on upstream through the orifice.
Give me that viscous friction.
The discharge coefficients are ready.
Blow out your resin agent.

   What's the matter, baby?
   What happened to the elongated pump?
   Do you need a pressure compensator?
   It looks like a reducing valve.

   How about a little friction
   to reexhibit some rigidity.
   Let's renegotiate positions
   and dissipate some frigidity.

I just watched a short film
of flowers
in fast motion
and I decided
that flowers try, too,
and that they struggle
and toil
like we all do,
and I like to reconsider
what the holy men
have said,
because maybe
they were wrong
and just saying things
like we all do,
and I like to doubt
the holy books
because they might be wrong
and just saying
old, handed-down garbage
or maybe not,
so I reconsidered the lilies
and found that they do indeed
toil and spin,
and they do dress nicely.

Darkness of the hour
     awakens
the dream-soaked man,
who arrives
after a pause
and a working
to the unlit room
of Buddha
for a visit
to the red heart
where fire shines
in these bricks,
to lessen the restless
     urges
and further the bliss.

Pushing my mother
in her wheelchair
through the forest
in the park,
I see my sister
picking up a leaf
and handing it
to mom
who asks
what should I do with it
and I suggest
using it
as a bookmark
for her daily words
and so I put the red leaf
in her pocket
and we roll on.

This ink is dry
with wetness
on a sunny fall afternoon
when we made a change
since we were told
of the coming that wasn't
and the going that isn't
so our feeling is
like a cotton sweater.

When I was a kid,
my brother and I
used to make fun
of Christian healers,
because we thought
they were fakes,
but when I grew up,
I developed serious mental illness
that psychiatry
couldn't seem
to cure,
so I turned
to religion
because I thought
it was my only hope,
but in mental illness,
sometimes
religion is more
of a problem
than a solution,
so after studying Zen
for forty years,
I'm still on the same medication
and seeing a psychiatrist
for the same old disease
that I was born with,
and that was after
a hellish time
spent with religion,
so when some people
brought the Dalai Lama
a young child
with a broken leg
and pleaded with him
to heal the child,
he said,
"Take this child
to the hospital."

Devo says,
"We must repeat"
and so it goes
day in and day out
same old, same old
but we know better
actually
because change occurs
moment by moment
and everything
changes,
although it seems
the same.

The first problem
that I remember encountering
in life
was restlessness,
and later on the path,
I have learned
that there are two ends
to the problem,
and that
the one that I usually have
is restlessness
when sitting
doing nothing,
but wanting
to do something,
and the problem is
that I don't have good thought,
an inspirational thought,
which will get me out
of my chair
to go and do something,
and we all know
what the other end
of restlessness is,
and that is
when you can't sit still,
you just keep going,
like a chicken
with his head cut off,
and that kind
of restlessness
leads to mania,
while my kind of restlessness
leads to depression,
so the trick is
to control the tempo
of rest and action,
so that you're not
a chicken running wildly,
or you're not
a bump on a log.

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.

I am writing
with my common ground pen
a poem
for five minutes
about right now
as the computer tower hums
and my Pendleton overshirt
rests on the black vinyl chair
with both feet parallel
firmly placed on the colorful
carpet
and the lights of green
of the high-speed internet
connection
turned-on
and I sit facing the green
wooden desk
which comes apart
into three
as the mind seems to be
focused on a visual and auditory
experience
of being.

I once asked
a river
by my house
to help me
quit smoking.
I'm still smoking.

The have ability harbor
to inner **** up, up
plastic cleaning bags
interceptors, styrofoam
trash containers, hydro-
powered cigarette, and
butts. Solar and the
other wheel, debris, trash.
The professor waste and
is wheel burned trash
to Mr.

The purpose of this
is to document
the place and time
where I am
at this present moment.

In a swiveling chair, the black and white images of light to the west, are reflections of mind in a humming machine. Turning a head, there is a closed window, showing an energetically inspired pen the nearing sunset.
                                                Moon swept itching dark
                                             Twilight, sunrises curtain
                                                   pink lids - open eyes

With a blink of instaneous awakeness and sleep, the neck turns fast, to look for inspiration.
                                                    Dusk - apart painted
                                              eight queued paired mare and foal
                                                     foliage lined dark black
Without my sister's presence, the filmed horse's birth is only an image, lost. Indeed, it's the shadows of sunlight that have lit up the southerly tree with darkness!

Noisy, talking brain
is actually the same
as quiet, still mind
so I can quit worrying
about quieting the thoughts.

So they sang
that we paved paradise
and put up a parking lot
but did we really like
living in paradise
with its snakes and bugs
and wild man-eating animals
so instead we have
beautiful Taco Bells
and strip malls
so we should save them
from being turned into trees
and moss
because I am an environmentalist
who thinks that nature should save us
not the other way around
and indoor nature
is to me somewhat preferable
to being outside
in the cold.

The young
follow the old
because of
their years
of experience.

The old
follow the young
because they know
where the action is.

The Buddha
is best heard
in the voice
of a little child.

The ancient
wise baby
gives a Dharma talk
by laughing.

I woke up with a different self and other inside.
They were a bit depressed.
I think I have billions or so others and selves inside.
So, in order to cheer us up, I did some meditation practices.
It helped a little.
We're still a trifle bummed out, but so be it.
We are a delusion of electro-magnetic bio-chemistry, or so I think.
I'm here somewhere, but I don't say anything in my old familiar voice.
It's OK though, we're happy often.

I used to think
that freedom
was found
in doing whatever you wanted to
and the crazier the better
but now I believe
that true freedom
is found in self-control
but don't leave
the craziness out
completely!

"Who am I?"
Me, but not
the word me.
"What am I?"
A man but not
the word man.
"Where am I?"
Here but not
the word here.
"When am I?"
Now but not
the word now.
"Why am I?"
Because I'm me,
a man, here and now,
but not those words.
"How am I?"
Fine.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
I don't know...

I will be doing
two new paintings
so in order
to prepare
I put my green bags
(which are red and blue)
into the car
and drove to the store
which sells a lot
most of which
is from China
and I know
that is not good
for our carbon footprint
but I like China
so I bought
two Chinese frames
and on the way home
I picked up two more
green bags
(which this time are green)
so I have been helping
the troubled economy
with my little
shopping deal.

Ordinary, everyday life
is none other
than infinity
and eternity.

This summer
has been hot
but the mornings
are quite nice
as I have been
sitting outside
with a cup of tea
by the flowers
with the chair
placed strategically
on the bricks
and I think
"Oh, I get it...
life actually is good."

For hours he
is not talking,
as inside a conversation of gentle speech
is droning

with the ecstatic music
of a minimal nature and
since he has no lips, the yoga
of relaxation

is applied to his closed mouth
which has in mind the view of Buddha

who
said that mouths
are born with weapons
that cut.

Some days are like this.
Some mornings I wake up with a head telling me what a loser I am.
It makes me feel lower than whale *****.
I try to love each day, but these kind of days are hard to love.
However, as we know from the song, the blues is allright.
So, I drag myself upstairs and write a poem.
That's better than suicide.

Relaxed, now,
after a morning
of a mind trip
which was
a bunch of thoughts
taking me in a very wrong direction,
thoughts which were trying
to get me to give up,
but it occured to me,
suddenly,
that a cleansing of the mind
was needed
so instead of giving up,
I did my thing!

You don't have
to be spiritual
to be spiritual.