My friend at Wal-Mart
let me into  the inventory warehouse
where they keep the products
people kept returning
and I found them –
the Quantum Binoculars
beautifully handcrafted
with seamless joinings
glove-soft leather grips
polished to a glisten
with a big red switch at the top.

Switch it left to Bourgeois View
and you see the world
as most people do
through lenses of logic and contradiction
happy and/or sad
right and wrong
young or old
rich and/or poor
but there isn’t enough room
in the field of view
to hold all this conflict
and when you look through it too long
everything goes fuzzy gray
and your eyes start to cross
and you get the headache of the century.
which is why
everybody who used Bourgeois View
wanted a refund for the binoculars
regretting their purchase
terrible product they would say
never having bothered to flip the switch.

Flip right to Quantum View
and your headache disappears
as every person, place and thing
pulsates with vibrant rainbow color
brightening, shading, winking
expanding and contracting rhythmically
in a hypnotic dance
and nobody has to purchase or sell
and the mountainous toy robot displays
and the Special Today Only neon signs
and the shoppers and greeters morph
and the milieu turns glorious.

Then you see
a tiny point of intense blue light
in the center of each object
and it grows and starts to spin
and the next thing you know
you’re being pulled into the viewfinder
first by your eyes
then your cheeks and forehead
and you think uh-oh,
what’s going on here
and you’re reluctant
to let the eyepiece
**** you in any farther
but then you hear angelic music
and the blue lights
crack open like supernovas
revealing the infinite molecular structure
inside everything you see
electrons and neutrinos spinning
atoms racing across the panorama
and you realize
you absolutely must
take this wonderful machine home.

Imagine the quantum universe
hiding inside Wal-Mart’s inventory chaos
calm and rhythmic
instead of razory and cacophonous
soft shapes with vibrating edges
scenes arising and passing away
and you watch entranced
mindful and equanimous
as the view transports you
past the electric sliding glass doors
into the auditory memory
of your mother’s soft lullaby
and the innocent tenderness
of your first kiss
and the smell of the grass
on the last day of school
before summer vacation
and images of big silver trout in clear water
and Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed and Rumi
drinking lattes
in the Wal-Mart coffee shot
and they see you
and wave you over
to come sit down and chat.

So you ask your friend
how much for the binoculars
and he says
you really don’t want them
because if you take them home
you’ll like it so much in there
that one day you’ll let them
**** you all the way in
and you won’t come out
in fact
we don’t know
how many people
are already in there
but Wal-Mart optical department shoppers
have been disappearing for months
and nobody can find them
and you ask
if he takes American Express.

RINZAI BOX

Had to have a psych eval
at the box factory
a human resources workup
to make sure
I could handle work again
making cardboard condos
for little mammal prisoners
of the pet trade
who live on hot windowsills
until someone comes to love them.

I got too depressed once
when I found tiny bunnies
mewling in a dumpster
their only refuge
yes
a box I had made
you could tell
it said assembled with care
by Kevin
and I missed a month of work
and got written up
for just being sad.

The shrink diagnosed me
a cognitive distorter
a predictor of worst case scenarios
but I disagreed
since I saw the sad bunnies for real
and he puffed up like a blowfish
stammering you’re the patient
I’m the man.

Well I’ve been around the zendo
so I challenged him
smartypants answer this…….
Do bunnies in boxes
have Buddha nature?

Irrational and pointless he said
hmmmmm I said
how do you know
maybe you’re a narcissist
on a psychobabble fugue
echoing in a therapy box.

But I have Buddha nature
and I put that in the boxes I make
and the Buddha bunnies go in the boxes
and you here in your Buddha office
are not separate
just uniquely boxed  
and the label on the bunnies' box says
assembled with care by Buddha.

Her transition ritual
between lovers
a masterpiece of denial
took at most
a week
before the rebuke
about what a ****
he was
and how dumb
the other was
and let me cook
the way to a man’s heart
always the stomach
until one man
an older wiser sort
told her
I don’t like potatoes
and you’re too cruel
I am afraid of you
and will not
be staying
for dinner.

My man-o'-war lies anchored 
silent after crossing endless seas
as I stand on the gangway
bathed in midday heat.
The olive trees on the hillsides
grown ten times taller 
since I left you here
to seek my worth
in battles with strangers.

Heavy coats of chainmail
have worn maps into my shoulders
those engines of the trickster's axe.
Though no man or beast has won me
not a queen I have not taken from her king
I still fear to stand before you 
unarmored and vulnerable
before your patient inexorable love.

Your pure love 
is my greatest adversary
yet you carry no sword.
You challenge me everywhere
yet you sail no ocean.
You know I am weary
yet you do not mock.
You have simply waited
for my hard road to end.

My heart stops
in mute surrender
as I lift off the last battered chest plate,
undo the sterling braces from my legs
steel falling like glass
around the pirate's helmet
tarnished at my feet.


Though a lifetime of war
has crippled my gait
I run with reckless abandon
to that open door 
on the welcome street
the place I left
for no good reason
where you have endured all these years
holding the only blade 
that can sever
the lover from the rogue.

From noticing comes attraction
from attraction comes desire
from desire comes touching and tasting
from touching and tasting comes craving
from craving comes attachment
from attachment comes expectation
from expectation comes disappointment
from disappointment comes resentment
from resentment comes pain
from pain comes anger
from anger comes frustration
from frustration comes unhappiness
from unhappiness comes isolation
from isolation comes loneliness
from loneliness comes despair
from despair comes boredom
from boredom comes  silence
from silence comes acceptance
from acceptance comes healing
from healing comes a new life
and then from that new life comes noticing
and from noticing comes attraction
and from attraction comes desire
and if you are lucky
you recognize the game.

Santa Claus is 100% pure love
his heart does not divide
the starved and homeless man with his tin cup
from the wealthy politician in his black limousine

nor does Santa ever blame
the frightened small town girl
who paints her lips and struts unsure
down hard dark streets

Santa Claus remembers his own mother
and weeps for the lonely karma of octogenarians
diapered in wheelchairs along fluorescent hallways
abandoned by the ones they birthed

our great elf winces every time
he feels the crocodile's fearsome jaws
drag the wildebeest down
while the zebras flee

he prays relentless sailors
stop harpooning the great breaching whales
and hears the grasses scream
when bloated oilmen pound holes
in the prairie dog's kingdom

he regrets that schoolteachers lie
about what a great man Columbus was
and why the Sioux, the Apache and the Arapahoe
were incapable of evolution

he knows you don't need a bicycle helmet
to ride downtown for ice cream
knows our legal system is for sale
knows surfing is Neptune's brave ballet

Santa delights in the spiritual joy emerging
when patients see angels hovering everywhere
before doctors scream psychosis
and numb what they do not understand
with sad needles and leather restraints

his reindeer are the dreams of the spastic child
who knows he will never run
his sleigh a zero carbon emission vehicle
and his great heavy bag carries
the sweet prayers of the Jew, the Christian
the Muslim, the Buddhist, the Hindu
the Gnostic, the Wiccan and the existential humanist

on the night before Christmas
Santa dreams that all the cars and trucks disappear
and every freeway grows trees and flowers and grass
where everyone chats and meanders and strolls
and vendors sell SnoCones, apple juice and pears

because Santa Claus is just doing
the one thing he knows how to do best
on a long winter's night
to bring some light to a world
that races toward extinction
while the butterfly sleeps with the lizard
and the children still believe

There is a consumer product demon
in the trash underneath my sink.

The other day, I tossed in a wrapper
from a Quest 20-protein-gram nutrition bar
and a hand reached up to grab it.

Thinking I was daydreaming
I pulled out the white plastic Rubbermaid trash basket;
no hand, but the ¼ cup of Kraft Fast Mac
tossed in yesterday was moving, undulating.

It made a distinct voice-y sound
like “You’ll like Mac-a-lot, so eat me!”
Thinking this was just my overactive poetic imagination
I turned to the sink.

My JetZScrubber had wrapped around a spoon
dancing in circles around the In-Sink-Erator drain
while the Ajax Easy-Hands Dishwashing Liquid spewed bubbles
in unison.

Now convinced I took too much acid in college
I ran upstairs where my dog Mr. Brown sleeps
on his 44” x 36” leopard-print GoodDogBed.
“Howdy, partner,” Brown chimed.
“Sure is a fine day to go for a walk
using that Halti multi-loop leader and Sprenger prong collar.
Yes, I love ‘em.”

I took Mr. Brown to the dog park.
the one with the Safe-Steel chain link fence
and the pine trees without labels.
He pooped in the sawdust and vocalized
in his hound voice.
I could have sworn he said,
“Glad I didn’t do that on the L.L.Bean Woven Nylon Area Rug,”
but I wasn’t sure.

Nothing moved
except the wind in the trees.
and I wondered what to call it.

There will be no better days
there were no bad days
there were just so many days
one after another and another and another
and there will be unendingly more
because this is never done…

…each day is a quantum string of moments
shimmering with meter, rhythm and rhyme
if you listen
moments make days of music...

…but not loud
more like angels whispering to each other
just out of earshot
there it is
behind the other sounds
traffic of door and automobile
the hiss that kills the middle ear
that makes hummingbirds hide…

…so just listen;
be present
and the leaves will shiver in delight
as the hawk cries
and cat stiffens
and you finish your latte
and the barrista smiles at you
and you…


…remember childhood’s pets
rain rivers on windowpanes
through which you sat and watched
cinemas of sunsets
with those sweet, few others
who understood this
with you…

What you don’t know is
that I don’t know either.
What makes you stay inside on sunny days
has pestered me as well my whole life.
Shadows of things that would never happen
grew ominous, loomed over my cowering heart
so being a defensive, obsessive ruminator
my hope to make the leaves in my yard
stand still against gusts of wind –
become a psychotherapist
a posturing senex
trailing his wounded child behind
all made OK
with a license to insult you
pretending I know something
you don’t.

Will global warming disappear (?)
just because I know thousands of facts
about worms after rain
about how so many weeds pop up
in freshly-rained soil
underneath even dominating magnolias
and you pay me
to wizen you.
You stare like a mesmerized gazelle
counting the lions
a whole dozen of them
drawing a circle around your life in tall grass.

I want to tell you
run from the need for a resting place
from the pointless mobius strip
of therapy’s semantic banter.
I wish you would tell me
to just be quiet for once
invite me to hike a trail
protected by angels
with just so much sun
enough rain to nurture
and the lions yes
the lions like Fu Dogs
guard the entry to the hills.

I always forget
it isn’t my frustrated reverie
my angst about knowing
how important it is
not to need to know anything
this constant inability
not to daydream
that brought you here
to a leather throne
with an Olympus digital recorder
so you can capture every
single
word.

Way off in the distance
Across the wide river
Near where the far meadow
Meets the trees
I first saw my beloved.

She was picking flowers
To take home
And arrange just so
In her cottage near the field.

She loves beautiful things
And she once loved me
But the water between us
grew so deep and wide
She came to fear the crossing
That would bring her near.

We stood on the opposite banks
Each of us often and alone
Calling out with hope day after day
Come to me, please come.

But we never did
Each in fear of drowning
Afraid to leave the hard land
Where every step is made safe.

Once I waded in
But the water filled my eyes
As I lost sight and never touched
That far desired bank.

In the end too much time
With no embrace
finally wore me down.
I was wet and tired
From trying to swim upstream.

One day I just stopped
standing at the river's edge
And looked no more
to the far meadow
Where I first loved
my maiden by the trees.

1. What in the world
         possessed you
to do that!?@#$%^
My god . . . that was so stupid and careless!

#2. Why? . . .
I trusted my intuition.
My heart believed,
emotional logic compelled me.
Fluid, spontaneous from the gut.

#1. You’re crazy.
I would never
put myself at risk like that.

#2. What risk?
Getting harrassed
by the mind police?
They don't own me.

#1. But they punished you.

#2. No, just a little
        desperate flaggelation.

#2. But look at yourself
all boxed up,
stigmatized and branded.

#1. You mean the labels?
Those words they use
to define me?

#2. Yes, you’re a bad person.

#1. No, I’m not.

#2. Yes, you are.

... and they argued til dawn
neither knowing
nature does not declare winners
but admires innovation....

like when Magellan sailed off no edges
when Einstein confounded everyone by sailing in his head
when the Wright Brothers lifted off
when Tesla moved electrons
when Christ embraced the centurions
when Gautama just sat down
when the librarian refused to take Catcher in the Rye off the shelf
when Lenny Bruce swore on stage
when Leary and Alpert left Harvard
when Joan of Arc refused to recant
when Gandhi and friends burned their English wool
when Jung declared a spiritual psyche
when the UFC earned a huge Neilsen

so be your own guru
take kava kava instead of Prozac
barter with your hair stylist
and when someone says
you are wrong
ask them why
there are no dinosaurs
in the Bible.

Google someone
on the Good Internet
it could make you smile.

Like your shy neighbor
the one who doesn’t talk much
not a lot of eye contact
at the mailbox
the one who practices his violin
at the oddest hours.
Google him and you discover

he has a glass eye
result of his heroism
in the Na Trang Valley Massacre in Nam

he has an M.A. degree in divinity

his wife and children died in a housefire
when he was away on a business trip
some years ago

and all you can do
in your shameful paranoid way
is google him
to find the dirt

but there isn’t any
and you wish
there was something
sweet about you
on the Good internet.

I live in one of those small
mostly untainted towns
not trendy, just funky and innocent
the kind that’s becoming rara villa en terra.
No Starbucks.

But modern winds bring dust and particles
from larger cities around.
They have infected our fauna
which are morphing before our eyes.

Last week I was at the pond
where the deer come to drink at dusk
and my heart broke.

There was that huge seven-point whitetail buck
the one I so admired
huge, taut and fast
but instead of hooves
he was trod with Goodyear offroad tires.
He saw me see him
and embarrassed turned and sped away into the trees
leaving rubber treadmarks in the loam.

I would rather be hysterical than vulnerable
to what most people call love.  
I would rather couple with strange women
on an Amsterdam getaway
than let one more man
try to own me.

I prefer to ignore my own psychodynamics
in favor of endless talking cure analysis
and occasional astrology cult ******
that promise to speed my eventual evolution
from wounded *** object to invulnverable starchild.

I don’t need a Beverly Hills shrink
to tell me my narcissism and depression and squeaky voice
are symbolic of never having the power
to set a boundary between me and my father
who doted over my puberty
with slobbering praise and veiled lust.

Everyone who knows me for more than a week
sees my father throwing me financial bones
instead of apologizing for what he did
and the more I take his money
the freer I feel
distanced by automobiles with dark-tinted windows,
a house with a skull and crossbones doormat,
a silver .45 under my pillow
and not one single ex-boyfriend
about whom I will ever say a kind word.

I have created emotional and psychological invulnerability;
all men are now my father
and all men pay the price
of never being loved by me
and I pay the price of never being able to let them love me.

Now I just play with partners
and when they inevitably start to use the “L” word
I start to run inside
and I bounce off the walls and mirrors
of my own emptiness
and I go on a photo safari to Africa
where I pretend to understand the meaning of life
and I put out restraining orders
against the men who insist that I explain
and I have come to rely on legal and monetary fences
to protect me from
the truth about my deep loneliness.

I’ve never had an ******
never said I love you twice to the same person
and I think
as long as the money’s there
I won’t have to.

In the next place
Everything's there
That isn't here
Like  free flowers
On every street corner
And little shops
Where everyone is forgiven.

In the next place
Nobody feels alone
Because everybody's heart
Beats at exactly
The same time
And the rhythm
Fills the air.

In the next place
The sun rises
Twice a day
And the espresso man
Stops at every house
So even sleepy heads
Are sure to marvel
At the light rose sky.

In the next place
There's a depot
Where all the people
Who were lonely before
Arrive to throngs
Welcoming them
With hugs
Singing hallelujah.

In the next place
The new people
Get so much love
They forget
To be afraid
And finally understand
That in the old place
Nothing had to be
The way it was.

He reaches for the other pillow
but finds no head resting there
looking pretty
ready to kiss
and he feels bad.

She awakens from dreams of him
but there are no arms
reaching out for her
just the rumpled sheets
that witness only sleep.

Each heart breaks sometimes
remembering the precious few moments
when they could embrace
like normal people
and they cry.

And they both keep weeping
feeling so sad and heavy
with anger at the situation
at the other
for not trying harder
to be there.

He ruminates about how
she never does talk about
where she wants to put her piano
and she complains to herself
because he no longer counts
the days until their next encounter
and has so little to say
on the phone.

Each one is obsessed
with worrying about the other
and neither takes
the time to wonder
if the distant partner
also feels the sting
of the empty pillow.

Whether by your own hand
or assisted by the selfish outlaw
with whom you last shared
your lonely body,
your eyes closed forever
no last thought
other than to end.

It was recklessness
that took you
to dark ***** places
no sweet girl should go
where endless bad actors
hurt and starving like you
had no lines to recite
no script but loneliness.

Your lovely face now torn
your once promising *******
like wounded doves
will never fly
to wise sacred gardens
where nourishment is given
to the orphaned heart.

Yet I have a prayer for you still
that perhaps from a higher place
you will come to understand
the beauty I saw
beneath your vain skin
a tender young girl
whose sweet hands
reached so desperately
to capture just one real love
not knowing I had waited
for you right there
at the edge of your heart
every time before.

a daring mountaineer
ran out of lonely peaks
and women he could brag to

he met a wild woman
just as tired
of her narcissistic journey

they attached
and hoped
they were in love

this projection
became their Everest
with no summit

they ate crackers and soup
listened to talk radio
fell asleep wondering

they sighed in unison
quit dreaming
of mountaintops

When CNN monotony breaks my heart,
children wail for candy at cash registers,
and traffic buzz replaces birdsong,
I flee to my garden to water and ****.

Sanctuary explodes in miniature chorales
soprano buds breaking through cellulose cradles
last waters from a thousand wilting blossoms
sing tenor at their organic wake above the loam
and endless pneumatic streams drip from leaf tips
as they always have and will.

A googolplex of minute carbon dramas occurs
melodious ballads echo relentlessly
like Buddha’s kalapas of soil and light
as pistil and stamen call the fat brown bees.

Equally marvelous are my hands'
deft fingers fueled by arterial rivers
lymph and blood on capillaric freeways
with off-ramps for neighborhoods of dividing cells
built into my DNA,
this machine of loving grace.

Even the leather of my gloves
once lived thick on a bull eating grass
that waved on a prairie where the soil  
let the sun in
drank the rain
and that meticulous ensemble
plays still for the wolf and the eagle.

With the last seed sewn
I sit transfixed by the garden gate
knowing every blossom in every random patch
will arise and pass away like the pointless TV news
and I hear the machinery of this impermanence
crackling like spring frost
when sprouts push through
and Gaia’s eternal trumpets ring.

the addict told *******
he was moving out of town
and could never be found

the **** user
kept calling her hypothalamus
but it never called back

the midbrain begged
the frontal cortex please
just one more time, ok?

the parents wondered
why the alcohol counselor
was not Jesus

the *** addict apologized
to the therapist
for not wearing underwear
again

the alcoholic told his boss
his grandmother died of juvenile diabetes
and he had to go to his funeral

the counselor sighed
then read again
what the Tao Te King said
about nature's inscrutable ways

I found you yet again
Dipping water from a well
In a small village square
Your face covered as was custom
And knowing you instantly
I took your hand
You showed no surprise
Just knew me
As the son you bore
In a tropical clime
On a world so distant
You could remember only
The rustle of crystal wind
Through tall red trees
Under a blue sun
Where you smiled
Knowing this was another life
One more time together
For our souls to learn
Some loves never end
But seek new bodies
In new places
And we always get excited
Rush to each other
Passionate and so surprised
Until we remember why.

My love says she likes me
because I'm such a great deipnosophist,
a sanguine fellow
whose susurrus musings
crepitate with a farrago of meanings,
a  protean and hortatory munificence
that brings her to her knees
in delight.

I adore her as well
for the beatific rapprochement
she accedes to
even when we expatiate
on and on about things mercurial.

Yes, I will always adore
her lissome acquiescence
to the inexorable germanity
of the simple fact
that we're simply
head over heels
for each other,
if you know
what I'm trying to say.

Youth found me seeking the fastest rivers
diving into them careless and unafraid
then stroking boldly upstream
faster than the current flowed down against me.
I was a god.

Now I watch the Spring ice break
huge white boulders tumbling downstream  
furious cold and unforgiving
but I do not jump in.

Not that I could not swim, but why?
I have already drunk the wine
that flows from the foot of the gold mountains
from where all rivers begin.

Now I walk down a path trod by the elders
past where the river moves fast
to where the current wanes into deep pools
and the silver fish glide among the reeds.
I wade in slowly
water gently rising up
until it closes over my head
and I see something.
I release my breath
and descend deeper into the calm.

One day when you are turning gray
Like I am now
You will look at a list you wrote
Through all those years
And all your different lovers.

You will think of them
One by one
And in the silent pictures of your mind
You will know which ones truly loved you
And which did not.

You will see their faces
One by one
And know the true lovers had the boy’s hearts
The gentle sweet fellows
Who came with sincere flowers
Their heads bowed down
Eyes fixed to the ground at your feet
Transfixed by your beauty.

They worshipped you
Trusting their beloved's animistic heart
Innocent and devoted like to mother,
They were pure beyond lust
And helpless but to adore innocently
For there is something in the simple heart of love
Tenderness in the heart of a boy-man who truly loves
And when he does
He cannot go halfway.

All my poems just sit waiting
unwritten impulses of some things
midway between my brain and my eyes

to get one I sit back in my Barcalounger
and pretend my head is in an MRI machine
with the laser scanner looking

I pay the closest attention
silently mindful
of how much I think and feel
about what I see

and then a poem says
you never saw that feeling
you never felt that vision

you just keep running
from one stimulus to another
like a person who cannot write

you need a bigger Barcalounger.

Help me
the drugs don't work
my father touches me
I am too fat
powerless
I incise my anorexic hunger
with a martyr's red razor
rewarding myself
with a dopamine high
mixed with pity and disgust
so I can hide in the up and down
never know my real reasons
project my sadness onto others
and take pills
from psychiatrists
who themselves
believe the shallow island of chemicals
is the solution
and who work only
to keep you sick
when the sun is shining
but you cannot see it
because your frontal cortex says
the sun is not shining
when in fact
it is.

When you die alone
nobody beside you to see
your heart erupts through your chest
and a thousand tiny people crawl out.

Some of them climb down the bedside
and build condos in your carpet;
others climb up the lamp
and start hang gliding businesses.

Still others make their way
down the stairs and out into the garden
where they ride on great snails’ backs
singing wistful cowboy songs
in memory of your greatness.