1
Peter's been in the job
nine months
He's got the hang of it
He's really good;
Customers ask for him
Colleagues rely on him
The boss assigns him tough jobs

Peter's wife says at home:
"My, you've become irreplaceable
Time for a promotion;
and time for my makeover"


2
And so Peter speaks to his Boss
about a promotion
and runs through what he's done
in nine months:
"I've got the hang of it
I'm really good;
Customers ask for me
Colleagues rely on me
You trust me with the tough jobs
I'm irreplaceable"

"Agreed, " says the Boss
"But you are irreplaceable"
…pause…pause…pause…
*"So no one can take your
current position; so
you'll have to stay there,
I'm afraid"

sometimes I wonder
if I haven't really made a blunder
Really I must have been a radiant Being
happy, easy, and just with lust to wander
and float about in space
and flit between multi-dimensions
And then I think I saw the distant fair
and lights
and rides
and a swirl of emotions and passions
and heard the pipes
and in my naivety
I must have thought:
"What's that?
I must go discover…"
And so I know next
there was an explosion
like thunder
And I went through a tunnel
And in order to see this
world-swirl
of passions and emotions
I had to fumble out of another
And then - hey!
now I know
there's not so much grandeur
as before my blunder
And those people they called my parents
they've been quite clever
they've found a way out
and they've crawled out:
they've stolen the thunder;
and leaving me to work out
how to pull things asunder:
" goodbye son;
turn off the lights
on your way out"
And where am I going to find another explosion
and another tunnel
to get me out of this sandy hovel?
Another mother, another father? -
for all things in reverse
Maybe that's what they call
Time and Death
to get me back
away from my earthy warren
And back to my natural state
as a radiant Being
light and easy, happy to wander
and float about in space
and flit between multi-dimensions
And this time
no matter how much I wander
I hope not to gape in wonder
at the lights and swirls
that I might see yonder

I'm having a drink this here
at Space Bar in Pluto
and Martian Pete comes in
and sits beside me
and we talk, and we drink

Full of loyalty
and pride, as a human
(and patriotism included)
I tell the Martian:
"In 1969
We humans put a man on the moon"

"Pish! " says the Martian
"We sent a team
to the Sun
Earth Year 1959"

"Oh, " I say to the Martian
"The Sun would have burned
your team of Martians! "

"Pish! " retorts the Martian
*"You stupid Earthlings!
We sent them to the Sun at night"

jp (a fellow-poet here at HP) and I were speaking of a popular Asian imagery of the Mind as a Monkey...I mentioned that I would write a poem of how this idea is also embodied in a Chinese legend of the Monkey King...And this is the poem that follows...




Sun Wukong, or the Taming of the Monkey Mind


PART 1
The arrogance of Sun Wukong

Monkey you may think of me
but ordinary I am by no means:
timeless and
of primal forces
from a rock I was born
at the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit
I, pure energy, unrestrained
in perpetual motion

Powers? Ha! you mortals are easily impressed
by miracles and powers
aren’t you, you puny lot?

In one turn I can travel a 108 000 li
I can do numerous transformations
I can cloud travel
and my magic staff that I keep
in the size of a sewing needle when not in use
has similar powers;
and with each hair of mine
I can be an infinity of myself -
though I’ll confess
I can’t make a complete change into human
as my tail just won’t go away

So in all, great deeds I’m capable of;
and I wiped my name off the Book of Life and Death
so I am immutable -
so why am I even talking to you weaklings?
Go climb a tree, you imbeciles!
And stay up there! Don’t descend!




PART 2
The taming of Sun Wukong

And Sun Wukong flies up to the Heavenly Kingdom, styles himself “Great Sage, Equal of Heaven” and there creates tremendous Havoc and Chaos…and even the Jade Emperor, the Heavenly Emperor, has his **** kicked…and then it is that Sun Wukong comes face to face with the Buddha…*


And Sun Wukong screams at the Buddha:
“I’ll kick and I’ll blow  
And you won’t know where you’ll go”

And the Buddha says:
“And who are you?”

And Sun Wukong says:
“You probably haven’t heard of evolution
but I’m the one who went straight to the top –
I can travel anywhere quick and swift
to any part of the immense void or universe”

And the Buddha says:
“Try then and show me
you travel the universe
and back here before me”


And Sun Wukong jumps into thin air
and off he goes into deep space
and emptiness and void
but no matter how far he goes
it seems endless
and it tires Sun Wukong
and then seeing what
he thinks are the 5 pillars
at the end of the universe
he scrawls on the surface:
“Sun Wukong was here!”
And in an instant Sun Wukong is there again
right before the Buddha

And says Sun Wukong:
“See I have travelled to the
end and saw the 5 pillars
and scrawled there my name”

And the Buddha says,
holding up his right palm:
“See, all you have done
is to travel across my palm”

And Sun Wukong sees the words
he had written just before but now miniscule
And the Buddha puts a coronet round
Sun Wukong’s temple
that helps calm the Monkey Mind
that helps still the Restless Mind





NOTE: 180 000 li = 54 000 km or 33 554 ml

if I were a frog
first I’d dart my tongue out
and catch a fly

then with the same sticky tongue
I’d catch a human
actually as many as I can
and all the cars and streetlamps
and some mud and puddles of water
to sauce the whole thing
and eat them all whole
in one roll

And then I’d do the same thing
always with my sticky tongue
deracinate the trees, the rocks and mountains
and all living things
(all humans first I’d dispose of)
and all objects and planets and stars and space
and quasars and matter and anti-matter and zero
all stuck on my tongue and all rolled in one
and all these I’ll just swallow
if I were a frog
and I won’t stop till there’s nothing
except me
one gargantuan frog
and then I’ll burp
and then I’ll croak

*and then maybe I’ll burst

1
I don’t like people
who come borrowing books
They sniff the paper and ink on my shelf
and they ask to borrow
as if they’d ever read
anything beyond junkmail
and cut-out coupons;
and as if they’d ever return my books
if I don’t bark, hound and remind them
and re-remind them…

2
There is my friend Sam
who recently took a fancy
to one of my books
on my shelf:
“Make a Billion, Loser”

“Can I borrow that?”
Sam asked
And he looked like a loser
so I said, “Yeah, you can borrow it”
And he took the book off the shelf
and he said, indignant:
“Hey! The first 100 pages are here
But pages 101 to 200 are missing!”

And I said, ******* by this imbecile:
*“Hey, the first 100 is where you read;
the second half is missing
cos that’s where
you go make your money, you loser!
Now go read the book
and then make your Billion!”

I had this dream
and then it became a nightmare
and there was no line between
wakefulness and sleep
and it came to be that
all the books and print
and all discourse
Animal, human, in Nature and Divine
all discourse floated as sentences
And all sentences but a universe
of phrases and clauses
And each became just a word
so a universe of words
separate, individual, discrete
meaning in itself but unconnected
And then all words disappeared
And meaning too
And there were letters
And then just one letter
And none then…that’s all there was…
…or was not…
and there was no line between
wakefulness and sleep…

*there is no line between
wakefulness and sleep…