**** Burton examining Liz Taylor's ****** sphincter for blood.
      That's love.
            ****** love. Pornographic, anthropological, primate love.

                           --------------------------------------

The white pine whispers
      What the wind can't say.
            In the blowdown there's a slow ballet.

                           --------------------------------------

I am a citizen of the empire.
      Moonlight & heartbeat.
            Watres pipyng hoot.

                           --------------------------------------

One hawk.
      Flying low, scaring crows.
            No snow.

                           --------------------------------------

Summer morning, rabbit in my garden.
      Let it be or send a warning.
            Let the rabbit eat my peas.

                           --------------------------------------

Avoid the I,
      Avoid yourself, and enter the void?
            I think not.

To presume to write to someone about courage
and not complaining, don't importune or make dying people cry.
I've always said Leave me alone with autumn.
Don't stand around my bed, I won't be in it.

Over 7 years after he died, I finally looked
through my father's papers. Couple of unclaimed insurance policies,
savings bonds, our genealogy and on graph paper in an engineer's
block lettering quotations from The Seat of the Soul.

Reincarnation and karma are the chicken soup of the soul,
the after life is the reward for our colossal imperfections.
Along with banking instructions, he'd underlined
this: Your soul is immortal. It exists

outside of time. It has no beginning and no end.
Every time you ask for guidance you receive it.
If we are not at home in the world, contributing purpose,
we lose our desire to stay here -- and we die.

The physical world is an unaccountable given in which we
      unaccountably
find ourselves and which we strive to dominate to survive
or it is a learning environment created jointly by the souls that share it
and everything that occurs within it serves our learning.

Sin is activity directed toward self rather than toward service
to others. Sickness is sin. Almost any condition can be corrected.
You are part of God, therefore, think in a godly manner.
If you cannot accept this, forget it all. Do not even begin.

The first act of free will: How do I wish to learn?
If we participate in the cause, it is impossible not to participate in the
      effect.
We shall come to honor all of life sooner or later.
Until you become aware of the effects of your anger, you will
      continue to be an angry person.

Walking is the most commonly suggested exercise. Also, breathing.
"Thy will be done." Concentrate on that!
These expressions of certainty, conjectures and guesses
were inscribed by him in block letters on graph paper.

You'll soon lose interest in walking
and talking and wearing the cap
of a fool. You'll.
            Words: walk, talk, wear, cap, fool, you, soon, lose.

Idea!: Four word poems, ten
syllables per line, six
lines per paragraph. Graph.
            Words: idea, word, poem, syllable, line, paragraph, per, graph.

The night I wrecked my father's car
necking with my date after the dance
inching forward into traffic
foot tapping the brake like an *******.
            Words: night, car, father, wreck, date, dance, neck, traffic, inch,
            foot, tap, brake.

The USFS issued paper sleeping bags
like tissues during forest fires and fed us
steak and pop. All you could eat.
            Words: paper, bag, sleep, tissue, fire, steak, pop, eat, food,
            forest, us.

Things hurt. Pain is a message
to shut up and slow down.
Breathe deep, take care. Wait and see.
            Words: hurt, pain, shut, slow, breathe, care, wait, see, deep,
            message.

Just as the war
in the Iliad goes back
and forth according to Hector's
fortunes, so does marriage and a truck in mud.
            Words: just, war, back, forth, fortune, marriage, truck, mud.

Fear destroys the last free assessment of life.
But what is there to fear. Death
is most of all like sleep. Death
is but a dream missed.
            Words: fear, free, assess, destroy, life, death, sleep, dream, like,
            but, miss.

If a poem or essay can end with a conclusion or its opposite, either one,
Can it be of any use to anyone?

Do the discrepancies and disparities, dualities and densities, reflect only
      the dementia
Of the bearer of the pencil?

First entertain, then enlighten if you can. One stretches truth in order
      to pretend,
Another leavens with levity one's inevitable end.

Most days it's not possible to bring your life into an expressible state.
Disparate hopes, arduous chores, word choices. And, of course, the  
      state of the state.

Driven by ideas rather than rhymes, for it is not metres, but a
      metre-making argument,
That makes a poem. Convenience store or university English
      department

The day's disputes, down to the meaning of the weather, leave you
      indisposed
To share your heart of zero and your inner rose.

It is the strong force, the energy of the loved ones combined with
      cooperation for good or war.
Dad's years in New Guinea fighting ****, he said, were his best by far.

The best that can be said or done is Be where you are. Love the one
      you're with
Not necessarily an adult of the opposite ***, perhaps just a kid who
      hates math

And school, dresses goth, reads rarely but learns a lot from movies
      and YouTube,
Has the presence of mind to say I am who I am, deal with it. That's
      who I want to be

And have always been. Today clean the house, again. Woke up this
      morning to two thoughts:
How sweet to be alive! Life is tough.

Electron herders,
that's us. It began
earnestly late 20th century.
The first organic computers
using polymerase and ADP
came later. Weaponry
via numbers, words
magically appearing,
telepathy. Measurements
in which the last significant digit
is the Other. However
immediately depleted
our resources were,
antibiotics were always at the ready.
Forgetting what we knew,
reverting to austerity
because in times of prosperity
we forgot to be austere.
It's the uncertainty principle
taken to the nth degree
where the bad god resides,
Zeus, passionate, confused, obtuse.
Yes, we are electron herders
matter gatherers and shapers
of our time. Cancerous
cysts, irrational exuberance,
collective experience, experiments
gone well or wrong,
we were trying all along
to last forever. Flood and fire
saw to that.
Prospero was our answer
who threw his book
into the sea and wanted to be
mortal, meditative.
Find himself. We found
the world without the self
cornus to oxalis
orbitals and calculus
waves and particles
equally likely to be
within us as without us.

Supermarket celebration
shoppers are cytoplasm searching
for cellulose, muscle, photosynthesis.

Oils, petrochemical and vegetable
love: faith and trust
for instance, the Food and Drug Administration.

In America, the custom is
to avoid meeting the other shoppers' eyes. We graze
like cows or wander as zombies to the oldies played over the aisles.

I've always liked it here.
Cornucopia, yes. Also
a place to be alone and depressed, or cool off.

Water and bone
and the known ingredients. Neurons
for remembering, calculating, touching stuff.

I have a favorite bagger
who has the smile of a lover,
wouldn't rather be elsewhere.

Like glamour stars in bikinis
(but unlike tomatoes and bananas)
cashiers and clerks are admired from afar.

Joe says What's not to like? Ice cream, yogurt,
profit, tofu.
To eat your fill is a blasphemy against God.

At dinner, Zach asks
about our nation's history, wars.
I say We're taking on everyone, one at a time.

First Britain, then Britain again: "He was the surly English pluck, and
      there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be."
Next Mexico: "Death is indifferent to what hide he tans; life crushes
      men like flies."
The War Between the States: "Well done, Mr. Cromartie. Time now
      for rest."

Most of Latin America: "Not only humans longed for liberation. All
      ecology groaned for it too. The revolution is also one of lakes,
      rivers, trees, animals."
Then Southeast Asia: "The slight bump the mortars make as they kiss
      the tube goodbye. Then the furious rain, a fist driving home the
      message: Boy, you don't belong here."
Now the Middle East: "A land to be admired like all lands. Harsh
      mountains and deserts, indigenous plants and people, adapted
      ungulates, carnivorous mammals."

Can't forget the Krauts & Nips: "Then I heard the bomber call me in:
      Little Friend, Little Friend, I got two engines on fire. Can you see
      me, Little Friend?"
Nor the Commies: "You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the
      beginning of a new one. I put this book here for you, who once
      lived, so that you should visit us no more."
The original indigenous people say: "In time we'll become prosperous,
      or else we'll become martyrs. The force that placed us here cannot
      be trusted."