Take me back to the
Ashtray, in which we burned
Incense, in the front
Of my truck

Flick your ash out the
Window. Keep an eye out for
Anyone working harder than we
Believe they should. Or danger.

Read me a story. Tell me
How he’s not what you thought.
Diffuse the red dye of your
Stained words through the air.
Breathe deep. Hold for ten.

Delete the stanzas, re-read,
Test foundation under shaky limbs.
Burn your bra, don’t turn around.
Forget.

Become the bare-footed rockstar in
His maharishi mansion.
Hating hate, with vivacious volition.
Crusade against indifference.

Retire to your riches. 
Numb out everything they’ve already said.
And have foresight, of what they haven’t.
Novus Ordo Seclorum.
Defeat the mundane.

Return to your home world. 
Return to the truck. 
Light the **** incense.
Don’t ash on the rug.

Gray waves of glowing
Boredom wash over your 
Pre-glossed eyes.

Dance, clouds!
These will serve as your instructions.
She will serve as your guide.

Hold on, for dear life. 
Sometimes the inconsequentiality,
Can send you through the shield.
Novus ordinary Seclorom

Maybe it started going down Peasley Canyon Road. I can't recall.
****.
Maybe it started with not giving, or not wanting to.
No matter really, that act was over, the lines were out and the curtain drawn.
It's funny what the mind drags up
on it's own.
Mine drags up things like lost telescopes, looked thru
and cracked plastic leather , that hadn't
yet.
I knew how that man on TV felt who had only months to live, as I had only weeks.
Only two.
So...I gave you my blue apres-ski sweater, too big, a ring I still wear, too big to0 and my love, that I suppose wasn't.
On the plane away it was like a mixer gone crazy inside me...part staying, part going.
Of the part that went along I lost or had it removed with drill parades and dope lectures, fighting fires you can't loose and paper targets.
Very surgically.
Letters to you had phrases like 'smashed psyche' (which I still can't spell) and 'never let go'.
Bunk beds can be fun until they're made of steel and draped with woolen blankets and someone's legs from Alabama.
One of my friends at camp turned me on and I became the barracks Dylan, I'm not sure whether Thomas or Bob.
After a hundred years and eleven weeks it ended
and started.
A nice lady at the airport gave us all the only ****** shot we'd e had in eighteen hundred hours.
I'd called, prior to leaving and you were there at the end of that in-and-out mouth that blows the people out and ***** them back in after the fuel
I'd grown tired of walking up that ramp in my dreams but that time, I left no tracks at all.
A blue dress with ruffles round the neck and those patterned nylons then the rage. I read a few days ago that holding hands feels good even in this day and age.
Send that lady a rose.
Two weeks can last 20 minutes, I know.
Then started the back and forth of school a thousand miles away and painful phone call and Conni ,signed with a circle above the i.We split and mended a couple of times and I read the Harrad Experiment and I got a purple note from Conni and I called to say... I'm not sure what.
Hello...goodbye.
Time went by and so did school.
I remember walking across this field in San Francisco and being depressed by how long it took for fifteen minutes to pass when one considered four years.
I flew home to you that weekend and was duly dropped from school the next.
I asked for some dreamed of tug boat in Puget Sound but got instead a minesweeper in Japan. We'de done the front seat and hurried basement tango and I called Conni to say
well, I'm not sure what.
Hello
Goodbye
Stairs and glass and a clutching you and a sick me.

October 10th, Nineteen Sixty Eight
A hand, a car, a reading, a letter, a truck, a plane, a train and another reading.
I think there were only five or six lines to it but it was enough.
No yo-yos, no pick me up and put me down again...ok?
OK, I love you.
A friend named Green, a hundred talks sometimes with wine, sometimes not. Letters and business calls to you, cycles with no keys and McGaha, Clarence BM1, unit of issue one each, houses and no overnights, Lt. Cris Curtis and no-trouble dissension, the Maharishi and July and you and me and you and me
The Astronauts made it and we did too,  by the gate to the new lake
"A small step for man, a giant leap for mankind."
He was almost right.

June 21st Nineteen Seventy
The shrink never seen and you in Southern California at four in the morning and the Kona Hotel.
Burning ears and imagined heavies sent to intercept us at the infamous glass door.Not the first time but the best time.
Flying home together you gave me the window seat and your hand, all I needed.

November 15th  Nineteen Seventy
Sea-tac Motor Inn, coffee and toast and love.
I'm glad you didn't come down cause Ed was there and he was bad enough at saying goodbye.
Calls to you from Hawaii and Kwajaline and Guam and islands no one ever heard of but fish and me.

T minus 180-179-179-177
ad infinitum
Goodbye Subic Bay, goodbye
Tricks to keep away reality like tapes from home and **** in the old man's coffee cup. Jokes told and re-told till we all re-laughed.
Who ever heard of Sea Detail at 3:30 in the morning?
Me, thank God.
Friend Green was gone from Hawaii too, so I left on the first plane. SoCal again as the news media calls it, two days of debriefing then
out
I can't remember if I took a bus or a cab to the airport nor can I really recall which gate or even if you were there.
I guess I start at the tunnel yelling "OUT, I"M OUT!
I don't know if it started going up Peasley Canyon road or down.

You see what glitters
can’t keep your hands off it
feels so soft
tastes so good

By the time you’re in high school
it’s already too late
to get enough of it

but you try anyway
like a responsible adult
despite marital ennui
despite collapsing financial machines
despite leveled forests
despite legal hypocrisy

so reality conflicts
with your childhood dreams
and you go numb
despite the glitter
you’ve piled up
in your desperate garage

then as a senior citizen
you grow scared of ending
you pretend all the craving and striving
meant something

even though you never believed in God
never prayed or meditated
never read sacred literature

and insisted
who needs the Bhagavad Gita
when you have a portfolio
who needs the Maharishi
when you have CNN

eventually age wins
you ache
you get wider
you are too tired

you stop counting
what’s in the garage
doesn’t matter now

all you need is room
for one more thing
about the size of a camp stove

it all stops
when you carry the generator upstairs
close the windows
put towels under the door
and pull the starter cable

the literature says
“Quiet….. runs all night.”
which comforts you
like the glittery things of your youth

So many paths I could have taken.

So many things I might have tried.

Somehow I ended up where I am

and I just don’t know why.

I could have stayed in Morgantown

and earned my bachelors in getting high,

or gone to Maharishi

and let them teach me how to fly.

I could have done a million things

and I can’t help but wonder why,

why I chose the path I chose,

if this is all still just a lie.

I could have picked up and moved to Arizona

or Charlottesville Va.

lived in a ****** apartment

and worked for minimum wage.

I can’t help but write these stories

and watch them play out in my head

of everything that might have happened

of all the lives I might have led.

And I can’t help but wonder

where I might be today

if I had done things differently,

if I had chosen to walk away.

Instead I’m still here in this same town

where I have always been,

a town that will never understand me,

a town where I just don’t fit in.

All these options I’ve considered.

Still I can’t figure out

what I should be doing with my life

what I’m really all about.

Maybe one day I will find a path

to take me where I want to go

or perhaps I’ll wander all my life.

I guess you never really know.

Getting loaded at 9 AM,
Is getting to be a habit with me.
Free & easy on a barstool,
Just like a Lost Generation loser.
Should be smoking ****, I suppose,
Everybody knows what a drag ***** is.
But I guess mind expansion is the last thing on my mind.
Just want to get stupid for a while,
With a smile smeared ‘cross my face,
Like a Salv’dor Dali clock.
And for every maharishi ,
Telling me how sweet it’s gonna be,
There’s ten thousand-thousand Nelson Algrens,
******* up my mind.
Getting loaded at 9 AM,
Is getting to be a habit with me.

Krishna tells Arjuna:

“Prakritim svam avyashtubhya,

Visrajami punah punah”:

“Capturing my own Nature,

I create again and again” (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s translation,

Often given by him during Invincible America Assembly sessions,

2006-2007)



We can follow this advice,

Experience Entirety as Krnishna,

Who is our Total Self,

And within our Self,

Create Again and Again.



Already we are doing it to some degree:

Let’s keep unfolding our Awareness until

We experience it Fully!

Innocently doing it!

Innocently!

To the leaf, the source is the root far away

But it can waken,

Be awakened,

And realize, as Maharishi puts it,

That it is Sap, playing the role of leaf,

And then the Whole Tree is Within the leaf,

Which has become Leaf.



Same is true of us:

Body, senses, thoughts, I-Sence

Are not just the familiar individual

Whose name is on our driver’s license,

ID card,

But the Wholeness within which all individuality

Exists as Expressions.



We have begun to Waken to this Reality

And our Life has begun to be not only Magnificent

But Cozy and Comfortable.



We are all Waking!

All!