Writing for want of seeing my own reflection. The one in the bathhouse mirror is not up to date; microseconds too late. The one in Drew's room has also failed to satisfy me; reporting only upon who I was when I peered into it.

Broccoli breakfast fried in hemp oiled wok is now as yet unconsumable; and when consumed is no longer now. Now is a belly full. Not now too is present here in its absence. Jack Johnson's 'Break Down' plays through the shop on our North Carolina frequency calling back Golden Summer moments who, when now, were so much so that they are immortal in their absence.

The melancholy of nostalgia has a nourishing richness to it. In the presence of the absence it suggests is the [sigh].

I come down to read, becoming pleasantly entangled in my own words as I try to speak to the great interjector.

You are the character in your diary, as I am. These pages thirst for tales of you. What has been written in yours? The Diarist does a poor job in Samsara of telling you the affection writ within me. Where is the natural conviction of speech I am so sure of when glibly articulating an anecdote of no consequence? Now, when my words would have what I confess from my closest conscious passion, do my phrases curl crippled dripping with wavering insecurity?

I am a tale-teller but I can't talk to stutter a simple truth. My eyes know, though, and I look only long enough to tell.

I am the void that my body occupies.

Lightning

Every electrochemical signal of my energy-matter stardust meatsuit seizes, ceasing.
Without motion, brilliantly, a bolt of immediacy is. It is and as it is there is no knower to know it, just a purple and green afterflash shimmering over a pair of closed eyes.

Now rain on a face, the feeling of the little cold falling fists interfered with, distorted, and distant. Vertigo. More dark time that forgets to remember. Grasping. Elusive. Recollection. Confusion. I seem to--
somthing
that. Flash. That!

Lightning

Diggin' Taters

Diggin' Taters
knees in mud
fingers are eyes
pulling plants
worming into dirt
Feel like my ancient rodent mammal root digging forefathers
seed potato sees me
lots of eyes
it's a potent potential potato potentate
with lots of new potatoes
to pluck and make pancakes

Jake's farm is a business whose model is Hellenic. We, the interns, are the ancient Greeks. Our managers are the kings of the city states. The owners are the Gods on Mt. Olympus. They don't have much real say in the way that things work, but occasionally a poor Greek will get hit with a lightning bolt to demonstrate their power.

The Greeks love drama, and this their Gods provide for them.

For the last two days, we have lived an orgy of hippiedom with new friends; travelers. Any moment, the Gods will see our pleasure and smite us. Though the hedonistic joy is tantalizing, I am not its host. I have a unique oppurtunity to escape. I have seen the forecast and will dodge the shitstorm.

'Dirt is matter in the wrong place. Thought is mind in the wrong place. Matter is mind; so thought is dirt. Thus argued he, the wise one, not mindful that all place is wrong.'

A Crowley

Queen Queso

Queen Queso
resting as if nature had
snowed her there in a pile

the secret focus of my peripheral vision
a sideways stare--
pupils focused elsewhere

soundless in her space
knotty locks massless soft
I can see thoughts flowing across her face
eyelids vines of eyelash

I ask a question
she speaks in interjections.

A haiku

I'm going diving.
If I'm down too long put a
cork in my snorkel.

Leviathin

Master turtle keeps bees;
the hive is in his shell.
They make honey for his tea
and the extra he can sell

He wanders fields of flowers,
a botanical collector,
pressing petals he spends hours
and the bees all get the nectar.

He taught the bees nonviolence
they abhor killing
even if the situation's tense
they will never sting

To the bees he is quite regal
though they haven't got a queen
for he treats them all as equals.
They keep his shell quite clean.

They do as they are told
and trust his grizzled guidance.
He's a hundred years old.
They appreciate the ride-ance

A wise patient waiter
and a strong tea steeper
he proves a merciful dictator
makes the best beekeeper

CAA

My name is Willy and I am a cockaholic.
I'm a country man, and it's getting hard out there in the field.
It's hard all the time, even in the community.
I'm an upstanding citizen, but it can be hard when I have school children
out on field trips to the farm.
Especially in the morning at sunrise;
it rises up tall and red
and crows at the top of its little cock lungs.
Yep, that cock gets me every time.
At dawn, it's just all pumped up and proud.
Its red body sticks out amongst the weeds, throbbing with excitement.
I tell you, ladies and gentlemen,
I am a cockaholic.
Them birds make me cream my britches.
I can't have them around when I'm milking ol' one eye,
our cow.

My goal here is to be so specifically vague and just vaguely specific enough that your inner semantic machinery will put in a cosmic cheat code and beat the game.

Blood on the Brain

'Bodily functions are parts of the machine;
silent, unless in disease.
But the mind, never at ease, creaketh 'I' ' -A. Crowley

The mantis in my mind
bleeding bug
in the unforgiving beak of an owlet
on her first hunt
'Allah Allah Allah Allah'
is the silent mantra of birdbreath laughter

the general at the particular

dying insect ganglia
grok the divine facetiousness
of the crying cosmic clownshow

crunch and swallow bits of bugbody
brainhead in the belly hears
Aumheart birdbeat
little organ pumps blood
a river that cannot be damned

headless mind
bloated organ pumps thoughts
a deluge only God can dam
leave minnows in the mud
flapping fish fortitude
as little selfs expire crabeaten
blood on the brain

Make do.

Walking in the woods
muck-scooting by the creek
crawdad crawling
crawbabies in eggs on its tail
does that make her a crawmom?
Wet carapace impressable with my fingertips
as she waves her claw
and flails a tail

I am pleasantly obnubilated
fastening my camo overalls
feel naked looking down
my cock walking noselessly below
sunhat tangling dreadlocks
weeding collard greens
half sunk in the flooded soil
will they drown?

Plants accept their planting
and put down roots
They make do.
Yes, they do make do don't they?
Yes they do.

My friends with sharp wit
slicing each layer
band by band
looking for the middle
but its a rubberband ball
all that is left
is broken elastic noodles
vibrating strings
what's the meaning?
Child's play.

'Never mind the saying
seeing is enough.'
throwing berries at the Abbydog
her quibbly quivering quim queefing quietly
as she quaffs the floodwater on the plastic
her mudpaws scare the crawdad

requiem

His demise a surprise
I cry for a fallen friend
my slow, fluffy brother
the four foot dill weed
Every day watering the greenhouse
I petted his soft dilleaves
Today someone has felled him
for fertilizer

Egopotamus

I am an egopotamus
Lament!
I am small in body
but when I am in the room
it's full.
And there is no space
for you or your face

Gotta shrink in the RV
with six tokers in a cuddle puddle
super-stoner has sexhope ponderings
pressing against S, J, M
little folks and my tall little love for them
sleeping in sexy whiskeysmell

With a home on wheels
we spend a quiet aboded evening
at a loud drunken party

We're sober sinners
in an alcoholic heaven
we wake up ready for more love
but everyone else is hung over

no one submits to hot tub beggings
how strange the poison alcohol
but there's no room in the pool anyway
because I am an egopotamus

Obama is a monster
Obama is a monster
though George Bush
was a monster too

George Bush committed war crimes
Obama wants to take your dimes
one brought on these turbulent times
the other one is seeing them through...

George Bush loved to torture
Obama exploited black culture
George Bush helped to corporatize
now Obama's here to socialize
and the government much bigger grew.

Don't pay the politicians
they're greedy money magicians
they take advantage of how we're conditioned
the only person to trust is you

they claim to represent us
but politics only prevent us
from dropping the game
and seeing what's true.

I

'Just because you chew your own ass,
does not mean you have prevented an ass chewing.'
Dread green and viscous made its cold way down my sinus cavity. All my major organs tucked themselves into the warm bomb-shelter of my large intestine.
I stepped off of the yellow vehicle and tried to appear submissive.
'That's a twelve thousand dollar piece of farm equipment...'
The fresh torn gash in the greenhouse frowned at me, plastic flailing mournfully in the breeze.

II

No matter how many times you go back and pick them, there are more ripe strawberries to be found. This morning picking in the misty rain, the sun finally reappeared. A hat became necessary.
Pale white-green berries burned baked ripe red by radiation. Brent bends to sort through tangled green grandma. A blur flies and strikes, with a pink thwack, the ass of his jeans.
A holocaust of fruit in gory glory berry-meat merriment sweet, splats. Shay halts it with a sudden thrust of her arm into the bush. A snake. Musk-monster growing between the weeds. Brave girl holds beast high having captured the predatory vegetable.

III

Spooked horse slowly calming; breathe some smoke into her nostrils. Over the ridge a party rides. The indians are coming; someone pack another pipe.

IV

I am a villain tilling between rows of Bull's blood beets. Bitchy tiller eats a rock crunch jerk crunch and shits it out with a thump scares a yardbird. Growling tiller chews the skin off of the field like it was a buffalo wing. I'd like to kill the chicken and till it with my teeth; very much a vegetable this foul fowl foraging free range for rocks and seeds.

V

Justin's huskydog wandered through the rye. I hung with her, petting her beautiful neck-nape. Is that a scrape? Skin off in my hand, bloody dogmeat beneath. Disgust like a windblown leafslap in the face.
I locked her in a room to fetch Melissa, the vet tech.
When I returned, a man stood crookedly scowling at us, skinless in patches. White bubbles thrust through the raw red. My breath was a cold wind. The man staggered at us, catching Melissa for a moment. She erupted in white bubbles, reduced to a foaming puddle.
I ran to Garrett's cottage, tripping over tapeworms. Knock. Answer. 'Get the gun!'. Click. 'The man is behind--' Garrett shoots. Nothing but air.
A husky comes running through the rye.

VI

Laying plastic, cut my thumb with Garrett's knife.
"I'm sorry Chris. This incident is not indicative of how much this farm means to me."
"I know. Shit happens. That's what I get bringing youngin's out here." He smiled. His mustache stretched in merciful yoga, "Now for your penance."

All paths lead to socks, but socks cannot be attained by seeking them.

Loving the love of seven lovers
at the church of the holy hot tub
baptised in flesh and chlorine
Pope Daniel annointer
out in the secret spaces
of backwood west Asheville
Ecclesiastic,
orgiastic,
Hosanna in excelsis sauna
devil duck dares the bishops; pawns of the pond
three strip skinned boys
one bald dom, one mohawked god, one dreaded sub,
a headshaved firebreathing dyke
with a voice like a tongue in my ear
a taut tiny human also, creature full of libidinous gusto,
a hippie princess hair in braids,
and the redhead lioness queen.
A twisting swim in a sexy soup
drive home naked
late but beaming

The cow lifts its head
and the mountain moos.

Alan Watts was talking to
a zen monk; Bai Shun
He said, "Master Bai Shun--"

Do I believe in God?
In God there is no I to believe.

Do I believe in an after-life?
After life there is no I to believe.

Some lighthearted blasphemy...

'He who does not know how to put his will into things at least puts a meaning in them. That is, he believes there is a will in them already. (Principle of Belief)' -Nietzsche

The deity concept of most monotheists is frought with the idiosyncrasies of their linguistic thought-- itself a symptom of the structure of their language which does not distinguish between concept, symbol, and object-in-itself.* It tends to be male-- a force of creation and destruction by will, for a will, and with a conscious goal. Heavenly father crafting, bit by bit, the artifact that is the world.

The deity concepts of most other types of theists reflects differently; it tends to be female-- a source of emergence, of nurturing, of growth without design, unconscious and mysterious. Great mother with a green thumb.

The former criticizes the latter as weak-- a pussy. The latter criticizes the former as domineering-- a cock.

But the monotheists must have a cock-- solid, precise, invasive-- or they would have no security.

And the pantheists must have a pussy-- wet, warm, safe, soft, malleable-- It is mysterious to them because they have no concept of it-- nothing with which to probe it.

Yet, the union of our concept with the thing-in-itself, our entering into it to realize that here I am, it is I, in that phenomenon is the point. Tathata.

At the moment, monotheists are sucking the cock when they should be fucking the pussy.

Have you ever wondered why Christians always have a mouthful to say?

Why the polytheist and the pantheist and the atheist cannot be satisfied? Why is it that they yearn for liberation?

If though, the heavenly father and mother earth were to have a long shag--

--a finger pointing at the moon.

*Though all three have the same source phenomenon, the symbol is a semantic echo of that phenomenon, and the concept an echo of the symbols. These dimensions of phenomenon are not accounted for in the language and so are not expressed in the consciousness which interprets it.

on the highway
where once was wreckage
an accident, a death
on the spot
a crucifix
I see the bent metal
the human roadkill
gray and hammy

may as well nail it up
each casualty, each highway
messiah hanging from the whitepainted wood
these roadside graves

the path slithers
through the valleys
dynamited into the blue ridge

great towering crosses
like horns from the head of the mountain
beseech drivers
to pull aside and worship them

or they gaze sadly as an RV
passes over in silence

we are still at 60mph
but South Carolina
crawls toward us
we dwell in her two nights
this most American of States
--void, leeching creativity--
until she recedes again

Country Sutra

Our farm truck is bad ass
low brow high class
like gulps of whiskey it drinks gas
a diesel engine moves its mass

color of steel drenched in blood
in low gear tow gear through the mud
from every redneck get a nod
because they know our farm truck's God

can't steer this great vehicle's karma
just make suggestions to its dharma
this bad ass truck will never harm a
mountain driving organic farmer

and though it's horn is just a whine
it's not the honk you've got to mind
for it may roar or purr or grind
when you climb inside this great feline

the last hick who tried to trash--
in a crash his ass was mashed--
nothing left but his squashed mustache
to learn our farm truck is bad ass.

Smoking in the Rye

with my redhead
reading Robert Anton Wilson
picking pounds of peas and peppers
in the clicking of the wind
through the rye
like a bamboo forest
winter rye covercrop and winter pea
eat the shoots
popping between the lanky grain
chewing green
toking green
it starts to rain
the old farmer next door
has a longhaired rottie
tearing tunnels through the tall grass
I follow him
a black blure
by bending stalks
grass in the wind bending sways
see my red pink brown
sweater blue jean female
ahead of an endless army
of green shoots
all standing stooping
grain flower like mohawk hair
they all to her attention stand
erect, gazing
toes curling with pleasure in the dirt
as burning churning infernal starmind
rays his smiling eye into their chloroplasts

'We are all part of the party; the party goes on even if we fall asleep, but our falling asleep is also part of the party.'

'When you look at a reflection of the moon in a puddle, you are the moon looking at itself.'
-Wei Wu Wei

I often forget that I am a Jew. Day after day among gentiles, I forget the distinction. Then my aunt calls. The acrid smoke of her voice taunts my ears. The smell is all too familiar; it is the stinking corpse of my semitic heritage, bloated with rot in its shawl in its casket.

I recall, the Jewish nose was designed to take in the fresh scent of bright red and yellow gentiles, blooming in the sun. A Jew among them is most content.

"Communication is only possible between equals." -Robert Anton Wilson

If I think that I am superior, I am not listening and no one can hear me.

'Taxation is robbery based on monopoly of power.
Rent is the daughter of taxation;
taxation of the land by private groups
based on monopoly of land.
Interest is the son of rent;
the rent of money,
based on monopoly of coinage.

In a free market, competition would drive price down to the level of cost (approx). In monopoly capitalism, price always equals at least cost plus taxation plus rent plus interest. Monopoly capitalism is not a free market.'

-Robert Anton Wilson

My world is a game of tag
and I am it
lovemaking among the plantlife
steamy greenhouse
plants, like birds
grow from little eggs
They've got everything we have
but slower.
Does the wren in the packing house
know what is in its spotted shells?

Turn down the resonance

Retreat to process my Easter sunday
off past the last beds
by the edge of the woods.
Morning picking frantically
flowers and veggies for new Buddhist teacher
but couldn't find her house
in old red farmtruck
Gave the food to Justin--
burlesque God lives on meat scotch and cigarettes
in studio loft
his friend--
elegant french-canadian cabinet-maker
has built himself an elegant woodworked apartment
feng shui and pretentious
simplicity unnatural, stale
Helped a new friend onto the farm
stuck in my head
feeling bitchy
my head has an echo
every word bouncing back
with self-doubt and disgust
zazen breathes
to unwind before dinner

It is no trouble to the mathematician to see that all things are one. For example, consider 26.

26= 1 + 1+1+1 etc.,
26
And if you were to ask 26 "Who are you? What is 26?" It will divide.
One part of its self will look at one part of itself, it sees one object before it and says 'I am one.' and it is so. There is one 26.
26/1=26
Say though, "26, you are one but are you not also 26?" It will multiply.
1 seeing + 1 seen = 2
The one that sees itself sees the seer and counts a second, and seeing the seer with the seen counts a third. Eventually, we reach 26 again, and he his whole. He is one. And one more sees this, and is 27, and so to 28 and any number.

"You have no objective existence--as you,
nor any subjective existence as you, because existence as subject would make subject an object and then who is existing? You can only exist as existence itself."
-Wei wu Wei

Your life; it's what you were doing before you came along.

If Krishnamurti got high...

I have never packed these nugs, never burnt this ganja, never breathed this smoke, never experienced this high. Every time, it is new. I never toke the same smoke twice.

Cannabis kills thoughts; kills mind. It does not eliminate, rather it opens the senses so that clinging mind is washed away.

A sober person will focus intently upon what he is trying to accomplish. His mind is filled with thoughts of plans, steps, goals. Even after he has completed his task, he will cling to the thoughts. He will make new plans, and set new goals that require further steps for further accomplishments. There is no relaxing, unless it is scheduled.

A stoned person does none of this. He has let the smoke in, and it has filled his head. Then, he has exhaled the smoke after his thoughts have choked on it. They are no more. Now he is filled with clean air. He has no thoughts of past or future. He has no goals or plans. He has only the moment.

That is why he will go to the kitchen and forget why he is there. That is why he will pause and forget what he is saying.

After cannabis he is retuned; with each breath he is retuned again to know only what this moment is telling him. Each moment his thoughts are washed from his mind before they form.

Eventually, though, mind must return; if it were not so he could never retune.

Nothing Special

At this moment I seem to be in the midst of a metanoiaic experience. I cannot say what brought it about-- for though I may attribute it to causal factors, it occurs as if it had 'begun with the beginning'.

That is to say, it seems to have been triggered by a gift from a new friend, or, upon further inspection from the preceding conversation with him. Yet the fact that I have been listening to hours of audio on various subjects meaningful to me by men I look up to seems to be a factor. So does my meditation, reading, music-making, and the tranquil work of farm life. Even the grapefruit juice I drank and the sudden snow claim their place in this state, which was proceeded by a feeling which resembled vulnerability.

If I pursue the causes and effects, it seems that this experience had root in my birth, or even before in history and genealogy. Everything I can name is a factor. It all had to be arranged just as it was to bring about this ringing inside and about me.

I do not mean to say that history climaxed in this moment. Rather, it was always climaxing and I only just suddenly noticed. It is nothing special, and I have heard a similar idea described many times. Yet, in this moment it is ringing in me, called to my attention.

Oddly Enough...

wet skin dries sticky
the apple most solid;
its liquid is sweet

Wuxin

Am I the character portrayed in my poetry?
Am I the faker who acts like the character he has created in his poetry?
Have I misidentified myself with my idea of myself?
I am the author, the character, the charlatan, the man himself but mu.
Without knowing I go on.
Nothing Special.

Men bonding may seem, after some time getting to know one another, to have begun teasing and torturing. This, however, is not the malicious bullying that it sometimes manifests as. Instead, mean are merely tuning in to the true form of one another; cutting through the possibility and ego to the iron core of another man.

Events following the conclusion of an excellent book

'Thank you'
planting quietly
the mud is cool
the clouds are the birds
the raindrop is wet
and like its wetness
the chirp has its own quality
both surround the growing green like stars

behind over around
the pubic mountains

at dawn and at dusk
arising shining setting
at dawn and at dusk

doesn't warm

purple violets yellow violets
white-purple violets
with roaring yellow vulvas

running spot a stump
stop off the walking trail. On
walks dizzy vision

rain on rot
is one beat
soaked and syncopated
turn to run and whimper
kneel by three bloodroot buds
white, longnecked, and bent a little
beside a fungussed branch
and a leaf speckled with dark dots of rain

I slip and crush the buds


Climb white-gray rocks
with tear-tracks through their makeup
an entrance
a nostril in the mountain
at its dark end reach
to take a stone from the cave
and quiver touching polished wood
carved bamboo piece
march down the slope
beating it

Tathagata

This mind has been so many selves
This has ridden through to thusness continuing
but no one is here
and the thusness is void

My life is creamy

Perfect today and yesterday
big pickling jar of Almond Milk Allspice Earl Gray
listening to Alan Watts' Way of Zen
saved the life of a neighbor's hen

In the greenhouse picking kale
sitting inside as the rain turned to hale
learning to conquer a fear of slugs
and playing with defensive rollypolly bugs
practicing Debussy's Arabesque
with weasel's wrestling about the nest

A Couplet

As a known implies a knower
so an Owen implies a Noa

Amateur agriculturalists
exhausted weekend
Star Trek and Porn and finished Ginsberg
struggling on couch in shop not to TV
satellite channels about classical music and modern art
all babyfood sweet in spoonfuls between commercials

playing the dusty out of tune estey upright piano
I got powderfingers, mimehands and face
playing mistreated clavier
practice first arabesque
little bits of dried time
reflect photons at me
flowing out of a crack in the lid
when I depress the pedal

Jam out on harlem Nocturne
birds at the kitchen window
gray and egypt-headed
little listeners audiencing outside
eating bushberries
I pause and walk around the shop
the birds flee
and the bushberries are dry and bitter

stole a pen
found my brokenface phone
lost for weeks in my purse
my ass hurts
from mountainjogging

Spinach planted
each green organism
greenhousing next to another
sprouting together
bedded together
weeded together
watered together
I Owen in zazen,
pick them together
like a shepherd
herding his fluffy green flock
They're washed together
packed together
shipped together
unpacked together
prepared together
and consumed together
by our customer.

Together, they are broken down
amino acids made together into muscles
used to nourish cells
they are a part of our customer.
Each green grandma all made one in our customer
they become her,

Surely, we grow our customer in our beds
and I am the salad
that I build myself from

In the greenhouse
I grow green
waiting to incarnate

Seamus the Nosebiter

My cat sports an elegant oriental whiskerstache. He purrs as I glance at him. In his mammalpredator wisdom he can sense my pretentious ponderings of his person. He claws me, bites at me, begging to be touched, saying smugly "I as a great feline am a great being. You need not personify me. To do so reveals your ignorance of my superior nature." As I pet him I tell him he is cute. He incises my nose in his maw and tosses of a coy mewl.

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

I am your dead husband
I have been inside of you
and I have been inside of God;

You don't have to bother looking for me when you get up here

and you can keep the car

Love, Leroy

Three Haikus

Extra Labia
a scandalous birth defect
but the sex is great

Plucking Nasturtium
a belly most satisfied
by food it has picked

Just write a haiku
if it sucks you can always
tear the fucker up

At the phonebank
on a break for toke and tea
dazed,
I close my eyes
on my eyelids projected
Bank Account Numbers
green digits endlessly enumerated

On the farm
on a break for toke and tea,
relaxed,
I close my eyes
on my eyelids projected
rows of leafy veggies
green stalks flowering

First farmdaze
chase wwoofin' puppydogs
pick spinach
weed strawberries
pack salad
wash radishes
water onions and cilantro
assault the biologist with questions
get a splinter
crawfish in the creek
eating the dirty murk
stirred by our rockhunting
no interblogs
make peace with wormslugsngrubs
hotei statues and patriarchs waiting found us rainbleached
living out intimate fantasies of all conscious mind
listening to Alan Watts and no-mind while planting weeding

Sphyncter

Too much hair
buttwipes despite constant fear of smear
am I a dirty folded browntown?
When clean talk candidly
of ever scared anal orifice
as eager as Allen Ginsberg
That feeling like I need to poop
when a penis goes in

In This House

In this house;
Bear boots Mopsy Joe Jeremy Rebecca Pagoda Seamus Tia Vanessa Chico Tiger Shay Owen Gremlin Jerry

All of us are mammals
Six of us are humans
Two of us are cats
Two of us are ferrets
One of us is a dog.
Seven of us are cats.
Four of us are from Texas.
Seven of us are from Florida.
Two of us are from Massachusetts.
Two of us are from North Carolina.
We're all stoned.

A Character Piece

It was six thirty three when Gabrielle asked what time it was. No one answered her, but her guess was not far off. She pulled enough of her bewildered consciousness out of dim twilight to bite into a fruit. Citrus broke the squinchiness of her drymouth. The fruit was so tasty, she might have been in a Jeremy Rice poem. She wasn't. Her face broke into the fruit-strewn war-wreckage of a smile as she lifted the rind in salute of the motherfucker inking her existence into the page. Her head hung forward a bit, letting her long hair collect floordust. She felt like a crackhead, so the author released her brief emergence by concluding the piece.

We are but simple farmers
simply farming
on a simple farm

Getting the Testicles and the Cat a Surgical Divorce

no more tropical kitty sex licking
beach kitty is all grown up
sewn up neuteredly
on outside pawfoot in the mountains
getting his creature-features resutured
surgical pants manager
makes for no more peepeepoopoospray
empty anal glands
and a pink penis
never again to peek from its foreskinned threshold
or penetrate girlpussy sex roaming
oh endless feline manchild
grow ye fat now
and cease to mark
I am both empathetic and
envious

In the midst of conversation about 'Revelation' with a Good friend who is a Jehovah's witness...

"It is true that humans have the ability to do good and to live happily together, but while the world is being influenced by the spirit creatures teaching greed, hate, living on desire, confusion, chaos, and deception, imperfect humans will not live in peace.

Only when death, sickness, and imperfection(all inflictions above the power of the human) have been removed, can there exist a perfectly happy world of humankind. And only when there is a perfect leader to guide that system, one who has had the wisdom of eons, and the experience of living through the torturous system governed by Satan as an imperfect human, can there be a truly functioning world in which it was always meant to be."

I agree with you that the events of Revelation take place in the future, though it is my suspicion that this will not have been the first time that such a thing has occurred. In my opinion, John was referring to an archaic past, prophesying the future, and documenting the struggle with Satan that we are at all times taking part in within our own mind. These things are all representative of our choice, our volition, our mindfulness, our free will in each moment to choose Jehovah's or 'our true self's' way, or to choose Satan or 'our ego's' way.

...
"I don't understand how you can know and believe The Truth while at the same time living how you do. You know about Jehovah."

The Bible offers incontrovertible proof of the Truth that Jehovah is the only path to salvation through his son Jesus.

The Q'uran offers incontrovertible proof of the Truth that Mohammad was Allah's final prophet, and that those who do not heed his message are damned.

Science and its instruments offer incontrovertible proof of the Truth that complex physical laws govern the working of our universe, which is creatorless.

Politicians offer us incontrovertible proof of the Truth that our political enemies are ruthless and evil and must be destroyed lest they destroy us.

Our senses, emotions, and intuition offer us incontrovertible proof of the Truth that each of us is a body, separate from all things and whose interest are our only priority.

Buddhist sutras offer us proof of the Truth that there is neither proof nor truth nor body nor priority, but not to agree is to be blind.

How many proof of Truths do I have to eat to satisfy my munchies?

Carbon Relationships

Wake up
muscles shift
digestive awakening
trudge to the toilet
expel carbonaceous solids
brown and serve

brown and serve breakfast
intake carbonaceous solids
inhale hydroxy nitrogen mixture
exhale hydroxy carbonaceous gas
muscle shift
digestive awakening
expel carbonaceous gases
laugh, carbonaceous gases
thirst. dryness
intake carbohydrate liquid

pack bowl
ignite carbohydrate solution
inhale carbonaceous gas
mixture of carbohydrate cannabinoids
brown and serve
get baked
cough, carbonaceous gases

metabolize carbohydrates
interact with carbonaceous entities
write on bleached carbon
with pigmented carbon solution

Tired of carbon
coat carbonaceous form
in a lipidinous hydrocarbon
and react it, through heat,
with oxygen.
Brown and serve

My weekend

The past is not.
Nostalgia is a ghost;
That in me which is unborn
is all that is free from longing.
Shay put a gash in my head
and I went for my paycheck
bleeding down my face
the last time Sitel saw me

driving for Rock hill
for Grandma, Mari, and Dad
land gets flat like Florida.
A stir within,
a hungry ghost
There is no home there
Past is not

Marilena the always this
I want to go home
to cry my face off
to go to the ever
and visit the stillness
that once was, never was,
and ever is.
Capitulate to warm nostalgia
into formless memory
Die into the neverborn to live
All I have of gone is recollections like skippy cds
tantalizing unreadable
the more content I am and proud
the more the burn of old attachments
singes the ends of imaginary nerves

desire to relax fills me
exhausted by my pride and happiness
satisfaction brings about yearning
for though time is long
all those Golden Summer moments
are only now.
I love with smiling tears every moment of our immortal present.

Visits from the RHPD in the middle of the night
flat tires in Lincolnton.
Mark the mighty handsome tow driver.
Changing dualies
homesmokin' at the Jeremy's
homesmokin' to Star Trek in bed

The Daily Clit

covering all the hot-button issues!

Further meltinism

Reincarnation is feasible; not in the sense of some 'I' going from body to body and life to life. Rather, to me, it is more like the flavorful essence of my attributes melting back into a hot liquid pot of sauce. The next ladling might imbue a meal with some of my flavor, mixed in with the stirred up pot. Then, the leavings from that meal go back into the sauce with a new flavor.

Consciousness in our little dinnertime paradigm is a result of a ladleful of sauce, having flavored a bit of meat, identifying itself as the pork and not the gravy. Yet, you are not your meat; it is, though, your flavor which makes a corpse a meal.

Do you believe in God?

Believe in God? Belief is of no consequence, but I know a few. Names; Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, Jesus; they're just brands. Religion is very much in the hands of whomever is marketing it.

If John Smith's ministry is doing some good marketing in the name of Christ Jesus, then John Smith increases the power of the Jesus brand and wields that power. If John Smith tries to let Christ's message of love and compassion do the marketing for him, he'll wield no power and you'll never hear about Smithism. The same goes for all Gods. Their names and stories are empty; the key is marketing.

Now, do Allah Buddha Jehovah Krishna and Jesus exist somewhere? Quantum Physics would suggest that somewhere, in the infinite matrix of possibility, they do. By the same reasoning; there is also a universe somewhere in which they have just heard about Smithism, and they aren't happy.

"Do sentient beings exist after death? Do sentient beings not exist after death? Do sentient beings both exist and not exist after death? Do sentient beings neither exist nor not exist after death?

These questions and any answers are irrelevant. One need not ask when one sees that there is only this, which rises and falls, only this. One no longer speaks of existence or nonexistence."

A call from a narc
brings a smile
to the morning
He asked if we'd like any trees
but could not tell us how he knew us
some vague excuse about
a party two years ago
In reality,
some kid got busted
and we're in his phone

SecondHand Rockingchair

I am giving my strain to the birth of a beautiful beast. Labor at eleven degrees in the snow liberates me from workjob existence I shall never return to except to salvage desk belongings; can't consign little plants to eternal flames of corporate woe. Confutatis maledictis flamis acribus addictis. Euthanasia's a tempting freedom sometimes, but I'll settle for samsara since winter's warmed to seventy inexplicable in the alley 'tween Lexington and Broadway. Squatting squeezing baby into manger at Justin's roomhouse huskyplace, dog licking birth wetness from Secondhand Rockingchair. Babyshower giftmug #1 Grandma

The being

Surface thoughts break. The prickly dowse into the freezewater of lakemind. Sink dark arctic to the seat of unstirred sand. And here it emerges from the weariness of memory suddenly compounding first dully blissful but next whirling eith uncalled confusion slowly freezing into a conception. Now the being knows a self-spectre suddenly building itself out of nothing rising from the chilly, peaceful depth. The light is known only because the darkness has ceased and the rise is intuited from its recession below. Blood fills the being and it is known for its warmth and movement expanding the real and diminishing the expanse of lakemind as it is filled with perception. At this depth quickfish thoughts dart about in mass schools of relativity; glinting, as they swim, with illumination. From all about, a net slowly pulls together catching the thoughts out of open water. With the net, the being closes; entraps; is once more 'I' now pulled through the surface filling with breath as perception closes every gap in the tightening mesh. I cannot see who cast the net, for my eyes are open and on their surfaces I reflect only the familiar appearance of my world and remember 'I am Owen who has finished meditating and would like a sandwich.'

"Don't worry; the first hundred years are easy; so long as you take advantage of every opportunity to have a good laugh." said the customer at 101 and God giggled down the snow. This morning snow sea brightens the park. Snow on the cows. No taxi to work. Too cold no furnace bed all day. God has given us this day for thinking...
"Your body may be strong and straight
but your mind is burdened with its own weight."

I am trying to overcome my religious bigotry.
Let me speak my hate, my pain.
Let me relish my fleeting fantasy of castrating the cock God Jehovah.
With marriage, one of his traps,
he has ensnared another woman.
I hope only that she can still find satisfaction in her path
despite her tradition's oppressive superstitions.
Perhaps in prayer she can still feel the mercy
of the God of John 4:8
'He that does not love, does not know God;
for God is love.'
So, I purge my hate and pray.

woe

K-- B-- is now K-- V--. A little tragedy; a layered disappointment. My K--, the cultivator of my passion, had fallen back into the cultish trap of the Jehovah's Witnesses. She recently broke up with her friendly and statuesque lover, M-- of two yeas and I was hoping that both of them might escape the sect. But today she announced not merely her betrothal, but her 'Surprise Wedding' to R-- V--, a well-intentioned witness of diminutive intelligence. Why, so soon after her last relationship, at such a young age, has the witty, irreverent, and intelligent K-- married? The logical assumption is that there was some outside pressure, probably from her large, closeknit, superstitious family. And why? Could K-- be pregnant? The Jehovah's Witnesses do not allow for sex before marriage or abortion. It follows that, if she had become pregnant, her family may have pressured her to marry to avoid shame for all of them. What a sad, primitive world this still is. What a sad prison she is trapped in. The child will be brought into that world too, and perhaps it will carry on the line of oppression. Woe, for K-- is lost to me. May she not be lost to happiness in this life for superstition about the next.

I have spent
a quiet weekend workday
manufacturing vomit
and depositing it
in dirty toilet
sickened face inches
from well-tarnished
toilet rim.
Reading chomsky while I wait
for the next purge

on the passing of a stimulus bill

We have become a country of people who do not know whether they are coming or going. Nor are they entirely aware of where they have arrived from or where they are to depart to. They reflect no thought and so cannot know what they want, yet they consume and consume and consume. Tell me; who or what is it that directs them?

Spocks Brain

FOXNEWS REPORTS

Iceland's economy has collapsed.
In no fluffy poetic terms
I hope I hope I hope I hope
that it happens here
"It can't happen here."
"It can't happen HERE!"
We're next.
I pray I pray I pray I pray
listen God Allah John Jed Inayat Allen Alan Frank Christ Buddhas Allah Wei Wu Wei Krishna Siva
if you'll kill the capitalist experiment
if you'll kill the democratic republic experiment
if you'll kill the collective societymind
if you'll turn off the fuckmachine for a minute or two

we can get our shit together
and make a deal

No more work!
No more money!
No more slavery!
No more more!
No more Less!
No more more!
Only yes!

'he's dissatisfied with his job...'

I work for an institution
of mechanical financial dildoism.
I am a clandestine agent of discord
mindfucking upwards
through corporate tree trunk.
Today though, they tried to strain my heart.
I can no longer rebate fees for needy customers.
Cannot return funds cheated out of hungry hands
only bank error (and that only happens
when rich people $$ is involved)
This machine fucks poor people
and tears holes in their pockets
though it loves those with plenty
stuffed like their bellies and their egos
Fuck families!
old crones with grown rich kids
deserve everything right?

I must comment that it was delightful existing in your vicinity today. I would gladly repeat the experience and expand my understanding of the delectable being manifested in your person.

You, broadshouldered, sneaking into my atmosphere like a euphoriatic smoke. Soft as a cough; lilting without a drawl; you planted seeds of conquest amongst my dreads.

Critique of a Young Writer

I am a mental bulimic. I gorge myself on sweet cake; empty calories; trivial information. Then, I vomit the pink mush and that is my work.
I am both impishly egotistic and childishly self-conscious. I yearn yelpingly for approval and attention; turn all analysis into a self-congratulation, then feel guilty. I am perpetually doing battle with my ego and so relish any criticism which I can engineer to both diminish and sustain that conflict. This is the paradox of Owen. Plus, I have inherited the unfortunate Ginsbergian trait of inventing fluffy adjectives.

'I've got one more thing I've got to do before I do anything..'
three nights at Jeremy's couch
waiting for RV fixability
'never seen a beast in better shape'
mewling kittens and fussy ferrets
finally crippled creature
crawls up the driveway
healed unharmed

Chocolate Lounge

Chocolate and Earl Gray
Theobrominous bergamot
cocoa tea liquid truffle
licorice lucky lick the mug
like perception of blissful wombstate
over each province of quadrune universe tongue
feeding God in quadrune universe of synapses
Aaron Copland rich and quartal
percussive Viols
Buddha truffle bitches brew
vegan jazz-tongued muted horn
toking THC cannibinoid
receptor massage
worth a cold walk in the dark

I harbor an inner octopus
who in a vibrant ocean
has yet an ink cloud to excrete.
The squid sister
the spider sibling
the nephew nautilus
the scorpion with Power of Attorney
all cut in for the death
of color shape form self
ego-amender garment speaker
rich in darkness
that dissolves as currents sweep it away
just long enough to disappear

My week

No wiggers in the Night house!
Inauguration week
bringing in with this new year
a healthy prophecy
No wiggers in the Night house!
Us lucky slinksters twice potlucked
and this week chocolate lounged
Thai restauranted
peace love and noodles
only $21 for two
didn't eat the salmon
I'm all about
Save the Sea Kittens!
little mewling swimming things
those savage inuits!
Can't you fucking Eskimos
find something else to eat in arctic snowholes?
Anything but blubbery blowholes!
Go to Gaza
eat you some genocide
a la pretty pink Palestinians purged petrified
by the green guns of greedy eating zionism

let's all just submit to
Grandma
have a festive potluck
talk liberal talk
over orzo and conversational curry
talking to my sister on the phone
miss marilena singing
No wiggers in the Night house!
redneck go home!

The Tale of the Authorless Title

Of late, the Authorless Title had been becoming increasingly dismayed. Each day, another of his peers found astounding success on the cover of the latest best seller.
His house grew cold and empty. He rocked back and forth in a second hand rocking chair. All of his room mates had moved out and into The New York Times.
The Namesake was the first to make it. Everyone in the house bitched about the rent going up. Together they made a pact and decided that selling out was for bastards; Who could ever do that to his friends?
Not a fortnight later, however, 'Just After Sunset' was gone. The next they saw of him; number seven in ink on that list of traitors, The New York Time's Best Sellers list for hard cover fiction.
Hell, even 'The Christmas Sweater' made it, and she was Holiday/Fiction! She'd found some asshole named Glenn Beck and had the nerve to leave her address and a note requesting her share of the security deposit.
"Cunt!" cried The Authorless Title, tossing the post-it note into the heap of undone dishes. He switched on the garbage disposal, savoring the violent crunch and grind of the machine and the gray green bubbles that splashed as they blew through the scum like suicide bombers at the surface of the murky water.
The Authorless Title quelled his rage with a joint of cheeseballs, watching the violet smoke journey across the empty living room on an eddy of heated air. Though still enraged, he felt a bit more contemplative now.
--Culture compels every title to find an author. It wasn't always that way, was it? A title could be anything he wanted, once; an anonymous folk story, a religious fable, or even an abstract concept. Fuck! It'd be great to be paid just to be an idea. Wouldn't have to sell out. Not that the money's important; just respect, a feeling of accomplishment. Now, unless you're embossed on a glossy laminated cover, you're no title at all.--
But the economy sucked. It sucked on the Authorless Title's job and he lost it. It sucked on his landlord. She was being foreclosed upon, which wasn't a huge deal for the Authorless Title because the economy had sucked on his pockets and he couldn't afford his rent.
Depressed, he betrayed his pact with himself one night and put up an ad on craigslist.
"Author wanted.
The Tale of The Authorless Title. I'll be any Genre you want."

For days, he stayed at home. It was cold outside. He ate beans, he wrote, he got high, he meditated, and he tried to come up excuses not to wash the dishes.No one emailed him about his ad.
--I couldn't sell out if I wanted to! I'm a worthless title. The Tale of the Authorless Title. I'll never find an author. Authorless is my middle name, and in our society a title without an author is a second class story. The Tale of the Authorless Title. No one goes for tales anymore anyway. All modern success depends on a formulaic theme, a short title, and an author who has already had eight other books with names that rhyme with yours. Fuck! If my name were 'D is for Dead Man', I would probably find an author right away.--
A ridiculous idea, but hunger has a way of clouding one's judgment. The Tale of the Authorless Title soon found himself at the far end of a long line for name changes at the clerk of the circuit court. That's the kind of place where the waits are long enough that strangers in our modern day actually have a chance at making conversation.
Waiting in front of the Authorless Title was a tall, tan, bareshouldered girl with a blond mohawk.
"What's your name?"
"Mari-Jane."
"Sweet, do you toke?"
"Hell yes."
"Is that why you're changing your name?" asked the Authorless Title.
"Mari-Jane is already my name. I'm changing it to Slut."
"What the--? Slut?"
"Hell yes! I like it. Mari is a name for squares. What's your name?"
"The Tale of the Authorless Title."
Mari smiled for a moment, then nodded.
"That's deep dude. Rock star. Tale of the Authorless Title. That's hot shit. Great choice!"
"Actually...I'm changing it to 'D is for Dead Man'."
"That's lame. Why?" asked Mari. Her disappointment was aggressive. She aimed its pointy end right at The Authorless Title.
"I know it's lame, but I'm broke. I need an author, and there is already a 'C is for Criminal'. I will be guaranteed to make it to the Bestseller list."
"Fuck that! That bullshit's for squares. Not everyone has a name like The Tale of the Authorless Title. You can't throw that away! Don't let the world fuck you out of your name. You're letting them win!"
She was frantic, but The Authorless Title wouldn't change his mind. His self esteem melted, dripping down his leg into a stain on the carpet. He stepped back from Mari. At first, she eyed him coldly, but then her demeanor changed. She relaxed and ignored him, which was a relief. He waited behind her all of the way to the clerk. He watched her fill out the paperwork. After she had finished she shot him a glance that he couldn't quite read. Somewhere between glee and pity.
Curiously, she lent over the counter and whispered into the clerk's upturned ear. Then she scampered away in obvious haste.
The Authorless Title approached the name change section of the long wooden counter. The clerk looked at him with fear.
"Just a moment, sir," she said and dialed an extension in her phone. A few moments later, two uniformed men took him by the arm. At first he stood stiff, but, shrugging, he relented.
The men walked him out into the cold and across the street to the police station. He gave his information for booking.
'You are being held because of allegations that you exposed yourself obscenely to a young woman at the clerk of the circuit court.' They read him his rights. With no money for bail, he spent several weeks in the dingy jail. Shameful, frustrating, something to be rushed through and not reflected upon. Then his date.

After such a place, the clean court room gleamed like Oz. His court-appointed lawyer smelled nearly honest. Frightened and relieved are two emotions that don't mix well in the bowels. The Authorless Title felt a bit weak.
The trial progressed. Each side made its opening statements. Mari was not present, only her council. He spoke on her behalf, detailing that Mr. Title had exposed to the Plaintiff an obscene part of himself.
"What part of myself!?!" interjected the Authorless Title, but he was ignored. His lawyer presented a motion; the Authorless Title has a right to face his accuser. Recess was declared until the Plaintiff could be found. The Authorless Title was brought back through the hall toward a holding cell, but someone tapped him on the shoulder.
"Hey!" cried the guard.
"Just a fuckin' minute! I need to talk to him."
It was Mari. She turned to the Authorless Title. Rage and apprehension were knotting his intestines further.
"What the fuck, Mari?!?"
"Dude, don't worry--"
"Don't worry? I've been in fucking jail for three weeks. What are you talking about 'I exposed an obscene part of myself'?!?"
"Well, I couldn't let you change your name. And besides--"
"But--"
"Hush. Look at this."
Mari handed him a paperback pamphlet. It was cheaply bound on flimsy paper. The Tale of The Authorless Title.
"I've already sold like a billion of these. And check this out."
Mari produced a newspaper; The New York Times.

The Tale of The Authorless Title Tried for Obscenity!

It was a half-page article and it even had an interview with Glenn Beck. That asshole!
"I see you smirking. See? I got your back, square. I am a creep and I don't care. I'll go into that room full of anal cunt whores and get you off!"
The Authorless Title, wearied, let the guard lead him on. As soon as he reached his cell and sat with his face in his hands, the door opened again.
"The Plaintiff has arrived. Recess is over."

The trial resumed. The room was abuzz. Before the recess the courtroom had been empty; now, a full audience was in attendance.
"I call Ms. Slut Vaschouner to the stand."
Mari smiled as the judge fought with his tone against the absurd beauty of her new name. Smiling turned to beaming as she took her seat in the stand. Then she stood in her seat.
"Fuck you anal cunt whores! I drop the charges, you squares!" she cried, standing in her seat in the stand.

A fortnight later, Mari and the Authorless title sat in his empty living room on the hardwood around a tall blue bong.
"I don't understand how you sold it. Why would anyone want to by my story?"
Mari took a hit.
"That shit about the bubbles being like suicide bombers; people liked that." Her voice was muffled by the smoke.
"True, but what about that courtroom drama stuff? Eww..."
"Yea, and the moral was dumb."
"What moral?" asked the Authorless Title.
"Be yourself. The title is his own author because he writes his own story. Real Barney the Dinosaur Oprah bullshit."
"That wasn't the moral. The moral was; Glenn Beck is an Asshole!"
"Are you ever going to do those dishes?"

'The Map is Not the Territory.'

Our realities refuse to conform to our notions, our culture, and our science.

redbluebuildinglovelinessspaceblackwalksoundcloudcarcrash

when the drama goes down
it feels alien
we're so conditioned to expect

the orchestra,
picking up with a minor 9 or diminished chord
slow-mo reactions

so when the real deak goes through
the trauma is quick and cold

Death and violence and destruction
are content to happen as they do
silent loud slow fast without regard for cliche

Love orgasm fortune
are content to occur without a musical motive

Our naming, experiencing, and describing of these events are arbitrary distinctions somewhat influenced by our culture world view language and what we had for lunch. There was perhaps a happening, but happening is what happened. When it happened it happened it was happening. It is one with all happening that happens or will happen or has happened. When I open my mouth and say, what I say is happening. All you speak of is happening. You happen, I happen, and it just so happens that this happening has been happening since the beginning happened. And when that happened it too was happening.

Cut it up if you please, but be happy with the happening.
'The menu is not the meal'

Thank you for calling
my name is Owen
How can I aid you in worming about?

You know, that thing that you do
across the planet's surface
busy breathing air (but forgetting)

On weekdays
moving paper around
still huffing air
oxygen, nitrogen
and poison poison poison

moving papers, moving papers
forget the in and out

fill the empty monkey with life
with synapse happiness
with brainwater breathtalk

empty filled monkey
of death and carbon
like silent smoke filtered
baked out of the furnace

walking turning tipping filing
working writing shitting eating
forgetting ignoring
forgetting ignoring

the breath the breath
the static the static
the oneness
the ness
the naz
the nasty

They're
working turning typing filing
working writing shitting eating
forgetting and ignoring
the nasty--
worn--
old

fabric
of the garment
The garment!
Grandma endlessly sewing on he own pants.
We're all the grandma
quivering in her crazystates
nails grown longs and hair grown dready
fingering her own saggy breasts
with the minds of six billion breathing monkeys
in her skull

she dresses every monkey in her garment
and dolls around in their pants for a while

huffing air
worming over the planet's surface
My name is Owen
how may I help you today?

Today's ideas

'We've considered becoming snowbirds and crawling back to the swamp every winter like the dirty Floridian slugs that we are.'

'Over the Holidays I learned that my lady's 14 year old cat looks just like David Bowie if you stretch back her face. It was a Christmas miracle.'

'I'd like to go to oz, the fill the tin man with water, pack that hole in his head, and take bongrips out of him.'

Do you remember that night?
Do you remember that June in the grass,
the first time I tasted lipstick under the rain?
We never talked about it again.
After that you were every one of my best friends'
best friend.
Hali Belle Noa Marisa Mari Lillian Nick
They deserve to mourn you.
I should have been friendlier
but you were beautiful and brilliant
so it was easy to be cold.
I heard about the crack.
I heard about the heroin.
I didn't go to that party on your boat.
You came to my poetry reading.
I think I emailed you
to ask for someone else's number.
You liked my music.
My photos.
Didn't you talk to me?
We had a nice chat.
I looked at those pictures of you.
How did you light it? Who took them?
You, tall, naked, twisting yourself
no grief in your face
makeup on your wide thai eyes.
How did you turn your body into art?
I liked to look at those pictures.
I went back many times.
Black and white or stark color
painted your face, your tits
turned to crawl up the wall
or stare into the lights
pupils tiny
hair like David Bowie
grinning like a cannibal.
This morning, 4:36
Marisa called me
when she told me
the first thing I did was
go and look at your photos.
I looked at your photos but they were all changed
you're dead but they're not
and they
are how I knew you best
If I made a list of ten people I know who would die
C-------- L---------; Death by Murder, or OD, or VD, or suicide
I'm sure you'd want it to be dramatic.
Death as art, spectacular as possible
probably young
Maybe you're pleased
sleep apnea is quiet and succubine
What did you think as you fell asleep?
Irony-- last night you went to sleep
and now you can sleep in until the ressurection
yet how many friends awoke early on your account?
This morning I saved those photos in a file on my hard drive
they're all I knew of you, and I must keep you
before some well intentioned mourner
would take them down.

Melanin Envy

Riding with Ken the boxer;
a gentler nigger you never knew.
I can't see him fisting faces,
but I've heard a fight can be like mu.
Fighting is like music, he says,
beyond the notes and beats and punches and dodges
is the heart; the rhythm;
and no matter what the music is like,
whatever the style it is in
you know when it's real.

Ken doesn't toke
must maintain his stamina
so I thank him with free starbucks
and head to the bus station
wishing I were black
Is that not every white man's wish?

Ned and the Box

Our noble Ned Rosenblatt
is an accomplished conductor
educator, musical pedagogue
demigod for young Owen
He works to exhaustion
pouring his passion in frustration
upon his impeccably perfect ensembles

But this morning I found him
scratching about in my Catbox
"Professionals have no time to flush!"
he explained
and I nodded my comprehension

inspired by twain's 'curious dream'

My brainparents are dead men. I make them roll in their graves.
Ingenious!
Like a mill, I hook them up and they turn.
Slander the dead--they roll in their graves;
so my machine runs on bad words and corpses,
powering cities with the tossing turning sleep
of the present departed.
All this power from foregone fathers dreaming my dialogue!
But, they too, run on me.
What would they do if not dream all long dirt-nap night?
Soilsleeping means serious business;
it's all-life coffin meditation.
"We make a deal?" ask Cadavers,
"We'll roll," they say," If you provide fresh green dreams,
crunchy and nourishing. You haven't got to slander us!
Give us good dreams and we'll willingly roll."
A skull-brained deal works well for all.
All have fun, make jokes, get laid, for sake of dead
laughing and tumbling in their little stone strewn yards.
When I proudly retire my skin,

My Winter Solstice

Yesterday, I left the corporate maelstrom for another meeting with John at the McDonald's in Biltmore village. I don't need to remind you about the faux euro-mountain village architecture of the area or the glitchy, out of tune player piano in the Mickie-D's. I arrived early and explored a bit.

I felt like I was on Longboat, on a break from Circle Books, traversing St. Armand's, toking in the middle of the circle with Shay. Bad music, upscale crapshots, tourists; staggering about drunk with their filthy wealth. The same shopping district exists hundreds or thousands of times from Sausolito to Vancouver to Houston to Asheville to Sarasota to Wilmington to Boca Raton.

I might have vomited for the sugaryness of this world, but I fear that the Vanderbilts would have taken legal action if I were to soil their expression of American elite consumer trapism.

My meeting remains confidential, but I was hoping for a lift home from John afterward. He apologized at the mention, and offered me his watch as a Christmas gift.I looked around for a bus stop, and bought a girl a taco for bus fare (I only had a card). Then, I trekked to the stop. The bus didn't come on time.

As I waited, I was spotted by a police officer. Owen; a grizzly hippie looking exhausted, holding two paper bags with bulging pockets and a fist of dollars. He pulled in front of me, eying me every few minutes. I was happy for his presence. The bus corner was dark and away from traffic. I considered asking the cop for a ride, but before I had worked up the bravery, he took off in pursuit of a speeder.

The bus hadn't shown up so I stuck out my thumb. No one bit, and I gave up. Lucky lucky, because the cop came back with a friend. One parked behind me and the other in the front. They watched.

A few minutes later, the bus scooted gaily down the drive. I was saved from the cold and the cops and the shops and the Vanderbilts. The bus driver greeted me weakly and I parked myself in her empty vehicle.

For a while we wound our way over the belated bus route of Asheville evening, and we passed an RV park.
"What street are we on?"
"Rock Hill Road," the driver said, " I never noticed that park either. Do you live in an RV?"
"A 24 foot coachmen."
"I live in a bus. A school bus. I convert them. I've converted 12 so far. Never lived in a house."
She spoke excitedly, but with an almost Zen groundedness. Her accent was that of the proverbial Midwestern hippie. She was beautiful in her middle age, and revealed that she had always tried to live life free of money, Born in Bradenton, she had driven and lived in buses all her life.

After a few minutes of riding, she turned the bus into a large empty parking lot.
"Do you want to play frisbee?"
She produced a large plastic flying disc and opened the door. For about 15 minutes, we tumbled around the parking lot throwing the frisbee back and forth.
Back in the bus, she introduced herself as Cathy Hubble, and took me to my RV park.

"What I'm doing with my life"?

I'm being not doing. Or maybe I am doing and not being... Well, I would probably rather be doing a being than be doing anything else at least. Does that answer the question?

I must be expressed
must cry before my God, so
Hear! Oh, Israel.

I excel at my job.
I am the most promising trainee.
I feel the lure of the angel
on a faux Jacob's ladder,
but I will never climb,
never be the tempestuous Jehovah,
the grand smiter,
who beat the angels to the top

In the bathroom at work

Colorfully cleansing myself with drought after drought of dried Jasmine soaked in hot water
after four reboilings limp bag breaks
little plant matter bits
this syrup scent is airborne nostalgia

Jasmine and Nostalgia
conceptual continuity
Does it grow this far north?
Perhaps, in a slow patient, romantic world I might wait until the spring and be delighted bu little white perfume speakers breathing th scent of the orgasming vagina of the Earth.
Ovulation opportunities waning because today I need not wait to get off in Springtime
The internet can bear me false fruit

I stare at stale screen
smear oily nose against the glass
but little white JPG does not breathe a scent

This doppelganger, unlike its female counterpart
is not life giving girlhood raped maiden Earth
but rather part of her parts counterpart
the invidious insidious raping phallus
of the seedy weedy steel and concrete

While one petaled wonder bends gently
to the whim of a southern breeze,
the other lives as a code of ones and zeroes
in a towerlike slave server
in a phalluslike tower of glass
of parts and pieces distilled alchemically
synthesized from dead nature.

Hands feet toes fingers severed
blood boiled and corrupted
to destroy their amputated origin

I'm sorry for the anguish I have here put into words. Is the poison that eats my time each work day here enfolded in the symbols? Can a secret venom, like a virus, contaminate you through my pain? I hope not, sincerely. Hear instead my words as moving music rattled from the clanging chains of my current captivity.

What captivity, though? I came here. I filled out the application of my own volition. I come to work each morning. I do well and make friends and memorize bank regulations and kiss ass and work to ascend but wish I could thrive like this in front of a piano.

I do not hate what I am doing, it's easy and somewhat interesting and I have the chance to please people. I want my time, though. This hungry entity; "Employment" has devoured my moments. I will please people! I want to! Just, God, John, Alan, Allen, Allah, Inayat, Robert, Wei Wu Wei, Joseph, Jesus, Ram; to whomever I can refer the guilt. It's a cold transfer. Which corpse will take it and smile back with father's arms?

Who of you will be a mirror? I look to you and the light I seek meets its source. I am giving my light to the universe. I sit in the dark, blinded , wondering where to seek illumination.

First Day Off

Alan Watts and Allen G
Robert Anton and Bobby D
John, and Jed, and Emily
She came over in the evening
we made spinach and mushrooms and calamari
and hung out her, Shay and me
the beginning of new life Lovely

Third cup of tea
first black
then peppermint
now green with ginger
I can't handle coffee
next I'll have flower tea
too strong
I draw a lotus
I feel a self unfolding
an addendum modifying ego
a new pocket in a coat
a new conduit of the great flowing squish
of the liquid cosmic jello mold
I am being filled
the amoeba is shuffling its innards
into the newest boundary

Existential Crises

I have no time!
Employment has devoured it.
Why can't I live?
I have no hours!
I'm so tired.
Why must corporation gnaw at my freedom,
dissolving in its maw like hard-candy?
That's all you can have at your desk!
I want my own soul, my freedom.
Why must I rush, why must I work?

'Mindfulness. Choice and freedom are
illusions of liberation. Liberation requires nothing
but mindfulness. No choice? No freedom?
No matter. Be mindful and present."

Noa smiles, used to the corporate masquerade
So each call I take
I will transcend corporation, society, culture, personality, soul
and touch the all-one all ways always.

Grandma's house

Today a caffeinated Owen
chattily made bracelets
of borrowed pipe cleaners,
Clothing all his neighbors
and their children
with yuletide braidings.
Waited out in the cold with Jeremy,
crashing.
His friend Maggie came for us
jazzed up, Deerhoofful vehicle.
We met Shay at his house
and had Ganja for the first time
since Thanksgiving.
I'm home, I told Noa.
"Howso?" he asked.
Here again am I in a small shared abode
where abide a thin nerdy existentialist
and a fuller, bearded introvert.
Good art, fine scents, indie music.
No need for Nostalgia when your memories
reincarnate.

Owen's first Job on the Day

Owen's first day
sur le JOB
at Sitel Corp
Morning raindrive
over the Blue Ridge
coffee-sweet
train room
orchestra with an effeminate conductor
next to a graduate
of literate studies
So, there IS intelligent life
in this corporate galaxy!
Thank Christ's soggy corpse.
He needs a ride to his new job.
Lucky news
my new friend
a writer of Gertrudespoken interblogs
is also a purveyor of Ganja
for which my ginger and I
have been long hungering.

This morning
like mixed up morning monkeys
we picked at each other's skin
lazily joking
as the clouds,
like sheep herded between mountain peaks,
peeked in on us.
we shut the limp curtains
on the cold windy day
slept some more
and in love, tied ourselves up
in Schieleian eroticature

A Zen Poem

'To learn to be always in a state of (non)-meditation means never to let your vital energy wane. You would never allow it to do so if it were certain that you were to die tomorrow. It wanes because you forget about death. Grit your teeth, fix your gaze, and observe death at this moment. You have to feel it so strongly that it seems as if it's attacking you. Fearless energy comes from this. At this moment death is right before your eyes. It's not something you can afford to neglect.'
-Suzuki Shosan

'You can no more impede your own realisation than a dew drop can impede the reflection of the moon.'
Dogen

A quote by Ginsberg with commentary by Owen

'The war is language
language abused
for advertisement
language used
like magic for power on this planet
Black Magic Language
formulas for reality
Communism' (Terrorism) ' is a nine letter word
used by inferior magicians
with the wrong alchemical formula
for turning Earth into ' (black) ' gold.'
--funky warlocks operating on guesswork
handmedown mandrake terminology'
-Allen Ginsberg

Motorhippie Poesy

I'm eating watery rice pudding
the world is coming to an end
I hate to be a nay-sayer
but nay nay nay
neigh neigh neigh
is for horses
and the cows next door
who flee nightly from locomotive
grinding wheels and
mooing cowlets standing out in the snow
after rainy moonglow will mushrooms stand?
Not if there's a Clinton in the cabinet
You're going to want to stay sober
This country is down the gray water tank
under RV bowels
Tchaikovsky's playing 'pathetique' again
begging me to kill myself
but what then would the crew of the Enterprise do
if I left them Spockless?
How dare you usurp my time!
Time usurped I could have slurped
usurped time to slurp my pudding
but it's bad anyways
'Awareness of the Dharma
inevitably leads to laughter,"
Noa said giggling beard jiggling faraway
"One begins to see the common sayings are true
All the world's a stage."
And he tells me his dreams of witches
and cannabis coming out of his ears
I said
You should see a doctor about that
hyper-cannabis excretion ear syndrome.
"He'd probably prescribe me medical pot."
My kitten likes the pudding
Noa says, " To help him reach realization
try to give him your presence
Be with him in the absence of a 'me'"
From snowy Oregons he shiversniffles
Another year gone by
and I again live across the street from Big Country
No longer a black man
now it's an RV in big letters across the back Big Country
but no. This is a small world.
Australia reads my diary.

Further adventures of an Owen in the Wal Mart

I had an uneasy feeling in the Wal-Mart today. Besides the dual guilts of feeding dollars to the ever-eating elephant, and boosting holiday sales figures, another crab clawed at my gut. I excused myself to check the RV and get my wallet. Distractedly, I looked about. Our sleeping larva was unmolested.

As I again wandered the wide Wal-Mart warehouse I met the eye of a tall, longhaired boy, He wore a coat, a spiked choker and some band's t-shirt. Cute, I thought, and forgot him as soon as my eyes moved on.

Moments later with a bump he was back in my universe.

The collision passed quickly, I surprised and he avoiding my gaze. He was beyond me before my synapses buzzed into sudden synchrony.

A long red band from the RV keys hung outside my jacket pocket, swinging to and fro like bait. They were askew, but still in place. Wallet; check. Phone; Check. Am I missing anything?

Had I just been the failed victim of an attempted Wal-Mart pickpocketing?
I searched the aisles for a Shay, spotting my pick pocketer twice more. Was I being followed?

When I found her, she shook her fists, but we couldn't find his face.

I am in a paint-swirl world of ego-tickling bliss! Last night I made contact with a man named Phil, and planned to visit him at his home in Weaverville where he was hosting a jam. We got frustratingly lost on the way there, but ended up crawling in our motor home behemoth up a steep drive in a suburban '70s style neighborhood. At the top of the curving upward drive was a little shangrila of ivy-covered trees and a wide, glass-walled home decorated sparsely, in perfect feng-shui with gold and red Asian art as well as little maitreyas. I dug up my Uke and my melodica and forgot a frustrated Shay in the vehicle.
Inside, the polished wood floors beat with the drummer, as the bearded bassist set down his line, the thin guitarist comped with a zenlike composure and a latin-american violinist played the head. I awkwardly pulled up a chair, playing with musicians of a caliber I usually only see on stage. My goal was not so much to excel, as to avoid embarrassing myself.
They were all marvelous soloists, especially the violinist, who did all kinds of expressive slides and chromatic flourishes. After each breathtaking solo, though, he'd look at me as if to say “Now you take it.” Having been distracted by his mastery, I had to fumble through an attempted variation on the theme he had just conquered. We played 'Oye Como Va', 'Satin Doll', 'Take 5', and 'Summertime'.
By the time I relaxed I was reading through the head pretty steadily, and when they passed a solo my way I managed a few graceful moments in the midst of blunders and counting errors. I apologized for my amateurism when we took a break, and assured them that I was having fun.
“Are you new in town?” They asked me, and, digging deeper. “If you could do anything you wanted at all musically, what would it be?”

“Ideally, I'd have my own orchestra. I'd be a conductor and composer. But, more realistically, I'd at least like to get a group together that played something like Medeski Martin and Wood, Soft Machine, The Lounge Lizards, or Frank Zappa.”
At the mention of the last name, they all smiled and exchanged various tales of the magic of the Mothers of Invention. Then they told me about music in Asheville. It's a strange town. Most consist of either good musicians or bad. In Asheville, they said, everyone is a musician. Some are great, and some are pretenders. From what they saw, they said, I was a cut above the rest. The pretenders, that is.

“That's where I'm at,” I started, “I am used to working with musicians below my caliber, and bringing out the best in them. I usually play with people who are musically illiterate, you know. It's very refreshing to play with seasoned professionals. That's what I want to be. I am the raw meat; I have all the knowledge and literacy and ideas and talent. I just need to marinate for a while in some good juices.”

I think that they appreciated my honesty, and got a pretty good idea of who I am. They must have, why else would they hear someone play as clumsily as I did and still ask me back?

Owen's Adventures

On our way to Asheville, we fell off of the side of a mountain. The road was there and then suddenly-- well, if an event can be called loud, the image of air beneath our tires was frightening and deafening. The world slowed, time shattered like a struck mirror. Shay and I just looked at each other in panic in slow motion as we were weightless, airborne. Then, seemingly forever after we're begun to soar, a smacking jilt told us we'd hit rock.

I'm only kidding. We had a lazy car-ride over highway that slowly bent itself up and over the rise of the land. The only things crashing were the tectonic plates that have thrust the Earth skyward into the Appalachians.
On the ride we listened to our CD's, and some music that I hadn't really heard since my golden summer. People often describe memories as of they were born in a warm fuzzy haze that pleasantly illuminated one's past in euphoric flashbacks of happy wonder, but, for me, nostalgia is a bitch. The aching pain of my memories, thoughts back on moments of experienced Wu-Wei suchness, feels like the cold and stingy yearning of phantom limb pain.
Noa says; “In idealizing the past, we lose sight of the Now. Only systematic remembering and impersonality takes away it's power.”

As we approached, with a painful but freeing scrape, I shed my pupal skin. New wet wings flex in the cold mountain wind, drying. The past part of me went chill and numb, dead, as the new living future burnt through tender flesh. We turned down Bear Creek road and, as we parked and plugged in, noticed we had lost a hub cap on the way. Just a hub cap, a little bit of our home. A superficial part; it's loss did no damage, but still left a little bit exposed and a bit barer. And we're here!
We stayed in last night, waiting for the campground's manager, Rick, to come by and collect his rent. He took his time, and when he found us we had already set up a film; Ikiru and set about eating cheddar and olives on crackers. In the film a man lives his life thoughtlessly, and only when he can feel his mortality can he finally relax into non-action and be.
After the movie, I read some Ginsberg and started looking for friends in Asheville on the Facebook. The ferrets wrestled around our little motorhome. I connected to a few interesting folks. And went to sleep late.
This morning when Shay and I woke up we made love for the first time in our new town. Then we lay around for a little while. When I checked my email, my cousin had mentioned to me that my estranged aunt Ricki just happened to be traveling to Asheville to have thanksgiving with a friend.
A few taut strings later, and Shay and I had an invitation to a Thanksgiving dinner with the Layton family. We dressed ourselves smartly and wound our way about mountain roads to the house, getting lost only a few times along the way.

The evening began with a low heat, a still, unstirred steam. The Laytons, whom I had met previously in San Francisco, lived in a large suburban style house decorated with a mix of American folksiness and Asian art. Their son, a shaggy but chill-toned twenty-something called Cory, helped us park our RV and charmed us with his friendly laid-back hipster-banter. Then my aunt Ricki, who I hadn't seen in years (but for a brief and awkward encounter) greeted us with a hug and her hard, intellectual Long Island accent loaded as it were, like a syringe of psycho-analysis.
Some friends and the neighbors came by and food was served soon. The gathering began to simmer, as the Layton's daughter wrangled five dogs ranging in size from a big, brown and gray Australian Shepherd of regal grooming to a Golden Retriever pup only eight weeks old but still bigger than the Chihuahua, the terrier, and the mini-Schnauzer.
As we sat about the dinner table, no one said grace, offered thanks for anything, or even brought up the murder of Indians or some such thing. This was a dinner of affluent liberal Jews. The topic of the evening; Barack Obama.
Now, I don't know how many ways I could possible approach a description of the unfolding of dinner's conversation. The evening began to bubble and boil. Everyone astir over politics. The table; Two motor-hippies, three lesbians, my aunt
s boyfriend, our hosts, their children (who were our age), and a couple whose matriarch was a silver-haired southern woman full of spunk and oozing Judaica.
Everyone exchanged tales of just how pleased, surprised, amazed, excited, ecstatic they were that Barack Obama had been elected. Each person in turn lauded his various attributes, praised his personal strengths, and extolled his virtues. Until now, when I had heard conservatives discuss a cult of personality around Obama, I had dismissed the notion. Tonight I got it, around this liberal bunch. If they could, any of them would gladly, as Shay put it, “volunteer to lube up and be Barack's personal suppository.”
Not that I'm not a progressive, and I did vote for the man. But by God, no politician will ever be worth my worship.
Then my aunt whipped out her brain-power, and provided an analysis of our nation's citizenry concluding that the false promises of our society have got everyone hooked into trying to be wealthy and voting against their own well-being. One of the women, a professor of law, argued that in fact such a citizenry did not exist, but that it was in fact the media's fault. That they portrayed our country a certain way and this made people lonely and alienated, feeling like they were the only ones who didn't fit the mold. Personally, I agreed with both women, but they were so hooked into their battle of wits that I could not interject. I heard it commented that “there is estrogen and testosterone flying around between those two.” The discourse boiled over.
Minutes later, Cory emerged from the garage. I smelt ganja on him, in my mind he was like a cartoon with little wiggle-lines of scent radiating from his outline. I bent to whisper, “got a whiff?” to Shay. He bent towards us and asked, “Do you smoke?” We nodded and offered to host him in our RV. On our way out, his mother smirked at us and said “Enjoy yourselves.”
In the camper I asked him about in-town connections, the library, radio stations. We made a friend. Somewhat elevated, we went back inside where the conversation was still smoldering. In the end, Thanksgiving was a soup of rich Ganja-smoking southern Jewish lawyers, their teenage children, 5 dogs, 3 lesbians, alcohol and Barack Obama.
The evening wrapped up slowly, with Kentucky Derby Pie, and we wound our way back to the park. When I checked my email, one of the people I had contacted online had offered me, a stranger, a thanksgiving dinner with him and his wife. I said I'm sorry I missed it and offered him my tomorrow. My heart got all toasty and I sat down to write.

Metanoia

I

This I-concept wants with a howling crash to break like through a sound-barrier like through a space-time grid like out of body, out of Bardos, out of Buddha-clouds, with grace of non-action into pink and swirling past yolk through enamel cosmic egg crack, leaving teeth and toenails rainbow-body behind like spirit pressure round a water hose slow flow high pressure tesla-coil. Vajra pitches, Yoni catches gestates in warm steam syrup after the milk fills, after the chord breaks resolving into a deep Allah breath Angel djinn into crawling craving larva, eating mushroom cattle Goddess melting like a drop, single layer liquidated the endless icicle cycle God is each drop floats up to rain down to flow to vaporize to breathe and freeze to snow to liquefy to again drip off his own icicle landing in the puddle, the sea like the churning inner fluids of a dancing Siva drinking Ganja, eating chocolate. This wants to be the tea steaming desire of God answers always himself be still be still until will it to be I will it to be on Earth as it is in heaven with the rain one crimson drop of blood. Here is stillness

II

'Contrahit orator in carmine vates.'
Pupa camper I-that-this-my home wrapped in warmth see beautiful larva coachmen crawler sleeping warm and lit beside motor-mansion behemoth. Our promised house, this lovely vintage vehicle, soaking in the moonrays, tanning in the silver light. Inside watch J. Cornfield, Gerald Celente, Chogyam Rinpoche and read

"...It wounded him to think that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast of the world's culture and that the monkish learning, in terms of which he was striving to forge out an esthetic philosophy was held no higher by the age he lived in than the subtle but curious jargons of heraldry and falconry." (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce, 1913) Where buddha and krishna speak the language of Allah in the eyes of Christ's pretend lovers. Where meditation may as well be shivambu and Ram Bahadur Bomjon is reduced to a rediculous buddha boy.

I am happy here yet. I smile on the sheep who preach the wolf's lies for they are fluffy friendly. I cannot wrest them from the path they march, but I will not follow them into hell.

Here in the shop I finish this diary, at 11:11 AM
Noa says "Senge Dradog is the aspect of Padmasambhava that that subdues the heretics of hope and fear, which exist only at the behest of an I-concept. Hope and fear subvert spirituality by protecting us from our pain."

Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9%
of everything you think
and everything you do
is for your self
and there isn't one.
-Wei Wu Wei

What is music (in response to a thread)

I was reading this whole thread, weighing the differing points and the different directions you have taken the definition of music. The last thing I read was Wesgriffith's signature "Slippery and Elusive...like a whale." What a wonderful summation of what you have discussed; tonality, atonality, differentiating between noise and music, timbre and tone vs source, it proves that with all of these factors acting on the category called "Music", the word sharing (as anyone who has had a musicology class knows) it's root with muse, it is none other than "Slippery and Elusive...like a whale." So far in history, Music has never paused its development, has never stagnated or waited for composers to catch up. Every time some new synthesis of order and noise solidified itself, it's own solidification implied a new category, a new synthesis. Every "step" in the "progress" of musical history is really just a recording of compounded human attempts to understand this "slippery and elusive" being called music. We have never really known what is was or been able to define it. All we know is that it changes and grows in defiance of our attempts to pin it down. All we can do is describe what it is, how it sounds, how it makes us FEEL, and that only tells us about OURSELVES. Studying it can never take away its mystery...you will find that the borders of musical thought will only recede as you pursue them, leaving you just as dumbfounded as the tone-deaf.

Rock Hill Haiku

Every weekend I
push grandma around Wal-Mart
Joe the plumber gawks

Tired in the aisles
lean on wheelchair handles
wish I had a boyfriend

To all the black teens
I am a hippie hero
but Joe just don't know

What strange fears does he
link to the dreads on my head
By God! I'm harmless!

We spent the day searching
crossed the Catawba four times
Gastonia Mocksville Kannapolis
rolling over hills
a thick layer of cows and goats
occasional pony
border collie racing our truck
off Lane St, Turkey Road, Moose, goldfish and tree limb
we found our dream
a 1984 GMC coachmen
from our hero, Toby
drove back home for $5400
floating back down 77
in love with our new home
troopers pass
but the sharks don't bite our plateless purchase
God delivered it as ordered
perfect and gleaming
we're living in a vintage, museum quality
collector's item

Oh waking partner
when can we to mountains
vacate?
Oh sleeping partner
when can I wake with you?
The cold rises
imagine
a chipmunk in the dusty dawn dead
but you are already at work
damn.

I woke up this morning with 23 spider bites
He got away twice.
Our truck can't be fixed
and it isn't worth much.
Shay's father is running out of money.
We're already out of money.
My parents don't know about Randy;
they think we live in our RV.
Instead of losing hope,
we felt emboldened somehow.
"Spiders are an omen of coming wealth."
A plan; we go back to our old plan
and get an RV
with no Randy to FUBAR it.
Now Shay and her father argue
"Just be with the feeling.
Hopelessness is our exalted state."
Says Noa-ji
a fight might break out
fear makes the dogs whine
I draw a mandala on my palm
four Om symbols with a sufi winged heart in the center
surrounded by my prayers and those surrounded by thank you's
suddenly--John stops it.
"A working class hero is something to be."
an unsolicited text message from a friend.
My hope returns.

गांजा!

Election Night

"Politics is the entertainment branch of government."-Frank Zappa
The voting process is just audience participation.

But boy does it feel good tonight.
We're going to have an African president
closer in soul, I hope
to the cooperative culture of our past
with a character to move and unite for the whole.

God, thank you. May I never regret my vote.

Why am I so giddy?
McCain has conceded.
I want to watch BO's speech,
I fear every moment that he will be shot.
John Lennon just came on.
I feel good.

I'd love to attend my funeral
find a Guru, be reborn
grow my dreads out, find liberation
smoke गांजा skyclad
as a naga sadhu

Noa and Owen Text Message Each other

O: By acting without action, all things may be in order.
N: Indeed, for non-action is the way to heaven.
O: Help me wrestle the concept.
N: Non-action is being aware of everything but doing nothing. Seeing is non-action. Looking is action; it's an absence of things because every 'thing' is an intermediary state between two absences (time, space).
O: So the idea is to spread non-action to all beings?
N: Yes, to become still, if only for a single timeless moment. The moon is a good example. We are all moons of the phenomenal world. Actions that are non-actions have no roots outside the present.
O: Pondering that and gathering wood--or rather dreaming that while finding wood, I was bit by a tick-- or rather, loved by God. Is there a practice for this concept?
N: That depends. The essence is 'be still', but it is sometimes described as the practice of no practice or the practice where there is no practicer because in the stillness of mind there is nothing to still or act on.
O: As a dog who eats and does not know who is fed; Pomeranian eats pomegranate.
N: Mmhmm... If he were to look and see he'd find he has never been a dog in his dog reality. It is not a very popular concept these days.
O: We live in a world of ego-worshipers. The dog in their dog world is their God.
N: To them, doing is always seen as the appropriate course of action no matter how much harm it causes. It validates the dog in their dog reality as something other than 'me'.

Campfire

I look into a campfire every night
and see my mind burning.
When my skin warms I know
the radiance of the divine
explicate to implicate to supra-implicate
cast out to the embers
fed back to my mind.
Deeds of love, deeds of contempt
are sparks and smoke;
byproducts of the fire in my soul.

I dreamed of my great grandfather
he spoke
but I don't remember what he said
at the siesta house
but he approved
and he loved me

What if Hitler did the Jews a favor by hastening their movement into a higher incarnation?

Just now I was on the potty. Analyzing the evolution of our ways of communicating, from simple vocalization to basic language, to symbolic language, to oral transmission of stories, to writing, to printing, to radio, to television, to the instantaneous multimedia maelstrom that is the internet, coupled with cellular phones and text messaging; it is apparent to me that our goal is to build, eventually, a real time, interactive, constantly updated, thinking experience of our collective minds. Which is to say, we are building ourselves as one external self. Which is to say, our communication's evolution leads to the manifestation of God.

South Carolina before election day

I am a snakeheaded Gorgon! Medusa dreadhead in the grocery store. I turn starers to stone. They dread my dreadlocks. The white folks go white whispering, giving ugly pigfaced looks. Only the black can meet my gaze unharmed.
African Americans know I'm safe to see
all the Caucasians' eyes avoid me
until I look away
then rednecks watch suspiciously.
The black ignore the white, the white ignore the black. A medusa like me might ignite a race war in the Rock Hill Bi-Lo; tomatoes and turkeys thrown, hurled pomegranates for fear of white man Mccainations, milk spilled cry for black Obamanation canned up olives salty all over the aisles. Politically incorrect pork chops versus mudslinging turkey burgers Joe the plumber victorious in housewares.
one brave perseus with reflective aluminum foil come to cut our hair
I fear for election day.

As I lay
the cat curls on my heart
his breath in my space.
As he breathes
and I breathe
I see;
we are both hearts.

I am the heart of God;
The breath is his blood,
and I move his breath.
I am the lungs of God;
when his blood is cool
I fill it with warmth.
I am the liver of God;
for I take the impure
and leave only the pure to flow.
I inhale, hold, and exhale
inhale, hold, and exhale
heart, lungs, liver
heart, lungs, liver

The cat begins to purr.

Vibrating Kitten
purring on my heart squints, yawns
wrapped in his own tail

Yesterday we visited Andrew Jackson State park, the birthplace of Ol' Hickory; past the Catawba River yawning like a slug between York and Lancaster. We didn't hike for long before spotting a mushroom in the litter by the side of the trail. Shay put green sprigs on it's cap while I hunted for the right kind of yellow, star shaped leaves. Arranging two rows around it, we framed the scene with four little grey pinecones and some lichen coated branches and took photos of it.
When some kids saw us, they got excited screaming,"It's a hippie! Hippies!"
Further into the trail, we reached a spot from which we could see some cut trees. The dark bark of their great cadavers had broken and peeled, leaving a soft bright brown skin.
I turned the underside of a big bark piece up, framed it with live green bark, positioned three big green leaves inside and made an Om symbol with longer ones. Then, I crumbled some rotten reddish residue beneath it. Happily, our truck survived the trip there and back.

I just emerged from a trance
losing consciousness gaining Godsleep
then I felt as if and observed at once
a power-drill carve into my heart
blood comes full of secret feelings
dying soul begging for union

and in the end
desire is not satisfied
the heart dissolves desire
it bleeds and beats
outside the picture frame
revealing the wall
the world
a problem neatly hung to be appreciated
oohed and ahhed at
and walked away from.

We listen to grandma's butt
it says it's going to rain
aching arthritic hips
slowly creaking into the next days

On our way to Catawba our brakes broke, and broken brakes burnt built up confidence. We got lost in Rock Hill with broken brakes. We drove down East Black, full of stop signs and pot holes, with broken brakes We almost hit a school bus, but swerved. Then we passed Shay's father's house (the McCain Palin sign), and made a U-turn with broken brakes. We made it to the house, pitched a tent on the porch warm with our creatures. This morning we took a walk, picking yellow purple white flowers, to a repairman to find the break that broke our brakes

Owen's Adventures

So, our adventure has begun. We set off Saturday morning; two cats, two ferrets, CD cases, a boombox, two big bags, and us crammed into the cab of our tiny Toyota pickup. Everything was progressing smoothly, the cats seemed content on our laps and we weren't too uncomfortable. But when someone says something like was progressing smoothly, you know that something has since gone wrong.

We stopped at the rest stop outside of Orlando to let the cats use the litterbox and to walk the ferrets. When we started the truck again, we couldn't shift it into reverse. Whenever we tried to fight the shifter into place, the truck made a violent grinding noise. Scared, we shut off the truck and shifted it without the clutch. It went into gear and we backed out of the space and headed back onto the highway, hoping to make it without any further issues. About fifty miles later, we reached 'E' and pulled off at an exit to stop for gas.

When we pulled into the exit, the truck ceased to shift at all. We cruised in neutral to a mobil station and called Shay's father. He was worried that it might be a dead tranny. Put one in mind of an oversize and overfeminine corpse of a prostitute rotting away beneath the hood. It may as well have been. That'd mean an expensive fix that we couldn't afford. Exasperated, we called for a tow and cried quietly in the lifeless truck. As we sat crying, pawed at by nervous felines and smoking a bowl, the gas station's ambient speakers played one mediocre oldy's hit after another. Then, quite surprisingly, John Lennon's "Well Well" began to play. We had a serendipitous premonition. It seemed that God was saying somehow things will turn out alright.

After forty minutes or so the tow truck pulled in.
"Are you our hero?" Shay asked as a large, rhinocerine man climbed down from the truck. He wore a camouflage cap, had engine grease on his shorts, and spoke with a gravy thick Louisiana accent. I took photos as he loaded our truck onto his. We told him of our transmission related fears, and he told us that he was a certified mechanic. He asked if he could take a look. First, he had to tow us though, to cover his ass because he worked for a company and couldn't take their business away. We payed him $65, so he towed us to a Uhaul center with our cats and ferrets in the cab. In the parking lot he got up on his truck bed and under our engine. Shay pressed the clutch and tried to shift.

"Y'all er lucky," he told us," Ain't the tranny, it's y'all slave cylinder. Easy fix, parts at the auto store. Ah could do it at ma house for y'all; pervidin' y'all can wait there for me to finish a call'er two. I getcha summin' old to drink and letcher sit in the AC."

We were reluctant but helpless. As he drove us to his house out in Orange City, he talked to us in his soulful dialect. He was frank and trusting with us and we found that we had more in common than I had initially suspected. He was a very kind-hearted and intelligent guy, well qualified to be a supervisor or manager in a shop; another victim of recessionomics. ASE certified, he'd taken the only job around as a tow driver.

He had a house on a rural street called Monastery. He lived with his girlfriend and her son in a little house on a few acres. Sweet and welcoming people. We were surprised to the point of disbelief when they fed us, let us wash up and let us exercise our animals in their yard and living room. You hear stories about people in Europe inviting travelers into their homes, but I never expected such compassion in this country and especially not in this state, and most certainly not in these times of social and economic fear and discrimination. Not only did they fix our vehicle, invite us into their home, entertain us, feed us three meals, give us a bed, and let us shower; they renewed my confidence in the inherent goodness of people.

We stayed up late talking with them and Anchor (as I shall call the tow driver) was in and out all night as he got calls for tow jobs. His girlfriend was Ray and it was her son's sixteenth birthday. We had brownies and watched the Planet Green channel, talking about social issues and life.

In the morning, Anchor fixed our truck, rolled us a joint, and set us out on the road again. Now we're at a motel in Beaufort, SC. The cat escaped from the room and I nearly slid off of the wet roof of the motel in pursuit of him. I am rightly exhausted and will now sleep.

Outlaw Ferrets

There once came some ferrets to a prairie town
well they weaseled their way in and they ferreted around
they ate all the prairie dogs from underneath the ground
when those ferrets road in to a prairie town.
One was Tiger and one was Bear
just one look from either'd give a grown man a scare
they steal and they thief without a care
those outlaw Ferrets Tiger and Bear.
Well they come in the night and they break into my house
leave no critter living, not even a mouse
then they set the house afire and the fire wouldn't douse
when those outlaw ferrets break into my house.
Well they kidnapped the mayor's daughter
the mayor said for ransom just give'm what they wanna
some peanut butter and a bottle of water
when they kidnapped the mayor's daughter.
Then one day Tiger found Bear with his filly
a petit little mammal by the name of Lily
Tiger said to Bear "Boy I'll rassle ye and kill ye!"
When Tiger found Bear with his dear Filly Lily.
They came to the square and got into fighting stance
then Bear tackled Tiger in a pile of ants
but Tiger knocked him out with a left paw glance
and Tiger ferret did the Weasel victory dance
Tiger turned to Lily but she wouldn't have him
the sky darkened, the mood was grim
Bear got to his feet, walked over with a limp
another ferret road in just about then.
Noodle was her name and she spoke with a cough.
Her neck was long and her fur was soft.
When Tiger saw Noodle, his heart was aloft
and now all the outlaw ferrets are much better off.
Now for a while the weasels ran our town, indeed.
And we cowered every night in terror afraid.
But a little distraction is all that ferrets need;
one day they up and left chasin' a tumbleweed.

Hannah Montana

Hannah Montana
carries a ketana
wears dulce and gabana
does what she wanna

Part time pop star
she is much younger
but pretty like flower
wise like an elder

It say in the papyrus
"in one girl is two heroes
from the land of mickey mouse"
her name is Miley Cyrus

Hannah Montana pa
he mate with an iguana ya
so of two natures is the cha (child)
she will reach nirvana

Miley Cyrus
is swift like a tigress
she is very dangerous
if you make her furious

Hannah Montana
carries a Ketana
legend all of India
part time pop star ninja

Om Mani Padme Hannah Montana
Om Miley Cyrus

I've been overfed by civilization. I've been exhausted by its tediousness. I am jaded; society's long lobotomy is not an elective surgery, but still my insurance won't cover it. This plastic paradise's privileges are not worth the compulsory fee. Obligation is a ball and chain. We can't have the freedom we want, can only work for what we're told we should desire, and are endlessly distracted for fear that any introspection might inflame the yearning emptiness of our evolution's expectation.

Money is the veil. Money is the manufactured addiction. It is a verdant green, the color of biology, but it is not life. It is not food, love, breath, or satisfaction. It harnesses the light of greed in its smiling presidential chloroplasts and sets its stem in the pregnant uteri of saddened collector-types, eager to set about roots to gather the blood of lesser sprouts into its sappy trunk. The fruits of some trees contain herbicide, but the thicket of our western bush is a dense choking genocide.

This morning we woke up early and set up a gypsy sale out of the back of Stella in the siesta beach parking lot. After a few hours of sunbaking the Golfcarts told us we had to go. Why they did that?

"Because they are pricks, and the purpose of a prick is to burst your bubble."

the only thing I aim to do
is piss on a bush

You know something is wrong with Florida because it is the only place where it takes more than an hour for tea to cool. Sometimes it even comes to a boil again while you're waiting.

the beach smiles like a million shrimp rotting on the shore. Because that's God's idea of a good time

there's a balm in gilead
but I've got Burt's bees

Owen heads to the potty
and emerges
Wetbeard the Pirate
Captain of the many masted ship
sailing over the ocean
raining drops of beardwater
as he gives orders to the crew
gesturing wildly
with his prehensile pirate dreads

Allah is always arriving
and never departing

Jesus Fish

In my online shop
come click with your clicker
and buy yourself
a metal Jesus fish sticker!

Yea they're made right here
in the US of well...China
but I'm warning you that
you'll go to hell if you don't buy enough

You put them on your car
to show your faith.
We double as a singles' sight
come find a hot christian date!

And if you're riding 65
but the limits a bit slower
if you've got one of my fish
the police won't pull you over.

Made of lead, steel, and nickel
never tarnish, high gloss
So if Islamofascists bomb
it'll survive the holocaust.

Just stick it to your car
comes with self adhesive glue
buy A Jesus fish now
Christ himself would want you to.

The breath of God
the light
reflected from fire
through crystals of tettrahydrocannibinol
is filtered into smoke
within the blue and yellow glass thorax
of the tea bee
and we inhale the divine
to breath ecstacy

Here we are, October Seventh. A quarter of the month through and the bottom is about to fall out on our society. Guy said "You guys really want to leave? Get out by mid-October or you're fucked." Mid-October. It's the seventh. We aren't there yet, but damn are we cutting it fucking close!
Gotterdammerung!

Listening to "Here Comes the Sun"

The Sixties almost made it...it might have been so great. But they went and shot Lennon. Mark David Chapman killed our society. His bullet assassinated hope. We all lost it. The 80's happened. The hippies soured into yuppies, curdled into Reaganists, and now they regret it. In the 1990's they went eco-friendly, and now they think Obama will fix it.

Hope for America. Vote John Lennon

We're wet hippies
yes we are
we're wet hippies
without a car
We've been walking
in the rain
All the squares think
we're insane
When we get home
we'll smoke some weed
and then we will
be high indeed
I hope that inside
it is warm
since we've just come in
from the storm

BuddhaGod speaks through every mouth
in every word I hear
BuddhaGod speaks through every thought
that flowers as the pains soaks me
Every drop of rain
is a syllable
and when the thunder hits me
that's buddhaGod's exclamation

Gimme Feta Cheese please
or I'll break both your knees
I'll activate your allergies
and if you so much as sneeze
I'll release the bees
If there's too much of a breeze
for the bees to do their deeds
then I'll give you a disease
put you in a cryogenic freeze
until they cure it, no release
when you come out I'll have your niece
and I'll make her itch with fleece
she'll itch where the tag is in the crease
if she's got hair I'll give her fleas
on your house I took a lease
tenants four hundred a piece
and you may think that I'm a beast
but I'm tamer than the geese
it's just that I need a feast
so in the name of peace
Gimme Feta Cheese Please!

I have never been a fan of destruction. The release of forcing things apart is particularly bittersweet in my case. Today we took a saw to the skeleton of our camper. We are turning it into a pickup in order to transport ourselves northward to a land of opportunity. As we saw the support beams, I am overwhelmed. With a push, the overhead of the camper, big and deadly, flies over the cab and crashes on the concrete. I couldn't stop shaking.

Last night
as I stepped outside
in the dark
where usually I,
blind,
cannot observe,
I saw an owl
I could feel her eyes as soon as she found me
we stared at each other
I took a step
we stared
I took a step
we stared
I was close enough to see
each stilled feather quiver
in fall's arriving breeze
I, entranced, spoke
and the owl turned
to fly.

Tonight we called our friends
Kelly Guy Andrew Jaguar Jason
to liberate our camper
redneck Randy went white
and we hauled the mess away
at home we ate steamed cabbage
like peasants
and made desert
from peanut butter, chocolate syrup, cheerios and trailmix

Where were we walking warm winsten? Why you wicked tail-wagger warm winsten! What were we wearing warm winsten? Which water was yours warm winsten? Wait with us for the worms warm winsten!

Shay
my home
my best friend
I love you
I think of nothing else
and love nothing else
your space is my only fit
your back is my only soft continent
The tiny curving infancy
in each hair speaks
of graceful purity.
You are the dark source
at the center of your own light
a light which like a rain of feathers
is delightful to be soaked in

The sea of shit we're in

The braided knot
of our society's collapse
is expressing itself
in our tiny corner
all dramas converging
everyone we know
unemployed
everyone we know
worried
and today our mechanic
Randy
informed us
that he will not release our RV to us
“It will be mine.” he said
in no uncertain tone.
Our roommates need us to leave
because their neighbors have seen us
and their landlord allows no new tenants.
We have applied everywhere;
it seems
employment is a dying state
and achieving it is impossible.
It's hard for the rats
in the sinking ship
only privileged passenger people
can invest in lifeboats.

Out for a walk by the pond

rarely.........................................
does...........................................
shit........its like a.......smells........
open........miracle.......of itself.....weed
windows.its brisk........ducks......nice
..............the air...........like.......weather for ducks
..............but yet..........moldy.....yea?

To migrate
I hope they
don't fly in
and eat the.....turtles
ants and........albino
...................snappers......from my hand
....................bye-bye..........and wiggle
..................they eat them.....their tails
..........................................wiggle
......................................... wiggle

This morning we washed the ants out of my parents' kayaks. We found a worm in Seamus's kittanus. We let the ferrets exercise.

In my family, relatives interact with one main motive; to trade and acquire politically sensitive information about other relatives. For instance, my father traded "Harris uses drugs" for "Brian has a girlfriend." Susan trades "Aunt Ricky's on drugs" for "Tess has a Boyfriend." I tantalize my brother but don't tell him about our parent's drug use. The only member of our family who keeps herself removed is Abby, my sister. The truest person in my blood.

Kitten Shit and Mouldy Weed

With all that's going on
the last thing I need
is kitten shit
and mouldy weed

but when I got home to my shed
that's what I found
shit on the couch not on the floor
or on the ground

so I get out the bowl
and I open my baggy
and I see white fluffy mould
turned my chronic all schwaggy!

After I calmed down
and got a towel roll to pick up
I go to write this song
and there's piss on my melodica

so now I'm fuming mad
I got to open up and clean it
and save all my songs for later
but somehow still mean it

and now I've picked up the shit
and I polished the reeds
I even took my tweezers and
picked the mould off the weed

I got out a pen
and I tuned up my uke
but first I looked in the fridge
for some veggies to cook

once I ate food
and I got some perspective
I thought about my day
and here's the wisdom I collected;

Even though it was hard
at least it was funny
I got a free song
and didn't spend any money

because to be inspired
all that I need
is kitten shit
and mouldy weed.

I have been offering hand jobs for money on craigslist. Now I am a drug dealer and a prostitute. Didn't they say this wasn't supposed to be fun?

Last night we had a honeymoon of lovely erotic bliss in oldwise dadshouse. Not that the dad is wise, but the deva of said Bayit happens to be quite the adage-puller. We spent the morning with a teabath and tunacrackers and this evening we are having Kate, Kat, Cat, Mike, Joe, Pat, Blake, and Kevin for pizza. A few fine days

I fear for Shannon Mullins

As I sit here on this plane
I worry and hope
that I worry in vain.
But I cannot quell a secret fear
that while I was gone
my Shay disappeared.
Perhaps through magic, perhaps burglary
perhaps she got flushed
when she went to pee.
But if she is gone, whatever the case
I don't know what I'll do
if I don't have her face.
For days all I've had is her voice on the phone
patient and full
a smooth river stone tone
A voice that is gray and orange and green
it's the soul that I love spilled out
with breaths in between.
I could call her sometimes
to just hear her take air
it feels good when it's smooth
when she wheezes I'm scared.
And that's why I'm listing what may have gone wrong
like perhaps with her asthma
she coughed up a lung!
If there was a morning that she woke up wheezing
I'd be too far to snuggle her
and save her by squeezing.
I'm so excited for when I land
for the feeling of a close Shay
and a hand in my hand.
But what if when out eating spaghetti
someone attacked her
with a machete
if I could not hold her hand it'd be egregious.
I hope I don't find her there
paraplegic
but if I do get there and she's a bit armless
well is she's got her Shay
she will not be charmless
so long as she's looking and figuring out
and knows every detail with logic
without doubt
then I am sure that she's safe and my slow mind can rest
but what if I arrive
and find she's possessed?
If she's foaming and cursing and performing feats
like treating souls and infants
like delectable meats
if she's skewering poodles on an upside down cross
as for what to do
I will be at a loss
I suppose I would plead with the demon that's in her
and hope I do not look
like ideal dinner.
I hope she is there to take me home
to the house she made
for the kittens to roam.
I will gladly sleep there in our bed in the shed
but only if I get there
and Shay isn't dead.
If she is I might have a heart attack
and when I'm in the Bardos
I'll have my Shay back.

Part III of a Letter

Loveliness,

This morning we had brunch. I woke up full of nausea, emptied my bowels of fresh-squeezed pulp, and took a bath.
They don't provide one with matches at the Hotel Omni, so I crumbled up some incense and bathed with it. The resin of Nag Champa gets very tarry when wet.
After my bath we made our way across the street to 555, a club at the top of Frisco's tallest building. In the lobby they were installing carpet.
We made our way in a supersonic elevator to the 52nd floor. As the doors opened, gold ladened wood molding and a pompous looking woman met our eyes. She was a portrait; fat and dressed in purple, straight from the eighteenth century.
As soon as an employee was in sight, my 86 year old grandmother squawked her favorite phrase;
"I need to speak to the management!"
Her complaint of choice was that the building, by scheduling to redo its carpets in a day when senior citizens were going to walk through the lobby had put the elderly in danger and ruined her grand-daughter's wedding brunch.
Luckily, my aunt shuffled her in.
The ensuing room was filled with food. I'm too lazy to describe the buffets, so I'll tell you solely my three plates. The first I ate was mushroom dumplings, pickled ginger, and veggie tempura. The second was olive feta pepper garlic lettuce wraps and spaghetti. The last dish was chocolate cake.
At the moment I am writing from the top of a tour bus. ow was promised to be my time to visit Golden Gate, the Sufi Center, and Haight-Ashbury. Instead I am on a tour bus breathing poison with my family as we pass City Lights Books and the tour guide remains silent.
We did get off at Haight, but walking down this street, though it is crowded with inspiring people and places, is a tough experience with a loud, course, ignorant bunch of gawking relatives.
I managed to walk far enough ahead of them to quasi-escape. I walked down the beautiful street, stopped to buy Kat a gift and passed some glass shops. There was a lot of beautiful glass, but I was wary of bringing it back to the airport.
At the end of Haight is Golden Gate Park, and when I reached it I could hear the drums from Hippy Hill. The path took me past a group of "The Freaks". I was prepared to see them, Frank Zappa makes mention of them and they were precisely where he had described them. I am not quite sure what kept them together. They all had a cannibal look to their eyes. All of them were untrustworthy in their own loud and unique way. Drainbow types, and to see them together I had to wonder what they saw in each other. If I were any of them I mightn't trust anyone, especially other people like myself.
The path led through a tunnel and at its end was a clearing. To my right was the hill, and at its base the drum circle. I found a spot on the hill, listened for a few minutes, then took out my melodica. The music was nice; some of the players were pretty skilled.
I like the ratio of beautiful to ugly in San Francisco. Whereas in Florida perhaps one in five people is mildly attractive, here every other person has style; a look, a grace, a friendliness, a beauty, a nessipism, or a confidence that excites me. My family thinks that everyone here is bizarre and disgusting, but I see real people with real thoughts feelings and statements.
As I played, a few people took notice of me and soon started a circle around me. A particularly gifted guitarist, probably 25ish, with short dreads and glasses sat by me and smiled when I mimicked his melody.
Most exciting was a girl who must have been nearly seven feet tall. She wore a long green coat, had pink and green dreadlocks, and wore glasses. She was so thin, though, that even the bones of her forearms were visible. Her skin was clean and healthy though and he muscles, though long, were tone.
I was shy before her beauty and hid behind the music I was making. When she produced a wide blue glass pipe with lots of tiny bubbles suspended in it, I could only smile at her mutely.
I wonder if she has that arresting affect upon everybody. Maybe every person she has ever approached has remained silent in fear that she may be the angel of death.
While I played, I tried to think of something to say to her, but before I could I saw my father emerge from the tunnel area and when he saw me he gestured for me to join him. My family and my shyness have been my bane on this trip.
I caught a different bus than my family but with the same driver that had taken me to Haight. This was a city bus, the 77, and the driver had put a piece of cardboard over the coinslot. Free rides today.
I sat in the elbow of the bus, four seats on a little platform. When the bus turns, one side pivots first, then the other, and the little platform maintains its position relative to the road. It's fun.
Initially, the bus was rather empty, but at the end of Haight it filled up. Two girls got on; one asian with a mohawk, small but dark, the other white with beautiful goldish curly hair. They sat across from and next to me, respectively.
Ashamed that I had been so shy on the hill, I was determined to make some real conversation. The asian girl had really cool paisley pants on, and I complimented her. I'm glad that I did.
Connection! Conversation! I just happened to be talking to an Asheville resident, two of them in fact. The Asian was originally from San Francisco, and was back visiting her family and showing her girlfriend around town. They live in Asheville and I told them of our plans. When we get up there we have friends.
She said it's a great city, with the largest gay and lesbian community in the US outside of San Francisco. There are lots of spiritual people and the prices are 20 years behind the rest of the country; great weed and awesome music.
The only drawbacks are the natives. Most of the city consists of immigrants from the North and West, so the natives, who are rednecky, are very defensive and resent the influx. Most of the police are natives and they sometimes treat people unfairly. Jobs are somewhat hard to find unless you know somebody, but hippies are good at networking and people get jobs for their friends.
After the bus, I walked back to the hotel and met my family. We took a cab to dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant, passing City Lights Books again on the way.
After dinner, we returned to the hotel. My brother is watching sports...it is getting late and I can already sense that I am not going to get any sleep.

See you tommorow,
Owen

Conclusions
I am glad that I took this trip, even though it left me with such mixed feelings. It's like the first time I visited Asheville; now that I have been to this city once, I know that it will be a place I spend a lot of time in the future.
I've only had a taste, but it was like no other city. I miss you, and I have been imagining again and again the moment we are reunited.

Part II of a letter

My lion,
Pitch and I have a strange relationship. Usually, I navigate the waters of its identification using reference tones; notes I know always. But lately I haven't had as much musical stimulus, and haven't practiced my ear training.
This morning a tone found my ear. I wasn't awake yet, but a mechanic process began to squeal into motion. My mind drank down the one, and I searched involuntarily for its match.
First, I conducted my inner orchestra through the opening bar of Suite Burgamesque No. 3, but the tone wasn't a C#. Next, Eine Kleine Nacht Musil, but the tone wasn't a G, yet in both keys it functioned.
Distressed that my musicality had tarnished a bit, I arrived at the note and awoke in the key of e minor. A soulful but laid back key. You called, and plans were set in motion.

We made a breakfast-bound departure from the Omni hotel. My father insisted I wear a jacket. I refused.
"You'll want it after five minutes."
"Humor me."
Three blocks later I thanked him for humoring me. He'd carried the jacket all the way. We ate breakfast at, of all things, a New York style Jewish delicatessen. Naturally.
My father insisted we take a ferry to Sausolito. The idea was immediately voted down. Nixed. Impractical. One hour their, one hour back, and we have to be at the wedding in 3.
"Okay" he said,"I relent." And then he was gone. For a minute or two we ate hungrily. Then father's absence was noted. He was gone.
My stepmother called him a few times, and he didn't answer. When father doesn't answer, he is up to no good. Despite the fact that my sister needed to purchase a coat for the wedding, that I had been promised a few hours of free time to busk, there was no time, and no one wanted to go; my father returned sheepishly with six tickets for the ferry. He must hate himself now.
He works furiously and busily all year for his vacations, but when he gets to them, he is so used to his style that he keeps his family busy being furious.
As we sit now on this big boat I feel a little bad for this self-destructive man who can't slow down.

We spent about forty minutes wandering Sausolito. It is like the St. Armand's of San Francisco, all expensive shops and art galleries full of soulless crap.
I really wish I were here with anybody else. I want to penetrate this city; it has a history and a good vibe. But all my family is interested in is the face a place puts up; its districts zoned for tourists where the city sells a candied version of itself to fools willing to drop a dime.
I have no interest in places that sell things! I want to feel what life is like here and perhaps that would be better done in the homes and worship places of real people... rather than those paid to smile and take our bags.
I find myself missing the time I might have had. If I'd been with you in the RV meeting interesting people who live beyond the shopping districts. Perhaps conquering this hilly place on a bicycle. And I haven't even a camera to photograpjh the beautiful things I do see.
We returned via streetcar to the Omni hotel to get ready for the wedding. I managed to assemble an outfit from a silk paisley shirt, a bola tie and a suit jacket and pants. And I pulled back the top layer of dreads.
We had an hour long bus ride during which we were presented with vies of San Francisco bay and mountain coast giving way to dry, warm, vineyard valleys.
I had never seen a true valley before, like a Godmade room. Great plain brush rounded by walls of rock and insulated under uncrowded unclouded sky.
When we arrived at the vineyard of wedded reception it had gone from 60 to 80 by the mercury. But here, 80 is a different lady. She's dry and wine-winded, fruity and invigorating. The sun, it seems, does not lash like a Florida cracker. It's not a warming whip, but rather infiltrates with a glow the skin and hair in a laid back sort of sunlight drip drop.
The ceremony was a blink; blushing bride rushing, waddling bloated body of a Jewess down the grassy aisle. The vineyard's grounds are filled with sitspots and abstract art. I passed them to pass water in the long, many urinalled, crowded restroom. I wish I had taken a sideways crotch shot photo. Men of four ethnicities cocks out standing together committing an act of nature. True harmony.
When I returned. the reception had begun and I mulled and grazed amongst the cousins. Then an interesting thing came to pass; my cousin Andrew pulled me aside. He's short and thin, works with computers and is an older doppelganger of Jon.
"I know we've been making fun of you about your RV and stuff. I think we've taken it a bit too far." He seemed a bit self conscious.
"I just want you to know, I want you to do good and finish it. No matter what; go through with it. That's what matters. You can say what you want, but if you're persistent and you finish what you begin, then you're worth something. You know that and no one can say otherwise. But if you don't finish, it's like a download. It's not done even if it's 95%. You know what I mean? Finish this, then do the next thing. That's life." Then he hugged me and as he did, Imagine began to play.
Now that I think about it, that moment was what made it. That moment was this trip for me. I left to cry, then came back. And, with this beautiful experience the rest of the evening was amazing. I met quite a few people, had great conversations and a few awkward moments.
But that moment of love birthed it. In fact, as I sit here writing, three more fun and interesting interactions have landed on me.
At this moment and for these few hours, I feel blessed. And tomorrow?
Well, I have heard tell of a "Hippie Hill."
Owen

PS
I stole you loads of Organic Pomegranates. Just shoved them in my jacket.

Part one of a letter

Ms. Shannon Mullins,
Good afternoon, it is I, your potato face pirate, shivering my timbers writing you in the cool San Francisco dusk.
Shall we disembowel this situation and sift through its entrails for to divine how I became so sublimely embroiled in my current fruit-smoothie of an emotional state?
Shortly after I fare-welled your acquaintance early this morning at Tampa airport, I observed a common occurrence on Tannenbaum-related voyages. My father made a scene. He stirred the nest, this time concerning how he specifically might arrive pacifically.
You see, because of hurricanous happenings in the lower Texan regions, all flights were rerouted and seats had to be switched. In the mean time, however, as the airlines were hard at work figuring out just how to pull such a maneuver
, my father had cruelly involved the superiors of the clerks of not one or two, but three independent airlines in a spar of longhorns for unvictorious bagchecking. When the starch settled we were securitied, ID'd and westbound for Vegas,
Lucky choice of seat-mates; lovely Laotians played me their local folk music on westwise planeflight. After a few hours of reading Khan and Elkins, my gaze made a windowed acquaintance.
Clouds, too short a word for the long streches of dense and creamy nuage mirage unrippling below the wings. A gray continuum. Gray of every color. Dark, passionate, robust Gray heroic and rojo-ic. The red of Gray. Fluffy lovely, glowy gray its yellow. Smart smooth and mellow gray its blue. And climactic organic verdant skyclimbing gray a dual green/purple.
I offered to Padmasambhava my eyes to swim with my vision in this weightless ocean. He surrounded me with warmth.
The plane dipped, the surface froth of the cloudy sea ascended and the land cracked, split, rose, plateaued, and fell into scrubby sandy plains. It was as if the ocean; the gulf of mexico, had given way to the great stratospheric sea; the clouds, and now, finally, the ocean and sea at their bottoms are these endless stretches of rock and sand.
My first live glimpse of this part of Earth's environs. We swept over the cavernous earth-anus of a comet's planet buggery, but the crater was merely a prelude to that grandest of canyons, wide as it was; a stretchy water-worn rarity of gold rock with dark bands.
Then, out of no where, Las Vegas happened, complete with swirling copters, tall mock-buildings, and a pyramid. Ridiculous, uncomfortable, and immediately distracting.
The clanging bang of binging gamblebell slot machines and clingy pressure-turning salespersons pushing putridly for green and long dead white men.
Quite overwhelmed we laid over for the plastic hours. I bought chocolate, it was no good. Flight 468 San Francisco. Parents next to me. As the cabin pressurized, so did the mood. My pen popped on my hand and lap. The affect was something like an abstract tattoo. As I recover, my parents in rabid rage foam in sudsy agony over a form so angsty I barely stand the recollection of it. We flightsailed over the border as the family gnawed bitterly on the stretching flesh of my heart but--

Ahhh... San francisco. A relaxed sigh as soon as I moved myself unplanewise. In baggage claim, I witnessed a small mexican man lose his wedding band. He cried. We dis-airported and taxied a cab.
In exhausted awe I watched the city drive past me. Through the doors of the Omni hotel, with its elegant west-coast-african-american door man. I needed a moment of escape so I walked thricewise about the block, counting dreadies and stopping for tea.
Soon we were greeted by ugly, evil cousins and aunts, all sneering and snorting like bridge-tending trolls. With them in tow, I piloted a poor and much jarred asian taxi flier to a dinner party. For all the uphill downhill he received only meager reimbursement.
Here was my cousin's California home. She's fat and ready to be married baby crying in her arms.
"Didn't know she had a baby!" I said. My brother, emanating uncouthity at me says,
"Of course she does!"
"It's the reason for the wedding!" my stepmother adds. I blush and congratulate Laine on her squealing delight.
"It's not mine," she says. The groom's family gives me an unfriendly eye. Turns out I am the victim of a joke. A grand laugh at Owen's expense and now he looks more like an ass than that crater.
"You're not still building that RV, are you?"
I stagger.
"What are you doing with all those books?"
"I'm converting you to Islam." I reply.
"Just finish school," They say, "What have you been up to, anyway?"
"I've been up." I say.
"Look at that ass-crack. What do you think your belt is for?" They say.
"Self defense." I say. My veneer is starting to peel.
"Are those supposed to be dreadlocks?" Another one takes a whack.
"Haven't you ever seen beautiful blond tresses before?" I ask. I'm starting to falter though. I have to excuse myself and take a walk. The breeze is picking up. It's getting cooler. Pessimism, pranks, parents and peers pissing on me. They tell me I smell, tell me I'm dirty, put their slimy fingers in all my tender crevices. I'm running low on sass. I must retreat to let loose the salty spillover of feeling from my vision.
As I escape, San Francisco greets me like a sister. I walk the cool, hilly streets, climb to a park, let the sun go and watch the lights on every hill. I am here alone, though, and wish I had my lion to lie with. You'd be so invigorated dancing red and wild up the sloping streets. Here we are beautiful.

In my nympholepsy I stride the paved park path to hill cliff edge by purple flowers, and there, pale and creamy-skinned with orange hair you lay shivering but smiling in the Californian botany. Cold, you look pleadingly at me, jealous that I have warm layers of clothing.
I pick a flower, covered in fuzz and pet you with it, letting it roll like a little wheel up your thigh, bringing each translucent hair to the summit of a prickling shiver and leaving a trail of shed petals up your belly.
The wind blows, tensing your flexing aureoles as you squeak with a tiny chill. I unbutton my shirt and gently connect my warm and wanting upper half in a gliding of flesh that sends shivers like waves over both of us, soothing your chills and sending our teeth into a chatter.
I breathe you; all sandy-smelling and sea-fresh, your lips like the flowers we've pressed between us. As we move, the crushed plants let loose their lovely souls in an upward draft of blanketing scent. I love you here in the park, warm in the cool air, and smoke with you by a bright fire as the sun dies.
Then we'll sleep naked on the hilltop to wake like rabbits in the flowers at sunrise.

Owen

playing hungry hungry hippy
on siesta
picking seagrapes
there is some primitive primate pleasure
in the pluck of flexing opposable digits,
some familiar focus in the squinting hunt
for the ripe purples.
Fingers sweet and
sanguine as our evolution.
We're island monkeys
for the time being
eating hurricane washed fruits
from the branching bunches
of peach-fuzz grape-bodies.

Shay awakens every morning
an asthmatic wreck
and one mucus membranes make their trouble
there is not getting her
asleep again

Birthday business is a strenuous affair
rotten Godhand sticking stinky finger
in a carbrokedownbitchypeoplefinancecrash
dramaphenomenon
designed by hashem, conspiring
to smoosh the juicy ladybug
this party was supposed to be.

Happy Birthday Shay
we're disappointed in you

A Sketch Gentleman

A sketch gentleman
has infiltrated our household
crack coke smack meth crank
drunk wanted unfit
but kind with an unrefined wit
a charming arm twister
of Heather and her sister

A dream I had

As bearded boonies grow nervous
seas rise
power stops
regimes go suddenly silent.
Jyotis from hawaiian hostel
on boats rides across
on my articulate horse.
A gift for me.
Wise horse I ride.
the horse's wisdom
the heart of rebirth

Kellster

I am building a secret beehive of honeyed caverns filled with the buzzing warm of new affection for the boisterous dash of her expression. With swishing digits she parlays her quips and the occasionally cheddar pun. A feminine brainforce limping about the house in her literary pajamas. Her voice is like a papazan chair,
rounding and relishing for each chewing spit of poem read. Twice the cheek diameter of sleeping secret thoughts; delight she makes me feel playing games of scopa.

This afternoon my brother Noa attempted to explain male and female. He said "Maleness is rare in the cosmos. The universe is basically female. Inorganic beings are female, and they outnumber organic beings."

This was after I told him, in a flurry of text messages, that I felt lacking in male interaction. I have no spoken face to face with a man in weeks, and I have been living with four women.

Today, though, has been the end of a transition. The day has been enlivened by a million tiny synchronizations and direct influence of the divine with its sense of humor.

Tonight, Shay and I went to Rising Tide. As we walked in, the Shahabuddin was speaking of the duality male/female as joy/peace and personal/impersonal.

The male is joy, which comes from change, from progress, from surprise, from newness. It is personal delight for this being. Personal is individual. It is this slice of consciousness doing for this slice of consciousness.

This is the way most experience the world, and our experience of God has reflected that. Our prophets were individuals who personally experienced an impersonal God. A God "out there" speaking to or inspiring them.

The days of the prophets, of private revelation, have ended. Prophets showed the divine, the impersonal, affecting the personal through miracles. But just because prophets do miracles and we do not does not mean that we are not divinely inspired. "Prophets do miracles. It's part of their gig."

Now, though, we are moving from a personal experience of an impersonal God to a personal God arising from the experience of the impersonal.

This is the female, and the making of peace. We are a bit like cells who, rather than coexist and be eye cells, or ear cells, or skin cells have decided to be individuals who, rather than making up an eye or an ear or a finger, are instead their own self; seeing hearing or feeling only for me.

In the process however, they have blinded, deafened and numbed the greater being they are a part of. We are God's eyes and ears and flesh, yet we live as if each of us were whole.

But do we feel whole? Do we not always seek to gain that which will complete us or eliminate that which corrupts us?

"King Solomon was leading his army to battle. Each rank fell in line and marched behind their leader, the king, whose path they followed to the step.

As the king marched North, he abruptly turned East, walked several feet, then pivoted North, walked several feet, turned West, walked several feet, and finally turned sharply North once more, continuing his original path. As each soldier followed, he too made Solomon's sudden changes in direction.

When they had walked a bit farther, one of Solomon's commanders asked him, "Wise king, why was it that, in your wisdom, you chose to change direction so suddenly just a few miles back?"

King Solomon replied, "I saw a large and lovely ant-hill, and I had no right to trample so many lives. The lives that we fight for are no more precious than those of the ants, but even the lives of the ants are precious indeed."

The Shahabuddin said, "You become what you kill." Whatever you destroy, or malign, or hate; you are.

I thought about aspects of myself I seek to do away with, supposedly to better myself and prevent suffering. A simple example; I exercise to stay in shape.

But it is the time and effort and work I put into exercise not equal to the suffering I might sustain from being out of shape? Is not the suffering of exercise not directly proportionate to my level of fitness and the amount of suffering being unfit might bring me?

Look, though, the duality fit/unfit possesses me and causes me suffering regardless of which way I spend my time. I have become that which I killed.

"Does this mean that vegetarians become vegetables and carnivores become animals? Absolutely. You become what you consume.You assimilate it and it i a part of you." I thought of "the borg" from Star Trek.

"What you kill was always a part of you. If it weren't, you could not absorb it. Vegetarians were always vegetables. In fact, if everyone were a vegetarian, there would be no war. Vegetables don't fight wars."

So is God personal or impersonal? Is God something we create together or is it an individual separate from each of us individually. Is God inspiring or expiring? Is he inhale or exhale? God is neither inhaling or exhaling, inspiring or expiring.

God is transpiring. God is the breath. When you inhale, take from the great expanse of lifegiving air, God is impersonal becoming personal. And when you exhale, God is personal becoming impersonal. Yet, all the while, God is the air being breathed.

When Shahabuddin explained this, I thought of something Shay said once about smoke. It feels odd that smoke, an external thing, can be inhaled and, somehow, it becomes a part of you. This impersonal experience becomes personal and we are made high.

After the talk, the Shahabuddin passed me on his way out the door. I thanked him for his beautiful talk and awaited his words.

"Ah," he started gracefully, "was it you who added me on Facebook?"

ED

I want her
I want her
but I can't stay hard
how cruel I am
that I can't be hard
the pen doesn't work
there's a spider on my leg
I have no one to talk to
why has everything got to be hard
but me?

My lobster waits
massive in Sweetbay's tank.
I want to free her.

There once was an oversized lobster
so weighty no one would have bought her
everyday in the water
she waits to be slaughtered
and her peers, long since boiled
have forgot her.

Mexico's gulf was asleep yesterday,
though today the storming Gustav
churns in its belly.
On the beach, brave pelicans and sea-gulls
strode and fluttered.
The water was still and waveless;
no cresting crash of shore-line surf.
Today siesta took a nap.
The water deepened steeply,
but only fifty yards out
it rose to shallow sand-bar
near the buoy.
Young yellow hair, sunbeaten shapely one
tall and curious-eyed, she came close to us.
We're two dreaded hairies, thin and tone
free-swimming and excited.
She watched us.
What could we have sparked
in her nubile mind?
I find it appealing
that we can affect the world
just by being in it.

In meditation

I ceased to identify solely with my body.
Eyes closed, no motion
the cool energy of the air
in the right nostril
out the left
in the left nostril
out the right
and a slow, warm dizziness unfolds
despite the colder wind.
I am the wind as it fills
I am the wind as it leaves
and surprised when eyes open
I find them lower than my awareness
which quickly adjusts again
to the height of my perceiving

I can hear the ring of my own perception taking place. I have been paying particular attention to the modulations of its constant sine. It seems to beat with my heart and flash and flicker between beats. Focus on it pushes me into distraction until it gets louder.

If I push my nose it gets higher. If I strain my eyes it gets higher. Sound, smell, touch, and color all amplify it.

It is truly the sound of perception and is connected with the gray buzz over my eyes in the dark. The sine is the sound of perception, the gray what it looks like, and the warmth is its feeling.

Rain air lives only
between tears; tiny patches
ghosts of the ocean.

Today I feel exasperated
listless
jaded.
I fell in love with a bunny rabbit
but had to leave it
it had a big blue eye for me
and ringworm on its foots
but we have ferrets
who make mini-mammal munchies
out of baby bunnies

Let us end the separation
of church and state
why not make every state
a church?

At Rising Tide

Tonight Heather, Shay, and I ventured across the street to attend a worship service of Universal Sufism. We had no idea what to expect, as the only information we had about this exotic religion was that which we had found on wikipedia. Would it be a gathering of stern bearded Arabic men? Would it be a gathering of crazy hippies? Would it be a faux-spiritual yuppiefest?
As we parked, Heather and I scanned the bumpers of the various vehicles. We were nervous and desperate for some hint of what we were about to get into. Most were blank. One Obama sticker gave us a meager, brittle sort of hope. The entrance was unadorned and plain at the side of the house-like oblong worship center. We followed others inside and removed our shoes.
It was dim, and we were told to take a pillow and sit on it. We slowly crept across the long room, settling at the back of a crowd of perhaps thirty. In the dim light, I couldn't yet judge what sort of people I was amongst.
"You should come up to the front, in the light, if you can't see."
Before the crowd, a man sat in a chair in front of a platform. He had long but receded hair which, backlit, looked like a dusty halo, and a mild and time-developed gut. The Shahabuddin; an American in his sixties. We scooted to the front, and he looked us over. For a few seconds, everyone sat silently.
'Sixteen years ago, Joe Miller left this planet. He was, if I may use the word, definitely enlightened. Mystics, gurus, zen masters, even his holiness himself said he was. If he had been born in Tibet, they would have said he was some sort of incarnation of a divine llama. But Joe would never have said so. He took no students. He said he wasn't a teacher. He was only a friend.
Nevertheless, we used to have--well, he didn't call it anything-- but we called it The Walk. Every day we would walk from Golden Gate park to the beach, through the amphitheater which has since been destroyed. It was nice, it had wooden benches carved from whole logs. Joe would talk all of the way.
He studied Zen with a Korean master. This Zen master, came to the United States for only a few weeks every year.' What could be the purpose of the master's journey? Was it to bring Zen to the west?'
'The Korean master came to the United States for only a few weeks per year to collect social security. He stayed here the minimum amount of time so that he could get his check.
Once, the Korean Master accompanied us on The Walk. He spoke eloquently about the unity of all things and had us all rapt--
"That's enough of you! Why don't ya shut it."' And here the Shahabuddin changed his voice, and you knew he was imitating Joe. In fact, it was as if another voice were speaking from him.
'But the Korean master, with perfect humility, merely laughed and said "You're very funny Joe." And we all knew that was it, Joe was trying to show us that. Once you get to a certain place, it doesn't matter what people say, because you've got it. And that was Joe Miller. He had it.'
At the end of the story I put my finger to my eye and squinted at the people around me. Behind me I saw a deep-laughing long-bearded Persian man in a white gown. The crowd was somewhat diverse. Very few young people, a few yuppie types, some conscious-looking men and women, a few aging hippies, and one or two bearded ethnic men in white robes.

The rest of my evening I must decline to describe. We used sound to alter consciousness, and it left the realm of symbols.

DOGANUS

the

SUNAGOD

Sarasota's getting....

Sarasota is empty
and it aches of Nostalgia.
Mrs. Chen's is closed.
Sarasota is my
and as I pass
Jon and Noa's old apartment
I imagine parking
knocking on number 32
Jon answers
Noa's on the couch
they have a bong packed
and a heady film on.
I miss my memories.
Nostalgia isn't kind to me.
My sisters too
Missy Kat Mari
they made me who I am
we were soul scientists,
but they've been blown away.
Why am I trapped
here?

On a Sunday Afternoon

little tea-time hunters of caviar
stepping out in manacles and gowns
after the spawn.
as they sip the soup
it is a sign of good breeding
to hold out one's little pincer.
Sophisticrabs
on a Sunday afternoon.

Randy is our mechanic, he's building our RV. By hand. From Scratch. Alone. At first, things progressed rather quickly. He tore the '82 Toyota Sunline we purchased to bits in just a few days, and drew up plans for a camper worthy of an engineering prodigy.
Not at all bookish, Randy's an eagle-featured white man taller than a Clydesdale who lives entirely off a superbly balanced combination of gritty creatine power smoothies, hand-rolled cigarettes, energy drinks so strong they glow in the dark, and joints rolled thick so that he can fill his voluminous lungs with smoke four or five tokes at a time.
He's strong too. Once, we ventured to Home Depot. He flitted about through the aisles like a bee in a flowershop; at full speed and with a near constant taurine-tempered buzzing. We needed eight sheets of plywood. Randy sifted through the stack, searching for an unsplit, knot-free sheet. He lifted the sheets with one arm as he examined each below. Feeling useless, I tried to help him out by holding up the sheets. He received my aid by releasing the sheets he held. As the falling sheets blew a burst of air into my face, I learned an 80 pound lesson in just how powerful this man is. Nursing a crushed elbow, I met his eyes and he said. "I make it look easy, don't I?"
He did, and he made building an RV look easy too. But then it started; parts we had ordered came out wrong. Even from Toyota itself. It took us forever to get a rear end, and we wasted time and money on parts that we still haven't sold. In the end, we had most of the parts made special.
Now, though we have our parts in order, it has all taken so long that Randy had to find another job, to bring him income while he works. Spending more time at his job means that he spends less on our RV. And while we are here...we are running our of funds and patience.
This morning he revealed to us that he thinks it might be well into September before he finishes; a death sentence because I have to attend a family wedding in California on September 13th. I declined plane tickets and offered to RV. My relationship with my family is continuously rocky, and suddenly pulling out of an engagement might put them over the edge. Stressful day, both Shay and I are rumpled.

Cetacea

Overweight whales have ocean obesity and when they're like that it's anything but pretty. Pudgy porpoises play purposeless lazing through seas without any duress; Firm, muscular fishmonkey skin marred, moldable, no longer thin. I played with the dolphins, slender and fit, they weren't sedentary even a bit. The blubbery orca came swimming around; his wake was so big that I nearly drowned. I'd play with him and hug him but I don't like the embrace of his squishy gut. I don't snub affection or hugs very much but cellulite gives unpleasantly to the touch. Those whales aren't healthy their eyes are all bloodshot and they can't get laid they've got fishbreath and toothrot, It's all because they're eating poo; it's dumped in the ocean by people like you. So next time you flush think of the mammals and the crap that got stuck between their enamels.

My Worst Fear

I awoke, tumbled downstairs;
an outside trip to old siesta patio.
Inside, I lay on a sexagenarian sofa
and a cat sought pressing mewling comfort
at my shoulder.
And I felt a--
again it--
worming.
A white soft slimer
pushing its existence undefined
with undefined existence from behind
eyeless earless legless unsegmented utterly horrifying
I raved like a waving crazy shouting save me
and she saved me with my shorts.
But the way got aworm.
We mounted an investigation
but somewhere between planarian and pinworm...
we forgot what he looked like

My Shay brains in a realm of kitten perception. She is sensible like the first misting wave of a thunderstorm but holsters hits of lightning. But she's not the Shay that moves and speaks. This outer force is surely Shay's seashell. See, Shay's secret is she's a snail, or at least a conch of some variety. She'll only bare her thigh if she can see you'll be the ocean, never an eating mouth. And on the inShay, the silent Shay there is a smile for my smile if I smile inside. A soulholding inner hand for interlocking evolution with. The monkeys grew fingers so they might finally interlock.

My religion; Gay
My sexual preference; Buddhist

I have an Octopus's chromaticists
for it seems who is around
is who I behave like.
I am filled with the essence of my friends
and find them in myself.
Drew is back and I found again
a tentacle or two that has been absent.

We were shopping at publix today
and I felt strange.
What feels so peculiar?
Then I caught it--
I'm sober!
I have not shopped sober
in many years.
What a strange, giggly feeling
it inspires.
Dude; I am so sober.

I cried for an hour today
In fact, I bawled until I had a headache
laughed and moaned goofy moans
an optimist smiling up from the well of grief
filled my lungs with snot
but I don't know why.
'Twas all my neocortex
upper brain's been scheming
now pours forth its built up invention
I cried, we checked my tarot
It confirmed my suspicions;
too long without tripping.
God still wants in to my brain
climbing divine through my wet blind eye
He told me in mystic tarot answers
"Imaginative insights are transforming your work,
making it into a receptacle of divine truth
and spiritual artistry."
All my cards are in reverse
my world is upside down
but for nature and religion;
my hopes and fears;
my ultimate outcome
then we fucked over the couch.

Don Juan El Gordo

Today,
blinded by yellow drops
at the eye doctor
I blurrily beheld
the fine and aged form
of Don Juan El Gordo.
He caught me reading Michael Dowd
and told me about
staying with Nietzsche's grandson
about a German speaking Czech
who escaped the Nazis for the Russians
and ended up teaching English to Slovaks
He writes
but doesn't publish.
He just slips his works in
amongst library books
to die unknown.