I have seen the great minds of my own mad
generation, lost there on the long road
to find-out, trolling in a dry wasteland
of television idols and false dawns;
of lingering doubts on the new world
order, lolling aimlessly at the trough
of some prefabricated nightmare dream,
where the subtle shimmer of some bright lie
draws even the most ardent activist
for truth into a warm apathetic
mire; of an amnesiac culture
that cannot even raise its voice above
the dull murmur of its own Machine; but
I am not my father's Allen Ginsberg.

I have wandered out into the somber
night, high on the watered-down and cut smack
of misinformation, finding only
spare hints and veiled clues to the universe;
weak honeyed colored shots of Nirvana;
bits and broken pieces of some grand scheme
to resurrect the spirit of this place;
and in the tepid water of a fetid spring
have washed away only part of the sad
sickness that saps the strength of will, and hope,
leaving only a malaise of selfish
preoccupation with the status quo.
In this stark and violent land I have learned
I am not my father's Allen Ginsberg.

Against the bleak sunrise of a new war,
the best minds of my generation blink
their startled eyes, like stunned deer in the road
that can only wait, paralyzed, surprised
as the blanket of our greed, frayed and torn,
looses itself from our stooped, weak shoulders
and we are discovered, naked and cold
on the fallow field of our investments;
as the slow, steady churning wheels of death
advance towards us, we pretend deafness,
turning a blind eye, or shifting our stance
so we can imagine there is no cost.
I cannot find a way to change this scene;
I am not my father's Allen Ginsberg.

31 JAN 2003

When so much of one's world revolves around
the search for the inner essence of things,
an attempt to hear the personal sound
or true song of being, what often brings

the most clear and vibrant indication
of something vital beyond the eye's range,
where the flights of one's imagination
find beauty in the sublime and the strange,

is the simple sound of nothing at all -
that still, quiet place between the heartbeats
of the loud and exuberant life-force;

There is in that space, beyond the ear's wall,
a silent sense of motion that completes
each audible voice, giving it a source.

31 JAN 2003

Yes, these are the times that try a man's soul,
when platitudes from saints and holy books
seem flat and stale, the semblance of control
blurs hopelessly each way a person looks,

and a sense of overwhelming, dire need
(mixed with a loss of temporal guidance)
comes over the waiting mind; it feeds
like a piranha, in a frenzied dance

rending the flesh and bone into mincemeat,
then is amazed that there is nothing left
upon which to satiate its cravings.

So self-absorbed, living only to eat -
creating a sad universe bereft
of a saving grace, or things worth saving.

30 JAN 2003

This poem was written after hearing of the adventures of two friends from the local bar who attended a gala opening for a new Mexican restaurant in town. Free Sauza shot glasses, appetizers, and margaritas were consumed in abundance.

Laughing and stumbling
like sailors too long at sea,
who suddenly must realign their gravity
to the stillness of shore,
like conquering matadors,
their legs still weak from the thrill
of their toreador jousts,
they returned through the door,
propelled by the smoke
and musky fire of consumed mescal,
their voices filled with the gaiety of life,
exuberant and freed from any commitment
to coherence.

And around their necks,
like Jacob Marley's shackles,
the emptied shot glass souvenirs
announced their arrival -
not as chains forged
through a long and meaningless life,
but rather a triumphant rattling of swords,
proclaiming yet another victorious challenge
to the still sober.

And then,
with a quick stumble to the waiting stool,
one lights a clumsy cigarette
and laughs,
tossing a collection
of imprinted plastics and colored string
on the bar --
"We came, we saw,
we just had to have one in every color."

09 FEB 2002

At one time in my life, I experimented with writing my own cut-up novel. Heavily into Keroauc, Ginsberg and Burroughs at the time, heavily into mind-altering additives of several varieties, spending late nights in cafes discussing Gertrude Stein and Pound's Cantos and drinking espresso while smoking Galouises. Or something like that.
Anyway, for anyone interested in some early 1990's Beat Literature, here's a sample.

Dances with Whales, Winces with Dulls or the Diary of a Former Establishmentarian

from "The Secret Undertown Ministry", copyright 1994 by John Litzenberg

Homespun Masquerade and Gravity Pushman are speed-balling down the road singing songs about cowboys and colored people get ready set go go dancing in the streets of fire of love of broken dreams and poor new drainage talking speaking enunciating emphatically delineating points of light of interest (no rest areas) of the triangulated divinity school students and children of the lesser goodness gracious in their defeat may move but the mouth just runs and runs and runs like a Timex or a good woman who takes a licking and either leaves while she can or comes back for more every three days and keeps on ticking like a time bomb or so like clockwork oranges and lemons and taking a hit of XTC, say their second album, the one before they thought they were the Beatles ...

and dreaming in his mushroom cave the hero wastes his seed in fantasies of wife beatle-ing deaf and mute he signs the hidden messages found on the Abbey Road album cover and swears to me, like my cousin did when I was six, that Paul died of stomach cancer. So who's the McCartney android that does all of Paul's best songs and tells the world why the best band in the world had to break up and marry Linda Eastman and Yoko Ono and divorce Maureen and Patti?

Beats the hell out of me. After the Marharishi tried to convince Mia Farrow that she was more than a woman they all stopped smoking from his hookah right before Grace Slick decided to immortalize the original Generation X bimbo in a song about roadkill.
Homespun and Gravity laugh, look at the fuel gauge and see rollers in the rear view mirror.

Yeah, just like Willie Nelson, David Crosby, O. J. Simpson, and Dolly Parton all know, you can't outrun the bust.

Hide it swallow it put it under the seat or for Christ's sake shove it up your ass you crazy fool - I mean the fear that's on your face 'cause it's obvious from the way you part your hair or the way your eyes are set in your head or the loose screw under the dash that's given up holding in its gut or the glove compartment and it's just like hand in glove, as they say in the penitentiary blues and it ain't Tiny Tim tiptoeing through your tulips anymore and Bubba, I mean brother, I mean brother man, I mean sir yes sir just moving it up the line, boss man and you aren't just tall, I mean to tell you, friend, the fat lady is leaving the stage drenched in sweat and last year's model of Tammy Faye is running down in torrents between her sponge caked boulders and you can see her Boticelli clear as day 'cause she's done singing and boy, you're signed, sealed and delivered - ya estuvo, mi amigo.

Steel blue under the campaign hat between the short cropped blonde on blonde and cleft chin and a voice that seems to rumble from the ground like whispers along the San Andreas says:

"Boy, you realize you've got a busted taillight?"

Gravity's rainbow shucks and jives like Bojangles on liquid L speaking in silver tongues and promising whiskey depth and saccharine lightning:

oh yes sir we were vandalized at a motel
burning motor madness
deep in the heart of Texas chain saw
Alice's Restaurant Massacre and I swear
on my Wounded Knee, officer,
we're just trying to get home safely so as to
rectify
correct
undisfunctionalize
and otherwise fix
remedy
remediate
mitigate
solve
resolve
dissolve
absolve
the problem you have in your fine judgment seen fit
to inform us of
after putting to bear
bringing to focus
and otherwise pulling into line
your outstanding powers of observation
which have brought to light, uncovered,
and otherwise given us the benefit of knowing
that our taillight
as you so ably stated
is busted . . .

To which, after the trooper had trooped along his merry law-enforcing way, Homespun replied, "and luckily, my friend, we are not."

And as the superhighway stretches solid smooth sliding into the shimmering sunset, the two seaworn saltsick sailors smile, and slip an eight-track tape of Vaughn-Williams Second Symphony into the player.

Gravity's getting heavy, says the one; the other laughs and replies, "Yeah, well I'm getting pretty sick of that Homespun's shit. You ever notice when you drive through Memphis, Tennessee that one out of every six drivers is white, and of the seventeen percent of drivers who are, shall we say, negative melanin concentration challenged, about one in five of those will admit they have friends among the other seventy three percentile?"

"It's like this," Homespun says, "it's all about family values, and when I say that, I mean family of humankind values. And what exactly are those high-faluting all-fire important values?"

Krishnamurti said we don't really love our children - his evidence: war, poverty, destruction of the earth, hatred of each other.

"Where have all the Jennifer Flowers gone?"

Gravity sits for a minute, then responds, "You can bet they're not growing on Neil Bush. And further, more importantly, can we talk about family values while sipping whiskey, dragging off a Klan-supporting tobacco company's products, supporting the death penalty, referring to quote lesser peoples like insects, I mean, wasp, jigger, bugaboo, kike, spic, wop, Polack, politician, commie, leech, redskin, honkey, whatever?"

I saw a new beer ad, man, and it said: Are you tired of that alcohol-related headache? Of course, they were pushing non-alcoholic beer or some shit like that, but if they really wanted to help, if we really were interested in family values or the betterment of the human community or any of that other bullshit that people like Rush Limbaugh and George Bush and Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and Jesse Helms and Bob Dole and every other person that thinks that by appearing to be moral on the outside while hiding a rotted, corrupted core that seethes with the maggots of racism, classism, old made-by-exploiting everybody who wasn't looking money, if we were really interested in saving the quote youth of today or whatever the slogan-promise-action committee-neighborhood awareness-media focus-issue that means Willie Horton or Willie Not Get Elected we would say: "Tired of that alcohol-related headache? Then put the fucking bottle down and stop buying our product, man, because we're killing you, we're destroying your minds, your homes, your country, your world, and you're paying us to do it, you goddamn morons!"

"Yeah," says one sailor to the other, "that's a beautiful sentiment.

But what about all those lawyers and psychiatrists and lobbyists and career politicians and otherwise unemployable bloodsucking spirit-draining soul-killing bastards who'd be lined up around the block at welfare services looking for food and shelter and a little bit of spending money?"

"Well," replies Gravity, "you'd have to tell them three things: one, man does not live on bread alone; two, if all the world were bread and cheese and all the sea were ink, and all the sky were cotton candy, we'd never be able to distill vodka; and three, if a hen and a half can lay an egg in a half in a day in a half, a cat is like a sidewalk because neither of them can play the piano."

"In order words," Homespun laughs, "you'd tell them to get jobs that create rather than destroy?"

"Yeah," the first sailor replies, "that's about the size of it."

One of my favorite Robert Service poems describes perfectly the state of ADD. It's called The Men That Don't Fit In. After reading the bio of one of my new friends, , who stated that the word bi-polar was too limiting, I thought I'd write a poem that speaks to some of the issues for those of us who are manic-depressive, bi-polar or otherwise challenged by the presence of both sides of the Tao while sometimes losing sight of the whole...

To say that the pendulum swings too far,
and spends too much time stalled at either end
(having somehow got stuck, its bearings fouled),
leaving great holes of time where reality

is distorted, and the continuum
of the necessary and the sublime
seems to be warped and far out of balance,
hanging at the frayed end of a tensed line,

is putting too fine a point on the thing.
In those vast stretches of space when the weight
passes (so rapidly) from black to white
it is that the grey escapes one's notice.

While in that seeming freefall, gravity
does not exist. And then it bounces back.

29 JAN 2003

I believe that the disappearance of the true Left Wing in the United States of America can be dated accurately to the first time that Colonel Harlan Sanders thought to split the chicken into three breasts, making smaller portions, more servings sold, and effectively decimating the distinction between Fascism and Communism. Although first introduced in 1939, Kentucky Fried Chicken did not begin its campaign of ideological subterfuge until approximately six years later - thus timing the elimination of the Left Wing (and its political effectiveness, despite the subsequent "Red Scare") with the rise of our World War II ally, Joseph Stalin - a prime example of Right Wing consciousness.

There are still some strange people in this world
who demonstrate compassion for others,
based not on a need for recognition
or because some reward has been promised;

An act of compassion is not a task
completed to meet some kindness quota,
it is understanding another's pain
and lessening it some by sharing it.

How can a selfless act, worth more than coin
be encouraged by an act of Congress
or a pay scale for rewarding good deeds?

A faith-based program must be its own end:
belief that doing the right thing is right;
else it is not faith-based, it is a job.

29 JAN 2003

If there is a principle in my life
that stands behind any visible act
or serves to motivate in times of strife,
it is this very simple and small fact:

I have been given many things to keep,
some of which may need to be protected,
and a dear few, watched over while they sleep;
this sacred duty is not neglected

while I still breathe and am able to stand.
I have sworn to die defending my own,
to face whatever ill comes to my door.

But I have no right to rebuff a demand
by slaying the villain. Know this alone:
my life will never be worth killing for.

28 JAN 2003

Sitting quietly under the carport
in the still crispness of the morning air
listening to the sparrows chirp and play there
on the light-frost covered lawn, their day's sport

unspoiled by this unseasonable cold,
watching the sky, made sharp and crystal clear
by the tentative sun as it appears
and bends, but does not break, the winter's hold,

I breathe in the tendrils of warming steam
rising from my lotus flower green tea
and let the soft fragrance fill my senses

like the lingering essence of a dream;
soon the entire world fades, and seems to be
only a facade of subtle experiences.

27 JAN 2003

If I put those parts of me I distain
away in a box, where they can hide
from the world, if I just do not decide
their resolution, I can avoid pain

and needling from their sharp little jabs.
Their effect on my life can be reduced
to nil - I can refuse to be seduced
into picking at their festering scabs.

But they will still continue to infect
every safe part of my life; and the more
I avoid dealing with these ugly things,

trusting in the power of pure neglect,
in the shadows they will find great succor,
and fill that quiet place with suffering.

27 JAN 2003

Far below the surface of the waking
world, there lies a still and sleeping giant,
a slow unconscious vision of making
that exists beyond the mad defiant
whirlwind of apparent thought and vision;
before the dawn it stands, self-reliant
and free from the bonds of indecision,
watching each small step we dare to venture
with a compassionate derision.

It does not seek to scold or to censure,
but instead fills ordinary, small things
with a great longing for some adventure.
Only a rare few hear the song it sings,
and manage to evolve from slaves to kings.

26 JAN 2003

A couple of links I just followed and read from my friend rialian's journal, particularly those that led to the website of Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of virtual reality, prompted me to start thinking anew about two of my personal directives, education and revolution. Now, for many years I have felt that the education system in America has been lacking in a number of respects. Particularly the higher education, or university, system which seems to focus more on acquiring a piece of paper that states you are educated rather than actually acquiring the knowledge and the ability to use it that would prove you educated. Like Jaron Lanier, I have no college degrees. Nor is it likely that I will acquire them, save for through the largesse of some institution that thinks it might improve its influx of donations through proffering upon me an honorary degree. However, I do not think that the revolution (or more succinctly, the continued evolution) of the human species will be promulgated or initiated by dwellers in or products of our university system. Einstein's relativity proved two things, to my way of thinking: one, that genius is not necessarily enhanced by structured learning environments - in fact, the absence of those environments or non-reliance upon validation from those environments may in fact be one of the primary motivators for genius (a need to seek out truth on its own terms, to look beyond the narrow limitations of conventional thought); and two, that a theory of everything is only practicable if it can be very simply demonstrated or analogized. One of my favorite illustrations of relativity (provided, I believe by Einstein himself) is this: if you're talking to a beautiful girl, five minutes seems to go by very quickly; however, if you are sitting on a hot stove, five seconds seems hours too long. Everything is relative, in other words. How does this relate to revolution? The ideas that will drive the evolution of the species are not great, giant conundrums of mental machination that will be impossible to grasp outside the realm of the quantum physics laboratory. They will be small, RELATIVELY insignificant kernels of thought that enter into the collective unconscious without even being noticed - and NOTICING them will trigger the evolutionary process. It's a phenomenon I have referred to in the past as Applied Significance.

Each small step for mankind, for human life,
has been made outside the sterile classroom -
in a fetid womb pulsing with unknown
and compromising factors. No constants.

Each single minutiae significant,
and holding within its identity
a key to the unraveling of truth
(not as the world sees it, but as truth sees).

Who while immersed in the obscurity
of dusty tomes and hackneyed evidence
will see more than just motes of swirling dust?
Who among those keen studied observers

will recognize the source of that motion
as their own bated and hesitant breath?
The primary rules of hard science are these:
First, yes can never be infinitely

tested, but a world can be swift destroyed
by a single, solitary failure.
Second, the observer and the observed
must always remain apart, for the sake

of objectivity, and to keep clear
from future disputations and disproofs.
How in such a climate of disbelief
(structured surely by nothing else than faith

in a far superior illusion)
can the observer ever become more
than what is already inside the box
defining tomorrow's limits today?

25 JAN 2003

Happy Birthday to Starlight Dances!

Things to do today:

Take Star out to dinner and thoroughly break our diet :)
Call Star's mom and give her congratulations on having given birth to Star :)
Do all the dishes, laundry and even clean the bathroom and fold the towels :)
Be on my best behavior, as much as possible ;>
Oh let us not forget the spanking ... he he he > ;P

for Starlight Dances

Sometimes it seems like the whole world conspires
against the enjoyment of simple things -
like the blend of colors in a warm fire's
flame, or the smile that a warm morning brings

after a long week of bitter hard freeze.
True too, the long days and months of life
can seem like so much flutter in the breeze,
with stretches of time that hold only strife

and reminders of past glories and deeds.
But right now, we celebrate arrival
of a new incarnation, a true gift:

your spirit, a beautiful bloom that needs
only recognition for survival,
and if not born today, would have been missed.

25 JAN 2003

When the temperature drops with the sun,
there is a stillness that comes on the world:
like a blanket of crystal on the lawn
that mutes out even the low sound of breath,

or a layer of gauze, chilled and lowered
on the exposed throat of the universe
(so that its murmuring voice is made dull
and one must listen for it in the hush),

the silence that comes with the evening frost
brings a solemn and delicately cool stop
to the city as it huddles for warmth
in its houses and beside parked cars,
as the slow creep of frost extends its touch
and holds the whole earth absolutely still.

Sometimes, it seems like the world is awash
in a dark, foul murky liquid that seeks
a height just above the chin, and tastes bad
to boot; at times like these, when nothing goes

according to plan, or requires no cash
or something else you just don't have on hand,
and the whole experience makes you cry,
wishing there was a rock to crawl under,

it's nice to have a wonderful person
smiling right back at you in the morning,
who's glad that you were born and thinks you'll do.

Of course, that feeling is even better
when after a day of constant worry
you both laugh because the cold car started.

24 JAN 2003

In spite of the obstacles, to advance
and claim your dream, a great prize worth winning;
to inspire the world with a song and dance
and send all of those nay-sayers spinning.

For this noble purpose alone I quest,
to answer when opportunity knocks;
I have the ambition, who needs the rest?
Those tired things are but stumbling blocks.

I can't hold a tune, but deserve your ear;
My voice causes young girls and dogs to cry;
Further, I have no clear sense of rhythm.

But I have been working almost a year,
and besides, all that matters is you try -
Talent and training? No one else has them.

23 JAN 2003

Looking out from behind the holly bush
as the early morning fog gently lifts,
watching the gauzed-tinted light softly push
its way into the air like a shy mist,

one can almost forget the waking world,
with its constant focus on ringing clocks
and deadlines for conflict. To find the pearl,
one must grasp firm the mad oyster, and shuck

quickly, to avoid contamination.
But it is there - in the quiet wren's song,
and the sharp greeting clicks of a squirrel;

there is enough time for contemplation,
to explore one's choices, sense right and wrong
and augment life in this sad, troubled world.

22 JAN 2003

It's one in the morning; only the cat
and I are still awake at this late hour.
It (cat) sleeps during the daylight so that
when no one is watching it can devour

the remnants of an evening meal, making
a good excuse for it to wake us up
early. But I've no such undertaking
to keep me so alert, sipping a cup

of cooled chamomile and just listening
to the sound of her breathing as she sleeps,
dreaming of gardens and happy squirrels.

By the light of the pale moon, glistening
through the panes, her peaceful face makes me weep;
right now, that one sight contains my whole world.

21 JAN 2003

After two days of eating much less food
(and believe me, missing it a great deal)
watching others scarf down rich stuff - how rude!
without giving a thought to how I feel

it seems to me that so many take thin
for granted (especially the young);
once you start fighting gravity - no win -
you look for fat people to stand among.

And in our society, god is youth,
fitness is the most high and holy grail;
oh, woe to the ugly and overweight.

Equating health with size may be a truth,
but as a test, it cannot be pass/fail -
or we all must learn to laugh at our fate.

20 JAN 2003

When I was living in Memphis, some friend of mine who knew I was a poet mentioned that fact to an African-American preacher friend of hers. The upshot was that this gentleman asked me for a poem about Martin Luther King Jr. to read from his pulpit. I thought to myself ... hmm ... as a 29-year old white man from the country transplanted to LA and then schooled in Boston jazz college now living in Memphis, my take on this situation is not likely to be altogether in line with a Memphis congregation's expectations. Al Green, you'll remember, has a congregation in Memphis. Just down the street from where I was. I mentioned my hesitation to this preacher man; he said, that's OK. You're a poet, right? Write a poem. And so I got my first "pro bono" commission. Here's one of the three poems I gave him. I think it was the best of the lot - but I never found out if he read it from the pulpit or not.

A Love Supreme played on the airwaves
speaking silent screams, I heard:
truth cannot be bullet-proofed,
the voice's sermon seemed to say.

In Detroit '65 I woke in birth to this;
before the burning summer's swelter -
truth be told I can't remember much
(I read the news much later).

I rode the L toward the lake
I took the bus south-central bound
I passed the white house where I saw
black jockeys striking on the lawn

A Bitches Brew drunk in the alleys,
speaking sermons soft I heard:
truth cannot turn 'gainst itself,
the voice's singing seemed to say.

In Harlem '65 I woke in birth to this;
before the churning cauldron's spilling -
truth be told I can't remember much
(I read the books much later)

I walked the railroad to the north
I sat on steps behind the fences
I passed the pickets where I saw
leaders leading where they'd fallen

Free Cellblock H spoke in the nightclubs,
humming hurtful hauntings I heard:
truth cannot be spoke but lived,
the voice's whisper seemed to say.

In memphis '65 I woke in birth to this;
before the hateful carbine's humming -
truth be told I can't remember much
(I saw the film much later).

I rode the BART to see the Raiders
I took the T past Roseland Ballroom
I passed the graveyard waiting vacant
thinking of Crispus Attucks.

(I hear him wondering why)

JAN 2004

To put it so it appeals to the young,
weave a world that is perfectly inviting
and despite a deep first-rate commitment
to adventure and wond'rous mystery

still manage to inject a few lessons;
the trick, I believe, is to imagine
that you are writing for the kid who thinks
they have grown up, and also for parents

who believe you are never too old
(to imagine, dream, believe in true love).
There's such a thin line, there, between childish
and child-like. So many people forget
what it means to cherish not quite knowing
how the book is going to end. How sad...

19 JAN 2003

Again, perhaps if there were but a way,
'tho as it is maybe it's just as well:
for when your tongue is tripped with come what may
quite thereupon one never can quite tell.

And then, between the whatsit and the whence
there often flies a fact that begs, beware:
'tis many long the night's experience
and such the different sort returns from there.

But in the end, it always goes to show,
and sets itself aright with no complaint;
for despite all the blather in between

it's really rather a small thing to know.
So trip ye merry, both sinner and saint -
the truth is only what you make it mean.

19 JAN 2003

Now that I am thirty eight (just this month)
it's probably time I got my thing in
gear; or at least to some extent, figured
out what role it is I tried out for, since
it's obvious at this point that the play
is into its second act, and it looks
like I got the part.

Not too sure right now
if it's a walk-on or one of the leads,
but I seem to have a whole lot of lines
for somebody who's just going to die off
in the middle of scene seven or eight.

It's also not too clear whether this thing
is completely scripted as yet; feels like
a dress rehearsal at times, and then not.

Based on simple math, I can figure out
I'm not the suave young romantic rebel
who's destined to lose his ideals en route
to some pie-in-the-sky notion of love;
also, the blocking leads me to believe
I'm not looking back and reflecting on
a span of years spent wasted in business
or watching my great beauty fade and dim.

So what's my motivation, Strasberg?
My inner turmoil seems to be working
itself out; and angst is so hard to fake.

I worry that somewhere deep in Act Five
I'll be dancing wild jigs across the lawn
and laughing. I'll admit, not too worried.

It is a damn good part, no matter what.
And my co-stars are a dream to work with.

18 JAN 2003

for Starlight Dances

They say you never know until you try,
that risking failure is the way to win;
well, I have failed a great number of things -
and I am sure that I'll do so again.

I cannot tune a car, or sweep a floor
(at least so that it gets approved as clean);
mechanical things are beyond my grasp,
and dancing? I will never manage that.

If there is something fragile in the room,
the risk is high that it and I will crash;
there's no chance that I'll ever move with grace.
But I keep trying, and at certain things

I can at least pretend I have some skill.
There are always poems and silly songs.

16 JAN 2003

To be or not to be, that is the question:
and if we are to be regarded seriously,
as humans, placed upon this earth to live
according to our stated frame of mind,

it surely makes no sense to place our trust
in a universe that we do not believe;
imagining a fantasy that shapes our whims,
without acting as if it was reality.

In other words, to say "magic exists,
but not enough to really affect change,"
to offer prayers to deities and saints,
but not believe they hear or answer back,

seems to show a certain lack of faith;
it's more an admission of absurdity.
Some things must be taken literally,
or there's not much point in taking them at all.

16 JAN 2003

To compose a new poem every day
(as a way to clear away the cobwebs
cast in sleep, that seem to often obstruct
the door that swings freely between the worlds
of my reality and fantasy;
or at least to oil the rusty hinges)
may not appear much of a regimen,
but more an exercise in self-conceit.

But fitting at least a stray thought or two
into a confined fourteen line iamb
gives me a continuity and frame
through which to observe the remaining hours,
and sometimes makes the dull monotony
of less creative tasks just sweet enough.

15 JAN 2003

Seems like I've been in a bit of a downward spiral lately: dark themes, disjointed thoughts, cold nights and bitter winds. But it is merely one side of the coin. This afternoon I feel absolutely Whitmanesque (although he too had his megalomaniac moments and times of somber negativity).

The path I walk is not one set firm in stone;
there are no hallowed saints or holy texts,
and rarely does the practice of my faith
involve restriction of diet or act

in order to bring me back to the source.
Rather, it is a meandering way
that follows the seasons and natural
patterns, seeking for realignment

with the single thing that breathes there beneath
a thin illusion's veil, and often hides
its simple message in such tiny things.

Love is my religion. Like any truth,
it cannot be written down and then taught;
It is learning and living the word yes.

14 JAN 2003

Like bits of quartz and dissolving sandstone
that slip slowly through tired and bent fingers,
the world can separate and shift, quite prone
to entropy; what energy lingers

just seems to founder, without direction,
while shreds of meaning flail into dead space,
and all hope is crushed by deep dejection
as the pieces fail to find safe places.

Spinning out beyond the realm of matter
in a maelstrom cyclone of crippling doubt,
the gentle soul seeks a haven of sense;

and sometimes, in the deafening shatter
as the pipes of peace are bruised with war's shout,
love is the universe's sole defense.

14 JAN 2003

Last night, after consuming far too many cups of jasmine green tea following a day of bad stomach upset and then finally, after a fitful hour or two of tossing and turning to get comfortable lying in bed with a throbbing colon and still stiff back, I fell asleep. When I woke up this morning, very groggy, head pounding, I realized that I had just experienced a four and a half hour dream that may not have been a dream, but a flashback - although it was NOT particularly clear whether the events in the dream (?) had actually happened in my past or not. Roughly, and I can only remember it roughly at this juncture - I was visiting some location where at one time I had participated in/organized/attended some kind of festival that had some kind of political agenda although it was primarily a Music/entertainment festival (I know, not all that clear ...). I have attended a number of festivals, performed at roughly five, and even was involved in organizing and planning a couple behind the scenes, so it COULD have been the scene of one of those - it looked kind of like downtown Boston, where I did attend an Earth Day festival (and actually did participate in organizing an Earth Day/Arts Festival). In any event, it was an urban environment but one with a number of open spaces. It seemed foreign, though, in a "Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii" sort of way. It was a place that I know I have never actually been before. But of course, I knew the way 'round the locale. On the way to the main event area, walking to visit the scene of a festival past, I and whoever I was with (a bunch of unknown people) we encountered a bunch of other people who were on their way to attend the festival (the same festival that we had attended in the past) in the present time. And they knew who I was, because for some reason I had become famous for my involvement in this festival in the past. See how Spot gets unstuck in time here?
It felt like I was dreaming about having an acid flashback related to a dream ... and in the back of my mind, there echoed the words:

We mourn your passing, California...

And I woke up crying.

Of all the big mistakes my parents made
in their own lives, and then subsequently
tried to steer me clear of, most pale and fade
next to the whopper that evidently

(at least now in my own experience)
is impossible to caution wild youth
against: not that one must have tolerance
and look for the many strange faces of truth,

but that childhood goes by so very fast.
There are many options from which to choose,
and each step in one direction negates
other possibilities. How the grass
that seems so green can soon become old news
once you deny a myriad of fates!

My house says to me, "do not leave me, for here dwells your past." And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future." And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death change all things." ---Kahlil Gibran

Each time you draw a straight line in the sand,
or as Kabir says, "when you put one foot
in front of the other", you have defined
a course of action, a new direction

that leads to an unknown realm, a future
where there is no map; Krishnamurti said
it was a pathless land, this place where truth
waits, longing only to be discovered.

The safety of a dwelling place, its warm
familiarity, can lull to sleep
(but yet never fully anesthetize)
the wanderlust of the wild, searching soul,
that beckons us to dare beyond the stoop
and forge a fresh road into tomorrow.

12 JAN 2003

For some, the moments pass and they are gone,
lost in some unending chasm of space
that leaves only frail wisps that linger on
in memories that fleetingly can be traced,

and the ever-arching line of past days
stretches beyond the grasp in a dull mist;
many seek in vain along hopeless ways
to recapture a brief second of bliss.

But I, at my best, am like a river:
traveling at the speed of now, ever on,
knowing each minute eternally here;
and along some bright thread, all time quivers,
and its intervals form an endless song
with overtones that do not disappear.

12 JAN 2003

Sometimes, it's hard to exactly define
the difference in density of blood
and water; often, it is a blurred line
that wends its way through a desert of crud,

and like the Sufi story of the stream
that, at the edge of the Sahara, must
give up its identity to the dream
of air vapor to cross the endless dust,

the slow process of evaporation
can change your perspective in such strange ways:
each old point of view is renewed in flight,
and you find each troubled situation
only serves to reconnect bonds that stay,
and feeds old dreams with a familiar light.

12 JAN 2003

How many strange nights have I spent awake,
only to move through the next whole day dull,
like a somnambulist who heedless, takes
mad walks through the world of dreams, softly lulled

through some forgettable conversation
by a bright chimera of quiet thought
that hides in its draining deprivation
the night's battle to be joined, and hard fought

so that the body's natural rhythm
can be re-established and set to rights?
In these slow hours that drag before the dawn
I sense between mind and soul a schism,
a rended veil between the dark and light,
that with the rising sun, pretends it's gone.

11 JAN 2003

There is, deep under the dull roar of life,
beneath the mad world's wild cacophony,
hidden in between the rhythmic heartbeats
of progress, ever advancing onward,

a small quiet voice that softly whispers,
so fragile that even a feather breeze
can drown it out, so meek that even ears
not deafened by noise can barely hear it.

You may have heard it, too, and thought perhaps
it was but a dream; just one tiny word
repeated over and over again.
To listen for that sole word, that wee voice -

finding time to hear it is called prayer.
So much depends on that little word, yes.

10 JAN 2003

I had spent more than a thousand rough hours,
distaining the coward's wax in my ears;
instead, forcing myself as each note soured
to find some beauty in each sound that neared -

even the ravening gluttonous song
of the apathetic devouring fog,
that slow, rends the flesh and bone of the strong
to a tasteless gruel not fit for a dog;

and lashed to the mast, saw a Siren's face,
denied its audience, wither and fade,
its tentacles exposed above the sea.
After a moment, I thought to replace

the now dead air with a song I had made;
but had no Music left inside of me.

Long lines and cramped flights,
bland food tasting like warm crap:
holiday travel.

Meeting family,
all dwelling on past actions;
skin deep interest.

More useless gifts,
and hours wasted in small talk;
No relaxation.

So rude and hurried.
Must keep up with the Jones':
California.

Too many people
rushing to get nowhere fast;
not a vacation.

08 JAN 2003

If I can find a repeating pattern, a repetitious rhythm that pulses underneath the warp and woof of my life, it is that each time I reconnect with my biological family, it becomes necessary to wipe clean the creative slate and start over. Every time I encounter my mother or brothers or sister in the flesh, it is as if my creative spark sputters and dies, and must be carefully and diligently kick-started back into being.

It used to be that on principle, I would drop acid every six months or so (when I started dreaming those technicolor, wide screen dreams again) and that would stop the nocturnal picture show for a period of time. During the time when the dreams were banished, I would create, feverishly manic out of necessity. For the past three years, however, that has not been required - I can do it without the drug, now; but it had been that long since I saw my family.

Now, I'm losing track of my train of thought here, but shall continue anyway. The bottom line is that these reunions always make me feel small, as if I had never started anything, as if my past were the only thing relevant (not the present or the future), and that comparison with my siblings makes me feel unaccomplished, unnecessary, unproductive. Not that they are really doing anything with their lives, except working, eating, sleeping, raising children. But a prophet, they say, is never accepted as such in their home town. And the spiritual quest that I am on is so far beyond the scope of their understanding.

So why is it that each time we meet, I have to spend weeks or months getting my self back from some mired, mucky limbo? Is the pattern of my everyday life so set, so predictable that this familial jolt disrupts the very cycle of my being? Or is it like that for everyone? Because family is one place where they knew ya when you were nobody. And they seem deadset against letting you forget it. The veneer of respectability, of civility, of cooperation and mutual well-wishing seems so cracked and worn, so victimized by the steady onslaught of chronology. If I wrote an autobiography and sent it to my family for review, would they even recognize the subject? How could they? I'm sure they would be agast at the pathways my journey has discovered, and they would long for the small talk I have lost the taste for along the way. Are all families so petty on the surface? Does the pettiness seep deep into the very marrow of a family's corporeal self, permeating the core with dysfunction? It all seems so false, a sham, a palimpsest against which the writing of truth is faded and peeling.

In that too brief moment when the old leaf,
released from the now hibernating branch,
finds itself adrift on an air current,
floating in limbo between sky and earth,

doubt may raise its ugly head and whisper,
urging secret fears to find their voices
and sing a mournful dirge for what once was
(now that it is dead and gone for all time).

In that span of seconds, one loses track
of the waiting earth, there below, littered
with other fallen leaves, other lost souls
who have returned to the one source of life,

feeding the dreams of the yet unborn trees
with the body of their experience.

08 JAN 2003

Ah, my friends, it is good to be home. After a week in southern Californika (which at times seemed like a colony on a far distant planet) in a strange granola world, New Orleans seems like a Mecca for all things normal. Now, I know that many of you out there are thinking -- New Orleans? Normal? But it is true. Compared to the rudeness, overcrowding, one mall per ten citizens, ostentatious civilization that is SoCal, New Orleans, with its dirty broken streets, its slow and greasy pace, its propensity for overindulgence (i.e., Mardi Gras, Sugar Bowl, Jazzfest, etc.), its "laissez faire" and "city that care forgot, because it is a particular brand of apathy", New Orleans is a MUCH saner place than California. Believe it, or not. There is a world that I inhabited when I lived that strange decade in California that is so far removed from the reality of my life, so different from the path that I have traveled, so alien to what I know to be a healthy, vibrant way of life.

It settled like a tempting, velvet glove -
the dry desert air that filled every space
and sucked away my energy and love,
leaving me gasping and running in place.

There was no room to freely stretch my wings,
nor space in which to find the center's void;
For life was crammed with petty, useless things -
the lack of which will make you paranoid.

Visiting and acting well adjusted
was the hardest role I've ever performed;
there was no script to read or to follow.

It seemed like pure luck not to get busted
as the thought police gathered strength and swarmed;
Full-time, that life would be hard to swallow.

05 JAN 2003