on the benefits of breakfast

OK, i said, i'll eat some breakfast
bread and jam and butter and bacon and eggs and ham and salami and fruit and juice and coffee

did i forget anything?

ok, i ate my breakfast and walked 10 or so kilometers and now,
i'm hungry

Rain in the Rhineland

october day
grey
and cold
wet
the way a nightmare's wet
cutting into the bones
and drawing out the marrow

october day
grey and cold mind
dreaming the warmth
of a previous life
and waking to the reality of the coming winter's
rain
and darkness

not always so

How many times have I changed today? As Suzuki says, "not always so" and I am not always so. There is only one "me" but there is also only one suchness. To think otherwise would mean to think you are outside of the Bhudda's robe, perhaps a fly sitting on his arm. That can be so, but not always. Think about the idea of self and how silly it is when understand how many sentient beings there are and we are a part of each of them.

bei giovanni

it is a rich kneipe
full of dark wood
brass
and green plants
flowers
on the corner
roses
the last time i looked
and i am rich
spending my fortune
on dark beer and vodka
and my mind
on dark thoughts
i will go there tonight
to sit in a corner
away from the retired men
and the husbands and wives
to think away the present
with the past

an excerpt from the muse lives in bielefeld

i did not think to look at myself through her eyes
for me, the moment lasted forever
the minutes were days
the emotions were tornadoes
raging across the plain that was once my heart
i sit in a quiet room
listening to the hum of a compressor
looking toward the night
when i can sit
between retired men
and listen to meaningless words
which will free my thoughts
conversation
and a little bit of vodka
will help me sleep tonight
will quiet the echoes
in my empty apartment
in my empty soul
it will be good to hear them complain about taxes
about foreigners like myself
about the turns of history
it will be good
to drown my consciousness
and my conscience
in a shining pool
that is not her eyes

Herford, 10/18/2004

And Once Again, it Turns

There is neither clock
nor calendar
which tells the time
the way the mind
can see it

nothing from now 'til then
'tween then and now
they are inflexible
and undefined

changing in the blinking of an eye
a lasting forever

my thoughts are winter's now
cold and buried by the snow
that falls from my memory
to cover them
freeze them
to keep them in their place

there is no memory to call up
I have frozen it
then broken the ice
there will be no spring
to thaw my heart

Mouse

When you wake from a dream you may find yourself a mouse or
not find yourself at all. Be aware at all times that illusion is no more than this mouse, no less than the man dreaming it.

From Daily Zen

If you want to catch a rat
You don’t need a fancy cat
If you want to learn the principles
Don’t study fine bound books
The True Pearl’s in a hemp sack
The Buddha nature rests in huts
Many grasp the sack
But few open it.
- Shih-te

The Muse Awakens

I have always wondered what would happen if the poet who lives so deeply inside of me fought his way back to the surface. In the late sixties, I wrote poetry which was published, edited a university literary journal, and lived very close to the edge of sanity and propriety. Thirty years ago, I was young and wild, excited about all that I could find and assimilate. No experience was a bad experience. Love was free and accesible.

The eighties changed all of that. The economy was weak, films were being made about disco dancers and divorces, the social order was changed, again, and for the worse. There were no more digger stores, no more love-ins, not even the hootenannies survived. I traded my beard and my guitar for a tie and a typewriter and began a new life as a technical writer in a munitions plant, the same one I had picketed after the first moratorium against the war in Viet Nam. I kept the poet and his muse alive for awhile, even gave a reading at the Wine Cellar (a now defunct bar in Scranton, Pennsylvania) and had critical and public success. Life caught up with me, and work became a passion rather than a chore. I began thinking about process improvement and cultural breakthrough to the exclusion of all of my other interests. I gave up playing my guitar, my womanizing, and to an extent, public drunkeness.

There were short spurts of words meant only to amuse or impress, words surrounded by philosophy and mysticism, but they were only excercise, a tonic for the brain, to keep it functioning during overloads caused by bad business practices, obnoxious leadership, and the greed and cultural stupidity which was so often the practice in American business during the '70s and '80s.

The Muse is awake. She has slept inside of me for almost twenty years, knowing I would not die before she had her chance to shape me once again into a voice singing the praises of freedom and self-awareness. She is awake, and well, and urging me to write, for you.

Liebestraum

I had always thought this only a waltz
only a beautiful waltz
yet, today, it is a nocturne
a symphony
a memory I cannot explain

Tell me of time
Tell me of space
Explain them to me
for I do not understand them

How can I be here
and there
and then
and now
when I am nowhere and never?

How can this eternity be so short
when my memory of it is eternal?

The muse, fully awakened, pushes me
past the limits of my humanity
into a vast field
of dreams and fantasies
I realize but cannot rationalize

There was a yellow house
on the shore of a lake
or the bank of a river
which never was
nor ever will be
save in the eye of the poet
of the painter
or the sculptor
who lived within it

and a wall and a mountain
and a priest and a soldier
marching together
against a tide of madness
forcing it to ebb