When I was a beatnik

When I was a beatnik

When I was a beatnik

(and it was something like 50 years too late)

I used to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day

And read Allen Ginsberg under a darkening

Dream

My thoughts about America

Were still American

(and they still are)

But the smell of those carcinogens

And the smoke and the taste of that bitter

Tobacco

Was senseless

And poised

I bled one time

My hand caught up

With a broken dish

My temper made the dish break

12 stitches and chatting merrily

With the man who’s putting needles

In the wound

 and puked

Every day for eight years

(thanks Goddess Be to Lithium)

I say that sarcastically

But with the radiant truth

In my soul

That knows my cats

Needed a beatnik to feed them

I did not so much go on the road

And womanize

As sit on my porch

Under the sun and the braches

Of the purple potato plant

That grew by the door

And I fed it carcinogens

By the bucketful

And read and muttered to myself

While the voices in my mind chattered

Mystically fervent

I tried to be a Beatnik

I felt I indentified

With Kerouac’s

Disaffection

And sense of rejection

And so like he drank himself to death

I smoked till I got asthma    

  

Lament (about the Earth)

Lament (about the Earth)

…so the news is predicting “rivers of Rain”

And I saw the thing about global warming

That says we are all doomed in 100 years…

I still go about in car, eat meat and forget to recycle

Sometimes I think every drop in the bucket

Counts

Sometimes not

Like when every drop is ignoring

It’s role as a collective wave

Like Ann Ryand hates “collectivism”

(and I have never read Ann Ryand)

But still I wonder what is a group

If not a collective?

Where power comes from

Is not my problem

I can exist knowing

The Earth will die

But not knowing

The sky will Die

If it stops raining

What then?

Will future generations forgive

My need for convenience?

In spite of their collective sorrow

I insist on going about in a car…

If hate were just a word

I would say that we hate the Earth

Otherwise

Why are we committing ‘Earth Murder”?

Why is the planet being drained

Of it’s blood and brains and soul

All for the auspices of industry\

Yet that amounts to carts

Power and piles and piles of

Landfill

If garbage is all we create

Out of forests and rocks

And “resources”

Then we truly are like rats that

Innovate towards our own

Destruction

(not that I don’t like people, I like rats too)

But it’s a shame to think that our civilized

World boils down

To the sun beating on a desert

That goes from pole to pole
and “all the things we are” keeps playing

On a megaphone in the distant desert

Heat, yet what we are breaks down

And returns to dust

Every which way you look

At this

There is no arrival at a world

That is better than the one behind us

Because we have wagered our future

For a ride in the car.

“Notes From the Above Ground, Underground”…

What I have can’t be borrowed,

Begged, stolen or bought.

It’s not a soul

Everyone doesn’t have one of those.

It’s a life force

That comes from chemicals

And electric shocks

A nervous

Chatter in the mind of the universe

Your center is the center

Of the world proper

Your heart is the sun

Blazing into the moon

And igniting space

The mind is a vortex

A wormhole

A field beyond time

The mind is a nexus

That fills the body

With feelings

Sensations

Energy and light

The soul is nothing

But an abandoned

Architecture

But the mind is a mind

That is an unfolding

Of patterns

And juice

That makes

Love so real

You cannot grasp it

Even if you

Light it

With a

Match.

wormhole

Wormhole

Is like an open door

Through which all things

Must travel

The endless reaches of space

Love tiny hands

Transistor radios

Red threads

And blue birds

Small chips

And black tiles

And purple pastry

A dog recently spayed

Lives with me in this

Wormhole of paintings

And work

And somber early mornings

I love snacks

And cars

And cans

And the whole multiplicity

Of the human world of stuff

Even though we are drowning in

Our materialism

The wormhole is not a black hole

It’s a clear-empty headed space hole

That carries the swift currents

Of passion through my home.

Nuns

Nuns

This city this street this place

Has no meaning to me

The world is faceless

The world is priceless

The sun fades

Over a clear dawn

And light

Wraps round the starry

Dusk

Love springs

From vast places

The planet

Is round and warbles

Fast through space

And like a bullet

Ricochet’s off the

Ceiling of the club

Where the nuns

Danced

Feverishly.

In their Catholic 

fervor 

The disco -vatican 

breakdown 

of the beat 

into historic 

moments 

the sexy nuns

danced 

and boogied 

and generally got down

in the vast sisterly 

room of Rome

If only religion were as trivial

as music

then maybe the music would be sacred

and the praying would be profane

all that swearing to Jesus

is mysteriouly

minor to my mind

compared to a good 

party\

We should get the nuns drunk

and ask them how they REALLY feel. 

 

jungle cat

Dark Dwelling

Light Dwelling

Life has love \

And cats don’t care

And men sometimes lie

About how they see the world

I sit in an empty chair

But the chair is full

Because in it I sit/

I have an empty mind

But it’s a mind full of emptiness

Openness is the cats

Face, it’s eyes \

Glimmer green

Jaguar eyes

Beauty

I don’t know what that is

But I see fierceness

Angel
The angel, Buddha
Sat under his wings
The flowering temple
Of his mind
Was covered in vines
The warmth of his
Love penetrated
The world
With light
To his left
Was a flaming sword
To his right
A dragon
Made by men
His hands
Enfolded, neatly
A cup tea
Tigers
Walked and posed
In front of him
Doves flew by
In his arms.... flowers
Grew
He surrendered himself
To his enlightenmentand was one with light
Sun and moon
All at once
His sadness and joy
The Earth…