I may smile politely
and nod my head with heartfelt greetings
and obsequious platitudes
to help grease the rusty wheels of
social intercourse….
But not today.
I may grovel and serve
and grant the right of way
time and again
to you and your uptown kind…
But not today.
I may shuffle along the cityscape
an invisible member of the anonymous pack
content only to go unnoticed
in a sea of harried humanity…
But not today.
Today is for me and mine,
not for you and yours,
a day for glorious self-absorption
and cosmic autofixated revelries,
in which I am
the Supreme Unmoved-Mover
in my own self-contained universe.
Today is my day
and mine alone,
and you, dear friend,
are the uninvited interloper
in the myopic monologues
and solipsistic soliloquies
running through the endless channels
of my own egocentric mindspace.
Tomorrow there will be time again
for duties and obligations,
for oughts and musts and have-tos,
for all the silly stupid demands
the others so capriciously
seek to impose.
Tomorrow I will play
the serf yet again
and graciously do
my masters’ biddings
with winsome charm
and gentle subservience….
But not today.
[inspiration: I was in the city on Monday buying a coffee at Starbucks (don't ask me what I was doing there....I actually hate the evil place) and heard one worker say to another, "I may do that for you, but not today." Her comment got my creative juices flowing, and the result was this little poem which I finished in the Reading Room of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street. The point: anything in everyday life, no matter how inane it may seem at first sight, can become a source of creative inspiration if you will just allow it to.]
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
End Times: A Pointless Allegory of Death, Redemption, and a Bit More Death
I remember once, a very long, long time ago, in a far-off corner of the universe, there was this young guy. Just an ordinary guy, I guess, about 24 years old. He survived the miseries of childhood and adolescence with all the scars and inner turmoil that were prerequisite components of growing up the 1970s in New York City. He had made it through the bong-blowing, violence-ridden hell of his youth with his vital innards more-or-less intact and was just starting to come into his own during the time of the actor-king in the slick, superficial, days of excess and over-indulgence.
He was thin, had an abundance of hair on the top of his head, and, amazingly, looked moderately fashionable in the cool, sleek, retro styles of the 80s, especially after all those years of being compelled to wear the unearthly and unnatural fibers of Discotopia. No longer the skinny geek, he had filled out just enough to land dates with a crop of fascinating, if slightly off-kilter, women—the amazon twin who towered high above him and her equally massive sister, the insane, obsessive Aryan bakery heiress with her delicious neurotic twitch, the uptight Catholic high-priestess of respectability and virginal purity …and, of course, the wild, neo-flower child from the North Shore, who was occasionally accessible, but always just slightly out of his reach. He loved all these fabulous women and some of them even loved him, and they all laughed and partied into the wee small hours of the beer-soaked night in smoky dens of unadulterated inhibitionism.
He had his own tenement apartment in the Bronx with sweet urine-scented hallways, fresh brown running water, and smoke encrusted walls—a virtual paradise at only $180 a month. On holidays he traveled with friends to Peru, Belgium, Paris, Italy….wherever the hell he wanted to go, ‘cause there was no one to tell him any longer how to live his life. And he snapped photos of ugly people with beautiful, sublime faces, because he understood intuitively that, in the transcendent realm that awaited him, hideousness and beauty were but dual manifestations of the same perfect reality.
He was, in short, young, foolish, slightly imprudent, and completely free…a recipe for happiness if ever there was one.
But soon wanton livin’ in gritty tenement paradise inevitably gave way to thoughts of a career at a “respectable” institution, with job-security, a 401K plan, and a substantial home in the “right” community far away from the chaotic energy of the decaying city. And he became a paragon, an upright citizen, a homeowner, a role model for wayward youth, and career guy who always did just slightly more than was asked of him. He even went to the temple of the divine manifestation, pretending to be intrigued by the idiotic mumbo-jumbo that passed from the lips of Yama’s holy representative on earth. And, in a sign of his own wisdom, he quickly learned to excel at the kind of fabrication and crass servility that is expected of those who wish to succeed in our cellophane-wrapped, image-obsessed little world.
If you met him on the street you would think to yourself, “What a swell guy; how happy he must be.” And, except in the rare moments when he was capable of being totally and completely honest with himself, he might have even agreed with those sentiments. “Life is super-wonderful-terrific!” he would often think to himself, especially in those unsettling nanoseconds when true self-conscious awareness threatened to emerge from his dormant spirit to dampen the keen fabulousity with which he was expected to greet each and every day.
That man, alas, died a sad and tragic death—a victim of his own sterile conformist sensibilities. One day, as he was fixing his ever-so-proper paisley tie around his ever-so-proper 15 inch neck, preparing for yet another soul-deadening day in surburblandia, the life energy inside of him simply gave up and he crumbled to the ground in a twisted heap. There he laid for five years, two months and twenty days, as family and friends stepped over him, barely noticing the rigor mortus setting into his decaying body. Nobody commented on his rotting remains, because to do so would be to commit the unpardonable sin of acknowledge that something—anything—was wrong with the picture perfect universe in which they all resided. “He’s just tired,” they said to themselves, even as the putrid contents of his bowls emptied themselves over his remains. “Pewww,” said little Johnny, “Daddy needs to take a bath!” “He sure does,” Johnny’s mom laughed. “Silly daddy!” At least they were able to use his body as a stylish coffee table upon which to play fun family board games.
But the seed of his younger self managed to survive somehow within his withered corpse and reemerged suddenly and quite unexpectedly on that very day when the Cathedral of Corporate Corpulence came crashing to the ground. Amidst the fire and rubble, he suddenly awoke, discovering that he no longer recognized the world in which he was formerly a part. After the conflagration, everything around him seemed so petty, so shallow, so exceedingly small, that he wondered if he had not somehow been resurrected in a weird parallel universe. But the world had not changed; he had changed. And there was simply no going back to the life he had before.
So he did what all men do who find themselves reborn after years and years of stultifying get-along-ness. He began to rebel. You wouldn’t notice that he was any sort of rebel from the way he dressed or even from his outward mode of behavior—that would have been far too obvious. The real change occurred deep inside him, in the vast recesses of his long forgotten soul. For you see, my friends, this one small, insignificant man, for the first time in his life, began to understand the awesome power of artful indifference—indifference to the conformist expectations of the larger society which render human beings pawns to the whims of market forces; indifference to the externally imposed, but often arbitrary, ideas of right and wrong which had guided him his entire life; indifference to silly threats spouted by the high priests of eternal damnation in the fiery underworld for those who defied the Yama’s eternal laws. None of this affected him any longer.
Then one monumental day, as all of humanity looked on with horror, he sat down, kicked up his feet, and licked his toffee ice cream, completely oblivious to everyone and everything around him. “This ice cream sure is swell,” he thought to himself. “I think I’ll write a poem about it.” And that’s just what he did.
With that one thought, time stopped, the world collapsed in on itself, and all life in the galaxy was suddenly extinguished. What reason was there, after all, for any of it to continue? After billions of years, the entire meaning of the universe had finally been realized with the wanton lick of an ice cream cone on a balmy summer day.
He was thin, had an abundance of hair on the top of his head, and, amazingly, looked moderately fashionable in the cool, sleek, retro styles of the 80s, especially after all those years of being compelled to wear the unearthly and unnatural fibers of Discotopia. No longer the skinny geek, he had filled out just enough to land dates with a crop of fascinating, if slightly off-kilter, women—the amazon twin who towered high above him and her equally massive sister, the insane, obsessive Aryan bakery heiress with her delicious neurotic twitch, the uptight Catholic high-priestess of respectability and virginal purity …and, of course, the wild, neo-flower child from the North Shore, who was occasionally accessible, but always just slightly out of his reach. He loved all these fabulous women and some of them even loved him, and they all laughed and partied into the wee small hours of the beer-soaked night in smoky dens of unadulterated inhibitionism.
He had his own tenement apartment in the Bronx with sweet urine-scented hallways, fresh brown running water, and smoke encrusted walls—a virtual paradise at only $180 a month. On holidays he traveled with friends to Peru, Belgium, Paris, Italy….wherever the hell he wanted to go, ‘cause there was no one to tell him any longer how to live his life. And he snapped photos of ugly people with beautiful, sublime faces, because he understood intuitively that, in the transcendent realm that awaited him, hideousness and beauty were but dual manifestations of the same perfect reality.
He was, in short, young, foolish, slightly imprudent, and completely free…a recipe for happiness if ever there was one.
But soon wanton livin’ in gritty tenement paradise inevitably gave way to thoughts of a career at a “respectable” institution, with job-security, a 401K plan, and a substantial home in the “right” community far away from the chaotic energy of the decaying city. And he became a paragon, an upright citizen, a homeowner, a role model for wayward youth, and career guy who always did just slightly more than was asked of him. He even went to the temple of the divine manifestation, pretending to be intrigued by the idiotic mumbo-jumbo that passed from the lips of Yama’s holy representative on earth. And, in a sign of his own wisdom, he quickly learned to excel at the kind of fabrication and crass servility that is expected of those who wish to succeed in our cellophane-wrapped, image-obsessed little world.
If you met him on the street you would think to yourself, “What a swell guy; how happy he must be.” And, except in the rare moments when he was capable of being totally and completely honest with himself, he might have even agreed with those sentiments. “Life is super-wonderful-terrific!” he would often think to himself, especially in those unsettling nanoseconds when true self-conscious awareness threatened to emerge from his dormant spirit to dampen the keen fabulousity with which he was expected to greet each and every day.
That man, alas, died a sad and tragic death—a victim of his own sterile conformist sensibilities. One day, as he was fixing his ever-so-proper paisley tie around his ever-so-proper 15 inch neck, preparing for yet another soul-deadening day in surburblandia, the life energy inside of him simply gave up and he crumbled to the ground in a twisted heap. There he laid for five years, two months and twenty days, as family and friends stepped over him, barely noticing the rigor mortus setting into his decaying body. Nobody commented on his rotting remains, because to do so would be to commit the unpardonable sin of acknowledge that something—anything—was wrong with the picture perfect universe in which they all resided. “He’s just tired,” they said to themselves, even as the putrid contents of his bowls emptied themselves over his remains. “Pewww,” said little Johnny, “Daddy needs to take a bath!” “He sure does,” Johnny’s mom laughed. “Silly daddy!” At least they were able to use his body as a stylish coffee table upon which to play fun family board games.
But the seed of his younger self managed to survive somehow within his withered corpse and reemerged suddenly and quite unexpectedly on that very day when the Cathedral of Corporate Corpulence came crashing to the ground. Amidst the fire and rubble, he suddenly awoke, discovering that he no longer recognized the world in which he was formerly a part. After the conflagration, everything around him seemed so petty, so shallow, so exceedingly small, that he wondered if he had not somehow been resurrected in a weird parallel universe. But the world had not changed; he had changed. And there was simply no going back to the life he had before.
So he did what all men do who find themselves reborn after years and years of stultifying get-along-ness. He began to rebel. You wouldn’t notice that he was any sort of rebel from the way he dressed or even from his outward mode of behavior—that would have been far too obvious. The real change occurred deep inside him, in the vast recesses of his long forgotten soul. For you see, my friends, this one small, insignificant man, for the first time in his life, began to understand the awesome power of artful indifference—indifference to the conformist expectations of the larger society which render human beings pawns to the whims of market forces; indifference to the externally imposed, but often arbitrary, ideas of right and wrong which had guided him his entire life; indifference to silly threats spouted by the high priests of eternal damnation in the fiery underworld for those who defied the Yama’s eternal laws. None of this affected him any longer.
Then one monumental day, as all of humanity looked on with horror, he sat down, kicked up his feet, and licked his toffee ice cream, completely oblivious to everyone and everything around him. “This ice cream sure is swell,” he thought to himself. “I think I’ll write a poem about it.” And that’s just what he did.
With that one thought, time stopped, the world collapsed in on itself, and all life in the galaxy was suddenly extinguished. What reason was there, after all, for any of it to continue? After billions of years, the entire meaning of the universe had finally been realized with the wanton lick of an ice cream cone on a balmy summer day.
Kill Daddy While You Can
“All arrogance will reap a harvest rich in tears. God calls men to a heavy reckoning for overweening pride.” — Aeschylus
I don’t care
what your daddy told you,
pretty baby /
killing folks in far off places
for no good reason
just ain’t right. /
it turns you into
a redneck goon
and makes you hungry
for the blood of orphans
and other small
woodland creatures /
don’t believe
when daddy says
they hate us
‘cause of our FREEDOMS
and our FINE CONDIMENTS /
they have plenty of
pickle juice in Iran
and don’t give
a crap-and-a-half
for the soothing pleasures
of american idol /
silly baby, don’t you know
your president is a murderer,
a coward,
a cretin
and pot of collard greens /
boil him if you like;
he’ll still taste bitter as hell /
take this from one
who knows,
my poor, sad baby,
everything your father told you
is a nasty lie:
the easter bunny don’t exist
and communists
sure as hell don’t cry /
don’t kill towel heads /
kill your father instead /
My Life in Technicolor
Because
my mind is a
purple haze,
I view the world in
spectacle-vision.
No putrid browns or tans
for me—
the colors of
the monochrome masses—
but reality awash in a
pastiche
of psychadelic
possibility,
a rich mosaic
of popsicle pinks
and frothy waves of
vermillion….
The hueless ones,
with pasty corporate countences
and grey flannel underwear,
would drain my pallet
of its most vibrant shades
until my blood runs clear
like tepid
tap
water.
But I will never inhabit a
square universe
with whitewashed walls
or live a
flat
desaturated existence.
Much better indeed
to dwell like one of
the great ones,
who burn out fast
but spend each second
coating the earth
In their own
rainbow perfection,
determined to add
their own little splash
of vibrancy
to this drab reality.
So
when the time comes
to depart this life
let me do so
in a roaring blaze of color,
like a napalm flare
scorching the earth
in a fiery orange conflagration,
rather then burn out quietly
in a off-white,
smoky
pooooof.
my mind is a
purple haze,
I view the world in
spectacle-vision.
No putrid browns or tans
for me—
the colors of
the monochrome masses—
but reality awash in a
pastiche
of psychadelic
possibility,
a rich mosaic
of popsicle pinks
and frothy waves of
vermillion….
The hueless ones,
with pasty corporate countences
and grey flannel underwear,
would drain my pallet
of its most vibrant shades
until my blood runs clear
like tepid
tap
water.
But I will never inhabit a
square universe
with whitewashed walls
or live a
flat
desaturated existence.
Much better indeed
to dwell like one of
the great ones,
who burn out fast
but spend each second
coating the earth
In their own
rainbow perfection,
determined to add
their own little splash
of vibrancy
to this drab reality.
So
when the time comes
to depart this life
let me do so
in a roaring blaze of color,
like a napalm flare
scorching the earth
in a fiery orange conflagration,
rather then burn out quietly
in a off-white,
smoky
pooooof.
There is no genius
in subtle configurations
that soothe the mind
and no great art
in dainty daubs
of tranquil banality.
in subtle configurations
that soothe the mind
and no great art
in dainty daubs
of tranquil banality.
Emptiness
Empty
empty
doesn’t have to be
empty
like shallow,
man.
it could be
full,
complete,
perfect
emptiness,
like
zen-fucking
total emptiness,
which is really
total openness…
empty like
the
lonely
milk-weed pod
in frosty autumn,
empty like
the vast and spacious
mind
of true
liberation.
infinitely empty.
empty
doesn’t have to be
empty
like shallow,
man.
it could be
full,
complete,
perfect
emptiness,
like
zen-fucking
total emptiness,
which is really
total openness…
empty like
the
lonely
milk-weed pod
in frosty autumn,
empty like
the vast and spacious
mind
of true
liberation.
infinitely empty.
Sutra #127
serene perfection is sublimely realized
in moments of still concentration
when the mind is not bounced
to and fro like a child’s plaything
but rests comfortably in the quietude
of the present, blissful moment.
i have never experienced stillness like this,
for my mind is a creature
of strange and erratic habits
and excruciatingly volatile sensibilities.
past endlessly merges with future
in the fragmented confines of my inner self,
and the present—if it does exist at all—
is but a promise as yet unrealized.
i have never smelt the sweet fragrance of spring
in the petals of the blossoming rosebud
nor have I seen the peaks of craggy mountains
rising majestically in the misty morning haze.
they exist as concepts and memories only
and thus they do not really exist at all.
reality abstracted from reality
becomes an empty canvas
of unrealized possibility.
in moments of still concentration
when the mind is not bounced
to and fro like a child’s plaything
but rests comfortably in the quietude
of the present, blissful moment.
i have never experienced stillness like this,
for my mind is a creature
of strange and erratic habits
and excruciatingly volatile sensibilities.
past endlessly merges with future
in the fragmented confines of my inner self,
and the present—if it does exist at all—
is but a promise as yet unrealized.
i have never smelt the sweet fragrance of spring
in the petals of the blossoming rosebud
nor have I seen the peaks of craggy mountains
rising majestically in the misty morning haze.
they exist as concepts and memories only
and thus they do not really exist at all.
reality abstracted from reality
becomes an empty canvas
of unrealized possibility.
Sutra # 42
the groves have been imprinted so deeply
that they have created deep, dark ruts
in the craters and crevasses of my mind
that are all but impossible to fill
with any sentiment noble or pure.
i have tried to smooth out the grooves,
to stop the impressions that formed them,
but my efforts have all been in vain.
so vast are the old, habitual processes of thought
that effort alone can not dislodge them…
something more is need,
or perhaps something much less.
i have sweated, and toiled and suffered—
i imagine—through countless lifetimes
to establish a more harmonious mind
only to find myself back at the very starting point,
a sad, disjoined creature, subject to
the inexorable laws of action-reaction.
more will not suffice, so perhaps less is more:
allow the impression the space to play
but do not give them too wide a birth,
and them to pass like wind trough the birch trees
where they can do no harm
and cannot leave lingering impressions on the mind,
and so create room for other lofty thoughts to imprint themselves
or perhaps the blessing of having no thoughts at all.
empty mind, pure mind.
The result:
annihilation of the thought-reaction process,
annihilation of the self that produced them.
that they have created deep, dark ruts
in the craters and crevasses of my mind
that are all but impossible to fill
with any sentiment noble or pure.
i have tried to smooth out the grooves,
to stop the impressions that formed them,
but my efforts have all been in vain.
so vast are the old, habitual processes of thought
that effort alone can not dislodge them…
something more is need,
or perhaps something much less.
i have sweated, and toiled and suffered—
i imagine—through countless lifetimes
to establish a more harmonious mind
only to find myself back at the very starting point,
a sad, disjoined creature, subject to
the inexorable laws of action-reaction.
more will not suffice, so perhaps less is more:
allow the impression the space to play
but do not give them too wide a birth,
and them to pass like wind trough the birch trees
where they can do no harm
and cannot leave lingering impressions on the mind,
and so create room for other lofty thoughts to imprint themselves
or perhaps the blessing of having no thoughts at all.
empty mind, pure mind.
The result:
annihilation of the thought-reaction process,
annihilation of the self that produced them.
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