Rope Trip

Homage to compassion

Can you just allow it,
without frantic search
for magic protections,
just let the rope
be a snake
and realize
this is how it feels
when you think
a rope is a snake?

Do you really need
charms and potions
to learn
that simple lesson?

This is a little note
to myself so I
don't forget.

Covergirl

Sweet girls come ‘round
to mend the fabric
In warps and woofs
Of high insight emotion,
Formal admonitions to be kind,
Seductions of lace curtain redemptions.

Rapidly covering blasted terrains
With layers of kind concern
Manufactured in workshops
Of their caring hearts,
Insisting on heirloom value
Of long laid paths.

I suffocate beneath their veils
And have no quarrel
With stark shards
Of broken convention
The harsh atmospheres
Ionized by quarrels and angers.

No need to cover the emptiness
Or costume the desolation
In gaudy colors of denial.
Let the destruction be revealed!
It will emerge regardless
Of frantic attempts
To reweave rotted remnants
Of illusory social fabric.

Real

He told her there was no reason
to fear clouds would
destroy the sky,
or trees weigh so on the mountain
that it would collapse

not that she said
that was her fear
but I saw it that way

as is said,
it cannot be
stained by confusion
nor exalted by
realization

so why do I find myself
yelling at the clouds,
losing myself among
the trees?

and why do I find myself
thinking there's any
problem with doing so?

what I love
cannot be hurt
by my mad dance.

Overheard in Bruce Lee Movie

And I heard him answer
the wise old white bearded
Chinese teacher
(whose voice was overdubbed
with scary Western intonation)
when he asked the young warrior
big spirit question.

And I heard him say
"There is no opponent."
And he said a lot of
other things, too,
before he flew off
to battle a whole slew
of people.

I dig those scenes
where the collision
of yin and yang
knocks my brain out,
TKO, TKO,
and another
consciousness
arises.

For Valtin

Because I came to post
after a while of nonposting
poems, that is
and saw
your question

good question!

shall I be a bard?
something heavy
for heavy times
ha ha
not likely

nor even a troubador
come from troubled plague-ridden lands
to sing their lives to kings
who for some reason
wanted to hear them.

poems for now when
ecstacy and despair do
braided dances
shall I join in
the sarabande?

You, mad warrior
who defends the sacred psyche
in bold words of rue and rage
in puissant tears
and stony silences
amid the rubble.

Fires are lit in the spring
on strange and lonely
fields.

Beat Evolutions

imitators
spontaneously
obscured them

form trumped
substance
so

you'd hear
wall street
suit and tie man
saying "far out"

see children
in junior high
wearing
blue jeans
and smoking dope

madison avenue
pounced upon it
like hawk on
dove

suburban housewives
viewed sex and
janice in feathers
with dismay

while human
manifestations
on the haight,
in East Village,

on roads
across america
in every small town

beaten and bludgeoned
and fired like ancient
porcelain

flashing through america
with young legs and
long hair

their stories
still untold.

Other than Blue

Three ayem ,
feeling
worn out as
old shoe.

Red satin,
rhinestone
stiletto heels

That kind of
worn out shoe.

Got my burden,
like every
living soul's,
it grows heavy

Violet clouds
and emerald
leaves on
summer laden trees

Beat
but
other than
blue.