Dreams

Thirty

(sitting in my little apartment)

Have reached the end of my proverbial rope

Search aimlessly for new ideas

But return empty handed time and again

Past memories intrude on my freedom

And the only security left

Is to crawl inside a bottle

To wait for the soul

To come home again

Or else move to a new address

Thirty-Three

(musings on my first non-military hair-cut)

The mythical symbol of masculine strength

And of feminine seduction

Grown long and care-free in easier times

Or in rebellion against the custom

Cut short in times of strife

A sacrifice to some higher deity

When short a symbol of slave-hood

When long a symbol of autonomy

An independent way of life

Autonomy has a curious meaning

A precious thing when hard fought for and not given away

Taken for granted and abused when it comes too easy

As if it cannot be lost

Spoiling many by its great wealth

But the source of creativity and progress

Heart of liberty and equality

The power behind human rights

That must be exercised to remain strong

Forty-Two

Too many self-proclaimed leaders

In dress of arrogant disguises

Showing off masks of authority

They will say almost anything

But are of superficial interface

Very insecure underneath

They know almost nothing

About the truth

But they'll do the job

As compromising magicians

They all value their paychecks

More than your life

Families in all shapes and sizes

Social units of law and order

Close knit with strong ties

With togetherness enduring

Almost any crises or dilemma

Affiliating with some religion

Possessing characteristic dogmas

Insulated from changes

Blessed with a sense of belonging

Hopes in definite form

In possession of love

Comfort of the home

Till death do they part

But families are entrapments

That tie the individual in the game

Who must escape the nest

To explore the risky world

And discover one's true potential

Alone as a human being

The true leaders won't solicit

The needs of other people

They look only to themselves

For guidance and impression

Their creations serve only

The best examples of inspiration

True leaders are rare friends hard to find

But they all come from some kind of home

Forty-Three

(L.A. to Chicago and back)

Beer in the lap

Roach on a clip

Three way stereo

Jamming to an oldie

Air conditioner cooling

Scenery fleeting by

Through smoke-stained

Windows

Miles of highway

Uncrowded stretch

On a full tank

No cops in sight

Cruising contentment

65 miles an hour

Humming minutes

In the fast lane

Reflectors on the left

Old farts on the right

Tolling death

Of city dogs and cats

And country animals

Reciting stories

Of near escapes

and classic accidents

Fate of modern living

In languid illusion

Of complete control

Cruising in comfort

To a speedy death

Forty-Five

(writer and would-be genius)

Life divided unrelentingly into many episodes

Of unsuppressible desires and loves acquired

An insatiable perfectionist endlessly exploring

To discover something a little better than before

Torn apart from the bloodstream of society

Heart in sentient creation transcending mere subjectivity

In a lonely world with few good friends

Wondering in ceaseless amazement and critically examining

The true value of his labors and himself

And at the subtlety of ulterior motivations

To ride the crest in the vanguard of progress

Giving form to revolution and new wealth for humanity

Frustrated writer who dreams of being an artist

And to photograph instead of yielding a weapon

Writing in waiting poor didactic verse all of similar vein

And can't make it rhyme or dance through the imagination

Torn in two by the emotions of having and relinquishing

To please himself with outward satisfaction

Or to be left alone with inward reflection

Questioning always with pen in hand

Is it a crutch of insecurity and fear of reality

Or only a self-defense against some latently felt inferiority?

Believing rhyme to be the non-spontaneous limitation of freedom

Remembering that an artist seeks to please only oneself

Forty-Seven

Devoid of content

Empty without ideas

Vague dissatisfaction

Formless inspiration

Like an empty glass

Waiting to be refilled

With another beer

Or to be knocked

Off the table

And shattered

Why the anxious desire

For something better

Continually frustrated

As time slips slowly by?

Why not some final contentment

Or just give up the game?

It's so easy to ask a question

It's so much harder to give an answer

That makes real sense

Cheap talent reeking of self

Pretentious allusion of easy truth

Mocking perfection and hard work

The best things in life are free

Lonely thought of death

Leaves one empty inside

A wasted moment of life

Add another to the list

Quantity with no quality

A contempt for critics

A deep glass when empty

Is only very shallow

Not like some ancient proverb

A mere fragile vessel

Of transparent reflection

An empty self

Waiting until

Tomorrow

Fifty-seven

(contemplation of sand at Huntington Beach)

Single miniscule particle

Unique reflection of wisdom

Question, answer and question

Strong force of love exploding

With immediate bonds of trust

Rebounding in perpetual flux

Spiraling far downward

Weak force of fear imploding

In a foreign bondage of mistrust

Pervading the whole

Composing all matters

Creating eternal contention

Of continuous cancellation

Death steals from happiness

In the creeping moments

Of living in remembrance

Imaginings of vivid reality

Of those entities who were

A part of us

And are no more

Making all endeavors temporary

Superficial and repetitious occurrences

Casting doubt on even the most important parts

While making life too valuable

Not to be wasted or squandered

By matters that prove afterward

So unimportant

You who have all the answers

And know what is best for everyone

Have never gleaned

From this single grain

The truth of silence

Only those who have best communicated

Alone inward reflections of feelings

Have done anything

Of lasting value

The stars that shine tonight

Have shone for the ancient primitive

It has been but a handful of grains

Amongst an infinitude of many

That has been the only truth wealth

Of petty human existence

Fifty-Nine

(in a big city)

Trying to break out and to change

Growing tired of the same old scene

The game is dragging out

While talk is cheap

And effort must wait for seconds

Wishing to return to the beautiful dreams

Of times past when things were better

But think that its too impossible

Then it seemed like such a big world

When one was so little

Everyone telling you what they think

And feeling guilty about being so selfish

While dividing up the pie of life

Without thinking about the whole

And what might be better done

Talking about the things one hates

To find oneself the greatest perpetrator

Without acknowledging the responsibility

For the things that are being done

In living so many wasted lives

Rationalizing on a beer

Life is the same anyway

So it doesn't really make such a big difference

When it comes down to the line

Everyone covers their own ass first

And why not rationalize on beauty?

And where has culture gone?

When dying so lonely a life

The same mysterious way as being born

Wishing to leave something behind

It need not have a name on it

But it can't be just any old thing

It must mean something to someone

That makes life worthwhile

Even if for just the moment

So tomorrow is the time for change

Radicalizing out and becoming different

Want nothing and they cannot take it away

Transcending the whole world in some self-creation

Putting aside the primitive irrelevancies

Caring for nothing but living

Sixty

Changes are happening

So subtle that I couldn't say

What they might become

But definite and irrepressible

While reflections of the environment

Are in a state of continual transience

It is but of superficial make up

Hiding the essence

That's unchanged

Thus is the experience of living

Forever in forward motion unstoppable

Leaving behind irretrievable pasts

To stop changing

Is to slowly

Die

Sixty-Four

Life is so short

As so many other things

Are so short lived

Brief moments in love

It sometimes seems

That the best things

Are always

Too short

Like this poem

That makes no sense

Is so short

Is this some joke?

Sixty-Seven

The human pilgrimage

Has reached a cross-roads

Unlike any before

Where unstoppably powerful forces

Only vaguely discernable

Are on a head-on

Collision course

Like some gathering storm

All that's left is hope

That the human travelers

Will survive the accident

And weather the storm

To be able to continue

Their age-old journey

Seventy-Two

(putting it together)

Dichotomize the world

Subject-object tendency

Outside subordination

Inside pedestal

Unquestioned fear

Disintegrating frustration

Integrate living creativity

Becoming one change

Transcending conflict

Of high essence

Courage being

Inner complacency

I must renounce one

Can't relinquish the other

Consuming passion of life

Toying with insanity

Selfish ugliness

Social creation

A part of myself

I can't amputate

Seventy-Three

(the changing of the self)

Revolution has a bloody history

Dirty implication of four letters

A proverbial fate of humanity

A nature to be long suffered

Until some peaceable kingdom

Can be created synthetically

The body politic has disgraced it

But it is blind without a mind

The future to see like some mystic

Nor without a crutch to carry it

Forward to its destiny

Let peace reign in revolution

Fomenting inner rebellion

Seventy-Six

(once more)

It seems to me

Time and again

That I'm doomed

To suffer

A peculiar fate

To be lonely

Without companionship

To be frustrated

In what should be

Naturally mine

My life unfolds

Before me

And I feel

There is some

Wisdom to this madness

A governing purpose

That led me

Unwittingly through

Too many dangers

But I can't say

What it really is

Something like Deja vue

In patterns growing

And cycles repeating

Happiness and sadness

In perpetual dance

To live only

For myself

In the things

I do

And to love

The world by them

Others think

That I am strange

But I've given up caring

If I must sacrifice

A part of myself

Let me do it

Alone

I think about suicide

And decide

That it's just better

To wait around

To see what happens next

But when I die

Make music

At my grave

And drink a beer

In celebration

Why can't I love

Outside myself?

Eighty-Five

(At six o'clock low)

As I sit in my space capsule

With seat belt unfastened

Ready to blast off

But my juices

I can't get them flowing

My drive motors

Have petered out

They must be replenished

With another beer

And some more music

What will the critics

Make of this lousy verse?

Who loves a six o'clock critic

Who makes it a profession

Not trying to do better?

Critics can say

Whatever they may

I got that to rhyme

This should be written

On the wall

As far as I care

This five minute

Concoction

Is a masterpiece

Still in the making

I thought that maybe

My stuff would get better

In due time

But it's only grown worse

I guess its time to quit or make some changes

Eighty-Two

(asked the interviewer)

He asked me

With decisive authority

When will you be respectable?

When will you get a good job?

When will you learn a profession?

When will you grow up?

Never

I replied

Off the top of my head

I'll die first

Eighty-Four

(myself)

I think back

On all the foolish things

That I have done

And all that I didn't do

These things frighten me

I want to isolate myself

From this complex world

But when in inspiration

I do the things

I like best to do

I feel good afterwards

And forget my anxieties

For the time being

Success and idiocy

Follow each other

I remember the past

And as I see the present

To promise myself

Is all I can do

To try to do better

Tomorrow

Eighty-Six

(very fast)

Where are my friends now?

I know happier people next door

And I know sadder people next door

I return to this sterile place

From all the fabulous places

And I know that fabulousness

Is just an expensive illusion

For I have known starving people

And I have starved for love

Too long to be fooled

By cheap imitations

Of neurotic emptiness

And the children pay in the end

The world teeters

With man against man

But the woman

Who is behind the man

Goes unnoticed

In all the stories

Except McBeth

Behind every great man's soul

Stands a mother's conscience

I wonder who rules

This small world

The great human dilemma

Is only a simple paradox

When it is solved

But it is just as complex

Like a circle going nowhere

The big world is not as it seems

It is bigger yet

Humans are natural specialists

Any expert can tell you that

Everything fits properly

Then why all the speeches

And the articles of faith

In all the written words?

They are the people's illusions

And not what is real

When will be the grand disillusionment

Life is a rock and roll song

and life is death

So what draws me here again

Like a growing animal

That I must feed?

If I can throw my hand outside

Then why must I be so lonely

And where do I fit

In this lonely world?

Where do we go from here?

Eighty-Eight

(in pen)

I picked up a pen

But not to write

To create another way

One which I have

Long neglected and frustrated

A part of me

Atrophied in my youth

What is the immense power

Of the self

To be capable of compensation

My dear family who loves me so

Have stolen parts of me

Over the years

And I am left without anything

But fragments of myself

Scattered to the winds

I have listened too long

And have felt too much

Of too many other's needs

To the neglect of my own

Everyone is neurotic

Neurotic people must frustrate

And disturb other's chances

And people try to change in others

What which they fear they can't control

Money has had a transient quality

And time has been in temporary quantity

I no longer care

About all the officiality

And titles of certitude that surround

Everything with trivial importance

That schools so educate

Most of what I have learned

I have not needed nor used

And have only forgotten

Teachers too often avoid and critically repress

That nebulous void of spontaneous creativity

With which they cannot cope

I have had to relearn how to be myself

I have grown tired of being belittled

By other's sanctimonious self ratings

I need prove myself to no one

Except to myself in reflection

Greatness is really incompetence reversed

And goodness is only hypocrisy fooled

While love means ignorance neglected

The self is only lonely

As I look into the mirror and see through

All the vicarious fantasies to find simply, only myself

I renounce the game of life

And vow to reach out beyond this world in exploration

Most of my time has been wasted

On dead ends and toil without purpose

Nothing that I have with me now

Seems of any meaning

If I can condense what I feel is important

Down into a single word

That would be myself

A single life consuming instant

Not a consumed lifetime

A silent picture can speak very loudly

in deed

Ninety

(or the Perfect Fool)

The fool plays games with perfection

Creating with minutest detail

Vibrant lines of tension

Question the inner motives and emotions

When in frustration all that has been accomplished

Is swiftly destroyed

Not good enough to have served an imperfect end

Perfection is a fool's game

And imperfection a rebellious note

The weekends convolute around my life

The same time of the week again

In repetition through a meaningless existence

And people want more than they ask for or deserve

But will never give for nothing

If I were at this moment someone different

The whole world would be otherwise

What are these silly notions of rationality

When we are all so subjectively ourselves

The world is all relative

And humans can't put themselves

In other people's shoes

No matter how much they may try

Or desire to be different

I see my limitations as my loneliness consumes me

Why people hold so tightly to empty illusions

Like measuring sticks to give dimension to emptiness

And scope to limited imperfections of forgotten pasts

I am more or less the same stuff

As when I was different

Common clay that can be shaped into a thousand forms

Yet neither more nor less but always the same substance

The void of being is all pervasive

And it makes no difference

Where I may be or where I am not

Or what others may see in me or say

As underneath I would be the same human as I am now

Too bad that I can't be just that

Human being unviolated and naturally imperfect

Even if I were a different being

Underneath all the superficiality I would still be only me

So why must I try to hide it

There is a single common line

That holds the subjective world together

And people feel it inside of their souls

Full of nameless emotion and pent up energy

It can't be crossed without upsetting their lives

To try to touch it is to threaten their security

As they will not relent to their inner nature

I am tired of shooting at the stars

I think I will bring my aim more earthbound

If I could extract and condense

All the unlonely moments from my whole life

I could fit them all into a single month of real living

So why should I put off that which could be now

The jealous expectation of some inhuman perfection

The fool plays a game

To create, destroy, and create again aimlessly

Jealous of perfection

Silently smiling

Saying too much in stubborn muteness

Ninety-Three

Plans always become compromised

Expectations frustrated

By unforeseen limitations

Things never work out

The way they were designed

But liberty is being able

To compromise with life's realities

And still be satisfied with the results

A healthy sort of lifestyle

Coping with imperfection

That is the beauty of creation

The simple elegance of living

Being able to turn inwardly

Completely ignoring life's demands

And unlimited freely do the things

The way one wants to do them

To work hard in spite of limits

Or not at all because of limits

Complete freedom of objectivity

The limits then are from the self

Only subjectively suffered

The only way of defeating

The universal tyranny of authority

Transcending temporal being

Infatuations floating from face to face

And spatial habituations

Fantasies transporting from place to place

Days and hopes adrift

On an open and stormy sea

Restless for some point or port

To find sanctuary

From the froth and broil

And to rekindle one's tomorrow

A somnambulate dance through life

I barely know you

But that little knowledge

Begets an ancient story

Ninety-Four

(generations over space)

Generation upon generation

Of hardy pioneers

In the protestant spirit

Of hard work

And spiritual rebellion

Have built upon this land

A great civilization

In unsurpassed wealth

Of humanity's idealism

In culmination

Of the lives of many

In what gratitude

Is the new generation?

Young rebels who love music

With little appreciation

Without concern for themselves

An anticlimactic revelation

Life in the fast lane

Is a lonely place to be

In disheartening realization

Of a different kind of being

In a slow cumulative living

Without worry for time

Lines curve into circles

And the path is ancient

In harder times

Selfish people come out

From the woodwork

Ostentatious background manifestations

Usurped by a different breed

Either great inner listening

Or greater outer obedience

A cacophony of dissonance

As the word issues from every breath

Explaining everything in simple terms

A path that leads to both

Greater wealth and stagnation

Always forward motion

Looking backward

Ninety-Six

Where are the artists?

Where is the culture?

Who around here appreciates

Living for one's work?

We value defense

To protect our belongings

And our liberties

We value our jobs

And our professions

We value hard work

And physical recreation

Of every kind

We value our cars

And our color televisions

We value high living

And fast competition

We value what we wear

And how we appear to others

But what good is all this

After you are dead

And your grandchildren

Inherit our world

What good is an artist

And the value of "culture"?

What good is just being human?

Where is the divine inspiration

And the cooperative solidarity?

Ninety-Eight

The ancient prophecy

Is now in the process of revelation

Of utopia or decadence

In a shrinking world

In war or peace

The ultimate climax of history

To prove a tragedy or comedy

The grand finale

Of the epic human odyssey

Through the dimensions of universe

The gulf is widening

While no savior has come

To walk on the quaking waters

Separating human existence

And the island of paradise

Only poor messengers on high

Scoundrels of ill-betiding

Mystic soothsayers of scientific cleanliness

And what will be our fate?

Children of a peaceable kingdom

Or adults in a hell-hold of anguish

To realize the prophecy of life

Or to wait for the executioner's song

While the conqueror worm is well-nourished

By diseased souls forsaken by their Gods

I am the volition of becoming

The self seeks its reflection

Integrity, unity, divinity

I am truth

as I am

one

One Hundred and One

As I sit here and dream

I think back to the monsters

That rolled across the land

"Let nothing stand in the way"

Was their death scream

Noise deafening and dust blinding

Huge mechanical toads

Little ants hiding inside

With nowhere to run

Steel ships on a gentle, sandy sea

Charging into a rough storm

Of fire and smoke

A hundred guns sounding off simultaneously

In distinct and different tunes each

In volley and thunderous noise

A calamitous, deafening dissonance

Of inner confusion

On line together

Trying to hear a subtle note

As I wake up each morning

I am confronted

With a special mission

My task was not finished

With the end of a normal tour

It is my fate to quest beyond

Without any clear or rigid answers

Formulas there are many

Each a game for the mind

And nothing more

Too serious to play the common games

To break free from the usual path

On a different course

While gentle music assists me on my way

In search of some golden key

To eternal freedom

Or spiritual harmony

Or just the illusive resemblance of peace

Words are only conceptions of the mind

This poesy must await further invention

As I sit here and dream

Why all the answers?

What is the problem?

Please tell me

As I toy with my sanity

Recollections

2003