1996 Road Movie, Road Rant & Buddha Rambling, Part 4

1996 Road Movie Road Rant & Buddha Rambling Part 4






the world
revolving
blue green
in a sea
of black--

the stars

I’m trying to continue my poem
and I have to move, --again,
I just pick up and go,
they say, an artist’s life, felt bad, but even worse,
I’ve forgotten already--

used to it
this city? push and shove
anymore--
my neighbors ‘hello’
on the stairs, I shun--

can’t pay the rent, can’t afford
to store the paintings, I’m
on a down swing, up, then down,
rarely a middle,
get a job, they say

OH, BY THIS TIME I’D LOVE
A JOB, I SEE PEOPLE AT “ONE”
WITH THE WORLD
EVERYWHERE I GO
they have 'a job'

me, mope,
the rest of my life,
for a lack of belief or beauty, direction
or order, the game, all the above
at once in differing forms according

to cycles, in some office, warehouse,
someone else’s life, to conform to
“Long Island had been a happy time...”
that guy leaving--
is back as my mind’s eye

into the orange
sky turning red
blue clouds
evaporating
silhouetted figure
black
leavings

for umpteenth time at this end of
this blazing 20th century, our century, left
to us, parts of the world, fallen
from, I make my way
OVER THE BRIDGE, to the es--STUDIO

and when I say, I, I mean you,
HERO,
yeah,
“talking to myself is poetry,
talking to you is politics”

continuing the chant

the light
comes and goes,
bellows breathe
earth revolving,
flowers bloom--
in and out
the rhythm
dark and light

crickets rhyme, a Chinese line
of Emerald Mountain
between blue and greenest, character,
flavor dreaming mountains, a turn,
nature’s simple truths, live,

describing sun
that disappearing Asian scene
the peace, cloud in the mountain, river falls
and winding valley,
at the Metropolitan Museum, on Easter Sunday,

I usually plant
Sunflowers to bloom in June--
Oh,
I fought with her over the house
my own frustration, psychic break

I lost it, my mind-- Long Island--
that house will never be
a home--
well, I was privileged to be there,
I own it in my head,

no one wants to know, I owned it
in a loving, way,
I’m out of it, out of sync with
the destructive mania for mall
and strip, my Jade Mountain

sped by, my discovered
Chinese new world, in seasons,
a poetry and religion of every day,
Buddha ideals
make them up,

Buddha sounds,
Good-- She's a Buddhist!
Yes, of course
a good one! Zen shadings,
sit still--

My Ramayana
of Guler, Punjab Hill
Hindi Doll, Krishna
Blue man
Buddha boy


Hindi, Disney,
partner by eye,
aesthetic shimmer
simple stylish shape, color, line
a simple light

in dark-- breathing
watching lotus
flowers bloom
elegant cartoon
in the abstract

connect to that tree!
growing from the root,
in earth
all styles in one, cycling, another
Achilles/ Fire,

lashed against the wind,
painting on the beach
the canvas flap,
my fractured
hero--yo-yo

yeah, died
and went to heaven
over the top, the century goes out
rosebud on the beach, breakers
in the sea, fragmenting the space

mantra
spinning into night
ideas falling to earth,
the robin on the beanpole
flicking its tail at the change,

what spark? the gods do it
before us in that eternity,
flower --bird
floating world,
MT Fuji presiding,

like mind
off in Himalayan Mountains.,
Kangra story,
the temples of eternity
repeating Navajo Mountain

world of shadows, silence falls
selling the books--
then, buying them back
one by one
poems on tree branches

blowing, prayer flags
blowing through cycles of life, a blowing,
blowing,
wind chimes, writing poems, nature
captured in sharp abstractions

hammered to forms, out of thirst,
HA! Get a job!
teaching bureaucracy,
I can’t even spell it
separating--


what reality would
one teach in this concrete building?
leaning, out west free
to make myself,
the raw material,

to make a monument
of a newer west,
still unfound-- good man
that is the good fortune, the unfinished man,
this romantic--

they didn't like the new paintings,
they where tied into everything
I experienced and knew, all tied together
my string, wound
tight into a ball, and a silence--

so hard to perform
in this vacuum, the wind blows,
no page flips
the desert in winter remembered,
a Florida breeze,

fanning, wooing the pain, Long Island
flickering light says good-bye,
looking for a piano box
by a banana tree
one foot in this world

one foot in another
thoughts scattered
on the ground, I love,
the poems
blowing on threads long

lines of memory
strands of DNA with (no?) particular
thought out pattern
something happens
seen, reflected

across the path
black and white flickering
a distant warble
stopping --the oriole
bright bird

Round as yet round, my dreams,
circle a withered moon,
the ancient fat man, the scent
of chrysanthemums,
ongoing, black and white

diver
page after page
figures here, stop
figures there
moments in time
every day
conversation
water from falls
a tea ceremony
to beautify--
detain the morning
moments

hours-- days-- a few lines
out of twitching
anxiety, throwing a pot,
a scene and stripe
so many mysterious theories
of beauty

Utamaro's home, Yosemite falling--
those dharma bums,
like the mad Chinese,
Cold Mountain
those guys at Sabrina basin

at Big Sur, the Birds of America,
Hokosai and Audubon
gita-sutra, Zen moment
sitting at Glacier Point,
little golden Buddha

to represent something, else yet still--
100 years of Endo push,
flowers and blue
hidden Pahari histories,
the unknown artists

mixed into a different stew
repeating archetypes
of different seasons, new beginnings
a fall
into edenic possibility,

this, journey to the west
this, self against the demise,
fighting battles
in the sunny blue
plunging to winter dream,

darkness falls, struggling
in wild weather, mud in spring and
ideals of the sun
attained all those journeys
seem as one

Wallace Stevens went to school
with Wynner Bynner,
studied Oriental influence of the time
even then-- superimposed
over our, American grain-- clumsy

Babe like Ox image
of sunflower, an elegant striped
bee on bloom and
parasol, the green cockatoo! I turn
from Palestine, the aesthetic of grim

Christ! our artists are religions
here, I compare,
as net of gems
western dreaming
jettison, Achilles into possibility

sneakers crossing America
a walking stick,
Jay head,
reflecting diamond

purple night
revolving to
dazzling noon
ahead
diamond carrot
blue imagination
cloudy silhouette

mountain range
blasted tree
into waterfall
the grand themes
clear and glowing
meditating

Japanese western
before me, Vincent’s Japonisma
of ideal southern flowering
spring arriving,
decorative bridge, a style of line

and design, a cropped Iris,
and broken line
surrounded by black, we dance the Shiva,
night and day
around in rings of fire revolving

flung, changing through
highest heaven
through deepest night
hoo-ray
hoo-hoo

OH, YES! the thousand dollar resentment

God damn you-- did you eat those sweet clams?
13 thousand dollars
did you step on that slippery eel, feeling with your toes?
13 thousand dollars
did you see the osprey’s first flight

in blinding reflecting water light?
13 thousand dollars
did you catch the purpling royal blue at sunset,
watch the stars imperceptibly appear,
the mocking bird by the porch light?

13 thousand dollars
did you throw the stone with aching heart
at the same bird singing
of it’s love, lost in the waves?
13 thousand dollars

did you love something, and watch it die
leave, like your mother’s face
13 thousand dollars
are you writing a poem, making a painting? It went on--
13 thousand dollars
something like this-- did you love it as me,

show it in so many words?
13 thousand dollars
13 thousand--
good, fine-- I love you still, as I love that place,
like the land,

like myself dissolved, those
13 thousand dollars
how many people forgot that place, the
13 thousand dollars

no home to love

42nd Street
Beekman Street
Walker Street
Church Street
Jay Street
Prince Street
Mercer Street
Mott--

all these people,
lists of people,
want to help me, love me
“Yea, call Angus,
he’ll get you out.”

“Orioles in Central Park, twelve of them in a single tree, 21st of May”
floating down stream
revolving autumn leaf
Guernica

sublime monument
for tragedy of our century, Stukas diving
squeal-- out of control,
“the dripper”
endlessly rocking

One

Long Island beach patrol
streaming beacon shining

Vir Hericulus Sublimis

wanted even more
standing there in front of--

with
Roy, Ajax and Achilles
ready to go up against the wall--
I’m off hiking mountains in the Sierras
trying to forget-- with Japanese poets--

drunk and singing madly
“vomiting the universe
vomiting forth my misery to be”
nauseous serpent self
a huge cartoon religion with

Mickey Mouse god
3 heads and six arms, killing buffalo
demons, “vomiting with anxiety that I was
not a separate self, but the same as every one else,”
“ they were all imaginary beings uninvented

for the fear of being myself”
TV’s images of dark angels, light connecting
us all in a comedy, darkening to tragedy of
our controlling and cajoling
what we think, songs of sex, religion and drugs,

children of the 1960’s
rock and roll
searching for a peace in poetry, hippie surface
of the whole
traveling the globe, for any answer,

My India,
wheels within wheels,
don’t cling to it, beauty and horror,
passing-- moving images
on planes high above,

trains speeding through
bus bumping along
chickens escaping-- fleeing thoughts
“death haunted India, to well oiled Japan”
my experience is yours,

my heart, my guru,
pluralistic pop
amid snap
achieving
that, unity

waving to President Kennedy, a sun tanned hero
in flags and confetti, this cute crew cut kid smiling,
anxious and swimming into life,
Dylan song, through
montage of flaming creatures,
film whir of Empire State building,
magic buses, bumping along country roads
with Thunderbird wine
--escaping
to elevated thought

“the blue jay stole the fire for mankind, passing
it on-- accounting for the colored birds,”
the journey we get is the journey we are ready for,
on the edge, jumping out--
decent into belly of the whale,

Jonah and Pecos Bill, bucking
the bronco, into the unconscious water
conscious creature in water darkness, to threshold,
cut to pieces, hope of resurrection,
before we’re eaten, back to live

in the system, protected from
the nature I love,
spirit out there, now

far
Hero--
out there the magpie
trickster
flies

lightening flash
standing up unafraid, I will go on,
“Oh, I could not
do that!” SAVE YOUR SELF! --slaying
the dragon fear

the light
striped and
patterned
a center,
revolving in crystal,

conscious Gaia

the waves come and go, the earth
seen from space,
a light, whole in the dark
the dark feeding the light, how?-- even
as I write this, I am still unwillingly attached

to the Christian ethos of
shunning the dark
“this am I” feeling it--
masks of god, the feeling of eternity
opposites of time, the breathing--

transcending duality, beyond good and evil,
the apple, split
between ourselves and nature, man against god,
nature is fallen against the divine,
overcome deeper,

brought together, GOD against nature,
nature cannot be evil, “I have poured out for thee
from myself” Know this, greet the divine, see
the divine in others, I am this creation, throwing
this off, I go on

the snake gives life, the refusal to except
the divine is the world, how does one say no?
eternity is now, thinking stops
this eternity, then a sway to opposite thoughts
of eternity in death, thinking stops death

the functions of life, are these
contradictions, multitudes
nightmares of loss, I try
to wake from-- the mystery which I am,
within, the heavens and hells

all the gods
the world
the poem scribbling
in my head
revolving, I repeat

“do not cast out the devil
lest one cast out the best”
“the central mountain is everywhere,”
“the still point,” of turning, a shape
whose center is every where,

we are that
mystery, but who will speak for us,
I will! I will!
try-- the birds flitted
and sang, so we can

“all life is suffering and pain
but by god you are alive--”
on the edge, “he can’t go
through life doing what he wants!”
One who knows,

he does not know,
womb to tomb
burned for rebirth, the seed
in the furrow
patted between hands,

a birth place,
this sprouting up, this sunflower
tic toc, tic toc, born
dies, in out, breathing
Brachman, flame burning

away time,
becoming this
O
OM is here
a birth

OO into being
M resolution
OM silence
the stream
of the present

modern, close -- fast moving
clean, sharp edged, objects speak
for themselves, the blank,
no order, modernist gems
float in a rubbishland,

mumbling to my self,
introspective voyage
jousting windmills, over hill and down valley,
I speak to America
from podium of self

drawing, drawing
now a smudge to
dream-- another round,
Oh, the beauty of the
smudge--

itself, on my nose and the distance
in my head, juggling this world,
balancing
civilization among the birds in trees
from-- he made a world

of the beach rose
in mind
of a summer's day
for Becky
Jackson Pollock painted a rose-- I read,

these black lines
bang to surface
like frame
of deeper space
death’s relation

to beauty--
of here, framing death, of there,
magnifying the moment
a copy, blown up, traced again,
the shape becoming, then

always beyond
Charles Chaplin wandering priest,
beggar poet
mountain hut
lost self

back country
dead at 37?
dead at 46?
cold mountain, no path
Sunbird, Soulbird

dead man walking
mountain
camp in stars
and falls
trees
beyond age
towering,

yelling across the void
madly singing
Krishna, Buddha, Walt
all revolving
gulping

after the formlessness
speeding
through
sparkled spaces, one with the stars
walking on

through shattered bottles thrown
from speeding cars,
fuck you, we yelled
WE LOVED THE WORLD
so threw wooden 2 x 4's, from overpasses

at oncoming cars, sped deathless on
motorcycles, bumped through roadless
mountains, driving our heads
into dirt and through dry heave,
through headache,

stifling heat, face down in Louie’s
cracked, plastic covered foam, oozing car seat,
Ford Fairlane
a bird sings, with
no one to reflect--

or respect, we are not heroes,
all the poetry had been written,
all the paintings, painted,
we plead for gods,
to show themselves, modern poetry has

walked away,
it is, frustration turning from
hope, any belief, no game to play
no answer to seek,
I push forward and am cut, limb by limb,

not wanting to stick out
another to be cut, to be violated,
pursued by guilt-- dragging a rotted fiction along--
making plans
for cross country

Austin, Santa Fe, through
Las Vegas?
to LA

the Sierra trip through
Deep Springs in Nevada silence--
make another trip to Yosemite--
Santa Barbara?
Point Conception

going through all the places, people,
rehearsing the story of California
the Big Sur
Yosemite monuments
the desert Mojave

SB and LA
New Mexico,
the old west like, my movie,
ROAD MOVIE
WEST of

MOVIE/ DREAM
SECOND CHANCE
the homeless guy
no name, over there, black and blue
in the shaded corner

watching, poet,
artist of sort,
voyeur, out side in weather
and 8mm film, video, seeing a different way
moving again, tired of the lists,

making it all up,
let them call me
they won't, “I’m alone here, --we all are”
symboled road,
gone again

getting ready to leave
setting out, again-- I’m
selling the books
The cottage was rented out there
thirteen thousand dollars.

to think
the style was anything, belief--
wall paper, we love it!-- wall paper!
expound and theorize!
I’m stepping across America

through daisies,
the American Grain, Davey Crockett,
Blue Man, with bells--
blue Jay way,
head full of diamonds

and black sneakers
planting sunflowers, oh my beloved
Crispin, friend, tending the birds
Chaplinesque,
a butterfly net in Toulomne Meadows,

a fool for art,
here in the mountain air
gone fishin’,
insane muttering,
across the silences

the nutcracker,
Prince
flies chattering
scolding

the waterfall
drowns all
to sleep
in the sun

who cares?
what's more real
a gesture--
a copy, simulacrum
I’m out in the trees--

It’s all there is!
I haven’t even started,
but I needed to hear myself,
say it

to know it.