Accept All, Expect Nothing (2008)
<<For relief, have some belief>>
Fateful flows from foes or my gangster bros knowing what they’re meant to be
What does it mean to be?
To witness this beautiful creation as a gift given to us never to use, showing in our attempt to reveal the present moment as death vanishing like a ghost passing away through derelict arches into the unknown
What is not known cannot be known when what is known is what is lived
A skunk sits upon the top stair contemplating each descending move
A king strides down the palace steps with neutral feelings for the burning city: starry-eyed in singularity, attired in simple robes…
A worker on break watches out the window
Men and women walking down the same road in pre-internalized patterns
Spider web in the sun’s rays avoiding shadows in lieu of the leaves
I sometimes think that white is green, black is red
Space is infinite but as fixed as lead
“Some things never change”...That’s the truth
I do what I do for the pleasure it gives…
No one can say anything for my not taking when no one’s got anything to give
Angry at themselves for the pain I don’t feel
Where am I missing out?
I need not worry. The traps are already set.
Soon I’ll fall down the hole that everything goes down: grounded for eternity
Eternity meaning there’s no tomorrow, it’s just today that you’re here to be...Nothing else
Not even knowledge. It too is sucked up by the dimensions of space pushing every which way.
What you thought was a spiraling galaxy is now a darkness emanating from your eyelids, though you see yourself standing like a pyramid in the desert, sand blowing in your face
How do you know where you’re walking? Especially with that thing spinning around in there?
Don’t you even want to know where you are?
The same old thing that will kill Mother Earth has already eaten out my back
Brain cells will do me good in the end, rotting in the dirt…until then, running my feet in the ground
The hours pass by mashing thoughts to finally decide: I need something to eat
And it always feels like the last time… is it bad for the second hand to get stuck? That’s not clear…
I want to know if time is the same for you as for me
I think I answered that. No, time is a number system.
Being-in-time= well...that’s just being
I need not move to think this all out
A timeless error perhaps but I know no more than this
Somehow blood is spilled in the search for reality though it is a peaceful one
Some feel the need to fight for what is wrong
Anger is desire
It is to feel happiness that the higher consciousness asks for, not to fear sadness
It is apparent that the lost must keep losing and the found will never stop finding...for now.
It is forever now, if not never, when one will stroll through the catacombs of youth- the caverns filled with shadow peer back, compelling us deeper underground, to the tomb glimpsed at birth and secretly loved in death
This poetry goes nowhere!
Still, standing, it shakes its head at the closed door which bears the number 5. Do I knock? How many times? This front step is mighty fine...only to hear from behind, “Step inside...”
I do not grant very much importance to these thoughts though in your company I feel more of the relevance of truth
Previously down this same road I have spoken words of contempt, anger, and perhaps delusion even; the wise consideration you have bestowed to me is, to say the least, astounding and beautiful
That is the past!
Let gentleness kindle your soul, and don’t even try to expect the Unexpectable…
With the right mindset, the body is straight
The things of which I learn are useless
Without thinking, tell me what you need to know that you don’t know already
You just can’t hold your nose to every bad smell in the world
How can one fear madness? A man talks into his boat with joy!!!
Perhaps a man without music doesn’t have an ear
What a pity for all those who cannot consider their cycle of thought as the cycle of suffering...though the crashing waves eventually subside
Eventually: as things have to happen, it starts slow (though slow is at a raging speed), then falls out all together (the seconds are measured with hundreds of mile-markers, striking out with the ferocity of a sniffing dog, most like the quick extension of a bird’s wingspan)
Places are not there although there places us together.
A noise blocks the non-self within, a truer one coming to you in the form of my voice
(Note the recklessness as true as it is impermissible)
Two-faced liars waste their years, littering the space between fitter specimens, trying to look good for the effect of treating people stupid
It is evil! Just the confusion… only the devil smiles back to their own soul with vengeance
Forgetting the things we know to think aimlessly on the past
“Should I kill you?” “Yes, but not for desire’s sake, rather for my pain, my sorrow…”
I’ll take a stab
I expect you not to budge
The brain must think twice
When getting used to (or ‘by’) a method, concept, idea, formulation- or action, habit- you always have to find other ways to satisfy the ends
The plain lines turn to shine a ray, made by force field disaster from electron emissions’ waste production
The wheel needs some turning when it’s lost its track, though the Aquarius night and blue moon steer straight after the struggle with initial velocity
That is what you expect!
When the truth is revealed, it is an ugly rearing head, racking pictures of perception (that’s what you lost! The sensibility of your abilities), an expression tainted by crying inside- eternal tears en-coating the wound in a bubble, popped the moment it is about to fly away...in the circulation of air, heat rises only to fall once again into cold
Viscosity holds water capsules, suspended on the railing in semi-circular delight for frost- ready to freeze or to fall
Naturally the leaves that lie dead are covered, and spring wipes away the white veil
The melting fills the streams, for the fish to swim in; the mountains redirect their outpourings though gravity pulls it to the singular reservoir forever still
No one needs to tell what it means when a doe raises her white flag, or when a paw print fixed in time travels no further
The reverberations of a pecking wood duck sound like a finger tapping a table miles away
The black bear appreciates the scent of white flowers. His coat knows not one gray hair. His eyes are fierce and fair
A heartbeat skips, the floor creaks, time stops again- it goes over itself… inside-out! Bottoms-up as topsy-turvy as an upside-down wacky wicker basket, case of soap, bar of gold, and silver shoes
The masked man never smiles but a lie penetrates every evil grin, hate held even in its own hostility, heralded in wait for that fateful day when the long-awaited ship will fare the sea of misery, shifting the layers of foam, dispersing the waves, calming the rough waves with her bow…
Everything comes full circle with a word
Or two, maybe it’s two
It is
Random noises do it too
Sum it all up
With a bag of tricks you don’t need magic
It’s all in your head like a grid, just tie all the ends together...one big knot!
Oh, it shall be fun to untangle, but remember we must go back now from where we started and re-schemative the system of though which has settled for subprime conditions seen first with an empty stomach, not to mention a clouded mind fixed by chemicals blocking neurotransmitters, sitting around with shoes on, sifting false memories for their fertility in a renewed Spirit
We are slaves to a society, selling us “what we desire” (not the most desirable)
The sirens do not go off for a dying man without a son
Subtly, the media presents back-to-back subliminal messages in a continuous flow of images bearing incontinuity, to focus on the new as if it were not old
Families horde stockpiles waiting for good to happen, until then chatting up about the weather, and house things
Things possess us
We are what we use, in a way
Bodies are painful, though the only living part one owns is consciousness and time-history
What is it to say, if you’re not to do?
Some forget they knew how to flow, or maybe just confuse the physical with where the mind should go
Most don’t have a clue
This hatred comes in the form of lost souls borrowing sorrows for a broken tomorrow
I’m not sorry to kill the dream; quit watching the stream
Build a boat; there’s an ocean to sail on
You can’t see it with that veil on
The window sill has no great view of the sky
Go outside and learn it comes down to live or to die
Defy the lies that a baby cries over
Deny the crowd like a four-leaf clover
You can be what is feared if you are the unknown, only if you are knowing one fear, having been told
In time, life is a two-sided coin.
In space, life requires three dimensions, like the six faces of a cube
The odds are an even number, though even numbers seem a bit odd
Prime numbers are always plus one (1, 3,7, or 9)
We look at each other to see ourselves
In the meantime I think of myself (inside of myself) as they do themselves
The pills in cabinets designated with a need
Out of my in-mind
Over your head?
Down the street I went walking thinking I could use the fresh air when a smog cloud incarcerated my will to breathe
It is ironic that metal rusts in contact with air
If a second seems too short, give it a second try
If a minute seems too long, note the minute difference
The day is today
No day to sit around and dream
While I pick up steam, be patient; we could work as a team
You’re smarter than the mouth that is talking
The sentences form out of what I feel for the being trying to read my mind
Bringing it all to the surface is a bad habit for those with no true contribution to the solution for human pollution
Bend a cylinder around and get a tube
Stack some tubes and get a cylinder
What is there to get? A shape
It is moving
Try playing a game without directions: it’s a melee
There are steps to take first, without going anywhere
Finding where to go and driving your heart there
When you discover there’s no road for traveling, plow the path that has carried footsteps in the past, at a time for wanderers to finally establish a lead
Followers will trod on, anticipating with precision each shady tree as it’s positioned while fading into vision
The image is placed there by our minds then broken up like fission
It may sound like science fiction, but here’s the mission
Tell the world the truth, not for fame but recognition
Rap has started the mash-ups to be happening
Like a sprouting tree, leaves are green, the bark can’t contain the sap within
This is all honesty, or as honest as I can be with myself, though honesty cannot be the truest form of depth when it came to my dreams
I put them all on the shelf when it came to getting what I want
I was straight up inept until I focused on the circles that always made me digress
With all this magic crackin’, the past no longer unrest, the future folds once, twice, three times now it’s back
I’m going forward, facing west, no trace of lack of meaning in this net of desire
It’s wack. I know it’s all a joke...and as they say, “So it goes, so it goes...”
Get on track... and get off again, thinking ahead, only to forget... to begin
I think of what to say and it’s not right
I’ve been defiled by society, that’s where I live, the people I know…
That’s wild
On your doorstep, or on your sofa, you’re annihilated by media, distracting the masses from the Last Sermon, in other words, violated to achieve subordination that should be rationalized not materialized
It’s only a few I criticize for making up a super-size (That’s not just french fries but a determinant of what we can be)
I’m trying to seize the leash and shake off man’s captor
The question of freedom captivates me
Is there something to see that cannot be touched but perhaps enjoyed?
The answer is null and void
My heart is not a toy anymore but a ploy I use to survive past the boy into the man
How do I make people understand?
Not by standing over or under them but facing them eye to eye
I thought I might as well try before it’s time for me to die
If you think this is the sound of discord, try again
If you can order chaos then you’re the one we are waiting for when the hour comes to take down old sentiments which were only restrictions to the True Self
The doubter rather obliged to set up fortress and mix emotions with devotion: the non-fatal love potion
A notion of applied science
Don’t let your conscience get in the way of your alliance to justice or defiance of lust that could be converted out of servitude to an attitude of a rude boy:
The funnel of existence pours the sands of the world directly into your hands to sift through the laws that confine our bodies to holding onto so much
There’s no need to rush
Everything’s possible, for example, here’s a sample from a life that I pronounce as strife:
A young man can’t go to school without his knife
Every morning asking father “Could I get some lunch money?”
Though he thinks his times running out
He doesn’t eat, sitting lean smoking cigarettes across the street from school
He doesn’t go to class but he’s no fool
He’s got a whole slew of ideas about the insanity of vanity
And the man he wants to be
Motive outcomes promote him as a popular friend because he hears the ones that laugh behind his back at the mistakes they’re making themselves though they make them bigger with words, searching the empty cabinets for some food when he knows not the reasons for earning because he’s still yearning for his love, the ease the pain:
Burning is not enough, staying up all night discerning the facts from what he is learning by chilling with the neighborhood, talking about how politics aren’t it so no one go fumble with it
This is one-sided and it won’t come down to any vote
The decision is one or another: Do you help yourself, or help a brother?
Keep spectating in your dreamland, reflecting the hatred that this nation has towards evocation
What is this place where the freedom of speech is to say but not something to preach?
Suck on that (!) and stop being a leech though the blood in my veins is tainted
I don’t have the faintest hint of why I’m still breathing
I let release of the heathen inside and fed on the Holy Brethren beside me at the altar
But the past is the least of these worries
Those scars in the mirror fall under suspicion for one to falter
This mobile hangs like an illusion, a vehicle more abstract than a Calder
Like a color wheel spinning, turning white, untie grey thoughts and neutral feelings for a fire-powered balloon to take flight
Raising the corners of children’s smiles, raising the eyebrows of old men at the price of changing styles
Do not lose the patience
It’s going to be a while so turn up the dial
I can’t stand most Christians
It’s hard to listen to some people so sick at heart, talking about what one knows to make themselves and others sad
Just thinking they know and not seeing how so
This kind of relief is that of the primitive beast
A sinister freak that once was called shy and meek
Quit that minister speak
Destroy complacency and seek the righteous few
When one loves too much it can take one’s soul away
Accept all
Expect nothing
Except one
Subway signs say step aside
Strangers’ desirous faces contemplating the thoughts never known
All suddenly gleaming- the subway train (snake of city’s destruction)
Eyes that once met in infinite wisdom-wonder erased by outstretched hands and legs of Man, moving contagiously to the rhythm and ripple of society-run-by-time
Strange city sightings:
Man threatened to stab me for not buying his fake Metrocard ticket
Rats crawling over a girl’s lap in the depths of the age-stricken subways, a blood curdling scream, followed by typical reactive glances filled with intentional ignorance
My very life is sustained through the gift of others
Waking up in the city with no money, belly aching, urination forces the acids to churn
Sal’s sister passes a bagel and some fruit into my groping hands, the other occupied by old ice cream popsicle
Fortune for I have clothes on my back, loving donation from family ties
Train man asks me for the fare- me uselessly shoving hands into pockets to manifest the poverty
Penniless and on the right track, tormented by the sounds (predicted only to return once and for all back to silence)
Rattling, crashing squeal swabs my eardrums through and through
River fog and gray sky overcast the world with shadow, clouding judgment for me to see when the Eternal-Being-Within-Ourselves, the Sun, decides to hide
But up in Poughkeepsie, blue skies, blue herons…
The world is small
The Earth is all
Though things are falling
Life is sailing above the broken pieces
Disaster beneath the wind
***ADDENDUM:
Poughkeepsie blues tumbling end over end like the drunk man falling face first into the pavement
His concrete nosebleed and sidewalk smile
Beer rolling to its place in the sea
No one to pick him up
The train screams out of the station
Migration to the roaring cure for chaotic loneliness babble surfacing in the air only to drop to the floor
A man left waiting on the platform chair digs into a coconut, milk covering beard and dreads
Police at midnight, spotlight searching for the right position to create a crime
Agenda of fragmenting black communities
Arresting husbands, destroying families betrayed by the laws
Trapping black habit to a substandard living condition
Woman with hips as wide as a car, carrying an umbrella to protect the sun
Young kids talking loudly about how good the girl walking down the sidewalk looks- “Damn, I’d tap that!”- her stepping into the grass with a smile
Naked blues night jives the college kids
Liquor shots driving the grinding guitar lines and interlocking rhymes
Head descending astral staircase
Body and mind propelled into fixed yet floating thoughts
Time stops:
Conscious of the Unconscious
Lies that say the Truth do not exist, they deny the striving for happiness, which is “Why? How? What?”
Anything that won’t break you makes you stronger... unless God is on your side, in which case, the end to all human suffering will end under the stars in a dream without direction
The nuisances that get a poor man by everyday are killing him too
No wonder the Hindus described the flow and rhythm of the path as The Waters (The Upanishads)
Observing the ant crawling over moss, it seems to have a sense of direction and a goal
The tinkling stream pours over mountain rock with a subtle restlessness in its voice
Receiving no retribution for its present of infinite love
Humanity poisons its only gift of which the arts cannot requite
Thinking alone by myself transports my mind like the feet of the ant
Tell me what the Hudson River has to say today on its slow wind to the city
Last time I returned from New York City I spotted a blue heron in the marsh, but looking not at all like the pictures in scientific birdbooks, rather he supported a long beak over a hunched back, dull eyes gazing endlessly into the ripple of the tide
Waiting precisely until an eclipse of the stars when- without sound- he takes flight…
The greatest Swedish aria, stuck in my head, just like the old man told me it was trapped in his
The way that the moon conducts the sea is how it controls the ebb, tide and flow of what we perceive as the wave of time
The stars: merely the stuff we are made of
The nosy teacher with her nasally voice inquired of the student: “You look awfully sick! What’s the matter?” He responds “Aren’t we all sick?”
On the news today they covered the fighting in Georgia. The Russians once again want what they have thought as theirs since as early as 1801. The media is a lie. Government-controlled brainwash babble. The television set has sucked people’s brains out. THE SCREEN has absorbed all desire for thought, their faces blank with contingent happiness, numbed by the fusion of chaos and domination in every image; violence, not only that, blood spilling…
Reading the Celestine Prophecy at the Philistine’s apartment thrust the Eighth Insight into my awareness- from what I understand, it explains that there’s knowledge in our minds yet it is not realized until one has experienced the thought from another’s mind
And the Tibetan Book of the Dead’s “Introduction to Awareness”...
First of all, past thoughts are inconsequential. Ideas fade away like the current flows back under the waves of the ocean.
Secondly, future thoughts are fresh and clean; true and impermanent
Lastly, the thoughts of now appear like flowers out of seeds, unforced and natural… The silence that follows as pristine as the California blue sky
Awareness of mind lets existence have its say (which is ‘no-say’)
On a NASA bookmark, there is written that everything in space around us, from planets to dust particles, is traveling in the same counter-clockwise direction around the sun. And there everything is, yet it all goes clockwise on the other side of the universe.
SENDERO LUMINOSO
The phrase “putting everything into your art” isn’t too astray from the truth, considering the term “everything” to mean “yourself” which I generalize unknowingly to the five aggregates of clinging, as taught by Buddha, “a formalized way of understanding the nature of our being”...by taking what we are- material form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness...
I was staying at the Vagabond Inn- a place really for the sort- and considering the sunny LA weather I went for a swim, on the way passing a room full of Mexican families, dining on chicken and rice, the scent rising into my nostrils for one deep breath, sighing for the mere separation between psyches which breeds dreadful chaos called suffering. I sat in a plastic chair, the sun hitting only my face and an umbrella shading my body. I watched the blazing eyes of passersby as they turned the corner.
From the balcony a little boy watched with curious gaze as I crept deeper into the water, each splash sending a thrill of wonder and encouragement to be stronger. A smile at him sends him running. Yet soon his mother delivered his desire, standing in the water with a smile. For a moment I felt like another brother.
Fears seeping precociously into
Tears weeping emotionally into
Years reaping ferociously- the
Beer keeping seers at their
Ears
The gentle mental raft that carries us down
The stream-like flow
Balanced on an electric current that tosses and turns
Waves that let go and do not push...
Waves remembering the tick against the shores
No "fine-balance" between mind and machines
The mind does not have a sole base of information to inquire within
It is a chaotic mechanism
That revolves around focal points of high and directed energy
A machine relies upon a 'yes or no' protocol
Of course, humans go by this nature in giving answers...
So who invented machines anyway?
Well, OK, humans are aware of their simplest functions