dont get up i am just passing through

wondering. still wondering. wondering more. just a little more wonder and my can of wonder will be empty.

as the pond settles
up pops
buddhas reflection

encounter within a poem

weird as it may seem my own thoughts are often very startling to me. sometimes they scare me. other times they make me aware of my own abilities. my singing bowl cant carry a tune today so filled it is with my thoughts. i think we neither fear nor appreciate our own thoughts the way we should. they just breeze past us and we fail to experience them. my singing bowl cant carry a tune today so filled it is with my thoughts. i refuse to fear dying. since i have no data to base any fear on. i mean i am typing this right now and that is not dying. or at least i dont ‘think’ it is. poetry gives thoughts their own experience i believe. my singing bowl cant carry a tune today so filled it is with my thoughts.

spring snowstorm
every path becomes
a meditation bell

thumbprints on a mala

nothing can replace the peace we provide ourselves. dont get me wrong i love people. well almost all people. the tools of seasons from humankind and nature all come together. if we will just get out of the way.

i sing
a mantra
of blooming jasmine

introduction to a requiem

when i am no longer then sing me a song. you can make it up or steal one from some hip hop group or the church. take your pick.

this world or the next
the dime i flip
hangs in the air

hoagy carmichael blues

‘kicking old buddhas gong’. that was slang for smoking opium in the thirties and forties. where did that come from i think to myself. was buddha a drug addict. not by a long shot. jazz was fed and grew up on dope though. but the best of them never partook or shook it off in the end. many of those that could not move back from drugs were lost to us. funny that the seduction of music led so many to lose themselves in it. when i went straight edge and cleaned up the real meanings came through to me. the long handwriting on the sheet music of my life stopped being blurred.

simple
but with a loud wail
baby wakes to a jazz tune

defining the form

i have all the lyrics to my favorite miles davis songs. i made them up of course. and i forget them and put on the music again (and again). reinventing them. and so it goes. each moment moves from one old joke to another. bad jokes. the stuff of life they are.

when   exactly
did this haiku become
a senryu for you

bye ya

when i as a young man i had an old car and drove crazily through the streets of milwaukee wisconsin. a friend put a bumper sticker on my car that read DON’T MISTAKE ME FOR SOMEONE WHO CARES. at first i was offended but then i realized he was only warning the other folks on the road to stay out of my way. that seemed very humane. so i left it on.

chewing gum comics
the stuff
that brings us together

ginsberg/burroughs and the facebook algorithm

two old beats smoking cigarettes eating watermelon and talking about philosophy and societal ills. i wonder if they had a phone that could do a live video if they would have made more sense. nope i figure. they made all the sense i needed then or now. car salesman could not have ‘sold’ me quicker than they did with their words. when you become just a little open to openness you are like that watermelon on their table. eatable but at the same time capable of spreading the seeds of a peculier religion. like a perverse johnny appleseed apostle.

spitting rocks
the heat of words
at a book burning