flies and buddhas

i love hanging out. just being. people are a great species. all of us. we kill the flies and ignore the buddhas. why you ask. because we are stuck in the web of finding ‘ourselves’. the flies must die. and buddhas must leave their bodies to be rid of US. and now i have to leave to write the poem at the end of this haibun. bye.

open window
the soul of buddha
follows the fly

slow like honey

dont rush. just watch every millisecond unfold. the seeds of milkweed just hang onto the edge of the pod. waiting for a breeze. the perfect breeze. i would like to capture that tenacity. oh the way things happen just when they have to. the wait until next year will involve cold wind and snow. but then…

nothing
out of something~
birth and death

like a scent in the breeze

fall. and everything is about to change. not forever. just for a season. the way we rely on the seasons matches our lives. each moment has meaning. for me one thing. for you another. but we should not fail to accept the gifts each fragment of the seasons touches us with. the changeless verity of the seasons is one thing worth clinging to.

slow dancing
the sunset leaves me
with crackling leaves

blue eyed soul

when you are born in detroit you join a club. it is a lifetime membership. no matter where you are you are a big ‘D’ boy. now older but no wiser i still have the invisible badge of that tattoo. after hours jazz. seedy movie houses and places where they have a dozen locks on the doors. but it is home somehow.

past midnight
the police light up cars
for no reason

my neighbor was a cop in the city. they raided an ‘after hours’ place. when they did that almost every time the evidence and cash came up short. this time it was no different and as he was taking two cases of scotch and bourbon down the stairs to this squad car he was juggling them and in one hand was his gun. you guessed it. he shot off his toe. well the booze crashed down the stairs before he did. but. he ended up with a full pension in his thirties. shot in the line of duty. welcome to detroit. he was a good guy though and my wife liked his wife. so. to hell with it i say. they sold their home and retired to live on a lake up north.

time passes
with the precision
of a creaking stair

channeling basho and the oracle at delphi

i dont want to find the spirit of basho. if i did i would just shake him silly for creating my addiction. what the hell was he thinking. rambling around the backcountry like a lonely bob dylan. inventing a ‘stage name’ out of a tree. i always laugh when people pretend they know what he was thinking when he wrote that hokku or this other one. right now i cant figure out how the oracle at delphi got into the title of this haibun. for the love of christ dont ask me what a haiku is. ask that pine over there instead.

throwing rocks
into a  pond
all the frogs leave

say a word for jimmy brown

when you are poor you really can focus. or not. the choice is yours. pitch a tent on the town square and shit in the gutter or find a nothin job and work on your self esteem pushing a broom or emptying the trash at a mickey d. i always opted for menial labor in a pinch. pushing a rock up a hill made sisyphus a household name (among hippie neer do wells anyway).

lou reed
sings my epitaph…
sweet nuthin

keeping yourself a secret from yourself

i was on my way to los angeles from milwaukee. i stopped in to see a friend in the suburbs of chicago. her father was a great guy. he had a large backyard and smack in the middle of it was a flower bed where he grew weed. he took me out back to see it and kept saying ‘dont look at it’ the neighbors just think i let the garden go and have no idea what kind of weed it is. inside the house he had a bookcase that was made of wood slats with antique coffee cans. there must have been two dozen of those cans in all and each was filled with weed. really good weed i might add. i asked him what he would do if one of his neighbors figured it out and called the cops. it was the sixties after all. he said no problem he would just plead ignorance and tear it out with apologies. he was a rather respected guy he said and they were sure to believe him. (i thought to myself if they find it outside why would they not get a warrant and search inside. experience teaches you to have these thoughts) yeah i said that is kool. we smoked dope all day and i left in the early evening for los angeles. dont know because i lost track of his daughter but he may have actually pulled it off. i hope so. he was after all a respected guy.

the voice 
of a turtle
punctuates a dylan song