So my mother
is lying, dying,
in a hospital bed
upstairs
under hospice care
by me and my sister,
but I decided
that although
I am sad about it
and it is traumatic,
that I won't let it
get me down,
so I have a kind of
happy/sad attitude
because I seem to know
that death is not an end,
therefore
this morning
I went to the basement
and recorded
a rock song
on my toy instruments,
which I thought
was kind of
kick-ass.
So Bob Dylan sang
to not think twice
because it's all right,
and I wondered
what he meant,
because there's always
another thought,
so a Zen master said
that the first thought
is the enlightened thought
and the second thought
is the Buddha thought,
but just what does first
and second mean,
when it comes to thoughts,
so I think
fuck it -
all thoughts are good
even though I used to think
that I shouldn't think,
or so I thought.
I was getting
bored with
the same old
routine, a few days ago,
so I decided
that I needed
a change,
so I did
a few things
differently,
and invented
a new meditation practice,
and then
a physical therapist
said my mother
had to go
to the hospital
and then
my mom's heart stopped
and then
they put her
in hospice care,
so I began
to wish for my old boring
routine
to come back.
So the lady
went to the store
to buy groceries
and when
it was time
for the paper towels
she saw
that a package
of two rolls
was about
four dollars
and a package
of six rolls
was about
five dollars
so she was suckered
into buying
a bunch
of paper
when what
was wanted
was a little bit
and so it's like
less is more
for more.
Religion
can get to me
because it
is always about
doing only good
and doing only
what you should,
and it seems
that lately
that has spawned
terrorists, pedophiles,
and abortion doctor killers,
because the dam
bursts,
so my philosophy
is to do good
if you want to,
and do what you should
if you want to,
and if you don't
want to,
fuck it.
Here's a notion
about thoughts
that doctors have,
I think,
and that is
that thoughts
are chemistry
and feelings
are chemistry
and that
we can change them
by ourselves
or by some chemical
that the doctor gives us,
so my mood right now
is fine
so that means
I have fine chemistry,
whatever that means,
so I don't need
any external chemicals
right now,
but there is all
of this computer light!
John Cage liked
external sounds
and I do, too,
but he didn't particularly like
internal music
and for a long time
I didn't either,
because my head
was playing
a jerky blues guitar solo
that jumbled up
my head
and things like
Mozart's Requiem
that made me think
I was going to die,
so I got in there
and worked on
my music inside
and now
it doesn't bother me so much
and some of it
is actually
just right.
If accidents
don't hurt you,
they can really
help you,
like when
I was recording music
and I blew it
on the machine,
so I had to
fix it
and do it over
and then I found out
that the mistake I made
was genius,
and it made
the music better,
so sometimes
the unintentional mind
is wiser
than the intentional mind
or maybe not.
When I was starting
to learn Zen,
I thought, unconsciously,
that it was my ticket
to stardom,
but little did I realize
that it was the path down,
so drugs and liquor
and crime
can be the path down,
leading to jail, poverty,
ill-health and death,
but Zen
is the path down,
it has been said,
to the valley
of happiness, contentment,
and good health
and freedom,
but without, usually,
worldly success,
so here I am -
a well-fed,
starving artist,
in suburban Nirvana.
Years ago,
at a Zen center,
I was trying
to quiet the mind
and was having
a terrible time
doing it,
so years later
the Roshi
said,
"You've got
to say something!"
so I decided
that quieting
the mind
was not necessarily
the best thing
to do,
and when the thinking
came back to me,
I felt much better.
This is the world
and this is life
and I am awake
in the morning
at night,
so here is
a new adventure
on the machine
of the age,
where we go
to find
the words
that we need
to only confuse us
more.
