Angry Poems (and others).

ANGRY POEMS (and others)
jay dancing bear

Introduction
Sometimes when I think about all the suffering, greed, selfishness, stupidity, and ignorance that I perceive in people, especially in America, I get really upset.

So much suffering seems unnecessary, easily avoidable. People seem to lack vision, to not see the big picture, to not see that their actions and lifestyle have effects on people, animals and the environment all over the world.

I see a society in the midst of committing mass murder-suicide, especially ecologically. I see people who would never think of being mean to a cat or dog, ordinary, otherwise nice people, with blood dripping from their hands, responsible, unthinkingly and indirectly, for the most horrible cruelty perpetrated on the animals they eat and the animals drug research is done on. The issue to me is not so much that animals die, but how they live.

Political correctness has become a thing to ridicule, the butt of jokes, but it is accurate when it points out our responsibility, and our power to make the world a better place, just by making better choices about what we buy and eat.

It’s very easy to get angry. Often I have started accusing, blaming, condemning, and attacking, both mentally and verbally. I’ve sometimes even gone so far as to say that this is an asylum for criminally insane sociopaths. Pretty harsh stuff, huh? It doesn’t do anything except make me miserable and destroy my health and peace.

I know that people are not transformed by condemnation and blame, but by love. I try to lift my energy to my third eye, to see with the eye of spirit. The spiritual texts say that the world is perfect. I try to reconcile this higher perspective with the suffering I percieve, to try and truly feel in my heart “forgive them lord, for they know not what they do”, and to see the ultimate perfection of the world. It’s hard.

In that spirit, I hope that you, the reader, can see past the attack, 
to the love.

Amin

Contents

NICE
I’m OK
September 11
If we only knew
Cute Babies

Jumble
open house
driving along
miracles
being and becoming

1587 Sanchez
Shopping
Old Man
What’s in a life
It never ends

Imagination
Wrestling with the world
How long is a minute
scraps of paper
Alone

Yes Too
How Many
Drinking Tea
Empty Yourself
Moments
Seeing the World in a garden

My face
Today
Waking up
Crossings
Krishna
True Nonsense
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NICE
I live in a nice neighborhood
the people here are nice
the houses are nice
The cars, trucks and SUVs are nice

 Each child has their own basketball hoop
They play with their fathers and mothers
not with each other

The garbage cans are filled
The water flows out of the taps and into the sewers
while the rivers run dry
There are no sidewalks, but who walks anyway?

Not too far away there are nice stores
filled with nice things and nice people
standing in long lines with big shopping carts
It’s all very nice

 The schools are very nice
The students mostly white, middle class
with the occasional dark skin

There is a police curfew on the children at night
they must not be on the streets after ten
and, after all,
there’s nothing for them to do anyway
except get into trouble talking and smoking
It’s all very nice

People are very polite, while around the world
billions of other people are kept down, animals are tortured,
and the environment is raped
so that everything can all be

nice 

I’M OK

I’m Ok, and you’re fucked up
and you,
and you,
and everybody else who’s not like me,
including me
when I’m not like I want to be
I’m fucked too

Nobody is OK

SEPTEMBER 11

Every one of us is so vulnerable
Naked, a thin layer of clothing and walls
anything can happen at any moment

 The old saying
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”

for our own protection
we need to be aware of the consequences of our actions
actions which fall into the world like stones into a pond
the ripples eddying out in greater and greater circles
What goes around comes around

We all live in glass houses
Without even realizing it
We have thrown millions of stones at people we’ve never even met
will never meet

Those stones were boomerangs
the glass crumbles into a fine dust
and suffocates us

IF WE ONLY KNEW

 If we only knew the full consequences of our actions
If we only knew how the animals we eat had lived
how they died,and
how the rest of our food is produced

If we only knew what happens to the rivers we get our water from, and the plants and animals that need the river
and what is put in that water

If we only knew
all the poisons in our daily environment
what happens to our garbage
how people around the world starve
so that we may get fat

If we only knew
all the suffering caused to
People
Animals
plants
places
ourselves
our children
our friends
our neighbors

by our disrespectful lifestyle
and thoughts

We know, but
we don’t want to know,
so we pretend we don’t know
because knowing is very inconvenient
because then we have to change

How will we live?
What will we eat?
Where will we work?
How will we get around?

more importantly
How will we get a sense of self worth and superiority?
If we’re not busy, important, affluent people?

When World War Two ended the German people said
“we didn’t know”

We know

CUTE BABIES

Cute baby calves

Cute baby lambs

Cute baby pigs

Cute baby chicks

cute baby steak

cute baby lamb chops

cute baby veal cutlets

cute baby hamburgers

cute baby mutton

cute baby porterhouse

cute baby rib eye

cute baby sirloin

cute baby T-bone

cute baby….

cute babies

 

JUMBLE

Clothes are heaped all around
Books too
The kitchen is a mess
Dishes dirty piled high
The bathroom floor is wet

I stink
and have no energy

The music is playing
in my head
Passing the time
Yeah
Yeah, yeah

Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on, if you don’t like it
but anyway there’s nobody here but me

If it didn’t make me sick I’d get drunk
instead I have to content myself with caffeine
what difference does it make, because any escape from life is temporary
The title of my new novel, which I’ll never write
Sentenced To Life: Prison Planet Earth
I must have done something really fucked up to deserve this

That attitude ruins my life
but it won’t go away
and since I really do believe in reincarnation
I just have to live with it 

OPEN HOUSE

Welcome to California, where the American Dream is dead
Work hard, play by the rules
end up with nothing

unless you are really good with computers
or some other high paying profession
in which case you get a heart attack along with the capital gains

One bedroom, one bath house,
five hundred thousand dollars
how much do you need to make to buy that?

of course you can always pay rent, high rent, foreverand end up with nothing

Woody Guthrie said, “if you ain’t got the do re mi, better stay right where you are”, except that, sooner or later,
it’s probably going to get to you, too, right where you are

 Maybe it’s national karma for what we did to the Native Americans
Maybe it’s just bloodless capitalism
or maybe it’s just the way it is
but whatever it is

it sucks

DRIVING ALONG

You’re driving along and
you keep going and going and going
until finally
you admit to yourself that you’ve missed your turn

it’s so dark ,you can’t see any signs
traffic is moving 100 miles and hour
your gas tank is on E
you’re exhausted

and god may not even be home

MIRACLES

Which is a greater miracle?
Walking on water, or a drunkard sobering up?
Spontaneous remission of cancer, or a closed heart opening?
Living for a thousand years, or loving those that hurt you?
Turning lead into gold, or ordinary people becoming bodhisattvas?
The world as it could be, or this world as it is, as it was, as it shall be,
world without end
Amen

BEING AND BECOMING

 

I hope to be a human being

Most of my consciousness is a human doing

A lot of that time is human becoming

Sometimes I’m a human having

There may be other things to be, but I’m not aware of them

 

I’ve had moments when I felt a part of all-that-is

but I couldn’t hold it, couldn’t keep it, couldn’t attain it

although I sure have tried

 

other times I’ve felt utterly bereft, empty, suffering. That is hell.

 

Most of the time I function and feel not great, not awful.

That’s all

 

1587 SANCHEZ

 

A 46 year old

walking past the house I lived in when I was 23

There is nothing to weep for, my life is much better now

 

SHOPPING

 

Going into stores, looking at the stuff

There is nothing I need, and I don’t even want much anymore

What could I buy that would change my life in a deep way?

What great bargain could I find?

 

I still look, it’s a habit, comforting in it’s familiarity

My material ambitions are falling away

replaced by the ambition to be peace

rather than to do the things which would bring me peace

to be secure

rather than to work towards security

to be love, loving, lovable and loved

 

 

OLD MAN

 

An old man no one sees does Tai Chi in his garden

outside, a wind of harmony blows

 

 

WHAT’S IN A LIFE?

 

People, places, things

 

thoughts, emotions, actions, reactions

 

Animals, insects, plants

 

Beginnings, endings, completions, and incompletions

 

Pleasure and pain

illusions of loss and gain

and so much more, and all for

what?

 

A good night’s sleep?

Breakfast in the morning?

Work in the day, sex in the evening, golf on Saturday, church on Sunday, death at 80, or 90, or 40?

 

?

 

IT NEVER ENDS

 

In our lives

there will always be more dishes to wash

there will always be more bills to pay

there will always be…..

there will always be…..

there will always be…..

 

IMAGINATION

 

Living in a world of bright lights and television ,it’s hard to imagine

the extraordinary

but

light a candle, stay up late, look at the moon and the stars and

many things seem possible

 

WRESTLING WITH THE WORLD

 

At some point in every life the day comes when we try to make sense

of this world we have been born into, especially our fellow humans

The tool we use is important

 

Using the mind to look at the world

is like trying to see the sky through a microscope

by this road many highly intelligent people have gone to despair

because their self interest and emotions clouded their minds

yet for some jnanis this is the way

 

Using the heart to embrace the world

is like picking up the edge of the sharpest razor

with your tongue

a death of a thousand cuts

raw and bleeding, you cry out, yet, somehow

you must use your heart

but it’s not enough

 

Using the spirit

an ephemeral thing

which for most of us is a concept, not an experience

using the spirit to unite with the world

to interpenetrate it, to become it, to feel it, to perceive it on the deepest levels, which deepen as we deepen

and then to find that the world is a mirror

it requires infinity to grok infinity,

and in the end,

in some way this poet can only suspect at this point

the world is infinite

and we are too

 

 

HOW LONG IS A MINUTE

 

How long is a minute?

60 seconds, stupid, obviously

but how long does a minute feel?

 

A minute waiting

a minute watching TV

a minute watching your child suffer

a minute at work, at 4:59

a minute making love

a minute having sex

a minute lying on a sunny beach, drunk

 

You get the point

 

How long is a year?

How long is a life?

Can a nineteen year old have lived longer than an eighty one year old?

subjectively speaking

or is that absurd?

 

To quote a cigarette ad

“it’s not how long you make it, it’s how you make it long”

 

What and who are you being in your life?

 

SCRAPS OF PAPER

 

Scraps of paper

are better for writing poems than clean

neat notebooks because

life is not clean and neat

 

ALONE

 

Alone with my mind, which will not shut up

which needs distraction

 

This is boredom

this is torture

this is truth

 

YES TOO

 

I have been looking for something for a long time

Many years ago I found what I was looking for

but I did not recognize it

so I kept on looking

 

Now I find, that all this time

it has been here, by my side, and all I have to do

is to say

yes

 

HOW MANY

 

How many lives have I lived

how many problems have I had

how many times have I gotten drunk

and

here I am

 

DRINKING TEA

 

I sit and drink tea in a new home

where I will be for one week

one in a series of many

the cats play, and I have my books

and a meditation cushion

the tea is good

 

EMPTY YOURSELF

That empty place you’re trying to fill

ain’t nothing ever gonna fill it

not food, not sex, not chocolate, not alcohol, not drugs

not all the daily narcotics of TV, newspapers, politics, empty words and conversations

not the high power distractions of romance, ambition, dedication, sacrifice, success, anger

and all the other feelings and emotions

not writing poems like this

ain’t nothing ever gonna fill that empty place in you, except

this breath

this movement

this moment

because the only thing which can ever truly fill emptiness

is emptiness

 

give it all up

get it all back

and give it up again, and again, moment by moment

again and again, moment by moment

you will be  full-filled

 

MOMENTS

I picked up my watch and caught it going backwards
it  thought it had me fooled
but I caught it

I thought these days felt very long
maybe it’s two hours forward and one hour backward
so even though only one hour goes ahead on the clock
it’s really three hours 

that’s it, so really
I’m already well over a hundred
and I like it that way

who says that time passes fast
in this house
every moment is eternity 

Amin

 

SEEING THE WORLD IN A GARDEN

 I sat in the garden and saw the whole world

A butterfly, buds, birds, cats, spiderwebs, rotting wood, sun, and spirit

 MY FACE

Looking at my face in the bathroom mirror

hot water runs, the glass fogs, I begin to disappear

all that’s left are dark patches of eyebrows and hair

and in a hundred years, probably not even that

 

TODAY

I’ve accomplished so much today

I woke up

I shit

I took a bath

I ate breakfast

I watched my breath

I took a nap

I read a book

I fed the cats

I watched a movie

and now, after a full day

I’m going to sleep

 

Amin 

WAKING UP

Waking up from a dream that has lasted my whole life

the fog rolls away, the morning is clear and warm

The cat cats, the people people

all is perfection

 

CROSSINGS

 

Crossing the ocean of samsara on a very small raft

Fortunately, along the way there are many small islands with delicious ripe fruit

The other shore is a long series of short steps away

and even the dark night does not last forever

 

KRISHNA

Krishna plays his flute
the gods and goddesses dance
The gopis spread their legs and
assume their favorite positions

flowers burst forth in orgasms of color
bees happily buzz
nature is fulfilled 

TRUE NONSENSE

Speaking spiritually
Everyone in the world has exactly what they need
there is perfect justice
So much suffering the mind cracks open like an eggshell
and the baby emerges
There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become
As the gunas ceaselessly engage in activity

Why haven’t I let myself taste all the joy of the world?
Why have I chosen to gorge my mind on pain and suffering, instead of dancing to the flute of divine love?

Why haven’t you?
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