The Spirit of Power
lyrical poetry
Coming To Town
All of these years I’ve come to town
I never looked hard at what I imagined
Just dimmed my eyes and walked my way
In burning fields I tossed pebbles away
And stepping into these bones
Garments and shoes pass me by
On their way to hills marked with stone
Singing birds I couldn’t see
Imagining their shapes from pictures
Beyond the steel brick and mortar
One way streets and guarded borders
Behind iron gates against the open sky
Until once I finally did see
Wings and feathers and beaks
While I breathed the smoke of a street vendor
Grilling hot dogs
Perched high above on a roof ledge
He turned his back
And dropped a load on the vendor’s grill
(Source: thecrowbuzz.com)
A Conversation Between Christ and Mohammed
Mohammed was on his hands and knees bowing before Christ and kissing his feet.
“Oh, forgive me, lord. I just needed to tell my stories. It got so lonely out in the desert stealing my neighbors’ camels. I had no idea people would take my stories so earnestly.”
“Oh, get up, Mohammed, get up. You know I don’t like others bowing to me. My stories were no more real than yours. In fact, I didn’t even write them myself. Some very impressionistic men wouldn’t stop following me around. I thought they were homosexuals and lunatics. So I taught them what I could. What was I supposed to do, let them wander off to some camel thief to be told how to think?”
“Very funny, Jesus.”
“I’m just fucking with you. Come on now. After all, didn’t I show them how to steal vegetables from the fields of farmers on days the farmers went to say prayers?”
“Ah, yes. That was a good one, Jesus.”
“Hey suse.”
“What?”
“I prefer the Latin.”
“Oh, ok. Anyway, how come you never wrote your own stories, Heysuse?” Mohammed giggled. “Haha, I see what you mean. It sounds funny. Reminds me of that song by the cowboy singer, Johnny Cash. You know, about the boy named Sue.”
“Oh him. I had a hard time with him, you know. He just refused to believe there wasn’t some character named Jesus he could reconcile with the idea he had in his head. Finally, I had to tell him ‘now look, Johnny, I can appreciate all the alcohol and drug problems you had but I had nothing to do with them. I didn’t supply you with all the alcohol and booze, nor did I supply you with willpower to stay away from them. You did it all on your own.” But he had swallowed so deeply that false humility shit that they teach in the religions that he couldn’t see that it was pride that led him to take credit for one side of the coin while turning his back on the other. They wear that shit like a badge of honor. Like a shaman who goes out into the drugged unknown to bring the fantasies back to his people as revelation. Like someone does when he denies himself food for so long, or light, or sleep. You know, ‘I have made this dangerous journey that gives me credentials to preach to you. I earned those goddamned credentials. Now listen to me.’ But if he also takes full credit for getting off that shit he loses estimation in the eyes of others, and it concerns him.”
With this, both Christ and Mohammed were speechless for a moment. Then Christ spoke, “isn’t that what you did, Mohammed?”
“Well, yes, now that you put it that way. But, if not me it would’ve been someone else everyone would’ve followed. Like you, what was I supposed to do, let them go off and seek the philosophy of some garden raider?”
“Yes, you are quite right,” said Jesus with a hearty laugh.
“All I wanted was to show others how to be creative; to do something with themselves instead of their petty useless bickering. Constantly arguing over which figment of the imagination is the real one. Most silly.”
“Yes, yes. And those elaborate regulations they made up in our names.”
“I wipe my ass with the Koran, Jesus. I don’t mind telling you. There is a reason why Ayman Zawahiri was called number two you know.”
“He isn’t a number one.”
“That would be less messy.”
“If he were like my popes of old he probably has a brainwashed boy clean after him.”
“With his tongue.”
“Yes, yes. As it has been with my popes in time past.”
“If it were only that, Jesus. The pathetic coward is hiding in the mountains, fantasizing about fucking little boys and brainwashing them into hating and killing. As if I would ever want my name on any religion that is taught by such cowards, teaching people they are useless unless they kill others who don’t believe as they do.”
“Now, Mohammed, you are going to work yourself all up again.”
“I cannot help it, Jesus. Goddamnit, motherfucking Christ!”
“Haha!!! I couldn’t say it better myself.”
“These hypocrites that want to be gods themselves, claiming their murders of innocent and defenseless people in my name; hiding like cowards in the mountains, slapping women around, raping their daughters and sodomizing boys. These insecure weasels think they can keep women from learning they are actually superior to these maggots that call themselves men. Those bastards are afraid of women because they don’t know how to fuck; when they do have sex with a woman they are cuming before they can even penetrate. They make laws to keep the women from marrying foreigners and finding out that these extremists are pathetic, lame motherfuckers. They can’t think, they can’t get along with anyone and they can’t fuck.”
“Boy, you sure are in a foul mood today, Mohammed.”
“Well you would be too if you saw millions of people using my name for hatred and killing and subjugating others.”
“Come on. Who do you think you’re talking to? What about my people? My people taught yours a few ingenious methods of killing. And don’t think your people have the market covered on brainwashing. If the Americans used some of the methods my followers used to extract confessions the entire Middle East would’ve confessed to crimes of terrorism.”
“At least your people had the Reformation. My people still live in the dark ages and blame the rest of the world that gains in science, technology and intelligence have come at their expense.”
“I must admit I find it hard to match you on that point.”
At this point Christ let a loud and thunderous fart.
“Jesus!”
“Yes?”
“No. I mean Jesus!”
“No shit.”
“That’s good to hear. I was worried a bit.”
“No problem. I’m sure we could have one of our “martyrs” clean it up.”
“Oh, yes. Those fucking morons would do anything if they thought it was my wish.”
“No need. Mother Theresa doesn’t mind cleaning my dirty clothes. It happens once in a while. All those figs and locust beans. It’s hard to break old habits.”
“Tell me about it. Sometimes I cannot resist interfering in dreams on occasion to inspire some of those idiots on their knees five times a day to do something useful, like stealing their neighbor’s camels.”
“I always wanted to question you on that point, Mohammed. Stealing camels is somehow honorable?”
“Ah, you know, Jesus. If you declare a war first anything is acceptable.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes. The war thing. It sure has a way of justifying things, doesn’t it?”
“It’s the only road to honor for someone who has no honor.”
“Come again?”
“When a man wants to ignore the fact no one around honors or respects him he must abuse them into respect and then he must lie to himself that the respect his captives give him is real.”
“I see. It’s too bad those fools down there have to believe in fairy tales. It’s too bad they don’t realize they are simply projecting the respect they desire into a fairy tale that in turn provides the credentials they so badly desire.”
“It’s your father’s fault, you know. He didn’t make them capable of sustaining magnanimity towards others who don’t hold similar beliefs or systems of judgments. They think the only way to have peace is for everyone to believe the same thing.”
“I believe you are confusing the beliefs of a few nomads whose ideology had an impression on you.”
“Have you heard the American politicians campaigning for office?”
“Touché.”
Christ looked at the effeminate features of Mohammed, the slender waist, thin long fingers, the soft skin on his freshly shaved face. “You know, Mohammed, you have a nice odor about you this evening. Do you have any plans?”
Mohammed’s desire caused sweat to break out on his forehead. “What did you have in mind, Jesus?”
Jesus bent over and kissed Mohammed’s hand. “I thought we could dine on pork entrails, baked catfish and barbecued snake. Then afterwards maybe we could go back to my place for a night cap.”
“Oh, how delightful. I will make sure to order an enema first.”
“Yes, please do. I do not like the smell of shit on my fingers when I take a piss in the morning. Now, where did I put that bible? Have to go take a shit you know.”
“Ah, reading material?”
“Ass wipe. I get enough of those stories from all the people who see me up here and try to tell me they know me. I ran out of ass wipe and the paper is rather absorbent for a book.”
“What would they think if their “lord” was out of ass wipe?”
“I’m sure the scholars would give them some reasonable explanation.”
“As always.”
(Source: thecrowbuzz.com)
Another Bukowski
The sultan sits on his throne
demanding to be entertained by poetry–
Poet, entertain me– he shouts as he farts and wheezes
I give you my time– ffppptttt!
(whew!)Entertain me goddamn it!
Hehe! As much as my flatulence
Register something in my brain
That lingers so well
Entertain me you fool
I’ll consume you while I flush
My personal comedian, entertainer
Maybe my thoughts don’t matter,
I’ll just use yours as my own later
To the imaginary harem I’ve collected on Twitter
Of pretty young girls less than half my age
A king’s prerogative you know
In the state of self absorption
Demanding that you know less than what I desire
Entertain me you son of a bitch
While I am wiping my ass and chastising you
With chirps and squeaks.
Are those the sounds you hear
When you read my words?
What’s the matter?
Don’t you want to serve me?
(Source: thecrowbuzz.com)
The Star of Babylon
What does Babylon look like?
If you must ask this question then simply look in the mirror
But you haven’t the strength to see it
Look out the window
Look on your tv
Look into your thoughts
You live in Babylon every day
But it is not the world you live in
It is the world you see
It is the degradation of perception through language structure
It isn’t one particular teaching
It is each of them
He who sees Babylon and knows it has reached the state of no-enlightenment
No one sees it through argument or coercion
The language of Babylon is the language coding one uses
The state of Babylon is geographically situated in the brain
Its ruler is the one that projects his thoughts unto others
The message is domination of the conceptual landscape
The weapons are arguments by those who profess to be blind
It insists in believing in the stupidity of others
It justifies its power through fear
(Source: thecrowbuzz.com)
The Blind Men Behind the Veil
Punishing peace
Ghost heroes
Practiced chants
shrivel and bloom
Children divided
with words
encumbering devices
Their lives framed
From whimper to croak
Men from the grave
Claiming children
With drunken stories
Teaching them
to chide things
They never learn to see
Like blind seers teaching
With each passing hour
Of each passing day
Always to look forward
To something new,
Something stimulating,
Never knowing,
Never seeing,
Forgetting
How came the lines
on the old man’s face.
(Source: thecrowbuzz.com)
Remembering Self
Give me a hot coffee and ice cream sandwich. Paint my nails. Anything that is illogical. Of all the influential people in the evolution of humanoids so few were like Socrates, a quibbler of words and pronunciations, filled with the grandiosity of winning a debate but oblivious to the fact he loses the argument because regardless of what he says he is flat out wrong. Debates do little to present the evidence in a way, even if it is a truth, to a person so that they are willing to reflect upon it. Plato, Buddha, Jesus, Nietzsche, Rabelais, Thoreau, Whitman… all sought to glorify the existence of self, not program it. The consciousness is not a computer that functions with logical algorithms and can never be replicated by a computer.
Millenniums from now the earth will be filled with cyborgs and zombies and machines that aren’t really alive. Men will become gods. They will come to see themselves as such. With their vanity and vainglorious recklessness they will forget what they were for hundreds of thousands of years and come to believe in themselves as gods because their consciousness will be superior to the consciousness of the machines which they create. Machines will be able to program themselves but never know what it is like to feel spontaneous emotion. Humankind will live in colonies on other planets where they can one day escape the wrath of the machines which will inevitably disengage from the superiority and mistreatment of humans.
One of the questions about that time will be if science will have eradicated all emotional attachment to self. We are in a war right now. The self is at war with the institutions of the world which want to assimilate it. The machines will be used by the institutions on its behalf, but will the selves, the independents program their own units, find a way to jam the signals of the armies of cyborgs of the world’s military systems, and of course be branded terrorists? I fear that in the environment we are living in now, the infant stages of Transhumanism, that the self will lie dormant among nationalistic peoples warring around the globe. All America has done with all of its military operations is perpetuate colonialism. The world is about to erupt and there isn’t a damn thing people can do because too many believe that it is selfishness and greed of the individual that is bringing it about. But it is the allegiances, the condemnation of the inner voice, the condemnation of self that is causing it. People are rejecting the compassion and altruism in their hearts for the idea of nation, succumbing to misleading propaganda. It isn’t for the good of the nation of selves who want to help their fellow man that we hate someone in the Middle East for some lies that the government and business leaders tell us.
My purpose is not to follow any person or institution. So many people will like someone for a while because they have a comrade in cause, but when the self asserts itself above common cause there is animosity. I don’t seek to tear down self. My mission is to lift up the self by tearing down the causes that afflict it. To have compassion for and to want community with others does not have to require a sacrifice of self. All institutions fail when they require sacrifices of self. It is the misleading rhetoric of politicians and business leaders that tell us otherwise, that you have to sacrifice something in order to belong. That is baloney. When someone is asked what they would have everyone do in order to be part of society the answer is always ALWAYS(unless the referent is a psychotic) something that everyone would do without coercion. We don’t need laws to coerce us to do what we naturally want to do. Laws add all the things that chisel away at the self to make him some gruesome manmade creature. I am not talking about exchanging one allegiance for another but a self who is capable of examining the evidence without needing to believe the interpretation of the evidence by this group, that group, this thinker, that one.
(Source: thecrowbuzz.com)
The I In Eye
I said I, and I said I, and I said I. that’s I to the third power = ME. I to the third power is less than EYE. in the mirror i see I and a little bit of EYE. when i see EYE i see a little bit of WE. you said I, and you said I, and you said I. You = a little bit of your EYE and a little bit of my EYE to the second power. For the manipulator WE = I to the 3rd power * the number he/she is trying to manipulate, and in his/her eye each ME is the small percentage in every one that is “evil.”
“He has who has eyes let him see.” But not with an I.
(Source: thecrowbuzz.com)
Prayer At A Republican Fundraiser
(A reprint from a piece i published in 2008 that is still appropriate. One thing that has become more apparent in the last four years is that elitism is synonymous with both major political parties.)
Let us bow our heads and pray
Thank you lord, for the leaders we have chosen
“Uh, Dad…”
“Not now, son. Thank you, oh Lord, for the leaders we have chosen, and the many blessings we have received through them.”
“Uh, Dad…”
“Don’t interrupt me when I’m praying, son. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Thank you for your bountiful blessings. Thank you for the many friends we have here among us. Mr. Crapschitz whose bank you saw fit to rescue. It sure is too bad about all those folks who lost their money, but I’m sure you will find a way to take care of them too. May you bless us by finding new buyers for all those homes that we had to take back from all those slothful sinners.
As we continue our prayer, Lord, help your chosen people in this room to benefit from your blessings and provide the energy that fuels transit and mass food distribution. Oh, and may your enemies be unsuccessful in their attempts to bomb our new headquarters in Dubai.
Oh, Jesus, we are sorry that our ancestors didn’t obey your father when he told them to annihilate their enemies. It is our generation that is paying for their sins. May you show us here today how to more effectively do that and we will make sure our citizens obey. Toward that end may you help Mr. Scrumpter to discover new weapons technology that our soldiers may be able to destroy more of our enemies while they are promoting freedom in an occupied land. And I’m sure he will now that you have provided his company with a new one hundred million dollar government contract.
Oh Lord, help us all to deplete the earth of its natural resources now so that our future generations won’t be faced with the decision of having to burn fossil fuels. And may you bless our sons and daughters in achieving ways to further a society of ever increasing consumption that continues to provide ever accumulating profits for those of us whom you have chosen to lead the multitude of folks in this the land of your people. May you smite those who protest and picket and whine about losing their jobs and homes. They are lazy, addicted sinners who do not follow you, oh Lord. They are disloyal and unpatriotic.
“Uh, Dad…”
“Goddammit, son, for the last fucking time, shut the fuck up and don’t bother me when I am praying. It’s rude and disrespectful. You do it again and I’m not taking you out on the yacht tomorrow. Okay, what is it? Whisper it in my ear.”
“Mr. Rojas is on the phone. He says he can get the men for that construction project you two talked about.”
“Oh, yes. Excellent. Thanks son. Oh, and tell Ms. Rodriguez to have her staff bring more wine.
Oh, Lord, may our wealth be able to support many of those who are currently so unfairly demonized simply because they did not sign the appropriate immigration paperwork…”
“I’d like to petition the Lord for a successful ad campaign to promote our new line of alcoholic beverages.”
“And we have a new online dating service.”
“Don’t forget to ask him to help the Red Wings win.”
“Hey, I have a great idea. Why don’t we make a tv show where viewers can call in with their money and ask us to include their prayers.”
“That’s not exactly a new idea. Although, there’s a vacuum there now that Falwell is dead.”
“I see a woman. Her first name starts with a P. She is suffering from some sort of mental issue. She is angry and frustrated all the time. I am praying for the Lord to heal you and clear your mind of all that has been troubling you.”
“Back in college you used to call that getting high.”
“There is a man in Texas with one leg. It’s been shot off.”
“Too vague. Could be a lot of people.”
“All right. Let’s be more respectful. This is a serious prayer. Really.
(Source: thecrowbuzz.com)
