"I AM THE DUST," said ITZIK
ISRAEL IS NOT A PLACE
IT'S A STORY
THE NAME THAT CANNOT BE NAMED
IS THE ONLY NAME













the rest is just our head

INVENTED REALITY
NOT REAL

or it's real what we make it

The Lunar Module

The Deletante is in the kitchen
reading fruit loops in the rain
There are side drops in the living room
but the sandwich makers sit lazily on parade floats
in buildings where there are lithe people dancing in barrooms
while lullaby's are sung by the Vegan Boys
in the best parade
in this galaxy of spaceships

Thanksgiving morning 2010

Sitting on Alcatraz
watching the sunrise
as the fire burns
and the singers sing
and the dancers dance
like Indians
Dancing to pray
praying for the indigenous people
praying for us all
to wake up
and stop digging each other up
digging up our ancestors and putting them in museums.

Craw Horses

Felt pens and big heaping piles of dilapidated hot dog carts
These soft cry-babies in a dream about 80 year old Charles Rangel
getting censured for ethics violations
The mental shrimp police under the table sleeping
Watching the time machine show on the weather channel
trying to figure out the news
Sucking hose juice through a Slurpee straw on Fridays
waiting for the days to change
Traveling through the universe on a disappearing wheel
Isn't this so much fun
going around and around
mentally praying for a miracle to interrupt this cranium trap?
"Gveld, gvold," Glenn Beck said gently on his show
listening to himself
and playing a special little game for oyster eaters.

11/3/10-Blackberries

It's all in the past
these mixed up universes
the slowly beating heart
under influence of barbiturates
the soft pliant emptiness whispering dreams

There are blackberries on this thorny bush
at the top of a hill in Lagunitas, California
No more paved road beyond this point
just big trees, damp earth, and hippies

There are blackberry bushes in my mind
growing along a fence
in the southern countryside of England
in 1986
next to my mothers house
with cigarette smoke and thatched roof
and it's all inside my brain in 2010
right here in the verdant California green
next to a blackberry bush
at the brightest hour of dusk
in the silence

Around the end of October 2010...

All the madness rolled in on us again from over there in the clouds near the southern rainbows where silent mornings dreamt of star bursts eating nuclear joy parades. Those are other places--now--we can't go there again. It's over. Give up. 10:00 pm, Oct 27th, 2010, stoned again. This ever engrossing dream, yet we have to let go. We must let go. There is a greater power in this universe. That One is _Od. And I turn it over to that-to that power-while that Who song plays and says "you are forgiven." An agreement? hmm. Well Scotty pants...? I don't know about that. There is a very kind joint outside that has yet to be finished--the addiction said. The higher [the higher higher self that doesn't need to get high] self has to take over, the observer has to take charge, otherwise it's more shadow, more fake mystery, burying ourselves in these substances and fun, fake union with the divine. Doing nothing all the time, experiencing ultimate connection, and yet perpetuating the lie.

Striped polo shirts and 300 thread count brown cotton sheets
Tennis shoes and a flat screen television
A washing machine, a dish rack, a kitchen table
and futuristic couch
more cars than a very small village might have,
scattered across the globe
little dancing fairy girls
and nothing talking over and over again
about the very thing it knows something about

An Introduction to What Comes Before It After it in the Backwards Book

It was so up and down, inside out and right side in, under water and under glass, and looking at myself through a dream of some future that never was. So I lost the game and shut down the computer and said nothing out of some care for what you thought. You. Audience, the ones who don't read, who leave me lonesome before the page, the illuminated screen, the past placement of the dream. So it was lost and it was found, and under California maple leaves with a squirrel taunting Kingston from the tree, I bid you hello again. That's now, and now I'll open the pages of the notebooks and try and find some semblance of scribbles and transcribe them to this machine and we'll celebrate this nothingness, in the midst of nothing, as everything unfolds from the midst of this earth orbiting this sun, while we zoom out with telescopes, through our little orbs called eyes, into the past, and make up stories about meaning and shoot each other with inventions, talk politics, eat snakes, and take seriously the myths we call religion. Up slick mind head dreadful bears. Beware.

California

OK, this is really getting tedious. The post modern apocalypse is well under way and I'm just not sure how much more I can stand. We are so uncool that we have made being uncool the cool thing to do. Being hip nowadays basically just means dressing up like an idiot taking a number of different things that were hip and "new" at some time in the last century or so, pretty much before there was the internet, and then throwing it down on yourself and hitting the town. So go for it. Mustache, tight pants, a scarf, a number of tattoos, converse shoes, some plaid, some checkers, a fedora, a bouffant, which was already regurgitated under reputation of hip in the 80's, so you are pretty much double reusing it. Cool. It's just that everybody (generalizations are cool) out here in California, and I'm really speaking especially for the bay area here, as I'm not spending too much time anywhere else at the moment, is just so totally uncool trying to be cool that I just don't even know what's happening anymore. I've completely gone insane, and I'm going to Brooks Brothers immediately, but wait, it's all so fucking hip, that I'll even be hip if I try to not be hip by dressing like a preppy unhip person who shops at Brooks Brothers, because some other hipster trying to uphip the other hipsters has already gone full on Brooks Brothers because it's so unhip that it's now hip. It's just ridiculous. Hip. You are loud, obnoxious, smiling incessantly like you're posing for a facebook profile picture, spouting off in your little group of collectively stylized individuals each individually stylized and collectively hip, so much so that you seem to forget that you are living in La La land and you think you are cool. You think this is all so cool. With your little Matthew Dear and the Band show. Matthew Dear with his little Bouffant, with his trumpet player with his little Bouffant, with his drummer with his little Bouffant. Matthew Dear with your tambourine and your tight fitting vest. Dude, please stop. I want off this merry-go-round, and I want off now. The Talking Heads were awesome. They were cool. They were hip. You doing them is not cool. I'm not cool. I'm not trying to be cool. Or am I? The problem is that not trying to be cool is the cool thing to do now. So to be really cool maybe you have to try to be cool, because that's just gotta be the hip thing to do if everybody else is trying to be uncool to make sure everybody knows they aren't trying to be cool. Are you getting the picture Matthew Dearest? Is there any other option than suicide? Suicide is cool because it's proof that you aren't trying to be cool, because like to kill yourself you have to be really depressed, and that's not something you can fake like you can fake hipness by shopping at Brooks Brothers, growing a mustache and showing off your tattooed arms in a short sleeve collared shirt buttoned to the top and finished with a bow tie and a sweater vest, along with a gold tooth and a gangster accent, remnants of times past when you thought that was cool. I miss New York City and I miss Aspen Colorado, I miss Barcelona, Spain, places where assholes are really assholes, and not just pretending to be assholes because they think its cool. I've traveled all over this world and never been to a place like California, so full of people who think they are cool and willing to be totally uncool to prove how cool they are because they think being uncool is cool. California. What a bunch of hype. There may be real people out here somewhere. But they are lost in translation, lost in a sea of sweater vests and tattoos and people too hip to be cool. I'm an asshole. Sure. I'm a critical prick in the midst of post modern apocalypse. It's over. We're post history. Information overload is waiting for you to turn on your computer and put your mouth around the fire hose called the internet. I'm drowning in it. I don't know about you. We're watching reality TV on the History Channel. Where is the reset button?

Captain

don't listen to that brain, it does not know what it's thinking.

OK Crew

Cawbirds. Let's just admit the game, and get this going. From now on we are in training. Let's get to it. We have work to do. Let's get to it. LGTI.

The Time Harpoon Salutes Mrs. Westinghouse

Well, well, well. Here we go old caw birds.
Ho Down Brown Town just came into town with his girlfriend Wes.
Oh Home
Smokie smokie hot cake taco.
and Hidei-son on the jumbo-tron popping prick on Downtown and Wes,
Oh Home parade, by criticizing their sushi eating as fake Japanese,
unlike his oh so precious traditional food.
No avocado in your shrimp tempura roll,
in your mind head on this day in 1975 with his ocean head with its mind medicine
Inside your own head cheese medicine man,
I'll eat my shrimp tacos my way with my head cheese and peanut sauce on the side please
and fuck you with your pivotal face swine herd
Your uncle Buck ate the taco truck
I'll peanut threaten your lamp shade fluid, Dweeb!
and go ahead and watch me as I eat my cabbage
Go ahead.
Eat it.

The top of the car stuck down
Tragic head cheese and the prince got robbed
Snatched the bills straight from the hand of the dealer-man into the hands of the french madam
and you know where she went, don't you?
Out of the house and into the kitchen,
the dining office of the flying dog ranch,
who ate the flying squirrel and bit off his nuts
like a true harpoon of the 90's
Oh yes
that was the truth of the matter, was it not?
hmm?
Franklin, did you not slide the harpoon handle down the avenue through the robotic arm?
I thought so.
The denus is in school
a compulsive procrastinator,
a hound of forever more,
a small vine of handies in the mind head house.
Didn't you think so mrs. Westinghouse?
I thought you did.
I knew you did.
Oh how dare you boy, have you really lost your mind?
Oh, I certainly did Ma. Can't you tell?
His alien space ship as the man reported
out here on the space hat
with the neighboring beings watching us on their monitors,
watching all the movies at the same time,
while we live them and make our own.
Just as long as we believe something, or ask ourselves what we mean.
What do our stories mean?
What do they say, these stories of ours, as they go,
as they lay themselves down the line,
one mark at a time,
rotating through their pages on the merry go round
inside our heads
as we invent reality and go to concerts and pack our brains with slime
Theology, history?
The blathering time harpoons,
Fogging up the place.

Baseballs

The Yankees are making a comeback against the Rangers,
with Georgie Boy W. in the stands watching his old team
and its making me want to root for the Yankees;
and time is getting eaten with the shapes on the Persian rug dancing on the floor;
and a whole lot of marijuana out here in California that I'm not smoking,
yet my brain is moving slower than it ever has before
and I'm totally sober in my red shirt and plaid shorts
with baseball music playing in the background,
the seventh inning stretch
instead of anonymous meeting attendance.
A ball and two strikes
and the whole universe unfolding.
7 billion Messiahs dancing and fucking all over the planet
And another Texas Ranger just got struck out by those damn Yankees
while George Bush looks on
and the baby in the E-trade commercial trades on a smart phone on TBS
and the Yankees take it,
winning the first game of the ALCS playoffs, October 15th, in the year of our Zord, 2010.

4/21/09

As the plane plummeted from the sky,
the calm pilot said:
"well ladies and gentlemen,
it's time to say your prayers."
He felt a tinge of joy as he saw the ground rushing up from beneath.
"We'll meet again in the next dimension."
Then he smiled as the world of illusion exploded
and he flew into the emptiness
to begin another dream

Late April 2009

The dirty little imp
with his hairy green spine
crawled back into existence
his nose covered with floss
his fingers numb

addiction

I'm addicted to facebook. I'm admitting it. It's sucking my life away. I keep going back to check it. Scrolling down, down, down. Thinking of things to say... who said what, who is where, ooh, pictures... what, hmm. Let me just comment on that. I have this to say and that to say, and lets debate the semantics of the meaning of existence, and I just can't shut up, and I have papers to write, and things to do, and wait, wait, wait, let me just check to see if anyone commented on any of this idiotic drivel I have written, or let's see if someone commented on my comments on their comment always trying to intellectually one up someone. This is a problem. Brain damage. Brain damage. DUH DUH DUH. Facebook. Wee. My brain is floating into the ether-net. DUH-m. DUH-m. DUH-m. I'll just post some incriminating pictures of myself to disqualify myself from credibility amongst the judgmental element of Facebookers... or business community, or who cares. My life is an open book. A FACEBOOK! No pay, nothing, just free advertising for the corporate interests who pay to get exposure amongst the loons like me who are so lonely that they just post their lives away, like, "hey, hey, hey, it's me. I exist! I exist! seriously, like I actually exist." Or do I? Is there nothing more than this glowing screen of pixelated information in front of me? Scroll down, down, down. What's going on down there? Is my brain stem down there somewhere?

just saying

you may never meet a man more proud of the fact that he worked as a butler.

Another Sunday in the Lodge. Good One.

Well howdy pardners and pardnerettes. Howdeedoodee? Felt like I should haw feld the old lench volt, so here we go. There was a mighty good sweat tonight out in the dome. The french clipped swelderhouse came back home. With his ear bags dragging and his hair fine cool, the dog faced singer now was high on his mule. And so many folks now so exited about medicine. This meeting, that meeting, peyote in their headicine. Now we all know we all know not, but some do know they like smoking pot. Many of these, like red road wayans, are up on the wagon, running, like I, from those boozy smoke dragons. So then we begin to see the green doctor in their eyes. They've been shown the light, but then it gets a little foggy so they wanna see it right. Back to the doctor, more medicine to be explored, but we are the medicine, we are the door. The button in the dirt that makes colors in our eyes, is just another molecule that can really warpitize. It's all true, my dears. The year doesn't even exist. 2012 and the new age twist. What is 2012? Now. What do we know? 2012 is now, 2012 is 10,000 years ago. A year is a social invention, full of good intentions. Time is more than flexible. It's empty. See look, there's plenty. See what the doctor says. He'll tell you what's in your head. What's in your head will tell you what the world means. What the world means will tell you what's in your head. Which is me just saying what I just said. The flower blossoms. The tree grows. The life eats life eats life eats life. The molecule eats itself; is what it is. IS.

Huh?

What's up with the meat dress? It seems to be the talk of the town, but seriously, I mean seriously? Are you kidding me? What is wrong with this Gaga woman who everyone is gaga about? It's not like the meat dress is even an original idea, it's been done before. Some designer even takes responsibility for it? Gross. I mean have we as a culture gotten so dumb that we get off on the post post modern apocalyptic irony of something so obviously obvious "look, I'm a piece of meat" symbolism, combined with the conspicuous consumption built right in with enough meat to feed a small village, going to waste adorning the body of a woman who seems to just take everything Madonna did in her career and make it just a little more ridiculous and expect everyone to praise her and give her awards, which is exactly what we are doing? What? I really don't get it. Maybe she is just so very clever, and the joke is on us, because we are awarding her disgusting, offensive, unimaginative, sensibilities, maybe for no more reason that we are in the midst of a disgusting, offensive, unimaginative consumer culture with our heads so deeply buried in the sand that we can't even to stop and smell the rotten meat, and the rotten idiot wearing it. Did she at some time in the not so distant past make a bet with some customer at the strip club and say "listen, I bet you a bindle that I can make millions of dollars dressing like a tramp on acid, acting like an asshole, frequently wearing Elton John glasses, and just generally being a symbol of a society sinking to the bottom of the delusion pit?" If she did make that bet, then I applaud her. She wins.

Once Again

Instead of the idiocy reflected in the video we ad libbed last eve, we thought it prudent to try and write something a little more rational. So Happy Jewish New Year my friends. Shana Tova! This time of Rosh Hashana is a time of reflection for the Jewish faith. I'm taking a class this semester at the Center of Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, called Cultures of the Jews. It is important to note the fact that it is not called culture of the Jews. There is not one culture of the Jews. This is a religion and a population that has changed over time, been influenced and has influenced the majority cultures they have lived amongst. They have lived in Palestine, Egypt, and throughout most of the rest of the world in the Jewish Diaspora. They have spoken different languages, been influenced in different ways, but there has been something that has tied this people together over thousands of years, and kept them somehow separated from their neighbors. They have held some Jewish culture or identity which reminded them of their difference, and they have chosen it, and embraced it. At different times, like in the times of the Maccabees, there has been active conversion by the Jewish people of gentiles into the Jewish faith and tribe. At times in the past the difference between Jew and non-Jew has been much more fluid. It is important to remember that Abraham was not a Jew, and he was the father of both Isaac and Ishmael, one, Isaac, who became the father of Jacob, who became Israel, and Ishmael who is known as the father of the Arab peoples who would give birth to the Muslim faith. David himself is the great grandson of a Moabite. If we go back further in the Hebrew Bible which is the foundation of both Christianity and Islam, we find one people. "Now the whole earth had one language and the same words...And the Lord said, "look they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech." (Genesis [B'reshiyth] 11:1-9) Indeed we have been confused, but even here in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, we find in the origin story One people, scattered and dispersed and confused by different languages. It was this one people who were the mothers and fathers of the Jews, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Scientologists, the Hindus, the Christians, and the rest. According to this story, these first people were the mothers and the fathers of us all. It was only after we became confused that we began to see ourselves as separate peoples who built up faiths and cultures around ourselves, blocking ourselves off from our fellow brother and sister human beings and began to identify ourselves as us and them. My people, your people, well even in the founding story of the Jewish people, it's right there, we are all one people, if you just read back a few pages before Jacob wrestles with the Angel who is afraid of the light and gets "blessed" with the name Israel. (Genesis 32:26-28) Within the field of Anthropology we find the same phenomenon, they identify this people and that people and focus on all the differences, but if we just go back far enough in their discoveries, we see our common heritage, and find all our hominid ancestors emerging in Africa, the Greek word for which is Ethiopia. So if we go back far enough we find that we are all Ethiopians, every human being alive on earth. We are all one people. And if, as the Lord states in Genesis 11:6, that "nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them," then we can most certainly begin to manifest our oneness again, which has been hidden from us for thousands of years by our confusion. We have proved our creative capabilities by our inventions, the microchip, the cellular phone, the rocket ship and space station, the walls we have built up around ourselves in our cultures, we have been marvelous creators, creating what we have proposed. It is time now, in this time of reflection, to propose we all come together again and create harmony, peace, unity, love, and respect for our Ultimate Creator, that which gave us the power of creation. So much power was put in our hands, and it is time we used it for good, for truth, justice, and righteousness. It begins with all of us acknowledging that we are one people, one human race. We are all Jews, we are all Muslims, we are all Buddhists, we are all what we are, perfect and imperfect, empty and whole, we're just a bunch of lost Ethiopians longing to know ourselves again as who we really are.

Shana Tova u'Metuka