What does God mean to me?
Hmmm. That's an unqualified question
as it stands.
If by god, you  mean
the momothesitic version
of an old man in the sky,
who needs believers to
live on false hopes
and rules by fear,
and is alleged to be the God of Love
yet when he was a Jewish god,
he slaughterd Egyptians, and
was later claimed to take sport in it.
I grant you that the source of the claim
contains other scientific and
historical inaccuracies,
 so the claim may be specious.

However, he also later requested
his followers to do the same,
to innocent people, and women, and children,
and he apparently
gets jealous, and angry,
and he sounds more like Saddam Husseien
or Pol Pot or Stalin
than a God of Love.
He is even claimed to have a spot
in a place of fire for
those who dare to question
the God of Love being so murderous,
and questioning how that can be
true,
and since his story has so many other
inaccuracies, is it true at all?

This Prince of Peace, according to his own family,
is still Pro-War.
His family is as dysfunctional
as any TV sit-com family,
or one here on earth,
that I began to wonder of
the veracity.

Does an omniscient God
who allegedly created everything
make scintific errors,
then make his family excoriate one of their own
for pointing out that he
really sees the truth?

Does an omnipotent God not
manage to inspire his own
to preserve their writings,
which claim divine inspiration?
Could he not separate the wheat
from the chaff for those?
Even for a century?

But if you mean some
out there god who doesn't interfere with my life,
why than I would have to say that I much
rather prefer to say

namaste.

And live my own life.

If one story is so riddled with faults
to render it untrue,
and the other so disconnected,
then I have nothing to fear.

I will create my own heavens or hells
and I know that if you sow a seed,
a whole plant comes up.
My karma ran over my dogma
a long time ago,
and I've never been
happier.

down on Highway 2,
just out of Kiwaukee,
along the Prescott River,
a place that was old,
hadn't been remodeled
in thirty years,
but kept up,
all the plastic inside,
the blinds, the plexi-glass
widows and skylights
were faded yellow by the sun.

The attempt to stock the shelves
with a little bit of everything
looked abandoned,
and as old as the blinds.
The gas pumps outside long
ago gave way to lack of use:

Premium: 47 cents a gallon

I stopped mostly
out of curiosity,
and to stretch my legs.
The sun was warm,
I realized I had to pee,
and I was the only one on the road
it seemed.

There on the door
was a sign, the ink slowly fading away
like everything else,
begging the momentary question
as to who owned the place now,
but I read that sign:

OUT OF BUSINES
NO ONE WANTS TO FISH WITH
THEIR THERAPICT

I laughed.
I laughed until I cried.
I cried until I laughed again,
the sadness of a place neglected,
so juxtaposed against
a sense of humor to the very end,
a quirky idea that didn't work out,
from a human just as quirky
it seemed,

who maybe died all alone,
his kids off in urban areas wanted
nothing to do with their
dad's remote retirement dream.
So the place sat empty and ignored,
until I came along.
I lifted an imaginary coke,
one of the bottled ones from inside,
a mere 6 ouncer,
and toasted Bob, introduced myself,
and asked,
"What's bitin' on the river?"

The vicious quiet,
the killing that
springs forth
into life later,
to feed and grow
and later, die
and give life
to bacteria
 fed on
by others and finally those that
nourish the seed tyhat sprouts
until it's
a green plant that
the rabbit eats
who in turn
is silently preyed upon
in the night
by the owl
who then discards
the remains that feed
the rich brown/black
soil that feeds
the thorny plant that
makes the blackberry
being picked by
the owner of
the Honda parked
on the side of the road
just east of my home.

She'll eat that berry,
discard it later,
where maybe that
remains is filtered
treated and
used as compost
that a gardner will
come pick up
and spread on his garden
which makes the
orange naturcium and cucumber he eats,
throwing the
green cucumber skin
on the rich smelling
compost heap
that feeds the bacteria
and worms and birds,
and maybe my cat.

I finished reading about dharma master Gampopa earlier today, and that really encouraged me. I was amazed at how much it encouraged me in fact.  Reading straight up dharma usually does, as does poetry.

And playing the drum kit....

Well, what if I own nothing? It's somewhat a matter of perspective because surely I will go out the way I came in, to some degree depending on how I actually die, and since I have no idea, like everyone else when that moment really is, maybe I should have a different perspective, like say maybe that I just rent all this stuff and the space I use to store all the stuff in Carlinesque manner and then get on with developing true riches like virtue and happiness that comes from making choices to develop relationships and family ties and helping others in as many ways as possible because then I don't have the burden of actually having that pang of fear of even thinking about losing everything I think I own because I won't be attached to those things which are after all just things and will break and go away even if thats after I'm gone; not to mention the cost of fixing all those things.

Detachment from people and things means that I really own nothing. The only thing that I "own" is the conciousness that is hanging out in this body at the moment, and this body will, well, we've already been over the whole death thing so maybe we can just get on with it because really death and impermanence are realities so we could do with building a society that recognizes that and create one that has better values than spending all our resources and time on stuff, because that seems just a bit insane really doesn't it, whereas I want my legacy to be that even though I was opinionated I was willing to listen and learn and be corrected and wanted what was best for people and even that doesn't matter all that much because I won't be here to boast of my own legacy but I will have a lot of good karma and that will benefit me beyond the life in this body.

So we really can enjoy life if we just open up our hands, with our palms up and fingers outstretched and experience life which is going to happen anyway but if we make better choices as to how we respond then the whole attachment thing will change and our minds will change because isnt a person simply what they think about, I mean it's been said many times throughout history and then we spend all our time thinking about how to get stuff and we get back into the same cycle we were in before so, well, if we just let life be and look inward we will find the answers we are looking for.

It won't happen any other way.

Is it a woman's lips,
or her breasts?
Certain politicians
might say so.

Is it being
in the presence of
the fire,
or the gasses that
ignite and roll over
your head?
I could think so.

Is it the
gun metal blue,
or precision feel
of a slide along
the barrel and receiver?
Confused young inner city youth
and middle aged militia members
might think so.

Is it the power of
saying so, and
seeing it happen?
Bill Clinton thought so.

Is it the
investor/entertainer/pro-jock
level of money
that commands the worlds
treasuries,
rarities,
and beauty?

It is none of that.
What is
dangerous
is the ego.

Not content with my
level of contentment,
what to do with
ambition rising.

How can the
heart not soar
when the beauty
all around
makes the eyes sing?

Bliss is
an elixer,
an amrita,
a direct result.

As a person thinks,
so they are:
Leader or follower?
Successful or not?
Moving forward and up?
Full or empty?
Afraid?
All based on choice.

Be not attached
this way,
I tell myself.
Bliss is a result,
and will soon
enough come
to stay.
But like oil,
slips through the fingers
if I cling.

A set of bluff stairs;
concrete sack on
the shoulder,
and go
down,down,down
and then get
uppity
there for
some lumber
and tools or a
battery.

I also repaired the
relationship
I damaged
by stopping what I was
doing
when my son came in
and gave him
my full attention;
and listening with
both ears
while my beloved
poured out her heart.

I confirmed what
my boss said,
so he knew
what he needed
would be done.
I passed on this bit
of wisdom to
the new guy,
and helped fix
a fractured culture.

I fixed the
words of this poem
as I wrote,
maybe a no-no
in the writers world,
but a lot like
my professional
standards:
don't leave it
for the next person,
do it right
the first time.

Standards I can
apply to all of my life:
my relationships,
volunteer work,
hobbies
and passions
and spiritual path.

Mastering one skill
opens the door
to another skill
and new tools.
From master
to grasshopper
to master....

So I guess what i mostly
fix is
myself.

Indpendence is a myth.
We like to
believe that we
are free of the influence
or control
of others.
But we aren't.
Your thoughts are shaped
by your parents, teachers,
maybe even clergy.
Byt he books you read,
by the pundits you listen to.
We all are.

We are shaped by our traumas.
It becomes a filter.

We are all dependent,
though dislike admitting it.
We are dependent on mom from day one.
We depend on our parents, then teachers,
taxpayers to provide the school
then the electricity,
the water, the road, scholarships and grants
or a boss to hire, then a boss to hire,
and carpenters, electricians,
plumbers, trash collectors,
the military,
economists,
manufacturers,
could you even make a pencil?
Could you extract the rubber, brass, wood, and graphite lead
and mill it, shape it, form it,
all by yourself?

Do you program your own computer?

We all are very dependent,
inter-dependent,
and the lives of the rubber tree harvesters,
and ore miners, and loggers, and millers,
programers, builders,
public utility workers, and my neighbors
all come together as I scratch a note
on a piece of paper while
I write this poem on the internet.

Want want want!
Social security, a nice car,
which of course comes
with a hunk
or beautiful babe.
Gizmos galore, and
who cares about the ceidt
it racks up, or
the mountain of interest
to be paid.
Food junkie, news junkie,
adrenaline junkie and all the
sport stuff, addictives, kayaks,
canoes, computers, consume
consume, consume.
Not living simply so that
others simply can't live.
Passions like this root me
to the things of this world.

But I hate that man! He was
a lousy husband/Senator/lawyer
President/talk show host
or even a woman who wrote books that were so full
of beans that it's laughable.
Yes, a war cost us billions and thousandsof lives
and health care sucks, and education is brpken and new Orleans
and the corruption and immorality
and tax cuts and pardons -
and if you let the anger eat you,
then you as well are one of the victims,
One of the casualties,
a self imposed loser of that battle.
Anger and hatred are self imposed,
a look in the mirror.
Liberate yourself.

Because; because;
all of those things have effect,
but no ultimate meaning.
No one escapes their karma.
No one lives forever.
I will reap what I sow.
Action always brings results
and action left undone
is never met.
The future is determined
by my choice now.
The past is memory
in my mind, mere shadows.
Hope and worry
do me no good.
Ignorance of reality
is the root of anger and passion
as well.
Know myself, be still.
Heal my self, be still.
Then arise,
in gentle love,
and play.