Altruistic World Online Library

The Dice Man Meets Nixon and Me At 4:30 A.M. In the Downtown Portland Days Inn, by Charles Carreon



That long night driving through the snow on un-studded highway tires, sliding once and carving a slow donut with a roostertail of snow, was the highpoint, watching others do similarly the vicarious thrill, arriving in the Portland Days Inn at 4 a.m. the apotheosis, laying down in my cheap bed paid for by my client the very peak, listening to the racketing piece of ice knocking about in the fan above me a step too far, that sound was like a crazy strange attractor spelling out my name in fractal images of repetitive not-quite-randomness. Having to get up in just a few hours to appear in court put edge on pain. Knowing I'd done this so many times before gave me confidence. Having done it many times before made me know that I had to lie down and rest every nerve even if it wouldn't sleep. Measuring out time in thin slices to move from edge to edge downward into darkness, I reviewed the books on the shelf which the downtown Portland Days Inn thoughtfully provides -- old books, usually some Reader's Digest Condensed Books, but some good titles, too, I bet somebody's got Tagore, and somebody else has Ivanhoe, and probably several people have Catch 22 but nobody's got Bambi. At any event I found with some surprise, delight, pleasure, that I had a copy of "The Dice Man," and this is in Room 517 if someone hasn't stolen it, I didn't, I was restrained, not looking for souvenirs when I already had the experience. This book, "The Dice Man" was something my friend Richard Coulter had told me about long before when I was a little experimenter. The Dice Man, the narrator of the novel had chosen to live life as Russian Roulette, extinguishing predictability with one stroke by willing over his will to the roll of the dice. But what really caught my attention was the mention of Nixon, and particularly, Nixon's "sense of history" in the introduction of the novel. You see, there was a photograph of Nixon leaning on his desk in the Oval Office hanging in Room 517. And at 4:30 a.m. I had this looming coincidence to deal with. Was this room the product of some clever interior designer's psychic weaving of subtle themes? Or was it, more likely, mere coincidence, a chance event? On that note, listening to the racketing piece of ice like a doomed ball in a demonic roulette wheel bounding not quite randomly, not quite regularly above my poor, benighted, weary head, I slipped off to sleep, or something like it.

The Galleries of Sky, by Charles Carreon

This desert morning dawns a fair one,
The sweetness of moist earth and soft sun.
The fragrances of morning
On windy breaths ascend
The winding stairs of rippled light
Where thunder like a lion prowls
The galleries of sky.

The Last Limousine, by Charles Carreon



(For Trungpa Rinpoche and his crazy entourage)
 
We humans be sum crazy muthafuckas as a rap lingo slinga' might say.
Bad ass muthafuckas always gonna be that way.
Play that fuckin music till you can't even hardly think,
Make you wanna drown yourself in that cool chickie's drink
Being just a home boy on this dedicated ground
Walkin' what your talkin' is rarer than it sounds
Making lessons out of misery
And poems out of rhymes
Making love with everybody
And yourself another time.

Some think that white boys can never be that way,
And others wanna listen to what Tarantino say,
Some think that Elvis was the Antichrist
Some think Manhattan is a drink with ice
But you can see it happen
Right in your home town
Earn your money down on Main Street
And give it to a clown
Kiss your baby in the morning
And tuck her in at night
But if you're half the man your father was
You'll never do it right

Now heaven's never been found
But people say they've been
Or know someone who knew someone
Who heard it from a friend
But hell's much more familiar,
We have it here on earth
We make it for each other
With each successive birth
Impress it on our children
Like sacrificial lambs
Burn our friends in hell
With smiles on our faces
Watching as the fire
Consumes the final traces.

Did he need a bodyguard,
A retinue of slaves?
Did he need a hand job
That everybody gave?
Did he need a limousine
To take him to the grave?

With deepest respect for the wildest lama,
One Last Molotov!

The Lemming National Anthem, by Charles Carreon

All hail the One-Party System,
So well-organized that no one can doubt it’s
The best, most logical system that’s ever been
Devised by the smartest brightest guys.

All hail the One-Party Leader,
The man with the robotic sighs,
With handlers, and helpers and programmed
Responses that don’t need to be scrutinized.

All hail the One-Party Loser,
The man who ran as one a-terrorized;
His voters felt like dopes, when he scuttled all their votes
And fell in with the One-Party Line.

All hail the Great Corporate Leaders,
Who have made the world their own swimming pool
Filled with toxic sewage and cool designer luggage --
You know that Paris Hilton is no fool.

All hail the Great Wall Street Bankers,
Making plans to get and spend it all,
Sending freight trains stuffed with loot to their friends
In big black boots, who will send them back an even bigger haul.

All hail the Great Iraqi Warriors
Who staunchly defend their foreign sands,
Who give us names for terrorists, and target practice for our kids,
And help our friends the Saudis keep clean hands.

All hail the Great Attorney General,
The baddest goddamn Mexican of all;
He don’t need no stinking badge, cause torture’s not that bad,
And he’ll explain it in that room right down the hall.

All hail the Free Press that’s freely
Publishing nothing at all, but the latest profile shot
That proves that Condoleezza’s hot
Which just proves nothing at all.

All hail the Fake Politicians
Who are wondering who to sell out today.
If you haven’t got a lobbyist then you’re not on their Santa’s list,
And won’t you kindly just go away?

All hail the Great Entertainers,
Who thank heavens have nothing to say,
Made of silicone and methadone, their voices big as megaphones
Keep all unpleasant news so far away.

All hail the Brave Media Lawyers
Who sue children and ancients one and all,
Since copyright is God, it doesn’t seem so odd
That piracy should cause the nation’s fall.

All hail the One-Party Voters,
Who didn’t even really have to vote,
We knew that we could count on them, and figured all those
Stray votes in, and things came out just like we knew they would.

So all hail the Great Manipulators,
Who turned us to a land of pimps and whores
Who taught our kids to kill, to do it with a will
To the sound of a heavy metal score.

And all hail the Holy Excuse Makers
Who sell insurance from the Great Big Man
Who hawk incense and repentance and talk in great
Big sentences about how moral folks must take a stand.

‘Cause God is a lemming,
And He made us in his image, of this there is no room
For reasonable doubt -- So when you see that cliff a looming
Just get your feet a pumping – you always knew that this was your way out.

The Old Ve-To, by Charles Carreon





Well you say
You're the Congress
Whatever that means
We'll ask Gonzales
When he's done eatin' beans
You gave me a bill
With time limits in it
So I'll veto that shit
And send it back to the Senate
And don't you step on my Old Veto
You can do anything,
But don't forget about my Old Veto.

Well I done decided
You know that's it
The troops are gonna stay
Where I say
The chips are gonna fall
Wherever they may
I'll raise the stakes higher
'Cause that's how I play
But don't 'ya
Forget my Old Veto
You can enact what you want
I'll just give it the Old Veto.

Well they say the nation's
Turning blue again
I'll prove that false
With a stroke of my pen
There is no power
Like the one to say no
So loot, motherfuckers, now go go go
We got 'em with the Old Veto
They can't do a damn thing
When I give them the Old Veto.

Well, I've blown Iraq
But I won't admit it
I'm after Iran
And I just won't quit it
Just try and stop me
I'm on the run
The light is red
That means fun, fun, fun
So watch out, I'll use the Old Veto
I'll run you down in the street
With my Old Veto

Yeah, the Constitution
Is a mighty fine thing
At least for me,
For you it stinks
'Cause I'm the Chief
I'm at the top
I keep the buck movin'
So it never stops
And when I lose I use the Old Veto.
I just tell 'em where to stuff it
And hit 'em with the Old Veto.
Yeah, they'll never know what hit 'em
When I hit 'em with the Old Veto.

The Oracle, by Charles Carreon (14 years old)



Outside Woolworth's and the A & P
Shrieking descriptions of damnation
Stands a demented soldier of Christ
Gnarled hands and twisted mind
Rooted in his grimy book
He teaches only screamable truth
His hands flay the air and his voice
Drones on
Yet his transient flock listens
Listens and answers
Answers with a silent, endless scream.

(1969)

The People, by Charles Carreon

We are the changing-lanes people,
the impatient-waiting-on the on-ramp people
the can't-stand-to-be-stuck behind-a-truck people.
We are the go-up-high-in-the-elevator people,
the live-long-in-a-gymnasium-on-the-exercycle people,
the cash-your-check in the line at the bank people.
 
We are the ant people, the build-their-hives
above the ground people,
The run-their-carriages on road-of-stone people,
The count-their-dollars in the millions people,
The deck-their-wives with splendid clothing people,
The raise-their-young like spoiled princes people.
 
We are the television people,
The wash-their-clothes-with Biz people,
The shine-their-cars with fancy wax people,
The comb-their-hair with gleaming mousse people.
 
We are the inch-deep-roots people,
The insubstantial-as-the-grass people,
The people without real names or memories.
We are the reckless people, the foolish people,
The coming-and-going people,
The crying-like-desolated ghosts people.
We are the people who try to sing themselves
to sleep,
But know no magic songs,
The people who line up to die,
And waken every morning asking why.

The Point Is Nothing, by Charles Carreon

Now lift the knife,
Now plunge it into the heart.

Lift the knife and plunge it in.

The point breaks in all barriers
because it is nothing,
penetrating all things.

Piercing deeper,
its reverberation emanating
from ever-deeper levels
shatters bonds in subtler and subtler places,
and all begins to crack apart
from the inside out.

At last it all dissolves in smoke,
and then in air,
leaving everything clear
and unspoken.

The Samba of Ignorance, by Charles Carreon



(Sing with Carlos-Montalban-pronunciation to a sinuous, sultry beat )

Not everybody likes to dance
Afraid they are of sweet romance
Preferring the samba of ignorance

Inside my rigid thought construction
No mechanism of reproduction
Just the boring noise of self destruction

Oh, samba of ignorance
So sweet entwining passionless
Of concrete make my party dress

The danger's clear my sweet companion
No daring drives through passion's canyons
Go straight to lovers leap and jump in

Oh, samba of ignorance
I can afford it, a small expense,
Free speech is just an extravagance

Oh, samba of ignorance
Let's dance it now and take no chance
Eliminate all happenstance

Oh, samba of ignorance
I'm blinded in your twisting arms
Safe from knowledge and from harm.

(This poem is really about Juan C. Aragon, creator of Buddhistboards.com, who operated under the false name of Bernardo Aragon during 2002-2003. Apologies to the true Bernardo Aragon, who probably is guilty of nothing more than knowing Juan.)

The Starlit Tomb, by Charles Carreon

[When I was at H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche's birthday party in San Anselmo, California, in 1980, I fell asleep during the Yeshe Tsogyal empowerment. I dreamt that I was looking at a pure white field of crushed pearl dust, and on that white field, as if someone were creating a sand mandala, a red swastika began to appear, pure red like ground rubies. When I awoke, having lost my upright balance, I stuck out my hand sharply for support, which made a loud thump heard throughout the large hall. Everyone turned to look.]

One would like to think that the business of writing is ordinary, that the life of the printed page is simple and direct, but the truth is otherwise.

To be a child of language is to be a slave. A slave to the flow of discourse, to the flow of meaningful sound. Should you fail to heed its insistent flow, you will pay a price.

Nothing surprises one more than loneliness. Just when you think you are insular and self-sustaining, you discover that you are no one when there is nobody but you.

Still you have your words. You can wind meaningful sounds through your fibers of being and seek in meanings transitory and broken the substance of your ignorant knowledge.

The night breaks open like a stone to reveal a heart of emptiness, a tomb of designless design, as quintillions of stars cascade through without explanation or destiny.

You remain wandering in the distance of your precognitions. You persevere in the toiling sands. You wash your water and mind your thoughts. You break down into a tiny pile of ruby dust and frosting of diamonds.