No Zen

No Zen

There is a madness in me

That will not be content

Though I know the depth of

Feeling others have for me

Giving their love to me

Body and soul

Holding me with fingers of compassion 

Landscapes give me peace

Ocean waves breaking or mountains in mist

Autumn trees rising above a waterfall

There I am momentarily at peace

Yet with those I love

I am restless all night

Beating nightmare fists into pillows

 My yearning is my wisdom though it annihilate me

The smile of the Zen master my distant landscape

Shakespeare's Sonnet 116

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

    William Shakespeare 

Stars of the Firmament

As if from heaven come

The compassionate ones

Buddha Jesus Gandhi King

Spreading wisdom like so much

Seed flowing out upon us

No solipsists they

Pure selfless love of humanity

Dying from food from the beggar bowl

Or from torture or from gun shot

Did they die for us

Washing with their blood

Our singular selfish souls

Whatever their vision their wisdom

They too had individual passion

Buddha was Siddhartha husband and father

It is what he gave up that holds him

In our imagination

So too Jesus whose private loves 

We can only surmise

John Mary Lazarus
Gandhi with his nieces

King with his lovers

What compassion was not

Begot by love in the flesh 

Jack 11/11/11

Naked

 Naked

My first act of graduate education

Was getting naked with Allen Ginsberg

In a bathhouse on Toulouse Street

Deep in the French Quarter jazz

Down in New Orleans

There was no end to the skin I shed

After the clothes after the masks

Down with the wine high with the herb

Altered states  one sure way to deconstruct

Nixon's Dixie damnation

We sat centered on a circular waterbed

All around us whirling like an ascension

William Blake inspired copulating bodies

Naked like us red lit and happy

Maybe mindless but fucking bliss

How many dark empty predawn streets

Did I amble intoxicated with Zen

Nothingness when Allen left when

The poets departed and I slept again

With Aristotle faithful and rational

Allen's rhythm enlightened me

Chanted me through Lisa Jan Roger Al

Who loved my showered hands

Past Humpty Dumpty's fatal fall

Until a sublime finger reached up into my hip

Heart

Jack 10/28/11

October

October

This month is gold and black
Houses porches lawns revel

In death's ghouls and broken skeletons

A joke for most just as death is

Witches on broomsticks

For me it is genuine

October's death is mine

With those who made it

What it is

A Leonard Cohen plaint of

surrender

October murdered one love gave another

To another on the Day of the Dead

Halloween expired with

A funeral dirge and a wedding march

Followed by a solitude that is

My dogged companion

How can I look love

In the eye and not see death

How not think of the erotic joy of

Bodies embracing without a skeleton

Bone

Yet neither grave nor vow has taken

My naivete my song my romance

This ever chilling October
So I commit to love again

Bury myself deep yield
To intimacy to touch

Accepting the gold of leaves

Falling with the autumn

October is my tomb my dark

Look back though grounded well in

You 

September 22

The rain is a caress

Its cool air comes like breath

Keeping me alive

Like your caress your breath

With a rhythm as sure

As your heart

Calming beneath me

My head resting there

As we fade to sleep

It is a rhythm quiet

Despite the hurry around us

As subatomic particles spin today

Quicker than light

As a busload of debris falls

Burning from our sky

Jack 9/22/11

In Sex

 In Sex

such passion fireflies display

as summer ends and storm clouds blow

above shadow upon shadow darkening

they flash the night beckoning for sex

knowing that from the trees may fly

at any second birds to eat them up

glowing insects on which to sup

for such reward of minuscule sex

fireflies light up to  fly- by- nights

defying  death

for a fuck

Jack 8-26-'11

Peyote

Peyote

Terror comes 

As illusions disappear

The familiar comforting world

Dissolves

At first we think distortion

This is not real

Enjoy the hallucination

Hallucination is a portal

An opening into mindfulness

Letting go 

The cloud becomes a face

Nothing becomes a place

My hand extends as far

As my eye

The round red face of my

Watch on which hands spin

Laughter erupts at the absurdity

Of time 

Who are the beings in this circle

In a tribe stranger has 

No meaning

My head is in the sky

There is no head no body

Consciousness floats along

Molecules of me collide

With those of a rose

Is a rose is a rose

Even the words dissolve

Bright hot sun rises ascends sets

The day is over and my ego

Returns in the form of a pulse

Cricket reality

Were you here beside me

All along

Two mouths one kiss

The revelation of the sacred

recedes into dull

Ordinariness the separation

The terror of solitude

The cloud bursts into rain

Yet for an instant a flash

Godhead

Jack, August 2011

Ars Poetica

For a philosopher 

It hurts to define poetry

Prescribing metaphor

Simile rhyme sharp archetypes of song

To define poetry is to step on a caterpillar

Pluck away wings

As a torturer will destroy 

Better to remain silent or to utter

A poem is a ploy

A poem is a toy

A poem is

Alive

A philosopher finds no joy

Qualifying a poem good or bad

Better to praise

To say "Wow those are

The exact perfect words"

Does a poem have meaning

Should a poem just be

LOL

A poem transcends should

A poem knocks on wood

A poem is sweet as devil's food

The philosopher who writes of poetry

Ends with a couplet  knowingly

Or a menage a trois in the Bo Tree

Jack 8-13-11
(For Alf Corn who will Gag)

This Time

This time the storm gave all the wetness

It promised 

Soaking the parched earth

Flashing and blasting away as it did

Leaving behind the damp fragrance of

Satisfaction

Tonight exactly ten orchid blossoms open

Purple upon the branch snaking from an old china bowl

As Beethoven's sublime piano melody

Melts what dry soul I have left

Away

Haiku Talapia

(old version)

Demented father

Nibbles crisp Tilapia

In the Pancake House

Jack

8/1/11

Heart Attack

This morning loading the laundry

Filling the machine

My back a pull a cramp a stab

Near the shoulder blade

Pain that lingers as I type

And goes right round to my chest

It will come to my heart

My heart which has been under

Attack most of my life

Pulled out of me as by a Mayan

Priest given up to the Chac Mool

So many times the knife of love

Not quite unrequited

Has cut right into you my heart

It will come finally the so called real heart

Attack the kindest of all freeing me of pain

High

High

High on the joys of life

Appreciating the mountain hike

No less the gushing waterfall

Delighting in the wetness of the sea

Jumping over the cool waves of sunrise

Over the Earth up to the stars

Beneath you the whole gorgeous world

Jack, 7/19/11

Eventide

Even in memory they are the same

Sunrise sunset

Hues of promise hues of completion

Life's brilliance opening up

Rising like an erection

Life's brilliance receding

Like the face of someone loved

Gone

My summer draws to a close

Already

I am not ready

Fall offers a season of color and repose
Yet its beauty is in decay

Let me go on with our summer play

Let me dance in your spring

Your abundance yet

Let us dance warm nights to our song

We lovers where nothing's either right or wrong

Jack

 July 2011

Libation

Σπονδή * 


Naked rubbing away hunger
I Sit back
Let the sun caress my face

Perhaps today I'll die

Death is nothing and nothing is more

Than need

Upon your steed you come
 Alexander
King of Macedonia
Facing  seas of false smiles

You ask all Athens where is Diogenes

The man who speaks truth

Your shadow caresses my face

Your words
I am Alexander

What may I give to you

Give me what I had

The warm sunlight you took away

You move aside ask me to share

Your wine

You command all Athens go

You bring your goatskin flask 

You disarm your shield golden in the sand

You sit here within my earthen tub

Though the sun sets your wine

Warms my belly warms your heart

We light my torch fire in our faces

Eye to eye
Against your eminence I rise up
You bow you give me head 

With morning we must part

I shall conquer Persia

All Asia all the world you say

What then I ask

Enjoy myself sit back make music

Then my friend  you will be Diogenes

 * (Libation)
Jack Miller 1/27/11

Copyright Jack Miller 

The Monosexual

The Monosexual


It is a state of distress
The failure to caress
The whole of a gender 
To open up flushed flesh
To just one sex
To kiss only woman or man
Alone

We lucky few who've known
Plenitude in the embraces of all
Tasting at the banquet we call
Life the oyster and the clam
Imbibing the green fairy
Absinthe on our tongue having it
Both ways

Pity the monosexual missing the rich reward adorned
Abundance and nourishment from our Plenty of Horn

Jack
Druid Hills
6/19/11

Death of a Peacock

Flipping slick pages of a news magazine

Full page photo Duchess Kate future queen

Long white veil over her white smile

White bouquet in hand lacy sheen

Next page over the eyes of Arabia

Staring from behind a black veil

A woman with black flowers

In her other hand  a photo from jail

Her bearded husband

Of all the news glossy or not

The story that frightens me  most

From Wuhan China a Panda

Chases and kills a peacock

Jack  5/6/'11

Musician, Age 25

Musician, Age 25

"He's lonely and you're a whore."
A witch in New Orleans told me.
We both laughed, 'cause we knew
It was true.
Not that we weren't friends; good friends,
Traveling to the city that care forgot
On my 21st birthday, staying in a red
Brick room with a French Quarter balcony,
Where I played guitar.
I got sick on oysters, but that didn't stop
My old man friend, 65,  from hitting
On me every fucking day...

It's been four years now, as I let him put his
Moist hands all over me; and I give his everlasting
Hard-on a hand job 'cause he loves it when
I hold his dick. Loves it more holding mine,
In so many showers we've taken together
I feel wet just remembering.

Thought I'd have to live with him when
My Parents threw me out at 24.
Let me keep my studio, but threw me out.
Out, now there's irony. I'm no gay-boy.
Then came a miracle. I met a girl.
I met two girls- her and her best friend.
They invited me in and I went in again and
Again. They bought me meals; gave me gas;
Bedded me in their dorm. Gave me whatever.
Damn, if I didn't go from whore to gigolo.
And there I play my guitar, and sing every fucking
Day. 'Cause, you know? I'm living the wet-dream.


Jameson 10-5-'15

jolt

Life dumbs down to dark

Gray Southern winter skies

Colorless crumbs for food

Bloodless afternoon belies
Energy half asleep

Like a mammal in hibernation

Until you come 

Offering me compassion

Gentle and caring from your

Embrace letting rise in me

Passion like a blazing transformer

Burning in the night 

Jack

1/10/12

Send Off

Your old guitar with its broken string
sits still in my living room
two weeks after Nashville
two weeks after we were high 
on Starr's porch and you hugged me
saying how freaked out you were
frightened like a child shaking
as I calmed you told you normal
would return as I knew it would
the day we had our send off 
the day pre-cum glistened on you
a pearl on the family jewel
offered erection for me to grasp
that pearl a slippery symbol 
of our sexuality fluid but never
getting there five years after
we first shared that pink source
of your pleasure your compass

Broken string on your old guitar
broken words that failed us
our love recedes into those 
memories of walks and food shared 
warm showers in a host of states
where we slept together naked
forgotten now as you answer my
question which of our travels did
you like best "they all had good 
and bad moments" no recollection
of standing on an overlook above
Asheville in a moment of pure 
camaraderie
discerning the waxing Moon

As you continue to gaze into the
Looking Glass be careful as you fall
deep within your mirror lie strange
experiences to shatter complacency
shatter your fragile self-esteem bending
the straight road you imagine lies
before you because your path of life
is like the road to Starr's filled 
with curves and twists that will
discomfort you ransack you just as 
we probed ourselves for seven years
from excitement to disappointment
no point in my being on your mind
swallow now that the song is over
it was a fine affair an enterprise 
of great pith and moment
of great pitch and foment
or whatever it is you recall or pluck
on the old guitar strings of your ego








Jack Jameson
 The End of 2015