And the Vehicles of Discernment

Where autism rides,
nobody believes in it,
and the vehicles crash.
Madness in America gave us this lay:
autism comes from television
and screen time.
I laugh at every little thing. [sing line]
This is the public mind.
Where do we go with it?
We can’t take it anywhere
in the fundamentals of ourselves
where we’ve encountered the unknown.

I’m dancin’ on thin ice.
I think this is the public construction of our ego today,
or whatever you call that we are now,
how it’s made,
where it comes from.
Everybody’s ignorant here.
Nobody knows what’s goin’ on,
and nobody cares.
Too many other concerns crowd the show.

How do I introduce you to you?
Let’s take your dream last night
the closer you are from waking up,
when you’re patterning on dreamless sleep.
You’ve gotten down that far.
This is really weird.
The forms bite you.
They do not contain waking life
in anything recognizable
except maybe a sandwich you’re a part of,
that you’re being eaten by.
They are larger than machine.
They swallow you whole.
You were merged with that odd substance, weren’t you?
The separate self was hanging in thin air.
You didn’t recognize it yet.
You were the forms you saw,
and you are all mixed up.
You couldn’t tell yourself,
but you were there.

Have you ever woken up from this
merged dream content?
It’s oddly familiar.
You feel basic with it,
like you’re on a slab of reality
you’ve know before,
when you first woke up from sleep,
somewhere in womb-time,
but I think after we’re born the show begins,
when we hold the world tight
indistinguishable from it.
We are merged in our identity
with all around us,
but the body localizes us
in our surroundings,
and we are so bodily there.
Mommy and springtime,
that’s the season we wear.
Her face, her touch,
her smell,
we know those are safety measures,
and we don’t know much else.
It depends upon the daddy.
Some are right there,
and it doesn’t have to be a parent.
I can’t give you the lists
without breakin’ ‘em up.
We’ve got to talk about the thing.

I think slowly we wake to the blows of life,
its insistence on its kin,
and we separate ourselves from our environment
slowly,
little by little.
You can see this happenin’
if your look’s engaged.
That sense of separate self is precious
a wee one becomes a person in.
Are you three
when you’ve balanced life
and can give a wink to other people
here I am, here I am, how do you do? [sing line, popular nursery rhyme]

I’ve just studied your rabbit.
You think you’re localized in space
a separate consciousness in time.
No, that’s learned.
Now put all this in a TV show,
some stupid video,
and you see what you got.
I can’t distinguish myself from time and space
to begin with.
Now add another layer,
the absurd,
the inane,
the chocolate freeze cake,
and some children don’t make the match.
They can’t distinguish themselves in time,
and spectrum autism
makes them their relationship with the world.

One in 36 is it?
Anyway it’s huge.
I can babysit
a two-year-old,
and I don’t have consciousness breathin’ down my neck.
I make contact with the kid
casually.
I understand his price.
I see him there
pullin’ himself out of the world,
tryin’ to make himself work in it.
I dream about him,
have him in vision.
We have open lines of communication,
and I don’t wanna mess it up,
that delicate balance he has with the world
as he’s findin’ himself in it.

No extra touches when I wash his penis,
no emotions in my hand,
and I’m careful with that anus.
(I have no sexual desire for the child.)
I think these are where he is localized now
as the body reaches the sky,
right there at the birth of thought.
No they are not the majors in the room
that determine his life.
There’s just so much feeling there,
and feeling’s what it’s all about
when you’re two.

I’m crowdin’ in on your crash course in reality.
I’m tellin’ yah how it’s made,
our sexual preference,
our sexual alliance with the world.
We can become gay or straight,
pedophile or necrophiliac,
and the list goes on,
and we can this and that
or just someone who harass women,
touch them somewhere
they don’t know where it’s at,
respect,
and if you wanna rapist touch them more momma.
An old movie,
don’t worry;
I’m taking it to see daylight.
It won’t take long.

We need good parental hands
with everybody who handles them,
our genitals.
The equations will reach the sky
with anybody who touches them,
or squeezes them against ourself
in diaper rub.
Add some kissin’ on top of that,
real romantic feelings
with some male role model,
and if you’re boy you’re gay.
Watch and see.
I just let the cat out of the bag.
Can you see it?

Autism spectrum disorder,
it’s not the only thing that comes out of our threes.
Every touch counts.
Every moment’s involved with us.
A screaming parent,
two fighting parents,
and that’s joined in our identity don’t you see?
You got it all wrong.
Those years count the most,
and they’re the hardest to bear,
aren’t they?
Hit that child and see
you’ve got a child there
the world has slapped by,
and they’ve been betrayed by everybody.
Can’t you see it on their face?
Don’t you know it’s in their pain?

I love you Dylan.
I really do.
Anyway,
there, I’ve done it,
showed you reality.
Can you get my dig?
Cryin’ all the time, [sing line, from the song “Hound Dog”]
no.
We wipe their tears with our love,
always addin’ to the world
their place in it,
and the roles are clear,
and that’s heavy, ain’t it?

I can bring understanding
to many roles in your life
and to horrible times.
I can do that.
When you even begin to walk,
we’re gettin’ some stuff done.
We’re gettin’ some stuff done put well on you.
Like what can you do
if nobody wants to be well?
Kid you know
travel love,
and make that the aim of life
the immediacy of this moment.

May all your memories and all your steps,
may they be easy.
Okay,
I’ve tuned you to the ages.
That explains it,
what went wrong.
Daddy, daddy! [vision of Dylan standing and turning to look at me and saying this]
Come there
even for your own purpose.
You know as well as I know
the movies,
trauma is almost illegal I’m carrying
to bring Dylan through this touch and screen of madness,
someone
experiencing the world
his play bubba,
his romance,
his mastery,
and we all look for spiritual change,
don’t we?
Evolution,
it’s what’s you do with a kid.
It be like
huggin’
sha-la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la, la-la tee-da [sing line, song “Brown Eyed Girl”]
and never gettin’ caught in it.
You’re free.
Why would you want to take a child anywhere else?

Zombies Online

photo by the author
Through the lens of the screen
we interpret reality.
This is how we get our gun.
It’s how we conduct business.
We die that way.
It’s a world in front of our face
that we miss,
we need to listen to.
What’s reality goin’ on around us?
It swallows the moon.

We’re just stale, happy, TVs in the room.
It jogs us.
It casts us aside.
We come to our computer to participate,
or put our cellphone between us and the world.
Does that make TV better?
We market our lives
sittin’ in front of a screen,
and it can be so tiny.
It’s not there you know.
You are.

We translate screens all day,
and we don’t know their rash.
It doesn’t solidify us.
We just get all choked up
on a reality ration card.
We think it excites us.
This does us in.
Get your notebook
and interpret reality with that.
Record your inner life.
Your outer life will still be there when you get back.
Those events jingle.
You can feel them with your hand.
They are real to you,
and they’re awesome.

They seem boring to you
because they step on the ordinary.
They have miracle all over them,
if you know how to look,
and do you know the world draws nigh to you when you do?
You see things
that are extraordinary,
synchronicities between thought and life
that you know somebody’s lookin’ at yah
the universe can’t hold.
These are certain stairs,
and you reach a height at noon
that reveals to you God.

You can’t see this on the screen.
It’s too confined in there.
It doesn’t have reality’s picture on it
that blankets you with stars.
It’s not where you’re at.
Oh you can move between thought and the screen
like you live there
all grown up.
You can ride lightning’s ways.
You can figure out the world
in the emptiness of its room.
You can sit and enjoy yourself.
You cannot hold hands with God.

I’m showin’ you this on TV,
and you just dyin’ to practice it in the real world, ain’t yah?
You want to see God.
You want to see thoughts larger than man.
I’m tellin’ yah they’re there
in the dry, material world.
I’ve picked up a book
and opened the pages of reality with it.
That’s my own damn TV,
where I sit in reality and wait
for the next full moon.

I sound good to your reason-sense,
but you don’t know what I’m talkin’ about.
It’s green there.
It’s got flexible and still on it,
and it’s a whole wide afternoon,
or a mornin’ that bakes bread in reality’s oven;
an evening there whispers to the stars.
You can’t get that look
onscreen.
It’s not tangible, real.
It tries to trouble you,
get you to play basketball
on digital courts.
You are mad at me no?

Let’s blame the room.
We don’t know how to put it right.
It just bleeds us
to make our reality all fucked up.
We have digitalized each other,
and this is worms.
We’re not even real people inside the machine.
We got lollipops on
we want other people to lick.
See me there?

Where does poetry go inside the machine?
It changes its meaning.
I’m starin’ at you now,
wonderin’ how many hits I get
singin’ in a dark tunnel.
Would you meet me there?
Would we get out of the machine?
I think we would find somewhere
to be humans again
not under computer programs
and not onscreen lives.

I do stay long
I do stay up here
in the companion of see.
My day’s because of it.
My time online are my thoughts
I’m tryin’ to have me killed for.
I’m not the only one
puttin’ you in touch with yourself
with my reality TV
Episode Donny.

We’ll say I was parkin’ and I saw a Muslim guy stare at me intently,
would you believe this is page one?
I’ve gotta get yah outta here.
So I turn the world upside down in your ideas,
act strange
with the written word.
Can you see me happy?
That’s most of my flower.
Now I’ll see where we’re at.
I’m not hatin’ anybody.
I’m lookin’ to end hate
so you won’t hate me.
That’s a noble enterprise.

Left the school
of bang your head against the wall,
of put out your left eye,
and so for nothing less
the reality’s keeps,
and if you see an American Jewish woman walkin’ down the street,
you wouldn’t war with Israel.
Know whadda I mean?

Wow, I think I’m healthy for the next line:
we are all one family.
We do business together that way,
on and offline.
He’s gonna put it in a bank watch this.
Why don’t you just leave it here?
Goddamnit,
could you put a photo at the top of the page
that is really, truly there because you like me?
And you enjoy your meal,
Ocean’s Eleven,
and there you have it.

How many realities of life are there?
A Boeing 747 in each one.
It’s on a fascinating, fascinating mountain not far from here.
Okay.
It’s in this poem.
Let’s go get some sleep
after the intro.
That’s not how about you rule things.
Your consciousness is up there.
I have trouble accessing it,
you are the poem.
I reckon then go,
go where your prime takes yah.
It’s right there
beyond the screen.


You just can’t do it.
What about an online pass?
We breed poems,
and I talk about accessibility.
It has that special sauce
when you’re committed to a short story a movie a play.
You don’t frontal lobe it.
You’d like to know
that word.
You thought you thought ahey? [line heard sung]
Leave me alone.
Alright be quiet.
I’ve gone back to being somebody’s poem on the internet.

It’s to help you open the world.
I’ve almost gotten you this evening.
Yes I’m quitting.
I put more butter
in my reality’s screen
to get out of the ego’s refusal to its environment.
Rest assured,
I just want God there
the vision I have always.

A quiet you find yourself in,
a silence that can see the stars,
these are the momentary hush
that come together to you for reality,
that grasp tangible God.
These are the momentary links
that give you all the nature of man.
Wind with me
to that summit.
I arrive there
the quiet in your room.
Lift with me
a moment tangible God.