Baklava Memphis

1/3/18

Before meditation:

You are a grand experiment

Shirtless after waking

In the state of worry

Realize quickly that no worry is real

Take neuroplasticity and joy

The making of making words and changing

A trip to The Lorraine to feel what maybe King felt

To acknowledge that there are still many problems

Though advances have been made

Anybody can stay at this La Quinta

Any man or woman holding any leash

Any breed of dog 
and this is something more than what was

The coffee is free for a hundred and thirty dollars.

Elvis got hooked on those pills and died

You, my friend, got to break free to come alive

To wake each morning and see what comes, see what

The world will bring everything that you are meant to see

So many falcons along the highways in Iowa

The vegetation all dead

Still the birds sit on branches and watch traffic

And what must each one think, what must they eat

Each day does one dig past frozen ground or poke

His head out and pick at the left cheese of Wendy’s wrappers

You have a space where trees can be planted and where you can see

A bird with yellow wings, tiny like a finch, like a bird you have never seen

Bear witness to the naked truth of what is brought forth

A platter of joy to begin the neuroplastic journey

A refrain whose chorus you are not aware until moments before

The first note rings forth like a snowfall in the South

Like Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King sharing a sausage sandwich

And what would each say to the other, what would each say to you:

Mostly enjoy the moment for you only have so many

Do not regret anything that has happened

Move forth and love past friends and family

Take salt shakers from restaurants

If you are willing to pay the price

Plant trees and eat rice that is planted in a fashion

Give back to the earth

This sounds more like you talking to you and using

The voice of the Kings. In Memphis and end may have been met

In Memphis is a grand pyramid that pays homage to the Egyptians

Take all of the names and find the history behind each

Even Georgia must be related to King George

And if you look at the Martin Luther King Boulevards

Throughout the United States you will find

Places of poverty where drugs can be bought

Downtowns with boarded up windows and shooting dens

Fires inside cans meant for barrels of oil

A joyous moment when a baby is born

A raised voice and fireworks

The sky lit up by one broken streetlight

Take care to take care of each other

In a spot such as this, designed by systemic practices and oppression

Do not act as if this has happened by the choice of the victims

Instead take bare rooted trees and vines and bring butterflies

And bring jobs that bring about change in this very community

Take turns taking off your glasses

And take turns to stop the people passing

Strike up a conversation, realize

Objects are bigger than they appear

In your rear view mirror. There can be no salvation

Until every voice is heard, you will continue to deprive

The world of the opportunities of thoughts that lead

To the machines of tomorrow and the dismantling

Of yesterday. Until you listen first, remain silent

Try not to defend, try not to say,

“That’s not me. That’s them. I’m not like that.”

Listen. Listen. Take steps to ask. Maybe nobody wants trees

Or butterflies or the purple of mulberries and shit

This has been heard, realized, offered time after time

The persimmon is not only for the Japanese

The poke of a vision takes on new territory

Not yours. Not theirs. Because there is no theirs and yours

So confusing when separation has taken place for so long

So much closer when you can sit each day and not

Seek to perfect or understand, but rather question and ask and then

Sit in silence and know that this is the gift

Know that all violence comes from dissenting voices

Dogs trying to pee on the top of other dogs pee.

Daily you do this by denying love. Instead, pee where no dog has peed before

Make urination it’s own journey rather that trying to take and break

And pull chunks from one that has come before

It’s like a dog fart in the morning

In a La Quinta in Memphis, drinking hundred and thirty dollar coffee

Without worry and without need for the traffic

Outside the window only now you notice

A U-haul...

After:

The thoughts are like Baklava

The way they are layered

Stuck to each other

And just when you think that one

Has been peeled away

Another comes

The thoughts are like Baklava

Sticky and hard to get rid of

Gone for the moment and back again

And the sign when thinking what Tolle said

Ask yourself what am I going to think of next

The sensation in the legs, the Wonder Bread factory

The men outside the window standing on scaffolding

Three stories above Memphis they work the new year

They build as we build and breathe as we breathe

And yet they seem so far away, their children

And mothers and fathers we will never meet

Always sitting inside the glass, inside

The trap of thoughts that come across

Snow on a television screen, a desire

A want, a need, building something

Worried that you will not get what you want

And what is it that you want?

You say that you are not sure, but this

This is the nature of the stickiness.

So maybe this journey of constantly pushing what

Needs to be next

Taking the seemingly inspired thought

And asking that one to go away

With a simple agreement you have made:

Thinking

Means stop

When uttered during meditation

Thinking

Means closer

To god

To time

To the moment

To the men

Atop the Wonder bread Factory

The white bread you ate as a child

Without question, without twist tie

With peanut butter and jelly

And bologna you didn’t know

And still don’t know

How to spell

For these are agreements made

By humans that once lived in a cave

These are agreed upon terms

This whole world survives upon

The notion that there is a speed limit

That there are equal rights and equal numbers

And that we have more power than a mastodon

In that we created fire and with this advanced

And maybe the acceleration of our minds

Meaning humans

Meaning more specifically

Homo sapiens

Came about from a Sunday stroll

(though the day was not known)

And a couple

(though the couple may have been a tribe)

And a basket

(this was a basket)

Of mushrooms that made the whole cosmos come alive

And with this realization

That we are more, can do more,

Can be more than eaters of marrow and hiders from giants

And with this came cognition

And with this came damage and progress

Though the dictionary can separate

At times the two are synonyms

Even these: bread and wonder and men standing

With or without families, outside of a hotel

In a city where a man that wore sequins was worshipped

And a man that fought to make everybody equal was shot

What does this tell us about the gift of cognition?

The false concepts that we all agree upon

Question everything or find a man

Eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches

Washed down with milk and qualudes

Living longer than one who marched and fought

And gave his own life

Who was really taking care of business?

And who really was the King

And which tried to pee on the pee of other dogs

A LITTLE BIT IN ALL

Of us

There is still the need to run from the mastodon

And stand by to determine

What the other tribe is holding

Stand by and determine whether to play the cards

Or

Thoughts are only stolen when you write too quickly,

Yet no thoughts are your own, for every thought has been shaped

So give this gift back to the gods

Back to nature

Back to the twisted shapes of men

Outside the hotel window

And ask yourself whether or not

The bread should be eaten

Pause before thinking better or worse

Pause before speaking or refusing to speak

Pause to find out what it is that moves you

Pause to realize what makes a true king

And what makes a simple witness in this

Baklava memphis

I would like to end but cannot

For to make words fit and work

We must first consider the thirst and the fountains

Of glory and a pyramid built in a city

Where the heat swells up

And nobody can gather at the top

And so maybe one day a new hotel will be made

After Bass Pro Shops rescinds ownership

And maybe we will sit with a world famous dish

Made by two kings, made by the Greeks

In a restaurant that spins

At the top of a pyramid, drinking

Coffee black and maybe

And apertifc, waiting patiently

For the waiter, the one we wait upon,

To come to the table

White cloth atop silver dish, to

Announce to the crowd and those passing by,

I have this for you,

It is ready, but are you ready

To take in the sweet,

To peel the layers,

To take a look at this:

Baklava Memphis