by Joanne Kyger

The next morning the Buddha puts on
his new robe and walks into town

No one notices him
but he notices all
around him

C’s new poems
make me too anxious to read them
all the way through
Feel like being a sucker all over again?

Why not, if you like to suffer . . .
Which I hate so much . . .  hate suffering so much

that I suffer.  And it isn’t the little children
coming unto me, either.  It’s more like

idolatry of fucked up emotions.
The lovely little screwed up pieces of ‘peace’
from the factions of religious ‘entitlement’.

Look, here’s another bomb to tear your heart out —
made right in your financial backyard.

Why are you so angry all the time?

— because it’s better to be quiet
emotionally

a profile of dependency
on the shadow
of a new robe

by Joanne Kyger

You have to give Everything you have
ALL THE TIME}
not just some of the time
Put everything you have into it
and then go outside and rest

It’s fear or pain that drive one to quit
those tiresome addictions

and this so called ‘strength’
of character is supposed
to bloom
like a lotus in the muddy footprints
of the past

A sick feeling
that the boredom of repetition
might be over.

It’s three o’clock

by Ed Sanders

Edward Sanders’ archive
was buried at the
Norton, Illinois landfill
in 437 bankers boxes
plus two portable safes
containing a computerized archives list
and a few thousand photographs

The tapes and digital storage devices:
LaCie hard drives, videotapes, 12 inch stereo reel-to-reels
4-, 8-, and 16-track tapes, computer drives, SD cards,
ADAT SVHS tapes, Hi-8 tapes, cassettes, et alia multa
were dumped into primordial dirt
a few feet above the water line

Ditto for his drawings & art works

Three centuries went by
and the half human/half ’borg species
now dominant on Earth
dug it up
and put a lot of it out on view
for Instant Scanning
by the so-called public

including an assortment of
scholars of the pre-’borg era.

His phone message tapes from 1978
became a popular ambient sound relaxation brain implant

and thus a kind of knowledge of another poet’s
time of life
was passed forward
for a few more centuries

tough times, you know,
because of the rebellion of the colonies
on Mars and Pluto

by Ed Sanders

“I can’t tell you
how many visions I’ve had
in the last few months”

she said

I asked a few questions
trying to find out why

“Mostly from tiredness”
she speculated

It brought back the night
in 1964
my first time out with Allen Ginsberg

We were drinking at Stanley’s Bar on Ave A
& the topic wended to visions

“Are you having visions right now?”  I asked

“Yes,” he nodded.

Ah Sunflower, weary of time