What Has Buddha Done For Me Lately?
by John Kendall Hawkins
.
I always wanted to know
the real story of the Buddha
who suffered for our sins
mine at least
.
always laughing
always spreading the rays
always making love to sunfilled days
always quaffing milk and honey
like it was going out of style
in the land of funny money
.
no one ever saw his when he was angry
no one ever saw him when he was teary-eyed
and wept for the excesses of the world
that had made even him a blissfully obese f*ck
no one ever saw when he replaced Santa one year
and replaced the coal with 'nothing'
little brats in the morning sending evil email north
telling him to stuff his honeyed koan
.
no one ever saw him the one time he kicked the black cat
I mean he put some record book into it
and that cat sailed through the uprights
and that was the end of bad luck, for that fat cat,
who'd been destined for a first violin
on an historically bad orchestra playing John Cage silences
crickets replaced with metronomes
oy
.
Mr B wasn't around for the hound
who came to interview him about the nuke
named after his brilliant smile
no, he'd gone poof by then, proof
that what goes around comes around
and you can't nuke yourself into nirvana
you could come back as an intestinal fart
that blows off the doors of the barn forever
.
it was a blackness that had crossed his path
a feeling that desire was all wrong
and he suffered for this feeling
because at the time he was in the vicinity
of a lemon meringue pie stand that had eat me fat f*ck
written all over them -- literally
at least that's what was read to him
from the Tibetan Book of the Dead
as he streamed out of his body an astral projection
Sara Lee calling him back for more pie
but by then he was already deeply lost
in the all-interpenetrating sky
.
next thing he knew he was
in what Katherine Anne Porter called so beautifully
the downward path to wisdom
known as reincarnation
that we all must endure, fire and cleanse
if we want a piece of our Beatrice in the end
which for the Buddha means no Beatrice at all
the poof is in the buddhin
outta here sayonara auf wieder sehen nicht adios mis amigos bye bye
.
all because he kicked a cat, a black cat called
infinity
so, the motto is
if you see a black cat in the road
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