Denver Vortex Sutra
I saw myself wandering the neon midnight avenues of Denver hunting the white aspirin of salvation, only to be tossed from the concrete lobby into the cold void of Crazy!
Who dug for the shimmering Buddha in the coughing lungs of downtown junkies and gutter-wine alkies, weeping to find the golden lotus blooming anyway in the blue-green grass choking the marble steps of the State Capitol!
Who stood zombie-eyed beneath fluorescent post-office purgatory sorting endless zip-code paper mountains while the celestial cogs of my own frantic mind spun out of whack!
Who vibrated to sleep beside the apocalyptic chatter of street-drill jackhammers, waking panicked to sprint through the white Denver freeze catching the diesel-choking two-hour chariot to Hades!
Who tasted pure oxygen bliss in the rocky jagged snow-passes West of the city and wept into the pine needles refusing to descend back to the human machinery!
Who hallucinated ancient Athens in the exhaust-fumed downtown squares, spitting Nietzschean Superman dialectics with the bearded prophet hobos of Larimer Street!
Who caught the absolute holy Truth from the paranoid babble of the madman down the linoleum hall and let it slip through trembling fingers by morning!
Who argued the Void with saffron-robed Hare Krishnas amid the cymbal-crashing festival dust, discovering only the sweet hollow ring of cosmic futility!
Who ran sweating beside the muddy Platte River at twilight as the great American night swallowed the trembling synapses of my brain!
Who two years later collapsed in the YMCA bunk-rooms of frosty Portland Maine, staring into the crucified eyes of ex-asylum ward-mates who asked man, what the hell are you doing here?
Who wept watching a spectral girl turning perfect cartwheels on the manicured asylum lawns of Webber Hospital!
Who found myself floating in the silver belly of a jetliner staring down at the suffocating brick ghosts of my Louisiana high school!
Sighing what a long strange trip it’s been to the empty plastic tray-table!
Who graduated a second time from the cold sterile Church of Reason, laughing at the madness of the institution!
And who still digs the laughing Buddha in the damp blades of lawn-grass, the holy Buddha humming in the microscopic silicon circuits of the engines of the night, transmitting electric Dharma waves across the vast world wide webs of glowing, pulsing energy and apocalyptic Light!
