The ATMA

Get off here.
This stop is as good as any.
There are no wrong ways to go about it.
You can build a shoe shop
or write about stalagmites
or open an e-bay store
in the district of Colombia.
You can eat a hoagie or
watch women’s surfing.
You can cheat at blackjack or
go seal hunting up north.
You can be gay in the Sunset blvd. way
or gay in the Christmas carol way
so long as you’re happy.
That’s really the only barometer
to tell about which weather is better.
And if misery is your stop,
maybe its just the transfer train you are waiting for,
halfway between where you were
and where your happy ass will be going
when its time move.
You can blow bubble-gum bubbles or
chocolate-milk bubbles
or sexy-time bathtub bubbles
with your fiancé at a cozy bed and breakfast
somewhere in the heart of Sonoma California.
You can cook and eat cannellini beans
or throw tin cans at possums in the alley.
You can grow star jasmine in your windowsill planter,
or you watch M.A.S.H. re-runs and curse at your
neighbor’s Rotweiers for barking at helicopters.
You can re-invent the wheel
and then you can patent it
or give it away to help the
Mother Teresa Foundation
fight Malaria along the banks of the Ganges.
You can buy light-bulbs or
Satanic hentai porn online.
You can choke the chicken in the shower
or choke the chicken on the farm so you and
your 12 kids can eat after a day of toiling
in the cornfields where greedy crows
are pecking away at your fall harvest crop.
You can be a producer, seducer, seditionist,
petitioner, proctologist, psychologist,
ceramics teacher, tad-pole watcher,
Top-model contestant on Tyra Banks’s show,
or a blow dealer so long as you put your mind to it.
You can have integrity or scoff at people with integrity
You can be a tax attorney, gambler, politician,
con man, artist, or car salesman and really
are those so different from one another?
Everyone’s trying to get through the days
in whatever fashion behooves their character.
Everyone is simply trying to use their gifts
competitively and for the maximum advantage,
be it Mousselini, the milk man, or Pope John Paul.
Who can point a finger and say you did it wrong?
You can gavel smash and finger point,
you can complain, defame, and slander,
you can gander and pander and philander
you can drive a high-octane car and forget about politics
or you can take two dozen soma and end it all.
You can join the military or the peace-corps
or the LAPD the LAUSD and make enough money to get by.
You can become a beaurocrat,
a democrat,
a demon’s hat
a feline cat-sitter cleaning litter-boxes in the noonday sun.
You can make necklaces that you sell at Venice or
You can make necklaces that you sell at Tiffany’s in Beverly Hills.
You can own a shopping mall or
sleep in the dumpster behind it.
You can wave the flag or burn it
or use it as a tool to get elected
or to start a revolution
or to let the people know
that the revolution has ended.
You can do it all or choose
a completely different set of possibilities.
There are no rules.
You can and will live your life
somewhere along the spectrum
of decency and dick-hood.
And you can tip your waiter 3%
or
be
impatient
with
a
slow
pharmacist.
You can believe the world is full
of snakes, loafers, and opportunists.
You can believe the TV if it makes you feel safe.
Or you can study history books to try to get at the truth.
Or you can find the truth in the basketball hoop if that’s your flavor.
Or you can be a vintage alarm clock fixer if it brings you closer to God.
And what is it that everybody is wrestling with?
You can dig the Dao
or speculate science.
You can chase it like a Buddhist,
Hindu,
Christian,
Atheist,
Muslim,
you are still chasing the same answer,
with a slightly different verbiage,
with a slightly different set of map-quest directions.
Turns out it’s all the same.
We are one ridiculous ever-changing globule
and you and I and the Harlem globe trotters
and the Hare Krisna, and serial killers, and
Jewish mothers against drunk driving
and the-cock fighting trainers of Madagascar are all a part of it.
And outside of it is the one thing you can never be.
And recognize that every time you move your elbow
or shout, or praise, or curse, or kiss, or diss,
or knock down 200 acres of trees to build high rise condos,
or write a book, or teach someone to smoke, or start a company,
you are twisting the collidescope of possibilities
and answering the oldest question of all:
What kind of Universe are you going to be today?