Dog Dream Press

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Books published by Dog Dream Press, San Diego, CA:


Mass Cull: the Approaching Cataclysm in America's Workforce
A comic book - 2006

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Dattatreya's Avadhut Gita (Song of the Free), 2006
Robert O'Hearn, trans. ..... (click here to read first chapter)

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Oblivioid, 2002 ```` (read below)



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OBLIVIOID
and other poems
1982 - 2002

by
Paul Wagner


Dog Dream Press
San Diego

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Copyright © 2002 by Paul Wagner
All rights reserved.

FIRST EDITION
First Printing June 2002


Two poems translated by John Stevens appeared
in One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan
1977 Weatherhill, New York - Tokyo


Printed in USA
paul_wagner@hotmail.com

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CONTENTS

No One Knows...................................1
Bathtub Baptism.................................2
Oblivioid..............................................3
Ryokan and After, 1 & 2...................4
Day Job................................................9
God & GOD........................................10
Other...................................................12
Easter Buddha...................................13
Play.....................................................14
Drop It................................................15
What One Wants.............................16
Wake-up Call....................................17
Genesis..............................................18
Lucky Winner...................................19
Light Life...........................................20
Dream Dream....................................22
Even the Stars are Lost in Space...23
Psalms 151.........................................24
Imagine..............................................26
In the Beginning and the End........27



dates/places
1982-1984 San Francisco
1985-1998 Bangkok
1999-2002 San Diego




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NO ONE KNOWS

This evening is too perfect to believe
rain against the windows
deep yellow lights turned down low
one burning log in the fireplace
oozes magic across the floor
Leonard Cohen sings "and no one
knows where the night is going"
and I wonder over and again
Where is that woman I love?
where is she in this splattering
black night?

Nov 18, 1982
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BATHTUB BAPTISM

Bathtub filling, shower on
I slide under the pelted surface
and am baptized in strange voices
messages from some remote present
soothing babble, spirit talk
Rising, I know I am the Ancient One
the wise old man
the very SAME person

January 1984

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OBLIVIOID

Lying awake at night
excited by money-making prospects
The money to be used
for extending my life
in various ways
My life being a process
of launching
from a foundation of oblivion
through the atmosphere of oblivion
into oblivion -
the life of an oblivioid

Feb 29, 1988 1:26 am

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RYOKAN AND AFTER, 1

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy grows longer.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.
The sun shines and I mend my robe;
When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report, my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after
so many things.

---Ryokan (trans JS)


My room is in the middle of a huge metropolis;
Every year the buildings and the traffic increase.
No words of wisdom to be heard anywhere,
Only the incessant blatting of racing motorcycles.
The sun shines and I sit and sweat;
When the moon comes out I go to sleep.
I have nothing to report, my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop thinking about
exotic destinations.

---PW, after Ryokan

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RYOKAN AND AFTER, 2

A cold night - sitting alone in my empty room
Filled only with incense smoke.
Outside, a bamboo grove of a hundred trees;
On the bed, several volumes of poetry.
The moon shines through the top of the window,
And the entire neighborhood is still except for the cry
of insects.
Looking at this scene, limitless emotion,
But not one word.

---Ryokan (trans JS)


A hot night - sitting alone in my cluttered room
Thick with diesel smoke.
Outside, a forest of skyscrapers;
On the bed, several volumes of Thai porno.
Construction spotlights shine through the top of the window,
And the entire neighborhood is still except for
The pile-driver across the street and several howling dogs.
Looking at this mess, limitless emotion,
But not one word.

---PW, after Ryokan

Bangkok, about 1989
Ryokan translations by John Stevens in
One Robe, One Bowl 1977
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DAY JOB

Vast space on all sides
nothing at the center
I pull on my shirt and pants
and head off to work

Mar 3, 1994


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God & GOD

If we're going to talk about God
let's talk about GOD before God
GOD within which God the creator,
the God people worship
and fight over, appears to appear.
GOD is not an object
GOD is not a guy
GOD is not feminine
GOD is not describable
nor is GOD something that is indescribable
GOD is the essence of what is
GOD is not buried somewhere within things
nor is GOD apart from things
GOD is not dead
Praise God, submit to God
Call on God, fear God
And when you're through with
all that, take the final step
and simply, effortlessly, be GOD.

Sept 24, 1999


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OTHER

?
who IS this "someone else"
who I'm holding back from
who I'm afraid of
who I hesitate to stand before
- revealed
?

around 1995


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EASTER BUDDHA

Yippie!

The cross is

empty. The

tomb is empty.

Your own self

is also empty.

I used to be

a Baptist-Buddhist.

Now I'm not.

Sitting, just

sitting.

Such joy!

1999
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PLAY

Our lives
neither difficult nor easy
just play - forever
Not as selves in situations
but as the entire situation
as it continuously
dreams
itself
into
hard edged being
- and out again

1997
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DROP IT

Why not drop it now?
Stop being somebody
(before it's too late
and somebody gets hurt)
A real life is an inconceivable life
anything else is a fantasy
To live in truth
is to hardly be around to enjoy it
Take the world as it is
Stop complaining
Let others figure it out for themselves
Sit down and shut your mouth
you're nothing but dust in the wind
Stand up and let loose
you're the one who swallows the sun

1999

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WHAT ONE WANTS

not getting what one wants
illuminates the great illusion

not getting what one wants
one knows he is living in truth

not getting what one wants
is the door of liberation

not getting what one wants
is what one wants

2000

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WAKE-UP CALL

My body the consistency
of a cluster of galaxies,
held together by a train of thought
Jarred awake by the sound
of motorcycles
whirling through my ribcage
Is this satori or what?


Feb 11, 1996 2am

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GENESIS

Take two particles of nothing,
toss them into empty space
Notice the hum they generate
Stand back and quickly count from one to infinity
Watch the entire cosmos spring to life

2000


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LUCKY WINNER



May this California Super Lotto Plus ticket
Be a reminder
That the Mind that is always freely arising
Is one of infinite abundance.
- You Have Already Won!

Oct 7, 2000


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LIGHT LIFE

Yes! Finally!
It has all come together. This morning!
The radical way of unknowing is completely manifest
- in Joy!
I AM the Way. I AM the Light. I AM the Truth. Yes!
And so are you - of course!
How could it be otherwise?

Have I gone mad?
Well, I hope so.
The shell of conventionality has cracked open for good
And we are all soaring freely on
Infinite wings of light.
No longer will conventional self get away with
appropriating those brief awakened moments
The awakened moment has finally swallowed up
our pathetic little storybook selves for good!
Jah Rastafari! Bom Shiva!
Hallelujah, Praise the Lord!
Om Tat Sat. Bodhi Svaha.
Ahhhhh.......


Nov 28, 2000 10am, immediately upon getting out of bed



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DREAM-DREAM

Okay now, This is reality
and That is a dream
But what, I wonder, is this dream-dream
where I find myself living?
Blissfully
Painfully


2000

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EVEN THE STARS ARE LOST IN SPACE

Nothing is as it seems
Even the stars are not where they appear to be
Where they appear to be is where they were
millions and billions of years ago,
their light from that moment having
just now reached us.
Who knows where they are now?

April 12, 2001
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PSALMS 151

GOD is all there is. There is nothing but GOD.
GOD is light. You are light. Completely. Forever.
In all directions.
GOD is not an object of worship. GOD is not other.
GOD is that to which there is no other.
Undividable.
You could not possibly, even for a moment,
be anything other than this.
Not merely a part of this GOD, but it itself,
as it is (but not really an it).
Seeing God as creator, as savior, is merely a way
to pretend to extend for a time the illusion
of separateness, selfhood - until you are ready,
until you spontaneously drop the effort
to perpetuate yourself and are naturally
returned into GOD, as GOD,
your true condition which was always the case.

Your big deal spiritual search never even took place.
It was no more than a figment's flickering fantasy.
You are that which you thought you were seeking.
There was never anything that needed to be done.
No search required.
No effort expended.
You were never lost,
never separate
- and no one was ever saved.
Hallelujah
Amen

April 18, 2002


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IMAGINE

imagine you are
not dreaming -
imagine this is
real, substantial


March 25, 2002


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IN THE BEGINNING
- AND THE END

As I remember, I started out
hopping around on one foot
on a linoleum tiled kitchen floor
in a little house in an old date grove
I didn't know how I got there
and I still don't
I was about three feet tall, just
tall enough to see the top of the stove,
and our baby sitter Barbara Clark
was making my brother and me a snack

The baby sitter was the second woman
in my life, and the first one I remember
Until then I was so close to my mother
that I didn't notice her
But I did notice the baby sitter
She was twelve or thirteen.

One evening she and I ended up
back in my parents' room up on their bed
We were sitting on our heels,
facing each other,
knees spread wide, up close and naked
She touched mine
and said I could touch hers too
It was warm to my fingers and nice,
and I told her so
I brought my mother into the room
when she got home
and told her what we had done
I never saw Barbara Clark again

The Date Festival and Parade was
the big annual event
Leggy baton twirling girls high-stepping
down Miles Avenue
Red, white and blue bunting lining the street
A contingent of old men in maroon fezzes
I could never figure out what all those
Arabians were doing in our town for
the parade or why my mother
sewed sequinned costumes for their wives

When I was ten the Lord called my father
out of his accounting career
and into the ministry
But first, Bible school in Oregon,
in an old school for the blind with tubular
emergency escape slides from
the upper floors
The next year his Gramma Grace
back in Indiana, my great grandmother,
died and went to Hell
It was a family scandal
She had stubbornly refused to accept
the formula that would have guaranteed
her admission to an eternity of
gold paved streets and non-stop hymns
like The Old Rugged Cross
and Onward Christian Soldiers
For several months following
Gramma Grace's death I put myself
to sleep up in my attic bedroom
falling headlong into an endless
mental spiral, tumbling through
the dark spinning tunnel at impossible
speeds trying to reach the end of eternity,
then back the other way
looking for its beginning

Years later, what bothered me most about
the religion I was brought up on was
its exclusivity. I refused to believe that all
those natives out there beyond the reach
of missionaries would be spending
eternity in Hell
How could I have accepted such absurdity
right up into adulthood? I had been tricked
I knew deep down that Truth,
whatever it was, just had to be
universally accessible
Big Truth, Big God, Total Being,
All-Inclusive Higher Self - whatever one
called it - in some way had to be
everyone's most fundamental identity
That was justice, and it made sense
No ism could corner the market
This grand identity was here for all to feel,
to know - initially glimpsed in the
space between things, the space
between ordinary habits and thoughts
And finally seen
- even in those things themselves
The idea that we are permanent,
separate beings
in a fixed system fell apart
Finally I was Home. Free

I had encouragement. Zen eccentrics
and Himalayan yogis had been
leaving tracks for centuries,
some muddy and nondescript,
others rather elaborate
When His Holiness the 16th Karmapa
of Tibet first came to the West in 1974
to perform the Black Hat Ceremony,
I was living in a little cedar-shake dome
I built in the woods along the
Skokomish River on the
Olympic Peninsula, and I bussed and
hitch-hiked up to Vancouver, BC
for the event, held in the ballroom of
a grand old downtown hotel with
a steep green copper roof

At the moment the Black Hat
was produced,
horns blared, cymbals clanged and
all those in attendance attained
unsurpassed complete perfect
enlightenment
Nothing else necessary - ever
All doubt was removed,
all personal agendas resolved,
confusion and unease replaced by
perpetual clarity and bliss
At the end of the ceremony
the hundreds of participants lined up
and as we filed slowly by the Karmapa
he said something to each of us,
like a blessing, and tapped us
on the head with an implement
An assistant monk tied a red long-life
string around each neck,
another passed out jujubes,
and yet another poured an endless supply
of an alcoholic beverage into
each person's cupped hand
from a four inch pitcher
without ever refilling it
I wore the string
until it fell off several months later



END


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