questions and answers

...something in us that moves us to Question this existence, to seek Answers-- becoming then 'seekers'-- some logo that might make fundamental sense of this otherwise 'absurd' life here... O.K., good enough, but as we search for that elusive cipher that ties everything together, that elusive hieroglyph to hang our hat on, why not consider that life itself is that hatrack, in all its spontaneous evanescence, both scary & sublime?  And any alternative 'answer' as only a soft flannel pajama for sleeping?

Reduction

In a world shaped by numbers
You too
Run the risk
Of becoming mere

1986

(for Michael Brackney)

At four AM
   we snuck into the firetower
      on Banner Ridge

Clanking midwinter
   up a hundred steel steps

One goal in mind-
   a streaking Comet Halley to find

to think of time....

Our lives are not measured by sand in the hourglass...
Our lives are the sand in the hourglass...

self-abuse

hammerswing
closing paintcan lid:
zing! primer across my nose

december pomes

San Francisco

I had just pulled my Saturday Chron
From the rack on Baker Street
When a LARGE armada of city pigeons
Stoppt me in my tracks
Swinging as one overhead




Vista,  1967

How formidable we felt
As our high school football team
Crossed the parklot to the field
Thundering in our cleats



Fifteenth

It would be easy to say
   how lucky I felt

To be called on the phone
   and hired

To repair the picket fence
   on Piety Hill

Damaged from the snowstorm
   already a week ago,

Amber branches snapped
   from the weight

Taking out whole sections
   of pickets & rails below,

It would be easy to say
   how blesst I felt

To cut measure & saw
   beneath a blue sky full

Of fresh turning clouds--

But--
Is there any other way?





Temporality

Paradise as perfection
Exacts one small tariff
From us:

That it presents itself
As time,
As wavering temporality--

Not as illusion,   as something
To be escaped
But wonders behold!   to be entered:

For what in truth
Could be more Hellacious
Than permanent deflection

From any MORPHOLOGY?

parable

Assange is jailed
     because
he freed the truth---

the cyber-gene

Thank God I was spared
The cyber-gene
That might have cubed me
In TeleDyne's research machine

Chester Street

Never take for granted

Those winter afternoons

That put you somehow

On the crest of a hill

A chance to study

   the underside of ice-clouds

      ribboned at thirty thousand feet--

How else would you catch

That loose wedge of snowgeese

Necks extended

Wings beating north???

Humboldt County

HUMBOLDT COUNTY

Slight rain
  falls cold
    across the windshield

As we bounce
  over the broken asphalt
    west to Petrolia

A stiff wind
  blowing the golden grasses
    making our way

To Cape Mendocino--

Forgetting for a sublime moment
  the troubles of this world
    where the expanse

of sky sea & land

Conspired
  to provoke bliss
    in our throats






DRIVING THE VALLEY

Taking the Woodruff cut-off
by chance at pink sunrise

Our eyes astonished
as blackbirds by the hundred

Swing across shimmering riceponds
back to phonewires





LUCID DREAM

Backstage
they primed me
preened me
readied me

For my big comedy show
at the Center for the Performing Arts

I took a deep breath
They pushed me through
The green curtain

Psyching myself
For a raucous ovation--

Every seat empty


FORTUNA

The cheap motel's low metal awning
Keeps rain out of our eyes
But pours it robustly
Into our EARS

November 04

Far beyond the headlines
And rumours of war
The middle-aged carpenter
Is hanging raingutters
On the backside of Round Mountain-
A fine November day
Bright under gold oak leaves
With long views of the dusky Yuba-
At 3 PM the sun got low enough
To illuminated a local scene,
"Manzanita and rock pile"
But the best was last 
Pink highlights of sundown fleece
Over the darking woods-
Crescent moon waxing in western branches
Driving the long way home.

she's very Zen
but hers does not point
toward illumination
it's just plain Zen

2010 quotes

Be the change
You want to see
In the world
                 -Gandhi


I long for man to repent
And be saved from his own immortality
                -T.F. Powys

All change is miraculous to contemplate
              -Walden

It is often said that my heart
Is too open for my own good
              -Henri Rousseau

Don't part with your illusions.
When they are gone,  you may still exist
But you have ceased to live.
            -Mark Twain

You ask the embryo
Why he, or she,
Stays cooped up in the dark
With eyes closed.
           -Rumi

He who knows others is clever;
He who knows himself is enlightened.
          -Lao Tzu

I am defeated all the time;
Yet to victory I am born.
            -Emerson

We spend our time searching
For security
And hate it when we get it
           -Steinbeck


There's no safety in numbers
Nor in anything else
              -Thurber

What you are
Comes to you
            -Emerson

Sky is the daily bread of the soul
          -Emerson


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