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???