Hawai-ku

Beware
Falling
Coconuts

-Puna

Grackle

Even as they call them pests
I annoy these Texans
By professing my affection
For these large, extravagant birds
That strut shamelessly
Across the sidewalk cafes
Or swing in noisy gangs
Through the citypark sycamores.
I guess I'm supposed to vilify them
In the ways those who've lived long
Beside them do
But dammit!    I'm just off the plane
And I admire their silken heads
And unabashed Texas bravado

cybernetix

Do you also

Find yourself

Giving many thanx

That you've been endowed

With half a lifetime

Cybernetic-free!

Now that they've become

So fully a part of us

Everlastingly?

Glorify the Hour -everett ruess

   ...the bright sheeny banner that heralds this late winter run of days is the streaming talisman called JOY, ponder it though we might this one grand emotion lifts me out of bed every day & presents me with a world LAVISHED in golden light and I find it elation to simple draw breath... Why & Wherefore?  does every surface fairly shimmer & exalt the eye that partakes in it?  This sublime condition questions every other, it asks why curse the almshouse when the rosy-domed Taj Mahal stretches from you in every direction?  This wine is effervescent & bubbles over your rim with the greatest gift there is, affection for all that's encountered, the roadie in the next car yawning as you wait together for the green light on Camden, the brown squirrel who rains down shuckings on your breezy skull, even the lone geranium flowering in the sideyard announcing its hour of existence, Affection! Kinship! Flesh! Connexion!

wordlesss

Somehow
we want
a 'Big Picture'
to carry us
FORWARD-

we want our lives
to add up to something

But smiling!
Is that Kasyapa
who understood
when Guatama
wordless
lifted the blue poppy

chester street

how is it
the simple sight of shadowlines
across the fresh snowfield
on the neightbor's cottage roof
so thrills the optic nerve?

nationalism

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. 
 -george patton


why is it that when
even a cursory glance
across human history demonstrates
that many of its darkest hours
have been written by Nationalism--
that is, territorial groupthink--
we're still never so much inclined
to question The Flag
as to wave it???

for william carlos williams

I was well aware
That in order to succeed
I had to maintain
A razor's edge
Against my own ready impulse:
But success being what it is
It proved worth
The many times No
I used against myself--
Serving a greater Yes