piano

we had to call the tuner back
when we discovered his F sharp
was actually G flat

Shaky Ladder

The cat stuck high
In the tree
Will surely be
The death of me:
No regal lion
With burning eyes
Could have spelt
More succinctly
My demise

poem without principle

It's quite a precipice from the Absolute
Into mishmash pluralism
Voices down through the trees
Or mystery bungling of pipes
Through the motel wall Monterey California--
Sniff of yellow dogs
With histories unrecorded
Fade out calls under murky skies
Rumoured to hold manmade satellites--
Everything uncertain in the New Realm,
All the signs tampered with,
Spun around or uprooted
On outpost roads to towns with river names,
Vagaries abound-
Flesh is your only raft
And it's damnsure doomed

I'll Pass

In high school
I tried out for the javelin-catching team
But one day of practice
Convinced me
I don't really need this kind of glory

time & space

Look at it this way: time & space are both projexions of the human mind.  After all, the only way you can describe either one is by extension from a set reference.
But in the actual world, extension just isn't there- try pointing to it.  Which brings us to the title of an Alan Watts' book,  regarding the here-and-now: This Is It.

Futurism

   A cult of 'Futurism' emerges beyond that point that hardware is devised to sweeten our conversation with the elements... this is the poet's view.  Futurism emerges where technology is given carte blanche to pursue possiblity for its own sake: what can be done will be done.  Futurism is the only "ism" that's able to rationalise such an obsession with means that ends become secondary and developmental.

Dauphine I.

On the island's west shore
Where Spaniards found skulls
A night wind runs over the dunes

skylonda

Deep in a sprawling canopy
Of old redwoods
Lost somewhere in the Santa Cruz mountains
I find myself mesmerised
By a solitary fogdrop
At the tip of a green needle
Squinking in the noonday sun
A dozen colors

deficit?

All this handwringing
Over Deficit, deficit, Deficit
When Surplus!   is our condition
A wealth of sunlight
Laurel leaf   crescent moon
And moths in the kitchen
Why drown in deficits?
When abundance lands in our lap--

Spitfire

Spitfire flipped me off
At the Colfax weave
Incensed I wasn't yielding
My hard-won right of way
She ran up alongside
In her big-pony Mustang
Then flashed her bold & brazen
Bayonet

street football

for Lew Toll

a big argument breaks out
     over the rush count-
three alligators or four?

-Clay Street

bejewelment

bejewelment-
low band of cirrus-cloud
wearing a crescent moon

locomotives

Trains idle at their sidings
The world over

The big Case-Hellwig diesels
At low rpms

Trundling the summer air
With a bass vibrato

Or occasional slow rev
Flashing what horsepower:

The iron-wheel'd gods
Bide their time.

-Guadalajara

dimensions

atom-spin
    or galaxy arrayed-
just where 
          is the game played?

behind the door

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

sharing snapshots- Fifties

for Susan

    My jaw droppt
    When she pulled snapshots
    From a closet shoebox
    With its usual mix of Buicks & butch haircuts
    From the Do-Wop Fifties-
    Then handed me a dog-eared black-and-white
    Of her uncle
    With his arm around Neil Armstrong
    As they graduated from Annapolis bootcamp

rats!

I apologized
To the large Norwegian rat
As I released his long-tailed
Carcass

caper

a LARGE magnolia flower
purloin'd from Swan-Levine's sideyard
I had to slide it
Passt Peggy on the street
I must be smooth
She never saw it

Nevada

             down
I came out of the September hills
near Halleck

The road blocked with cattle

I mean brown-eared doggies
           a cattle drive
Complete with cowboys
Splendid in their leather chaps
And kerchiefs under the bright Nevada sun

wide-brimmed hats cocked
    just the kind of traffic delay
        I delight in

Pyramid Lake

I was already vulnerable
When I pulled into a turnout
High above Pyramid Lake
To let a leadfoot go by--
I was already weak
With pink sundown in my eyes
Looking over the sage crest
To soft tracts of light wind
Feathering the last sunlight,
A loose ribbon of black freightbirds
Settling for the night
Offshore

spiro

Spiro Agnew-
Is someone really
Named that?

hot-ku

kids shriek
running through lawn-sprinklers
mid-July

Junkyard Jim

for Lew Toll


Almost inert-
The Raleigh pipe that smokes itself
by the beat quonset shed,
mid-junkyard.
Mr Ruddy in denim overalls
sizes up our randy selection
of rake tines, rusted pulleys, flywheels
and bent occult shapes
already sifting back to earth-
our 'found objects', our makeshift Art-
Pulls out his roll of worn bills
to make change,
shaking his head,
pronounces 'five dollars...'

thursday

An odd creature
In a green vest
Straight from the Monty Halls
Of Darwinism
Stepped out of his recycling truck
On our street today
Took one look at our overfilled bins,
Pointed at his big steel bucket
And shouted at me,
"Load 'em up, Francisco!