militarism

"...The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure."

-LBJ

quote

"...Everyone perishes from an excess of their own first principle..."

-Lord Acton

bad lunch choice

jot 2

"what if they gave a war & nobody showed up.....?"

jot

how old is the warmth of your blood?

-alvarez

County Road #85

beat up by pickups
   Jackass Road
      wears rain-puddle shiners

just wondering

We've so filled the world
   with time- and labor-saving devices
Why then have we so little time
   and work so hard?

&

let's have a hand!
for the asterisk*
& ampersand!

after Ling Zi Ping

Is this not
The same wide moment
The mastodon roamed-
Where then is the demarcation?

drizzle

...'drizzle' pretty much gets accorded 3d class status in meteorological circles, rain but not really, unrain but not really, yet this morning when I walked up to the street to fetch my Bee I was greeted by a subtle and sublime atmosphere that sent a cold fresh spritz across my cheek, misting the town lights before me, and I felt nothing so much as christened by this new day, lifted happily out of my sleepyheadedness into an indistinct euphoria- call it 'drizzle' if you'd care to, but what I call it is unexpected grace.

kitkit'ku

On the dusty sill
   of Gary's outhouse-
Livy's History of Rome

bi-cycle

If technology was devised
To sweeten our conversation
With the earth & sky
A bicycle would certainly
Be a gem of engineering

EMGOLD INC.

Go ahead call me MR. NO-
     but why slight the least
     who tilts at the beast
That sees all things as DOUGH?

Old Rusty

Sixty-two years young
Streaming yahoos!  come out of me
Coasting the long grades
From Indian Springs
To Penn Valley on Old Rusty
Even standing on the pedals like I'm 16
Face stung by cold November wind--
Yes I'll be gone someday
But tell 'em I lived!
LARGE!

gigabyte

Once upon a time
We charmers held life
In the palm of our hands
The wide world
'Come round to us
In dance sunlight flower & song
Then Google!    came along
With its dotcom & gigabyte
And we wash on the margins
Inept & alone

five-seven-five

my what fine cussing
when the neighbor's rottweiler
runs off with his hat!

-carpentering w/ Steve House

Palisades Rim Trail

Summertime
Hiking the Palisades Rim Trail

Sixty-nine hundred feet

Across a scrub mesa
Of snow-stunt firs & ponderosas

Walk out
A long brow of Ritter granite

To triangulate yourself
Between Castle & Devil's Peak

A perspective that goes
Decidedly planetary

sweet aire of Otherness

ah the sweet aire of Otherness,
no matter how close & familiar,
the spotted ladybug manuevering
up my armhairs
as I leaf through the morning paper
remains strange & otherworldly,
taxi horns with distance in them,
who knowz?
what we're all doing thrown together here
willy-nilly on the fractured pavements,
shuttered by the shadow of a dozen pigeons
swinging across the marquee
of the art deco Del Oro theater,
say your prayers say the imams
or the churchbells floating
over the crooked tombstones at St Patrick's,
say your prayers mi amigo
but you'll never get out Alive

just wondering

Was it Albert?
Who first pronounced
Undulation
As the square root
Of minus-one?

Cancun

The airline apologised
For leaving us stand on the tarmac
While a fine caribbean spritz
Played on our heads;
But for my part--
no apology was needed!

time & eternity

Eternity?
NOT the incomprehensible extension
Of time,
But the temporal process itself-
HERE-
Where nothing abides,
Nothing abides

Leaving Mexico

Turns out
The couple next to me
On the plane out of Cancun
     Were there
For metaphysical reasons:
     She:
Reading Mayan Prophecies.
     He:
Reading People Who Don't Know They're Dead

Six AM

A loose gather of crows
By the dozens
High across the pink stratus of dawn
Calling to the sleepy residents of town
A New Day!   A New Day!
Wake up sleepy-heads!
-This blessing of birds.

primitive religion

     The most ancient of religions ferries on its haunches the actual magic of this blue planet Earth, its rocks & trees & blooming wildflowers, its skylights on clouds & singing birds, its circling heavens burning with stars planets & galaxies spinning, a religion so universal, so irreducible it resists ideology of any stripe that might shape some "orthodoxy," where bastions of 'faith' get edified, followed by debates & quarrels & well, you know the rest.

just wondering.....

   
 "...people forget it is the eye that makes the horizon......"      -Emerson

 "Time" & "Space" seem to perform one function: when projected, they reduce us to mere specks in a vast tableau that stretches beyond comprehension.
     However!  what is the source of those projexions if not our very minds & senses?  What if time & space are seated in the observer -ah Whitman!- and the moment in front of us is literally ALL there is???

last rainclouds at sunset

   ...it started with just a faint blush
of pink on the undersides
of the front's departing rainclouds,
arrayed in distinct bands up the Sierra mountainside,
   but having seen this omen before
I rushed to the street for a wider vista-
Sure enough,
in five minutes' time the setting sun
-unseen beyond the ridges-
   fired the bellies
of this low deck of cloud
with a color so vivid, so surreal,
   I was founded dumb

The One Question

At bottom of all discourse,
Debate, dialogue & diatribe
Burns a solitary question:
How then shall we live?

santa barbara

Power out-
navigating table & couch
by full moon in beach cottage-
boom, skid, ouch!

Moon climbing nightly,
   Toward conjunction with Venus-
      On the glory dawn, FOG!

miller-moerman

It was only an errand
To fetch a stick of stovewood
Behind the tilting plywood shed

When a sudden breeze
Passed in the tall pinegrove
Up the hill

The shimmer
Of ten thousand pine needles
Danced on my retina

Tansporting me
To Rumi's "Ode to Joy"

Some kind of backwood beatitude-
Along with the split oak
I droppt my jaw

for Dan Sweigert

"You'll learn to like it"
According to my Bandy Blue
As I collect Bon-Bon's doggie-do
From Chester Street
-And yes indeed!    this time
Turns out to be true!

beach cottage

Navigating furniture
   By full moon tonight
      Room to room

-Santa Barbara

Groupthink? be careful

      People want to belong to something larger than themselves. It may even be genetically directed:  good enough, but with a price it comes: it concentrates decision- & policy-making power in the hands of a few or even of one, & you better hope s/he's benevolent, with the best interests of the group at heart; but from where I stand the almost universal downside of this 'cluster' phenomenon is its inevitable push for orthodoxy of some stripe, some tenet, principle or protocol that each member is expected to line up with.  This shapes the way they see the world, and it LIMITS what realities are available to them, because what's Real True & Actual is already etched.
      To the student of human behavior this has also shown itself to be dangerous- to whit, religion & nationalism-- as part of the way any group defines/ contours itself: by projecting others as an out-group, as not-them (hint: jihad) (hint: kool-aid).

Aurora

Climbing the stairs
To fetch the morning paper
My eyes leapt to see first light
Coloring clouds to the east.
It tells them
A spectacular dawn
Is in the making.
Coming into day
Broken rainclouds move up from the south,
Their ridges & outlines
Catching first rose tints of sunlight.
In the distance
More clouds scud across
The pine-tops like a flotilla.
O Aurora!
How you ravish
This poor lad.

-after Wang Wei

one summer day

At five o'clock
the sky grown dark
with thunderclouds
bristles with raw voltage;
dry gusts of wind,
pregnant with something,
lift the blanch underside
of alder leaves on the trail home
from the creek.
The swirling air
carries a cold spritz in it
playing against your delighted cheek.
Faint rifleshots boom
up the canyon
And for a moment
the misting turns to large patterings
of rain.
Some tremendous thing's
advancing on us.
Like a wheel valve opened
the darkness begins to send hail
down in enormous volleys,
pinging on every surface,
flattening the garden daisies.
Dark forms churn overhead.
Suddenly close jags of lightning
arc across the sky
followed by explosions of open thunder,
Thoreau's "giants rolling lumber
across the huge floor above us"

'Spoze

Easy and apparent it is
To suppose the world a grand globe
People'd with passing skeletons;
Obituaries tell well their story-
However!     Let's turn
That spoze on its ear
And reckon the world aright:
This the first day,
And never's been tonight.

retort

"Easy for you!"
Said Doctor Irons,
"To flog American society
As an equity culture
From some comfortable
Philosophical Walden Pond...
But I have kids to feed!"

My Free Tattoo

I got my tattoo
The cheap way--
Hanging raingutters
On Railroad Boulevard
I lost my footing,
Slid down the wet ladder
To land in a patch of briars-
Now I can show off
My improvisational art-
Zeus cartwheeling across Orion
Multichromatically-
Free of Charge!

Sly is the guy

Sly is the guy
To use the ruse
Of handy man dandy
Just to cruise the 'Cruz!

transition

you start arguing
with this concept
of goneness
that just seems to go
against the grain
until it's recognised
one fine morning
it IS the grain

ever been fired?

Hey Lew,
Ever get into one of those nasty towel-fights
Like in a locker-room,
Where you might even wet the tip?

"Yeah," he replies chuckling,
"I got fired for a job once for that."

Fired, really?

"I was a prep cook- another guy & I
Got into it by the dishwasher
Just as the owner walked in-
Gave us one look & just said
'you're outta here.'"

-Vista Golf Club, 1967?

dawn lollygag

...who is that grinning hackysack turning pedals under low bay clouds lit pink & gold by the rising sun at 6AM, who is that wide-eyed fool who laughs out loud tracking lazy curves down the wide mobile park lanes for the sheer dumb lollygag of it?

locomotive

Locomotives idle at their sidings
The wide world over
The big Case-Hellwig diesels
At low RPMs
Thrumming the summer aire
Or occasional slow revv
Flashing what mighty horsepower:
The iron-wheel'd gods
Bide their time.

-Guadalajara

"... Simplicity is freedom.  Duplicity is bondage.  Simplicity brings joy and balance.  Duplicity brings anxiety & fear.  The preacher of Ecclesiastes observed that, "God made man simple: man's complex problems are of his own devising."

-Richard J. Foster

flesh!

    the bright sheeny banner that heralds this late summer run of days is the streaming talisman called JOY, ponder it though I will this one grand emotion lifts me out of bed every glorious dawn & ponyrides me across a world lavished in golden light & I find it elation to simply draw breath why & wherefore? does every surface fairly shimmers & exalt the eye that partakes in it? by the lilt of a voice or swept clearly 'round the bend by some stray melody chanced upon:  This sublime condition questions every other, it asks why curse the almshouse when a rosy Taj Majal stretches form you in every direction?  This wine is effervescent & bubbles over the rim of your ears with the greatest gift there is, affection for all that's encountered, the roadie in the next car yawning as you wait for the light on Camden, the brown squirrel raining down shucking onto your breezy skull, even the lone geranium announcing its hour in the neglected sideyard, Affection, Kinship, Laughter, FLESH!

yes

Why thumb through leaves
     of Darkness
With so many
     rays of sunshine
Ready to be counted?

Transtromer quote

We see these events from the wrong angle:
A heap of stones instead of the face of the sphinx

-'Molokai'

nationalism

Nations are something we have to put up with, artificial & arbitrary boundaries- not something we pledge our allegiance to!

Virtual Reality

Once upon a time
We charmers & brigands
Held life -yes!
In the palm of our hands
The wide world ours to steal
In sunlight daisy & childsqueal
Then Google sets things right
With its dotcom modem & gigabyte
Its kindle IPAD & smartphone
And we wash on the margins
Inept & alone

Glass Floats

   Down on the far end of Plaza del Rey, tooling about on my big fat-tire bicycle with no particular object in mind, I steered in my nonchalant way into a small cul-de-sac where the neighbors thereabout took obvious pleasure in their gardens, ornamenting them with various flowerbeds & offbeat sculptures...
    One resident had affixed on an angular pedestal a simply beautiful glass ball of a tourmaline hue, maybe six inches in diameter, and it immediately brought to mind my youth in Oceanside where beachcombers, in their various wanderings would discover such glass orbs that were rumoured- whoknowz?- to be floats that provided buoyancy for fishing nets cast by the Japanese fleets, lost one way or another at sea--  now they have drifted across the north Pacific to wash randomly on this far California strand waiting for whomever might find them.  Many of these beach-wanderers favored displaying their prizes across the long sills of their plate-glass picture windows, some with netting still attached, filling the occasional visitor with slack-jawed amazement.

new 'Ku

A big midnight favor
Unscrewing the neighbor's light
In her borrowed bathrobe


Carhorns behind
As I slow to watch
Pasture geese land     -McCourtney

Air Sign

Air Sign
Until I get my geminectomy

Then I go to the Astro-Mall
A free agent

Perusing the mockups
-Libras & Aries & Taurii-

Thumbing through the plusses & drawbacks

"Grounded," "Quick to Judge,"
"Rational," "Deliberate," etc

But when all is said & scrutinized
I lean toward the blue depths

I'm going PISCES

nope

zen

non-

sneeze

prime-ative

the 'primitive' simply refers
to a certain primary band of energy
that emanates from rocks, trees,
'the design wind makes on water; '
wavelength that poets, children & aborigines
are particularly attuned to,
SOURCE ENERGY accordingly characterised
as 'sacred' or exstatic.

spit-fire

Spitfire flipped me off
At the Colfax weave

Incensed I wasn't giving up
 My hard-won right of way-

Then flashed me
Her bold & brazen bayonet

speling

Sinse when did it becum

Such a big furrry deel

To spel a word correckly

Or get labelled a shlemeel?

Yuba River: february

A sudden break in the cloud
Low sun
Highlighting every polished stone
In the winding river;
Then dims & is soon obscured.
Dark underbelly clouds
Drift up the canyon,
Light snowflakes wheel in the air,
Soon covering the trail to Purdon,
Printed only with rabbit's feet.

Sitka

A full moon rises huge & yellow

Over great tracts of tundra

Near the eightieth parallel-

Under a splendid Borealis

A young grey wolf drinks

From a long tire-pond

On the road once used

As a shortcut to Sitka

rei-ku

So into healing

  she reikis

    the dented watercan

poet

You juss' a throwback
Poor poet hackysack

Your chromosomes don't jibe
With the hustle of the tribe

You never seem to get ahead
Simple stoolie chowderhead

Clapping sticks out of season
Gazing on clouds for no reason

upside-down

Small band of poets
Who believe technology
Has got it all wrong-

That instead of delivering
Space and time
It's been against them all along

one for Bukowski

Almost by default
I slip further & further
Past unemployments
And broken plumbing
Into midsummer's lowest denominators,
Barefoot unshaven in underwear
Limping about the house,
Cold showers
And one-sheet-sleeping alone-
Knee surgery recuperations
Opening up the lazy day
And its slow hours-
I'm lazy too on doctor's orders
Reading Hass or Emerson
In the shade, tilting vodka 
in homemade lemonade

off the Short List

japanese lanterns hung,
big party next door-
not invited!

old photos

In attic shoeboxes they fade

Destined to be just faces

By generations not yet made

navel

The little knot we carry
On our softskinned bellies
Symbolises our warm blood
Is inherited,
Remnant of that glistening umbilicus
That links us to wind grass & stars,
Mother Gaia.
It is the achilles hole in our theory
That we are self-wrought, autonomous,
But all neural pathways 
Lead back to this ancient home,
This universal hieroglyph that spells
EMANATION

Moving Rhododendrons

Even as we struggled
To keep the wheelbarrow upright

To breathe in the sunlight
That is the thing

Even this cold steel shoveling
On Red Dog's north flank

To be suddenly dumbstruck
Looking up the green/gold column

Of ten thousand pine-needles
Ablaze with golden sunlight

-That is the thing.

moolah

The wayward squirrel
Who lingers in morning sun
Admiring leaves or seeking silence

Is met with the reproach
Of squirrel wisdom,
With the squirrel-wheel mantra-

"Time Is Acorns!"

Willow Glen

Heavy rains have pooled

In a broad sheet across the backyard

No more than three inches deep.

An old shoe floats with gardenia blossoms,

The cat's bowl drifts in it,

Brisk stormwinds rake its silver surface

Just like the open sea.

mexico

'Standard Of Living’
Was his reply to my query-

“Well if you could live anywhere
Why not live here? ”

But elsewhere
There is far more ‘standard’
Than there is living

tail-wags-the-dog

Every new technology

Brings what it will

You know the drill-

Better! Faster! More!

Until it morphs into

Just another thing to pay for

january

A swirl of thin snow

Yard hands stamp & swear
Rubbing hands

By a fire of pallete staves
Ablaze in a blue oildrum 

Behind the stacks
Of rolled fencing


-Hills-Flat Lumber Co, Grass Valley

lonely-ku

towers blink red

across Galveston Bay-

my Texasized loneliness

Land's End

Like Roethke's 'Journey to the Interior'
One presses on where the pavement ends,
All the Caution signs riddled with bullets
The curving gravel ribboning through oaks
Across narrow bridges where no water runs,
Further into switchback mountains
Winding out in low gears to the inevitable fork
And of course,
all the signs missing.
Dice rolled on Mendocino County Road 431
Miles of harrowing timber access road,
You've no idea where you're heading
Sliding in dust to the axles
Lurching over potholes & sticks,
The rolled Ford pickup rusting in the ditch-
Then suddenly the close trees open
To a scene not made for the eyes of men-
Stark bright golden star
Shining over vast Pacific sea-fog
At land's end.

Jackass Flats

Driving out Jackass Flat Road
Deeply chilled in December
Spending an warmth-free afternoon
With the good grey poet
Yet every rainpuddle shone
Along the washboard roadway,
Every surface brilliant, even dazzling
From yesterday's long soaking-
But now the storm's departed
Leaving a battered garrison of misshapen clouds
Wearing that bold brass December light
The winding road opening
To long views of rust-red buttes-
Rumbling the long way OUT
Takes your breath
Confirming the charmed life
That's found you 

-for Gary Snyder

good-bye

I too sifted
Down the dark seductions of life,
Lacerated by faint perfumes
In sundown hallways,
I too woke alone
Where once a lover'd been,
Kitchens ominously silent.
I too tumbled across the glinting tines
Of love & devotion,
I too was doomed
To long sigh goodbye
On answer machines.

backroads

Home by back roads from N. Columbia
In the warm mizzling April dark
Mazda floating on headlight mists
Wet gravel turns & straights-
Glimpse of canyon pinetops
Band of moonlight over the dim pastures-
Coasting the river canyons
I caught the ninth inning
A fuzzy faraway Giants game
Fade out by the bridge-
I stopped in the middle
Killed the engine
Leaned on the rail
In the huge imponderable beauty
Of deep Yuba night

hobo

the tramp's going steady
with the sky-shining moon

he meets her on the high mesa
most nights

smitten with her moods
knowing she can't stay

herni-ku

Giggling like a schoolgirl

   The surgery prep nurse

      Shaves my pubes

handyman

Rolling the cement-crusted wheelbarrow

Behind apartments on Pleasant St

Scooping what's been mucked from raingutters

I delight in these worn clothes

Content to do the unwanted work of the world

If it leaves me under a cerulean sky

A Spring breeze passing pinebranch to pinebranch

steve

He's right

About most things

But we forgive him

Guadalajara

Locomotives idle at their sidings
The world over
The big Case-Hellwig diesels
At low RPMs
Thrumming the summer air
Or occasional slow rev
Flashing what steely horsepower-
The steam-wheel'd gods
Bide their time.

geography

When she lifts her shirt

To show us a bugbite

All I see

Are vast tracts

Of sublime womanhood-

flesh

If deathlessness you desire

Go be a stone or briquet

If it's giddy evanescence you prefer

Flesh is your ticket

debate

Evolution or Creation-

For those who insist

On Derivation

Daisy Blue Mine

Alive!    was I
In the sunlight today
Crouched behind a cosmos
Of blue poppies,
A wind moved
And splendors of June sunfall
Rained down from loose brilliant clouds
That floated
Over a terracotta St Francis
Weeping in his white allysium Eden....

Coming Home, Lake Vera

After days down freeways
I come home to frosty woodsides
Where a night of snow
Has graced every surface,
I can breathe again gazing at clouds-
I feel the blurred life of salaries & carshine
Interrogating this hidden quiet way
But I too sift like fresh snow
Through the aimless shank & swirl
To trace the tiny ledges of the unlatched gate

broadside

The poet finds himself absent
The pervasive telegraphic gene,
Constitutionally unable 
To manipulate arcane figures
For some distant purpose...
Accordingly he comes to accept
The shovel or pipewrench or drill
Placed in his hand,
Comes to value a life
Among squirrels bluejays & clouds
Turning in Spring skies

finches

a loose threesome
  of blue finches
    swinging high
between pine-tips-
  brief glimpse
    of what this world
might really mean

Big Sur

Behold the blue sea-swell

That lifts itself a glass morning

Out of the sea’s heaving breast:

The open ocean wave

That draws itself across the rock reef

Cresting toward the fine pitch

That exhilirates the very air

With a perfect arc of spray

american manhood

This American manhood,
Aren't we just the toast of the earth
With our muscular SUVs
And SuperDuty trucks,
How formidable with our Sequoias
And Rams & Expeditions,
Our testicles hang clear to our knees!
KingCab & Hummer,
A thirty-four-foot fifth wheel!
Don't mess with America
And his gritty-jowled leathernecks,
Finesse?    is flaky flowerpower-
Better left to Belgium & Thailand,
Now get outta my way

one more hour

The whitehaired lady
    singing in her garden
the random stones
    on the pathway to the bakery
a warm breeze
    in magnolia leaves
working at Howard’s--

yes the exstasy of contact
    the joy of cheating death
One More Hour!

those are the wuns

In the larger Matriks
Many get born
Who have no knack for knumbers,
Knelsons, knomenclature,
Nuckleheads who accordingly
Don't propagate.
Those are the wuns who kut skuul
With nothng to warry,
Free to pick daisies by the trax
& Never marry.

-2011

bike ride

     When you get out into these
alder-graced creeks
     Like French Ravine
     On a summer morning
     It begins to dawn on you
that time- as we project it-
is just that, a projexion,
a useful fiction of human culture.
     Here in the warm dappled
shade
     What projexion obtains?
     There is only the trout-dimpled
flats, & the frantic wave
     At mosquitos.

recycle day

An odd creature
In a green vest
Straight from the Monty Halls
         of Darwinisim
Stopped his huge green truck
On our street today
Pointed to the overfilled
Recycle bins
Then to his beat blue bucket
And shouted at me,
"Load 'em up Larry!"

musta been nerves

I'd rehearsed it
a hundred times
in my mind

but when the time arrived
for reality
pure botch-ville

channeling the islands

On a lark we sailed
the borrowed blue trimaran
from Santa Barbara
out for a day of snorkeling
in the kelp forests
rimming the south cape beaches
of Santa Cruz Island,
holding our masks
as we splashed over the side
our big frog flippers
glinting sunlight in early July,
plying those sublime
netherworlds
strand by translucent kelp-strand
in a trail of outbreath bubbles
until you chanced
upon an opening
and the startled flash
of seabream by the silver thousands
turning from you
& oceanically gone

murphology #131

If you ring me
Please make certain
I'm square in the middle
Of something
Can't be put off

16d carpenters

(for Alistair)

He forgot his lunch
Now I have to give him
Half of mine

yes, fate?

As it turns out
Yes it is possible
To subsist
On the accidental largesse
Of a society
Hell-bent on widening its wealth--
But- did it have to be MOI?

trouble

I lean over
To pick up my droppt keys
And the night's imagery
Comes awashing over me,
Faint runs
Down chalked playgrounds
Or camping by simple tombstones
In breezy May:
Then I recognized
What trouble I'm in,
Somewhere on the high seas
Sans paddle or compass
Knowing that numbered are my days-
Yet charmed unspeakably!
By saffron morningtime
Streaking the eastern
Ramparts

Toe-Stepping

After he honked behind me
At the ARCO Station
I turned to look at his wife
Pointing to her watch:
Get Done Fueling SOB!
Was the scowl on his face--
Incensed at the moment
Now I feel only amused
That someone gave me their toes
To step on

bike-bliss

     Finding a secret source of bliss
Brings always a smile to your face:
Like the one I've found
Tooling out backroads on my spoke-spun pony:
Gliding through long canopies of oak leaves
On a splendid June morning,
     Heading in particular Nowhere:
Down county roads like Auburn, Orion, or Ponderosa
Neglected by most traffic:
And instead of clicking down to low gears
Getting off the darn thing
     And just pushing it
Up those shady pavements:
Best of all, doesn't cost a dime!

field trip

In a circle
   Around the Park Ranger
      Kids pass a bear skull

Darwin's Dementia

Once upon a merry time
I was an aspiring birder-
Charmed by the shape & song & soar
Of crows robins & orioles
Not to mention the dazzle
Of darting hummingbirds
Or the swing of pigeons by the dozen
Across the Del Oro marquee
Even investing a hundred dollars
On a pair of nice Nikon binoculars-
Then one day
Purely by chance
I was surfing Wikipedia
And landed on a site
That presented an exquisitely
Iridescent blue-green citrus beetle-
Now I've set birds aside,
Now I've landed Darwin's Dementia-
I'm become an aspiring BUGGER

Ridge Feed & Supply

Please don't
   Pick up
      Chicks

-hen cages

murphology

Thirty years in the trades
Have shown me
Very few troubles are orphans
Most have cousins & uncles

who's to Say?

Who's to say
The frolic of pigeon flight
Swinging across April sunlight
Is not the incarnation
Of good souls
Rewarded with delight?

samadhi

Any 'Seeker' soon discovers
that life is full of lessons,
parables that indicate further
or deeper truths
so cultivates a self-awareness
to encounter roadsigns
pointing to what really matters--
accordingly he finds
his everyday reactions
that spin him around
present a SURFACE
disturbed by these crosswinds-
a surface thus indicating
the enormous reservoir of samadhi,
of reflective poise
disturbed & deflected
by the press of attachments,
converting all Be-ing
into the mad scramble
of Becoming....

Barn Owl

There I found him
In the high farm valleys
Of southern Oregon

Where some of the world's
Best timothy is grown baled & stacked-

I found him
Near the irrigation boneyard
Foraging for 'lost' objects-

High inside a plywood box
The yardhands built for him

On the steel crossbeam
Of an abandoned hayshed

His mission quite obvious-
On residential rodent patrol-

One of the world's
Most otherworldly-
A tawny barn owl

Giving me that look

supreme ironies

Supreme ironies shape human life
& an engineering culture like ours
    sows this one:
Where its enormous premise
is to save time,
    its plethora of devices
Only puts time on the run,
underscoring the flight of time,
    endowing it with fleet feet--
thus for the poet disappeared
into mountains
his morning is slow wide & unhurried
    as the sun's leisurely transit-

[his devices:
shoes/shades/shorts]

the buzz

They're worried about a large buzz of bees
Above the sushi bar "Kaido"
(former home of the Aldebaran)
They want a bid from me to remove them
-Ladder, long sleeves and wasp spray-
I told them I'd have to think it over

Sunday bike ride

How perfectly sublime
to coast
your sleek-wheeled pony
down Hidden Valley Road
a Sunday morning  early in June
past many a pasture rail
painted white
horses turning heads
to check this strange sight-
down to an alder-dappled creek
named French Ravine
where some night cool
lingers

"Civil War Re-Enacted in Pioneer Park" -news item

     As a former combatant in a very real war
I remain perplexed whenever I encounter war portrayed as theater, entertainment, or anything "fun".  Simple regard the present state of video games.
    War is a hideous business, as anyone will attest who's been sullied by the viscera of comrades, or had one breathe his last in his arms.
    With all the sublimity that surrounds us on this blue planet, I can't help but wonder why we go to the lengths we do to rehearse and recreate- thus legitimating- the next river of blood.

two hundred pounds?

It's an old excuse
But it's the only one I have-
"The scale must be broken!"

apocalyptic gladiators

It’s still undecided
Who Rules the Heavens

But Thor & Zeus
Had it out Monday night
Over Grass Valley

Hammer & Tong-

Fearsome gladiators
Locked in titanic combat
For supremacy

The outcome unknown
But what a display
Of apocalyptic firepower

ah, early morning bicycling

Coasting my fat-tire back
     down the cool breeze
          on Willow Valley Rd

Through long morning canopies
     of oak leaves

It was the first week in June

I braked at Varnell Lane
     leaned my bike against a tree

Drank deep the samadhi there
     the world's troubles far behind

Serenaded by orioles

thermodynamics

the three principal laws of thermodynamics are sometimes expressed jocularly as (1) you can't win; (2) you can't break even; and (3) you can't get out of the game.

-Dennis Overbye

rush creek

Walking without destination:
    or rather,
    walking where each step
    is itself destination:
    thus the snow-graced earth
    receives us,
       offering small intimacies-

happy birthday Ed

If I had a bootprint
For every nickel I've made,
I'd be a wealthy man

-for Ed Buryn

Kinevan Ranch

          Up
        Into
      The high
    Meadow moonlight
We hiked,

Crossing hillsides
       And slanting down
              Sandstone ridges,

Straw grass tasseled
With foxtail & seed silver
In the bright albedo
Of that summer moon,

Moving slowly
In the shadow-world
       Of night-things:

          Up
        We climbed
      The steep
    Incline
Of worlds out of time,
Across fields of stars
      For flowers,

Sat quiet alone
In a moment that spanned
Ten thousand years

-San Marcos Pass, Santa Barbara

petals

talk all you want
   of iridescent beetles--
the world belongs to peonies!

Mr Powell

Soldier On!   Mr Powell
In the majestic tradition
Of bayonet AK and HumVee
Of intimidation and demise
Carry always in your heart
Patton's noble phrase
"Make some other poor bastard
Die for his country!"
Will this human race
Ever tire of waging War War War
And equating it somehow with
-Peace?

-Time Magazine interview w/ Colin Powell

annular eclipse

Rare times
the celestial domain
breaks through our pedestrian perceptions
like the annular eclipse
at the cheese wine & cracker fete
at Mary Beth's up the hill
large tracts of maple & locust shade
printed with crescents
by the hundred
this sun/moon "Ring of Fire" conjunction
across the lawn
everybody pointing & shouting
"Can You Believe It?"
all the heads shaking this-
"UnReal"

new haiku

no one willing
to drown the grey rat
it fell on me


hands full of daisies
she pushes the WALK button
with her elbow


asleep on the couch
her new chemo book
across her chest


C'mon Ruby
No man likes 'em
THAT big

Do No Harm

the mosquito unslapped
fills with Buddhist blood
untapped

Ism

   Any "ism" scares me because it represents an orthodoxy, a protocol of perception that defines the world and me in it, that "tells the world what it is."
   That's fine for you, but it scares me because it also tells me what I am, before I've had a chance to present my own identity.
   And but a brief glance at history too often shows these isms have propagated a sizeable "groupthink" that aspires toward empire, an outlook with one ambition: Rule The World.

Ward C, Memorial Hospital

Like the Roman Army
Camped legion in low light tents
Re-wrapping their cloth bandages
Reminiscing about sunny days
Before the trouble began

gotta love this guy

(for Dan Sweigert)

After he praised the snowboarding
at Heavenly
I protested that most of that snow this winter
was "made" snow,
blown out of big snowmaking machines-
"that doesn't count" I offered.
"Dude!" he countered, dismissing my petulance,
"I'd get shot out of an elephant's ass
If it meant have some fun!"

mike wallace tribute

Couldn't hold back the tears
When they presented the clip
Interviewing the Secret Service man
And showing the grainy video
Jackie in her pink hat in Dallas
Helping him -arm extended-
Onto the back of the limo

two hundred dollars

I fell on hard times
I did what anyone would do
My body now belongs
To Palmer Chiropractic
Portland, Oregon
When I'm done with it
I'm a cadaver

hypocrisy

"What you do
Speaks louder than your words"
Said she

But I don't mind
I've made my peace
With hypocrisee

April

    After three days of voluminous rains, today was rumored to be “taper off” but instead we got the full meteorologic roundhouse, the haymaker that sheeted us out of a barrage of dark supercells, lightning thunder & hail in robust volleys turning the back roads white & slick with their swift pummelings, traffic reduced to twenty-five MPH on freeway-- lightning like the fuse lit to thunder, lapse of time, then crack & roll like Thoreau descry, “gods rolling lumber in the sky”-- but by day’s end sun shone gold in the west firing his rays up under the heavy veil of nimbus that lingered on Newtown, delivering across the rainshimmered earth a promise of weather faire-

downtown pigeons

My friends
They chuckle at me
For my exuberant admiration
Of downtown pigeons

Yes common Rock Pigeons
Local merchants are likely to call
"Feathered rats"

But how I soar with them!
When they swing wide
Across the Del Oro tower
By the dozens

The way sunlight
Flashes on their wings
Mid-turn

Dip    rise    &flutter
Across the Safeway park lot

Back to roost
   ridgeline
      on the OddFellows Hall--

Splendid!

Careful- high voltage!

They had just purchased
My lot of overstocked handyman stuff
Collected over the years,
        strewn haphazardly
In & beyond the old tilting shed.
ABS, PVC, gutters, buckets of fittings.
A contractor & friend.
After the negotiation and a deposit,
We leaned on his truck
And reminisced together
Our years in the trades.
"If I had to do it over again
I woulda been an electrician"
I offered.
"Of course I've been shocked once in awhile,
But what 'sparky' has not?"
His friend, Damon by name,
Chuckled, then added,
"Well, I knew a poor fellow
Working on a high rise in Frisco
Walked by some 440 stubbed
Out of the wall, got shocked alright,
Threw him onto the safety net below.
He survived,
But he was burned real bad
Across the shoulders,
And it messed up his brain,
Couldn't put thoughts together
The way you like to.
Oh, he got compensated alright,
Something like half a million,
But his heart was affected too
And after several years had a heart attack
And that was it"

rescue

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

oregon

Behold the blue sea-swell
That lifts itself a glassy dawn
Out of the sea's heaving breast:
The open ocean wave
That draws itself across the rock reef
Cresting toward the fine pitch
That exhilirates the very air
With a perfect ribbon of spray

What hurt more
Was her blunt indifference:
She didn't even bother
To insult me

you too

Give thanks
Social programming
Has not yet mastered its science

Though countless give themselves
To Oz and his dot.coms

Give thanks
Moon     wind     &sand
Fall untrammeled
And free

You too

120V lunch!

Tearing off the sheetrock
To remodel her old living room
We found inside the 2x4 walls
Remains of a large grey rat
Who had the misfortune
Of chewing on some 14-2 romex

ants

They particularly enjoyed
  the long table knife
    that cut the mint chocolate cake
      left on the counter

commodity

It turns out
  as it always does
When we've made the world
  into a warehouse
The commodity is US

spin-machine

The human brain is a spin machine-
You can look at evidence, and arrive at a certain POV,
Open to review.
But!   if you start from a certain POV- not open to review-
You will cherry-pick the evidence that supports it
And slander the rest.

industry

Tom Q mocks the Samoan painter
   who brushed lattice
      according to his own sweet time,
Says- if he were foreman-
   "it would drive me crazy."
I know what he means,
I too have the nail-pounding devil in me,
I push myself to be productive.
   I smiled inwardly,
I envied that insouciant islander
His sweet indolence

rowdy ravens

A group of rowdy ravens
    makes a ruckus in the locust trees
        up at the County Airpark.
    There are the beginnings of rain
    On Drake Hill
    As I deliver new phonebooks.
    Funny that I would remember
    What Jon Pearl once told me:
       “It’d be great
          to be a big black bird
             carousing in the sky--
    But then you’d have to eat bugs!”

left out

japanese lanterns,
   big party next door-
      not invited!

a little slice of Humboldt heaven

A little slice of Humboldt heaven
    Where I took refuge from sudden showers,
    Pushing my borrowed blue bicycle
    Into the dark high-raftered dairy barn.
    A soft sheen of rain
    Played on the tin roof
    As I stroked the moon-eyed pokeys
    In the close pens-
    Then the sun broke through
    And all the wet pebbles shone
    Back to the road
    Glistening like the first day of the world,
    And I was on my way.

Usal Rd

USAL Rd

Like Roethke’s “Interior”
One presses on
Where the pavement ends,
All the Caution signs
   riddled with bullets
But you follow the curving gravel
Through dark tunnels of oak,
Across beat creosote bridges
   where no water runs,
Further   &   Farther
Into switchback mountains
Winding out in low gears
To the inevitable fork
   and of course,
All the arrows missing.
Guess south on Mendocino County Rd #431,
Miles of harrowing timber access road,
You’ve no idea where you’re going
Sliding in dust to the axles
   potholes & lurch & cuss
Over down madrone branches,
The rusted Ford pickup
   rolled in the ditch---
Then magically!    the trees give way
Stark bright golden star
   Shining over white Pacific fogbank
Far as the eye can see.

poet

It turns out I’m chowderhead himself
    I’m the one without a clue
All the world’s smarts lost on me
    Wandering the windy slough

-Humboldt Co.

dairy country

Seawinds carry mist in a line
   off irrigation sprinkler heads
      dairy pastures down Substation Rd

Bullet holes in big yellow Cattle Xing sign
   sky shimmering in the troughs
      rock music blares from milking barns

-Fortuna, CA

handyman hell

Rather than drive back home
And get the extension ladder I forgot
I take wild chances
Balancing on one foot
Atop the neighbor's stepladder
To pull the large mat of pine-needles
Off her tin roof
In woolcap & frayed jacket
Like some college kid errand-
Wondering, "what the hell am I doing here?"


 (age sixty-one)

tramping

    It couldn’t be planned,  it had to rise up out of the expanding moment, Moment, it was the very current of life (in its most exquisite banality) as deepest approving gesture, it couldn’t be scheduled like any bus trip it spoke rather out of the very weft of things, time, Time, this, This, you’d been looking elsewhere, crossing fingers, ‘spousing mantras, like grace it burst forth the inner significance unbeknownst & unheralded, one night, Night, in the act of surrender all’s won

for Allen Ginsberg

    Some for whom the green/gold vibration of existence slipped through the weft of convention to hum softly in the belly,
    Some for whom the myriad pretexts simply don’t wash, remaining pretexts,
    Some for whom the inner gnosis of the larger world Got Through, messaging Ex-stasis,
    Some for whom the low hum of existing is worth more than a pile of appliances,
    Some for whom the low hum is the wavelength of God, that is, sudden belly kinship to stars...
    Some for whom that visceral resonance connected them to ‘the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night,’ who received the subtile energies of the Cosmos oblique to the neat algorithms of utility,
    Some for whom relations to all things remain open-ended and thus glimmer with Possibility, all predicates droppt, making them secretly and not-so secretly giddy....

march eighteenth- grass valley

the soft gentle quiet snow
has brought the gritty city
to its knees

that helling place

Looking up from their books
   every head in the library
      when it thundered

new/ancient snow

    From Palmer Road suddenly we walked out onto Bloomfield, in a flurry of cold ‘popcorn’ snow swishing off the black umbrella, Bloomfield become a pure new ribbon of white ice without a single track so thickly did the new snow fall & fall & fall, erasing all differentiation, and in that late frosted moment I found myself walking every lonely backroad in the world, for a thousand miles this same endless avenue stretched to Wyoming & counties you never heard of, past empty pastures & granite deadfalls, little-used roads where snow fell huge & silent into pine barrens & fishbone cottonwoods, not a sign of anyone just plywood tilting bus-sheds covered with wet sphagnum, needles, & ancient perpetual froze-fingered snow

Lazy Dog 2

Never forget how lucky you are
   To find rubber dinosaurs
      Left in the bathtub

Terra Flora

Lift the latch
  to the inner
    gardens
      where
        peeper frogs
          blink with dew

Mt Lincoln

Riding the four-wide chair alone
To top of Mt Lincoln
Clapping my rented skis together
I’m overcome by purple alpine aether
Holy enchantment mountain light
On snow-feather rock cornices,
I was so literally high
At the twelve-thousand feet offload
I slid to a stop
Breathless
On the matted ice
In every direction snowy Sierra peaks
Appeared between great white pure clouds
Turning,
Some had dark rain
Some had lightning

Drive-In

Night freeway driving-
   Meryl Streep's face huge
      On the Drive-In screen

-Oakland

stung!

Beware!  when you allege
   "Dead is the wasp"
       On the windowledge

early Spring, north valley

To Marysville eight AM
rain clearing in the valley
mist rising everywhere
wet    wet    wet
the good earth reborn
long
  bright
    puddles
in mud tractor rows
ditch grass frizzed beaded & bent,
over distant fields
white waterbirds
flutter     light    &settle-

(2002)

charmed objects

Charmed objects
You treasure for many a year--
Like the Italian 20-lira coin
I found on rainy backstreets
In Hundred Mile, Canada one summer
Carried such a long time in my wallet
Until I showed it one night to Jan
At the Forbestown Bar
Who said she’d trade me
A jukebox dance for it--
Gone.


(1999)

The loneliest man in history

For years
I've spun the tale of Michael Collins,
The third astronaut
In the Apollo Eleven crew,
Consigned to orbit the moon
While Aldrin & Armstrong got famous
Landing on Mare Novitium.
Collins got relegated to orbit the great grey rock,
To transit the backside
Never seen directly by human eyes before.
And when I informed Susan
The loss of all radio contact on that leg
Must have made him
"The loneliest man in the history of the race"
She said "don't be so sure-
Better write him a letter and ask"
(will).


(for Michael Collins)

d h lawrence

     Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.

-- D H Lawrence, Etruscan Places, ch. 2 (1932), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

work-site

He forgot his lunch
Now I have to give him
Half of mine

-for John Young

Gandhi

"...we are constantly being astonished at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt-of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence."

-Gandhi

clubs

They finally figured,
Did the Millards,
That nothing's quite as boring
As playing cards

beach 'ku

padding his nest
the cormorant’s finessed
a red bikini vest

busted

Busted by neighbors
borrowing the wife's Mexican sandals
to fetch the morning mail-
triple-takes & broad smiles-
did they believe my tale?

reversal

As generally supposed
Eternity is the unimaginable
Extension of time:
When precisely the reverse is the case,
Eternity as all absence of extension,
Yes, temporality on its very face.

provenance

   Apparently the term "hauling ass" as regards to going fast originated in the Forties from this verbal image: "...make like a bread truck/ and haul buns"

for Ed B.

If I had a bootprint
  For every nickel I've made
    I'd be a wealthy man

berkeley bumpersticker

I'm Already Against The Next War

Art of Cheating

(for Lew)

As I crawled across the floor
Accused of massaging the pong score

Gales of laughter coming out of me
Just confirmed my larceny

regret

“Sometimes we just don’t think”
she tries to console me
when I relate my story
of standing on Gary’s dining table
to replace the overhead light there--

“Sometimes we just don’t think”
when I wince
reading the New Yorker article
about Snyder’s Japanese house
with its Shoes Off rule--

Then she rubs it in
by pointing to the page cartoon
a field dog scowling
at the hunter who’s downed a pheasant-
“Now Look What You’ve Done!”

Pine Street wag

"...it's not the despair that gets you- it's the hope"

haldane quote

"...the universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine."

favorite roadsigns

No
 Routine
  Snow
   Removal         -Scott's Flat Rd



Semi-Trucks
Thirty Feet
Kingpin to Axle
Not Advised      -Highway 84, Woodside

question

(for Steve House)

Where's the game played--
   Atom-spin
      Or galaxy arrayed?

work radio, adios

Remodeling the basement in Berkeley
the old plug-in radio gives up the ghost
and gets tosst like common rubbish
on the backyard plywood heap
taking with it the archaeology
     of my mind--
the summers at John's
when Cesar & Pancho listened
to Mexican ballads
shoveling in the bright sunshine,
the KNBR Gary Radnich days
in the Oakland hills 
laughing out loud with sawdust in my hair
or KRFC blaring Jagger
as I rolled Navajo White on walls
in China Basin;
      dusty shop days
nothing happening in a Giants' game
or getting wet
forgotten in the back of the truck--
Most of all I remember
the day Lindsey gave it to me
because I glommed onto it
doing odd jobs around her house,
beat radio that formerly belonged
to brother Bruce who perished
   six years ago
      in a pre-dawn trailer fire

Lost in Mendo

Like old chowderhead
One presses on where the pavement
Ends,
All the C A U T I ON signs
Riddled with bullets
But you persist
Following the gravel
Curving through tunnels of oak & madrone,
Across beat creosote bridges
Where no water runs,
Further & further into switchback mountains
Winding out in low gears for many miles
To the inevitable fork
And of course, all the arrows
Missing.
Nothing to do but guess south?
On Mendocino County Road 431
Miles of rude harrowing timber access,
You've no idea where you're headed
Sliding in dust to the axles,
Lurching over potholes sticks & loose rocks,
The rusted Ford pickup rolled in the ditch--
Then suddenly the close trees
Open to bluffs & ocean headlands
Stark bright golden star
Shining over white Pacific fogbank
Far as the eye can see.

thief

on the scrap-wood ladder
   I push stolen apples
       inside my shirt

-Santa Barbara, 1982

d h lawrence

"...man has invented the machine & now the machine has invented man."

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

"...man as yet, is less than half-grown.  Even his flower-stem has not appeared yet.  He is all leaves & roots, without any clue put forth.  No sign of bud anywhere.
   Blossoming means the establishing of a pure, new relationship with all the cosmos.  This is the state of heaven."

number

Science chuckes
   at the old devotions
Oblivious to the worship
  of its own numeric notions

ring of bone

barefoot
  she brooms snow
    off Zendo steps

--Carole K.


working alone
softly I gonged
the big iron densho

-2005

On the dusty sill
Of Gary's outhouse
Livy's History of Rome


-2006

Steve comment

When I told him
How careful I had to be
Boring six-by-six roughsawn beams
At the Ring of Bone Zendo
To run exterior conduit for lights
Measuring like five times
To make sure it came out right
What did he call it?
"Titz on the Ritz"

spared

Thank God
I’ve been spared
The cyber-gene
That would have cubed me
For thirty years
In Hanford’s
Research machine-

hell-lo tech

Once upon a time
We charmers held life
In the palm of our hands
Sweet world come 'round to us
In song dance flower sunlight--
Then Google!    comes along
With Facebook iPad & Smartphone
And we wash on the margins
Inept & alone

Baja advice

"...believe me,
you don't want to be held
against a chainlink fence like I was
with a machine-gun under your chin
at an Army checkpoint,
hearing about two years
in a Mexican prison--
get rid of your ganja"

-Mr Jenner @ Desert Inn

Punta Gorda

I knew she'd get lost
When she set out on her long
Dawn-time beachwalks
But I didn't think
She'd be gone for days

eduardo

"what's your dream job?"
she asked,      astonished
at his answer:
"delivering crates of oranges
from a flatbed truck"

Jeffers quote

         Or as mathematics, a human invention
That parallels but never touches reality, gives the astronomer
Metaphors through which he may comprehend
The powers and the flow of things:  so the human sense
Of beauty is our metaphor of their excellence, their divine
       nature: ----like dust in a whirlwind, making
The wild wind visible.

New 'Ku

carhorns behind
   as I slow to watch
      pasture-geese land          -McCourtney


gunpowder-smell
after street fireworks--
Feliz Ano Nuevo!


through cracks
   in the old sidewalk
      dandelions appear       -chester st


every sailor's delight-
to trim down-wind
ride your big kite       -Zaca


frozen blackbird
dead by the tracks
catching fine blown snow     -Utah

snorkeling Zaca

hundreds or thousands
     of silver merelings

scatter in every direction
as I surface,

little sunstreaks
transmitting some kind of joy

     gone
          oceanic

debate

Pro-nuclear types
Like to label critics
As 'wanting to return us
To the cave'
But another Fukushima
Should do the trick

wondering

   If buttered toast always lands buttered side down and a cat always lands on its feet, what would happen if you tied a piece of buttered toast on the back of a cat and tossed it?

   What does Geronimo say when he jumps out of a plane?

   Why didn't Noah just kill those two mosquitos?

   You know that little indestructible black box installed on aircraft? -why don't they just make the whole plane out of that stuff?

   Why is that when you're looking for an address, you turn the radio down?

   How does the guy who drives the snowplow get to work?

   Beware of thy wishes: they will come true           -edward abbey

   If Einstein had discovered creme rinse instead of relativity, would he be Rod Stewart's brother?

backwoods heat

country-speak
for a woodstove's cheap friends-

"fifty bucks" says the ad,
"for a pickup load of mill-ends"

dangerous gift

whale vertebrae gift
   but he informs me
      I'm now a felon

-Bill

hayden on hippies

"...now I know all of you just want to return us to the cave-
But I have news for you!  We've already returned to the cave- we just drive them around now."

-Tom Hayden, Alameda Park, Santa Barbara, 1979

Bert J

"forty years of buzz
         turned his liver into was"

mattingly quote

"Who can beat Obama?
Any mammal that can file--

What about Republicans?
      there's the rub--
Every one's a reptile"

when it's OK to kill

"...There's a consensus that it's OK to kill when your government decides who to kill.  If you kill inside the country, you get in trouble.  If you kill outside the country, right time, right season, latest enemy, you get a medal."

-Joan Baez

"you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake"     -Jeannette Rankin

new year's haiku

"tell me again,
why do we want the blue guys
to beat the red guys?


-tricia on football

conversation

I got indignant
After I asked him
Where he was headed

After he put a wad of bills
In my hand
Repaying my loan--

"Going to Heavenly, Dude
For some snowboarding"

But it's all manmade snow this year,
It's fake!

"Dude" he replied,
"I'd get shot out of an elephant's ass
If that's what it takes
To have some fun--"

-for Dan Sweigert