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