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