After Tu Fu

A deep hush spreads over
The empty winter camp
In the frigid afternoon
Growing later.
Everything knows what is coming.
The roar in the pinecrowns
Has ceased;
The scrappy cedar branches
Grow still.
In this short short day
The sky darkens.
Then out of nowhere
The first light flakes arrive,
A quiet joy
Leaps in the heart.

My Epitaph

"You better have that looked at"

lowbrow vs. techie

The day my cellphone
Began giving me trouble
I strolled into the AT & T store
And asked the clerk for help.
"For not much more
You can upgrade to a Smartphone
That offers you so much more"--
He zigged & zagged at my naievete.
"That's alright," I offered,
"My dumbphone suits me perfectly"

the mythology of "Progress"

      I suppose most of my reflexive resistance to technology per se (pursued often for the sheer curiosity of where it might take us) is the widening degree to which it REMOVES our minds & senses from the sublime Garden of Light, Air & Water which each of receives at birth- like engineering can deliver a higher heaven?

brinksmanship

At Zacatito

we paddled our slender kayaks

half a mile offshore

to where the sea gods were breathing,

silvery plumes of exhale

hung shining in the late sunlight,

were we at our peril

gallivanting with a pod of 40 ton humpbacks

in the pelagic wilderness?

Maybe not,

but we could not be certain,

and such brinksmanship

easily translated into high adventure...

w/ Bill, Mexico 1999

snow 'ku

A kid again
   Catching snowflakes
      On my tongue

Hills-Flat

In a far corner
Of the lumberyard

Behind the stacks of 2 x 12
and racks or rebar

Broken palletes
Burn in a blue oildrum

Yardhands stomp & swear
Rubbing hands

Under a swirl of light snow

handyman #156

Rather than drive home
And fetch the ladder I forgot

I take wild chances
Balancing on lawn chair & flowerpot


-nevada city

willow valley

Between measurements
   the roof carpenters
      argue astrology

-willow valley

Kids scatter-
   backyard home-run
     through kitchen window

-penn valley

Lake Vera docks

On my open page
   lands an exquisite
      blue dragonfly

Gold Hollow...

             Tomorrow has been cancelled

             a swoop of cowbirds

             jabbers in the pine tops

             above my little red cabin

             as the bath fills with hot water –

             silvery woods at dusk

             were all things meld

             into an indistinct soft repose,

             including me.

             For an hour that has no measure

             no Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

             poised above my head,

             all sins forgiven

             all fears forgotten.

One Day

      How I loved the sweet knockabout of life, bruised by contingency on all sides, I found myself drawn down the bright play of trackless circumstance, I followed Triano with my brakedrum in hand down the shortcut path through the old cedars to the back stalls of Riebe’s, sunlight glinting on crescent wrenches, what day was it?   how would it all turn out?  I loved the sure clank of metals more than music, mystery malfunctions cussed and discussed, all on one hot August afternoon, blue doors to nowhere, zigzag paths to the neighborhoods above the cracked retaining walls, no immunity anywhere, time and eternity are one.

NYC

Yellow leaves on subway steps

smoke from diesel buses

sparkle in the night street pave

traffic barriers over the ripped out

sidewalk in the Bowery

glance of Puerto Rican eyes

the scruffy black man blowing his ancient brass horn

 in front of St. Timothy’s,

hat sprinkled with coins,

 endless endless taxi horns

 walking Fourth Avenue in the Village,

 beat book racks in front of Strand's

 cold wind and wrapper races

“ to this middle ground we wake

 heaven or hell ours to make”

 the pretty Asian girl

    turning the corner

        onto Bleecker Street –

time

"When means are separated from ends time is born"

bicycle

Heaven can't be stormed
It's entered through a side-road
Far from brass tokens
And spinning turnstiles

-Hawk Hill Rd, Humboldt

versus Plato

I gave up my quest

For a strong clear mind

I surrender to the waffle

That decides both sides

I relinquish all claims

I go with the flow

I no longer wish the clarity

Of the high alpine lake

My mind's a broad roaming river

Dark with swirling muds & silts

I find myself substantial as dust-devils

Crossing country roads

I'm happy to spin and spiral there

It may be true – perhaps it's true –

I may have no mind at all.

olive branch?

If you really desire a true peace
    in this world

You must start with an olive branch

You must convene peace talks
     and listen to every side

But I'm afraid this is unacceptable
To those with the biggest tanks
The largest warships
The high-tech armies

Those who've invested far more
     than simple defense

But have built up
A world-class Expeditionary Force

So many contractors   suppliers
     fuel deliveries   businessmen

Too many jobs!
     depend on it

We'll listen to you alright
But only if you recognize

     our invincibility
     our firepower
     our 'leadership'

And follow the script
     we put in your hand

(Military 'aid' is on the way)

Late afternoon
cold coffee
I don't mind

First day in the Army: they put a Bible in one hand, a bayonet in the other.

-Edward Abbey

haircut

How was I to know
the cut-rate barber
at the VA hospital
was half-drunk
when I sat in his chair,
slapping at my skull
he asks laughing,
"remember Boot Camp
when the Sarge asked you
that first day
how'd you like your hair cut?"
-HAW!

the world as commodity

It's useless trying to get this world
     to see things
From a poetic perspective

To recognise the value
     of things-in-themselves

Write all you want
Only other poets will read it

No, the larger world's taken
     by engineering cleverness

Where reigns expedience
     and usefulness:

This beautiful blue planet's
    just commodity.

handyman fix

Rather than drive home
And get the ladder I forgot
I take wild chances
Balancing on lawnchairs & buckets
To pull pineneedles
Off your roof

-for Maureen

Loren Eisley

I would prefer, like all my reptile kind, the still space between clock ticks,
            sandbars in silent rivers;
man's first mistake was ever to see time pointed somewhere beyond us.

-Loren Eisley, "The Flow of the River"

Lake Vera

They think I'm an intruder
But today I'm Alpha Goose
The dock is mine
While the honkers
Glide about the lake
A band of coots in their wake
Waiting for my departure


wind brisk enough now
   to scatter sun-jewels
      across the lake


On my open page
   lands an exquisite
        blue dragonfly


When the wind ceases
The lake becomes a mirror
Cottonwoods across the way
Lay down a sheen of gold


The stiff morning breeze
   lifting the pages of Abbey
      I read on the docks


Access to grace is such a simple thing it makes me wonder
     if people really want it.
Sitting on the Gold Hollow docks
In the warm November sunlight (surprising)
Letting the light breeze
Run across the lake & brush my cheek
Is nothing short of grace for me.
Not just here, but in the twilight clouds,
The deep silent forest,   the "second snow"
Up some obscure trail in the Sierra.
Yet so many prefer   -Oprah?

day-dream

For a moment
I lidded my eyes
And suddenly found myself
A broad-winged pelican
Descending
In the middle of a line
Draughting for one another
Above the blue Pacific:
Our leader timed it perfectly
To glide a cresting wave,
And sailed mere inches
Across its sun-sparkled face;
With a gentle crash
It collapsed
And up we swept into the sky.

carpenters

forgot his lunch
   now I have to give him
       half mine

ladder work

Tree-trimming at Daisy Blue:
  ratcheting the extension ladder
    to thirty feet
Gravel picked up
  from the drive
    raining down
On my breezy skull

library

Forget the books she browses
   I'd rather study
what her sweater houses

dawn, october

Up to Digger Ridge Trail
Turning pedals pre-dawn
Suddenly the branches
Fill with golden fire
And the looping blackbirds
Show off their stunts

breaking up

Rain across Texas today
Didn't help
The sky so close to the mesquite earth
Weeping
Far as the eye can see,
Through towns like Marble Falls
Luckenback
& Fredericksburg.
Rain across the entire LBJ spread,
Muddy ran the Pederales River,
The sun a distant memory.
I tried different tricks
To push her out of my mind,
"Get Present,"
"She's wound too tight,"
"Never would have worked"--
All failing equally.

haiku

through the fence
   the neighbor's vine enters
      flowering

Plato Good-bye

I gave up my quest
For a strong clear mind

I surrender to the waffle
That decides both sides

I relinquish all claims
I go with the flow

I no longer long
For the high alpine lake

My mind's a broad roaming river
Dark with swirling muds & silts

I find myself substantial
As dust-devils crossing county roads:

Abandoned
To the spin & spiral there...

depression

    Now I know what depression is:
a world gone hollow, one's once-ample soul
reduced to tinny echoes of former prospects.
Things, gone.  The half-conscious stream
of possibilities slowed or stopped, night's darkness
nuzzling at the window.  Hollowness.  World of-
inanimate objects.  Just there.  Loss or rapport,
loss of contact.  Lassitude.  What difference does
it make, really?  The clock just ticking, measuring
what?  Drear rudderless lapse of days, movement
of life that signifies nothing.  A tale told
by an idiot?

Edward's Xing

home
by back roads
from North Columbia
in the warm mizzling April dark
Mazda floating
on headlight mists
wet gravel turns & straights-
glimpse of pine-tops
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.
Stoppt in the middle
killed the engine
leaned on the rail
lost in the huge starry beauty
of deep Yuba night

home repair

Actually I counted it my great fortune
    to make a living
Prying leaky raingutters
From an old house on 61st Street,
Scrambling on red composite,
    gassho to the men in graves
        who fastened them
In a day just as this:
Bay-clouds overwhelmed in light,
    clap of pigeon wings
        in a grace
Called morning:
Down-crash of twenty-foot sections,
    claw & whine of nails pried
Cussing the black roof-goop
    on calloused hands-

    
   

night ride

Do you recall
   the first joys of bicycling
      in dark of night,

Guided only by faint stripings
   of the old county road,

Streaking through warm summer air
The scent of straw & cinders--

Do you recall
   the animal joy
      of hair-streaming abandon

Plunging down summer hills
   into grassy cool
      frog-and-cricket bottoms,

Gears clicking
   to pump
      the coming rise?

wild asses

     How I miss the smooth nuzzles of the feral burros I befriended down at the tip of Baja, three of them that I made the mistake of feeding.
     Thereafter they'd show at the gate come sundown braying like hungry hyenas.  This didn't exactly endear me to my Zacatito neighbors.

pathos

The sadness of the world
Sticks in my throat like chalk,
I cannot breathe.
Innocence has grown up quickly
And instead of ripening into bright fruit
Adjusts its tender shoulder
To a crucifix of loss.
What began christened with laughter & bubbly
Leans precariously now
On the shoals of an obscure reef,
Beneath a circle of strange birds,
A reckoning gone badly awry

Mr Emerson

"...if once in a thousand years the stars should appear,
       men would think the City of God had been founded."

and

"...the sky is the daily bread of the soul."

-Emerson

Free Dive

Now I cannot walk
    under the leafy bower of elms
without recalling those sublime
subsurface frolics at Lake Pillsbury,
Spooning & rolling & tucking
Into cold secret green rooms
or entering the undulating darkness
    of seagrass canopies,
A forest of long curving stems
Melding into further mystery---
Headlong I plied my passage
Through the silent labyrinthe of leaves
Peopled with the movement
    of small translucent fishes
Who like me larked weightless
In the glimmer of wavy light--
At ten feet & equalise my ears
And stroke plunging to twenty-two feet,
Where the sea-gardens array themselves
    in fields of white rippled sand,
The silver shining surface far above,
I turn & roll lewdly unclothed
    exhaling a stream of bright bubbles,
Surprising a school of big bass
Trawling the rock garden bottom--
Then with sublime slowness
I drift upward
Into a shimmering halo of golden light
through the high twine of branches,
Calmly I break the blue surface
    and float on my back breathing deep,
Studying the prisms of cirrus ribbons
Miles overhead.

one for bukowski

Almost by default
I slip further & further
Past unemployments
And broken plumbing
Into midsummer's lowest denominators,
Barefoot naked unshaven
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 Ginsberg or Billy Collins
In the shade
Sipping vodka with homemade lemonade

the poet (#2)

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-

Get Busy!
Time is Acorns!

navigation?

The stars let us down
Either that or bad math

Caused us to call
St Charmain Rock 'Rabrindranath'

tilting at windmills

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

so?

Your actions speak louder
   than your words
      said she
But I don't mind
   I've made my peace
      with hypocrisy

A Date With Death

A date with death
On the high Wyoming plains
Premonition in dreams,
December when the ground lay bare
And sunlight shone golden
On vast windy rangelands,
Out of Rock Springs
Ominous snowclouds gather to the North
Sioux chanting & death-rattles 
             in the bottom of my mind-
Far down some wrong turn
The pickup out of gas
Where the road ends
Under swaying cottonwoods

thurber

"...there's no safety in numbers-
or in anything else."

I'll Take That Job

Little could I know when yesterday
I stacked the two-by-eights
And corrugated sheetmetal
That my errand to repair her leaky roof
Would carry me up shaky ladders
Into a windy blue domain
Where hour by hour things changed,
Close clouds caught the light
A hundred ways
And rowdy ravens gave me their greeting,
Morning air pulsed
And squirrels scolded me from their cedars,
Raining shuckings on my poor skull,
Little could I know!
What fortune I would find
Spending the entire day
Rubbing elbows with eaves
       & brick chimneys--
And at dusk on the gable what a seat!
   full moons waxing alabaster
      over the purple sage Sierra....

fields of fruit

     If it's depression that you're after, there's certainly no shortage of sources, there are plenty of cherries out there with a big black D printed on them waiting to be picked & tart your tongue

baja

It arrived some time

in the middle of the night

the moon was high

     the air was clear

even though asleep I could hear

its slow rhythmic roar

in sets of three or four

the big Peruvian swell

surfers this morning
     sounding the conch shell –

a grand familiar thunder

to all who've gone "down under."

Baja, 2011

Ah but what a dance

to plunge into that Cortez surf

and stroke for all you’re worth

   to the dangerous rocks

      with their whitesand coves

following the stripers and iridescent scissortails

as the big Baja waves

tumble across your silly snorkel

weightless is the dance they show you

Exit your boardrooms and cubicles

come frolic with the colorful mexican fishes
that school about in that vermillion sea

that know what life's about

merge a marvelous moment

with the yellow transparent fingerlings

   oblivious to everything 
but movement color and delight…

traveling on the edge

bad sparkplugs
   almost ended our trip in Virginny
leaking camper roof
   almost did us in in D.C.
a big argument
   almost ruined everything in Biloxi
then we ran out of money--
   yet here we are
fat dumb & happy in N'awlins

-2005

my circus act

Alone in the digger pines
At the end of Piper Hill Road
Cross'd by vulture shadows
I balance the 2 x 8 x 14 redwood skirt
On my knee
Twenty feet up the bent extension ladder
Between my lips a passel
Of sixteen-penny galvanized nails-
Praying nothing shifts

lunacy

In the Asteroid Room
   a scuffle broke out
I got clocked
   or should I say moonrock'd

Orion Rising

Rexroth didn't exaggerate-
When some errand
Took me to the street at 5AM
There he was rising full splendor
In the east-
The great celestial hunter ORION-
I staggered backward
From the sheer spectacle of him,
"The most impressive sight
In all the universe....."

haiku

The heatwave made it
Far too hot for carpentry
We worked anyway


Next to the red barn
Long pools of morning rain
Shine in the cornrows


Riding the ski-lift
Alone
Through ribbons of snowdust


Obituaries-
Knowing someday
The name is yours


After dinner
She snaps the gingham tablecloth
Out the backdoor


The dog to whom
Table scraps were slipped-
Never forgets you


Next the Thrift Store racks
She holds a gingham sundress
To herself laughing


Already she's asked
For a sign
From "the other side"            /TR's deathbed


Big arm bruise:
I've no idea
How


On the log-truck
Still rimed with snow:
Giant Sequoias


Trailing clouds of dust
Kids chase a blue-ribbon goat
Loose in the duck pens                      /Nevada County Fair


After he perished
We found his stash
Behind the Britannica                   /Chuck D.

Improvement?

     Americans seem possessed by an irresistible urge to improve everything: to streamline all scenarios: to make its world faster, wider, more convenient, ever-more productive.  It greatly admires engineering & technology, that tirelessly tilt at the windmills of time & space.
       But along comes the poet: that marginal, raffish soul with the silly question, "what's wrong with the world as it is?  Why make a straight race out of every curve & feature, in love with expedience, why take all the personality out of the landscape so that where you arrive (so quickly) looks no different from the one you departed? Why compress time to the point it chases you?"  And then he adds the familiar question posed by poets down the ages: "in this haste to manufacture ever-greater wealth for ourselves, have we glossed & trampled a less tangible and less measurable wealth, an indulgence of sunlight & morning breezes, of bird-frolic and the easy laughter of friends?

Kool-Aid

Ten thousand Muslims
Knelt & bowing in a vast circle:
Nothing frightens me more
Acted out in venues
Through vast tracts of space & time:
The human being born Free
And discerning
Selling it all for some formidable belonging:
This poison peril
-No matter its name or nation-
Called groupthink

jackson toll, age 2

With a large Ka-Boom!
And a sweep of his arm
The toy soldiers get flattened

every day is a gift

Am I perverse to congratulate myself
For not drowning in the Eel River
The way Mary Silva did?

Skylonda

*bedazzled*
by a solitary fogdrop
tipping a redwood branch
glinting rainbow colors
in the breakout noonday sun...

DAV fundraiser

Peanuts hurled my way
When I refused to stand
And Pledge Allegiance

Be-attitude

-->

   The bright banner that heralds this late autumn run of days is the streaming talisman called JOY, through no machination of mine own ponder it though I will this one grand emotion lifts me every day and presents me with a world lavished in golden light and I find it elation to simply draw breath…. Why and wherefore? does every surface fairly shimmer and exalt the eye that partakes in it? This sublime condition questions every other, it asks why curse the almshouse when a rosy-domed Taj Mahal stretches from you in every direction? This wine is effervescent and 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 for the green light at Camden, the brown squirrel who rains down sycamore shuckings on your breezy skull, even the lone geranium flower announcing its hour in the neglected side yard, Affection!  Kinship!  Flesh!  Connexion!

                                                                                 -12-2-2008

quote

The mind is a television
With thousands of channels.
I choose a world that is tranquil & calm
So that my joy will always be fresh.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Lost River Ranger Station

Always lurking there,
Behind the everyday facades we strike,
Our connexion
To the Lost River Ranger Station
Hewn from cliffs
Up Highway 36 Trinity County CA,

Parklot strewn
With gopher skulls
Peering from kestrel turds

deciding what this world is

    When somebody out there declares that 'religion will be the death of us all,' what he is implying is that insofar as what we call 'religion' carries with it some distinctive orthodoxy, or dogma, it has already decided what this world is about, where it came from, and to what it is directed.  And insofar as these ideologies- or theologies as the case may be- contrast with one another, they will clash & compete.  Well enough if these religious adherents are content to follow their own catechism, or spiritual odyssey, but the real trouble begins when others- nonsubscribers to a particular cast of group-think- get projected as 'lost,' 'fallen,' or 'secular,' even guilty of profanation or blasphemy-- deserving somehow to get 'straightened out.'

cup half-full

Over sixty
    pain nibbles at our days,
threatens to commandeer
    the entire pallete--

Yet too is the cup half-full!

nameless birds zing
across Chester Street at dusk,
roosting time in the blossoming trees,

reminding us-
The Joy of Incarnation-

poet's view

     Lost in the fascination over new products generated by computer technology is the fact these advances in the arts of abbreviation have stripped us of our bodies--  bodies made for direct connexion to the earth & sky.  Worse yet, technology sells itself on the premise that the body is not only inefficient & cumbersome, but the locus of hardship & 'necessity'-- which it happily dispatches with its swarm of (pricey) appliances....

turning pedals

     You can have all the iPhones & Smartphones & IPads & Nanos & laptops & tweets etc you want--
     Just give me pedals turning a fat-tire cruiser bike down a ditch-tender backroad out Yuba County  some glorious sun-splashed morning in April, serenaded by the exuberant whistles of red-wing blackbirds bobbing on cattails there & above me blue textures on cheeky rainclouds: on the distant Coast Range blue veils trailing the far earth.....

near the Arctic Circle

A full moon rises huge & yellow
Over great tracts of tundra
Near the eightieth parallel
Under a magnificent borealis-
A young grey wolf drinks
From a long tire-pond
On the rough road once used
As a shortcut to Sitka

darwin quote

Toward the end of his life someone asked Charles Darwin,
"after spending a lifetime studying the works of creation,
what can we now infer about the mind of God?"
Darwin pondered the question a moment then replied,
"gosh he sure is fond of BEETLES!"
(over half a million species)

stevie-ku

cheap enough to dare
    & cut his own hair-
        does he care?

heir to a New World!

pink   cloud   ribbons
   on this gift
      that presents itself
         above the pine-spined horizons--
A New Day!

breath

-for Allen Ginsberg

BREATHE     as the source
   of samadhi
      pra na ya ma--
of all life's gifts
the greatest,
direct link to moon cloud
   wind  star &snow--
inbreath,     outbreath
the entire cycle
three hundred sixty degree
in one diaphragmatic motion--
Live On!     Live On!
O bright red blood
Course On!

fold-ku

The same old argument
Is it you or me-
Whose turn to fold the laundry!

double-rainbow

A corner of it caught my eye
So I ran to the street
Rewarded for my effort
By a splendid double-rainbow
Just after dawn,
High across the cheeky rainclouds-
The first band so brilliant,
Neatly defined.
The second higher yet & faint,
But the eye can make it out-
Just a hint of silver & red.

cruel joke

It started as a cruel joke
Until I recognised
She might actually buy it,
Up late when I saw on TV
The News Report at 3AM
There'd been a spectacular explosion
And the regal sun,
Pouring forth its golden rays
For millenia,
Has been reduced to globs
Of glowing red embers.
"Better get used to it,"
I warned,
Looking out across
   the constellation of citylights
      tumbling to the horizon,
"There will be no more days"

Taps

At Harrison's Landing
   the day lies ebbing
       a sheet
Of last light on the James River;
A gaggle of snowgeese
Murmurs on the flat water
By the Civil War shrine
Where the brass elegy "Taps"
Was first sounded,
Echoing down the far chambers
           of the mind

wundering

What do you call
male of the specie--
'gentleman bugs'?

Six AM frost

The morning after The Big Snow
The entire Valley of Good Grass
Is locked in ice,
I give my usual greeting
To Antares
Spinning in the heart of Scorpio
As treacherously
I navigate my way to the street
For the morning paper
Slipping & sliding like a drunken sailor
But mine eyes get rewarded!
By the frizz glitter of town-lights
Frosting the empty mailbox

whacked

Who is that wacko
Who has turning in his head
The notion that the bicycle?
As the apex of human engineering

what is time FOR?

   When my friend chastised me for taking too long to finish rebuilding my water-damaged bathroom, I paused a moment & wondered why in this results-minded culture we allow ourselves to be so badgered by the clock- after all, I retorted, in the approach to anything we do, "what is time for?"

perspective

   "...we see things from the wrong angle:
a pile of stones instead of the face of the sphinx"

       -Transtromer

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 reality, my own values.  And if you take only a brief look at history, too often these isms have fomented a voluminous groupthink that seeks to push & promote its views into Empire.

irony

Wise are the eyes
     that recognize the paradox
That eternity lies
     In the heart of clocks...

crow 'ku

the old crow
  makes himself at home
    on the scarecrow's arm

                  -dubuque, I.

alvarez

  You have been careful with your technology
              to remove all of the necessity from life;
  But it turns out that you have been reckless enough
              to remove all the living with it....

One February

How sublime in its own way
When I steered into the fast line
In consideration of bypassing the Brunswick ramps
To glance in the rearview
Shocked to find a large SUV
Mere feet from my tailgate @ 65 MPH
Obviously irritated
At my sheer audacity!
To put myself in his path-
Exasperated at last
He swerved into the slow lane
To pass me
 And I knew well what was coming:
A hard stare of utter contempt
Along with a grand display
Of 'digital disdain...'

                -Golden Center Freeway

no more wars

Plato:

"...only the dead have seen the end of war..."

the old jones hospital

deep in dry leaves
under flowering magnolias
the old mower sleeps

finesse

From the poets perspective, Americans do not know the meaning of the word finesse.  For them power is everything, the raw sheer confrontation with the other, to whom they do not intend to submit. Their hypertechnical teacher has provided a largesse of domination that encourages its members to press home their material advantage.

                                                                                    -Alturas

            Conversely! the natural life -intent on rapport and reciprocation- makes the most out of what is already offered freely to it.  Always it seeks the threshold where not edge but equivalence can be realised. It does not want to turn the night into day; it wants to find what the night is made of.  Far from a desire to control everything, it invites &  delights in the natural course of things: accordingly finesse is always its preferred m.o.

July 2002

To be brazenly  a  bum
Unapologetic
Answering to no compunction
Of clock or calendar or skedull
Yes to have all the morning to oneself!
And all the slow measure of afternoon
By evening sitting on a rough bluff
Looking over The Big Sandy
Or walking the starry bliss
Of crushed quartz where the road ends
In Wyoming,
Silent lightning far-off--
Flashing in the blue Tetons

My Type

Your keyboard is more efficient
   but I'm fondly reminiscent
Of the chrome-and-black shine
   and the Remington ring
      at the end of the line...

drizzle

   '...drizzle' pretty much gets accorded third-class status in meteorological circles, rain but not really, unrain but not really, yet this AM when I walked up to the street to fetch my Bee I was greeted by a sublime atmosphere that sent a cold fresh spritz across my cheek, misting the town lights before me, and I felt nothing but christened by this new day, & lifted out of my sleepyheadedness into an indefinable euphoria- call it 'drizzle' if you'd like but I call it an unexpected visit from Grace...

far from home...

 Today my baptism came in the form of a driving sleet
 That caught me far from home
 My only shelter a scrawny digger pine
 That clocked me with snow-fragments!

the Cybernetic Revolution

     What to say about the cybernetic revolution that's added so much to our lives?
     Well, it's inevitable I suppose that human beings will continue to tinker, to create & foster 'application' that can do so much for all of us.
       But likewise!  that revolution has also subtracted something from our lives, something called the Solar Plexus.  That is, where in so many places a man had to rely on his own skills honed by experience and learning, now the GPS or a hundred other pods, pads, smartphones & apps can manage nicely, thanks very much.  Where before a man fell back on his own resources, the cybernetic domain has 'liberated' him & left him increasingly where technology's intended- left him with nothing to do.
     Call it progress if you will, but from where I stand a man's instincts, intuitions, resourcefulness- the self-reliance that makes him a man- have been sacrificed on the altar of productivity.

sunrise, sublime

Queuing up at dawn
In the eastern sky

A long ribbon of stratus
Hiding in the quarter-moon

Just tinged with first soft colors
Of sunrise--

It takes my breath away
Knowing what color

This raft of loose vapor
Will bring

Lord of the Rings

     When I told them violence & endless fighting in “Lord of the Rings” offended me they said “come on Craig, it’s only a movie.”
     Okay, it’s only a movie. But it’s been remarked before that most cinema is directed toward 15-year-old boys.   Which means, long scenes of fighting with as much graphic death and destruction as possible. I can put up with a modicum of this imagery if it contributes to development of the storyline, but in the ratings it soon becomes apparent that–for all the cutaways to Frodo and the Odyssey of the Ring, which is darn violent itself– this brutality depicted IS the storyline. Forgive me, but I find my adult sensibilities insulted by ceaseless murder and mayhem that’s directed toward adolescent boys. If that’s a natural and healthy part of human development, so be it; but the site of a large audience cheering on the increasingly gruesome battle disturbs me. If we’re appalled by the violence in today’s society, why do we celebrate and glamorize it in our entertainments? Yes “it’s only a movie” but when violence is viewed on screen as a solution to conflict, where else in life does it get legitimacy and approbation? Is this what we want to share with our children, chuckling at the man on fire who runs in the throes of his demise?
     Afterward I walked out of the theater shaking my head at the technical wizardry of the cinematographers, whose many dreamlike scenes were so hauntingly beautiful. It showed me what’s possible for the artform. But so much of it–as depicted in The Rings–is wasted on graphic butchery and devastation–severed heads being catapulted into the “City of Kings.”
    “ Come on Craig it’s just a movie.”
                                                 
-journal, 12-25-2003

violence and Jesus

     The point is, I don’t think it possible (perhaps not even desirable) to remove violence from human affairs. Ritualized violence like football or WWF helps to gratify the lust for bust, but by the same token legitimates conquest and supremacy. In fact, it appears that the urge toward violence is primary and elemental, and has formed nation-state in Empire, based on what else? The rule of might.
     If there is a way to transform violence into respect and regard, it is through the alchemy of the heart: Jesus taught us “to love thy neighbor as thyself.”  Resist not evil, turn the other cheek etc. When Jesus claimed he brought not peace but the sword he meant to excise the martial temper that enforced the Pax Romana. And a transcendence of material culture that divided men: the worship of Mammon. But these so-called Christian churches have not taken Jesus seriously: they have fallen into the accommodation that he warned of. They have enshrined the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory as the Lord’s Prayer- burying the battle-dead at sea.
     If Jesus represents anything at all, it is transcendence of the secular. Why? Because the secular is sourced in one thing: reactivity. The wisdom of the heart acknowledges first of all one humanity that runs through each of us that we know because it readily shines as one emotion: love.

handyman hell

Money as my carrot
I pushed myself down the hard knock of physicality,
Earthquake tempering in the House of Richter.
Bloodied by old lumber,
Cement dust in the lungs,
Six days laboring in an El Cerrito basement,
Skulll repeatedly rung on floor joists,
Hucking plywood as shearwall-
Just to pay a few more bills.

Mexican journal

 If I hadn’t read Emerson in college
 I would have become a poet of mercurial evanescence:
 blowing snow and sobs in the night,
    tires rolled in ditches
       and broken plumbing–
 but having read him
 likewise do I know
 we were gods for a day


After the morning rains have ended and the clouds dispersed
the sun comes out
in the little terra-cotta patio
of the La Paz Hotel
shining in the bougainvillea
where the finches come to sing for 100 years



 How impoverished
 becomes the old iglesia
 when it has enough money
 to replace its bronze iron bell
 with digital carillons                    -Cozumel


 can’t be reduced
 rain on a green poncho
 shoveling sandbags




 Every new technology
 bursts upon the scene

 With this familiar routine:
 better! faster! more!

 Until it morphs
   into just another thing
     to pay for




Give thanks
social programming
has not yet mastered
its science

Though countless give themselves to Oz and his decimals
give thanks
moon    wind    sand
fall untrammeled & free
also me!




 in the cheap hotel downtown
    a hairpin
       left on the sink--


hammer-swing 
to fingers
holding eight-penny nails-
constructor of cusswords





 warm nights in Quintana Roo
 out to fetch some local brew
 strange to see Orion too
 in an unbuttoned shirt and beach shoe


 stick-legged flamingos
 wade steel-silver rain-ponds
 on the hotel’s roof
                        -Zuanajoly, Cancun


how came I to love
the way she chinned her pillow
slipping on the case


like my neighbors
I’ve left my key in the lock
how many times?



 the music of block and tackle hoisting buckets of wet concrete by Mexican laborers building the new hotel at Portofino reminded me of Cendrars
 the way odd sound Scott his ear
 but then everything in sunny Mexico reminds me of Blaise


 to shave
 or not to shave:
 who gives a damn?           


 here in the warm Caribe
 all the detritus of material life
 is stripped down to the low bank of cumulus
 highlighted with late sun
 over the outer reefs



 it’s probably just as well the natives
 don’t care about basura
 because if they cared
 then they’d care about other things
 like banning your swim
 across the harbor at dusk
 or padlocking access to roofs
 for moon watching
 or making you wear sandals
 at la cantina

                  -Cancun





 40 years of buzz
 turned his liver
 into was             

-angelo