Baja Revisited

After my return from the tip of Baja
And my delightful frolics
In that little corner of the ocean
That spans three-quarters of the planet,
I lean against my pillow
Under the old familiar bedlamp--
And when I lid my eyes
From a long day of travel
Voila! that underworld buoyancy
Comes streaming back,
Grains of sand float past my ears,
Buoyant also,
Specks by the thousand
black   &white   &gold mica,
a sublime hallucination.

sight

God’s sleek sword

Into the heart of the poet

Is this slender stranded

Optic nerve

That slays him

To every purpose

murphism #102

hammer-swing
    to close paint-lid
Zing! primer across my nose

frolic

Out the side of my eye

            I caught the high swing

            Of common seagulls

            Over Frobisher roofs

            South of San Jose,

            Merged into a mingle

            That turned to maybe hundreds,

            Loose,   aimless,   a chaos

            For its own delight

            That quickly became a sheer joy of flight,

            A winged camaraderie;

            “slipping the surly bonds of earth”

state park

In a circle
Around the ranger
children pass a bear skull

dawn-dream

The sea is calm,

No wind.

From dream I wake

At dawn,

Knees in limp kelp,

In a place of pink

And amber lights.

I cling to something

Undulating in slow swells,

Alone save for three

White terns

Asleep on the water.

you may say I'm a dreamer

I'd love to be present that inevitable day when the world has had enough of tanks & bombers & AKs & bleeding children & lays down their arms to rust & rot in the sun-shine, smile & hug each other like long-lost brothers, break bread & sing old songs,

That day will certainly come when the world will wake up & recognize militarism for what it is, Paranoia & Payback, & pronounces the word together, ‘enough! ’

Last Call

              In a separate action the Supreme Court upheld a ruling giving United States ownership of the ship's bell recovered in 1935 from a Confederate raider, the Alabama, sunk off the French coast in 1864.

            The Alabama had sunk at least 62 Union ships before it was attacked and destroyed by the vessel Kearsarge off Cherbourg.

            The bell was recovered in 1936 by a British diver from the Isle of  Guernsey, who sold it to a local bar in exchange for drinking privileges. The foot-high bell was used to sound the last call for drinks.

            The bar was destroyed by bombing during World War II, but the bell was later recovered from the rubble and turned up on the antiques market.

            A New Jersey antique dealer, Richard Steinmetz, said he paid $14,000 for it in Hastings, England, in 1979. The United States government laid claim to it three years ago.

                        The lower courts, and now the Supreme Court, agreed that the US government retains title to all Confederate property. 
-San Francisco Chronicle, 6/2013

the archivist

       The archivist may enjoy some passing pleasure from casting his thin strand into the stream of time,

       Admiring the soft patina it’s left on his trinkets,

       But the day will arrive when  both he & his artifacts will slide into that resistless  water bound for oblivion…

gravity

In the Asteroid Room

    a scuffle broke out

out of the blue

    I got moonrock’d

           for my lunatic shout

southern adventure

Bad spark plugs

            almost ended our trip in Virginny

A leaking camper roof

almost did us in in DC

            a big argument

 just about ruined everything

 in Biloxi...

 then – we ran out of money.

 Yet here we are somehow

 fat dumb and happy

 in N’awlins!

bus-ride

             an inveterate bus-rider I loved the cargo of bright angels, the press of the old woman’s arm to mine is about “all I can bear,” bus that unlike the swirl of cars is going nowhere, sunlight in windows as we pass Lloyd’s Muffler Shop, hiphop bebop black teenager next to me, I fingered the orange hole-punched Transfer like cryptic password money, bones lunge together at brakestop corners, smiling skeletons all, seafloor roadcut by Christ Lutheran Church, towtruck dog barks at me eye to eye perched up high, aggressive driver leans hard on horn but disregards heavy horn behind, big-ass accordion bus blocking traffic, kids skip rope in phonewire alleyways, here’s our stop, pigeon-swing House of Pancakes!