disillusionment

She heaves into the woodstove blaze
Her little carousel of wicker angels,
Pulled from Christmas boxes
Remembering with a sigh
Twenty years given to Ananda.
"I'm getting rid of all my religious ikons,"
She said.
Wood-carved madonnas, matchbox baby Jesus,
Even the toy shepherd must go.
"A secular Christmas," she decreed,
"Snowflakes & Santa Claus."

-for Tricia

Zaca Recalled

Decorating her daughter's bedroom
She showed me the wallpaper trim
With cutesy smiling dolphins

Suddenly my mind lapsed
To a windy dawn
In the Sea of Cortes

First sun splashing
Off a hundred leaping porpoises
Half a mile offshore

A large pod
Surrounded our kayaks
At frolic in the pelagic wilderness--

What was I doing in Grass Valley
Rolling fresh paint
Across sheetrock bedrooms?

chamed objects

Charmed objects
that stay with you many a year
like the 100-lira piece
I found walking the rainy backstreets
in Hundred Mile, Canada
carried a long time in my wallet
until I showed it off to Jan one night
At the Forbestown Bar
Who said she'd trade me a jukebox dance for it-
gone.

found poem

Working in the basement
Of the CHP officer's home
In Alta Sierra

I looked about
For some random piece of lumber

To help level
The recycling bin I was standing on
To get at loose ceiling wires

"We feel unsafe with them like that"
He'd told me

On a corner mudsill
Between two-by-six studs
I pulled a flat slab of worm-eaten redwood

That served a long time
As grave marker
"This should do the trick" I thought

Hewn into it were the words

Marjory Lucero
Died April 3 1922
Age 17 days

zaca ninety-nine

Were we at our peril
In our silly fiberglass floats
A mile off the coast of Zacatito
Gallivanting among the seagod whales
And their bright plumes of exhale?
Probably not,
But certain we could not be,
And such brinksmanship
Easily translated into high adventure.

-w/ Bill, Baja 1999

san diego

    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 way up high, aggressive driver leans hard on horn but disregards heavy horn behind, big-ass accordian bus blocking traffic, kids skip rope in phonewire alleyways, here’s our stop, pigeon-swing House of Pancakes!



-San Diego, february 1995 w/ Steve House
  

pondering

Why are parsons & pastors
So busy selling us more life,
-As in everlasting-
When we'll never have more
Than today?

ah dontcha love religion?

Dan won't let me call
the antagonism
between SRF and Kriyananda
a 'rift'
because clearly SRF has it wrong,
"a bunch of tight-pantied old ladies"

fluke

a kid again
catching snowflakes
on my tongue

bus haiku

(for Rick Perry)

he knows
   he has no chance
      still he runs

Encounter

That silly clucking squirrel
Was going to let me have it,
Something nice & ripe,
I followed him
Through the bouncing high-way
Of cedar branches,
Cheeks bulging with something unspeakable,
Yesterday he rained down shuckings
Where I worked at sawhorses
And I cussed him & his pedigree,
Today he's going to say
"Take this hombre!"
And disappear into the wind-stirred canopies,
Laughing all the way.

Elder haiku

both blamed each other
for not bringing
the vaseline

picasso quote

"...computers are worthless- they only give us answers."

Deck Repair at Sixty

Alone in the digger outback
At the end of Piper Hill Road
Crossed by vulture shadows
Mid-July
I balance precariously the 2 x 8 x 14 skirt board
On my knee
Twenty feet up the bent extension ladder
In my mouth a passel of sixteen-penny nails
Praying!   Nothing!    Shifts!

Bodysurfing

Fine white ocean sand
     between my toes
Awaiting the Glory Wave
     that never shows

-Zacatito       -for Dan Sweigert

woody allen quotes

"...as it is writtten, the lion and the calf shall lie down together... but the calf won't be getting much sleep."

"...I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality by NOT DYING."

windy-ku

high winds today-
    the tall pines
        give up their kites

What Is Time For?

   Riding my bike today from Nevada City back home to Chester Street on a splendid! end-of-November day, breezy, no, windy, swirling leaves & pine needles down across my cheek how good it feels to be spinning pedals again, cruising backstreets!
   As I'm free-wheeling once more the recognition comes to me I'm that rare bird who abides in a culture that's projected time as an adversary, that at every turn & wherever it can seeks to reduce, compress, or streamline time not only to be more productive but has fallen in love with gadgetry for its own sake, to embrace the latest in ex-pedience, just to marvel at its new potential!
   But- what if you step back from this manic obsession with crunching time & choose instead- Lord Help You- with entering time?  To exit the wizardry of the mind & return to the body, to what you can do for yourself?  To step out under the sky, take a deep breath, and pronounce the word "here"?  To feel the sunshine on your face, to visit with a finch frolicking in the branches, to lean across the back fence & have a friendly word with your neighbor?  To walk to the grocery, playfully carousing with every dog along the way?  Behold! An entire universe opens from you in every direction!

What does the Sky have to say?

   ...because no matter how 'liberated' you are nor how independent you feel, so long as you take your place in a cultural setting you remain subject to hundreds of tips, protocols, associations- all the subliminal queus of group-think.  For me, that is the appeal of the woods, the winds, the mountains & deserts- to push down through the slush of endless opinion, Point of View, punditry, advertisement, etc to some kind of bedrock reality, nothing further, and see what THAT has to offer.

   "...I am finished speaking; what does the sky have to say?"     -Confucius

driving to san luis obispo

We pulled off Highway 46
Into the wide turnout where Hwy 41
Tees into low hills south,
Dan checks the atlas and pronounces it
"Too winding."
Open the truck door,
Amble out for stretch and aire,
A brief shower had just passed
But now the low setting sun
Has lit up the distant hills
And wide grass valleys
With a soft purple light,
Rose-tinting the last low clouds
Drifting slowly east-
I've been around the block
Seen many things
But such sheer ravishment
By light
I can't recall

time & space

the only way we can describe either time or space is by extension, am I right?  But "extension" belongs entirely to the human mind- is there any to be found in this vast here and now?

Mexico Highway One

If you ever want to feel lucky
To be drawing the breath of life
Get impatient behind a slow truck
On Baja's Highway One,
Take a chance passing on a blind curve
And find yourself suddenly in No Man's Land
A truck coming fast the opposite way-
Floor it, FLOOR IT!
Swerving back into your lane
Mere inches ahead of the long trailer-truck
You'll never pass again

colonoscopy

On an oversized gurney
Get rolled into a darkened room
By a small Asian nurse in plastic farbs
With the inevitable (& expected)
Jolting on the corners-
Psyching up for your 'procedure.'
Then answer more Q's,
For the tenth time give your "last four,"
Then it's roll your knees to your chin kid
As the IV sedative begins
(Thankfully)
To drip away your wakefulness

from Ed's entryway

No lord has taken you yet-

Breathe in the peaceful aire

And be on the loose........

(rough translation)

question

Where is the game played--
     electron loop
or galaxy arrayed???

(for Steve House)

POME

I saw a man swerve
And try to hit a stray dog,
But the quick mutt dodged
Between parked cars

And made his escape.
God, I thought, did I just see
What I think I saw?
At the next red light,

I pulled up beside the man
And stared hard at him.
He knew that I'd seen
His murder attempt,

But he didn't care.
He smiled and yelled loud
Enough for me to hear him
Through closed windows:

Don't give me that face
Unless you're going to do
Something about it.
Come on, tough guy,

What are you going to do?
I didn't do anything.
I turned right on the green
He turned left against traffic.

I don't know what happened
To that man or the dog,
But I drove home
And wrote this poem.

Why do poets think
They can change the world?
The only life I can save
Is my own.

-Sherman Alexie

quote

the answers are low sand hills
   compared to the Everest of the questions

-Wm. Alvarez

A Date With Death

A date with death
On the high Wyoming plateau
Premonition in dreams,
December when the ground lay bare
And sunlight shone golden
On vast windy rangelands,
North out of Rock Springs
Ominous snowclouds gather
Sioux death-rattles in the bottom of the mind-
The pickup out of gas
Many miles down some wrong turn
Off State Highway 39
Where the road ends
Under swaying cottonwoods

irony

All our acts of abbreviation
  [read:  cybernetics]
    only seem to amplify
      the flight of time

contrast

the engineer admires
     the Caterpillar skids through muddle
the poet admires
    the green frog swimming across its puddle

-Rush Creek

note

the artist resists orthodoxies
     without exception-
because?
all dogma represent
      a protocol of perception

'innovation'

For life is nothing
if not distinct particulars
like washing dishes,
   sweeping floors
      raking leaves
        et cetera
-all 'Zen' occasions for mindfulness-
to what end then
this resistless Cyber-push
to endlessly abbreviate things?

Mt Ritter

for Dan Sweigert

"...descending Mt Ritter
crossing those large snowfields
you have of course to select a course
       that won't kill
when you start glissading-
because SLIDE YOU WILL"

what emotional rivalries
  have at it
    when I let the phone
      just ring

damn those democrats!

The skinhead carpet-cleaner
Come this morning
To shampoo Mom's wall-to-wall
Sporting a ballcap stitched
With the triple tree of Calgaree
Offered us this opinion:
"The present crop of Democrats
Are on a mission to reduce the U.S. of A.
To a third-world country-
Why?   "so we'll Be All One"

wonder

While so much comes and goes
     in the blink of an eye
How to account for these fingers and toes
     that count year after year going by?

correction

when I told my Buddhist friend
"we're all on The Bubble"
he corrected me,
"no," he said, "we ARE The Bubble"

snow'ku

a kid again
catching snowflakes
on my tongue

-january 2011

Getting Even

for Susan-

After I punched it
  To beat the yellow light
    On Richardson Street
      She flipped-

This became the shape of her retaliation:

"After we've crashed and you're dead and gone
I'll bury you in a Veteran's Cemetery
With full military honors!"

Moonrock'd

In the Astronomy Mock
   a scuffle broke out

I got clock'd by a moonrock
   for my lunatic shout

Reno VA

An ex-Marine
in the travel re-imbursement line
at the Reno VA today

citing Hai Phong where the defoliant
Agent Orange
was "deployed" from twin-blade Chinooks

across the jungle indiscriminate
to flush the Viet-Cong

Nineteen Seventy-One

"Everyone qualifies for disability
If you can prove you were there"

Why so few question
such blank-check militarism
where the formidable M-I-C tail
wags so many national
dogs

Paulo

Showing off her husband
She had him play 'Moonlight Sonata'
On his new baby grand
And the minor flubberies
Only embellished it

choices

This wide world offers
An abundant portfolio of grief
-Purchase all you'd like-

But it likewise presents
Rosy dawnlight
In the upper canopies

Spin

Something in the poet
Inclines sharply toward The Tale,
Toward a colorful recounting,
That wants to spin
A Walk Down The Alley
Into some kind of art piece

beer money

I fell on hard times
It could happen to you--

Now my body belongs to Tasman Research
After I've turned blue

rain

Those who hold Nature
Close to their breast
Recognise what wind rain &snow
Represent:
A christening:
Not only of the dusty preterite
But also one's rote sensibilities:
When the glorious sun
Breaks through the storm's last clouds
Thrall to a new sky
And the pine grove
Resplendent in a light
Not before seen

Skyline Boulevard

Tell me again
how the sapien sapien
whizzing by in his Honda bot
is smarter
than the red-tailed squirrel dancing
in the sunlit redwoods
two hundred feet above?

-Skylonda

my forty-year old axe

has already had
three different handles
and two different heads

piano

we had to call the tuner back
when we discovered his F sharp
was actually G flat

Shaky Ladder

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

poem without principle

It's quite a precipice from the Absolute
Into mishmash pluralism
Voices down through the trees
Or mystery bungling of pipes
Through the motel wall Monterey California--
Sniff of yellow dogs
With histories unrecorded
Fade out calls under murky skies
Rumoured to hold manmade satellites--
Everything uncertain in the New Realm,
All the signs tampered with,
Spun around or uprooted
On outpost roads to towns with river names,
Vagaries abound-
Flesh is your only raft
And it's damnsure doomed

I'll Pass

In high school
I tried out for the javelin-catching team
But one day of practice
Convinced me
I don't really need this kind of glory

time & space

Look at it this way: time & space are both projexions of the human mind.  After all, the only way you can describe either one is by extension from a set reference.
But in the actual world, extension just isn't there- try pointing to it.  Which brings us to the title of an Alan Watts' book,  regarding the here-and-now: This Is It.

Futurism

   A cult of 'Futurism' emerges beyond that point that hardware is devised to sweeten our conversation with the elements... this is the poet's view.  Futurism emerges where technology is given carte blanche to pursue possiblity for its own sake: what can be done will be done.  Futurism is the only "ism" that's able to rationalise such an obsession with means that ends become secondary and developmental.

Dauphine I.

On the island's west shore
Where Spaniards found skulls
A night wind runs over the dunes

skylonda

Deep in a sprawling canopy
Of old redwoods
Lost somewhere in the Santa Cruz mountains
I find myself mesmerised
By a solitary fogdrop
At the tip of a green needle
Squinking in the noonday sun
A dozen colors

deficit?

All this handwringing
Over Deficit, deficit, Deficit
When Surplus!   is our condition
A wealth of sunlight
Laurel leaf   crescent moon
And moths in the kitchen
Why drown in deficits?
When abundance lands in our lap--

Spitfire

Spitfire flipped me off
At the Colfax weave
Incensed I wasn't yielding
My hard-won right of way
She ran up alongside
In her big-pony Mustang
Then flashed her bold & brazen
Bayonet

street football

for Lew Toll

a big argument breaks out
     over the rush count-
three alligators or four?

-Clay Street

bejewelment

bejewelment-
low band of cirrus-cloud
wearing a crescent moon

locomotives

Trains idle at their sidings
The world over

The big Case-Hellwig diesels
At low rpms

Trundling the summer air
With a bass vibrato

Or occasional slow rev
Flashing what horsepower:

The iron-wheel'd gods
Bide their time.

-Guadalajara

dimensions

atom-spin
    or galaxy arrayed-
just where 
          is the game played?

behind the door

Thank God I was spared
The cyber-gene
That might have cubed me thirty years
In Microsoft's research machine

sharing snapshots- Fifties

for Susan

    My jaw droppt
    When she pulled snapshots
    From a closet shoebox
    With its usual mix of Buicks & butch haircuts
    From the Do-Wop Fifties-
    Then handed me a dog-eared black-and-white
    Of her uncle
    With his arm around Neil Armstrong
    As they graduated from Annapolis bootcamp

rats!

I apologized
To the large Norwegian rat
As I released his long-tailed
Carcass

caper

a LARGE magnolia flower
purloin'd from Swan-Levine's sideyard
I had to slide it
Passt Peggy on the street
I must be smooth
She never saw it

Nevada

             down
I came out of the September hills
near Halleck

The road blocked with cattle

I mean brown-eared doggies
           a cattle drive
Complete with cowboys
Splendid in their leather chaps
And kerchiefs under the bright Nevada sun

wide-brimmed hats cocked
    just the kind of traffic delay
        I delight in

Pyramid Lake

I was already vulnerable
When I pulled into a turnout
High above Pyramid Lake
To let a leadfoot go by--
I was already weak
With pink sundown in my eyes
Looking over the sage crest
To soft tracts of light wind
Feathering the last sunlight,
A loose ribbon of black freightbirds
Settling for the night
Offshore

spiro

Spiro Agnew-
Is someone really
Named that?

hot-ku

kids shriek
running through lawn-sprinklers
mid-July

Junkyard Jim

for Lew Toll


Almost inert-
The Raleigh pipe that smokes itself
by the beat quonset shed,
mid-junkyard.
Mr Ruddy in denim overalls
sizes up our randy selection
of rake tines, rusted pulleys, flywheels
and bent occult shapes
already sifting back to earth-
our 'found objects', our makeshift Art-
Pulls out his roll of worn bills
to make change,
shaking his head,
pronounces 'five dollars...'

thursday

An odd creature
In a green vest
Straight from the Monty Halls
Of Darwinism
Stepped out of his recycling truck
On our street today
Took one look at our overfilled bins,
Pointed at his big steel bucket
And shouted at me,
"Load 'em up, Francisco!

God made an example of me

          *

True I’m a magnet for money
But just to make an example of me
God switched the poles

Vista High, 1967

Cut the tension with a blade
In full pads helmets & cleats
Oceanside versus Vista
Line up in the tunnel
As loudspeakers
Announce the Big Matchup

solicitation

There I was wedged
Between the resawn cedar trusses
In Fred's attic mid-July,
Attempting the impossible
By boring through the double 2x4 plate
To feed romex wire to Robin's new wall-sconce,
Splayed to my armpits in murky pink spun glass insulation,
When the cellphone rings in my pocket
"Sir, can we interest you
In some Triple-A breakdown insurance???"

Get Real

At long last
America got what it wanted-
Everyone spinning their private squirrel-wheel
In universal pursuit of the almighty acorn-
The old hippie bus
Hand-painted with whales & moons
Outside Crescent City,
Towed away...

LM

so into healing
she reikis
the dented waterjug

connexion

if you're willing to view the bloodless tear of skin
on your forearm
as a hieroglyph that welcomes vulnerability
in a vastness populated with sidewalks   cedar trees
& the devious impulses of grinning figures in ballcaps
& find it all a special blessing,
you're there

Zen

how have the Japanese
merged so exquisitely
Art & Contemplation--
this thing called Zen

Spoze

Easy and apparent it is
To suppose the world
A grand globe people'd with passing skeletons:
Obituaries retell their long stories-
However!    let's turn
That spoze on its ear
And reckon the world aright:
This the first day,
And never's been tonight!

Flag Day

Behold the red white & blue
Or banner thus of any hue:
What blood is its sport & spin,
Even as it pronounces Win!

haiku

laughing she pulls
   her green panties
      onto the dog

baja revisited

"Standard of Living"
Was his reply to my question
"Well if you could live anywhere
Why not live here?"
But elsewhere
There is far more 'standard'
Than there is living

Six-Ten

All these signs & wonders
All these strange hieroglyphs
Can mean only one thing-
the start of the world!

barefoot in baja

"barefoot I was born
    -barefoot I'll remain"     -alvarez


I'll caretake in Baja
Even if it means
One hundred ten degrees
Brutal humidity and bugs in my hair
So long as I can splash daily
In that sparkling blue sea
The Spanish once called "Vermillion..."


Mexican silver
The Chinese prized for coinage
Back in the day
But pirates roamed the seas
Around Cabo
Also had their way


How do you have
The sound of raindrops
On terra cotta roof-tiles
With a sky full of stars?


She warned us
Keep The Gates Closed
Else the wild burros will come in
Eat everything
And you'll have a devil of a time
Getting them OUT
      -mooney


She got in trouble
In the big Baja surf
That surged up the sand & back,
Carrying its cargo of swimmers
Where it would,
Regardless of their intentions.
Turned out she was fighting allergies,
Just could not breathe
And soon the current brought us rocks
To negotiate--
The girl in the red bikini
Left her towel
When she recognized our plight,
And a grizzled gringo ran down from his palapa
Upset & angry-
"You people have to respect these rocks!"
He shouted in my ear,
Once we got her wobbly
To the steep strand,
Gasping wheezing & giving gratitudes.


that's what we come fer
   that's what we got-
     the mantra "manana"
        ruling our thought---




bodysurfing

Fine white ocean sand
  between my toes

waiting for the Glory Wave
  that never shows




every sailor's delight
turning down-wind
to ride his big kite



little girls share the joy
    of hide & seek
        in the evening zocaloy


Sooner or later
It was bound to happen
Feral burros greeting us at the gate
Back from our evening swim--
And of course we made the sorry mistake
Of feeding them week-old tortillas


BAJA BURMA SHAVE

Why bother with shirt & pants
When they can be such a chore
Why not let your skin freelance
And they'll never call you a bore!


She scolded me
    for my hang-laundry sins
"Don't be so damn lazy--
   always use clothespins!"


Somehow a wasp
Has gotten into the kitchen
Now I've got him pinned to the window
With a broom-
But along comes the question,
Is it him or I who've met his doom?


Ah to plunge into that Cortes surf
And stroke for all your worth
To the dangerous rocks
With their whitesand coves
And sunglimmer narrows
Following the stripers & iridescent scissortails
As the big baja waves
Tumble across your silly snorkel--
Weightless is that dance they show you
Leave your boardrooms & cubicles
Come frolic with the fishes
That know what life's about
Merge with movement color & light


Big five-gallon bucket
On the beach
A sawed-off shovel leaning on it:
FAVOR  CACA  DE  PERRO  SOLO 
     -arroyo


Cloud-connoisseure yes-
But if cirrus be your thing-
Get your butt to Zaca
Batabing!


If your thing is making $
And finding ways to spend it
Go get yourself an oversized SUV
And a well-appointed home
Get to Galleria Mall on weekends-
However!
If on the other hand
You find your pocketbook full of time
And inclination too
Go disappear in Baja
After awhile they’ll stop looking for you
 


I dunno, am I bent?
Somehow it's good
To sign up for this tenement
Where they still give advice
On dealing with mice


How good look those blue pesos
Folded squarely in my straw hat
Ready for a walk to Zac's
For a shot of TQ and a beer back!


The hysterical braying
Of the wild burro at dawn
Produces a quick list in the mind
Of the hacienda's gates-
In particular, left open which one?
And how much damage has she done?


Jet fighters thunder over Baja
leaving long vapor trails
spelling out one ancient word:
t-e-s-t-o-s-t-e-r-o-n-e


Montezuma got more than revenge
With this goofy gringo
Who ate & drank everything put in front of him
With gusto & gracias--
Now!   he's sprawled across the cool terra cotta
In absolute renunciation
Of every institution public & private


It arrived sometime
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
The surfers had been waiting for


The subtext of travel
Is to put yourself in a place
Where the Unexpected can


Must be something amniotic
this turning & freewheeling
heels over head
in the warm clear shallows
just beyond the surfline
large groups of fish bright blue
come school about with you


Whooknowz?
How close came I to perish
Throwing meself this twilight
Into that no-man's surf at Zacatito,
Swept immediately
Into currents surges & nasty rips--
This powerful equatorial swell
Way more than I bargained for
Once again some angel
Steered me through channels in the rock
To scratch out gasping
-All dignity canned-
Onto the steep forgiving strand


True!  large spiders subsist here,
  I saw one last night dart under the bed-
    Though it was allergies she said,
      Is this why she actually fled?


Another large truck
Working the dusty network of roads
At Zacatito today--
Single short horn for propane
Two long for water
Thrice just to say Amigo!


"Lo Siento!"
All I knew to say
When I interrupted
The lovers at Land's End
In mid-play


Came out of nowhere
Big eight-foot "sleeper" wave
A top-to-bottom cylinder of pure juice
That caught & hammered me
Heels over head
Into the rough-grained bottomsand
Adios mask & snorkel


She didn't see me peek
When she rolled back her bikini chic
To show her friend
A new rose tattoo
On her perfect end
    -Cabo snorkel boat w/ Lew Toll


Hundreds or thousands
Of silver merelings
Scatter in all directions as I surface
LIttle sun-streaks
Transmitting some kind of bliss
Gone
Oceanic


In all the hundred-degree saguaro desert
What compares
To the bold baja sun
Ashine on the wings
Of soaring
Cawing
Ravenings


Low on the twilight horizon
     -Soundless-
Green and red fireworks
     Stream over San Jose


For fun
We tried guessing the age
Of the dark-haired infant
Held on papa's lap at the next table
While enjoying our desayuno--
Somehow we thought
Between two and six months-
Were we ever astonished
When he told us
"Cuatro Dias"


Try as you will
Fighting sand in Baja
Is strictly uphill!


   I look across the palmfronds at the weathered stone steeples of La Mision de San Ignacio and try to imagine a preterite three centuries or more, a land inhabited only by Jesuit friars & Co Chi Mi primitives- here with all the elaborate theology of the Roman Catholic church, here with hundreds of pages of 'revealed' scripture, here with a detailed iconography of sainthood- what in this vast european heritage would appeal to these indigenous baja indians?  Was it 'deliverance' or Christ's vaunted martyrdom on the Cross- for their sins?  If indeed it was simple subjugation of one culture by another under the pretext of "salvation--" how and why did these robust natives submit?


(this last poem has nothing to do with Baja but is a recurring meditation of mine)--

Tumbling down the proverbial
Loop of time
But Reverse Cosmosis still holds true--
Your condition is universal
And the yardstick is YOU

Sixty Minutes

Sixty Minutes
Saved the Mt Athos ossuary
For the end of their segment
Behind the monastery
A mound of whitewashed skulls
Still chanting

zen reversal

Zen represents a reversal of common wisdom:

Instead of the moment serving one's agenda,
One's agenda is made to serve The Moment

Nature or Not?

Are we mistaken
To hold up in our minds
A paradigm of non-human Nature,
As pure, undefiled, whole?
Is this something true, useful, compelling,
Or some kind of aesthetic mythology?
I mean,
As many have asked,
So many species inhabit this planet,
And is not the human race one more?
Because whatever you can say about cultivation,
Manipulation,
Opposing thumb,
Domesticity may well fall
Into a larger category of FERAL

sky

If imagery is everything
what compares
to that loose wedge of snowgeese
moving north over Grass Valley
giving the cloud-dappled April sky
enormous dimensions

what time is it?

Look closely-
Has this moment
Any extension in it?
Then it's the same moment
It's always been-
The eternal Now

First Light

Seldom enters the eye
  into the dream-pavilions
    of Aurora,    sweet dawn
      deftly shedding her satin
        night-robes

downtown

hands full of zinnias
she pushes the CrossWalk button
with her elbow

-grass valley

POV

He gets on his high horse
He tilts at windmills of every stripe
Minus sceptre & robe
He pontificates to anyone who'll listen,
He takes no prisoners-
Who is this rathskallion
Clubbing you with his position?
Some self-righteous fool
On his street soapbox?
No- that someone is me

GroupThink explored

Q. People share many positions, at any time many may be thinking the same thought, having the same POV... so what's wrong with "groupthink?"

A.  Well I'm glad you raise that point because what I'm referring to is what you might call "marching orders" to advance, invoke, or preserve a given position... What I call "groupthink" is not about sharing a certain point of view, it's about promoting it in a self-rigteous way- the flip side, the dark side, is make anyone who does NOT share that view "lost," "fallen," misguided or in some way wrong. The dark side of this is that others, just because they don't march to the same music, are rendered second-class citizens or marginalized in some way. "Orthodoxy" comes into play, and people are measured according to how they line up- or don't.
Human beings are social animals, and our queus are many- all you have to do is go downtown and see all the pants hanging around the knees of teenagers to realize what lengths people go to be "cool." I'm not angry or bitter, I'm amused actually, but when you look back over human history and see the vast mayhem that's been visited on "outgroups"- that's when this aspect of human psychology gets to be downright frightening .

Chester Street Roof Repairs

Little did I know!    when yesterday
I stacked the two-by-eights & corrugated sheetmetal
that my errand to repair her leaking 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
rowdy ravens gave me their greeting
morning air pulsed
& squirrels scolded from blustery cedars,
Little did I know!
what fortune would I find
spending an entire day rubbing elbows
with eaves gables chimneys & gutters
low-slung cumuli entered my eye
and at dusk    full moons!
waxing huge over the purple sage Sierra

quoting Shakespeare

The other day an erudite friend of mine was asked, in the course of conversation, to give us his favorite Shakespeare quote-
"OK," he responded, "“To thine own self be true,  and as it follows, as the night does the day, that thou canst not then be false to any man..."
We thought that was too well-known, so, annoyed, he offered us this:  "Exit, Stage Right, pursued by a bear..." 

-michael moerman

DH Lawrence

"...in everything, the shimmer of creation, and never the finality of the created."

field trip

in a circle
around the Park Ranger
kids pass a bear skull

-Alleghany

zen

...it is mystical in the sense that the sun shines, that the flower blooms, that I hear at this moment somebody beating a drum in the street.  If these are mystical facts, Zen is brim full of them.

-DT Suzuki

Lake Vera

in the saucepan
   catching rainleaks
      a cricket has drowned

impressed

Of the many fine appointments
In their lakeside getaway-

The Bavarian crystal,
The brass scrimshaw chandalay-

Most precious to me's
Left in the rain:

The white humpback vertebrae

burroughs, anyone?

William Burroughs got a Pulitzer Prize for literature when he took newpaper clippings and cut them into strips and rearranged the words. who knew genius.

river walk

between sets
the trumpet mariachi
talks on his cell

-san antonio

late

missed my one o'clock--
somehow got my tick
confused with tock

newspapers

Why subsist
On the bottomless basket of rotten fruit

When it can only lead
To disillusion & dismay?

This is NOT a rhetorical question.

The poet offers this:
Identify the sources of exaltation & Joy,

Make your life
The edification of them--

And from there let the world know
What's p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e

Shangri-La

is toweling down
after a brisk swim
in Bally's blue cove

-coupla shots of Bushmill's in you-

sun dazzling off the rim
spokes of cirrus
radiate overhead

and in the lemon trees
a warm Texas breeze

beetles

   Toward the end of his life someone asked Darwin, "after spending a lifetime studying the works of Creation, what can we now infer about the mind of God...?"
The great naturalist pondered the question a moment and answered, "Well he's awfully fond of beetles!"

(400,000 species)

just curious

any truth to the rumour that the USA traded T.S.Eliot to England for Bob Hope?

texas

barefoot
I was born-
barefoot I remain

subjectivity

Easy to mistake
Our own projections of time & space
For transcendence;
              what smalls us--
But as Emerson reminds,
"It is the eye that makes the horizon"

haiku two

frozen blackbird
   dead by the tracks
      catching fine blown snow

-north dakota

zig-zag

Instead of insisting
On the narrow Zig-
Why not invite
The wayward Zag?

pigeons

What does it say
  about a man

whose spirit soars
  on the flight of citypark pigeons
       
by the dozen

swinging across sycamores
into March sunlight?

Money

    Money, too, dreams of love.  It’s tired of being crumpled in our pockets, insulted and maligned, blamed for everything that’s wrong.  Money didn’t ask us to run up all these debts, thinking money would save us.  Money knows nothing will save us.

                            -Sy Safransky

true poetry

   "...true poetry is what does not pretend to be poetry.  It is in the dogged drafts of a few maniacs seeking the new encounter."


-Francis Ponge

you want... concretehood?

Dodge & weave
     all you can
But vulnerable's your fate
    Mr Everyman

handyman

sublime
working alone
at the Ring of Bone  


to gong so slow
the ancient

bronze

densho

like any reckless tramp

            “...every storm has something fine to show you.” -Muir

Trudging through hip-deep snow
along the Truckee River
showered with blowing snowdust
from the close pines
I stopped to catch my breath
and glimpse a winter half-moon
    between swirling snowclouds--
what exhiliration I felt
in that chance moment,     like
    any reckless tramp
bogged down in the middle of nowhere,
snow in my boots, the going rough:
out on the edge that is everywhere,
out in the cold waver of pink twilights,
baptised by ice, the elemental shakedown
the world builds itself against--
the adventurer lives for that edge,
seeks it, walks it, courts it,
where all roads end, trails end, time ends,
the blue glimmer of the forever beyond
he finds irresistible,
forsakes for it all other loves,
Where he is lost again
he finds his life....

von trappe

The cybernetic “revolution”
Is really just an extension
Of a long-standing tendency in the West-
To keep the mind bright, restless & strident,
Abuzz with prospect & production.
For the ocean depths it has traded a sleek gigabyte surfboard...

Regarding Time

"...we are taught from childhood to regard absolute Newtonian time- that is, the steady, observable ticking of the kitchen clock- as the single valid measuring stick for all things in the world.  The shrew is quick, we say, whereas the grizzly bear is ponderous.  However, each of those animals is living at the appropriate pace of its own biological clock-- and the result, living quickly for two years or ponderously for thirty-one years, is in the end the same."

-Charles Panati

lines from Thurber

"...it is better to have asked some of the questions than to know all of the answers."  

"...there is no safety in numbers-- or in anything else." 


-Thurber

Geo. Bernard Shaw last wish

"...please, no religious service and my tombstone is not to take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice."

haiku

after Megan's party
   the donkey tacked to the door
      has ten tails

Spring

Smote
by float

Of semi-
      cumuli:

Gift of eyes
Wed to blue March
             skies

Otherness

Sexy
is all this rumination
on transcendence,
on what holds everything
together--

But these hours
I'd rather the vast extent
of otherness,
the deep & unknowable
salt shaker

Hawai-ku

Beware
Falling
Coconuts

-Puna

Grackle

Even as they call them pests
I annoy these Texans
By professing my affection
For these large, extravagant birds
That strut shamelessly
Across the sidewalk cafes
Or swing in noisy gangs
Through the citypark sycamores.
I guess I'm supposed to vilify them
In the ways those who've lived long
Beside them do
But dammit!    I'm just off the plane
And I admire their silken heads
And unabashed Texas bravado

cybernetix

Do you also

Find yourself

Giving many thanx

That you've been endowed

With half a lifetime

Cybernetic-free!

Now that they've become

So fully a part of us

Everlastingly?

Glorify the Hour -everett ruess

   ...the bright sheeny banner that heralds this late winter run of days is the streaming talisman called JOY, ponder it though we might this one grand emotion lifts me out of bed every day & presents me with a world LAVISHED in golden light and I find it elation to simple draw breath... Why & Wherefore?  does every surface fairly shimmer & exalt the eye that partakes in it?  This sublime condition questions every other, it asks why curse the almshouse when the rosy-domed Taj Mahal stretches from you in every direction?  This wine is effervescent & 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 together for the green light on Camden, the brown squirrel who rains down shuckings on your breezy skull, even the lone geranium flowering in the sideyard announcing its hour of existence, Affection! Kinship! Flesh! Connexion!

wordlesss

Somehow
we want
a 'Big Picture'
to carry us
FORWARD-

we want our lives
to add up to something

But smiling!
Is that Kasyapa
who understood
when Guatama
wordless
lifted the blue poppy

chester street

how is it
the simple sight of shadowlines
across the fresh snowfield
on the neightbor's cottage roof
so thrills the optic nerve?

nationalism

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. 
 -george patton


why is it that when
even a cursory glance
across human history demonstrates
that many of its darkest hours
have been written by Nationalism--
that is, territorial groupthink--
we're still never so much inclined
to question The Flag
as to wave it???

for william carlos williams

I was well aware
That in order to succeed
I had to maintain
A razor's edge
Against my own ready impulse:
But success being what it is
It proved worth
The many times No
I used against myself--
Serving a greater Yes

touch football

an old argument breaks out
on the Clay Street rush count--
three alligators or four?

goofing

lollygagging
 is the only word
  to describe

turning pedals
 down empty backstreets
   New Ulm, Minnesota

a sunlit spin of spokes
 heading in particular

nowhere


-2005

slowpoke

Cruise-control set at seventy,
She gets upset
At anyone caught-up-to,
Quickly branded "country yahoo"

-JaNet Q.

withdrawal

If you find yourself so dismayed
By the pervasive malaise
Of this mad mad world
That you step awayed
--Are you then defined by it?

enya

That minor key
Holds inside itself
The world's vast sadness,
The endless good-bye

two "found" haiku

Do Not Insert
Foreign Objects
Into Fan Blades



Never Check
     For Gas Leaks
          With An Open Flame



-from tradework

Guadalajara

The steel-wheel locomotives
Idle at their sidings
The world over
The big Case-Hellwig diesels
At low RPMs
Thrumming the summer air
With a bass vibrato
Or occasional slow rev
Flashing what horsepower:
The iron gods bide their time

the coming revolution

     Is there not a revolution coming,
     A generation of youth born into every kind of gadget & digital gimmick, a youth who will stop to ask the question, "how much information does a human being need?"  Who will recognize this sea of technology as mediation from life's sources, mediation from the wind sun rain & stars, from birds & trees, technology that delivers not the enlargement of time & space (as promised) but the amplification and underscoring of them?
     Is there not a day coming,
     When a new wave of young people will INSIST on direct contact with this earth & sky, with each other, and pronounce cybernetics for what it is-- a fascination with cleverness, an elaborate testament to the new truth that "Invention is the mother of necessity"?

a new day

...the quiet congratulation of it, to step out onto the frosty porch at the break of day, to lean on the rail and receive the subtle colors that tint those fleecy bands of cirrus sometimes with a crescent moon in them, and if you're lucky a loose frolic of starlings will swing out between the cedars and greet you with the exuberance that says Sky! Sky! Sky!

whoops

boxcar derailed
east of Langley Nevada-
desert strewn
with Tucson phonebooks

Wearing all the Hats

Being their handyman
they asked me to pull down the cheap tin woodshed
damaged by a windblown branch-
But being sixty years old
I balked,    I should have refused
yanking, sledging, cussing,
sumo-wrestling with bent green panels in oversized gloves-
But it was the first week in january
a sharp chill in the air
loose cloud fragments floated above the close pines
a job clearly made for college kids-
more than once I almost walked away
but when the trouble ended
and the shed was upended
voila!  a truck full of metal
my foot on the pedal

Daybreak

         
Last day of the year-
First light at Seven AM.
On the southern horizon,
Slight bands of ice-cloud
Are feathered pink.
High in the black dome of heaven
A crescent ten-day moon
Burns next to Venus.
In the smoke-hazed valley,
Every slanting roof glistens with a hard frost.
Then to the unwary eye it appears-
A loose wedge of snowgeese
Hardly visible a mile high,
On the wing for destinations
Unknown

            -Grass Valley