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