RAY's Rogues Gallery

Salvadore Dali and Walt Disney

I don't know how much I owe my uncles

 Out of storage and into porridge,

A dozen white cats with legs 

selected  at random 

from le Flaneur's subterranean stuffness

Jack Kerouac

Dali said he was the most beautiful man he had ever seen

William S. Burroughs 

Searching for hallucinogen Yage

 Paul Bowles

Composer and author

 

 Gerry Mulligan

Irish-American giant of cool jazz

 Fred Neil

A master of those who know
Wavy Gravy and I were talking
 Over the phone about Bob Dylan
I mentioned I still had all of Fred's LPs
Wavy's seismometer jumped up several chakra
 

James Dean

Original 50s wallet photos

 Dion

Early hero of me youth,
I've had this 45 for 55 years

Jim Morrison 

On Crown Beach Alameda California 

This is a keepsake from an exhibit in Alameda

Of his high school artwork

 Charlie Watts

 Rolling Stones 1981 tour souvenir book,

Charlie is my darling

Rotten Johnny Rotten

Singer song writer

I've met him and one other of these gentlemen

Who do you suppose the other one is?

Hot Town Summer in the City

Down by the far point of the Oakland estuary again

Waiting on a friend

Another hot day in Flaneurland

Whether we be made of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white

When it hits eighty degrees around here we all melt,

Chinese get more like dewy pork buns

 Oh where, oh where can my little pal be?

Here he is!
He's glad to see me too!

He brought his human with him,

My oldest California friend, a professional keyboard player

 I've had the honor of collaborating with for 35 years

Most recently doing jazz poetry with his improvisations

In a San Francisco nightclub

Good old R-man

 We found a suitable sylvan spot 

 Kind weed in the shade

 Time passes pleasantly

While high wind sheered clouds into parallelograms

A WWII bomber for a moment

 After we split I went on to the natural foods supermaket

 but realized I left my reading glasses behind

I went back, didn't find them

So I spent more time lying in shady green grass

As the heat of the day slowly went past

 After dinner
I realized I'd been grossly over-charged

went out to catch a bus back to the lake again

A crown-like aura radiated over the setting sun
Far beyond my crepuscular neighbor

 What's that I see?

Well, that explains everything

All the mild snafus and the rapid change in mood

The mass of the full moon

Gaining buoyancy in a night tide

 

 Marquee Moon,

I remember
How the darkness doubled

The movie playing was "Some Like It Hot"

28 August 2015

August Round Town

 

Spocks

As the cookie crumbles 

still digging the scene

 Looks like Grover Norquist stopped here

On his way to Burning Man

Berkeley USA,

Coming at you

Some alienation perhaps

 Always plenty of eye candy 

If you know where to look

BART tracks, North Berkeley

 Don't sleep too long
This drowsy afternoon

 Summer's clock is ticking

 

 Better shake a tail feather

If merman I should be

 The student returns prepared

For whatever may come his way

Yoga Chic

Summer 2015

Netherworld Locale

Lonesome Echo-location

The Flaneur haunts the lonely streets but never feels alone

--a noirist baptism of solitude

 

 Urban landscape at crepuscule

 The evening falls over the security state complex

 The moon it is a boat, my love

 

  A small protest on a warm night, 

Helicopters  hover like hellish mosquitos

 The city shifts into the underworld

At night it's a different world,

The quaint corner coffee house

Has extinguished its lights

 A disorienting, puzzling,
sometimes troubling region

 It's the Old Oakland Hotel

 Contrast between the dark and the light

Plays tricks on the windows of night

A Deconstructionist cafe

 

 The ceiling fans turn in the semi-dark,

The ghost of Ratto's

 No Italian fruit bread for you,

All the non-combatants have fled the area

 Next?

Even the Mexicali Rose is closed,

 Just a private after-hours affair 

Too late for the tattoo joint

Comic books made of skin

Hypnotism and nitrous oxide

 ATM and smart phone

Attention span, attention span, attention span...

How the cops see themselves,

Followed by grandiose state-funded funerals

The jailers and the bailers

Keep long business hours

Separated at birth

In a black marble void

July-August 2015