Solstice Tide

Solstice Tide

 

Meteor Cloud

 

Symbolic lasso

noctilucent curlicue

fifty miles up close

 

 

 

 

 

Things left out of the bible

 

I have to force the door shut

against the nightmare world outside

it gets in any way

hundred-leggers

under the floorboards

The street is a skirmish

one enters into

 

 

 

Stringbean hid his money

in the chimney of a humble cabin

found many years later

it could no longer be spent

Estelle fled toward the Cadillac

Frost on her in the morning

Stringbean's killers missed

money sewn into his pants

his trademark joke pants

they stole his notorious hat

in a dirty parting deed

helped convict them

Nashville 1969

 

 

 

 

 

 

Murmuration of Stars

 

falling dishes

emblazoned with fruit bats

never reach bottom and break

 

cycle around the centripital belt

tumbling excited in mid space

glancing off others

 

in the milky way parthenon

places are palimpsest

to the paleontologist

 

wave after wave got bigger

until the beach tumbled away

and all was sea

 

Another million years of hominids

crack in the accepted timeline

the subterraneans swarm out

 

To join again the living

perhaps get a bite

adding to the long lines

 

Walls of painted figures

mummified cats waited

in the priestess's tomb

 

Soul colors speak directly

for the soul entombed

the sea beyond the West

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Absent pleasure craft

estuary's blank mirror

sun makes slanted eyes

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foot tap on the rail

gull feels it but can't tell where

watches for hand-outs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.

Wind and rain blow past

secretive trees roil and writhe

storm outside and in

 

 

 

 

2.

The street's sleeping rough

furtive traffic forces itself

the night stilled by rain

 

 

 

 

3.

Jack London station

insistent deserted dark

trains sound in the rain

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tell us your dream of dreams

your most forbidden forests

where nothing is impossible

it seems

 

Slender trees grew in too close

labyrinthine thickets

of briar and rose

 

Bears and painted wolves

the theater comes only at night

moon flowers and night herons

 

Between Our Lady of Lourdes

and Christ the Light

Fairyland and the estuary

Garden of earthly delight

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 2018

 

 

 

 

Cigarbox Manuscript

Cigar-box Manuscript

 

 

 

 

 

Deep purple elliptical clouds

over the railroad

Instinct leads me to water

 

the west aglow

a highway of gulls

they fly up to the cranes

 

Then over the estuary

to the Alameda side

spellbound stood I

 

Watching the conflicting currents

in chiaroscuro

and turn to look south

 

There it is

the pink
 pink

pink moon

 

 

 

 

 

 

By a strange pre-ordained

chain of events

 dropped the joint

in a glass of water

 

Not for so long a time

I can even remember ever

a mighty holiday joint

 

Dried out it had

an odd aftertaste

nevertheless

 

It still pulled

the figurative rabbit

out of the silk top hat

 

 

 

 

Civilization runs out

empty calendar grid

pipe lines unfinished

spewing a tidal wave

of regression

 

tar pits

reduced

to primordial ooze

skin tannery

tattoo beauty parlor

 

Robotic empty bus goes by

obscure canned foods

left on street corners

the unreal real

appears where it wasn't

no newspapers to stain

the men in uniform

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The earliest poem

was by a cave man

when his cave felt sad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vote for Me

 

I have proven that

I'm protuberant

time and time again

 

I have demonstrated

that I will reach

into negative numbers

 

To stoop lower than my opponent

I have excavated the ground

below the bottom of the barrel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I must go back

 to my former floorboards

I would think about them

strangely creeping in

to fill a room

 

Put up screens

in avoidance

of a situation I let settle in

an imaginary 

woodstove

  

Lumber from the environs

branches and boards all burn

neighbors noted

the wood smoke

in white winter

 

Mild panic when the paper boy

comes around collecting

strange cooking in sepia rooms

radio Sally Go Round the Roses

while they counted out coins

 

the herald news added inserts

to  deliver with no extra pay

found down the sewer

 Reported my brother

lost his paper route

 

 

Side street soda pop distributor

metal signs for Nehi RC Cola
racks all bottles then

the jukebox jobber sold

used 45s for a quarter

Walking in the Rain

 

On a fence behind

a Protestant church I slipped

impaled on chain link

got stuck and got free of it

makes you stronger

 

Next route closer to home

a bar room where a guy yelled

 get a haircut you look like a girl

at my Beatle bangs

every day

 

Strange agrarian yards

a culinary rabbitry

exotic hot dog place

 

Across a schoolyard

to another house

Two papers an old lady

on the second floor

I'd passed her once before

 

This day on the front steps
 holding a pan of table scraps

she seemed to lose her ability

to stand and melted down
on the concrete stairs

her head hit the walk

she was bloodied

I leapt down to help her
she was mumbling
didn't sound like English
 I saw her head
 lowered her again
Leapt back to a door
on the first floor
Upset lady took over
and bid me on my way

At the collection day
the middle-aged lady
told me not to leave a paper
on the second floor any more
the old lady died







They don't give second chances
and they don't give you a clue
all you get is the time
assigned to you





Tree at the top of the forest
Crow at the top of the tree
Look at the world before us
Crow at the top of the tree






Ghost Ship Anniversary

Flag at half mast
over the courthouse
for the young artists
that burned
they never saw it coming
never seem to learn






 

 

 

 

 

 Gently on my eyes
 the coots moving down the cove
some people talking





trains at midnight
sentimental to notice
empty time passing





jettisoned refuge
rubbish satellites
of the repression belt
exceed the plasma membrane
you're on your way
to the stars
dream along with me
rupture the rapture
initiate escape plan
airlock the exits
if exits exist





I refused to shut up
he brought down the broadsword
on the center of my head
before I finished talking
my tongue spoke
on both sides of the issue







The Soul cannot thrive
in the absence of a garden

--Thomas More




 

 

 In Greenland
 a colorless cigar-shaped shark
moves 500 years through icy seas
worm-like parasites
on luminous eyes
hypnotize
those about to die

Razor-like skin teeth
hallucinogenic meat
stagger around shark drunk
in a crevasse of dirty snow
up to our shoulders
in a treeless plain
midnight sunlight jigsaw fiords
moody stretches of sea
weather-battered islands
barnacles on the shark skin coast

Moskstraumen
a system of whirlpools
formed in the bad dreams
 the sailors of Norway
afloat in a rubber boat
the world's full of mirrors
the sea turns inky
and without rest

Dana octopus squid
each branch is lit
flashing in attack
millions of sharks each year
killed as dangerous predators
by those who lose less than twenty
to the sharks of the world
On dying oceans
the abysmal set out
into an imaginary abyss









 

 

 

 

Recent Paradox

Recent Paradox

 

 

The threshold of dreams

has been changed

I'm someone from long ago

 

Early one morning

at the St James Infirmary

that was me a while back

 

Gone the certitude

of the storybook ending

knighthood

 

The windows are shut

and stoppered

Processions go past

 

In hazard masks

smoky sunlight

bends incredulity

 

Some sylvan paradise

old couples unable

to open the garage door

 

Their cremains on the wind

particulates that want in

to begin again

 

When all the smoke clears

vast chasms of water well

from the center of the earth

 

Our civilization

our relation to all that lives

passing glance in geological time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I notice I'm still awake still thinking

I turn on my side facing North

and burrow into the pillows to fall asleep

I commence an adventure story

that takes place in the Great White North

I call this going to Canada

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was the last passenger

no way to make an approach

The put me off in the midst

of nowhere Canada

I started down

an old Indian road

 

There was a calliope

abandoned in the woods

I seemed to know how to play it

once upon a time and I tried now

It percolated right away

into an old robin jingle

before long I taught myself

an old organ fugue by Sweelinck

 

A small green leaf branch

fell on the keys and I fled

walking along a fairy folk berm

sort of a old ha ha

I heard rhythmic hooves

on a heavy aqueduct

Momentarily startled

I looked into the green green

gloom

 

From there emerged

a saddled horse

he walked along with me

until at last I stroked

his velvet mourning coat

The under the watchful

in-flowing horses eyes

I mounted him and rode on

 

 

 

 

 

 

October-November 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poems of the Fall

 

 

 

The moon makes lunatics of us all

 

 

 

 

 

 

A great ripping sound

the fabric of reality

Blue Angel goes by

 

 

 

 

 

Bats aflight tonight

seems they know it's October

gulls have gone elsewhere

 

 

 

 

 

A scatter of crows

between the lake and the moon

the first chill of Fall

 

 

 

 

 

 

What makes a man a recluse?

 

a car radio

booming a talk show

otherwise peace

 

bees and ground squirrels

come this far

then it's just gulls

 

the fish of the sea

all the faraway places

sails on the Bay

 

 

fifty people standing on deck

followed by a raft

an empty Hornblower

 

 

gentle clouds sweep from the north

like chanterelles

like encephlapods

 

 

I've come to be alone

with my thoughts

unmediated image capture

 

 

white boat approaches

like an unknown dog

throws stuffed bags over the side

 

a field of gulls rest up the shore

sails far out from Sausalito

morning on the wide Bay

 

bird-like over Angel island

a plane turns to san Francisco

swoops in the soaring distance

 

Tamalpais has a stationary cloud

 a floating model mountain ridge

fragmenting in the noon

 

inexorably the plane comes here

turning broad wings

 gone again toward Treasure island

 

circling the Bay ominously

over Golden gate again

the thrill of martial law

 

 

 

 

                                                                           Berkeley Marina

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rumors of a rectangular ice shelf elsewhere

 

 

 

 

Lobby cards promise a cinema of the ideal

 

 

 

 

 

If you scratch the surface

you are apt to find

where the skeletons are hidden

buried alive in shallow graves

 

 

 

 

 

Crown Beach

 

Kites plunge perpendicular

Mount Tam a skull cap

on the white capped fog

Twin peaks a tuning fork

Stuck in story book mountains

of blue and white illusions

The family from the next tent

now seem distant on the Bay

Droopy girls in clingy jersey

tattoos and comic book colored hair

dip a toe then sit down again

lazy snacks a bulbous recline

the other is more chubby

yet the first one says, I'm fat

Florescent pedestrian icon

one hundred yards away

catches my eye catches the sun

and communicates it to me

yellow green stains the sky

blazing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sky crystalized

inevitably refracts

my prismatic mind

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How heavy the dew

on my neighboring rooftop

has it been raining?

 

 

 

 

Due more to serendipity

than due to propinquity

I moved ten feet back from

the edge of the precipice

just before it stove in

scattering seals far below

where it mattered

I could see Tule elk

the crest of an ultimate hill

look up in interest

while the cattle chewed

dully on their cud

 

 

 

 

Swilling fabulous pabulum

to his base base

 

 

 

Do you prefer homo sapiens

or human being?

 

 

 

 

Geese fall into chevrons

even for short hops

heavy yellow and black

bumble bee bends the flowers

squirrel looks in every direction

before hiding its morsel

beneath a garden shrub

 

 

 

 

 

October morning

blow all my nightmares away

cool breeze open window

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you flown in the sky?

It's easy to try

First you must find

the right broom

 

Old Scratch buys your soul

Then you dance 'til your old

under a blood red

moon

 

Have you ever gone

Outside the norm

and changes to a cat

or raccoon?

 

Have you kept a strange form

from dusk until dawn

and chanted all night

'neath the moon?

 

Have you conjured a hex

on either sex

enough to make someone

swoon?

 

Have you marked with an X

the head that was vexed

to make him another

child of the moon?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dreams hidden

in the leaves of the trees

all come down in the Fall

 

 

 

 

 

Some prophecy of the sea

came back to haunt me

 

Wreck after wreck

demanding respect

 

Cane after cane

tempest and flood

 

The sea took back the islands

and then the shore

 

In oscillating shoals

the flying fish flew past

 

The abandoned birdbath

like an empty laugh

.

Lands washed out to sea

all the barnyard animals

 

Followed on

from old Macdonald's farm

 

Brides left to their devices

mountain flowers the windward side

 

Flames lick the leeward

wind overturns an adirondack chair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All  Souls Day

Remember your loved ones

forgive those you didn't love

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 2018

 

 

 

 

 

Short poems on a page

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An ephemeral world

 

 

 

 

 

1.

 

from a slow window

Tamalpais glimpsed afar

there a spilt second

 

 

2.

 

clouds down lonely fourth

statin magenta hourglass

could it be enough

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Notes of Woe

 

 

Old Oakland so quiet

tonight it hosts a riot

unlocked and loaded

parlous hip hop hiccup

full volume of alcohol

curvy broads in the parking lot

hipster let an oldster

pass in peace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gone in the Morning

 

a tree fell on my bed

I slept on instead

now rain collects

in the dent it left

right side of my head

 

 

 

to extract blood from a stone

survive on perception alone

 

 

 

no one can save you

 from yourself

you just go on

and hope for the best

 

rather a farrago  than a drudge

 

 

those are all the wrong precepts

the right ones grow on trees

 

no one is there to meet you

when you arrive

at the end of the line

 

 

 

 

 

On BART train

to San Francisco

 

I have to hold on now

the girl in front of me

swept my hand with her hair

testing camel hair

 paintbrush #9

 

(slim tall attractive young

third generation Asian)

 

residual unconscious response

 

 

 

Hazy Forecast

 

particulate matter

past participles dangle

in the unswept sky

 

 

 

 

 

End of Summer

 

Vigil on the lawn

two hours too early

for the library at noon

 morning smoke out

as time passes

 

Ducks

 and their reflections

fly through the estuary

in perfect calm

 

splashdown

obliterates

the bifurcation

 

 

a breeze picks up

contrast patterns

appear on the surface

 

wide wingspan

one high-glider

turns slow circles

 

I see the atomic

level of perception

surround him in the sky

visible invisible

optical template

 

don't see him

when he disappears

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 September 2018

 

refracted reality

Intermezzo: A Word from le Flaneur

Wonderful life goes on with me and not without me

Here to document the rupture in the culture

and find beauty in places mistaken for unsightly

The surrealism of every day life

 

I had to take a time out to recover
 from cyber-surgery

smart cables ran up my main arteries
 to rewire my golden heart

a miracle of technology one cannot deny

Since I have been going slow on the resumption

of my own cyber-activity

 

But as ever le Flaneur
still is seen everywhere

and eternally returns

Stay tuned for more sight and insights


Into the mystery
and back again

 

 

 

 

 

 

The vandals stole the Japan peace plaque

September 2018

 

Miscellaneous Scenes of Summer

 

 

RAY's stoned vacation

 

 

The roof of 

the Morcam Rose garden

 

 

 Black tea and lime juice

 

 

Here comes my ride

 

On the Oakland Ferry

 

 

New sports facility

on UC campus

empty while I go by

 

 

 

The Fitzgerald

 

 

Ancient Oakland café

now a hipster bar

 

White peach perfection

with O% Greek yoghurt

and honey

 

 

 

 

Summer 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

KoKo Nuggz (mail art)

 

KoKo Nuggz

 

 

 

Silence the Distraction

(B-side)

Thriller Matinee

 

The grand old

Grand Lake Theater

in elongated  afternoon

 

 

 

 

 

Came today misled

 by an erroneous ad in the newspaper

I was expecting to see

 2001, A Space Odyssey in 70 mm

That's next week they said

without admitting any mistake,

So I decided to stay for this

I'd seen the hair-raising trailer

and suspected it would be an escape

from my day-to-day concerns

 

Look who's here

another elephant

it's unredeemed garishness

excused by design

by school kids

 

 

Charming I'm sure

but I'm not here to see this

Never have particularly liked

ant Spike Lee joint

Infiltrate hate,

Spike is infamous for claiming

that Black people cannot be racist,

Wonder what he thinks about hate,

But then he lives on Martha's Vineyard

and I'm more or less

a white man in the disphoria

of Oakland

 

 

 

Into the heraldic

mystery chamber

for the moving picture

The Moorish Auditorium

so-named

 

Had to change seats twice

At show time a puerile

man mountain sat in front of me,

followed by a senile guy behind

who said oo-oh during fight scenes

then laughed like crazy

 

The film did its job

lots  and lots of very elaborate thrills

in sequences of a mainly analog variety,

People are killed regularly 

death framed without remorse,

Giant stretches of credulity

and of course super-abilities

just short of Marvel comics

 

Poor middle-aged Tom Cruise

has to fill the screen

Still doing a young man's job

 

 

 

I was as high

as the labyrinthine

patterns in a

ceiling of stars

 

After the film

I wandered over to the lake

with my lunch bag

 

Somewhat dismayed to see

it crowded with lodgings

In this case a fort constructed of

pissy old mattresses  

spray-painted with slogans

to pretend it's more of a protest

instead of just a make-shift shanty town,

This is what passes for governance

and humanitarianism

in a crap-cavity town,

This individual grabs a prime spot

at the head of the lake

then acts territorial and hostile

toward the public who try to use the park

 

White lady calls cops on black man

just for staking a claim

 in a public park

 

The landscape was

scary and desolate

enough as it was

 

 

 

 

 

Someone is scratching at the window

That's what the bars are for

 

 

 

Home home on the strange

where the prickly cactus flowers

flourish

 

 

 

 

 

9 August 2018