The Kindness and Cruelty of April (poetry)

 

 

Train Ride Past Diablo

and Back Again

 

 

 

As vast as the clouds and sky

multifarious colors green

the cloud line

the whole topography

everyday to others

fantastical to me

April's mild delirium
bursting out of the
long black-out tunnel
to toy town Orinda
onward to the land
of the ultra green
 

 

cloud shadows on Mount Diablo

a map of another green world

hills in the brilliant sunlight

deep shaded verdure
trees and shadows

cows on a ridge

under palm trees

US and McDonalds flags

one hundred feet over

the Pittsburg flats

photosynthesis of the eyes

and the wind

ultra green expanses

on a rapid train

industrial zone

you never tough the green

 

BART yard of train experiments

variegated green

clouds pass over day-glow green hills

a map of greenness seen from space

miles and miles of brilliant lawn

generally without object or inhabitant

elegantly tall blades of grass

rained on again last night

green glow on the rolling hills

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the bark of an absent dog

a dead mother

God talked to them

in a voice they could hear

with their ears

voices peel off passing cars

watching you watching you

voices exist on the

psychotic continuum

 

 

I'll make no remark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Temporary penises occur

as female bearded dragons

grow up

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't even know what reality
 is supposed to be

it's never been adequately
explained to me

 

 

under a dim pier
a gray wading bird
chilly evening wind






in childlike wonder
successive trees in flower
bus past fairyland






gulls high circling
the film noir Tribune tower
in late afternoon






The brother despaired of himself
and took the road back to the world
The Desert Fathers





Daily life
the world coils inward
as life becomes circumscribed
the commonweal frays
fibrillated edges
thimbles inside of one's gloves
little electric shocks
walk on gilded splinters
third rail warning
outages late arrivals
death on the tracks
material at year zero
never exposed to space
oblivion addicts sleep sitting up
on park bench ziggurat stairways
zebra striped to fool a fly's eye
bee hives unplugged
buzz kill dynamo
the greedy wage war on the needy
borders lined with long term
migrant tents
every mistake gladly repeated
flooded bayous rebuilt
life at the glacial end
Arcimbaldo's principle
the scarecrow laughs at thee
toll for walking down this street
No one was left stranded on the moon
only dunes, only ruins




Holy Thursday

Duck Season on San Francisco Bay

early for the ferry
this morning the mother duck
with five live hatchlings in close formation
glides in the estuary shallows
first tender day of Spring weather
air still cold over the Bay
moving through it at our clip
face masked with a black cashmere scarf
as if others didn't already
think me different enough
Bay bridge and cinematic city
well up like 3D FX
most of the sparse passengers
de-board downtown stunned or stoned
We who travel on to the Wharf
brace before the chill
of Thrilling Golden Gate
Ant farm Sausalito
in a Cezanne light
harbor seals bark
but our barque sails on
Sidewalks bulge but
the deluge is still to come
Decide I'll walk the main drag today
past the brilliant red buildings
 visible from space
Lurid kitsch horror
entertainment billboards
hover overhead
Old tableau a dummy
overhead in a life preserver
gigantic lighthouse prism
revolve the kaleidoscope
of Fisherman's Wharf
outlandish vehicles
megawatt primary colors
the old Fisherman's neon raincoat
Flowers for the Dungeness crab
on Hyde Street Pier
the tall ships renewed and resplendent
Mild enough walk into frigid water
I liberate the small beach
children and others come and go
Alone again two iridescent ducks swim in
Upend themselves finding food
Small wave tosses one out of the water
onto his feet in the sand no problem
soon another wave lifts both out of the water
they poetically turn it into flight
Overhead a sinister silver plane
with a huge surveillance disk
goes out low past the Gate
and comes back again
Leaving the Port of Oakland
several gunboats were seen racing in
endless anxious preparedness

I've lost the butterfly effect
my heart doesn't flutter
into somersaults  as it once did
yet peace was briefly held
astonishment of topography
sea and sky orchestrations
the feats and stunts of civilization
the ease of an adventure such as mine
the new eastern span sifts
 Mount Tamalpais
Stop at the Alameda side
two perfect ducks in flight
level with me
returning on the mythic path I just came
estuary trail the Bay bridge and Golden Gate
line up in the shimmer
the warmest day this year



metallic full moon
bangs a gong in Chinatown
purple gray light


big flock of black terns
waters under the bay bridge
shift when the ferry comes

The Ghost of Notre Dame

Haunts the Holy Week

My photo of candles years ago

votive chaos theory

demons and prophets

a vertical lobster

from the Cathedral façade

Adam and Eve enstoned

kaleidoscopic window

Reliquary of the Crown of Thorns

Roman noir of a young couple

there at night so far from home

pages flipping in the wind

absorb flame memory smoke

Time spent itself

in la Place de Notre Dame

architectural l'horlage

maze inside the Consiergerie

Ste Chapelle labyrinth of jewels

St Severin metaphysical puzzle box

St Julien le Pauvre secret heart

of the Latin quarter

secrets of the Rue Git-le-coeur

Critical mass of the Holy Ghost
Novena at Notre Dame

How high heaven from here

Filigree spire infused in flame

the gargoyles recoil

Nineteenth century addition implodes

Singed palms of Christ's entryway

leads to actual mental Jerusalem

Fire in the medieval forest above

Eerie parallel to Notre Dame church

Fall River Massachusetts

burned to collapse in the early eighties

when a workman's torch

ignited the roof during renovation
Granite Gothic replica
double-towered facade

Majestic horizon forever gone

People who still remember it
go one by one
 the reservoir, the reservation beyond

the Freetown woods

All as well do go

It won't be water

the fire next time
Black hole at the center
 la Voie Lactee

 

 

 April 2019