Whenever I find myself growing grim
about the mouth, whenever it is
a damp, drizzly November in my soul...
I take to a ship
Herman Melville
The quicksand in the hour glass
I've had hours of ill repute
Once your feet are buried
they don't return
Trident gate to the casino of loss
Iron fence topped
by playing card symbols
Breech is inevitable
lightning felled the oak
Lawnmower man circles back
tickets inserted in the brim
of his mad hat
All play by surrational rules
internal hallways
Women record countless
subconscious details
intuition as pattern recognition
People become atmospheric
to provide a skeleton for the future
from open-air pauper
to entombed billionaire
Jailers who jingled the keys
thrown now into solitary
Gradually move out onto a branch
past death row and gas chamber
One maybe granted temporary clemency
Still must eat and sleep
all much earlier though
Edenic garden no clothes
no shame as promised
and as expected
I leave the lights on
so I don't sleep forever
I wish I could say otherwise
If I could I'd go elsewhere
We all have to serve out
our life sentences
I opened my cell door
before they could lock it
And went out on a spacewalk
in the hallway
in the stairway
in the Milky Way
Onset of the Cold
Unmistakable instinctual
response to cold and dark
first ice in the marshes
Wooden houses on hillsides
howl in the gale
Woodland creatures retreat
into nooks and nests
Rotund bears drowse
on fermented fruit
Armies of starlings
retrieve denuded seeds
Will-o-wisps foxfire frost fairies
Long nights of vagrant stars
each a survival test
Haunted past--cartons of books
where nobody looks
the tire chains approach
Bleak days of inverted gray
Rain and wind moves a iron skull
one hundred years closer
to the Canadian falls
Islands not there anymore
Yukon Klondike Bering Strait
move in next door
to the Northern temperate zone
all farther and further away
Blown away by the wind
Downpour
in the mountains of madness
Redness in the trees
sleek white clouds are shaped like sharks
train tracks remote cries
Before I awake antlers appear like fungi
everywhere I had slept the night
rolling around on a mossy hillside
Tributaries of the soil emissaries
just as shrubs and trees
breezy though like fluent coral
branches in an ocean current
Nudibranch undulate in the sea
before land-locked cactus
I wave back in return reflex
from my bed in Emeryville
Where I flew to Micronesia
and back in less time than
the velvet antlers took to grow
Passing clouds leaves ragged patches
tatterdemalion
on the asymmetrical racks
lungs and viscera
the heads of Easter Island
buried here upside down
response to cold and dark
first ice in the marshes
Wooden houses on hillsides
howl in the gale
Woodland creatures retreat
into nooks and nests
Rotund bears drowse
on fermented fruit
Armies of starlings
retrieve denuded seeds
Will-o-wisps foxfire frost fairies
Long nights of vagrant stars
each a survival test
Haunted past--cartons of books
where nobody looks
the tire chains approach
Bleak days of inverted gray
Rain and wind moves a iron skull
one hundred years closer
to the Canadian falls
Islands not there anymore
Yukon Klondike Bering Strait
move in next door
to the Northern temperate zone
all farther and further away
Blown away by the wind
Downpour
in the mountains of madness
Redness in the trees
sleek white clouds are shaped like sharks
train tracks remote cries
Before I awake antlers appear like fungi
everywhere I had slept the night
rolling around on a mossy hillside
Tributaries of the soil emissaries
just as shrubs and trees
breezy though like fluent coral
branches in an ocean current
Nudibranch undulate in the sea
before land-locked cactus
I wave back in return reflex
from my bed in Emeryville
Where I flew to Micronesia
and back in less time than
the velvet antlers took to grow
Passing clouds leaves ragged patches
tatterdemalion
on the asymmetrical racks
lungs and viscera
the heads of Easter Island
buried here upside down
After the clock change
dinner in early darkness
poignancy of time
November is the Norway of the Year
November is the Norway of the Year
in fact is drear
in a country house
newly leafless trees
crowd the lamplight
the clocks turned back
it's twilight time
slow motion amber
tree sap verdigris
the winds hurdy-gurdy
fleshy leaves moist
from phantom rain squall
passed through
overnight as I slept
midnight view from the loft
November fields blanched
in starlight in moonlight
hallucinatory figure
furtive passage bundled-up
steals diagonal trespass
old stone walls subdivide
flaxen fields into
grave-spilled stones
Notes in English
Shadenfreude for a schizoid
scholarly schmuck
trying to split the schnitzel
without having to spend a lot
on the schmaltz
One saw end times coming
they came and went
People ask
What happened to
the Apocalypse?
It's here, it's now
It's every minute
all the time
they came and went
People ask
What happened to
the Apocalypse?
It's here, it's now
It's every minute
all the time
Storm's chaos subsides
jarring cold mundane rain
battlefield of survival strewn
with household casualties
soggy doggy digs
turmoil under the overpasses
bomb cyclone versus
pvc sheets old doors
Sound like fire-crackers
big drops of wind-driven rain
on November's window
first storm a real squall
Throw open the window
Sheets of rain twist and roil
flags whip relentless
rain comes inside on me
People outside huddle
under tarps and flimsy tents
spared this weather
dry and mild
until late in the year
now the landlord is here
wind cold rain all at once
cold clouds twist in the wind
an alto trumpet
clarion of coffee time
petite tea kettle
November 2019
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