December's Orphans (poetry)

 

 

 

December's Orphans

 

 

 

 

They opened my tea chest

and discovered I had become

an infamous monster of filmland

There was no excuse

I could see it coming

could have taken a different road

 

I'd had my run in supernova

went back to being an ordinary star

somehow avoided a black hole

Other planets grow older and more distinct

The crowds are vast and distracted

easy to anger and to lose the point

 

I'm forced to use retro rockets

tired old conformist tropes

to slow re-entry into daily life

Enormous school of shadowy fish

part ahead of my splashdown

aging backward through my dissent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pouring Winter rain

in shorts and baby carriage

runs around 7th street corner

How strange the rain a

after its prolonged absence

Puddles in action on a roof

hours later still moving

That it should make this sound

miraculous planet

That drought and desert should be

dangerous planet

That flood or tidal wave

should come down

Darkness in the day

the doors all wash away

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My capsule became cracked

I was already post-human

intersecting immaterial world

 

Bystanders were flooded

with unfamiliar memories

songs and jungle

jingle bells

bells

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outside my window

winter storm on the way

gulls carousel past

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday 13th

 

Something odd

will come to pass

you may break

 a drinking glass

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rain in rooftop puddle

the moon has burst a bubble

A world sunk in muddle

image capture by the Hubble

 

Under the Long Night Moon

 

 

Last full moon parade

of this dysphoric decade

Thoughts of a world

not God but man has made

 

Under a Long Night Moon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Epiphenomenal ice pack

recedes into the general water planet

Moisture invades my cracker barrel

 

 

Crisis Climate
 

We sailed so far and vast
that we reached the edge of the world
without meaning to
without knowing it was near

Five days from it we turned about
by then the cataclysm was unavoidable
some of us said it didn't exist
that it was a mirage of the sea

Product of a devil's idle whim
but the sea itself flowed over the chasm
where did it migrate to?
the world afloat in a shoreless sea

A snow squall vanished
the ship's denouement
we were long past the last longitude
there was no turning about







Libido wants to satisfy itself
That doesn't mean it's evil
The ego wants to gratify itself
Pop goes the evil




How great are the humble
How fatuous are the famous







The yelp of a dog in the manger
kneeling at the foot of the Baby
asleep in the animal feed
You are going to give him
a Christ complex
Seen baby-worship before
but this is ridiculous
He does look great though
Take thee and eat?
 not for dogs

To the Trained Ear

 

I contrived to lead a life

in which I was exposed only

to naturally occurring noises

 

Aeolian harp in a glade

to recall the idea of music

brought indoors in Winter

 

When songbirds are gone

when at night I heard

wind and many wolves

 

 

 

 

 

December 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 


Conservatory of Flowers
Golden Gate Park



 

Fade Into November (poetry)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fade Into November




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



 

 

 

After the clock change

dinner in early darkness

poignancy of time






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

 

 

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

 

 

 

October Poem Tome

 

October Poem Tome

 

 

 

 

Ad Astra

 

God sent a self-driving car for me

Its destination was encrypted

I got in I had no choice

I went along for the ride

hazy day no horizon

I whistled a sad air

the limo went past the graveyard

and kept on it didn't stop

I passed by granite cathedrals

outdoor stations-of-the-cross

The vehicle knew where

I did not
 

The sky resembled a frozen lake

Nightfall and the misty stars

The stars said I was headed north

We never stopped--Water

 apricots nuts cheese and flatbread

had been laid in

The landscape at night was white

Mountainous silhouettes rose and fell

 

The limo came to a halt

I got out without stopping

Lastly a vast green bar in space

growing larger enveloping the full moon

throwing tentacles of astral color

to all horizons of a trembling earth

Darkness gave way to utter splendor

irrational astonishment

Mind heading heavenward 

on its journey to the stars

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Apples of Tibet

 

I conceived of a new planetary system

that revolved around me

a police car gum machine panache

No one would have to know

I'd exist only to those

in my perceptual spectrum

And walk around undersea cities

and forests ablaze

Still stopping at red lights

wearing clothes and passing

for normative

Comets and mystic moons

mine alone to behold

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10 seagulls at dusk

harass a strange bird roosting

on the dark tower

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

100 crows cross

7th street in Chinatown

flocks of October

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hares go forth after dark

except in mating season

happening naturally in march

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tate in 85

I went deep into Blake's light

quiet few people

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When a broke grifter in a cheap hotel

notices the Gideon's bible

he sees his next career move

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I wonder if there is

anyone pervy enough to really dig

my deformity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Punk: Not a mode of music or dress but permanent revolution

a dialectic between mindless positivism

and the great negativistic hand

 

 

 

 

 

 

Urban Nighttime Soundscape

 

Sirens at bed time

get so you no longer notice

Trains like old memories

fading as they go

Street sleepers may argue

usually just before dark

Weaponized motorcycles

a moving gun show parade

Some with ultra loud music

hostile militarized radio

All audio phenomena embedded

in the highway's toxic whisper

 

 

 

 

Yacht Club Bench Point

 

barefoot in clover

marine cloud blankets the coast

bridges at high points only

jeep pulls up with bullhorn

boat anchored fishing

in the marina channel

get lost

other side of the breakwater

saltwater expanse like manifest mind

existence in cleavage in the trees

refracted in all ways

congeals bright fungus like

berkeley cops roll by

 the outskirts on the bay

past the edge of town

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In search of the lost papyrus

on which my first poem was read

Nothing to do with Osiris

Nothing to do with the dead

 

 

I saw a ship behind the sun

Coming my way

Couldn't make it out in the brilliance

Then behind it three ships

Then another row of five

then nine an armada

fanning out behind

The lead ship of the sun

 

 

 

 

 

 

Against my will

I started to become a monster

I was in farmland a lot

terrible animal husbandry

The old Onanist

who wore out his balls

Hitler gave anti-Semitism

a bad name

I found the backdoor to Hell

Not to get in but to get out

I wrote a long letter to God

to ask for forgiveness again

His métier after all

Imagine the worst person in the world

having the most military might

Would a guillotine be too much?

Special rendition to a secret prison?

Plea bargain for waterboarding at Gitmo

the Art of the Deal
Fate's inexplicable arrow

 

 

 

 

Haunted by the eccentric

eschatologist

who sleeps in a mummy bag

inside an Egyptic sarcophagus

now afloat in a flooded basement

sand and seawater

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 The world to be seen and unseen
so much seen once and not seen again
the finite unspooling of subjective perception
water in a infinite glacial state
all perception exists as one mind
outside of time dreaming in
dreaming the world of time
birth death incidents along the road
mainly monotonous tarmac
some tar pits some mere mirage
Epiphanous amnesties
mild neuronic action out of doors
Tuning forks wind down
Mo more asphalt no more
gas stations no more cows
Wind and weather
scrub the crime scene
sand in the hourglass
cease to add up
the ambiguous incalculable





 

 

 

 

Great Ohlone rock

cresting the sunlit ridge top

alone not for long

Over three clear nights

never saw the Hunter's moon

cold breeze from the Gate





Devil's Wind

Leaves and debris flags and bags
hurdy gurdy in the wild breeze
the first sun seems wan
The lacuna of the universe
the black hole at the galactic center
indeed a worm hole may be
Life comes back fast
after great extinction events
new aggressive spiders

 

 

The Past Thundered Past
 Old Amherst Mass

(memoir of grimoire)

Emily's for Halloween
One more empty haunted edifice
On Pleasant Street was it?
Call it Pleasant Street
The busy little liquor store
The dismal City Hall
restroom open at night
A fountain a church
Sidewalks rolled up and stored
for morning with glad rags strewn
The former Folklore Center
A rustic store for country food in bulk
 a freaked-out peaceful life
Fahey LPs esoteric books
for a conjectural world view
Borderland conjuring
Log's bar eagerly entered
easily forgotten nights
when Sticky Fingers was new
Ramshackle topiary hut out back
Smoke lodge for a fleeting house

The cemetery a stone's throw away
Austere Dickinson plot
Legend hidden by a wrought iron fence
Stars roll upward from burial mounds
The Dickinson estate behind a row of trees
Its garden I spectered alone
on gelatinous nights set in  moonlight
Slept in a drowsy meadow
just down the railroad tracks
Through the Pioneer Valley chilly night
light still on up late
Had a crummy place here one year
How gleeful it was to live
Somewhat poor and young
copious hashish and laughter
Throwing open the bathroom window
in wee wee hours
to watched the train thunder
just below


Mad face paintings a blue guru
white-washed skull mask
Nosferatu skull cap
Bonfire at Erik the Rat's
in feral Belchertown
Sunken eyes and a ruffled shirt
blonde succubus on either arm
New England rocked the cradle
on All Hallow's Eve






Head of the Estuary



1.
Squadron of sea birds
hover high over--shadows
on distant high-rise



2.
The church foyer lit
sunlight on a baptism font
ineffable organ chord



3.
World reassembling
the Cleveland Cascade respite
as the world cascades



4.
So quiet the peace
seven silent geese passed
water turns the page










Three ravens keep
a open eye
waiting for me
to pass by
 

 

 

 

October

2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rhymes of June

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rhymes of June

 

 

 

 

 

 

Endless game of chance

a crow finds a playing card

flies onto a roof

 

 

 

 

 

New World Theology

 

 

Jesus summoned the Elder-Father

and distracted the Indians

with a cover wagon train

He summoned unto him

His flying saucer

Promising those left behind

in the desert

To be saints at a later date

their own eventual planet

All of those present swore

certainty that this Man

was Jesus of Nazareth

Jehova's witnesses there

avowed that he looked

a little like Gabby Hayes

Elder-Father Smith

carrier of the golden tablets

was never seen again

in this world

 

 

 

 

 

Breezy sunlight here

fog rolls the peninsula

sea birds or jet plane

 

 

 

 

 

Electric green moss

tide marks on colorful rocks

tide at eye level

 

 

 

 

I can't hear the waves

forgot to remove earplugs

only half the grace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take off my sandals

and walk the water walkway

lonely girl watches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14 kite surfers

not as thrilling or profound

as two pelicans

 

 

 

After the Recent Deluge

1.

My house wasn't always a houseboat
in fact it wasn't always a boat
My home wasn't very close to a river
but it was on a hundred year flood plain
and today it's all water
To my surprise and salvation
it broke away from its foundation
the bottom layer was built watertight
By the eschatologist
 that dreamed-up the place
And my household floated away
My cat and whatever wildlife
  taken refuge from the elements
Swifts and other squatters who nest
in the ornate Victorian woodwork
of the towers the belfry the rooftop
Over the thick downstairs windows
Along for the journey heaved
 Headlong into the gulf below
The garden gate served as a rudder
I set it for a general direction
Dark coast a few lonely street lights
Heat lightning on irreal bayou
toward a crevice in the stars







 

 

 

 

 

 

June 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Au Printemps

 

 

 

 

 

For the divine Perdition
of Idleness in Spring 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Au Printemps

 

 

 

 

 

In The Outback

 

A woodpecker and his allies

Storm the woods where I lay sleeping

Crows exchanged themselves with shadows

Three kingfishers from the East

Bearing acorns and fur

A worm for your delectation

A rose to a dog is undistinguished unless

It has been urinated on by another dog

Carpenter ants redo my deck

Trees provide ladders and clocks

The world of birds goes off at once

At dusk and at dawn

A street light in a deep forest

Invites a galactic blizzard of moths

In Spring the wilderness awakens

Males pursue arborial females

Frogs constitute a wall of sound

Thrumming

Thrumming the stubborn heart

That insists on beating

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gulls so high and free

encircle and encircle

downtown high-rise jail

 

 

 

 

 

 We never know how high we are
Till we are asked to rise

 

 

 

For a long time I thought

I was going crazy

Madness now no longer

much of a threat

More like arthritis but less so

more like a common cold

contagious unremarkable

ubiquitous at the last

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I cross the street

a crow finds a playing card

flies onto a roof

 

 

 

I extinguished my joint
with whiskey and water
a trace a trace
I've had my fill 

 

 

 

Train Tracks by Emily's Place


The amative Bonobo prefers
food offered by a bully
The frightened mistake
the ruthless for a champion

Arrogance never sees the silent train
of comeuppance and pain








Gone Medieval Posterior


In a tourist cottage
in the Bavarian Alps
three found murdered
with crossbow bolts
The crossbows were left
at the scene of the crime
As if asleep
encircled in
a forest of thorns






The earth is divided
into that which is predominantly water
and that which is not water
and of course a third
air made of gases
water and
particulate matter









And the Sea should part
And show a further Sea--



I sailed beyond the pale
entered a new envelope

I saw beyond the veil
leapt to it as an antelope

I sailed beyond the pale
 it was all all to no avail






Downpour
behind the railroad tacks
and the wind
behind the traffic rumble
the commonplace gunshots
Chinatown firecrackers
I thought I heard
thunder






The rain taps relentlessly
what does it want?
what do you want?






The perfection
the finality
My Savior in my heart
and my perception of reality






With a face on it
translucent plastic bag floats
the estuary

 

late evening sunlight
the gulls fly purposefully
and inscrutably






My kettle whistles
I'm a little teacup song
come back as a ghost






The survival lust
of the multitude
disgusts
me

manifest destiny

I trusted that the epiphany I felt
couldn't help but transform itself
into literature

I sued the future
based on the past


All that was promised
will arrive at last






A cold day in May
on the Blessed Mother's lawn
Mom changes nappy






I do believe
and it do behoove
whenever I see
life is a groove

   



Valley of the Waterfalls

Great waters flow
across a plateau
no where to go
but down


Circular crater valley
waterfalls surround a lost society
myths and songs unaltered
No longer a way to get out
unnavigable river high cliffs
to an impassable wilderness
When it rains not enough air
Inhabitants get pleurisy die young
Icy rain freezes the temple
Salt corrodes the ancient pillars
 isolated civilization
farms fishing small game
Sugar skulls dissolve in the rain
White noise of the waterfall
at the foot of the bed










Shadow play of leaves
new light on the window frame
the trees they grow tall








Everyday the radio says
it's a mild day
I go out and it's
variations on windy and cold
even when the sun is out
The radio says it's warm
and I go out I go out
dressed in summer clothes
and it's can I make it home
before I fall asleep
in the figurative snow
that desperate
Wind clouds even rain
wind off the bay
the sea beyond
skeletons in the fog
cold that moves through you








Lighting Spring-green trees
late sunlight down seventh
everybody sees







 

 May 2019

 

(lines from Emily Dickenson) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

The March of Dimes (Poetry)

 

 

The March of Dimes

 

 

 

 

The rain come back by train whistle
windshield wipers a doomsday clock
car horn has a panic attack
sibilant tire thread says the street's wet

Radio tuned low on a lonely heart
alarm clock impersonates a time bomb toy
anguish some small conflagration
the rain soon extinguished the source

distant wolf pack of trains howls
blend with white noise of the rain
imaginary world of the dark
the white horse of the rain

Motorist after motorist
a far away siren
subliminal neighbors burrow in the walls
tattoo from a nearby drainpipe

Nothing comes next
all the same loop
wet wind on the window of now
magnetic stars make me disintegrate

On your death bed
you hear a car gunning it
from a block away or more
the world driving away from you






a candles are urgent
dreamt it was a tall flame
a hoar-frosted bottle





Made myself a cyclone of love
like a snow cone
 if none avail themselves
perhaps now for the best

Everything goes up to the sky
everything stands monumental
like Easter Island figurines
the quality like gravity
that holds it together is love








as the end of the experiment draws near
one looks for the things one holds dear
Status homes and automobiles
don't count yet seem real to us
I walked in trees and clouds
places where things weren't loud
now all my ties are spiritual
at the end of the earthly road
When one's burden is too heavy
one shrugs off one's woeful load





Most copies of most books of poetry
go largely if not entirely unread
Forests are floored for the sake
of vanity and pretention





If Satan asks you
do you think God
cares about your bullshit?
the answer is yes



 Yiddish Wisdom

Coded premonitions
Jacob and his twelve sons

You're dwelling
soon you'll be kvelling


Rigor mortis begins
with the eyelids


Home from the horrors of hell
(the world outside)





Beelzeburp

Call himself
the Lord Byron
of burping

But he's just
another belcher
from Belchertown





No more appropriate declension
in the English language:
"drink,
drank,
drunk"





Two tall white cops move
a black lady in handcuffs
elevator shuts






Splendid in sunlight
Chinese girl with transparent
folded umbrella





In the new green trees
flags tell of a windy day
with rain on the way











No suicide option
you have to serve out your
life's sentence amen





Sometimes I like to see
how high I can get
before falling off the world
swept into the gravitational pull
of the saturnine moon







Patent Application
for New Vehicle

Resembles a case for eye-glasses
a sarcophagus in bronze tree bark
Solar energy gathering,
Travels in snow, on ice
in the air, on water
below the water's surface
on rail road tracks
in outer atmosphere
in near space
Operates by AI with advanced
topographical and global positioning
Maps include lake and river bottoms
and the ocean floor
Operates with or without passengers
Empty vehicle can be sent to rescue
the stranded
Velvet jewel box interior
Will work in extra-planetary
applications





The Wicked Captain Bly

Haven't heard anything of him in decades
Robert Bly when did he die?
They'll never be another like him
arrogant over-confident corn fed
blunderbuss
that somehow got taken seriously
Once my little wife was exiting City Lights bookshop
in North beach San Francisco
When the old bullshit artist himself
came trotting out brushing past
He stepped on my foot, hard, she said
In my best Shakespearean accusatory voice,
"You hog!"
I shouted at him as he made his escape
hastening up toward Broadway
he slowed as his shoulders cringed
before charging on afraid to look back
Not my first encounter with him
I had caught his early 70s clown act
at Hampshire college in Massachusetts
Squarely trying to a Ginsbergian entertainer
He wore a Mexican serape under which
his clothes were rank with body odor
The North beach fracas
was ten years after that
He was in the middle of a notorious
men's movement against feminism
He in his mind was still manly
as he skulked off after being
hog-called






A Rush to Buzzment

Ultra green and flower bloom
Revived trees press new growth
Giddy laughter prepares
A wedding reception
The church delivers another bride
Inextricable labyrinth of branches
Over a wide-trunked pine
Bar cars from the park fat chance
Drop by to see what can die
Brazil meadow grass thickens in patches
Like mineral springs doused
Small dogs plow into tall grass
Wow a rainbos ing around the sun
The breeze turns chilly
For the duration of a cloud

Girl in white robe near a sundial
Practices her recital from a book
Frantic antics of three dogs
 Tied together to a backpack
An overly erotic young couple
Landed in the grass
Third wheel friend with dogs
Comes over and sits with me
Ford he tells me his name
Still likes the girl himself
She was his girlfriend first
 Looks young for the eleventh grade
We see a red-tailed hawk overhead
Circling just before us
He takes a photo is curious
About cannabis
I'm buzzed I tell him
 The dogs relax around us
Stoned comrades

Dogs dig a wise old guy
After goofy handling by the kids
Tied confused to a central backpack
The girl's parents circle the lawn
Ford says he from a delightful enclave
Named Kensington
Speaks English well
Unusual words but not used to impress
He says the girl's parents don't
Approve of the new boyfriend
A Lothario in his blonde
Mohawk panache with short black sides
He's too ready she seems happy
Over his lusty attention
Ford is not happy

The parents summon them
  a remote vehicle parked below
and off they go
I recline in the grass
some young girls lie nearby
revealed to the dimmed sunlight









rain nipples puddles
Shubert's Ave Maria
existence seems endless






an epic sunset
saffron fissure in the dome
puddles reflect light





tipsy dreamy skies
vast clouds torque in from the sea
train scuttles under





wisteria house
old town with its witch hat roof
odd mushroom shaped cloud







brilliant white cloud
blue sky and vibrant green
primary colors






She paints with lip gloss
looking at a hand-held screen
her lovely young lips








Noon at Mountain View

To look upon yon greenest hills
unrelenting traffic to perplex
Chinese death cult holiday
first flawless day in Spring
subsumed in ancestor worship
add a gigantic hole no doubt
another hall of ashes hauled

And yet I find my shady niche
to gaze high on green grass slope
raisins walnuts and cannabis have I
Coming down again
from my Gothic perch
a bed of tulips levitates
the sun's glory shines through them

Outward again in time and space
incongruous stretch limo
outside the Chapel of the Chimes
Blacks in bright sportswear colors
Deserted Catholic cemetery looks over
I might have gone there instead

In front of a busy pizza slicer
I await the bus still eyeing the hills
an enchanted corner in memory
a vast pumpkin patch on this corner
every year long ago
Ghosts go by at night
in outmoded carriages

A small blonde boy bursts out
wearing a small baseball uniform
walks with serious determination
His grand dad also carrying a slice
follows him around the corner
I find him immeasurably precious
he didn't as much as glance at me

Bless him here a long way
from the boneyard
Grandpa and me draw near
to the hilltop plots
every stone here lies a person
or his whole family
Lent is leavened by fair skies
children extend our lives
into an azure future

March 2019

 

More Poetry Brute

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Poetry Brute

St Valentine's Day

 cold bullets of rain

ecstatic static on the radio

abstract thrill of romantic songs

vicarious moans

misty roses

melancholy Chet Baker

my funny Valentine

saxophoned out of temporal reality

whispering highway nearby

late night BART train sound

hive-like midnight

tomorrow over-rushes

the saint's feast day

love is distant omnipresent

held  aloft in one's faith

joy in one's self  all life

pervasive humor

suffice in the void

between

 

 

 

 

 

One great auric cloud

with a setting sun within it

a fairytale lantern

coming toward me

others rise up as well

in classical gestures of defiance

aereopterix gulls

reweave the tarnishing fabric

the iconic sun gives in to

grey wall of storm

subsuming the Maxfield Parish sky

neglible difference made

to the whirling acrobats

 

the sky the sky

I have a lot of sky

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tide went out and did not stop

Everything we left on the bottom

came back out to shame us

Then the water all came back at once

and it didn't end at the shore

 

Broke at the Altamount pass

and shot through the Caldicott tunnel

Alameda remained underwater

Oakland became its estuary

With high rise mirror buildings

remnants emerging at shoulder length

Seagulls adjust albino raccoons

expected as much

Scavengers came in rowboats

to salvage all that floats

Clocktower goes dark at moonrise

The stars reconnect like ferris wheels

Whales arrive out of curiosity

Too many fish in the sea

All of us eating each other

Kites comprised of sea foam

mount the breeze

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The green hills of now

host stones of forgetfulness

oncoming cloudscapes

 

 

 

 

Winter night of rain

last Fall wildfire smoke snuffed me

chilly wind and rain

 

 

 

 

 in the wind and rain

passersby seen from inside

 my dry windowpane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The universe is not big enough

for the two of us

 

 

I'm sensual but deep

you dig your own grave

if you go too deep

 

 

If I sleep now

when I awake again

it will be raining

 

 

 

 

The Pit and the Razor

when the very last stroke

scraped my poor throat

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided

I don't want to hear

what the shitheads

of the world

have to say

 

 

 

 

 

Danger of spending too much time

in the backyard of the mind,

Hours spent idling

in the attic of memory,

The quicksand of

old photographs,

Each turn of the hourglass

may be one's last

 

 

 

 

 

1980

 

A swanky shop used as a polling place

on Post street San Francisco

We came over to vote against Reagan

Where we used to live

where we were still registered

though moved across the bay

On the way back polls still open

the public address voice

of the BART train

in the tunnel under the bay

informed us that Carter

had just conceded the election

at the exact point

of no return

 

 

 

 

 

 

inner radiance

the perpetual sunrise

I sometimes forget

when I stare too long

in the dark pool of myself

light coming on

the happiest day of my life

 

 

 

 

 

Alone between di Chirico buildings

Sunny chilly empty streets

lone figures walk slowly and savor it

A place with less wind

beside the floating lighthouse

the wind in scintillating

reflections on the estuary

clarity of Winter

the sun not weary on my eyes

A long freight train

sounds its deafening horn

Freight cars with graffiti

ten feet tall

Others with fresh red lumber

from forests north of here

tanks tanks tanks

helicopter passes over me

like an unattended thought

National holiday

without joy or purpose

None can celebrate presidents now

People in sleeping bags and refuse

doze on sunlight sidewalks

seek refuge and shelter

few look in their direction

 

 

Highgate cemetery in London 

Some ghoul attacked the grave marker
of economic theorist Karl Marx
I was there many years ago now
a cadre of Chinese Marxists that day
made the pilgrimage as well
Everyone was quietly respectful

Karl Marx bones lie
a-moldering in the grave
Karl Marx'  bones lie
a-moldering in the grave
Workers of the world
remain in chains, remain enslaved

 

One wind made me stop and spin
made me hide in my hood
in a Chinatown neighborhood
Youth society in dessert shops
anywhere out of the high rise
every port in the storm

No take no bills no more
at the bizarre pharmacy
 closes on Saturday afternoons
But a stable mailbox
and no one begs for money
though they let people sleep
on these mean streets

A sidewalk along a wall
has the stored possessions
of the absent dispossessed
The self-sustained camp in tents
under the infernal overpass
where the State in its fairness
no longer forbids the poor to sleep






Occult Scatology


He complained to the city
that the house across the street from him
neglected their gardening
Wild trees and plants were an eyesore
But his neighbor was a witch
and put a sore curse on him
That the next time he moved his bowels
he would not be able to stop

The next morning he entered
his bathroom at his regular hour
Copious continuous excreta
soon filled the commode
What did I eat he wondered
He tried flushing in flux
but after two successful whirl
it soon stopped shut
the steady shift of ejecta continued
across his sink instantly filled
he resumed his enforced extrusion
into his shower bath

Sweating he soon had to
tug the shower's glass door shut
to contain the swelling mass
of firm heavy dejecta
In frantic desperation at last he
climbed on a hamper opening
the laundry chute to his basement
 to crap down its chasm
By dark he had filled the basement
and the crawl space beneath
with this terrifying ejectamenta

At last in shame
mortification and depletion
he fainted and fell over
expiring in the end
of dehydration



Epilogue

Sufficient structural damage
made repair out of the question
His estate was happy to have
 the lot filled in and bulldozed
No buyer ever showed interest
and the place became overgrown
a arboreal glade with animals
herbs and birds
with incredible mushrooms
The lady across the street
seemed more than content
with her new view
with her new neighbors










Rainy escalator
in impoverished Oakland
a wet dollar bill

February 2019