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
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
