The Representation of Everyday Life

Someone on the sidewalk

smashed the window

on the bus I was riding,
Mad at the world
or just missed the bus?

Of course everyday can include

 many different sorts of days

 

We had to wait for the following bus

an opportunity for me to do

some art and anthropology field work

 

 I've only had unsatisfying

drive-by image captures of this place

Nature preserves

of the wild wild west

Yogi pimpin'


These Negro profile works

are all over town

Next stop the Bengali section

of university avenue

This location

felt a little like

surreptitious surveillance

There's an old familiar face

 The most famous

living resident of Berkeley

Saint Misbehavin'
Name of Romney,
once ran for president

Just then a train rolled in

but the 51M is defunct

I decide to walk over the highway
rather than seek out an unfamiliar bus

The type of motley assortment

observable in any train station

See you later Wavy Gravy

I just can't make no connections

This ancient anchor

marks the spot

A prehistoric Shellmound

remains and spirit objects

interred here below


Along the tracks and toward
stairs to the roadway overhead,
Familiar pathways are now populated
by seedy tent encampments
with dogs

Wow

 Incredible amount of fresh water

captured in the wetlands in May

unprecedented in my experience

And the old devil has been

around here for a long long time
I was dressed entirely too lightly
after a big temperature fall-off
But I found a free box of  clothes
with a wool suit jacket (ladies),
It passed a close inspection
and a sniff test for perfume
Lined, padded and quite warm
it gave me back my afternoon

Wild flowers profuse

after a season of rain

I stopped at a relatively
un-wind-swept picnic table
to devour a mountainous
tuna-salad on pumpernickel
A kite raptored nearby

Turn into the wind

and the vista astounds

Mount Tamalpais

centers the universe

of San Francisco bay

 A bank of frigid fog

has begun its siege of the City

as it now takes the bridge

Mount Analogue

Sky and water

a hovering red-winged blackbird

The water planet

is receiving me

A traffic cone amid the fennel,

odd

A grotesque stumbling block peace sign

now mars my and others' power spot

how chagrining

In the midst of a vast

field of mostly grass

An isle of iris
 like a mirage growing wild
too worn to walk there

I become one with

the red-wing blackbird
the gull and the kite

soaring before the immensity




Left behind:
my purple houndstooth
temporary jacket

Out the way we came in

It all seemed to hinge

on the shattered

refracting

glass

4 May 2017

Pot Growing Boy / Stinkin' Rich

 

The Dead Letter Office

Conceptual Mail Art

Pot Growing Boy

Stinkin' Rich

May 2017

Wake Up and Salute the Flag

I'm as patriotic as the next guy

but we're turning into

Absurdistan

It happened as I slept

I opened the blind

and there it was

Vast flag hung on

a hook and ladder truck

honoring fallen fire-fighters

 

There were a hundred or so

firemen in uniform,

It's been a gruesome six months

two unsafe living spaces burned

 record-breaking fatalities

The Flaneur

in his precarious lodgings

salutes our fireman

3 May 2017

Ray's May Day Weekend

May Day may seem
somewhat licentious

in Berkeley

1.

Another everyday Yantra

heading into Berkeley

on a day of helicoptering

police tension

 Church on Shattuck

varnished and refurbished

What's liberty when

one class starves another?

What chance have we

when Sotheby's is the seller?

Across from the neighborhood

formerly known

for Dorsey's Fish-locker

Flint's smoking ,

Longhaul anarchist drop-in

and the Homeless Action Center

Alt-Right Pricks Attack Berkeley

No worry

that large insect in sky

is a police helicopter
over the disorder
taking place in a park nearby,

Disgraced ex-cops

Vets on meth from Missouri

and other "First Defenders"

are again inciting violence

Fighting words touted as free speech

I joked with a guy my age

"Why don't they stay

in their own hometowns,

they can wave the flag

and say how much

they love Trump"

An alt-rightist nearby replied

"because there are no borders on free speech"

I said I saw the photos of the piles

of weapons you all brought"

The Famers Market was

cancelled because

everyone knew you were

 bringing political violence

Locals  were stuck with he bill

the farmers were stuck

with their loss,

I may have accused him of being

an uneducated fascist

to my own personal regret

Irish temper

I walked through and chastised

some of the overtime pay cops

but I otherwise ignored them

Times are grim  enough

without trouble-makers showing up

to make matters worse

Old Berkeley

antlers and a symbol

of the old rugged cross

Let's lighten up

and love one another

while we can

2.

Telegraph

Anniversary of

the Summer of Love

Getting his freak on

dressing for the Telegraph Avenue

50th Anniversary of the Summer of Love
White is the new black
look at that angel fur
and it's as soft as your old granny's



Combining beatnik, hippie, punk,
grunge and 21st Century geezer
My Chinese robe was hallucinatory

Had a perfect storm

of extra expenses this month

Insomnia after running out of herb,

Laugh if you want but this contraption

nets six joints, four cannabis caramels,

big secular cookie and a few greenbacks,

I was soon delighted to fold up

and dig the best Country Joe set

since I saw him with the original Fish 

Three ace guitarists to play
and a spunky drummer

on a great sound system

Electric Music

for the Mind and Body

one of the greatest LPs

of the Summer of Love
I blew copious smoke as Joe sang
"hey partner,
won't you pass that reefer round"








May God Bless
Country Joe MacDonald
and the Fish

Listening to the Fish
50 years ago at Monterey Pop

3.

Walpurgis Nacht

Hot weather has actually

started to happen

so I'm out after supper

walking down to the Port

2017 Corvette parked outside my pad

Warm weather mania

and displays of luxury

consumption

A Coheeba cigar from Habana

Not the first time I've seen

them barely-smoked

 and discarded,

People like the look

choke on the smoke

Into my customary solitude

Biker gang on regular bikes,

new Bohemians I guess

Even have denim jackets

with official "colors"

More showed up

they all had a beverage

then they all swept off

   Emma in sky

at sundown

Guess it's

War all the time

All over again

Never going to Smurf city again?

Smurfs come to Oakland,

in paranoiac posters

I left here and went over to Oakland Metro

to inspect their Gothic demonic posters

Only to have a young Hispanic maniac

start yelling down the street

maybe not at me

and holding up his arms with

middle-fingers extended

But young very angry

and twenty pounds on me,

he was not someone I wished

to occupy a side street with,

It was like he was yelling

at some who drove away

or maybe just the world,

I walked calmly back to Washington

he turned down toward

Jack London cinema,

Just be one more person buggin'

30 April 2017

3.

May Day

The play's the thing

Poofters taunting a bear with feathers


There's the bear now

 

There's the ring-leader
an odd fellow indeed

Some sort of Anglo-Saxon

fertility rites I suppose

And where was this theatre located?

This reenactment of halcyon Albion?

Shall Actors be the lap dogs

of commerce?

Me thinks

he twirleth his mustache at me

what cheek!

So down to the dispensary
to replenish
then along Dana street

Gut feeling

at First Congregational

Only to come back more sturdy

Speaking of the skeletal...

Saw a familiar face on campus

fortunately he didn't see me

Cyber-fossil

cryptozoa frozen in stone

Down to the shady creek-side

to rolleth a smoke

Struggle relents

an isle of peace

Today's blessing takes the form

of Midnight Indica

blended with an astronomical

AK-47 Sativa

Epiphanic greensward

Long grass in May

how it heals the soul

Onward down through campus

and into town

May Day march

immigration folks in red

outnumbered by police

The long arms of the law

I smell sex and candy,

only I remember that song

modesty prevents them

from pulling the tights

up snug on the booty

Hope that bear

doesn't hear I was looking for him

and come looking for me

tonight when I'm asleep

April-May 2017