A.D. Thompson’s

My Life (as) Poetry

 

 

CHAPPED

LIPS, LIES

AND LIVES

 

 

 

L

 i

  f

   e                 I                  o               n               e               H               n

     l              o  l              d  I           o  E           h  r           n   e            i   g

      i           d     i           t      d       y      a        I     e         i      l          o      I

       n        y        v       a         o   h         r     m       W    e        l       g        ... d …i …e.

        e    h            e    h            W            t  a             h  r            a   I        

          W               W               ?               h                 e               m        

 

TEXAS

There was love before

Hate, peace before war, why should

We have to fight any

 

Dreaming I’m a philosopher, butterfly, I escape.

Already I’m announcing my own imminent return.

Never knowing how I came to be a babe in the woods,

The cry in the wild that nobody

Hears

Out of memory I forge

Manacles of hope

Perhaps I will persist or

Somewhere rest a moment

On dreams dreams

Nobody can ever guess.

 

I’ve written many acrostics through the years for my many names and others’.  Most are quite bad.  This one, which I wrote on a blackboard impromptu one day for a writing class I was teaching in China, may be my favorite.  I started writing poetry very young, as you will judge from the next little ditty…

 

DANCIN’

 

Come on let’s dance, dance, dance all night before the bright moonlight.

I’m falling in love with a young girl.  Her face is exactly like a pearl.

Come on let’s dance, dance, dance all night.  Come on and see this lovely sight.

With eyes like pools and lips like roses, looks just like a gift from Moses.

 

This was written, obviously, before I knew love—years before.  I like to consider it a Sufi text to the Beloved.  Later I would know love, as in this next piece, written when I was smitten with e.e. cummings:

 

aNOTHER bEAUTY

 

another beauty could

distantly exist forgetting,

god, how I just kan love

me, none other,

pounding quickly!

r still tense u?

very wonderful

xtasy, you?

zzzzzzz

IMPORTANCE OF A COMMA

 

I stand in possession of the field, master of destiny, fate in my hands.

There are none higher than I, yet none are lower.

I am without enemies.  Neither have I friends.

There is nothing, a void,

There is no black emptiness

but the lack thereof.

Am I part of that?

Am I all of that?

Am I, God?

Am I God?

 

COWBOY CAROL

 

Howdy y’all, yee- haw!

Christmas time is here!

We don’t need warm eggnog,

Just give us Lone Star beer

And make it nice and icy…

It sure is hot down here!

 

Now that wintry white ol’ Tannentide

Round here ain’t never seen!

‘Stead we gots zesty hot Navidad

of chiles red and green!

 

Huddlin’ brrfore a yulelog fire

Just ain’t quite the same

As campin round the piñon fire

Out on the starry plain.

Like keepin’ warm ain’t half as fun

If’n you can’t share it with someone. 

 

Now that wintry white Tannentide

Round here ain’t never seen!

‘Stead we gots zesty hot Navidad

of chiles red and green!

 

After my happy New Age early days, there succeeded…the teen years!  When, as an angry young man rebelling with many a cause, I found deep literary expression and catharsis through heavy metal music:

 

DEATH DRONE

 

His sleep was troubled, but he knew not why.

Dreams of death- hear the reaper cry.

His bony finger, oh, it beckons and calls.

Chosen of Valkeries, now the warrior falls.

He wakes and stares upon a midnight sky.

Stars hold no future for him- it’s his time to die!

 

Hear the death drone.  Hear it ringing in the air.

Hear the death drone.  Hear the singing everywhere...

 

Everybody sings their own.  Time to join dust and bone.

There’s no reason to be brave when you’re entering your grave.

And when you’ve lived your whole life wrong.

There is no question- you know where you belong.

Oh yes you know it; you know it all too well-

You’re gonna burn in hell!!!

 

Hear the death drone.  Hear it ringing in the air.

Hear the death drone.  Hear the singing everywhere...

 

Lucifer has called your name.

Now you’ll sing it just the same!

Death drone- rotting flesh.

Death drone- carrion stench.

Death drone- lost remains.

Death drone- scavenged brains.

Death drone...

When you die, you will look in Satan’s eye!

 

THE BALLAD OF THE GIFT

 

Below the land of ice there froths a lake

Beneath its waves gray impish fiends abound

There I met their Queen with eyes of granite

Under her skull-shirt whined a baby sound

 

She asks me do I think to leave alive?

I say, “I plumb forgot your gift outside!”

The waves rise up then to chastise my lie

I laugh them back and rub her belly hide

 

She spits on me a bilious flame of wrath

I coo, baby cries, she falls with a groan

Up in the sun spring warms the grand sun’s house

The lake imps help to carry mother home.

 

My life was not saved by poetry, rather by fantasy.

 

FANTASY AS SONNET

 

Aryan illegitimately born

Prophesied great by oracle exiled

In ashes hid by birds raised in blue corn

To war-torn kingdom returned to stand trial

 

For murder most foul from whom he was born

Added rape to the charge of patricide

Maya the princess’ hymen he’d torn

His very own sister it was he defiled

 

Oracle tell us how can it be born?

The oracle I the poet just smiled.

The city crowns them and will all soon be worms

The son is soon born and as soon exiled

 

Tis thus the heroic couplet met

Applaud not the couple but I the poet

 

I was obviously obsessed with form poems in my early years. Tthis tendacious tendency soon disappeared completely and left me freer to write freer to write.

 

CRACKS

 

A child sees spots and cracks on the pavement an adult strides purposefully by- would that I had still a child’s eye, such as I-am-sorry if I touch a touch too much. Living as I do on the razor’s edge, too quick to cut, un-balanced on the tight-rope from the cave...

not your fault I am burning in the fire of self and so I let words fall  

like poor hurt little birds I try later to heal to health to                 never-let-fly-again and I hide I behind others’ words of the                                     Other reflected in a tangle of my own mind-                                                       mingled un-deciphered; I will be led blindfolded through the labyrinth of my own mind and I shall know it not, as the prophet said.  How do I love thee- with words welled up from before time, beyond me and the        manifold limitations of fear and desire, fleeing and clinging, if in the blue abstract                       of cloud dancing where laughing buffalo thunder, more so in the details with the devil                  and all- where I can kiss your hump and smell the acrid breath of the tide of you,                       the moment toward and beyond death by this very act of wanting, wishing you were here now, and again in the orange purple abstract of remembrance- where you dance with a gentle bouncy and sul                      try sway, and so sass away all night, curl                                                        ing into me where you fit tight                                                    , so right I can feel your breathing deep and forget if this is not the rhythm of the world, but only the rhythm of my words now that if they ever hope to take flight beyond time, can do so only will so in your love so...

 

 

 

School also saved me from the harsher fate of some siblings torn asunder.  I was most lucky to live with my wonderful working class mother who valued education and travel.  I wrote many a poem to her in many languages through the years, but she has them all and keeps a watchful eye.  Though I shined, high school of course was difficult:

 

POPULARITY CONTEST

 

A man can be president in America or so I am told

If he be red or black or white if only he make so bold.

But he cannot win in thrift clothes even if he be so bent

As upon the post of high school student council president.

He, nay never she, though lacking little, candidate best

Loses dead- but don’t fret- it’s just a popularity contest!

Oh what relief, the man, he thought- okay, well, it was me.

Glad to hear I’m a loser in life, ugly, not just strategy! 

 

I have left the rhyme and meter as awkward as I was a boy-man then, but the feeling remains and retains some dignity for it.  The thrift and clean references allude to teasings I suffered throughout school as a “pink-sliper” (free lunch) with a Brit mum who thought bathing once a week quite adequate.  She had seen rationing as a girl during the War.

 

HAIL TO TACONIC HILLS

 

I cared not for your so called good manners, nor understood your mean

which mattered not it seemed that you were cruel but called you “clean”.

Still it is sad to think, though I moved on and did much good, not great,

Still prouder I of me than of this nation still so in high school-like state.

The principals have abdicated and there are no teachers left, too little pay

In spirit that is; for in dollars it is still they- the pretty old boys- that play

The role of kings and khans and gods and idols and the president

And we cannot even counsel them from the evil their ear is bent.

Not even on the side can we ride the bench of law and framers on our side

But we console ourselves with integrity; they have power, we have pride!

Still it seems a sticky sickly ride behind the madmen at the wheel, they peel

Out and leave burnt rubber behind as the only legacy- our children cannot appeal!

They are the losers, the geeks and nerds unavenged, the loners and the bullied.

They are our children.  But we left them in the hands of brutes.  We have no honor.

 

BUDDHA BELLY

 

Father, mother, thank you!  Thank you for:

four limbs that carry me far and hug the trees,

thick chest, big shoulders to carry huge weight,

Leg muscles large enough to swim mountains,

Fine hair easily shaved off my round monkish pate,

tiny eyebrows, a graying goatee, and ear for music,

a nimble hand for ball, drawing, and stroking,

this skin that holds me in and touches the world,

a tongue that loves all tastes and a strong stomach,

a tongue that twirls front and back languages,

a quick smile and booming infectious laugh,

my mind crazy enough to brave myself.

my big nose royal, ancient, bird-like.

eyes that change color like my mood.

a firm jaw set to survival, ears alert,

a back and feet I can mostly forget,

firm seat relaxin’ into earth anywhere,

& my Buddha belly people love to rub.

 

My brother is an artist like our mum and my best friend through life.  Alas, as teenagers we fought for a time, hurting each other as only those who love can.

 

METACARPAL

 

Fifth metacarpal phalanges- as much as my mental capacities you distinguish me from all animals.

You are healed now but you remind me of a time that you were bro

ken by my rage!  When I was no more than an animal you held a fist; hold now this pen and a sweaty memory for conscience...

 

As an adult, I returned to Texas for a first (failed) stab at grad school and visited the Austin of my boyhood once again, astonished to find the pool where I had learned to swim so small.  Austin certainly had changed from the hippy days when everyone lived in houseboats.  I applied to live in Sandia House, a co-op named for watermelon and the landlord handed me a thirteen page manic lease and demanded too much deposit.

 

WHAT MEANING MADE

 

What meaning can be made by overheard conversations,

raindrops, the place of a fly on the page,

a blind man trying to make his way through an intersection,

technology, privacy, the reoccurring owl, the absent skunk,

the ring card, watermelon house’s closed doors, the Law,

Quetta, the Quest, yellow Hondas, power corruption? 

Meaning is made in context- ok- but when

you can stop the world,

shut out the insistent riffs, decide whether to attend to the

anthropological discussions d’à côté and eschew the

political article, then THEN suddenly

you SEE the rain- on table tops blue & black,

and orange chairs, see the way

they splash into puddles- see as we saw as children

(the intimate informants)-

can you get into the skin of- the blind man??  Cool, wet,

prickles, slick, attentive, scared?! 

Forgetting to make your list, check your calendar, think

where you’re going next, in life,

but there you are, speed through the yellow light,

cursing at that moment, lucky-

did you feel it?- not hit, no collision fatal, this

time, because you  paused for a blind man,

a sigh, a second-

                                                                                    thought

 

O PAGE!

 

Can I write my love out- spill in ink not semen my need and gift,

to create not impotent pleasure- but what? empty thoughts that go nowhere,

not shared- lived words only will not do- I must hold, touch, kiss, dance, eat...

Oh- it’s been sooo long: to feel the comforting touch.  Of course it’s a high to write,

to create- but a comfort?  At the base is a very deep (original) pain that must be healed-

I did not create it alone: could I thus repair it- the breech, of trust, a gaping hole

in my life where you must be, my love- I need you- protector, nurturer. 

When will I see my love of Self spilling over everywhere reflected in her smiling

teary deep understanding eyes- equanimity All- ok but hug a stranger get arrested-

yet I have that Nature need urge- why?  Shouldn’t I, we, All?! 

Shall I stop up my love, smother it in my sein self?

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Try to guess the chapter break Novels- Rewritten- in- Haiku- form (answers at end):

 

A high healing air                                              Mighty odyssey

Refuge for a man insagn                                    All in one day one in all

From world wars to end…       #1                    I need a Guiness!                      #2

 

Man rapes all Europe                                        Pull the switch will ya?

As foul, as sun as a bull                         Lawyer redeemed as avocat

Goddess is jealous.                   #3                    Madame wants his head!          #4

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

 

EUROPE

Paris worth a mess

Or bal bordel! I ain’t danc-

In’ revolution!

 

CITY OF STONE

City of Stone and I’m all alone.  Paris, I come searching.  An empty sky is not digne to rain down upon such beauty. Paris- a palace on every corner- quelle belle façade!  I search in all the grand museums and I remember.  How could I forget?  Only erosion.  Can this poem move you, Paris?  There is no structure- only free flowing feeling... I search, Paris.  So many statues.  I talk to them.  I cry to them.  Statues in the streets- they have no pedestals.  I would kiss their feet, wash them with my tears.  I search, Paris, je cherche, Paris.  So many beauties attract me, behind the shop windows.  One cannot touch la beauté du musée.  Je cherche, Paris.  I stare into the fountain.  There is a face in the water that I cannot see for the tears in my eyes, or are my eyes too of stone? 

Paris, I search.

 

Before and during college I had the honneur to study in Paris, City of Lights certainly and also of grayness.  Here is one poem I scrawled on a napkin at the student restaurant Mabillon where I eventually met the group that befriended me.  To them- grand merci!

 

THINKING PLACE

 

I’ve gone to think where thinkers go

beyond the rain

beyond the snow

not to the mountain

not to the plain

To the inner reaches of my brain.

 

I’ve gone to dream where dreamers stray

it isn’t near

or far away

or at the end...

or at the start.

At the secret place within my heart.

 

I’ve gone to live where dead men dwell

no not in heaven

no not in hell

search not your body

search not your mind

Look in your Self your soul to find...

 

Somehow these two distinct language poems demanded to be together, after which one written actually in both languages, all the rest in French, then translated by me.

 

MONDE TRANSITOIRE

 

Dans ce monde transitoire, néfaste

Understand the mystery of your heart. 

Qu’est-ce qui reste que moi? 

Do not care for sharing what. 

Et qui suis-je sans origine

you cannot comprehend

sans destination, sans chez moi? 

Do not bother where you start

Peu importe si je cherche ou si je fuis

or where you end

j’y suis.  Partout ou je cherche je me trouve...

or where you start.  A circle has no heart.

différent.  Peu importe si je change le monde

The world outside can smile or laugh or cry

ou si le monde me change moi. 

Don’t you stop to wonder why. 

Tout change et n’est jamais le même. 

Only wonder why you feel

Ainsi l’eternel dillème- qui change et

the same.  Understand this mystery

se change juste pour changer,

of your heart, a circle with no end

le constant inconstant

and without start...

je ne puis m’échaper. 

 

L’HOMME ET L’OMBRE                          ME AM MY SHADOW

 

L’homme est son ombre.                                  Man and shadow are one.

Je m’écris, puis une question                             Writing my story I query          

se pose tout de suite: cette histoire,                    myself now is this history

n’est-ce que l’ombre de ma vie                         of my life o’ercast or

ou est-ce que je ne suis que l’ombre                  am I only the shadow

de mon oeuvre, plus que la somme de   of my works, the sum of

mes actes? Ni l’un, ni l’autre                            my acts?  Neither for it’s

car il est midi point.                                           full noon.                     

Le soleil est au zenith et il n’y a pas                   The sun’s at its peak and

d’ombres de tout.  Est-ce moi qui écrit as shadow nears feet

mon autobiographie d’ailleurs ou bien    I ask if my work does not

est-ce que mon oeuvre m’ecrit moi et    perhaps write me.  Now

qui lit?  Allez!  Il est tard- puis, au lit!     it’s late, too late to read.

 

Partout où je fuis, j’y suis.                                 Partout où je flane, there I am.

Partout où je cherche, je me trouve.                  Partout où j’ere, I am there.

Partout, partouze:  Tout par, tu pars…  And parting is part sorrow.

 

Les amis s’en vont, et viennent.             Friends come and go

Ils se cassent, comme mon coeur.                     and depart of my heart.

Qu’est-ce qui reste, que moi?                           What’s left, any me?

Je reste meme quand je m’en vais.                    I remain having gone.

Le constant eternel,                                           The eternal change,

je ne puis m’echapper.                          I cannot escape.

 

The English word ‘core’ (as in apple) sounds close to the French ‘coeur’ heart.

 

BIENVENUE                                                 HI THERE!

 

Parfois on se demande,                                     Ever wonder to yourself,

a soi-meme qui seul nous                                  the only one listening

écoute attentivement,                                        with attention anyway,

à travers les ages                                              through the ages if any-

si personne parfois peut nous                            one could ever have

entendre au fond,                                              heard us to the core,

et sans parler de comprendre,                           without speaking of under-

répondre au fond.                                             standing, answer at core?

C’est ainsi qu’on se promene                            So it is that I write

sa vie sur papier,                                               my life on paper, a

c.v. sans visage,                                                faceless resumé,

pour chercher sa place                          seeking its place in

dans ce monde disperse                                    this disparate world

et qu’on entre anonyme                         and enter anonymously

dans le café chercher son coin               my coffee house corner

ou semer son coeur                                           to plant my heart seed

en mots sur papier,                                           in furrowed lines,

paroles sans son, sans echo,                              silent words unheard,

plume envolée ou racine arrachée                      soaring ripped from root

que personne écoute jamais.                             no one ever listening.

Et cependant un jour                                         Then one day slinking,

qu’on cherche à glisser inattendu,                      we hope unseen, we are

on sera interpolé                                               called out in a symbol

dans une langue symbole                                   tongue forever and

abordé difinitivement                                         ever named at core

sans doute au fond...                                         of course…

Peut-on ainsi jamais vraiment                Can anyone, even us, ever

comprendre, ni répondre                                   capture us or hope to know

au fond soi-meme?                                           our core selves?

 

IMPERISSABLE IMPERIAL                     VAIN VICISSITUDE

 

Les ailes no sont pas                                         The wings are not

Brulées par le soleil incessant                            Burned by the ceaseless sun

Rompues par le vent bienfaisant                        Broken by the battering wind

Dorées si loudes qu’elles cassent                       Gilded so heavily that they rend

 

Les ailes ne sont pas s’attachées                       Not bound to each other

Les ailes ne sont pas arrachées              Nor torn off one by one

Les ailes ne sont qu’oubliées                             They are only forgotten

Et c’est cela la plus tragique                              That is the most tragic

 

Car les ailes servent encore                               That they work still pulsing

Pas à battre l’air nuagé encore              Not beating the cloudy air

Pas à monter en dessus surtout              Not rising above it all at last

Pas même à flotter sur le vent si             Not even to soar on wind so

Inattendu, inconnu là-haut                                 unexpected, unknown on high

 

Mais à proteger seulement                                But to protect only

Dans un nid à l’abri de rien                                In a ground burrow free

A cacher aux enfants affamés                            Hidden nestlings starving

Qui dans le ventre s’étouffent                            Suffocating in breast plumage

Affamés par terre comme les                             Under wings starving grounded

Vers dans leurs lits enplumés                             Like earth worms dirty bedded

 

Ils n’apprendront jamais a voler.                       They will never learn to fly.

 

After my year at the Sorbonne ended, in order to stay on in Paris, I took work as a guardian or security guard for EDF, the French energy corporation, socialized, then privatized.  I was asked to retire after it was found my papers were not in order, and although French friends soon arranged work papers for me, I then left for diplomat work (with their kids in Summer camps) in den Haag, Holland and Genève, Switzerland.  This silly little poem I wrote on night shift (12 hours) is certainly not worth translating:

 

CONTROLE DES BADGES

 

Oh, un beau jour à l’aube

me trouvai-je

la tête pleine de chimères

au poste de garde

àa centrale 2 à Noissy-le-Grand

pour contrôler les badges.

 

Il vint le premier, s’ensuit un autre.

Ils attaquèrent

cette nouvelle journée

comme des machines,

des machines humaines, dirais-je,

Et je souris!

 

Je me flatte si je me crois poète

malgé moi,

mais ne suis-je qu’un agent

d’exploitation, exploité moi-même

par une vie qui me fatigue,

comme fatigue la vie,

je souris.

 

A chaque passante

non plus à celle de Beaudelaire

qu’à une autre je souhaite

la bienvenue, le bonjour.

Et alors?

Mais je souris...

 

Et voici le produit

de mon ennui

je vous prie-

un poème pourri!

 

TRAHISON                                                               TRAITOR

 

Le visage, façade, portail au monde                               This face, front, world gate

audela de l’âme dedans                                     before the soul within

enfermé un instant                                                         closes off at times

et creusé, sévère, usé par la vie                         caved in as an old mine

écroulé par le temps et les accidents                              eroded by time and tragedy

qu’on appelle évenements,                                            peel out like scars

ne traduit pas la gentille beauté                          doesn’t let out the timorous

que je sens ou veux sentir                                              beauty that I feel or want to,

en moi en verité.                                                           in my true soul house.

Cet aspect dur, qu’est-ce                                              What’s with this hard mug?

et qui l’a fait, choisi?                                                     What bad potter made it?

Pourtant, je le porte                                                      I lug about this armour

comme la maille origine,                                                as a rhino does its horn

garlande d’amour,                                                         but strung with flowers,

et je l’offre à vous tous                                      to offer it to anyone to

à contempler et à diviner:                                              ponder.  Try to guess

qu’est-ce que c’est?                                                     the hoary secret of

Ce portrait d’un homme                                                the portrait of man

qui s’appelle Gaoussou?                                               in this case, named Dan.

Et qui est le vrai: ce devant                                            Which is the real one the front

par derriere ni Janus ni masque caché                            behind the myth or the masque-

ou ce fonds amable voulu sympathique              rade man or the self well-mean-

d’un puits plein ou vide qui le vrai?                                ing empty full or fake?

On se nomme pas soi-même                                         We don’t name ourselves

mais moi, j’ai un nom pour moi-même               but I have a name only I know

secret que personne ne connaît                          and you get no guesses

que moi                                                                        only I know

ni moi                                                                           or do I?

 

The following poem was written snaking all over the page in a way I was unable to re-produce in this text, therefore I leave it longhand as many later poems would become:

 

QUAND

 

Quand tu ne sens plus la force de continuer sur la route que tu as suivi, poursuivi, pour

When you no longer have strength to follow your road that you held to, you had to, too

 

suivre trop longtemps sans savoir pourquoi, sans se demander, sans raison...  Quand tu ne

long without knowing why or ever even asking, without reasons… When you only walk

 

fais que la tour de ta vie trop connue, que tourner, retourner dans un cycle prevu que la

traces of the tour of your guideless life, well known, turning, returning, in a prepaved

 

tour de ta vie trop connue... un jour, leve-toi, te regarde bien dans la glace, et souviens-toi

cycle your auto-life… one day, get up, look yourself in the eye, and remember yourself;

 

de toi; et crées ton propre nouvel chemin dans l’espace infinie de possibilités vers un

and create your own new road in the infinite space of possibilities towards a future

 

avenir toujours ouvert...

which is always open…

 

The middle of this last poem turn round in an ever-repeating circle, the last lines at last breaking out, free, unlike the  tomes in a U.S. ‘French’ café I once saw glued down!

 

PAS PERMIS                                                            INTERDICTION

 

Il ne nous sera pas permis de lire.                                  No reading will be allowed.

Les livres seront colles aux murs, devenus                     Books will be glued to the walls

de simples décorations comme les fruits             like tinsel after xmas decorations

plastiques derrières les vitres qu’on                               or plastic fruit in a display case re-

vend aux êtres plastiques qui seront les              flecting plastic consumers with

seuls qui restent à pouvoir les acheter.               hollow plastic credit to burn.

On aura à ecouter la musique vapide de                        You’ll have to listen to muzak

cuivre qui pend sans cesse une atmosphere                    all the way down forever.  You’ll

à balayer les croutes!  Que c’est bon-aigre,                   sleep on tiny crumbs you’ll feel.

doux de miel royal.  Le feu aussi est vrai.                       Sour and sweet honey fire alive

Ça brûle l’essence, gas qui jette dans                             burning gas chamber metal-eating

le bois de metal là-bas, qui consommé               dinosaurs in oily woods that never

jamais, n’ont pas d’odeur.  Néanmoins              end odorless.  In the museum mean-

au musée même, et dans le parc autour,             while and in the park around it those

ces amants qui ont volé et à l’argent et               lovers who stole from silver and

à l’éternité une miracle minute de                                   eternity a minute, man, woman, of

loisir s’embrasse, et l‘herbe n’est                                   leisure to screw sur l’herbe no longer

plus pelouse sous leurs dos mais feral                lawn, yard grass stuck to their feral

encore et les nuages refuseront                          sweaty backs and clouds which take

toute image et forme qu’on voudrait                              no form no matter how hard you try

leur donner- même les plus imagines.                             or how innocent you imagine them.

Et la plume danse au main du poète                               The pen in the hand of the poet

et va plus vite que l’esprit et plus                                   dances faster than spirit and goes

   lent   que    le    coeur.                                               out   slower   than    the    heart.

 

For Christmas holidays I visited family in Warrington, UK after a brief misadventure in London. New Years in Scotland impressed me most of all the generosity and good will to fellow creatures I am accustomed to find on travels worldwide: “You must be cheery!”

 

FAKE FLOWER

 

How little you are to carry this story

of the stranded at Christmas

you might seem of little worth to some,

aluminum foil stem and crushed tissue

paper petals green and red,

shiny bright and festive,

 

Indeed you have your price:

sixty-six proper British pennies,

you were worth every one

not much but what a fortune then to me,

my wallet and passport lost myself somewhere

that I gave to the old woman

who approached me at the tube exit,

placing you in my button hole saying

“Please sir, for the orphans at Christmas.”

 

I held you tight and you comforted me

through the cold night. 

I clutched you like a charm and all luck changed.

Wallet and passport all were found.

Got the last ticket to my family up north

a Christmas miracle but true

for sixty-six pence

silly fake flower

 

My travels in Europe were modest as befits a poor student but did include a small tour East in Spring thanks to a good friend living in Germany who had a car we could sleep in when cheap hostel could not be found.  Our misadventures are too many to recount…

 

CHEESE

 

I think of photos not taken.

Many a true happiness

escapes posterity for others.

Did they happen then?  You know.

Rare are true smiles in photos.

Smiles hide as much as cameras.

 

Look, here’s me on Spring Break

in the perfect gardens of Salzburg

where the hostel bar stays open all

night and forgives naked Aussie

tourists but tickets one-way cars.

Can you read theft, hang-over, in

our Sound of Music smiles?

 

We climbed so high to get the

photo of the fairy tale castle that

I began to see crosses marking the

dead in crags as we climbed.  Can

you catch a glimpse of mortality in

the frozen smile on my meditative

face as I sit full lotus atop the Alps?

 

Hard to believe it’s Spring in the

next photo as I stand triumphant

up on a snow mound,

King of the Hill,

the snowball terror.

I’m on my way to Eagle’s

place where Nazis met and

plotted where I play, removing

the “Danger: Do Not Enter” sign

from the snowy road.  I want

to climb a hill but my friend is

too tired. Later there is an

avalanche at that exact spot.

Can you see it in my smile?

We leave for cocoa and cake.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

System crash romance                                                  They were a farmer,

Luckily he had a pal,                                                     A priest and a long way from

Maid and helm to don               #5                                Home but brothers still. #6       

 

To kill a lender                                                  Hell what the fall

Spared the squad at last sec                                          Red orange yellow green blue

Lag off you gu now…               #7                                Indigo violet                              #8

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

NEW YORK

the tree in the yard

has bloomed overnight bright white

in the morning light

 

POETRY n.

pontificating profoundly upon pretty petty or putrid points with progressive print & punct uation?

 

for that’s all there ever was, boy was

Po-et-ry- Poem- Poem- Po- ppppppp

the pitter patter clitter chatter of raindrops rhythm

 Poetry is, the Nature of- before essence, existential

expressionistic/impressionistic- ex/in

exhale

in                      hale      breathing cadence

Tone Texture Tone Deaf

And the Echo

Pure Art- onanistic self cycling hollow

Ah, the echo, alas- like Sisyphus

classical allusions illusions, similes like smiles

roses red-color- blood beets beat menstrual

Identity- to understand upon the universal singular

and thus such & such- suck-me-OFF!

Poetry is Power, after all- and that’s IT.                                    ...or is it?

back to the rhyme, shit.

Ode to an ode- metaphysics- symbols signif

holistically the moon beam on lake’s sheen unseen eternal

grace hologram, thank you, ma’am- Automatic Echo

To the People, the old songs- march- two, thr3, 4- Ho!

Or lyrical-limericks

There once was a leprechaun named Big John!

Censure Self peel back the skin of Life

Avant la lettre, that’s better

What is poetry?  An interrogation?

A feeling- fleeting- the Nature

of Reality.  Echo.

Thank you.  Mantra.  Chant.  Paean.  Lord it just goes onandon

accumulationencyclopedicennumerationcataloguinglistsetcadinaus

Portraits to, the nose knows, non?  Catharsis- description

narrative epic story, scene- don’t make a scene.  What is poetry,

You say?  You won’t find it that way- you’ll have to read, write,

exhaust the language, the code then somewhere somehow

as the first waking awareness but still asleep in slumber all known

all encompassing peace where poem and poet are born one and indivisible

and suckle the warm nourishment, fulfillment even- praise be- of the Poem,

self-evident for that’s all there ever really was, boy was.

 

Most of the poems here were written under duress.  In college I took one elective in creative writing and it required us to spend half our time on poetry, not fiction as I had wanted.  We should never get what we want.  Our teacher was a wonderful author who wore a necklace of giant red chiles and wrote Travels of a Nuclear Whore, I believe.

 

ART HAIKUS

 

the sleek orange seal

glide easily, carelessly

through purple water

 

an odd green camel

his legs, head, and hump cut off

in the sand and sky

 

the lumpy blue frog

sits so still contemplating

the unseen blue fly

 

two headed tigers

snarl wildly at each other

blood drops everywhere

 

a huge mingled pile

of red seal bodies blending

together as one

 

The course was taught in the art building, which had a café in it, in which hung the above spackled haikus.  We did not linger in image alone, but were asked also to engage.  But first, one indulgence, an automatic writing I did one fine spring day in same said café.

 

AUTOPILOT

 

zebra chair empty yoghurt

flower there blue notebook

two gloves a Snapple juice

strawberry to tell the truth

square table but I’m unable

to write again

got my yoghurt spoon

ain’t got no pen

 

GLOBAL PROBLEM POEM

 

A social political problem poem concerning

poverty, the environment, education, all violence,

the proper raising of children, and male/female and

inter-race/culture/religion relations:

 

Why do we struggle so?

When peace comes naturally

when trees and children inspire love

and all people love

when we all share the world

and everything in it

when happiness and harmony

are our universal destiny

and all is in us already...

 

R  U  4  RU486?

 

Pop a pill, it’s the right choice!

Une femme enceinte need not walk the gauntlet en route to

la clinique where she swallows two pilules, and her tumor goes. 

Women who live in the land of the free can only look to Lady Liberty

through hazed eyes unable to imagine another’s future, her own.

Her doctor is dead at the hands of right-to-lifers

The doctor lies dead for unlived non-lives.

Women without two pills must play mother martyr

besieged by the fervent who kill and threaten and say they save,

mobbing, chanting and cruelly menacing, raping, pillaging

their ads lies to deceive the desperate,

their lives lies to deceive themselves, their gods. 

They do not do day care in fact the moms they now berate

were unwanted babies forced upon the world before their suicides

Desperate, dying womyn march through the deadly battle lines

into secret clinics where weary doctors work their magic against all odds

Women went to the streets for their rights in France.

In America, women, girls must slink into alleys.

 

Changing tone, we went to the Nature Preserve behind campus to write one day:

 

CALL OF NATURE

 

Who can resist? 

Searching for solitude

I feel the pressure,

the need of escape,

to ease this pain,

the pressure-

on my bladder! 

Searching for solitude-

a place to piss

for who can resist

when nature calls?

 

UNBEARABLE

 

In a spot such as this I sat as a boy

alone and afraid and in need of a friend. 

I found no comfort in birds’ distant cries

nor in the buzzing of the hidden crickets. 

The still of the lake was un-bear-able

for I had no silly old bear like

Christopher Robin’s to wish me

Happy Monday & Tuesday &..

 

DAYBREAK

 

Sunset dusk does day

Descend to dark down...

 

The fruit hangs heavy on the broken bough.

A donkey now stumbles beneath the plow.

I hear the cracking of the trees’ thaw.

Along a bare black branch I saw

a single shining dew drop slowly slide,

hang agape, agaw.

To alight in its nest will gently glide

the sparrow; its seasons too subside.

As breath and love both moon and sun

in time

must fall

as to dust descend we drowning

living

all.

Now we to space and beyond aspire...

Losing thus our teacher in a sudden rain

-of fire!

As Icharus had to fall to show, swoop

down now,

Beast!

Upon Prometheus’ glow-

Devour!

We taste the fruit of the tree, our will,

as, to forever, crests constantly... Sisyphus...

the Hill...                      

highest

high higher

high                                                                                          rise again

     glide and     

into the deep sky fly and                                               dive                        

                                                                                                 fall

Ho!  Dawn, awake- up, up!                                                                  to fly to fly            forever...

 

GET BACK

 

One of the first days of Spring

timid, innocent, all the more seductive

charming nymph sneaking in

the first rays of morning bright, warm

The snow still on the branches, melting

now glistening, all a’sparkle

a shiny dew drop forms, slides down along

the bare, black brown branch bone

slowly captivated, timeless, enraptured

You watch it hang on the tip, ready to drop

the eternal drama of nature’s rebirth

Your life seems to hang in the balance

as it hangs heavy now, the first of

many, you see it... Phone rings!

You answer- work; Bob’s called

in sick, can you pick up his shift,

hurry over? Hang up, for God’s

sake, your wife screams- will you

help get the kids off to school

The baby’s sick!... and you nev

er will get back to that dew drop

 

SILENCE, SPRING

 

Cease your incessant singing.

The sun does not shine on me.

I am in sorrow’s shadow.

The birds do not sing for me

nor the flowers blossom.

If I could I would wish a

Winter eternal upon the World.

Let all be frozen, dark, and dead

since the Spring cannot

thaw a heart that once loved me

rekindle a fire that warmed me

brightened eyes that once shone for me

renew and rebirth

a love lost

A love forever locked in an icy, dead

Winter of memory and longing, and despair

Yet Spring bubbles forth anew

frolicking and dancing with delight

and brings me no comfort.

And I cry as birds sing

and tear the flowers

for she love me not

and I die beneath the shining sun

and still Spring sings uncaring-

Spring, sing no more!

 

My tender heart ran to melodrama and why not?  Clumsy style had to follow.  All of us would erase many a word, whole scenes, if we could, but I would not erase one dewdrop.

 

WHY?

 

Why can’t I write these tears I feel

for love of you?

this gentle, wrenching mingling of

pained euphoria, longing...

I cannot conjure your image-smile,

laugh, cry, scream, moan, slope back,

naked neck, mysterious eye hiding,

inside legs lifting, inside

The hands- I never look at them- to feel

so much- God, why can’t I remember?

Look at the hands alive

To feel you

I do not even reach out past my

coffee cup

So much do I love you, desire loving you

more still

-a thing inside me

my love for you

But I need around me

You- so far away, reaching

as I remember

holding, groping you

Together at least joined

I inside you

You around me

That is life!

Who could I tell

and must I forever more

spill myself out on paper

flat and blank

for want of your Ear

that once bent to my nibbling

Love spill forth

whit I could never fill

You and if I am so Empty

whence then this           for you?

Answer me!  Anger me!  Kill me

with your kindness without which

I do not know how to Live...

 

NAPE

 

I will stir the sauce on the stove by the sunny window,

warm inside on a wintry day.

You will chop the vegetables in a flowery sundress.

I’ll be singing quietly to myself.

You’ll be sipping your coffee in your calm, gentle way.

I’ll turn and stare at you warmly.

You’ll glance into my eyes a second, smile radiantly.

Then you’ll bend to your vegetables and I’ll slip my arms around you,

kiss the nape of your neck.

You’ll giggle and scold “sweetie!”

And the whole world will be alright.

 

I am proud to say I moved on from my heavy metal phase to folk, then grunge hit.  Appropriately enough, I worked in the dining hall dish room, also for our college radio station.  My irascible and irrepressible German neighbor upstairs sat in his $100 car outside my window with the neon laundry sign flashing, blaring what we then called music.  Blame him for this poem and also insomnia brought on by loss of first love.

 

ENEMY INSIDE

 

You say I scare you. 

My moods are changing all the time. 

I scare me too.  And I can’t escape my mind. 

My moods keep changing.  There is no reason. 

Changing like the season.  Now it’s Winter time. 

If to be yourself is treason than I’m guilty of the crime. 

Guilty in my mind.  I judge me.  There is no escape. 

I can never be free.  My mind is churning all the time. 

The machine is eating me alive.  How can I survive? 

My problems are my own.  I create them in my mind,

my eye, my life.  I keep wiping at spots in the picture. 

But the spots are in my eye, my mind, my life.

I can never be free.  I can never see clearly. 

The enemy inside is me.

 

On Staten Island sits one of America’s most successful intentional communities, what many laymen call communes.  My father who resides there took me down to the waterfront for open mike night at some dingy café and man, did it open my eyes to a world of possibilities I was not yet ready to grasp.  I did write that night an amazing poem, the greatest poem in the world ever.  This is not that poem.  I cannot find it.

 

CRAZY NIGHT OF INSPIRATION GRACE

 

pear pie faced priestess (shades of before) on one leg watched standing

center open mike glazed a water bird watching fish telling stories

at our table a French painter, a Saharan, balding guitar man

women in black mc’s with music growth work between deep blue

sea radio and devil dad with anecdotes aggressive, a recovery trait list

sweet fat lesbian Grace (scared girl singer) sweetly intoned the African ghost

the old poet guy with his fusion word melded Milwaukee and walled Bukarest

one tall Irish singer without band screams subdued, a clarinet guy quiet and shy,

American as apple pie and... I will write your stories

my poor friends at adjacent tables. 

You cry out to exist!  I will invent you then. 

Forget everything you thought you knew. 

The world exists for me.  Alone.

 

 

 

 

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

Damn you dirty pig,                                                      Damn you the horror,

Be master of all the beasts,                                            Did you not hear the conch shell?

Make a five year plan.              #9                                Homoerotic                              #10     

 

Watery wench, ghostly                                      Hey slave! Wanna paint                       

Dad and doomed messengers                                       Way down the Mississippi

Stab the curtain man.                #11                              A white fence for me?               #12

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

AFRICA

In dark flood soil soft

lays Passion in hurls crushing

silence silence sigh

 

BLISS

 

I love life!  Like truck stop pie!

The jazz of the multiform nations

played out in my café house...

Lying under the infinite night sky

in the country no noise but singing

a distant clapping dance

no light but the stars of promise-

I wanna eat them there stars!

 

I always loved school and I best loved university, but I read the most in my life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali.  Although I could only read mornings before pages began melting in sweaty hands and until sunset, after which there could be no better book than the Saharan sky full of more stars than are dreamt of in your philosophy, still I read the classics, yes even the fat ones, and notably many many anthologies of religion and poetry

 

CHARM HARM

 

No!  No!  No!  It cannot be!  My love, my own true love,

in a note, by her own hand- leaves me!

So I go to see the healer, singer, charmer, medicine man,

the old sage vision lore keeper gris gris fellow

in his smoky haze full of tokens and trimmings

so much stuff!  I tell him what I want and why

I want her to love me unquestioningly, purely, forever

to never leave off loving me again... He put in a pot:

honey and vinegar, essence of mountain, sky drops,

marrow of wild tree, first snowflake of the desert,

horn of toad, hair of fright, a ghost’s keys, this,

that, the hidden treasure, essence of essence, a word,

wind, broken promise, secret stone, soup of mother’s love,

mind milk, a griffon gem, a siren’s silent scream... and on

and on ad nauseum...  Came out a knot!

Said: she will love you, or love you naught...

He gave it to me, told me- slip a drop in her tea.

Then I heard the cherubs chant:

 

splish splosh oh my gosh gimme gimme good god ...

splish splosh oh my gosh be careful what you wish wash!

 

I slipped a drop in her tea one day, then

tracked her down to say say say my peace-

she heard me out and nodded out whispering,

“I love you,” slipped away- passed away...

Gone to come no other day!  She loved me and left me.

Tricked, I thought, that old charlatan, but-

I’d gotten what I wanted, he said,

for in the great beyond, and only there

this then is how they love and only there

infinite love unrestrained without conditions

forever, just as I’d asked, and only there...

There, there, there... glorious There! DEAD.

But for now I’m alone again, left and lost and

then I heard the cherubs chant:

 

splish splosh oh my gosh gimme gimme good god ...

splosh splosh oh my gosh be careful what you wish wash.

 

GHAZAL

 

Radif the caliph smoked a fig leaf in his hookah.

He saw a worm, smelled its germs, and asked Kaca the crow—

Where do the dandelions roam and trees fly?

Where can I catch a chocolate wildebeest?

Where are buildings inside out and do the rocks grow?

Where do buttermilk slippers wait?

I want to get young and sick the heels, so…

Tell me crow--singing pee pee to your lover—

Do you know?

 

 

I won’t gush here about the amazing people I met in the tiny village of 100 mud huts I had the honor to serve in that difficult place.  I tell of their generosity, simplicity, and joy in my book Notes from the Interior.  I have never yet done them justice nor ever can…

 

SONG TO THE SUN

 

Sun, where is your due?  Sun, here is your due!

Age upon age accumulates.  The Sun still rises.

Men like ants clamor on.  The Sun still rises.

Civilizations build to fall.  The Sun still rises.

Great men live and die.  The Sun still rises.

You and I laugh and cry.  The Sun still rises.

In hope we toil all day.  The Sun still rises.

To plant our little field.  The Sun still rises.

Upon countless fields in time.  The Sun still rises.

Season upon season succeeds.  The Sun still rises.

Ours prayers still climb and fly.  To the rain.

Fickle, blessed rain still rules us.  The Sun still rises.

Constant, abundant, unthanked.  The Sun still rises.

Forgotten, forgiving, unbidden.  The Sun still rises.

In our sweat we curse the Sun.  The Sun still rises.

Sun, where is your due?  Sun, here is your due.

Overflowing, everlasting love unconditional.

To the source of all Life nothing need flow back...

The Sun still rises.

 

AFRICAN NIGHT

 

Sweet Africa night!  Bright full moon, light breeze. 

By full moonlight, all the village children out at the well,

the girls all clapping, jumping and singing, the echo on my house. 

Out on a mat at Sanyi’s, sleeping a little on the mat beside my best friend,

talking of loves, his hopeful fiancees, playing cards loudly, drinking rounds of tea. 

All the people come by- young bandits with their radio and American caps,

elders in their grand bubus with dignified greetings and benedictions, loudly laughing

voluptuous young women in bright print pagnes, onw with an adorable, sweet-

tempered, tiny baby so doux, smiling, gurgling cheerily.  Then light raindrops,

soothing the desert.  Then the exhilarating wind blows breath-takingly in

with red clouds and rain, meaning more in Mali than we could ever dream. 

The smell of wet earth.  Never before...

 

Cholera kills, but it doesn’t have to.  One dies of dehydration.  I offered this simple technical solution of course but it was not enough.  A baby died.  Isn’t this the story you wanted from Africa- black despair?  This is true as are full moon laughs at the well.

 

 

ALI

 

On the death of our griot’s firstborn

baby, Ali, of cholera-  Allah ka hine na!  Amiina!

Ali, son of the prophet Mohammed, African avatar,

archetype, hero and victim, martyr...  Tonight,

by the moon, among the starry clouds’ movement,

on market day no less,

gentle Samba the griot’s only son Ali died. 

After many days suffering, the life ran out of him

into the sands of ages.  Ali has gone now to the ancestors. 

There is the comfort of this village.

Here for generations it has seen another early passing on. 

This village has seen many souls.

The living are the least in number or power,

clinging to their daily daba toil.  Ali will not till

the earth, but fill the earth.  And he has left the living,

but not the village.  Many have lived here and many

more will live here yet, God willing, and Ali has his place

among us all.  Though so small.  Ancestor! 

They are hungry for more good company

Ancestors a blessing as are children.

Aalbaraka, Ali, blessed, thanks, I Bissimila…

 

CRADLE TIME

 

Newborn Christmas

As white as new fallen

snow the white sands of the Sahara,

enveloping eternity in her changing season

ever same- now burning red hot glare, now whipping

wind blinding sting, now blue-black chill beneath the

stars, now a serene sea of tranquility, still as Time

memorial, stretching out to All, to you, Peace...

 

It makes no difference to me whether I celebrate Christmas or Tabaski.  I celebrate.

 

TREE DANCE

 

bathed in rain

branch out little lots leaves

branch out flower fruit and in it

seed born away by wind in it a

new tree tomb womb earth,

earth from roots form roots born

single sapling grown baptized in

rain water womb grown earth enveloping

bark brown flexible growing

strong firm branch out bathed in

rain branch out little lots leaves

branch out flower fruit and in it seed...

 

There’s nothing like a storm in the desert, not even these poems:

 

I AM THE SUN

 

in the desert searing my soul sea of sand and solitude

nothing- but the maddening imagined mocking buzzing of flies

no comfort from oppressive heat, this dust filled orange obscuring

wind rolling down in pressured clouds smothering all, heavy my head,

my heart alone against all myself...

The rain comes, the unforgettable smell of earth alive

fertile divine the drops the love myself standing

exultant in sweet nectar suckling succulent under

starry skies pity, acceptance, approval even...

But soon comes the storm, for rain never comes here

without lightning crash, roaring thunder, stinging whip

angry gods, drinking overfill flood myself crying over!

For the rain knows not how to last here, never lasts,

this storm, my love, myself, in the desert- of my self,

can you never sustain, oh pity!

 

ODE TO MALI

 

Thus I mark thee Mali in mine own eye

home to bull and shit and baa and bleet and

Ameriki never knew so much sand

but thus I do love thee; here now is why:

 

Here they never bother me to think or

wash or work or much of anything all

but lay oh lay all day we all small small

in our own filth which we call home for...

 

Mali is a sty for you and I who

are the mulling herd mass, zen child nature,

noble savage cilvilize, slate pure,

wind blown buttocks street and house of doodoo.

 

Lo!  Here am I big fish, eagle to men-

Malimogow sheep to my wolf, ou bien?

 

I was medivacked to the Ivory Coast for a host of maladies.  I saw Cyrillic.

 

ASIGNI

 

La plage, the beach, crash of waves, still of sea. 

La meduse, jelly fish- why me?  Why not burn instead

the fat red carcass of the over-privileged, protected

Club Med decedents?  What sign is this? the touch

on me the volunteer?  As I condemn this expat here

in his Africa hat-  how dare he?!  Me in my flip flops. 

And who knows, perhaps he is a volunteer just like me.

Condemning me?  Who is to judge?  La meduse. 

And in the ivory tower, is there not also misery? 

And greater loneliness?  Where is my sugar mama? 

Little Simon the small boy with his smile and chatter

also came up to touch me.  Slept on the sand with the

sand dollars- of infinite value...Ate the langoustes, fruits

of the sea- spicy salsa, dance, passion fruit- fantasy... 

Fried fish and plantains, so plain, beans and rice delight! 

Samsara- the cycle of life.  The moths fly out-

Simon tries to stop them, tarry a while and play,

says he, dancing winged one, out to sea...

Falling finally as far as they can go in the all

encompassing mother of waters deep to die-

washed back in on waves crashing, still of sea,

invigorating and rejuvenating me, after, to

relax light on the beach...

 

Peace Corps no longer supports motorcycles for volunteers.  They are dangerous, but they are what allowed us to go off the roads.  Sticking to roads is dangerous.

 

TRIUMPH

 

I left as master- of the field of dreams

a field of victory in eager young eyes reflected conqueror

I left them to the stream of fate’s unfolding flow

Grow seed of Hope in that field I planted...

I know now, weary go- home fly I on my moto

racing the wind and a formation, divinest nature’s sense,

of white birds against a golden cliff, that hour,

over sand and rock and thorn and ravine I rolled...

Overcoming all, exultant, one, and All

to my home and well I’d earned that honor

to my home to tell that triumph to

sing my song to myself to

no one there.

 

AFRIKIDIKI

 

In ignorance they laugh. 

In ignorance they cry.

In ignorance they live and love. 

In ignorance they die.

Poor, poor people,

dirt poor people, dust poor people,

soil poor people, earth poor people...

Who will help them? 

Who can help them?

In illusion struggle, desire,

and despair at last!

Who will help them?

Who can help them?

Nobody.

Thank God.

Allahumdidlidli...

 

If I stayed away from my hut for a week, when I returned my first task would be to sweep away new termite growth for an hour or so, but there were formations I couldn’t reach.

 

YOGA MUDRA

 

in the mud dome of my mind

acrawl yes with ants should life be born

from a red, swollen sore on my left leg

then or flash in the sky calm before

a dust storm stinging sand its windy force

but bringing no much-needed rain to soak

the hard cracked earth hard cracked

fissured baked pounded painful earth

that gives us birth- a womb like

the mud dome of my mind

yoga mudra oom

 

WHAT IS AFRICA TO ME?

 

All a place can ever be, a place of belonging, of ancestors I had never known, of welcoming strangers of shining smiles and eyes of curiosity where the dead do not pass- away.  They are glad to see you come back- it is good.  Family.  Elders.  Clapping children’s songs.  An age group even though I am not initiated.  Common bowl.  Bissimila.  Calm.  Wrapped in hills.  Hidden fruit tree delights.  Sand in toes.  Sleep under stars...  What is Africa to me- friends, a taken village, and family.  Baptism whisper, kola nut blessings, a name that knows no limits, that has been patiently whispered, blessed, greeted and remembered for generations and to which I add my white face and which passes through me to two babies- one an orphan, another a friend’s tree nursery, chief’s counselor- where none will ever be left forgotten.

 

INBETWEEN

 

I am sick at soul, Mali, missing you...

Not a claim-staker like a lover, Mali,

inviting open spaces, vast welcome

Desert unobscure and open, Mali,

like sand time through the hours pass

And rock surprise leaping high, Mali

sunrise to sunset shining rock...

And this hard place, now, stuck,

back and beyond, home- unless...

Speeding by- crowds unknown

Nothing beckons

And I am

still

    staying

stuck

in-between.

Sitting sipping café city

the dream I dragged with me,

through you, Mali.

I am torn, still, thoughts fly,

to your wide open twisting arms,

Mali, I still believe

You live in and around me

-even here..

 

CITY LIGHTS

 

Bright big city lights-

towering grid patterned skyscrapers,

neon all night rotisseries, neat rows of

suburban streetlights- Vanity!

What pretenders you dare to frown

drown out the very stars with your noisy glare. 

Who, trapped within the hazy hue will ever

know the true brilliance of the real sparkling

luminaries of Infinity and Eternity- the stars? 

For all your glitter and glare, bright big city,

I would not trade my quiet desert sands

sleeping beneath those steady stars innumerable. 

And the village children clap, sing, and dance

by the well under the full moon...

 

Because in reality We are moving...

the earth revolving, not the Sun setting,

it is more true to say: I saw the mountain

swallow the Sun...

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

How far deep down fo  r                                               Strike up your deal then,

Beauty and Virility                                                        Scientist, but be ye ware

Will you dare to go?                 #13                              What you lose you lose.            #14

 

An old man catches                                                      Provincial Woman

At length upon the mast                                     Marries a bourgeois doctor

Crucifix a fish.               #15                              Suicide fait divers.                     #16

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

NEW MEXICO

Burrowing into

your brown skin rooting in search

of your red soul plunge

 

POLARIS

 

When the scientists first informed us

That the long-range telescopes indicate

Polaris had ceased pulsating, illuminating,

That was the beginning of the end

of the Faith in Science.

 

When it became obvious even to

the naked eye that of all stars why

the North star had faded and was

no longer visible, that First man and

First woman circled nothing, no hearth, 

Cassiopeia the Queen and the Big Dippin’

Drinking Gourd went around Nothing,

Nada, the North Star had well just sorta

disappeared, well it was strange.

At first they all thought it was just a

technological failure when all the damned

cell phones went silent suddenly mute-

Turns out nobody was using them is all.

 

People stared at silent TV’s- the signal

Long gone.  They planted fish in ‘em.

People threw clocks out the window

When they went off a few minutes

Each day a little later for work they

Stopped going and went out into

The streets and said hello to one

Another and told stories under the

Remaining stars and someone said

What does it mean?  The story?

Whatever you want.

 

My return journey from Africa across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and halfway across America stalled like Bugs Bunny’s in Albuquerque where my mother was drawn to the artistic light and I drawn to her sadness.  I beat the streets, oddly paved, in search of work and met a Navajo woman in human resources who laughed at the goat sinew repairs in my holy shoes and later moved in with me.

 

THE HIGHWAY

 

stretched on long, doubly, up to the horizon-drop

brown, white dash lines, and yellow

He waited for the bus, and waited, and waited...

He tried to fill out the job applications

but couldn’t, couldn’t write all lies

answer all those questions again.

They didn’t want to know who he was, or where-

Didn’t they know what he could do?!

They didn’t know what needed to be done.

No, help, so-

When the bus finally came, he got on

said hello to the driver

“How’s it going?”

No answer-

so he killed the driver.

 

Later, the social worker asked him, “why

you did it?” /  No answer.

again:

“Oh, I know- you don’t care!” said social worker

to silence

“But you do- so why you so pissed off”

No answer.

“Let me guess,” provoked social worker,

“God made you do it.”

(pause)

“There is no god,” he told the social worker,

 

“God is dead.

Read Nietzsche.”

 

They executed him.

No help for it.

“why?

Add your stone to the Cairn, passer-by.

 

SPIRIT UNSPEAKABLE

 

When we met all was worlds away

and fleeting our flirtations with a masquerade world. 

You tried to run.  I brought wild flowers to your door to die. 

I cannot tell you the meaning of this love, dear turtle. 

I tried to retain a place to be a man- and one to reflect you in,

visions of you beyond- and me-mingled, but you moved in to share

All, too much, too quick.  We wandered midnight streets with junk

carts, beneath stars that had seen both of us dirt proud, wind-blown. 

How can I make sense of this for you?  If I write you rose petal rhymes

will they fade fast too as blue horses rush in, can we hide among the

grass seeds- small in the skies I want to soar on wings sore from trying,

endless trying- I bare your wait.  Hand in hand we move whirling recklessly-

but where, where?  Let us not speak of debt what you have given and I profaned, 

now that I have seen you resplendent, sneaky looking, snug on Mexican buses,

laughing, teasing in N’awlins.  I have seen you stand strong against the storm of me.

I have seen inside you a spirit unspeakably beautiful and strong and i will not be free again until you see it reflected in my eyes into your heart forever...

 

ULTERIOR REALITY

 

He was looking deep into Reality

trying to figure it all out.

He stared deeper and deeper

emerging from the tunnel

into a protean pool of deep green.

Life fluid and there it was

in the bottom- the Worm.

He was searching for meaning

and he ate the marrowless

Worm- the Tequila Worm

and he stared at Reality

through the thick green glass

of the bottom of an empty bottle.

 

MEDITATION IN BLUE

 

I’m on a blue streak.  Blues up and down my arm

Like quarter notes in an archipelago crescendo

Down the blue, blue Danube.  But- in trouble

With the blue line, doin’ blue time, biding

Visions in a midnight blue sky I can see blue

Sky at midnight blotting out the stars, moon, sun…

I just can’t wake up.  What’s a blue boy to do, little?

What horn to blow, Ezekiel?  It ain’t easy bein’ Blew!

 

Did you ever feel you were living in a different world than someone else, or everyone else?  Get help! Like poetry.  I did ask the mc of this event if he would mind if I tried out some story telling as I was then compiling my trunk of fables, etc. into my book Diner Dharma.  He said, in not so many words “Stick to poetry.”

 

WORLDS-A-PART

 

Best Price Books poetry on the patio-

vagrant bearded broad-beating beats

(his buddy swaying beside, conceptually,

lighting styrofoam coffee cup on fire)

to counter magic wiccan women amazonian

man-hating, vaguely circling chicana indian

smoke sex sing song, the gay guy about

bashing maleodramatically, carelessly,

a coupla guys droning out letters to mom

from dying soldiers back when? WWI,

dry skeptical theorums annunciated matter

o’ factly- the usual cast of suspects, plus the

Outsider watching wistful, wishing, plus MC

screaming wildly sophmorically enraged at the

street kid on bike who interrupted

(never mind the yuppie cigar cell phonies)

says- to all the big women in black at their table,

about the seven pointed star, riding off with the

BEST by far poetry of the night:

“Fuck you and the World you live in!” 

 

A SERPENT, RAINBOW-TONGUED, ME

 

Beauty to the left.  Beauty to the right.

Beauty behind me forever.  Oh  please

Let there be beauty ahead, four times blessed.

May the Buddhas continue to turn the wheel of

Prayer for us aqui abajo, for God is big and, well,

It is good that you have come.  I will wait for you then

Even in the rain- on the Pollen Path… I’ll wait

Where blue horses rush in and Angels fear not to tread.

I await you on the Beauty Way, fore-praised…

Hojho Hojho Hojho Hojho

 

Those of us who cannot readjust upon return from Peace Corps become Peace Corps fellows and earn free degrees in weird places.  One lovely such fellow, my book end, had his first child in the Chusca Mountains near Nakaieitoh, Mexican Springs, on the Navajo Nation.  Dine believe there is a special connection when a baby first laughs.  I don’t remember what I did to make that baby laugh, perhaps it was just my ugly mug.

 

FOR HANNAH SAGE

 

It is Good that you have come! 

How small fragile strong magnificent and miraculous you are! 

Breathe, sweet angel- and open your eyes to a new world- you have made more beautiful, worthwhile...Lovers talk of becoming One- but only in babies is it done- but much, much more!  First laugh- let me hear it- I am not so hard as to not still be touched by the miracle of Life- we All have it Already! We forget and you remind…

I am sorry I haven’t breath for your song,

yet remembrance- no doubt you sense it

somewhere

in your huge

world Awakening-

Open Sesame!

 

DIG IT

 

I knew a dude who knew a dude who

Found this huge old diamond, man!

He was a made man after that but

You know what happened to him?

He died soon after is what and well…

Here’s how it went down, see his dad

Dad was a diamond digger and went out

Went to the fields every day of his life.

He was looking for the big one but

He only found diamond dust, barely

Enough to keep him going but never

Never the big one on his screen as

He sifted out the dirt, the mud, the

Gravel and stones and he bent, man,

He bent but he never found the big one!

So you can imagine his son was bitter

Bitter he was about that when his dad

Died, died penniless and left his son

Nothing but the dried mud stuck in his

Screen, and the boy promised that he

He would never, ever go looking for

Diamonds, and he never did, until…

One day this old woman who loved

That boy as she had loved his dad,

She said go get you a diamond today,

Son, today’s the day!  How did she

Know?  No telling but he went and got

It- the biggest old diamond, I tell ya!

It was a fortune his father had always

Always dreamed of, and the son had it.

He hid it at first, as if ashamed, no, not

Scared, but- there was something,

He could not understand.  Why him?

What got him?

In the end?

He killed hisself.

 

Every year for ages, perhaps, and for a few more seconds if we’re lucky, the great birds on their way south rest down with the mule deer and jackrabbits in Bosque del Apache.

 

BRINK

 

I look to the crane to save me.

We have hunted them to the brink…

Yet they cling gently on- in the DMZ

Not only on scorched earth of cold wars

In Afghanistan for instance and in the way

Of the three gorges dam, bird of fortune good

 

On the Bosque del Apache I knew them

The sand hills of whom Aldo sung

From far away, and they had hatched

Whoopers among them but these of

Old they nested not, knew how nor…

Though others had followed an

Ultra light to Florida and made it out!

 

So in the Land of Enchantment we

Waded not nor hiked but drove in

Nice as you please in a yellow line

Past SUV sucking mule dear, we got

Coffee at the Black Lab café on the way

Happy but I got mad at the maddening crowd

Overdeveloped America, God help us!

 

Through car windows we watched, no

Different, consuming, like on a TV

And birds were everywhere, not at all

Watching us, strange big metal beasts

But I wonder what they would have

Thought had they such thoughts as me

 

What to do with my life?  Where does it

All lead?… after all even good roads were

Paved under!  We got out at last as light

Faded I lay down exhausted and then, then

They took glorious flight, en masse, and it

Was spiritual, lost we all were and they in

The majesty of a moment of grace together

Each small thing beating it’s perfect wings

A hum of harmony and a movement sure

As the Sun rises each day and all things

Know their path, even we if we would

Only forget ourselves a moment forever.

 

Also endangered is all hope for children, abandoned by mother, father, church, and government to the care of tyrants, imagination squelched, curiosity crushed.  Help.

 

I STAND IN SYMPHONY

 

I sit in sympathy

with my students.

No one would want their job.

I am teacher.  The day is long.

 

My students begin it on that orange monstrosity. 

The insults on the bus go round and round.

Arriving they have no office.  Their only space is a tiny desk.

But don’t dare decorate it.

Everything they must carry in backpacks. 

See them hunched under texts, binders,

compass world, standards, memos home,

write ups.  They cannot possibly ever carry it all for us.

 

Every half hour bells ring and they must run the gauntlet, like rats,

Punches, yelling, spills, vomit…BUT

No time for the bathroom.

Wait for lunch—if you can make it.

Don’t dare ask a teacher.

Imagine Trump begging for a hall pass.

 

Your time and tasks are not your own.  Need a break?  Hurry finish!

Need more time?  Homework. Got a great idea?  Confused?

You cannot talk to your colleagues. Whisperrrr Teacher yells.

Lecture, lecture, lecture…

You definitely can’t talk to them.

World’s worst boss.

 

God knows in which tome I read of this form, but the locale I know well.  After two years teaching public school on the Navajo Nation, I rewarded myself with a year to write and spent it in the only coffee house in Santa Fe open past 5pm- Borders.  It was a sad year.

 

CLERISIES

 

Dr. Albert Schweitzer                                                   The honorable Dan Thompson

On Kant, Pax, and God couldn’t be righter                   Of fame and fortune had aucun

Went to prison camp for matin and morgen                   Nix, nada, none, but a shwa

& still fixed broke arms wings & his organ               Ending with esq.

 

MLK                                                                           George Dubya Bush

Took the hard way                                                       To the white house was rushed

Took on the sheets                                                       Dumb he was without a mandate

Now they’re walkin’ HIS streets!                                  With greed, power, history, and hate.

 

Georgia O’Keefe                                                          The Brothers Grimm

Painted a queef                                                 Wrote fat and slim

If Stieglitz had known                                                    Gingerbread-fed birds

He’d have left her a bone.                                             Echo “Have you heard?”

 

Gustave Flaubert                                                          Emily Dickinson

Of talent so rare                                                            Now what a fix you’re in!

And such simple heart                                                   Hope is the thing with feathers

You can smell Emma fart                                              But despair is wearing leather!!

 

Agatha Christie                                                 Don Quixote de la Mancha

Ha ha you missed me!                                                   and trusty Sancho Panca

Now the pear’s in a pickle                                            caught in flagrante dilitante

And the monkeys are fickle.                                          With Dulcinea and Rosinante!

 

Friedrich Nietzsche                                                       Karl Jung

Couldn’t beat ya                                                           By a Viener bee was stung

Cross the wire o’er the trench                                       Right on the mandala

From fiend to übermensch                                             Made him want to holler!

 

I owe this to the many kind-hearted souls who have written for the struggling writer books of ideas, exercises and affirmations, this one in particular to the Artist’s Way.

 

MAXIMUS TRANSFORMATIONS

 

In Honor of the Artists Wayward Way

 

Indiscretion is the portal to fluidity.

There is always one more angel than I dreamed of.

You can tell the free future by the train’s whistle.

There is no soup like the lack of preparation.

Happiness is a smear on the admission of pain.

Nostalgia won’t be what we once were again.

Sometimes sweet ambrosia is only the beginning.

The feelings, fascinating, are sitting in the rain.

The caring balm of hope is constantly communicating.

Someone who thinks magically is an addition to the word.

Things are more likely today than they are liked before.

Anything worth dieing for is worth living for.

Everything seems simple to an open heart is.

Friends come and come, enemies dissipate in the light rain.

I have seen the light, and it makes beauty pale.

Birth is the most severe form of self-actualization.

This is definitely as god as it gets, believe.

If you doubt there is good in everyone meet anyone.

All things are equal, the meek meet more hope.

Smile when things seem wrong and renounce the name.

One star of life spins on sunny moon beams.

By the time meat ends, moving begins.

Not one shred spun supports noting life seriously.

Things shine diffidently to giants on mountains of mind-seeking.

The more you flatter a nine to lifer the more you run smiling.

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

Foppish bourgeois bore                                                Dirty old man Vlad

Gossips a lot and smells his                                           drools alliteratively

Granny’s Madeleine.                 #17                              Then Sting steals her song.        #18

 

Plantation anthem                                                          Me me me me me

Frankly dear, don’t give a damn                                    Jewish mother and jerk off

Birthin' no babies.                     #18                              MEMEMEMEME                   #19

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

 

OLD MEXICO

I wish I could wrap

Up like first corn man myself

In a tamale

 

VIRGEN

 

Lupe wrote me a xmas card.  Didn’t say much- just like her.

Just- I’m pregnant.  They (she meant the family) asked me:

Who by?  I said- hey, immaculate conception, a Christmas

Miracle!  They don’t believe me- Help!  I need an angel to

Bring the glad tidings and share the good news.  So I sprung

The joint at that one- even if mine was a university, not a jail,

Tightly strung!  I didn’t think I was an angel- always thought

She was, but Hell!  I can play one on TV!  Me they call Lobo,

Lobo loco, the lone ranger- and I usually do ride alone- Lupe

Was the exception that proved the rule and the only card I get!

 

I showed up not in shining sunset though, but in dead of night,

Lost!  Got there and greeted the fam but before I could bless

A hair on their heads, they start in- he’s the one, the one who

Did this to you, isn’t he?!  Good thing I got wings- well, wheels

At least! Lupe hops on the back of my bike and we speed off

Into desert stars while her past is still looking for the shotgun!

 

I know what you’re wondering- did I do it? Did I really do that

To her- like it couldn’t really be a miracle, and I an angel, ‘cause

Miracles don’t happen anymore, right?  Well, you’re right.  I did

It to her but you know what, baby- I gotta tell ya- it was a miracle!

Immaculate!

 

I keep her image graven, gilded in the cathedral of my mind.

In the image’s eye are reflected a man that was me, reflected

To eternity and in his eyes are the stars, fixed forever on that

One moment.

Immaculate!

 

Mountainous joy and sorrow.  To describe to a king this country, crumpled paper.

 

UNSENT LETTER

 

Fascinating.  Timing.  Life lives on it. 

You write your letter and at that very instant

all is playing out and you are played out,

there scratched out, your pen ends, lines

on your palm- love, life- already on paper,

the words true or false gone; do you feel them yet,

the ink still dry when you see your love walk by, gone? 

Send your letter now, fool- to yourself, to remember, to learn-

nothing- it joins many such letters in your box of momentos-

but many more come, coming, timing- I’m writing one even now...

 

LA CAJA DE MI MAMA                                        MA’S MEMORY CHEST

 

Dama Fortuna no era amiga de mi querida madre          Fate was no lady friend to dear mom

quien perdío poco a poco todo, si había algo                 who lost it all little by little if any-

más que nada; sin casa ni cama, nada más                     less-thing: no house, no bed, only a

una caja tenía, trenándola de lugar en...             box she lugged from place to...

Perdío padres y casa, unos hombres y un                      She lost parents, house, some men,

maridos, hasta su último amigo, hasta                one husband, even her last friend,

que le quedía solamente dos niños- pero                       until only two children remained

de memoría no le faltaba nada nunca                             but no memory left her ever even if

aun si no había de comer- había historias                       no bite had she to eat; history she

Si, de boca abierta, y cosas sentimentales                      had, wide gaping sentimental things

también que se llaman recuerdos para no                       called souvenirs so as not to forget

olvidarse- de viajes, de juventud, de                             their family trips, her youth, and

viejos- fotografias, zapatos pequenos                            old photographs, tiny shoes as well

pa’ bébés, y rosas fanadas- de todas estas                    for babies, and faded rose, all that

cosas habían “en mi caja alguna parte”              she had “somewhere in my box”

decía- y pensiamos mi hermano y yo                             she told brother and me, we thought

que debía haber pues muchas cajas llenas                      the boxes must be bursting heavy of

pesadas de estas cositas, de memorias...                       with so many precious keep-sakes…

Si se trataba de algo, honores o tristesas,                      Whether it was honors or sorrows

mi mama tenía autentica prueba siempre                        my mother had sure proof in her

en su caja, y cuando murío mi madre no                        box, and when she died she could not

podía dejarnos nada más que su caja como                   leave us much, only the box as our

herencía- y era bastante- pero era vacía.                       inheritance, enough, though empty.

La caja contenía solamente una carta                             The empty box contained only a card

cubierta de todo el polvo de las edades             covered with the dust of ages that

que dijó que tenía que dejar a las cosas                         said she’d had to leave the things one

poco a poco... como se andaba mucho             by one… as she went around and had

y su vida era llena de allegria y también              a full life- full of joy and also sorrow

de tristesa y la caja nunca contenía lo que                      of sorrow so it never contained what

contaba, lo más importante, que era más                       counted most which is bigger than

grande, más enorme aun que el corazón.                       the heart, box, bigger than the box.

 

EL PASO

 

The music in this neon lit

McDs fits perfectly my mood-

somber but no passion, a bad

ballad.  Floods blocked the

bridge into USA, poverty

blocked our rpads out. 

Adventurer took us in-

was backpacker- now cooks

launders for 3 kids, lives thru

old photos.  Another set of

uniforms stood btwn us and

goal of return- no reason or

explanation.  Even nature

should work against us- or for-

the luck of finding rescuer. 

Feels I’m forever walking dark

unknown streets laden under rain

dependant on strangers for

food, direction, permission…

 

I cut all the poems that should be here because I felt I owed client confidentiality to the residents of the immigrant shelter where I worked, Casa Marianella.  Instead I include a couple of pieces from the perspective of those who think themselves uncrossed:

 

QUE

 

“He’s vomiting now!”

Bro/ken Spanish

“Esta vomitando ahora!”

and they seemed to get me:

poison center operator, duty nurse at the hospital, whoever

“No…bottle…please.”

calm, controlled, quiet and slow-

Caribbean Spanish speaker.

“It’s triptomene, an antidepressant.”

Spanish 

“He ate them all!” 

My three year old…got the cap off…asleep…tummy ache…empty bottle…screaming:

 “How many were left?!  How many were left?!”

In Mexico on business- I’d picked up some

Spanish

though all the Mexicans who worked for us spoke

English. 

This trip, stupidly, family vacation.   

“…water…”

“Que?”

“…temperature…”

“Does he have a fever, honey? 

Honey, does he feel hot?”

Calm/not calm…stopped vomiting…nodding off:

God,

do they say don’t let them sleep?!

I couldn’t catch any more.  A bath?

“Que?!” 

“….!” operator yelling.  

Later, no ambulance only

doctor,

translated the operator for me:

“He’s FINE!  No need to worry.  No danger at all!”

Years later: same son in

secondary school

foreign languages. 

He chose Spanish, got a

D in it.

“Who needs Spanish anyway?” he asked me. 

“Everyone today talks English.”

 

I’ve been to Mexico many times but never on business and only once as a student (of Mayan folklore), but always for pleasure.  I lay on beaches, sipped cocktails, danced many a night away and ate like a king.  My counterparts from Mexico in America, be they welder or engineer, hauled cement for hourly wages higher than the daily wages they had heretofore known, shared rooms and funds with dozens of others at home and abroad and saved  for their return the many presents they would owe and to build their family home:

 

VISA ACCEPTED

 

The first American rocket that landed on

The newly ‘discovered’ planet tried to first

Off plant its star-crossed flag right away.

Immediately a security team swept down and

Immobilized the ‘contaminant’.  Interrogation

Ensued with the result that the custodial team

Realized these would-be ‘invaders’ did not

Even speak lingua inter-galactica!  Imagine!

           

“I tell you what, Zog,” spoke the Captain,

handling one of the creatures gingerly, its

silvery skin smooth and cold between his

pincers, “their habitat is mighty puny!”

“Yes,” Zog affirmed, handling the great

space shuttle roughly, upturning it over,

“seems they’ll let anybody into the inter-

galactic club these days, eh?  What right

have they, cluttering up our own pristine

planet with their junk,” he crushed the

shuttle the Argonaut, “and then they sit

here idly, not knowing even how to tele-

path or any of the most basic skills, and

they depend on our services and welfare!”

 

 “What shall we do?” asked Zog.

Said the Captain: “To the zoo!”

 

I visited a friend who did Peace Corps in St. Lucia in the Caribbean where cruise ships dock taller than their palace.  I always try to help out and as they had an AIDS campaign going, I offered up this modest ditty in praise of the mighty condom. Lucians fear the rain

 

KINGFISH CALYPSO

 

Rain is coming, drip drip drip

Put on your rubbers, get a good grip

 

They are fish in the sea that you don’t want to eat

So when you go fishing make sure you do like me

They are fish I tell you that you don’t want to catch

Bottom dwelling fish that bite and scratch…

 

When you go fishing wear your rubbers

When you go swimming wear your rubbers

When you go diving wear your rubbers

Oh when you fish men wear your rubbers

Or you might catch IT!

 

They say man he don’t step in the same river twice

But I always come back to that same hole so nice

The road is getting so slippery

Don’t get bounced, men, do like me

 

When you go fishing wear your rubbers

When you go swimming wear your rubbers

When you go diving wear your rubbers

Oh when you fish men wear your rubbers

Or you might catch IT!

 

Some men they tell me I get fish one time!

I say that’s nice man if you like slime

 

Me when I dive I go down long way

I bring a lunch man there to stay

 

I take my time until the pump is primed

I go one time two time three time four

With rubbers on I can always fish for more

Stopping driver!

 

When you go fishing wear your rubbers

When you go swimming wear your rubbers

When you go diving wear your rubbers

Oh when you fish men wear your rubbers

Or you might catch IT!

 

The next friend I visited was doing Peace Corps in Paraguay, South America.  Okay, they were a bit more than friends, but from this one I got a call on the eve of departure saying “I don’t want my cake and eat it too.”  I knew I was in trouble but made it through the high holidays and managed not to throw myself in the Fos d’Iguaçu waterfalls:

 

RECIPE FOR DISASTER

Ingredients:

1 man

1 woman

A dash of suspicion

A pinch of innuendo

A jot of jealousy

30 second phone call (hang up)

Lots of love

 

Directions:

1.  Beat the love until it is raw.

2.  Separate the man and the woman.

3.  Sprinkle suspicion on one; add innuendo for spice.

4.  Ring phone.  Hang up.

5.  Mix well.  Serve cold.

 

I cannot do justice to the wonders of South America and the people there I saw and met, as all was colored by my green ego.  Go see for yourself.  I got tattooed and other robbed

 

INTO GREEN

 

We slept as children all winter long-

cuddled, burrowed deep, hid and napped,

lul, lul, lulled to sleep by sweet Orion’s song,

or else by spring our strength be sapped!

 

Then thaw and wonder and stirrings anew-

we rolled and thundered and cloud burst!

Snow to sleet to rain sheet gentle drip dew-

As much praised we the robin as once Jack Frost we cursed.

 

Spring comes gently first, in sir the merest trace,

but wind whips then and lightning crack!

Earth scents the air, sand stings the face

to heights of frenzy my love and I turn back-

 

But then on a day as another she turned cold

though my fire burned yet bright, now steamed-

over reason to give me, she made not so bold

And I, what could I, disbelieved as if I’d dreamed.

 

Now or then?  No answer- only round shoulder

mocking and melting me, he who once was her lover

Rage! beg, despair, rack brain- grow bolder-

Imagined I suddenly- perhaps she’d set another

 

Before me never, after I forever, first and last

that is how I resolved that it must be

Future now and every season eternal, never past,

she with me and I with her and she with me...

 

One day into the wood I watched her go

and sullen I slunk out animal-like to spy

to see if not if whither whether I don’t know

I crawled and growled and snarled not to cry.

 

She walked brisk- some purpose surely drove

I sniffed each step graceful print and scent

until she came of a sudden unto a shadowy grove

And so went I cowardly behind a thorny bush bent.

 

I saw her and yes! another creature she embraced

Blind red blood eyes I turned cursed sky to see

blinked, pinched, looked again and faced

the man she held unmistakably was ME!

 

I reeled, I spun, or was it world around

ran, stumbled, grabbed, fell, to grassy moss I clung

Then saw she was with me rocking, rolling, writhing on the ground,

Then knew it was another creature round me tightly hung.

 

In a forest alone, except air, electric mist

I was with a demon dancing, devil in green

so laughed he, she, I and softly kissed.

Peace resolved no more could ever come between-

 

my love and I back home in sweet bed light yellow

sweaty slid, made love eternal- such a silly fellow!

 

JAMMIN JAVA

 

Well the poets were wow well wonderful

Words like unicorn not penned attacked

Expanded to fill space if not infinite at least

They shook the bricks and thumped the bibles

But one echo haunts me there

My eye drawn constantly to the couch

Where she once sat, spilled her coffee and laughed

I sopped her up, never enough, gone now…

This place is packed but empty for me

Words- no matter how beautiful, or painful-

Cannot expand enough to fill my empty heart

Fill the fuckin' joint to the GILLS, all the Chinese tea

Cram the space up to the rafters still still

Still, without her, for me, it is empty here.

The ghost of her laughter from that couch

Haunts me, laughs, haunts, laughs,

And I surrender, stumble over zombie like

Startling the people- who are they all?- between

And fall into her arms

And fall

And fall…

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

Hicks hitch way out west,                                             Snow damn snow train snow

Steal spiritual pith, suck tit                                             Peasants take the house, burn books

Need better agent.                    #21                              Snow train snow damn snow.          #22

 

A why why why n                                                         Kids wear your helmet

The greed justifies the end                                             Math though non-Euclidian

Not worth an ism.                     #23                              Can crash a koan                            #24

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

 

 

 

OLD SOUTH

Hot pancake dreams and                   

Syrupy reality             

Warm you up, honey?

 

BROAD AND SALUDA

 

From my spot on Turtle Island

Where the Broad and Saluda meet to

Form Congaree River and Swamp, de

spite man-made mallandia Lake Murray

Where only Mexicans use the beach BQ

With native foods like acorns choked by

Kudzu and at farmer’s market: peaches,

Pecans, okra, greens, yams, watermelon,

Ya cotton on- in the cypress temperate-

With opossum, wild pigs, pan fish, gator,

An occasional gull up from the strand- and

Cherokee of names with C and G and…

Tikkun Olam Heals the World

 

I wish I could tell you about Freak Street, the cul-de-sac of mill houses, of or pertaining to whales where we were married on the median and had bonfires, piñatas, badminton, showed movies on the sides of houses, past the train tracks, down by the river, with the born agains and Baha’is and black, gay, Jewish Latinos and Buddhist notary, tall bike kids with dreads but straight-edge, the mad gardener and his bees and yes, even our one republican and the dying old man and the dog walker and especially the house where the Chinese lived within walking distance to their restaurant and with their Guatemalan dish washer who was run down by an SUV when they put the condos in.  I would like to tell you more about it but I can’t.  It’s my secret and I’m afraid they will pave it over if…

 

A VIEW

 

We are ALL the dispossessed.

I took that thought from village to city.

Damn this place is provincial…

Then a new thought:

Don’t you know you caress mountains with your hand?

All your eye beheld was yours to explore!

Corn rows to kiss in, lakes to drown eyes in…

Sure you had no exclusive fencing off thereof

That meant all the world was yours to mete out:

Dusty hermits on briared roads, half disclosed bathing maidens

You set your picnic blanket on any glen your heart chose!

And invited any who happened by…

I think I’ll reclaim lightly, as I look out

My bathroom window on a morn

See a bird flit over clothes line on which

Drying mop hangs, an oh so simple scene in

Green, overgrown, soft light on the sloping mill house roof

Now this place, I think- anyplace really- is place

I can stay.

No one can dispossess us but ourselves.

And I don’t care it’s special, saccharine sweet to say-

But bless this place oh so provincial.

Bless you all, and everywhere.

 

FRIDGE MAGNET LOVE

 

Come kiss me / Speak less / Soul friend / Deliciously / Luscious dazzler / Morning symphony / Like moon do / Easyful / As never night / Breath like / Beneath desire /

As kiss can / A moment / My Queen / Gentle sweet / Fruit caramel / On your lovely belly

In passionate embrace / If you want spring joy / & celebrate the rhythming / at home angel / here honey / asleep / and I will show you my

 

My now wife stalked me, seriously.  She showed up at my work, where I volunteer, and asked to move in on our third date, after asking me three questions.  It worked out.

 

BEST PAL

 

You know, sometimes, with friends I feel like a fraud.

I know it’s cause you see the best in me.

I want to be that best me.

But, sometimes I feel I must confess.

Friends, sometimes I pick my nose, and wipe it places.

Seriously I have many faults.

I’m angry-not just at injustice, greed and war.

Friends, sometimes I’m angry at computers, can openers, a wall.

Sometimes I lash out at family, those I care about.

I’m vain and insecure.

I pee in sinks.

I never cheated on a woman, but I cheat on taxes and once at Scrabble.

I’m gluttonous, slothful.  I know you know I’m fat.  I fart!!

Sometimes I want to quit.  I want to give up.  Yeah brother.

I held a grudge once.  I forget what.

Friends, I get bored.  I instigate.  I’m an incorrigible gossip.

I spread rumors and I know now it’s evil.

Like this one time… Okay!

Friends, I’m not perfect.  And I’m not sure how to change.

Truth is—I do know better.

BUT…

            But, there’s an angel.

She came down, human, so she could

love me just as I am.

Friends, I’m not sure anymore about anything.

I admit it!

But I’m sure of her.

So, friends, I asked her.

She said yes.

Friends, I want to announce to you:

Chrissie and I are getting married!

 

You have five minutes.  Pack!  You’re leaving your country.  Now what did you forget?  Shoes?  Photos?  Toys for the kids?  Rolled up medical gloves serve as a ball.

 

BANTU BOY

 

Bissimila.

I was granted a new beginning.

A little boy laughs like an old man I know. 

Old souls.  Smell the village on them still, in

yellow UN refugees scarves at the airport.  Tears. 

Careful, don’t fall on the escalator… 

Don’t forget your new sponsor’s jacket. 

Welcome and beware.  They still wear colors,

smile, at ringworm even.  Turn the saucepot handle.

They put knife twixt toes and pull meat across it.

This makes sense where they had no tables. 

What are you cooking?  Meat.  Mr. T wants to marry M.

Again.  In a woman’s blazer! 

Stop!  Don’t run off the steps.

Fayne muru. 

She’s a single mother, Black, on food stamps, welfare.

Does your image capture the colors of her head wrap?

Does It matter she is refugee?

Bantu ten years in camps.

Ran out of campfire ghost stories.

She is mother.  What identifies her?

Her oldest is Eden.  Struggles with soccer,

Likes math, writing:  “Wait for me teacher,

One daytime I will be do right.”

There is more in him than he can say.

He can say all the suras of the Koran.

Father dead, he watches over sister Y’mbaya,

Brother Humidin, a shade lighter, why? don’t ask

Oh, and feisty Yaba of course.  This is his story.

Where is Yaba’s refuge in this world neither cruel nor caring?

Seizures rack his little body, bladder flows, stomach empties,

Eyes roll, kids come running for me, years since CPR class,

I carry Yaba kicking, put my shirt under his head, waiting

Desperately for modern medicine while Eden and grandma

Put keys to his nose and spit salutatory prayers to Allah on him!

When he stops at last there is a second of silence, another.  Total

Silence, my burning ear on his bony chest.  Then a snore!!!

Sweetest sound I ever heard!  I’m scared as if an uncomprehending

Child myself, in between empty echoes an eternity until the

Heart races back babum babum babum- Albaraka.

EMTs come then, too late, terrify them with tubes,

Eden groans, another sound I’ll never forget.

He does not trust us.  Should he?

Spit sense and keys trump EMTs.

Someone explain it to me, please.

 

After World Refugee Day and thanks to fellow Voyagers, we were able to have the Unitarian Universalist sponsor a Bantu family.  My proudest moment with UUs, however, was when they embraced the unlaced bodiced pagans around a Maypole:

 

MAYDAY

 

Beltane

We’re going down.

The Green man rises.  Again.

Pagans today wear mainly black.

The color is in their cheeks.

Blood cannot be bleak.

Ribbons- blue, yellow, pink

Wrap around the pole-

Corpulent twirling parts

Surprisingly lithe, agile even,

Joyously jiggling

Cannot be laced in,

No, not even by lace

I am around around now

Tied in the middle.

Truly now the world

Spins around me.

Newton, eat your

Fig heart out!

On the grass we lay

Listening to string pluck

Birds from air to listen

You can see the notes

Arpeggio in midair!

Chrissie has a fly on her head

A huge soak on child’s tattoo

I’d shown her a flower, then

Slight of hand put the fly on

And the children shriek

When I remove the cool cloth!

I have my head on her belly

Up, down softly staring agape

At sky all wonder, silent for once

Just being… in Bliss!

This now with her with everyone

All the world around the color-

Wrapped world-pole wonderful.

Truly, the world was already

Spinning around me always.

Newton, eat your blessed fig heart out!!

 

We were also lucky to be among the birthed from the ashes of the South when Phoenix Tongue’s poetry exploded under the guidance of our guru Starino and later the alliterative JB.  Strong poets passed through, slam winners, Just Cause, blues riffs…

 

ARISE FENIX

 

From ashes of the old South / Sacred cadence burnt / Into memory / Invoke the greats

By all means / BUT / Let us not take our / Selves / Too seriously / Be ourselves

Beautifully / Zits and all / This is a hate free zone! / We can don gloves / Even wear berets / If we back it up  / With our life blood / In words / Or, at least, / A laugh!

Whisper now / To be heard over / The noise of it all: / Beer glasses, chatter, / And God.

 

WAKE UP GENTLY!

 

Ya write a different kinda poem for a

reading than a reader, one a

persons, another an idea (no l)-

you cannot misspell things for one

thing or leave weird spaces, punk-

tuations... and trite ellipses-

cadence, rhythm, rhyme forboden

These things you must singsong spin in

images spiders webs sinew tough thin

You- hey, you, yeah- you weren’t

listenin’!  The other with attention

rapt- looks at me, thru me, for a

savior, at least one night, say stand

up- take a bow- thinking of the poem

he/she, s/he would writ!

No deep ideas don’t work- is smoke

black or white depends what’s

burned- can’t burn an improv poem-

au chaud, on the spot like:

“Where was god b4 he made the earth?”

as St. Augustine (pretend self) confessed

to wonder-this won’t WORK!?!@

Gotta paint the image, bloody hands

READ< RED< READ- say, spray it,

masturbate it, slam it, jam it.  Gimme a beer, damn it!

 

I conceived of many series of poems in that sacred place and I will magnanimously now spare you, but share just one, as it is a series- of joke poems- that never got passed one:

 

JPO  K  EM  1

 

The orphaned creature’s cry is the saddest thing.

            It does not even know what noise to make.

Its mouth stretches tremendously wide.

            It is hungry, green.  It hops along.

Presently it bums up against a smooth hoof.

            Towering above is the strange, stretched, arched

Spackled giraffe powerful of limb though

            It looks unsteady on skinny spindly legs.

Its neck is thicker!  And longer!

            Nubs on its head, big eyes, it chews with

Long tongue and strong teeth

            Tiny leaves—acacia thorns are nothing to it!

Its baby nuzzles against its sloped flank.

            Intertwining its neck and little head between

Mama’s legs.

            “Mama giraffe,” the orphan asks

It’s mouth really enormous, hungry,

            Loud—“What do you feed your baby?”

Bending backwards knee, stooping giant

            Neck down, mama giraffe sees the tiny

Frog, answers—“the leaves way up

            There in the tree branches, honey.”

Baby wide mouth frog hops high as

            He can flicking out his tongue—to be

Fair it is proportionately long like

            Giraffes.  But no way can he reach

The leaves.  “Thanks,” he leaves

            Mama giraffe and baby sad and sorry.

He hops on, wind in his mouth.

 

VILLANELLE

 

She carried cardboard to the trash.

This I did not want to see.

She kept the cans for cash.

What does she want from me?

 

Why lord won’t she let me be?

She carried cardboard to the trash.

Her clothes were damp and dirty.

There were still those to call her perty.

 

The cans she kept she kept for cash.

She fell, caught the box upon her knee.

Silent her eyes registering no plea.

She carried cardboard to the trash.

 

She crept behind the naked tree.

She limped and lifted herself to pee.

The cans, the cans she kept for cash.

Will she ever be happy?

 

Is she ever, already happy?  And me?

I carried cardboard to the trash.

I saw the cans she kept for cash.

 

I was surprised when LA or SC did not riot when Michael Jackson was exonerated:

 

EPIC OF M.J.

 

The gloved fist is raised.  It is no longer for black power.

A new era dawns…

The glove is white covering A tight fist…

It means Victory for us all- Michael Jackson is free.

I saw it on TV. So it must be.

Read it on page one. Live at nine!

Jurors interviewed. Book deals. Action figures…

Michael Jackson is free!

 

Meanwhile in Amazonia the green sap flows and pesos reales are devalued.

But never mind, Michael Jackson is free!

In Africa severed limbs drip AIDS on shiny diamonds.

But no matter, Michael Jackson is free!

In Asia a starving child opens a tin can landmine and loses face.

Never mind, Michael Jackson is free!

In America drug companies find new ways to spike drinks and rape women.

But it’s all good, Michael Jackson is free!

In Oceania brown bodies pile up unnoticed bloated by yearly Antarctic tsunamis.

Never mind, Michael Jackson is free!

Arabs and Jews are killed, disfigured, enslaved all across… Europe!

But no matter, Michael Jackson is free!

A genuine American tap-dance thriller- fit to acquit- a BIG HIT!!!

Michael Jackson is free; yawn

(Already yesterday’s news)

 

Social work, as I learned in SC, does not work and is not very social:

 

FULL OF IT

 

It took me a while to see it.

I mean, I knew the death eaters in Africa.

They called themselves developers.

Why would I think social work in the States

Should be any different?

Of you warm-hearted, worm-eating, fallen

Heart-breaking parasitic idealistic leeches!

Tell me your pain, client.  I’ll write a grant.

 

Bob’s wife lay dying for five years sucking

Oxygen, silencing him, lonely Bob his

Son Vietnam Vet 100% disabled did not

Leave the house for over a year upon return

Medicated now.  But Bob is still lonely.

Eat it up, pain-sucker!  Eat his stories!

Regurgitate a theory, a platitude, a poem…

Feel self-satisfied, smug, less self-absorbed,

Self-doubting, self hating, less self-assured,

Full.

 

Full of blood.

Full of pain.

Full of life.

Full of shit.

 

Case in point, prisoners who are not allowed to receive books.  Prisoners who often work, for example, at food banks where I visited when working with shelters are among the most well-read people I have ever known.  The majority in this country languish for victimless crimes usually associated with addiction.  Anti-glue is not a fair treatment.

 

NO ADHESIVES ALLOWED

 

I got mail today!

Weird- a bit of taped paper

My own address

In my own hand

I open it to find the cards

I sent my sister Kim.

She did the murder

And is doing time

At Penn States… Penitentiary

“If you look into the abyss long enough

it looks back at you,”

she quotes Nietzsche.

Too bad they hadn’t caught her sooner.

Ten years she punished herself

With heroin, slow death for his death

And many times she called prison

No Home

I sent her recycled cards:

One my mom painted,

Another a nice quote

A picture saying “hang on”

They ripped my index cards off them.

Glue ripped paper they sent back

With a red stamp on the envelope:

“No Adhesives”

Man rules in prison-

Guards’ rules, prisoners’ rules…

 

She used up her free envelopes

Fighting the adoption and

Ten more envelopes cost $4.50

But she only makes 33 cents an hour

And sick calls cost $4 each and lock-

Down for power storm blackout equals

Lost pay too, she even used up

The yarn for her daughter’s gift…

No money for more, she writes me

I send cards; they come back…

 

“Be careful when fighting monsters,”

she admonishes, Nietzsche again,

“Not to become a monoester yourself.”

When the caged are saner

What use freedom?

We are monsters!

Our freedom’s no fucking good!

Look what we do with it…

Electric battery installers!

Nothing sticks anymore!!!

But we are all …

                             So…

                                      Damn…

                                                     Stuck.

 

GLOATIN’

 

Listen- I will not trade souls for all the tea in China!

Judge me as you will- I volunteer my life away you say.

But ours is a better way.  While you waste and wile,

I have felt the cool sand between my toes, and I count

Only shooting stars.  Pity to you who never knew the

Hug of a small boy just because you came after school

To help a little and he never knew what a man could do

Yet and I felt that.  What can compare?  Or the look of

Joy when I return to a village that never believed I’d come

At all.  And the profound thanks of they who have nothing

When you offer at least a towel, a hot meal, and all they give

In return.  Oh you who never knew that, how can you judge

Me, because I never had a house myself, or fancy things or

Titles?  Our parties are better than yours.  People laugh and

Dance unfettered while in your stadiums all languish and

Stress pretend.  We crowd small in little basements resounding

Jazz and spoken word sing song bouncing off of every wall

Bountifully blessed, walking in beauty the pollen path, we even

Love better, make and give love better, with generous hearts

Unfettered, proud, resonant, enduring.  We will not be judged!

 

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

Like poppy monkeys                                                    Qiao on Quaiklong

Mad cracked tea party from hell                                   Decorum est pro patrie

Too crazy for kids.                   #25                              Morior in the mud.                    #26

 

New age talking points                                      Ow ow ow ow ow                  

Cry Ark let loose the dogma                                         Get it out already I

No more god! no more.            #27                              Need a stiff Shandy.                 #28

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

 

ASIA

Spring brings stealthily

with the sun still in the

sky a silvery moon

 

OR

 

I can stay up all night and go to Paris

or Prague or Peoria or to the café or dingy diner

to eat hot cakes or burritos or birdseed

or go to sleep and dream of dogs or dreads or

diamonds or shiny stars or seas or seasons subsiding

or steady rising or not dream and die

or I could make an act of contrition, a random act of kindness-

put money in a meter or on a table or bench or in a wishing well

or make a paper airplane and sail on it to the moon and build a

hut there, and give it to a hermit, in exchange for a nut and watch it

grow, and climb it to the giant cloud and dance there and sing a song

and sing the song and sing and sing and sing-

the song which heals the world and exalts the fallen

on up into the and and and rejoice!…

 

After Africa plans fell through, we set off for the Appalachian Trail to get fit, hikin’ from Georgia to Maine.  However car died in Junction, Texas and by the time we’d made it to the trail head, better heads prevailed and my trail name, Switchback, was proved prophetic while my wife’s trail name, Splashback, led us to Korea but we did not linger.

 

LAMENT FOR TRANSFORMY, OUR CAR

 

I looked up at the roof of my car, my albatross.  It was gray faux felt (as kept alive the pilot crash).  But I thought this is not my gray life.  I was heavy laden, destined for greater stuff, rare these moments of honesty with myself.  So in I went to coffee shop, that my preferred anti-depressant, with blues/grass music.  Might soothe me into key/essence/tense, but the dying of the light was magic indeed, made me believe, even me, in Underado.  Who is he?  One of the 16?  32?  42?  And where or where may my true love be?  Fish float mockingly still, not looking.  The chicory is bitter, less than the lyrics, less than my heart, less than me, myself.

 

I had the good fortune, after a few misadventures, to wind up an English professor at Suzhou University where I taught writing by use of negative space, warm ups, weirdness:

 

TWO SWORDS

 

The mighty red starred epaulettes of the PRC

are selling socks on the Shanghai Nanjing rail line. 

Round faces, sallow with no/sleep register neither

surprise nor annoyance at the loudspeaker (no whistle)

interruption of their own particular somnambulant daydreams (or lack thereof). 

The socks of course as demonstrated with harsh wire brush,

are indestructible.  As dreams alas aren’t.

 

THE LECTURE

 

What constitutes identity? 

Three points.

Random gesture.

Cheap plastic clock loud.  On syllabus?

Elbow patches- ethereal over aesthetic.

Turtleneck existential black.

Lecture hall cell.  Hell!

Doodling.

Tick.  Tock.

 

Firstly…

Individuality?   Frat boys in third row?!

My god!  And I’m atheist.

Monotone.

Clicking pen.

Confining desk torture device.

Gaze into middle distance.  Ultimate distance.  Nothingness.

Tick.

Tock.

 

Second, culture.

Sensitivity training kicking in.

Political determinism.

Nature versus nurture.

Eyelids heavy.

Drone.  Shift in seat.

Assignment?  What font?!

Coed barely clothed.

Tick.

 

Did I leave the milk out?

Another ten minutes!  WHY???

Laughter out in the hall.

Why not just give handouts and nap?

Questions?

Blank faces like the unadorned grey white walls.

Used napkin on floor.  Nice.

Inspiration. Poisonous fluorescence.

Tock.

 

I know how I will kill myself!

 

COUNTRY UNDER CONSTUCTION

 

The cranes have come to China.

They bring the rain. 

Therefore they are welcome,

happily heralded. 

I’ve seen them,

breasts muscles pumping,

thousands taking flight

from marshy Bosque del

Apache in the land of

enchantment.  They followed me,

it seems.  In the desert they were

sacred Blue Herons. 

In swamps long legged egret. 

Else somewhere may be flamingos red,

giant albatross…all the same. 

One of their favorite stopping places is the

DMZ in snow cold and so they come

the world over, glad tidings. 

Alas to China in smog black

cities now it is construction cranes

that come, metal beaks rending gray skies,

they leave no place untouched. 

No space to fly.  Acid

Someday may be no rain 

Skies emptied by modernity

For now let us sit, warm,

as if on eggs.

 

TANKA

 

The dauphin hid it,

Buzzing in his royal hat,

Smiling ripped its wings,

Pinned it down in a corner,

Burned it beneath his glass.

 

SOMETIMES STILL

 

Sometimes still

When I see a cake plate

Covered in leftover frosting

I am a boy again

Remembering my great, gretestest

Joy, surreptitiously licking

Crumbs so precious

 

Sometimes still

I burst into a run for no reason

Just to jump tree roots

Growl like cougar boy

As big warm raindrops fill gutters

To swim in…

 

Sometimes still

A sunbeam catches dust floating like tiny magic pirate ships in air

If you stop and see

 

Sometimes still frosting is precious

Rainsdrops are magic, leafdoms are

Kingdoms, man, everything is just so

Warm wet precious evermore!!!

 

KOAN

 

What is the sound of one hand clapping? 

The ringing of the bell of life, the cosmic

clapper inside It, the universal sound of

existence. What is the cause of the ringing

of the empty clapper less bell? My little

pantheon: Tara the liberator flitting about

me with her flowers joyously playful, fragrant,

dispelling all fetters, attachments, bindings

holding me life a little fairy, or many, feminine,

flowery little lights all around me fending off

problems; Avalokiteshvara sitting before me

large, magnificent, magnanimous, fatherly,

looking upon me smiling kindly in complete

acceptance and approval of me and everything

about me in this great wisdom love;

VajraSattva shining behind me around me

large infinite light dispelling all dark storms

of delusion and all negativities even past; and

finally the Buddha supreme in whose hand

folded in lotus lap I sit completely at home,

at peace, welcomed, arrived with absolute

power of peace, belonging, understanding,

compassion, joy, harmony, enlightenment,

and I in turn holding in my hands in lotus

lap a little Buddha me...

 

AS SOON AS

 

As soon as I can behave without impatience—

there will never be a moment without dew drop reflection.

No more wrong turns.

As soon as I feel no more anger—

I can respond purposefully to the

Gatekeepers.

I will tell my heart to the critics insistently.

I will speak my truth without expectations.

As soon as I achieve equanimity—

Accidental Accolades will reign down upon me.

Unneeded allies will appear everywhere.

I will remember all the world’s hurts smiling.

I will play in the fountain.

As soon as I let my guard down—

Impish ambitions will attach to me.

You’ll be sticky sweet.

This poem will make sense.

As soon as I am perfect—

I’ll fetch water and hew wood.

I won’t need to be perfect.

Being perfect,

I won’t want to be.

As soon as I stop talking about I.

In the meantime,

The in-between times,

I’ll act “as if…”

 

Time in Thailand also seems under this pen to have taken a dark hue, but in the Land of Smiles, may not be the I is darkened while the ass sits zazen?  Could it be a world at war, responsible for…  This one from an expat newspaper about a sad suicide seen as routine:

 

FANNY PACK

 

People think suicide is a sudden thing,

like flipping a light switch.

The guy in the Cabana next to mine

likes certain aspects of 60s counterculture-

the more hedonistic ones.  Idealism was still

born in him.  He self medicated the phantom

pain of that abortion of hope.

Abbie Hoffman came to speak at his school.

Since he was on some student committee, the Prof who

invited Abbie said he should come to the

welcome dinner.  Apparently conversation was

lively with Abbie and the Prof.  My neighbor

bailed to bang some chick.  Figured he’d see

Abbie next day at the lecture.

No dice.  Abbie went to the hotel after dinner

and killed himself.  Just like that.  No

speech.

We hear about Western tourists on over-

extended visas jumping from hotel

balconies on Pattaya beach, unable

to return “home.”

Expats plunge to their deaths in the

stairwells of their condos.  In their bum

bags are soggy swimsuit, talc, and a

length of electric wire.  No one knows their

remains. 

To hear – or read – the news of this rain of

fed up farang in Thailand, one would

believe indeed suicide was quick and

final, an epidemic as deadly as

meningitis among village children.

But I believe suicide is all around us,

slow as palm breezes and tooth aches.

See the suicides drinking their weight each

day, all bodily fluids turned poison,

blue starred vein noses inhaling death,

trying to buy youth by the fistful, prepubescent

brown bodies on each arm, dead weight –

Impotent attempts to flee in deep sand.

See the suicides playing roulette on motorcycles

weaving like a drunken stumbler in crawl traffic carcass.

Suicide is slow – I should know, trying to

commit it but it’s no switch you flip.

I’m frenzied to light the fire but the wood is damp.

Wouldn’t you know it?

 

Social work studies were cut short by a mobilization, this one for a wetter war zone than the Middle East.  I watched over the night shift as River Center arena absorbed the displaced of the Superdome that peeled like an onion and then absorbed another hurricane, all of which I sat and spewed in my book Shoot the Wind.  This too darkens:

 

 

 

BIZ AS USUAL

 

Admittedly I’ve not been to Iraq, BUT

I know profiteers.  I saw Katrina.

FEMA contractors could go up to 200% hotel

allowance on government credit cards in times of

emergency.  Is that not all FEMA does?

Meanwhile behind the Green Line they BarBQ

by No Bid Contract built bowling alleys.

Per Diem in New Orleans, Hazard Pay in the

other crescent.

It’s the same Black water flows thicker than

blood, security or mercenary, the buck

never stops…

In an old WWI poem a soldier cleans his

rifle and gaping down the muzzle sees

an abyss.  Stare long enough it stares back.

Gotta feed the guns.  No food at the dome though!

 

Never would I wish to end on such a sour note, however, nor does it reflect my current teaching at Thammasat University, or my view of our potential poetry, I mean, future…

 

MY TEMPLE, MY TEMPLE

 

If I were to somehow have a temple,

If by some aberration one day there were a temple to me,

Let the old men sit drinking tea in it, talking, not talking,

Let the children slide down the altar, laughing, fighting, crying, then laughing again the way they do,

Let pretty girls dance there, but most of all let the ugly girls dance, in the place of honor,

Let the fat man sing there, and the thin man too, side by side, in drum rhythm,

Let the lame and the lepers sleep there in the shade, and the rich man sad at heart,

Let all the offerings left to rot in all the corners of the world be brought, orange slices and hominy stew,

Let us eat it all together.

 

Burn in the ceremonial fire all the:

constitutions and money

certificates and invoices

paper tigers and card castles

-Wash in the smoke and smell how sweet it is!

 

Though this temple were never built,

Yet it exists somewhere in the heart of us.

Treat it with reverence and remembrance, with care, not awe,

Then it is real.

You’ll feel it: solid as pillars, buttresses flying,

In mind’s eye go there to worship and repose,

Sip tea with elders, laugh with children, dance, sing, sleep, dream, and live, live, live…

 

And I suppose how I knew this project was ready was when a new chapter opened in my life.  The gris gris blessing charm given to me by my village Kiro in Male had gone missing long ago, then ended up on my father as he lay in coma ready to die.  I still had a rosary – cheap blue plastic – given to me by a Buddha.  It broke at last and I opened…

 

BROKEN BLUE BEADS

 

If I empty my stomach and open my eye

I feel lungs left me- I sweat wisdom

There is a prince round of face

And black

His smile is my smile

His yellow eyes see my soul

I want to be pure

He is a fiction who lives

This memory is deeper than the worst

Scar I have- he’s my original face

The beads cannot be broken

His words soar long after the traces

Of rhythm disappear

He holds hope

In him I am held

If I can touch bark where there is no tree

Circle with the shadow hiding from sun

Sit in peace, sip bitter sweet tea, talk to stars

And see no snakes, it is him

Nothing else can touch me but happy wisdom

I dream the crocodile not my totem I am

A seabird maybe but what does it mean to

Dream another’s totem?  I should offer my

Body to it

I would sustain- sink into morass

Make love to earth

I would ride the wind and wave and

Crash the beads are broken

The idol is hallow

Memory betrays

Where is my need and dread?

Here!

here

 

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

 

#1 Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann                 #15 Old Man and Sea, Hemingway     

#2 Ulysses, James Joyce                                  #16 Madame Bovary, Flaubert

#3 The Iliad, Homer                                        #17 In Search of Lost Time, Proust

#4 Tale of Two Cities, Dickens                       #18 Lolita, Nabakov

#5 Don Quixote, Cervantes                             #19 Gone with the Wind, Mitchell

#6 Bros Karamazov, Dostoyevsky                  #20 Portnoy’s Complaint, Phil. Roth

#7 Crime and Punishment, Tolstoy                 #21 Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck

#8 Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon                      #22 Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak

#9 Animal Farm, George Orwell                     #23 Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

#10 Lord of the Flies, Golding             #24 Zen & Art of Motorcycles, Pirsig

#11 Hamlet, Shakepeare                                 #25 Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol

#12 Huck Finn, Mark Twain                           #26 Bridge on River Kwai, Boulle

#13 Inferno, Dante Alighieri                             #27 Celestine Prophesy, Redfield

#14 Faust, Goethe                                           #28 Tristram Shandy, Sterne

 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

                        

                              

                                         all

                                     e        y

                                  r              o

                               s                   n

                            t’                         l

                          i                              y

                       T                                   g

                    U                                        a

                 B                                              r

               t                                                    b

             i                                                         a

          r                                                              g

       e                                                                   e

   m                                                                         IF the reader decides to tear it… up!

This poem maybe garbageby which I mean of little