Thursday, December 17, 2015

Gravity

Gravity, whose .....mysterious attraction
creates a physics ignored.

Love, the gravity irresistible, drawing us to touch;
Love, drawing me to your anahata;
Love, the source of mysterious, yet inevitable energy;
Love, that gives, yet takes my breath away;
Gravity, the inevitable and irresistible mystery of you.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Alexander Technique

Walked past, by your place today,
in the neighborhood, you know, scouting poetry
at a bum academic show of a score of miserable poets' ego.
I looked up at your gently glowing windows
in whose light you work and share your art, expecting nothing.
At the outdoor market once, expecting street domestic garb, I couldn't find you;
but then, your beauty wrapped in glamorous dress and elegant style
shone out, not of vanity, but care.
One evening in that light I witnessed artistic being amongst
those who share your practice who shared
their talent, music, movement, and delighted in your voice.
We kissed to a soft romance several evenings there,
chatted, shared, explored --
even learned to float a perfect soft-boiled egg on water --
respectful admiring and parting, each to dream alone.
One evening, I saw you wave good night
from that perfect windowlight, and blew you a kiss,
not desiring or expecting it would be my last.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Bumble Bees (working)

In the garden ground is a nest of bumble bees
who go about their business with no intention of interruption.
who gather pollen, let a little go with each visit to a new interest;
Who in their beauty share the possibilities bountiful in their nature.
The garden needs a chore, a human chore to move your habitation
Out of the human breast to a less intrusive spot more amenable
To our common needs -- thinking less in common than in needs.
Oh, I wished you to be gone, placing our intentions' common purpose
Beyond our selfish needs. Yet tomorrow you were there and forever,
Beyond my existence, beyond my possibilities, beyond my narrow kind.
And so, forgiveness want, I waited till the sun could no longer witness
my ingratitude, my selfish ignorance. I burned your habitat and beauty,
your selfless existence, your sharing and my admiration and shame,
all one dissolving in the smoke of gasoline and match.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

World News Tonight (2002)

The day darkened blue grey and poured down
rain on the world earlier today.
Grass grew under the wet heat
and the cool sweet rush of air before
the lightning shook the trees in thunder.
More rain is expected tomorrow and tomorrow.

Last week's storm exploded the bark off
a respected, two-hundred-year-old walnut
and blew the ground up off its roots.
Though reported critical, it seemed to have survived —
counting its decades more patiently than most —
but during the week it weeped off young leaf clusters
in a slow, uncontrollable rhythm, barely perceptible.

The grosbeaks come to join the singers and peckers,
the bullies, the meek, and other proud birds at the feeder.
A single thrush ate and trilled, delighting onlookers
while the old man who grooms her left clumps of Bessie’s
black hair on the low garden wall near the house.

People in the house are studying for final exams,
the Prom at the Plaza, and the deepening, anxious sadness
of parents’ imprudent end-games.

The May flies are gone, but hundreds of damned mosquitos
emerged from standing water, roamed the heavy air last night
and sucked life out of unwitting hosts. Dozens have been killed
in continuing hand to hand violence
while others are simply chased down and disappeared
by roaming gangs of bats and swallows.

Locusts bloomed and dropped their supple yellow flowers
in two short days a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday
their primordial green leaf fronds sifted leisurely
shadows from the light of the late afternoon.

Bessie had a bloody, near-death spell of
diarrhea and vomiting last evening
and woke her alpha at 3:06 am after a guilt-ridden dream
of fighting in shallow excrement on a despairing, humid day.
She hunched and stumbled about outside,
poured out the remainder of her bowels and wretched
a neat pile of curds in the darkness. She’s still a dog.

On a personal note, I ran my hand under the blown off bark shroud
still hanging fresh on the walnut and was stunned to experience
the electric thrill of its smooth, damp cambium. I admit
I took pleasure in the tips of broken capillaries
looking like freckles on its exposed supple flesh
in the quiet morning light.

By this afternoon it had turned wet black.

Monday, July 27, 2015

Am I David?

Surrounded by quiet circumstance and days-long isolation --
the vacationing Poets' gift --
I walk naked freely, alone, atop the mossy rocks,
among the massive trees and off-spring,
along the steeply nestled creek to dip in the pool
above an old log dam wedged between the banks.

Along the dog-worn trail passing a fire circle and a labyrinth of rock,
back to the exquisitely purposeful yet seeming random-built and scattered house,
embedded safe and secure in the mountain over years,
I pass berries, leaves, flowers, plantings and fruits of the endless garden,
enter through the spacious, airy, well-appointed
vacationing dogs' apartment (some would say, "enclosed bare-wood porch").

Back inevitably to the Poets' den of intellectivity:
rare and rarefied, addictive library corners, enchanting shelves of collections,
Camus, Rodin, Baudelaire, Dickinson, Michelangelo, Dylan,
fireplace, piano, guitar, commentary, candles and plants.

Still naked, and but for my paradisiacal isolation's looming Goliath --
the voice who threatens me with return to the human world from this nest in paradise --
I watch, asking my reflection in every mirror and glass for courage and a sling,
"Are you David?"

for Mary and Heller

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Where am I?

Where am I?
Like, yeah, no, like becoming some first times.
You know.
You know the inadequacy, our shared experience,
where you, like, know what you want, yeah, no,
and I know, too.
You, a mystery, infusing me with nuclear fuel,
like Iran, illegal according to some,
but so powerful to us locals, so legal, so impossible to deny.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

River of Love

A river of love flows
out of my heart
non-stop. And another out of yours.

Our torrential flood
flows into the frail human desert
surrounding us,
willing to sustain life in abundance and
the thirst for keeps.

Yet here is sand,
And elusive aboriginal arts aside,
I see no silk and spice in caravan,
no oasis, beyond the slippery banks
of this lonely violent flood.

February 9, 1999

Seventh Wave

Stunned, not swept off my feet,
my feeling, inadequate,
somehow absorbs the love that comes
to break, warm, around and then within me.
It is not a constant, burning heat,
not lapping sweet nor massive crest tsunami.
But like the rhythm of the seventh wave,
almost inevitable, it breaks and, more than expectation,
more than passing, overwhelms.

1/1/2014

Sunday, June 7, 2015

I Took a Walk Today

I took a walk today down by the falls, in sunshine along the railroad
I tightroped the tracks and timed the ties to step along the day.
I took a walk today, by my magnificent river, under full moon and stars,
I reason an excuse for tides, for bridges, ferries, docks and parks.
I took a walk today to open up my spirit, to give me time.

Time to fly, time to recognize my ignorance,
Time to open up myself to all my possibilities,
Time to stop thinking of them and every detail in between.

I love where I am because it is where I am.
I love to watch, to look, to have this Earth around me.
I love to walk in sunshine, rain, fog and storm.
I love to be with those I love.
I love to challenge myself.
I love to be happy when I'm finished even though I fail.

I took a walk today and the sun shone down, the Earth shone up and
I shone in between, all one.

June 7, 2015

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Booktalk

Thank you for joining in this journey with me. Do you hate it when someone calls some simple pencil scratches on paper accelerated into a book, a journey? But proceeding in the spirit, not having had a drop yet, by the way, [‘by … the way’, get it?] I am glad you are willing to share the toll on the road to the end.
It keeps me alive.
If I didn’t think you were there to pay the freight so to speak, had something in your pocket there on the seat beside me, that is, to buy some grub and have some left over on the other end of the turnpike [page-turn pike – do I have to explicate?], I would just quit.
Like you and the rest of us faced with pressing ahead, I mean moving forward, not pressing per se, but then again [‘then again’, think about it: I’m trying not to repeat myself and besides, you get in beside me here on this journey, taking a seat that you paid for once again, you get my drift; ‘you get my drift’, think about it]
I must be putting the pedal to the metal or you wouldn’t have laid out the cost of the ride already.

You know you’re hitchhiking, and I’m hoping you have a beer or a story or a joint or a kindly place to rest if needs be; that is, my ride with you already beside me, my having something virtual to look forward to, by virtue of your having hopped in and having already gotten here [x], then I guess the ride-journey metaphor doesn’t work quite, given that you could have picked up the book … stop me right here … you picked up a book that’s already a book so’s it must have already been paid for by somebody and then you might or might not put it down or bring it to the register, risking the guilt that you paid the toll or just had a cup of coffee and paid the toll to somebody else who already bought the book that you’re willing, if you did bring it to the register, to gamble it be worth the ride, price, burden and the guilt over both the coffee and the coffee and the book when there’s a baby, education, house, Mercedes in your drive, a future that may have benefited by not having been preempted by our journey begun here in front of us, since you got in.

So isn’t it the truth, hard to be authentic here, stay on track [on a journey home or away, on the seat beside me in the car or train or ox cart box, maybe scanning the horizon] when cool cynicism put those last words down, needs be that there’s a little bit of toll ready, maybe gas money, then I guess we’re already on our way in a respectful sort of way, you acting your part and I acting mine [and, of course (course, heh) directing].

Just so you know where I’m coming from, so hard just to be here, inside the journey you could burn or close, I feel like I’ve already given too much of my gratis side and need to share my gravis side, as opposed to my graveside, since you already put your change on the table so to speak to read this.
You and a few thousand others, I hope.
Words are so easy to get on and ride.

2010

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Dancer

Rare fortune to witness the wonder of a pair of vultures
cleaning bones of a dead fox on rocks in deep wood
finding themselves discovered under the gaze of dogs and I.

As we approach the cliff they rise in silence absolute
with the fundamental sacred beauty of their powers, to float effortlessly
up and above to wait for us to pass with no sense of their wondrous beauty, their performance.
As much as the remains of the fox, we're simply witness to their innocent, inevitable being.

Your beauty fills me with wonder and desire.
Without performance your every move, the dance;
the dance, your inevitable being.
"Touch me, dance, and let me trust you."

Music

Sacred dance extempo-rare, I dare
recall my strength, possessed to embrace your fair
swooping arc unbound, unbroke, rebound
to balance perfect time to perfect end, a dance woven into life.

At the window, in the street, as I breathe
Sudden dreams electric shudder chakrac isles
Shiver neck, envelope heart, course current wile
To quake desire, remembrance
embodied vision, aftershock after shock, we dance.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Aftermath a Memory -- The Lovers

Birds goes
loosely wingen
through air silent reign
feather glide motion
gentle ocean
rain pliddle sand drops.
In dawn calm breathen rhythm mist
o’er we wet skin-foot-walken soft beach
hand in hand
the birds goes.

Leaves blows ...
soft piana-key-playen wind fingers
strum tuneful hush music smilen
summer-shaded forest downy
breath of lovers breathing.
When dark come warmen naked to kiss
close lyen open wet and touchen,
we watch stars back through black patches
the leaves blows.

Love knows
nuzzle open flowing
closeness gentle, warm in
whispered kissing moistness,
candid hands, possessive lips and
passion heaving perced to the rooten
bodies now arose with petals licoured wetness
swollen hote to one the other melden
madly to-and-gether naked lovelay
soaken bursting inside one an other
one eternal molten ecstasy
only love knows.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

In the Woods

I saw in the paper that the moon would transit Saturn
on a particular night at about four in the morning.
I had a vision of the great ringed planet passing –
setting like a movie poster vision – slowly behind the moon.

This is my illusion.

Now I believe I walk beneath my stars.
I believe the moon is shining through my woods
And through limbs, Saturn and Jupiter, my friends.
The wind has ceased and smells are close,
as close as quiet in my woods now lit only by the moon.
My friends the dogs, oblivious to my quiet woods, my stars
and ages of needy, random reflection and misdirection
are my companions on this short journey, this illusion,
I believe, and share their own with me.

One New Years Eve not quite midnight I described to Elizabeth
the transit of Saturn by my moon on that peculiar night:
how the Great Ringed Ball of Gas empostered never appeared,
how the simple, planetary light and friend to dogs
passed irreconcilably behind the dark rim
of the mountains on the edge of the moon;
that the light reflected back, directly to my perfect eyes
had been created hours before in the energy of the sun
and spun off, there and back, and different light
on its own sweet time had spun my vision of the moon.

Beneath my stars, my moon whose edge
on the limbs where it rests is sharp,
I walk in the rhythm of my moon, the stars, my woods,
my moon, my illusion.

Inevitably this night reflected from Elizabeth's different light
now spins my limbs, my dogs, my moon itself,
the message, her message delivered toneless,
in transit of her shadowed despair.

Between 2001, 2002, some egg nog, and my vanity,
I ratcheted on ... how the moon and planets' motion
generate a personal sound
as the swirling silver gas and dusty rings,
reflecting light from the sun would
approach and disappear behind the limned moon --
my great and ringèd ball of gas
just a simple point of light, now there,
now not, disappearing, reappearing somewhere all the time.

Now reflecting this poor light on my friend
Elizabeth's quiet hopes last New Year's Eve,
comes this particular moon in these particular woods tonight
no less momentous than a disappearing point of light
or Elizabeth's realized despair
or my dark wander, pointless, here in the woods,
reflected to the open sky, with dogs and snow and failing sight
tangled amongst Great Gas Balls reflecting an invisible sun.

April 8, 2002

Vacuum

I. Word Game: If nothing exists, show it to me.

“1960s” not “1960’s”.
“us” not “u’s”.
“us” is not “us”.
“us” looks like “us”.
“us” is not “us”,
“us” is not “we”.
Double u is in a vacuum
We are in a vacuum; w is not.
Is anybody out there?

II. I don’t think we abhor nothing.

Is nothing a vacuum?
A vacuum contains nothing.
Nothing is a vacuum.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Nature abhors nothing.
There is nothing in Nature that Nature abhors, because
Nature can abhor nothing, so Nature abhors nothing,
least of all a vacuum.
Nature cannot abhor nothing, because nature can abhor nothing.
If Nature is everything, then everything is natural.
Nature contains nothing, so nothing is natural.
Nature does not contain everything if it does not contain itself.
Nature contains nothing, itself, and everything else.

III. Final Exam: Vacuum

Are the two us empty?
Does dead always come after death or
is there just “dead”?
There are dead things in Nature.
There are dead things in me. And you?
Does dead end and not alive begin?
Limestone: dead? Gold: dead? Nothing: dead? Us: dead?
Nothing is natural. Everything is natural.
Nothing is unnatural. Show me us.
Show me nothing. Show me everything unnatural.
Where does a vacuum end?
2001

Gravity

I write in longhand.
I do not know what gravity is.
Something draws us together.
It is not deep within or enveloping us.
Nor is it out there.
This drawing together is our doing,
yet we do not know it at all.

Snow and ash falling together
and dust in air
are simply distractions.
an energy, a physics unknown draws us together.
5/2008

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

A Night You Needed Me

I lay with you last night
asking why I want I want I've wanted you, you, yes, you,
and yet my only comfort is to hold you though I'm roused;
just to breathe in sync for hours while you sleep,
to think, to reminisce, to try to find my secret key
to your heart, my heart that now I realize is brass.

Your fox-rimmed, hooded leather costume mystifies me
till I walk behind you, your naughty womanhood,
costumed in a youth you do not need for me, for anyone:
your boots, your jeans, your darkened eyes
alluring to me and you, and yet so wanting wasted in allure.

You ask me only to be your friend, a friend, and I see it now:
I have never understood what I've had to offer you, you've seldom asked,
the you who've given me so much, so selfless, timing perfect in its edgy way,
and now it turns to this sleepless night, parsing breath and silence
holding my beating heart to yours, your electric anahata,
breathing in, breathing out while you finally sleep and breathe and sleep
baring my regrets, my endless negligence exposed, not just in dreams,
my loss so obvious yet not to me till now.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Chimera

The twins, the other voices roaming free in my brain ...
My whole wholly personal family
telling me I'm perfect
telling me I'm an idiot
telling me to share
telling me I'm wrong
telling me I'm bad
telling me the way ...

so often telling.

And Wacky Am I

And now wacky am I, I thank you, mother, for the days I take no pill; the oak table that folds upon itself, a hinge, a turn, a hidden b...