Red Salt

My vagrant ways became annoying,
desultory were the holy socks
the grumble stomach,

until one day a plumped up dumpster
with flies and fleas circling round,
whispered my baptismal name in
metal letters,

told how blood is salted,
streams in dark through
cells while caressing,

speaks in hushed tones
rushes and trills,

a sacrament red and
wildly painted
washes us clean into
human sainthood,

fills high and low and what’s in
between with invisible scripture
writ sacred from glorious trees
and our full life story.

Since that message tin cans sparkle,
each new season and every alley

fountains of light and lovely folly.

ALGIERS IN AUTUMN

“Sojourn with me
to Algiers”,
she entreated at
the museum of light.

Its astonishing layers
and ivory walls reveal
histories of mystics,
colonial plunder and fight,

they meander like snakes in
the dust over miles for days

are white as cow’s milk
or children’s first teeth

and the heat, how it blazes
pours down like hot caramel
on narrow alleyways

in a sweet golden scorch
from cerulean skies,

we’ll pray word/
lessly at noon
on our eager
four knees

in magnificent
mosques bathed
in silken
Mediterrranean
breeze

make love
all night
soaked in
oil of myrhh
on thick
tapestries

dally in the cool
moonlight
of a perfumed
room.

How could I not awaken at once,
begin to pack cotton socks,
that cherished book of Rumi poems
to unbury those bright emeralds of song,

commence this longed for pilgrimage
of lushness, the very second
“sojourn with me to Algiers”,
she seductively crooned?

Home Coming

Our bodies are homes
where dreaming resides.

Oh, how in good times
and hard these bodies are
our first homes and our
myriad stories their lush
verdant back yard.

When we bide our bodies
with a light touch and care
we honor our homes, know
in our guts that we do
live there.

In a drunk Mexican town
under the volcan’s haze
or a vibrating street in
a big East coast city,

our muscles and sinews
sing of home and the yearn
for a friend who takes us in
in all weather through
their open front door.

Whether rich or poor, in ill
health or not, he offers cups
of warm tea fragrant
with cinnamon and clove,

listens closely as we tell
our real story of desires
that burn and secrets
unclothed,

show simply our nakedness
this wavering and fear,

how we battled our aches
stomached deep doubts
year after year,

then with some luck,
shimmer and glisten,
we both settle in chairs
of plum colored softness

watch the night stars
turn slowly while long
travels liquefy,

we smile and sigh fully
feel close to the earth,

there’s now birthed
a surplus of ease as
we know in our bones
strongly,

true home and high
treeful dreaming
may finally
be nigh.

dance lesson

the real reason people stop dancing at night alone in downtown lofts
and cozy wooden houses with azaleas in front yards tucked back on slow roads
is not that they can’t glide like stars in the black canopy above or have been
given at birth two left feet in tortuous shoes which pinch and contort

but they don’t stand up, unkink knots of tightness and dance to soft soothing
silence or to music which trembles the heart and shakes crazy their floor when
day is finally slow and all is easeful so quiet,

(to me it’s the damnedest, one of the saddest things),

they’re afraid to open into their god-given bodies,
let go of smallness towards the great nothing
and with full unthinking relish, relax like a child
and laugh into love!

EFFICACY

Jake’s proclamation to the beauteous
Contessa of the court was efficacious
and scandalous, his red rimmed cheeks
burned like a bedroom of crimson coals
and she blushed a pink prettier than any
Aurora Borealis in their torrid time
of volcanic heat,

as their thirst was slaked
they burst open sated
in molten
complexity.

Why File Bankruptcy

unavoidable debt piled up on her front porch steps
like months and months of unread soggy newspapers,

sapped her strength, bogged her hopeful mind,
and raped her will to do what she must
and could to beat the odds,

to ride in high style the crazy wild foaming surf
through capitalism’s thickest banks of fog
to her true home secure and warm,

her emerald palace deep within lofty trees
of red and green amongst the friendly gods!

for HEIDI--2

May your Autumn Harvest fill all your bushels
with ease, a surplus of fruitful wonders to de/

lightfully please your lovely soft feet
and those double sweet knees

as you hike up your hills and penetrate each valley,
may the grace of ten saints rest on your lap,
uplift your spirits and whisper tall tales

as you silently nap in your hammock between
those grinning mischievous twins christened
surplus and ease

who deliciously swing sway you half-daft
in the waft of a breeze….

for HEIDI

for HEIDI

May your Autumn Harvest fill all your bushels
with ease, a surplus of fruitful wonders to de/
lightfully please your lovely soft feet
and those double sweet knees

as you hike up your hills and penetrate each valley,
may the grace of ten saints rest on your lap,
uplift your spirits and whisper tall tales
as you silently nap in your hammock with
hair blowing mischievous twins christened
surplus and ease

and deliciously swing sway in the waft of a breeze….

field of dreams

a bloated belly rises from the diamond
of his body like a pitcher’s mound at dusk,

the game begins again:
one resin bag in dirt
and a pair of steel cleats
scratch their workday marks
on his baseball skin

eight thousand fans lounge alert
in bleachers built of wood
from miles and miles away

chug cold beers and cheer,
watch the show unfold

roar, boo and bellow
approval and disdain

with every pitch, belly
laugh and belch
as he lazes in
stadium's midst
soothed radiant
by the breeze,

enjoys untold innings
curl pleasing
unpredictably
into one another

(so full and slow-
going these
spherical
afternoons
of curve)

he's warmed by
Autumn’s
dervish sun
in his chubby
golden Buddha
days

plays the teasing
maverick
asleep or awake
with graceful
twists and turns

and a smiling
gut-first sliding

sure athletic
ease.

The Misanthrope Laments

Unwild childless women strap up after work to walk their puissant
yapping dogs round and round and round the goddamn boring block,

gulp down quickly as prescribed by their tick tock tick-tock clocks
dry thin rye-krisp crackers with white pots of lukewarm tea for
desultory dinners just enough to keep alive at gruesome tables
where guests are rarely seated,

they later sit starched prim in pews of peeling pressed-board
inside churches of no name, pretend to worship any bland mute
and balding faggot gods who remain to bully, conquer fully
the faith-fooled dressed-up vain..

Unbeguiled tired husbands stagger and march weak-kneed
in saggy under/pants toward tiled family toilets in some sort
of weird inhuman trance,

athletes’ feet pad across Berber carpets like Bedouins on sand
as these men vacillate, grouse and rant about sour low-fat cows’
milk spilled on expensive hand-carved couches..

The moral of this poem, the story behind this song, leads one
such as you to think through well (do tell) what the hell
has gone wrong?

A Plea for Surcease

Can you help me find a cure for my myriad
allergies, please? You see junk mail makes
me nuts, fills my nose with phlegm so thick
and full of gunk I can't think, forget what
my girlfriend's rich breath smells like,

it used to remind me of the scent
of that fun color-- pink.

Hives burst from my splotched up face
like ripe berries or volcanoes on the make
and man they itch so bad--
it's like a bus on crack trashed my old man's
drought tolerant front yard, overran his pad.

Can't you see, it's hard to stop the mail,
every day he brings me more, it's a living
fucking jail,

but with your aid this time maybe I won't fail
to breathe deep, sleep straight through
the silent night again.


Send your checks or cash by US Mail
to P.Lautz c/o SD County Jail
and you shall be wrapped within
my prayers for nearly as many years
as this cure and your kind sure acts
prevail and my hard won health persists,

(in this, a loving dovetail of dermatological release)

ps--each day when awakened by the postman's steps and stumbles,
I thank god my jailhouse bunkmate is a stone blind deaf dumb bumbler
and junk mail ain't yet printed up in braille or downloaded onto ipods
for the sightless hearing impaired ones.

Take Your Stand

Stand firm on thick sand or even
when at odds sick with pain

in sun and rain be chest open
quick to quiet and the late
shifting hemlock leaves


breath deep and easy so the scent
is noted in those pores and nostrils
of each amongst these greenish trees

pink and soft, it’s our last chance
for earthy life to lift aloft,
I implore you

it’s now forever,
please.

MUST THE MAIL ALWAYS GO THRU?

I’m allergic to junk mail.

My chiropractor prescribed calcium capsules
and a disappeared mailbox,

he proclaimed at our last consultation:
“purchase a one way ticket to Canada by canoe,
you will feel a certain relief, a quickening in your
cardio-sternum as the box floats away”,
as his well researched treatment protocol.

Night after night I trudge upstairs and carry inside
my casa umpteen petitions to save the caribou in Alaska
and those sixteen wolves in Yellowstone,
compulsive outcries, these crazed repetitive pleas
from the local public broadcaster for my annual cash
(why can’t they cease and desist, find another career?)

and thick wads of unruly paper stinking my fingers
with cheap printer’s ink exhorting my consumer self
to let the inner addict out into the holy marketplace of Geico
and the local pizza joint and save some bucks by spending more
on cannolis, car insurance, and let’s not forget to use
those little coupons for reduced price car washes,

my poor itchy skin commences to look like crimson
lunar pockmarks or Cancun twitching after a 6.6 earthquake
creased the tropical city into fiery folds of broken ground,

not a single chiropractor in sight and all the mailmen have
crammed their kids into cars to caravan towards Quebec,
they heave and careen around curves heading north
as I scratch and scratch, smear hydrocortisone cream across
acres of derma and read the latest news,

oh god or goddess of junk mail will you ever hear my calls?
I am down on my last plucky swollen scabby knees,
I’ve rid myself of mailboxes and fired the quack I’d hired,
it’s my turn for some good luck,
won’t you listen, please!

traces

Trace the reclining arm back to its strong shy author,

give bulbs and beetroot to stickball kids with mitts
who sit to catch their breath on the little stoop,

tell no one of your sadness or your glory
for time rolls sure and slow over each
and every morning,

then when the lunar breeze blows inward
from the canyon,
feed friend and foe together at the long birch table,

the final feast is placed in bowls and brimful platters,
and if the rain is lucky, we’ll forever be there smiling,
lapping up gladness in brown gravy like Thanksgiving turkey,

our noses lips and smooth foreheads dripping,
sopped aglow in pooled delicious-ness,

outside the window a waterfall
aroar and pouring
lasting past our many doubts,
they're all wet

our now is fine and real
and over stones
so flowing

this music babbles
onward as
unclipped
wildness.

SCREEN YOUR VARMINTS BETTER

Why are all screen doors torn out in small town flatland Texas?

Bugs big as your fist worm their way through sagging
rusted metal without its sheen, orangeish iron careens
unsprung from dull bent tacks like drunk cowpokes lost
and sickened fast, metal thin as an elder’s skin
floats like dying tissue in the bloated breeze.

They heave their red meat guts on the kitchen floor,
heat stroke can hardly close the door against rough
and tough Neolithic insects or snuff lipped humans,
bowlegged unsung curmudgeons such as these.

August marauders try to beat the fucking never-ending heat,
do their best to wreck all rest in your messy nest, the downbeat
casita of squalid unspent dreams,

leave slithered trails of meandering yellow spittle
on this chipped bowl of half-eaten spilled granola
like a gruesome grieving pilgrim Gretel sans
her roly-poly ‘round up them
usual suspects’ Hans.

Now that you’ve read of Texas and its few proudest,
recall how The Late Poet writ it well, (hell, best):
“Good torn screen doors bug fake and boring neighbors.”

Black Mountain

Black Mountain became blacker today,
its granitic peak hid inside numbing
leaden covers of quilted fog,

and nobody had been ready.

Sorrowful clouds obscure any perhaps of day,
morning empties out promise completely,
now is altogether night.

Coal scraps from innards deep have been hauled
piece by leery piece in short tons up blind-sided
onyx tunnels by brave and weary men,

(oh their sodden silent pain, their once young arms
and limber legs have ached and ached for long
and fearful years)

and rowling heaving machines born in the reek and roil
of industrial nightmares where smoke thickened storms
brew sulfurous smells and warn with blood red pennants
windblown, waving from a thousand feet under this hollowed
out midnight sky.

Anthracite hunks pierce and scrape elegant tall
pines raw, rocks of congealed heat slice fierce
through rugged bark to fibrous skin where amber
sap once ran sticky as syrup and small children tumbled
across these acres until circles had each been named anew,
as so full they were that once,

and each crying salt tears and joyful shrieks in shade
below on pungent green and brown beds
of soft needles which surprise,

all they ever wanted
was to fly free like
those pleasing birds
and butterflies above,

there in the heavens
of seamless smiling
ease, radiant light
and the very yes!
of love.

Yet, Black Mountain
did darken today,

and these birds search
and grope for clear air
to breathe
and to be on wing again
in the wet cold gray
of a truly drizzling
morn.