Wednesday, December 27, 2017

         Smoldering

Some mornings torpidly plod
through fields and sod
of a green and emptied mind.

But what fertile thoughts,
I wondered, would start to smolder
within tiny clods of dirt

if midwives toiled
birthing seeds from soil
buried deep,

while sprouting unseen
changes budding
underneath?
BLOSSOMS FROM MIST

the waterfall tumbles,
        sprays and refreshes
a gaggle of oldsters
who chatter like mystics

stumbling with grit
as they blossom
from mist.
        
         replenished by this curtain
         of friendship and moisture,
      
         they spread well-seasoned wisdom,
         mischievous grins,
         broad wings of inclusion

across a base of granite and schist.
while the rest of us, wet ears alert,

enter quietly
to learn and to listen.

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Let us not squander blossoms
but through persistent practice

gaze down often

onto this peculiar path
where color is born
from buds for those

with eyes that seek
to pause.
   Everything

Ten million geese,
maybe more,

paint the slate Autumn sky
in magnificent white rivers
converging here.

Wordless before such power,

we gaze upwards
at their dazzling dance,

their astonishing songs
of V-shaped beauty.

As tears stream
across our faces,

waterfalls of awe propel
us forwards

to a future where everyone stands
and is vulnerably longing,

and everything, absolutely
everything,

belongs.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

   Early To Be Late

It’s early, yet the day’s dwindling into pieces.

Night came fast, sucked
all the light from flowers
in the park.

Green is gone for now.

These sidewalks are straight as Kansas,
misspelled ancestors’ names scrawled
in Swedish, Chippewa and Croatian.

As the slivered moon escapes its lair,
I can’t stop thinking of her, her thick
brown hair.

Even gas stations won’t take this pocket 
of counterfeit coins under acres of neon glare.

Parking the tired car with its empty tank 
on a silent street, I re-tie my shoe laces
and set out into darkness, dank as a steam bath.

A drizzle turns to rain descending,
holy water of a foreign home, 
black and cold, from unforgiving sky,

this dome, deaf and blind 
to all I've been afraid to ask.
     The Smell of Success

Bukowski burps out poems
like prednisone powered hiccups. Cigarette 
ash smears the Remington's eroded
keys. Stale beer stench,
crap gin and sweat floods his room 
hidden at the bitter end of a greasy 
hall. 

As yellowed fingers pound and drum away,
suddenly his eyes glaze, he's become
a crooning Vatican castrato!

An angelic chorus of staccatoed bliss,
of tender albino flesh re-makes him. 

My bad dream is I’ll never mate a muse
as fragrant, flush with life, with sacred
intoxication, as profligate or dangerous as his....

Though my fear is I may indeed sniff her
late one eve, erotic heat hovering
mischievously above my pen or keyboard,

and when and if so ecstatically invaded,
poetically overtaken, mystically shaken,
who then, I find myself pondering,

would mow the crabgrass,

spank the brats,

scare their chums,

clip these coupons,

raise the dead, or

pay that goddamn garbage bill?

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

                         Camp Kenosis

Be extravagant and empty! At break of a cold dawn’s call
relinquish every craving, squander the most secure camel,
the freshest of the flock, for a card game and let the smallest

prayerful clinging be left broken on clumped sand,
scorching every desire at your forsaken camp.

Rest, reflect, consider on the long climb towards a place to stand,
this companionless walk through acres of crisp stalks, thick
unwoven vines, a dormant volcano steaming sulphur from the crater

and circle obsessively the cracked mirror gleaming against a single
Sycamore and linger, look cleanly into your true face: that face
before your bloody breech birth.

Quick! Act kenotic. Look up the word if unrecognized. It’s Greek
to you and me. As the tall monk proclaims: “Silence is God’s original
language, everything else, just a poor translation.”

Carelessly, courageously take the unknown inside your dark uncovered home,
where the new guest, home from hospital, this swaddled friend of chaos,
tiny night crying king of confusion might magically become unchosen balm,

coherent and composed in this flow of completion, this scintillation
of starlight, camel dung and wonder where all, above and under,
are strangely calm and weaving love letters to every stranger.
Day stretches out
towards night,

a cat yawns at the window.
He steals a look around

the kitchen, starts to nibble
the planet Venus

when nobody’s eyes
do spy him.
Real Faith
      is

knowing

in our deep
bones

through
   empty
       space

we are forever

       free
falling....

our hearts quiver 

like a drop

of precious mercury

as we,
     no longer hidden,

descend
time and again,

bidden and unbidden,

into the supple
arms
of uncertainty, and

this spacious
befriending
moment.
                       
             Ashes in Light

The cemetery soars above the river.

This holy place where we settled mom’s ashes
under the bush planted 80 years’ ago
by her father after the sudden death of his wife

is washed by November light slanting earthwards.
Mom two years’ old when her mother died,

my grandmother’s body buried close
to the bush blazing with a husband’s grief,

and now the whole hillside witnesses quietly
a presence blooming from absence, family
whispers sheening aliveness in this chilly air.
         Little League Daze   (For Jevan)

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns..” - Homer


Bat Cracks! percussive snap of smooth ash

mitts thunk hands clap heads lift up

white ball orbits deep sails leaps onto green

kids perched on wooden bench lulled to sleep

begin to scream banshees adrift in dream

boy sprints counter clock-wise base to base

dust blurs sight dulled cleats bite dry infield dirt

hat lost flew off rounds third tight

out of breath one last peak on mind to climb

head down fast despite hurt shins

slides feet first home plate

‘SAFE!’

(fans stand)

dugout clears team greets high fives

man alive!

ecstatic grins everyone for the boy of twists and turns

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

the waterfall tumbles,
        sprays and refreshes

a gaggle of oldsters
who chatter like chickens
mumbling through mist,
         
         replenished by this curtain of moisture
         they spread well-seasoned wisdom
         and broad wings across a great granite base,

while the rest of us, wet ears alert, quietly enter to listen.

Monday, December 18, 2017

   An empty plaza

except for two stray dogs
sniffing promiscuously,

rain like fresh pillows
drifting down
from a bed of gray sky

 and van morrison’s
‘brown-eyed girl’ lush
and swirling towards us

from inside the yellow church
with peeling paint, a homeless
man on the concrete steps

and Don Quixote astride
his steed out front.
         Up On Otay

Some days I can feel the cougar stalking,
almost hear its furtive breathing close,
four paws soft as air on this trail of dirt
and rock high upon Otay Mountain.

Below me a blue lake shimmers,
the great sea beyond forever glimmers,
yet squinting, I can barely see it.

Suddenly a pair of crows squawk
rude demands overhead, their raucous
calls awaken the animal in me
while Santa Ana winds off the desert
blow steady and hot, clarifying boulder,
bird, bush, what’s above, down beneath.

Thoughts sharpen and glimmer like tendrils
of gold hair in currents of thin air.
The torrid breeze on my face purifies and dries
throat and eyes, makes a single blade of grass
stand out against an astonishing sky of blue.

Everything is vivid, easily in reach,
I can see each leaf of the wispy
Tecate cypress across the southern ridge
and a lone truck shrouded by trees,
a four-wheeled mystery somehow landed
upright down in the steep canyon's bottom.

The rustle and sigh of oak leaves afloat,
their flutter calms in this raging heat --
everything appears clear, except whether Otay’s cat


hearing boots scuff on the stony road will strike
with her powerful claws, her awful greed,
those razor teeth that can plunge like a savage
goddess into a man’s muscle, tear flesh
and tendon from bone.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

Everything

Ten million geese,
maybe more,

paint the gray Autumn sky....

Wordless before this power, 
we gaze upwards

at their dazzling dance 
and astonishing songs

of infinite beauty.

Tears stream across our faces,
waterfalls of awe

where everyone is longing

and everything,

everything 

belongs....


After the pounding rainstorm,
before the dark street outside
unpuddled,

the old man sidled up to his dozing wife,
nuzzled her like fog kissing tops of trees,

his unshaven cheek barely touched
her sexy freckled shoulder

like sunshine shyly touching
burnished barley sheaves,

like Autumn wheat softly swaying
to the couples' quiet rhythms

as songs of love and life's giving
resounded in their breeze.
none of us knew 
nor understood
how 

one white 
rose could 

in its perfumed 
dangle, its 
fragrant 
song

put a wrong day 
so right.
Day opens into light
like a cat stretching
at the window,

takes a furtive look
around the house,

then quickly nibbles
on the planet Venus
when no one’s watching.

day opens
into light

into stars
of golden
honey
her sweetness writes
in perfumed ink

across a cerulean sky,

wafts forth
towards

seductive depths
singing within

moist earth's
sensuous

welcoming
reply.
getting to
know you

is pure
delight

now I
see

how stars
feel

emanating
light.

Friday, December 15, 2017

             The Voice

the downtown train station sparkled at noon
as six or eight passengers lugged bags
across a grand gleaming room.

you sat shrouded by a favorite cloud
of ongoing gloom, tears like winter rain
washed what remained of your departure
too soon to mundane Midwestern towns

with odd names announced with a frown
by a tired black porter in the middle of night
as the train roared along.

and do you recall that he offered you a song
as you pulled in to Omaha; reluctantly you
relented, grinned shyly, as he belted forth

loudly in the aisle, a generous Pavarotti
lifting your mood, and how he sang

with great soul for hours until daybreak
in Chicago, all the while his eyes laughing,

beguiling, with a sweet voice off track,
completely out of tune?

Thursday, December 14, 2017

the waterfall tumbles,
           sprays and refreshes

a gaggle of oldsters
who chatter like chickens
mumbling through mist,
          
          while spreading their well-seasoned
          wisdom and wings across a great 
          granite base.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

 Dreaming Circles (for Ray)

Like beads on a worn broken rosary
or wine colored leaves dropping
from the crown of a maple, people we love
depart from our lives, vanish
somewhere, (thin air?), one by one,
while we clutch what’s left of the string,
furtively touch each smooth trunk, remember
with love and anguish our lovers our friends,
recite feeble prayers, rail against long starless night,
deny death's bite, it's leaden wall (the sudden sound of an end),
or like a cynical monk refuse god’s unseen embrace,
either way wonder when and how
we too shall take our last
leave from home, abandon the circle, 
fall breathlessly
down
finally
into mother-earth’s mysterious floor,
seeding the patient ground
with dried leaves, discarded
beads, where each quietly
dissolves then re-enters
the sacred circle,
becomes in time's slow gleaming
a new tree of life, a world
of small miracles dreaming
itself seamlessly again and again
into the warm arms of being,
like the shining smiles and bright mind
of a brave, open-hearted friend
we shall always hold dear, 
even after we take our final leave
from the shelter of trees
in hazy, soft glowing moonlight.



Wednesday, December 6, 2017

                 Restoration

One daughter is a dark table half-hidden in trees,
heft of her grain sheens moist with dew;

the other a bird, lover of sky and horizons,
her song of sweet freedom not heard for years;

the son a rainbow under snow covered cliffs
where young women and men jump to fly,
burst forth with glee to fulfill wild dreams.

Here on the edge of a field snowflakes drift
and plop softly like unwritten poems
from the blue dome overhead and cover our table,

holding a bird feeder, binoculars and detailed map
to a high mountain pass where children play
music with feeling, eat sandwiches cut neatly in half,
after lunch, chase each other shrieking.

Later they lay on silken mats,
wear raincoats from Stockholm, eat stuffed cabbage
from Zagreb, learn to love each other’s quirks

while waiting for jolly pranksters to tell stories
of home for nickels or decanters of blood-red wine.

The painter mourns his lost children traded
for adventure after death of a dog, a grandmother,
a family, a job, a home, stormy times
raining warfare and fear.

He makes art from blacks and reds cracking a canvas
of circular thought, a topography laden with strokes
of thick sad colors, heavy, stiff yet resilient and sharp as knives,
like the steely will that repopulated families of Croatian villages

flattened in Winter, wracked by flaming siege
and these daily departures of children and women
across unknown frontiers.

But where are their men when desperately needed?

Three children stand together in an empty pool
in this new country that has found them.
It’s noon. They rest quietly in sunlight,
their serenity, unsaid and subtle. They feel soothed.

Each is a flower, a rose, an iris, a gladiola,
forces newly risen, a poem and a painting
come full circle, birthing their own sounds
of truth and delight composed for a father returning

from years of foreign battles, adorned in rags
and many memories of his errant wandering,

now finally smiling around the same table, 
all together they sing of family restored.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

      For Jevan

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns..” - Homer


bat cracks!
percussive snap
of smooth ash

mitts thunk
hands clap

heads lift
up

white ball
orbits deep

sails leaps
onto green

kids perched
on wooden
bench

lulled to
sleep begin
to scream

banshees
adrift in dream

boy sprints
counter clock
wise

from base to base
dust blurs sight


dulled cleats bite
dry infield
dirt

hat lost
flew off

rounds third
tight

almost
out
of breath

one last
peak

on his
mind
to climb

head down
so fast

despite hurt
shins

slides in
to home
plate

‘SAFE!’

(fans all stand)

team greets
high fives

man alive!

ecstatic
grins
everyone
pungent sage
after the storm
subsides,

my hands grip
the cold
steering wheel,

all the self-control
on this solitary 
road

your missing
voice and sweet
fragrance

hold.

Monday, December 4, 2017

                     Elmer (Be)Fudd(led)

a squat chap, squinting and balding with rifle in hand,
trudged like a chunky spud on two legs
through oozing mudflats from garden to garden in dark of night,

hunting a long-eared crop stealing thief, a scoundrel
who burrows and hops with skin like Teflon, leaving the lone runt
downcast, bereaved, fatigued and forlorn, bewildered, befuddled,
beaten down, but not beguiled one bit

by the drip drip drip of daily annoyances and this no-account nit-picking
neighbor of nuisance, Fudd found some small shred of solace
in browbeating and besmirching, essentially buggering ‘Bugs’ good,

the wascally wabbit whose gray fuzzy nose was forever nestled
in deep fertile dirt and moved through fenced plots of earth
like a greedy speed reader librarians love or a semi-truck driver

roaring down Route 87 on another kind of speed, sniffing and snorting
the yellow-orange high in vitamin A good for your eyes,
(for a fresh crunchy one he’d give you his hare shirt)
this garden variety cocaine commonly called carrots.

Living low, close to ground zero, made Elmer feel bugged,
envious of taller heroes, a low grumble in his mind droned
constantly on like a sticky second hand smoke which stunk up his house,

and forever trying to ignore his thirsty third wife with her porky smooth skin
her bark less than her bite, like a stumbling drunk with yellowed fingers
that grip for dear life a wobbly barstool, our woozy Elmer onward chagrined.

One windy moonless eve on his wayward walk home after several or more
tonics and gin, he met his nemesis the rabbit down on the curb, and heard
how the carrot crop had withered and vanished from an unusual late frost.

Elmer’s enemy looked almost human in that rare moment of straight honest talk
causing an upsurge of compassion throughout his frame of three feet
and with no further ado into Fudd’s cottage did the two hop  
for a post-midnight snack of barley and cabbage and a frosty cold one,

from that moment on Mr. Fudd still stubby and unsober, but for once
un-befuddled, found a true blue unsoiled agape in his tipsy epiphany,
this unspoiled love of a thieving, orange eyed, carrot-gluttonous rabbit.

He might soon leave his quarrelsome pink skinned honey
for this new pal Bugs Bunny.

Please give it a whirl dear reader, what’s your best guess?
           Meal

Caramel colored cashews,
nutty crescents scattered

over sauteed broccoli
and kernels of corn

kissed by melted butter,

gave good crunch
and substance

to Friday's tasteful
hearty meal, the first

in many months alone
without my crew,

without your sweet lips,
and eager tongue
tasting too.