Blooms boiling over the trellis,
blue, purple, ultra-violet
Appear in dew of new sun
and drown in ink of night,
Drop to a carpet of color, fading
memories of mornings’ glories.
Morning Glories
2
Category Archives: Home
Sam1-4
Sam1-4 wrote from afar
(I'd never met or heard of him)
in a box of sandals, blue,
A note, quite brief, which simply said,
'Packed with pride by Sam1-4'
(sweet he thought that I should care),
And, mused I, that Sam must be
a kind and gentle working man,
perhaps a sort I'd like to meet,
Though almost certainly he speaks
a tongue quite strange, unknown to me,
like bird song mixed with clicks and halts.
In my mind I greeted him,
"Hello, dear Sam1-4, good soul!
How pleased I was to get your note."
And he replied, "My dear new friend!
How fine it is to hear from you!
You are the first one to reply."
And so we garrulously spoke
on many topics, low and high,
women, books and moons above,
Until the man from Porlock knocked,
(the interruptor famed of old)
who broke apart my reverie.
I know that Sam1-4 and I,
shall speak no more, and I shall miss
conversing with this distant friend,
Who, if were found, could only speak
with smiles and tears and waving hands,
as he outside my head would be.
Mona Lisa
He saw the Mona Lisa on
an ancient wooden power pole
one San Francisco chilly day,
Surrounded by a murky fog,
a thing of strange consistancy,
a soft translucent wall of air
Pushed aside his probing hand,
he tried but could not touch the child,
still smiling through five hundred years.
A crowd assembled, curious
at his pale arms grabbing air,
"What are you doing?", asked a girl.
"Don't you see?", the man replied,
"Her face, her lips, her guile and charm,
the slyness in her gentle grin?"
A boy, quite small, ran to the post,
and said, "I see a poster there.
It says, 'Reward for my lost cat!'"
They smiled and laughed, not at the man
but just the gentle joke of it,
as thickening fog spread round about.
He turned and moved into the crowd,
now silent, gray as lumps of clay,
they fade into the darkened day,
While, down the street, the boy cried soft,
"Here, kitty, kitty! Here, kitty kitty!"
The man, alone, remained distraught.
He turned and faced the splintered post,
which smelled of creosote and tar,
and saw that she remained aloft,
She smiled at him and knew his soul,
his secrets, sins, and failed loves --
naked, though still clothed, he shrugged,
He walked away, his eyes held low,
and, guided by low booming horns,
he found himself at water's edge,
And took the ferry waiting there
across the cold and choppy bay
to an empty house so far from her.
Chaos
Chaos writes with windy pen
on dunes of sand and frothy sea,
cirrus clouds aloft, and then
Erases all before we see
the transient text that's hid therein.
She makes a breeze beneath our door
and tricks us with her icy chill,
freezing feet both rich and poor,
Whispers with a voice quite still,
while scuttering frost along the floor.
Carefully mounded garden leaves
spout up in twisting jets of air;
she throws them up into the eves
And casts them down upon our hair;
confusion reigns while she deceives.
She moves the air in many ways,
a gentle touch, a typhoon's blast
slanting rains from storms just past;
She whimpers, rages, laughs for days,
the words she babbles forth don't last.
So, though the message can't be read,
still, it's plainly understood,
that Chaos birthed our world and said,
"My work is neither bad nor good,
in fog you stumble, then you're dead."
Phoenix
His mother told him many times a bird most striking had appeared in the window at his birth, How calm she felt the last hard push which shot him forth into the world, as red and yellow feathers flared.
... In the woods, the fire burnt out, an old man left the child there with tales of gods aflight. The boy had felt the ashes, cold, startled at some thrashing wings, seen glints of color in a tree. ... His guide was pointing to three birds, flying through a sulfurous cloud at craters's lip where they fell dead; The hiker sensed a whir and saw at vision's edge a brilliance fleeing molten rock. ... On his walls were pictures -- quetzal, peacock, red macaw, golden pheasant, scarlet ibis; His questions lay in ancient myth, memories shimmered through his day, his dreams at night kaleidoscopic. ... She was above him, rouge and gold, nuzzling hair with avian kisses, feathers falling over him, And sang, "Miss you so, love you so!" He felt her answer brush his cheek, his last breath smiled, and then he flew.
Calendars
He never found a calendar
he couldn’t keep —
Museums, Mens’ clubs,
Bornholm, Bay homes,
Cathedrals, Cats,
Gas stations, Radio stations,
Candies, Cookies,
Doctors, Drugs,
Insurance agents, Actors’ reps,
Pols, Celebs,
Pinup girls, Weber grills,
Alliance Française, Esperanto Youth,
Night school, Preschool,
Elder Host, The US Post,
“Dates, steaks and apricots,
shipped to your door”,
“Pigeons & Crocks,
and much, much more”,
Endless lists,
guarantees
that time persists.
Cobalt Blue
As he walked,
he thought of cobalt blue,
And the many acquaintences
who knew it by name
And admired or even
loved it.
He thought about their isolation
in this affection,
Their membership in a group
that never meets,
Diffuse and unknown
even to their own selves,
Secretly united only by
joy of observation,
Who regale it
in their vases and walls,
In the folds of curtains,
feathers of a forgotten bird,
At dusk the edges
of distant mountains.
Some are illuminati who know
the truth of the hue,
That, absent cobalt blue,
only vacuum would exist,
With occasional photons
or other-ons
Racing from each other
at the speed of light
In the slow entropic-death
of a cobalt-blueless universe.
He realized the planter beneath
the garden wall
Asserts his existence,
that all is here and real,
That he can stop holding his breath
and breathe once again,
That the race is slow,
and oblivion infinitely distant.
— Cobalt blue is both a color and a substance
(cobalt aluminum oxide — CoAl2O4). The
nature of our universe predicates the existence
of cobalt, aluminum, and oxygen.
Metamorphosis
Every night, when they went to bed,
she spun a cocoon about herself
of blankets, sheets, duvets,
While he slept adjacent,
clinging to the edge,
strangely content,
Knowing that, in the morning,
she would emerge,
spreading her wings,
Fluttering him
with love
and scrambled eggs.
Adult
He was stiff and ached
from the dares of childhood
and near-misses of youth.
He remembered being seven,
able to run faster than
anyone in the whole world,
And knowing with certainty
that, when he grew up,
he would run even faster.
Ode to an Old Shirt
You were a gift
with a slogan
across your chest.
“Talk Bizarre” or
something close —
all that’s left,
After many
detergent cycles,
is a faded Z, and
Many holes,
tears and
sagging neck.
Once worn often
every season,
you performed well
In the manner of shirts —
kept out cold,
blocked breeze,
Shielded skin
from sun,
sponged up sweat.
But “Bizarre” gave you
a long life
and many conversations,
That was your
unique attribute,
your elixir of youth.
And now, wet
with soapy water,
you push and pull
Across a filthy car,
Z forgotten,
no longer bizarre,
Suffering the
mundane fate
of a rag.
Limericks for John
PTH
Peptidyl tRNA hydrolase
Eliminates cellular toxic waste.
In the heat, cells will die
With a cough and a sigh,
By John’s lethal mutant erased.
Sea Turtle
There once was a sea turtle carapace
In the basement of Menninger’s ediface.
In the middle of winter,
The museum did whimper,
And the shell swam back fast to its starting place.
Frogometer
What a wonderful thing the frogometer,
Diabolical quasi-voltameter.
When a frog sees John enter,
The amphibious sprinter
Breaks records and hops a kilometer.
Rattleback
An amazing thing is the rattleback
Spins merrily left with a tiny smack —
But to physicists’ surprise
Natural laws seems like lies,
As it even turns left with a rightward whack!
Limericks in honor of Prof. John Menninger,
who finds them the highest expression of poetry,
on his 90th birthday.
Ghost Tree Sirens
The sirens sit in a green field
and warble him to death
with the sweetness of their song.
Homer, The Odyssey
Ghostly beeches in Winter’s crisp
spread ochrous wings,
and siren call,
“Come, we beseech
and implore
and beg and sing —
Leave the path and
tramp the muddy ground
through ferns and leaves.
Come beneath our wings,
our pale protection,
our comforting arms.
We’ll guard you
from loblolly ghouls
with heaven-piercing stems.
We’ll lay you down
with softest rotting logs,
and moldy turf,
And moss you over
with fairest green
like dripping sponge.
The anxious squirrel
will race over you
and rest content.
The worms beneath
will squirm in peace
and fear not the crow.
By us, you will
sleep forever
in Eden’s forest.”
— Photo is a “ghost tree” beech
in a loblolly pine forest near Chapel Hill, NC
Mole Kid
When he was small,
he burrowed
to the bottom
of a sleeping bag,
at the foot of his bed,
under piles of clothes,
searching the beneath of things
for quiet answers
to questions he
could not ask.
They worried, but discovered
one day
his eyes peering out
from sofa cushions
and gradually
he emerged
into the world above
with squinting eyes
and questions flowing
from his tongue.
He became
a golden youth
arms wide, embracing
the wind,
as he ran for the
pure love of running
sucking air
in great gulps,
singing, in
bassoonic voice,
quavering ballads and
booming hymns,
and mole became man
dancing with friends,
in a circle
of perpetual surprise.
Johnny Dollar Died
We thought he would die
in a hail of bullets,
Or forced over a cliff
by a villain’s car,
Or poisoned by one too many
jilted blondes;
But, instead,
he married, had kids,
Retired rich
and grew old.
His memories faded,
but on his death bed
He gasped his last words,
“Expense account total, zero.”
Johnny Dollar was was the star of one of the longest running
radio detective shows ever, “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar” (1949-1962, 886 episodes).
Here, courtesy of the Internet Archive, is a sample:
Monsters
After flying all night
over the Atlantic,
he deplaned,
while children ran from him,
screaming, “Monstre, monstre!”,
in Danish falsetto.
He examined himself
and found nothing grotesque,
aside from a few
bumps and wrinkles,
tired eyes and
an unfortunate reliance
on flat California English;
nothing terribly scary.
And, then, the barks —
he turned and saw,
close on his heels,
a pair of bulldogs
on leather leashes
with day-glo pink collars,
and, as he petted
the slobbery giants,
he felt his newfound monsterhood
sadly slip away.
Leaves, Children
Leaves, star-like,
beneath the maple,
Levitate in breeze
and pinwheel
Across my path,
bouncing, hopping,
Child souls
in single file,
Giggle whispering,
“Lookit! Lookit!” —
Cartwheeling
little show-offs.
Ginkgo Leaves
Falling ginkgo leaves
Golden yellow cover earth
Like butter on toast — Yum!
Oak Leaves
He gazed at oak leaves
whose serrations recalled,
As a young child
in Humboldt County,
He’d seen, in the back of
a logger’s pickup,
A beat-up crosscut saw,
rusty, splintered handles,
Unused for decades,
but still displayed,
A sign saying
he could if he had to,
That old ways persisted,
stubborn as ancient oaks.
Glass
An image formed
on the pebbled-glass shower door,
A pixilated pattern
of brown, cream and rust,
Until she moved and spots coalesced
into hair, breast, knee
Which morphed with each movement
into scores of brief bodies,
Each a different screen,
a chaotic movie of opaque beauty.
Rock
The boy, nine years old,
walked down an alley,
steep, dirt and weeds.
His toe caught a rock,
round, palm-sized,
and set it skittering;
…and, a miracle happened,
he had a thought,
an original idea.
The rock could be
over a million years old,
maybe a billion!
The past had been
an unreachable grayness,
far behind him,
Only the moment
was of consequence,
was of any utility.
Yet, now the past
had slammed into him,
bruising his foot,
While remaining unchanged,
lying still in the sun
a few yards away.
He picked it up,
held it in his hand,
held eons of the past,
And knew that when
he no longer existed,
and was long forgotten,
Indeed, when no one was left
to kick a thing
or have an idea at all,
This rock might still lie
somewhere, unchanged,
resting in sunlight.
He kept it the rest of his days,
from time to time noticed it
and remembered to think.
Doughnut
He sat outside at the table,
reading the paper,
Glanced at a bird in the
sun-splotched branches,
Then saw on his plate
a doughnut, decorated,
Where none had been
when he sat down.
—
No one near him, nothing above,
he seemed alone,
But knew it was not a miracle,
by the silence;
Miracles are loud and brash,
earthquakes and disco lights,
God wants to be noticed
when violating physical law.
—
He heard a wee giggle
from the grass below;
Pushing back the tablecloth,
he saw a shining face,
Crazy tussled hair, red
as a Neanderthal’s,
Becrumbed grinning lips
and chocolate cheeks.
—
He ate the doughnut with coffee,
and pondered a revelation,
That God is a secret, slithering arm
of a young child.
She escaped from her cave and ran,
crowing across the lawn,
Filled with certainty, and joyfully
ready to save all mankind.
Last Words
The old man stared
through a bus window,
and grabbed her hand;
“Mary! The colors!”.
She was not Mary
and saw nothing.
His grip hardened,
temple throbbed,
and forehead dripped.
He mumbled,
“It’s all so beautiful”,
and she understood,
as his hand fell away.
Apple Sun
He glanced fleetingly,
unintentionally,
at the sun, and saw
an apple, covered by
a veil of golden threads
crossed by yellow rivulets
of molten metal
and surrounded by
a white-hot corona
of fiery rays.
But the apple beneath this
splendor
still showed its redish skin
and a bite in its side,
made by crooked teeth,
and he realized that
either he was stark raving, or
God needed an orthodontist.
Haiku Convergence Suite
475
Pebble, sleeping
on sandy dune — thudding wave,
Wake up, rolling stone!
675
Butterfly sat on face
of sleeping child — now old man,
dying, flapping wings.
565
Blue heron with frog,
hapless agony, tongue
kisses death’s feathers.
585
Face of symmetry,
perfect beauty cultivated,
always forgotten.
574
Ripe mango falling
through black and green shaded limbs
to child’s hands. Joy!
576
Child’s tears puddle dirt,
grass, flowers, sand, hole in earth,
father sleeps forever.
575
Swing rising, falling
girl, giddy, laughing, begging
“More!”, flying angel.
Zoomies
He knew our cats
don’t kill us at night
Because, anciently,
we kept only those
Who stayed kittenish
while growing,
Which suggested to him
why the sudden four-foot leap
With rocketing and zooming,
through the house,
And racing through tubes,
skittering balls and blocks,
And scaling great heights
of furniture.
He diagnosed a clear case
of kitten insanity.
Before him, man-mother,
feeder and protector,
They chase invisible mice,
butterflies and beetles,
Play with long-gone
siblings
While hallucinating
an infant past.
Receipt from Half Moon Bay Inn
Rummaging for a pencil
in the glove compartment
He came upon a receipt
for two nights at
Half Moon Bay Inn
and he paused,
So still as though
catatonic,
Finding himself
once again
Eating, making love, smiling
with her
That colder-than-expected
June weekend,
When he bought a sweater
because he’d known
He wouldn’t need a coat
at The Coast
(after all,
it was nearly summer!).
She laughed and loved him
for his certainties,
And he replied in kind at being
always young with her,
So near the bull’s-eye
of his complicated
Requirements of love
by which one moves
Along an arc
of ageless youth
To a predictable end
fearlessly,
As long as they
were together —
He started, startled by
a squirrel on the hood,
Peering through the windshield,
chittering “Are you OK?”,
And discovered
a pencil in his hand.
He grinned,
and tossed it back,
No longer needed,
as she rapped on the window,
Bringing him herself
and a girl’s sweet smile.
Man in Sunflowers
He suffered a private madness,
the question “What am I doing here?”,
always lurking, clinging,
An affliction unrevealed
to others, friend or otherwise,
a boring, trite obsession.
Corn and wheat sped by,
muddled worries interrupted
by a solitary figure in sunflowers,
Shabby, in dark hat and overcoat,
looking, eye level, at a single flower,
staring, in turn, at the sun —
A half-second snapshot
instantly replaced by more
corn, wheat, sunflowers.
“What is he doing there?”,
he thought, knowing it
was already unknowable,
Knowing he was neither
bored nor offended by a
worthy but unanswerable question,
Knowing that he was,
finally freed
by the third person, singular.
The Racket
The racket next door
drove her indoors,
But, he found it
oddly comforting,
A concert of
sawing, pounding and
Screech of nails
pulled from wet wood.
He remembered his father
making similar music,
And knew, had he been present,
he would have found
Some excuse to visit
the young man next door,
And offer to make it
a duet.
Lullaby
Come back, my dear —
back to your soft, warm bed.
I will wrap you with my arms
and press away fears.
Let Hypnos do his work,
and float you over flowers
In terraced fields waved
by the sea’s blue breeze.
After your sleep of sweet oblivion,
a day of bravery comes.
Dragonfly Trail
The trail to the dragonfly
lies narrow and
Teflon-smooth,
Frightening when black-iced
by freezing fog
or sleeting snow,
But, twice driven,
a carnival ride
of breath-holding
To the four-winged creature
of crystalline eyes
sheltering lovers
Who’ve had bravery
thrust upon them
in the cold.
Cormorants
Silent fishing philosophers
cling to Baltic rocks,
await the perfect wave,
Then struggle aloft,
skim and dive,
seeking sardines,
While ignoring taunts
of herring gulls,
omnivorically fat,
Lazy eaters of sea rot,
insistently screaming,
“Play! Play! Play!”
Rituals & Immortality
He always set up coffee
for the next day,
As though insuring
another day,
Or the coffee would be
wasted.
He remembered his
friend, Philippe,
Declaiming about Descartes’
famous axiom
As they skipped along
Toronto streets,
“It has a corollary —
‘If you know, you are alive’.
It’s a kind of immortality,
no?”
Once again, the memory
stirred his thoughts
As he held his hot,
steaming cup of life.
The image is a detail from
the portrait of Rene Descartes
by Frans Hals (Statens Museum
for Kunst, Copenhagen).
Barnaby’s Thistle
As he walked,
his hand touched
a beautiful flower
and bled.
He saw St. Barnaby’s thistle,
and wondered if
Barnabas had ever brushed
against his namesake,
And, if so,
was he
divinely protected
from the golden needles?
His hand began to itch and
he thought of Barnabas
who argued with his mentor
and was slowly forgotten.
In his obscurity,
did the saint ever ponder
yellow flowers as these
with crowns of thorns?
Quantum Cat
When a black cat
escapes
on a moonless night,
He’s a bottle of India ink
spilled
on black linoleum,
Spreading over the
entire neighborhood,
everywhere and nowhere,
A diffusion the man in pajamas
and worthless flashlight
soon discovers.
At dawn, time reverses,
the ink retracts
back to its vessel;
The cat springs through
the opened door,
heads for the couch.
Being everywhere
all at once
is always exhausting.
Things Still There
Things were still there
where most should be
and some should not;
A rising red lily
in its speckled forest,
open mouth singing;
Dirt, freshly hoed and raked,
the odd squirrel hole
and impatient weed;
A dandelion seed
drifted, buffeted
by thermal fingers;
Trees — Fig and orange,
abundantly giving
and eventually messy;
A roach on its back
once prayed for help,
desiccated in summer heat.
An old man reclined
in the shade,
surrounded by green,
Wondering if he were content,
tempted by beauty
and the risk of joy,
When the upturned creature
said, “Be careful,
I am a mirror.”.
To a Plowed Field
Ripples of earth
floating on water,
Sinuous ridged edges
merge into symmetry,
Land square-framed
by mud and reeds,
In your moats and brooks
tadpoles graduate
to heron-speared frogs,
Wrigglers hyperactivate into
buzzing flight
to blood feasts,
Gopher snakes glide,
Zen-like, without
much thought at all.
Reaped and scraped
at fall’s end,
Asleep through winter’s death,
you await spring’s glory
And a face-lift returning
your furrowed visage.
Danes before Five
The Swede told him Danish
was so difficult
its own people can’t learn it
until they’re five.
As he pontificated,
his very young children
happily played house
with babbling little Danes.
How can that be? asked the man.
Oh, quite easy, replied the Swede;
Until they’re five
they just speak Scandinavian.
Sleeping Cat
The cat insinuated himself
between their paired bodies,
Momentarily interrupting
shared sleep.
Readjustments followed,
small shifts in alignment.
He compensated in turn,
flowing alongside them,
Gracefully threading
their dreaming postures,
A lethean stream of
nocturnal bliss.
Nose
The report said,
“Mildly deviated septum,
otherwise normal sinuses.”
He remembered age four,
excited, impatient,
Standing 3 steps up
a concrete porch,
Holding a celluloid tube
of tiny candy balls.
He’d seen older kids do this,
even sharing once,
And now his chance
to pry the plug
With wild fingers,
only to spill everywhere —
His haste-driven dive
to reverse the effects
Of gravity on plunging spheres,
found his nose resting
On the sidewalk below,
where he bellowed bad luck.
Soon, clinging
to his mother’s neck,
As she wiped
his blooded face,
He complained only
about broken fortune.
His nose was quickly forgotten
for a lifetime,
Until x-rays penetrated
his memories,
Of sweet loss rolling away,
yet still desired.
Memory Number One
He was 4 or 3,
at the edge of memory,
When he saw a dead possum
in the road.
For 80 years it visited
his thoughts;
Nothing before —
not a mother’s loving gaze,
not a father’s good cheer,
Just a tail carelessly touching
a bloodied nose,
And two button eyes, staring
at god, at him,
at nothing.
Egg
Egg tottering,
nest ruptured by careless wind,
future flight’s dashed promise,
embryonic wings unformed.
Bird ghost’s
first and last airborne arc,
parabolic to slate below,
shattered shell and yellow stain.
Surprised child
stops, curious, then home
crying in fear, chased by
angry mother cawing grief.
Colors on a Morning Stroll
He saw, on his morning walk,
a house with cobalt walls
and pink eves,
But, on drawing closer…
the eves became brown
and the walls, gray.
He thought about imagination
and the word ‘image’
almost within it.
He had, as always, a goal in mind,
but this route was chaotic,
random with bias.
He chanced on a stick
in a gutter,
long, straight, lanceolate.
And imagined two spears,
one pink,
one cobalt,
Except the pink was really
like a filet
of wild Atlantic salmon,
And the blue was
like sparks of
violet and green.
He saw two knights
rushing each other,
red pike, blue pike…
And stumbled at the sign,
his goal,
“Matmor Rd”.
Mata mor,
mata moro,
kill Moor.
He drifted to the Crusades —
his fifth-grade teacher
described their futility;
Yet, he later read
about the 200-year
Kingdom of Jerusalem,
Probably not so futile
to the knightly order
for a long time.
She also remarked
on the Moorish failure
in Iberia,
But, the Caliphate endured
600 years, three times
my country’s age.
Images returned —
the Knight Templar,
the Saracen knight;
He thought
perhaps that
was the whole point,
To impale each other
on beautiful lances,
salmon and electric,
Autumn Trees
Would it be lying
to speak of autumn trees,
specifically, the Plane,
Looming in plains so strange
as resemble Mars
or Enceladus,
When in fact we see
in plain sight
the Plane itself?
Red Souls
Almost-touching orbs
cruel Fate’s separation
Frustration of joy.
On Yellow
Despair of yellow if you wish —
The taint of
choleric bile,
Midas’ daughter,
snow pee,
jaundiced eyes.
While Orpheus’ golden lyre
went to Hell and back,
sunlight echoed on dayend clouds,
towheads ran on Baltic sand,
dandelions colored my hand.
Jacob’s stairs still ascend
— presumably to Heaven —
But who waters the geraniums?
Taste of Wild
Yes, it’s better than glass —
a hard, cold
divide from reality.
I can feel the breeze,
rain falls and I am wet,
squirrels fear my smell,
jays rail at my presence.
But, there’s still this matter of
nylon, a millimeter thick,
a soft cage of unwanted
domesticity.
Primitive Creature
Early morning fogs rose from the river. He waded through an eddy of warmth swirling slowly between bank and goal, a heavily wooded island, cloud hidden, Spanish mossed limbs penetrating opal curtains. He felt time evaporate a hundred million years as he entered the past earth. and knew the river damp smell was once familiar to a dinosaur, that nothing had changed, that his particular world's sights and sounds were truant. Reaching shore, he had no idea how close he was to the nest of guarded eggs, as she burst forth through fog, the Great Blue Heron, screaming in the very rasp of God, a cry so terrible that he became a wee twitchy creature, scurrying to evade scaly winged masters of this new world.
Lunar Eclipse
"I'm sorry about the Moon...", he said.
"Oh! What an interesting sentence!",
she replied,
smiling with unexpected delight.
Love illuminated them
in the recovered lunar glow.
Demon Casters of Asilomar
The Demon-Casters of Asilomar,
in the great lodge room,
huddle before fire,
Ess-word mutterings float,
"...sssalvation...,
...sssatan...,
...ssssin...",
potent, frequent
"...Jesssusss...".
Bowed backs as
shields,
Stares as
needles, knitting,
White thin lips as
prophet, knowing,
But no
blue eyes on the
lurking heathens
(who suck your soul),
No
flirtation,
temptation,
touching the
unwashed.
This is a joyless,
serious pursuit,
Saving the world.
Red, Blue, Yellow
My friend, the under-employed artist, sold photos to the Sunday edition of the paper. Strictly freelance, not a regular job. “Shoot anything but put three kids in the middle, in red, blue and yellow.” The formula never failed. Every Sunday, $25. It paid the rent.
Gutter Fish
I worked nights in Brazil, photographing stars. Coming home one morning, I found the neighbor kids gathered around the curb. All year, a trickle of water
ran beside it, starting from a neighbor’s farm and moving down through the prosperous community below, eventually draining into the Rio Potengi.
“What’s up?”, I asked.
“Fish!” they answered.
They were on their knees, giggling, hands in mud and water. I walked over, expecting floating toys of sticks and leaves, but saw little flashes of color. A child’s cupped hands held a small, brightly hued fish darting in a bit of water.
I knelt beside the rivulet and saw hundreds of tiny finned creatures slipping through fingers of little people delighted by their beauty.
I lived a few degrees from the Equator. These were tropical fish, the real thing. They weren’t in an aquarium in a doctor’s office. They lived free in their home, my gutter.
Also Chaos
A ripple spreads from a Kansas tornado,
and the wings of an Australian butterfly skip a beat.
That would also be chaos.
The image is the Australian Amnesty Butterfly — click on the link to learn more.
A Shave in Natal
Living in Natal, Brazil, was time travel. Evenings, we strolled and conversed lazily, danced at the social clubs, visited the dying in front rooms, surrounded by friends, and went to the barber for a shave — hot towels, straight razor, funny jokes and a rubdown, all for a dime, like an old movie.
Once, I was having a haircut. A man with no legs came in, selling lottery tickets. He maneuvered on a roller board, head about knee high. Everyone knew him. A few bought tickets, and he moved past the line of chairs where he waited. Why was he still there?
The barber to my right finished a guest and turned to the lottery agent. “Same as ever, José?”, who nodded. In a fluid motion the barber lifted him from board to chair. Question answered — a customer, like everyone else, and a frequent one.
A sheet billowed out and was pinned behind his neck, steaming cloth applied, and the conversation continued without break. A few minutes later, towels removed and face skillfully shaved smooth and clean, followed by a brisk massage. Second puzzle — the barber was in no hurry and the next patron seemed happy where he was. Gossip, sports, politics, weather flowed as ever in that global mens’ club. José smiled and chatted, a member in full standing.
I was done. My barber spun me about to face the grand mirror on the wall of every barbershop. “What do you think?”, “Looks great!”, universal query and response. My eyes strayed to the salesman’s reflection, head level with mine, great sheet before him down to floor. Puzzle solved. José sold them lottery tickets and a chance at riches. They sold him a shave — and added legs for a few minutes every day.
Lost Poems
Ten years ago, I moved from Salt Lake to California and lost neighbors, views, streams, opera, a packet of poems from 1996, and so much more — but, last week I stumbled across the poems.
It was exhilarating and emotional, like coming out of a suicidal coma and finding life is wonderful after all!
Well… a little like that. Maybe just a touch, for this very specific event.
Hmmm… To tell the truth, life has actually been quite interesting this last decade. The discovery was a bit of a rush, a stimulant, an exhilarant, a mood elevator.
A better metaphor: Imagine that you discover that the little toe on your right foot, which you thought you’d chopped off with an axe 10 years ago, has all along been folded in a peculiar fashion under the other four toes, and that a little clever autochiropractic manipulation pops it right out — now when you prance on naked tippy toes around the house, everything feels just right.
More like that, perhaps, than the suicidal coma.
See them here, if you wish, but, for the most part, they are raving doggerel. They are purposefully scrambled. Do not try to find any thematic continuity in their arrangement.
Russell's Teapot
Russell's little red teapot
grew tired of avoiding
Venus and Mars
and waiting for the proof
that it was not there.
It sits quietly on my coffee table,
prefers serving up up tea,
brisk and hot,
to playing games with God
all the time.
How to Zip
You could compress data on your computer, Or you could turn, red-faced, and close the hole in your pants, Or you could move fast from here to there. Take your pick, small, medium, or large.
What Was the Name of That Bread?
We’re sitting in the living room, and Dad asks, “What was the name of that bread”?
“What are you talking about?”, says Mom.
— “That sponsored the ball games”.
— “What ball games”?
— “On the radio, when I came home from work”.
— “You don’t work anymore”.
— “When I worked — past tense”.
— “That reminds me… Once you came home from work and sat down in the living room, this room right here. It was late, you were tired, the TV wasn’t working, and you said, ‘I think I’ll go to bed’. And I grabbed you by the hand. You said, ‘What’re you doing?’, and I said, ‘I want to show you something’, and I took you into the kids’ room, and I woke them up and said, ‘Hey, kids, I want to show you something. This guy here, he’s your father’! Well now, they thought I was crazy”.
— “Home Farms”.
— “Home Farms”?
— “The bread. It was white”.
— “What does that have to do with my being crazy”?
— “They did the ball games. You asked me why I always bought it. It was the ball games — I wanted to show my loyalty”.
— “And for that you call me crazy”?
I put my book down, and look at Dad. He’s wearing a half paper plate wedged between his glasses frames and head. He’s shading his eyes from the floor lamp, and told me years before that he found it better than wearing a hat in the house. I realize that, tonight, I’ll never read this book. The story I’m part of demands attention. It’s compelling, droll, insane. It’s exhausting.
Time for bed.
End Noise
Part 1
Old folks die noisy deaths. This is not the received wisdom of youth who firmly believe in the silent slide to oblivion "He just closed his eyes, and was gone!" she gushed with a smile, As though describing a child's first steps. The truth is Great-aunts drop casseroles onto hard kitchen floors, as their chests burst, Widowers knock over tables lurching from bed clutching their throats, A farmer scolds his dog, -- gone 40 years -- for chasing sheep, And the mother rips tubes from her arms, cursing the nurse for poisoning her.
Part 2
The dying man hears the loudest noise. He carries from birth a metal bowl into which drop steel balls, at odd moments, unexpectedly. He walks alone down a long crystal arcade, lined with glass cabinets. The bowl becomes heavy and he grows frail. He pitches forward and the perfectly elastic spheres bounce everywhere, a cacophany of clack-clack-clack and breaking glass. He lies, clinging to the sounds, life oozing from his mouth with each moan, Not fully gone until silence follows the last tap.
PINK
PINK I just saw an old art joke --
"PINK" in purple ink --
A T-shirt on a sad young girl
Stalking out of (what else?)
A gallery, and thought
Of the drowning man
Trapped
Beneath a grate
An inch beneath the surface.
He breaths through a straw
Penetrating the screen,
Will live only if he
Inhales slowly,
Calms his anxiety,
Relaxes until
He dies from hypothermia,
Or -- if in the Carribean or
The Gulf of Cortez --
From starvation,
But never from thirst
Or the color pink.
Tree, dog, cat
Lumbering, misshapen, looming tree, no symmetry, favorite by far, visible for miles in my flat land, shading two unlikely litter mates — dog, ugly happy thing, flabby jowls, stubby legs, marching by sister cat — two same-day born beings, carried box to box by mothers, confused, unsure finally of offspring, form & laws of inheritance — he marches beside that creature dearest in his life, who in turn leaps into air, runs beneath dog belly, rolls in plowed earth of the great shared field — these three allies standing guard against sun, assassins, and tiny jewels floating in dusty rays.
The Master Virtual Guitarist
My friend, Mike, is a master virtual guitarist, perhaps the best in the world. At times, his eyes half closed, lips slightly parted and smiling vaguely, he twitches his fingers in a barely perceptible way, and I know he is performing at Prince Albert Hall. And Fani, the master aficionada, gazes dreamily at her musician and listens with an invisible rose behind her ear.
False False Memory
Recently, I drove oceanward on a small 2 lane highway leading, in a circuitous but ultimate way, to San Francisco. I passed an intersection which seemed familiar but also vague and unspecific. I puzzled and began to assemble a picture from fragments of memory. I had arrived in my new town 8 years ago and wanted to explore. I drove west on a country road towards the Coast Range through the rural flatness, curious only about where I was. After a few miles, I found myself in rolling hills with homes, children, pets and small farms. I was happy with this discovery, as my wife found the levelness of our new area depressing, and knew that my report of what lay nearby would cheer her. The road gradually turned and came to the very intersection I had just passed moments before.
Unfortunately, when I looked in the direction of this dimly recalled population, I saw only a thin forest of valley oaks and eucalyptus, no undulations, no ersatz Shangrila in the depths of Yolo County. I now knew that there should only be flat farmland all the way to the mountains edge. I had fought to put this puzzle together, and must have fused memories of events from long ago, perhaps in Salt Lake City, perhaps in Toronto. I had rationalized a sense of deja vu which, in reality, was false. I have a fertile imagination, and have done this before.
I had occasion to pass the same point several times since, and each time had the same unsettled feeling of having been there, went through the same process of assembling memories, came to the same depressing conclusion, and worried about the gradual decay of my brain. Then, a week ago, Laura accompanied me to the coast, and as we approached the intersection, I told her the story about my imaginings and poor memory. As we entered the intersection, I looked left. Previously, I had only done this after the fact. This time, I had a clear view up the exit road into the distance, and saw — rolling hills, houses, horses, children playing, with a sparse forest on both sides which fused after we passed into a green panel obscuring a remembered event I now know was real and unimagined.
My wife does not think my memory is bad, but she does think I am mad.
Red Building of Deepest Mystery
A five-minute walk from my workplace lies a red building of great mystery. It is worthy of capitalization: The Red Building. I have walked around it hundreds of times in eight years and did not see it the first seven. It is accessible but guarded by taller structures. No one enters or leaves. A view through the windows shows abandoned lab benches, hoods and offices, covered with dust. No bodies are visible, at least not directly. It is unacknowledged — the campus map pretends it is a wing of an adjacent edifice, which it is assuredly not. It is a place of someone’s fear, an unsettling enigma, a place of desperate ignorance.
Bees
Today, I visited bees, perhaps a dozen varieties, including a 4 foot ceramic one of alien and exciting coloration. “Welcome to our garden!”, said a kindly man of academic beard, who warned of little cups of colored liquid on the paths. I avoided them adroitly, but did notice varying numbers of dead bees therein. Bee Haven, while an idyllic refuge for sober hard workers, capitally punishes its drunkards.
The Artist
My son, Aelric, was an artist for four years and has since graduated to other pursuits (our and the world’s loss!). He was brilliant, creative and fast. His pallette was primaries plus black and white, mainly acrylic, occasionally tempera.
He used only a large one-inch flat brush and a small round brush whose handle was employed more than its fibers. He painted canvas, masonite, all kinds of paper, and even sticks. His works can be found on walls, desks and cards all around the world, as well as a few right here.
He reveled in color and was fearless in its application, with no pretense of representation. The act of painting was purely performance — he loved his audience and kept a constant commentary as he layered with abandon.
He set only one rule — he was done at the request of the audience. Without this subtle intervention, the continually added color gradually merged into an amorphous mass of gray.
Victor Vasarely gave us Op Art, Andy Warhol, Pop Art, and Aelric Kofoid, Stop Art.
The Wild Cows of Highway One
Do not let the wild cows of Highway One
seduce you with their siren moos.
Notice how they cling to a vertical wall,
daring you to peer over the edge
at their ragged victims on the beach below?
Tide Mall
I’m in a bright, shiny, synthetic mall, surrounded by money and Muzak, while outside are blue skies and brilliant sun, and I think of La Jolla tide pools, swimming with my brother through clouds of confused anchovies smashing into our legs in a frenzy to return to deeper waters before the tide drops even more and traps them, where they don’t want to be.
Eureka
Not a day went by that my parents didn’t hate Eureka. The cold, the damp, the drizzle, the smells of fishing and wood mills were utterly foreign to their San Diego-driven view of the universe. When I breath its sulfur and anchovie essence, I once again race my bike through a stinging cloud of droplets, excited, happy to reach Stubby’s birthday party in the mud and slippery green grass.
My Beautiful Crow
Crows, I am told, can tell us apart with exquisite ease and, of course, have no problems with each other, whereas we — even the most skilled corvidologists — are unable to distinguish one of them from another in any subtle and automatic way. Except for me — my beautiful crow is the one that places the walnut in the road when she sees me rushing to work, caws and flaps in the air as I pass, and glides gracefully to the meats exposed by my tires. She is confident of my intentions and is, in turn, faithful. She knows me regardless of conveyance, and ignores all other vehicles, which would as soon hit her as the nuts. It is a strange affection and if I were a crow, I would go out of my way to dine with her as often as possible.
Red Rose, Bornholm Yellow
Some days, all Bornholm walls are the summer sun’s own gold, baked deep into gypsum coat, warm just by sight.
Bluster & Absurdity 