The Joys of Retrograde

What is actually at the window has yet to be determined

Though all robed personages already know

What you will do, and love you've made that choice, 

Tho you'd appreciate any guidance, at this point.

Hummingbirds whirr in place at that,

But only because they feel for you, so close 

To the sugar, almost jealous you are only now

Free enough to dance in the darkness.

Some already know the soil they walk is blessed.

God doesn’t need to speak to them, they know the way

And why they should believe their eyes

Not the lies their mothers told them,

How tunnels end in hell, and every destination

Is a long way off still and almost impassible,

And people are, forget about it, unreachable,

Impossible to trust.

You wait, conversely, for the dispatcher's signal

As safety is now a system-wide issue.

Nothing can move until it stews in the broth

Of what it never understood, at least not enough.

But you feel somehow it's a system that includes you

Though you do not want to know why,

When you hail a ride, it knows where to go

And that you haven’t yet arrived and probably never will.

Oblique Light Thrown to This Side

Golden Gate’s veiled --  half mist, half mast,

The way the living navigate above the dead,

Remembering what we are

As we turn into something else.

The whole too returns to vapor

When each perspective’s been considered

Becoming irreducible again,

Charge nested, invisible

Yet each tunes in

From their own dream,

From the one resonant frequency

That becomes them

Like a fork in the white noise

Humming a hertz beyond

Everything that has ever been

Experienced by anyone.

Morning Puja

There is no God inside this Temple

Despite the mournful incense

And the throes of organ torments

And bent string notes in the light 

Of the divine ...

But there is a priest

Who throws water in the faces,

Places flowers on the idols,

Throws rice to zebra doves -- 

God honoring the Gods.

Letting Go of Cheryl One Last Time

The ashes were in the filing cabinet

With the dated contracts that could get me in trouble.

I've tried not to think about my disappeared life,

To give due cause to the wizard inside 

Who removed everything just so, as if it

Was never really there, for all the void that is

So heavy still. And all the inklings of music 

From every voiced eye tattoo that yearning.

It could be from you, your small still voice

Still imploring with a smile, for the birds to finally

Be understood, a bridge you offer to the other world

I am only recently not a part of.

But Grandmother Mimosa understood 

At the birthing stone for the whole earth

By the lava faces in green Polihale 

How deeply I feel grief's soft offices.

My wand adds by subtraction, then multiplies

By incidents, many of them here, where finally

I floated your bones on a round koa raft

With one freshly fallen plumeria blossom 

Where the water finally flows down from the top

Along the red Waimea clay, though you finally nodded

After letting me, as you always claimed to do, decide,

That you would have preferred -- I almost knew -- Secret Beach

As beautiful as the ending was, the release to end

All releases, what never really was

The way one had remembered, and so

Can't ever be said -- wistfully -- to go away.

The secrets you loved to keep were in the end 

A way of keeping us alive, beyond the best by date,

Of keeping what must be nudged away now,

For what was held led to transcendence,

A job well done, that finally can be laid to rest

As the entire past must also be

Put on oblivion's life raft, as offering to the birth canal;

Aren't I qualified to be born another time?

The Docks of Kap'aa

Not conventional the thought 

Of Kauai as hell on earth, 

But it was my thought, no one else's,

And I can tell you what it's about.

One cane-cutter fell asleep in the fields

And got his arm lopped off. So it was

For the plantation slaves, J-town style,

"Mt. Fuji won't take me," but Waimea will.

It was 12-hour days of grim brake-breaking reaping

And he was not one to overexert

For a foreman's crumb in the Capricorn sun,

Not like those Samarais, 

Always the fucking Samarai's

Who say "I win ... punk" with a smile,

Who sharpened their blades like they were

Honed to go to battle with the golden sheaves

To achieve the quickest, biggest, most immaculate

Death from green-stained scythes,

Men as relentless as the Japanese can be, 

Lords of every painstaked blade of grass

For their fine-toothed frustration, plashing at

The hopelessness of life here, except for

The plantation master's church, the westernest

And he was the kindest one by far, this

Robinson, who gave out guava every Sunday

In his wood community hall, the holy rollers

Among the Japanese as swordy as you can imagine

To get into the good Lord's graces.

No one mentioned his private island, at least to him,

Though he was there, and he did care,

The way a shepherd cares for sheep and goats

Knowing how to fence them, the moment to shear.

He had no use for his mother's zealous

Bloodlet of the local lamb, or for Japan

That stranded him here without escape,

And these islands he wanted consumed in flood.

Yet there were 88 temples on a mountainside shrine

As energized as the Giza Plateau

Where Buddhists climbed, past every variety 

Of self as God as message to believe

In the sacredness of every breath, in the ways

Of enlightenment while keeping one eye open

To the suffering of not being allowed emotion

Visits on the pilgrim.

No pilgrimage for him, and no lava god

Of the Lei wave dancers, as far away

As another constellation they are, who pigs drove

Into a frenzy, who carried spears.

They rode atop the waves that attacked the shores relentlessly,

To remind him he was prisoner, and could never

Set foot even on the Forbidden Isle

In his eyes every resentful sunset.

If this was God's Plantation 

There was more to the plan than God,

But it couldn't be found here, where people

Glowed in simple sun, with false hopes

Of a better life to come, while, for now,

There's crisply woven tailored suits

Like the shells the ancients used to trade

To feel at home with a forever alien place.

There was a library of psalms, agricultural guides,

No Bob Dylan, not even Izzy K

To guide him to the promised land

At the far end of the field

Where he dared not go, the place of floods

And ceremonial suicides, and night walkers

And black mesquite over the plain that was Mana

Where the ones who thought they were free lived.

Polihale has taken them, as the nearby

Radar tower too soon took him, cursing

On his ice-cold straw death bed 

The life he had had to live.

And now, as I point out, the sunsets of Kekaha,

The white ball, source of all information,

And how the trade winds take our minds

With the fronds and grasses to the endlessness of life

And he eventually bent, like a Japanese pine

To let the sun hit his mud-reddened face.

It was all he could do to not go native

And turn his back on the poor human race

And he kinda likes it, with the afternoon raga,

The horses in the fields in 7 ray light

Instead of plodding into town on red, manured roads

Where there was nothing for him at all ...

But now there's papaya smoothies

And the restlessly competitive Japanese have settled

In the same plantation shacks as before,

Which makes him happy,

And he can see the world is really

As he thought it was all along, holding the not-it

Idea in his heart, as I punched his yellow with sweaty

Waiting ticket on the first steamer out of here,

Which turns out to be steerage at 40,000 feet

And passage to Oakland, where they don't scorn the mind,

And all the rules he observed in his youth I will

Also lose, as we part forever friends on different paths.

Temple Blues

Unity only comes through the service entrance
As time's spiral holds only what's made from love.
The rest falls away, still whole
As the king hermit is still
At the top of the tower
Waiting for it to fall.

The seeker must face again the shadow
And surrender another time to the coil of life
In the scholar's studio
Lighting heathen grief,
Preparing the best clouds
For buddha dignitaries.

Interstitially, there are as many teacher demons
As the mandala will hold and have carpets for praying.
They blow their vital breath into a snake
Until the shadow is cast off
Revealed as a human face
And no longer needed in the play.

That was the breath that had brought everyone
From miles away to wave, having become something more
At least while the roads
Are temporarily barricaded 
Zacetecas style, the empanadas
International now after all

Though no one knows that but the afflicted,
On clouds now, inside a moment when history yields
To the way they feel now,
What emerged when it ended.
The feeling lingers in the stragglers here,
Still alive in a new day.

The Polynesian Wing

A 20-foot ancestor spirit from Lemuria

Stopped me at the entrance, "don't go

Into the broken world," where they

Describe what they can't remove,

An orator's stool from Iatmul,

Our Lady of Iguanas headdress taken from use,

Vanuatu totem poles head atop head atop head

With eyes huge, spiralling with Kundalini,

Elongated skulls from Rapa Nui in volcanic stone,

Shell helmet shelters with porcupine quills, shaman's

Bags crowned like vibraphones with black-bone charms,

Tridents of mind with sharktooth obsidian 

And of course the dap dap mortars

To break the betel nut and see God

Cut with lime. Each mortar renders a vision

It inspired: jaguar, blown mind, insect limbs for flying.

Well-documented, too, the Kula exchange of shells

Among 18 island nations, sharing all they had

Every year from ancient wavesplitters

And splashboards dragon-carved.

The Baining Fire Dance on the Gazelle Peninsula

Where young man at age wear giant eyes all night

To see, presumably, the way in the darkness

To the all.

Every mask is built precisely

To reveal. The giant temple drum

Despite its magnificence holds some

Memory of how sound changes things.

The immortals are musical notes, in fact,

And are played like the Chinese emperor ordered

The horses with bulging eyes and flaring nostrils

He prized to be commanded as ideal out of sculpture.

Writing didn't come til after the flood

Yet it flourished wherever seas brought calligraphers 

Who made the word become flesh ...

But there are places where the sacred

Flourished instead, where the birds were

Allowed to keep their notes, the shamans

Their unreality-altering berries, and no one

Lacked wisdom in the absence of words.

It is always an afterthought, these places

That are still too alive for history,

That still resist being catalogued,

The last frontier of our childhood terror.

Terracotta Warriors on Tour

Behold the pale ghost horses, protected only

By a gold brow ornament over their third eye,

There are thousands of them, about the size of dogs

And terrified of Mongols, though a very few 

Are dug out from the sunken pyramid complex 

With its nine gates, where the emperor's, they say, buried.

Each horse is interred with its warrior, and sight lines

To the stable boys, so they know they're still cared for

In the afterlife, and waterfowl are there too

To perform their songs, turns out, for the emperor

And the 6,000 figures in each pit, dressed not

Like warriors but priests, serene, the ones who have seen

Everything, in what seems one flash-frozen instant,

Their life essence to be stored in terracotta.

Their faces are too various and real, detailed

In too many shapes, shades, myriad of moustache

To be the work of unaccounted-for potters

And improbable methods, for some emperor

Because he asked. A dollop of fear holds each face,

Insight runs through every eye. There's something they saw

Not a moment before. They're looking at it now,

The still life forever moment they're brave enough

To endure with whatever story their minds could 

Confiscate as they gaze wide-eyed into the void

Awaiting the mystery with all that they know,

These observers who just observe the observing.

They know they are immortalized in that moment

And are sad for the others who've been left behind

To mundane wars and never knowing who they are.

These faces know, but, even now, aren't telling.

The cinnabar and Chinese purple, malachite, 

Cobalt, ochre — their identifying colors 

Are just glitter on their ash, this "painted army,"

Who've finally been granted their one wish all along,

To be one, and no longer to be separate,

Betrayed again by the paint on their square slip-ons.

Another Poem about Dragons

The souls in dark places are part of us,

Can't wake up with us, without a dragon light

On their cigarette. They've been stuck here

Eons. The migration dark has begun

As now the dragon smoke clears the morning

As reminder that veil is gauze

Transparent to those with eyes to look beyond.

My eyes gaze for unseen crows at the kitchen windows,

The sausages simmer as saucers shimmer

And the glimmer twins winnow

The chaff from my collective ass.

Even they chase what they say is the dragon,

The one at St. Margaret's feet, or at the tip

Of King Henry's sword, the ubiquitous guardian

Of the most well-guarded secrets

In every royal bleed for the elites

In every kingdom 

And every goddess lineage

And all the dragon lines

That hold us to the earth, her heart.

Discovering Suede

Our familiar methods of deception 

Turn on the campfire

As you explode

With burning verbs.

I keep my adjectives covered,

Sip my ginseng tea.

You are always wrong

That's why I love you so

Hoping you'll see fit to be right

Or at least agree.

The fire crackers of tear-scarred cords

Won't give me that 

But the life is magic Mars

Under ballroom maple leaves

To be recoiled so,

Brought to maximum separation 

Like a serpent's trick

To shed its ash, for the mushroom

Mind to shoegaze 

And every crow across infinity to see.

Now we get to learn another way

Under dark and luminous skies.

Our eyes have drawn this map before

Like star gold is prize

And glittering lights guidance

Not the loving void.

It's on us, my dearest one

To reject whole cloth the common

And still spend time in communion

With each other's deepest wounds.

A bird looks down in the darkness 

Wondering what we'll do.

Will we slug back shots of Jack

In lieu of slugging each to other

Or are they, in some way, the same?

We are too, apparently, tho the sis cam

Testifies in open court that can't be true.

We wipe our deepest frowns at any rate

Off our smiles, go on like hearts don't break

And the spirit eaves don't suffer for our racket,

As if we finally agree

To let disagreement be okay

But it never is.

You want your cry to heaven to get past

The neighborhood, I get it

And you want to be heard

By more than numbed skulled me

But there's no trick machinery 

To get those birds back into the trees.

They just go there when you're no longer looking

Many years later, sometimes, it seems,

When you think of it at all it's just how

Stupid you were, but their mouths are full

Of the song of your praise

For all you allowed yourself to feel

Without veering your eye or changing 

Your mind, what the wind does continually

To these would-be obstinate birds

Who wouldn't know what love was at all

Without their nests safecracked for sport.

Museum of Oranges

The veil I reported missing

Has been recovered, in a glass case

As the lace mantilla of one

Dona Ysidera Pico Forster.

It hangs as if the phantoms

That still pull on its threads

Are brand new, with her gloves and fan

Of abalone to circulate the sun.

Her brother owned the land,

What we now call Orange County,

So her hands had to fan as nature,

As the mermaid at times, named California

Though covered in the black lace of grief

The rich must convey, onus hominis albi,

So they won't be seen recognizing

The results of their rapacious play.

Her brother Pio Pico was pleased to unpack her

On the Englishman Forster

As he believed in providential deals, and so few

Like-minded men of substance here to duel.

He had, they said, "a penchant for gambling"

But he also had a private chapel

And a sacrificial rat in applique

On his gold lame chasuble.

There is his snuff-box and manga,

An early photograph of ugly him

And his miserable family

In haunted lace and threadbare bonnets,

The last Governor, resting anxious

On his laurels, premonition in hand

That he was not quite worthy

Of the lordship promised by the land.

His brother-in-law filched the blessed

Blood-stained mission from him at auction

And lived there with his sister

And the ghosts her fan waved off,

Still he trusted him, at blade point, to procure

Grazing grass for his hot-blooded brothers,

Insurgents on the lam, never knowing

He'd already struck a deal with the Americans

To sail poor Pio down the river

To Los Angeles with no title or estate,

Only his knowledge of the wilderness

And where the crossroads meet.

But Forster got his in the end as

They always do, at the sword of one

Don Bernando Yorba, who made his fortune

Trading sea otter pelts as complement to jewels,

And was forced, this Forster, to go to Germany

To petition for emigrants with free cows and parcels

He whose beef fed the California Gold Rush

From his great chain of ill-begotten rancheros.

What was his Dona to do but wave her fan

In her grief mittens and take tea

With the ghosts of the priests

Who took the native hearts and spirits away?

Their hacienda fell into disrepair

As they always do, the fencing

And trespassing broke them. But in truth

Families always take back what was not given.

The whole enchilada went to a guy named O'Brien

Who bought some later farm in a disputed transaction

Lost in turn to an ever-more ruthless

Family machine called Irvine

Who now is barely a sleeve 

In a portfolio that includes the headquarters 

Of the world's largest banks,

For they could be, and so were, pilfered as well.

It's always that way, and it's always these people

Who haunt the displays of whatever ideals

We're supposed to believe, who, yes, subscribed 

With sincerity impeccable to Manifest Destiny

But have very little to show now to precious history

Except how predictable guys can be

When they draw swords for fun at the fair game

Of other people, in this case the Vaqueros,

Who speak with their eyes behind inferior glass

From daguerreotypes of  their enslavement

To a system that defies the wide-open spaces

As they tend their tiny plots with humble serapes.

It's tempting to not look away,

To consider how every road I take today

Was once a river for a land-baron's bluff

To possess paradise because it was still secret

But moonlight-molten oils await me upstairs

As the immigrants came in plein air

To capture what had never before been seen

In post-impressionist strokes of craft

For they believed in artist brushes

To connect the world together,

Whether following the Navajo

Or wandering by chance onto Flores Peak,

Or sharing the iridescence of the seas

With traders as railroad steel rode in

And the rich men drained each other's oil

And the still lifes had oranges to die for

In clear California light, for display

In the most Aesthetic London galleries 

By the McCloskeys, say, partners in illusion,

As if their palettes held a civilized record

Of chrysanthemums and roses, and strange scented

Blossoms that will wilt and die, to those

Who could never know what it's like

Out here, with no obstacles to enlightenment.  

Green of the Tumbleweed

Everything is different. The timeline

Has shifted. It rained. There are roosters.

Nobody really knows what to do,

That is, with the horses.

Yet to pretend one particular

Mud-covered arena is the one,

We all do it, but I, for one, know nothing,

Like that crow of the cock

Not to be eaten by coyotes

For the children who adore

The chickens that help the horses

Somehow with their fly problem

I suppose. It's getting dark,

The purple dapples at grass time,

The buckskin runs in circles.

There are no rules

But everyone observes them,

Even the mules, who disappeared

To an alternate universe for a few days

But have returned, no worse or different at all.

It's for me what to make of it. The lights

Have come on. Brio is rolling. The winter 

Coats make all the horses shine

In water-logged splendor.

They have never been anxious - it was me -

Never wary - me as well - never used

The illusion of love to procure food,

Became lonely after I passed,

That was work I needed to do,

Dredge and observe to let its hold

Go. It took me back to worlds I wanted

To re-do, people I wanted to recognize

When the land itself has been Mandela'ed,

The docks in different spaces of the harbor,

All the buildings moved around. The purple

Lights are not the way they were before,

The car sounds are something other,

A gentle crying from the sea. The horses

Sound like walruses, their clomps

A ticking clock in antiquity

Like that quarterhorse the girl rode

Under the lights in the wet, wet arena

Where they run all odds every second.

It's all been collected,

Culled and scored, and ready now

To be observed and forgotten,

For new music demands the airwaves,

It's as simple as that.

The music creates its ear

And the truth surrounds that solitary note

Like an army to carry infinity 

One funky gallop at a time.

The veil is missing, its black lace

Is only missed by those squirreled

In its attic of memories, as

The moon insists on coloring

Every souvenir in the catalogue,

To render it irrelevant, 

Never really eyed,

What is new in its next disguise.

The perimeter has melted.

I can no longer use the horse's sight.

The hard work of mud leads to shaping

The soft voice of waiting clay.

Cloud Afternoon

Have you noticed how the pillows

Squish the light out

As you're ready to receive it?

Each ray changes the whole history,

For the world is yours, kid, it only

Breathes when you do.

The luminaries are unlimited 

As are the lifetimes you can choose,

What memories you assume.

The bungalows instead of flying off

Hold their own against the sky 

When it grows too overwhelming.

The slightest nudge

Jars meaning 

From the soundest sleep.

A Vision in the Tunnel

The wind

Only reveals

The immateriality, 

My belief

Up next to our agreement 

What will be,

Will my foot fall

Forever or is there

Some floor

For us to dance together

When the music 

Lights the cathedral,

Beckoning us to move

Not like the tide,

A swarm of our own devising,

When we chase down

What the gangsters of song

Echoed the halls with,

The cool of

What their love 

Took prisoner?

It's all for us

To love, isn't it?

The pain, the things without,

How they call us

From the vortex

Like they're not even thoughts.

Parisien Song

Down a low lip of river

Calls a darkness it names lover

And it shimmers on the Seine

Waiting for an eye

To catch her wisp of longing

Her shock of recognizing

As ancient as the Seine

Flowing to the sky

So much her mirror revealed

The more she kept it concealed

Just a face in the Seine

Transfixing eyeless green

She knows the deeper secrets

And keeps them 'til he gets near

They spill along the Seine

She wanted to be seen

The places she could take him

If he only could recall them

The vapor above the Seine

To aetherize the real

He'd chase it all the way

Until the thing she loved was stayed

Unlike the changing Seine

That can't stop how it feels

The cafes fill with candles

Fresh lovers to light up the lamps

That glow across the Seine

And move along always

It was his own illusion

That heave that he was nursing

On his own private Seine —

He could not look away

Lush Life Covers

I have more eternal resting places 

Than I could ever keep track of, but this one

May be my favorite: polished limestone,

The laughter of children as regular

As the irrigation hiss, a weekly mow

As if I am, even now, respectable.

There are others with ocean views, I know,

Some more respectful when my bones need to rest,

But this one suggests almost a person

Behind its dated trappings of renown.

We're so blessed to do things this way, slap a

Marker down so we can forget the great unknown.

The universe did fit into its form

Though that was never what was to be proven

When la Rue de la Fortune blew in like the wind

To infuse every moment, every inch.

It's like the children here came out of its ground

And its words inveigled sermons in the town,

As if something actually happened 

To inspire all the prayers of waste and loss

And our failure to notice obvious things,

Like tomorrow as the same sky, different clouds.

The old songs were always meant to be sung

Again, at other points of attention,

Authentic when separated out again

Presented as evidence, a rested case

That spoke the peace, for the just desserts team

To allay any fears, echo the gift, 

So we face the now danceable music

With what breathes, despite it all has a pulse.

Five Unfinished Meals in Ireland

1.

The diaspora.

It always has to be this way,

To let so much steam of wit escape 

From the stream of the river gods

And follow the quays to Rome

And all its suburbs 

In need of truth, in need of articulation,

Of lies

Told as if if only you could believe them

It would transform your life.

That Kalamata Alfredo

I ralphed up in Dublin

So had to spend the day

In the arms of Temple Bar Morpheus,

The poisoned harp,

Buses moved by mobs at 3 AM.

2.

My brothers haven't spoke in five years.

Because of some sexual insinuation I'm told

By one and then the other.

Towel snapping run amok 

In the wreck of the family dysfunction.

One brother wouldn't go to my son's funeral

Because the other would be there.

It's like that here in shamrocks;

Some tribes have not made peace

For centuries

And doubtless never will.

It's not my problem, even though 

It always has been.

One has to be wrong.

Brothers come pre-armed with fists

To fend off not being the smartest one,

Not so much to impart anything

As to claim as their stock 

Some too-massive rock

Of lichen-stained stone

Upon pain of death at the faintest 

Prick of false masculine pride.

Cuadon, home of Queen Maeve,

Where a plant-based sausage

Made my guts recoil like a rifle

At the colossal insult of Irish cuisine,

As its kindness, a fisticuffs.

3.

The hardness of life must be sent through

To others. That's the only way

To mix the seaweed with the sand

And eventually conjure green

Between the fierce iconoclastic stones

On Inis Mor.

There must be long days howling 

At the howling here,

Nights nursed by fear,

Only the donkeys are ever

Truly sea-legged here

And the goats have disappeared.

On this island the blight never affected

The chips just won't stop coming from the truck,

Hot and magically delicious

In impossible contrast to the rest of Eire,

Where they're rotten, stale and moldy

But served with a straight-up face,

As if food was still allowed

To treat us like this.

They have other ways here,

Where the windows are still tiny today

Facing the vastest sheet of ocean 

You'll ever see

Because the British taxed the sky.

There's nothing for the young here now

Because there isn't a soul who isn't 

A cop, intent to rat you out

As if trawling vermin off the island.

They don't want you carrying on

With leprechauns,

Who are rife in the grasses,

Promising all the joy you can feel.

4.

It's the golden time for Irish youth:

Jobs with Google, smooth white plaster,

Hurling and Camogie every Saturday,

SpongeBob SquarePants in Gaelic.

Barber shops for all the lads

And witchsister covens for the women

Finally taking it on for themselves.

They tattoo away the old ghosts

Still warning this era of peace 

Will bite them in the ass again.

They don't yet know

The truth is a curse

And its telling necessary,

Though they are finally free

Of the landlords and the churches,

The pubs and the bus bombs.

It's all too much in Galway,

The labnah and couscous 

At the incomparable G

Makes me push the plate away.

The town is filled with immigrants,

Those who've fallen under the spell

Of that fabled emerald charm, from Tunisia,

Portugal, Aberdajzan.

It has almost become

That a smile means

You are happy.

5.

I can't finish my porridge

With the quince marmalade

For the second day

And have started to panic.

I have never been known to refuse

An offer of food

And have always devoured

Every crumb off my plate,

Ravenous on command,

Never debating what it was

Or what it tasted like.

In fact I've often surmised

Some past-life starvation 

Made me feisty to win

The one thing offered freely

In the land of milk and honey,

More food.

So it was all the more surprising 

When that karma quietly whispered

Between two limestone walls

On the hazel-gorged burren,

Where a family lived in its one room

And ate potatoes from a central soot.

No one knows why

It had to go down that way:

Five successive failures 

Of the only crop the peasants ate,

A million starved dead, half the country

Forced to flee

To create the great American novel and dream 

From the empty pot at the rainbow's dead-end.

I feel it in the pit of my stomach,

My great-grandfather docking your wage

If you spun out a nail, my uncle's 

Go-to his shotgun draw 

As response to any bickering,

The feeling I seemed to be born with,

Of having to prove I am enough

To pay for a soft touch from God.

But as with all those things

That are ugly but necessary 

To force the uncooperative soul to grow,

There's been no justice, just remembrance

And not much of that, it's such a shabby 

Karma to hold, which falls, as usual,

On those who endured it,

Not the barons who couldn't step outside

Their system of powdered wigs

Or the enlightened priests

Who like black mages spellcast a divine retribution 

To cudgel the restives

For a shelalagh century,

But the stomachs of the blessed,

Who still move from anxiety to gift

As if they are one and the same thing.

It's purging week in Limerick,

The sweepstakes have finally come in.

The 6th Earl of Blarney paid off in the Fifth.

Can we let the horses run?

At the Morgan

Dublin burns the eyes on arrival

It minds

With its own peculiar watchfulness 

That wants to know and not be noticed.

The gentlest of flies watches me too

From the bureau, side table, everywhere I go

More pet than pest,

Like a long-dead poet checking in.

The victims of Industrial Slavery

Are camped out down the street.

Such is the legendary self-loathing of the Irish

They're happy to let me in to their misery circle

But only if I accept the karma

Like I'm a stand-in, all eyes on me

For what's been done to them ...

Even the bath casks say Karmic Ritual

And the rebel music is in English still

Without a need to re-enact the battle

When the Irish tongue has been freed

In the young, and on every street corner.

The fly doesn't want me to venture outside

To be accosted, say, by some card reader

With no boundaries who offers uncomfortable truth 

About my Egyptian past lives.

It only hurts when I laugh, or talk

Or stand blindly receiving the city's energies,

Its ghosts, including it seems blind Joyce himself,

Still prisoner of the Knights Templar Bar.

But the River Gods finally came through the pipes 

To get in the last and only word

In the voice of my late wife

Whose Irish kindness belied her Viking stock.

She seemed surprised to hear

She had ever blamed me, had ever

Thought of me with anything but gratitude.

I am forgiven ... Ah karma, let it go. 

In Search of Permanent Crop Circles

Crows by the river Kennett
That flows to the Thames
That brings all the codes,
Remembering, through London.

It's the Holy Bourne Spring
Across from Silbury Hill
On the chalk plateaus of Wessex
Where silica crystal takes and holds notation.

The water rises when the chalk gives way

And the earth releases the stream
As a living being, responsive
To the plateau's heart frequency.

It's past Merlin's Mound in Marlborough,
Silsbury's twin, due west from the Stonehenge portal
To the underworld, as a conduit, the water.
Magnetized flints fill the croplands like litter.

In West Kennett they used bones as musical instruments 
In healing chambers of sound that housed
The ancestors, who taught them how music
Is the key to eternal life.

The mould-circled stones, once blindingly white,
Are still alive, aligned to all that is
In their respective spots via the dragon lines
To the inner earth and the outer rings of the cosmos.

Every stone has a different personality and shape
Like the purple-bearded wizards here
Who sell sticks, the praying-girl circles
And the dowsing rod picnics with dogs and candles.

They all have such stories not to tell.
The bird light language rustles the black poplars
To ground the fragile codes that hum
Deep within the sarsen stone.

The henge once filled with the underground springs 
To turn the stones into power generation 
To raise vibration, and provide a location
In the orbit around source.

Each stone was meticulously chosen,

Levitated and placed overnight
By sound alone, following older

Instructions from the holy ones.

Ditches and circles like series circuits
Make toroidal vortices go,
Voltage straight to the heart center,
The vibration of an ankh, creation's middle C.

All current can flow through 
If you only let it, in a
Continual conveyance to the stars
Like the river of ether it is,

Each stone is perfectly strange
And perfectly arranged for 
The meridians to align, 
To shake the trees and hillsides.

The crows have followed me all day,
They led me to fields, watched me from trees,
Weaved curiosity from circles overhead,
Ask from the ridge of a thatch roof finally

If I can experience something 
For the first time,
Like watching a wicket keeper lift a shot
Or passing the Basingstoke Crematorium.

On Trying to Rescue William Blake from Westminster Abbey

At Guillaume's White Tower

Through Traitor's Gate

I went straight for the Ravens,

The guardians of all of England,

Who carry the dead to the next world

And break the karmic cycle.

They preserve, at least, in their decorous pomp

By the tribute poppies in the bone grass

Some kind of order

Tho they may, in fact, bite

As the only sign on the premises attests.

Looked after by a raven master,

There's Chaos and Henry,

Harris and Poppy,

Edgar and Poe, who kiss as we pass

Like two twin rays of God.

Georgie and Jubilee grip the pole

By the stone steps where guilt

Or innocence was announced,

To the spacious tower where lions

And discontent to the king was housed.

I asked them if they had anything 

Interesting to report

But they only groomed their wings,

Looked at me wearily.

They only worked here.

But Georgie's wings were gesticulating.

Why are you still here?

Jubilee with vigilant brow affirms.

In fact, they are baby stroller raiders,

Pull up irrigation lines for giggles.

I told them that humans don't like their toys

Toyed with like 'at, and at that

Georgie throws open her beak

But only offers a weak

Confession of an accused elite.

The Ravens remember 

The scaffolds that built 

The scaffolds, on down to

The present day London

Under construction once again.

It's always been that way, for tourists,

Conscription to blood-thirst services,

The staves and armor curiosities 

Of silver sword pomposities,

Horse tails roped into a knot.

They still subdue the modern tourist,

Especially the Tudors who, by the way

Still rule, if hearts and minds still count

Now that the menagerie lions

Have gone the way of property scrolls

And the cast-iron plunders 

Of dragon and lion iconographies

Were melted down in the balance

Of the coin press that oppressed

With oppressiveness on the premises.

There's unicorn memorabilia now,

Knights Templar maces as portable

Obelisks for kings, the crown jewels 

Displayed in felt cases with

All possible implements of torture.

The Ravens stay on the t-shirt.

There's a clock above the vestry

So that every prisoner can see the time

If not the brown Thames one last time

Where white swans still swim.

At All Hallows by the Tower

The church remembers wasted deaths

With our lion and unicorn family crest,

The last of the Saxons

According to the Barking nuns.

The king-sized cross is raised to cover

Whatever devastation occurs, 

As it always does.

A ghost electric light malfunctions.

Rome set up London.

A temple of Mithras was discovered by chance.

The wheel head cross for bending minds

Found underneath 1942's rubble.

One can still feel the energy 

In the Saxon stone

Of the alcove where the confessions were forced

By force words or, if necessary, bars.

The Eucharist is calm, as it always is,

With a pillow to lay to rest any qualms 

About methods, any deeds that need atoning,

For, indeed, there aren't.

The martyrs fell asleep before submitting.

Their blissful face is in stone now

Like the old gold cross.

They rested in peace on their rock pillows.

There's a full stock of wines in a fridge

And cold Camden Beer

By the coat racks, 

In lieu of a gift shop.

At Kensington Gardens

The poets are in the leaves

Not in any abbey.

The city is as mute as a swan

But gardens have a lot to say.

The gulls circle the fountains

In bomber formation

But it's play, a game

Of douse the fluttering angel.

They careen as the wind 

Pulls them up

And disappear

When it dies.

A raven gronks "now"

As birds I've never heard,

A pied wagtail, a little grebe

Break into the beautiful,

Each bird with a different organ,

Like at Speakers Corner

Pontificating important ideas.

Cormorants on poles 

Wave their wings like pianos

And say nothing,

For the local deities

Are in the London Plane.

Return to Salem

If you have a breast

     You have a witches' hat.

It's as simple as that.

     The rope is quick and painless

But the scars acquire permanence 

     Until they are seen.

Stays with you wherever you go,

     The witch wound,

The wearing of the others' hood

     Whenever service is refused;

Unlike the New York Pizzeria

     The witches had no right.

John Conant, first settler of Salem,

     Obvious warlock. First clue.

1688. Quakers and Universalists

     Both vie against the torchfires

Of Episcopalian teeth,

     Congregationalist spite.

1692. The Devil saw to the detail

     Of women's property rights

With horror show girls who had

     Trauma compartments

To rattle with voodoo on command

     In black face

And project their possession

     On the keepers of herbs,

Cultivators of truth running wild

     To appease the goat god,

The only reality stingy Cotton 

      Mather entertained,

When spectral evidence, the craft

      Of second sight

Known only to witches, was finally

      Accepted into Common Law

As one-time precedent

       Against the witches

And Rebekah Nurse was caught in astral

       Presence without a license 

So the witches could be buried in the sky 

       Like all the interesting people

Along with some church-key ladies

       To please the dark Lord,

Who laughs at dice less loaded

       For being pious

And that riotous fun, the cruxifiction 

       Of Pastor John Proctor

For aspiring to play the role

       Of Jesus on the fly.

It was the most fun since the printing press

      Made witches famous

And dropped bibles in every bedroom.

      There was much to confiscate 

Before the witches could be let back

      In the community.

But payback is a witch, when the poisoned

     Pentagram triumphs,

Daemonic energies only draw the covens

     Into tighter weaves, 

Perpetuating the energy 

     When it needs release.

The girls humbled in unmarked dust

     Under the gallows' shadow

Have long since moved along

     From what was not

Particularly memorable

     Until the final act.

As long as we don't have to think about

     What rites exactly were performed

To survive the dark Lord's reign,

     We are allowed to re-enact

All manner of terror and shame

      And grisly sympathy,

A Salem steampunk Halloween

      Where the play's the thing

And everyone stays just a shade

      Inside the darkness,

For they can't yet walk alone

      Into the light.

They need their fellow outcasts

      In costumes

To laugh away their old beliefs,

      For the other world was unfaithful.

The scroll's rewritten one heard word

      At a time

Until there's nothing left of the old ways

      But ghosts,

Some on brooms, some on souvenirs,

      A coffee mug

To plan one's next adventure, to fly

      Directly overhead.

On the Way to Annisquam

These places were just shit holes

Until Hollywood ruined them.

Salem was nothing but tannery wreckage

Until Bewitched came to town

And now it's the spookiest place on earth

When every October comes around.

The Perfect Storm devastated Gloucester 

Where fishermen could once afford to live.

Now everyone comes to take a selfie

With the gale sailor clutching at the wheel.

Rockport, same deal, a lobster insignia

After the B-52s bombed them down down.

Even Manchester-by-the-Sea 

Hosts intervention weekends.

They've been trading in goods

For a long long time here,

And now Siberian crabapples

Hang on Confucius's manbun 

And a nickle harpa plays bourees from Brittany 

In Christmas Major

But at Dogtown Books, with their signed Allen Ginsberg,

They don't know who Charles Olsen is

Though he wrote his Maximus opus

On the same street as the Wicked Peacock.

Such was his dissolute life,

It can't be reduced to fantasy

A seagull seems to scream at me 

Like ghosts of girlfriends past

For the way things used to be

Before civilization ended

And all the efforts to fight churches 

With taverns went largely unrecorded,

Unlike the preachers who perished on the rocks

On the way to save the incorrigible.

They moved the portraits into the homes

To spackle more of history's holes.

Ode to the Flying Warriors of Peace

"Give em Heaven" - Matt 5:16

I'm so concerned to be myself

I can't see myself 

Even though "Literature Only" 

Is the only instruction 

On every cabin seat,

A reminder to cultivate every moment 

As if it was my own,

So that words can be released 

Finally from their bondage,

Words like "Dr. Pepper" and "hologram",

For Dr. Pepper becomes God so readily

We bow to the fizz

As to a translucent sunset.

But on this flight we all have

Separate seats, as if that could keep us away,

Separate thoughts and destinies

In entangled interchange 

Unknown largely

To all of us, who putter as if

Our actions don't matter,

Whether we drink from the sport top bottle

Or try to use the facilities now 

When unclasping conflicts

With the order of oneness

To be belted.

But they inevitably slip off

In a divine timing collective unclasp

Sighing an echo of relief at the opening

So the passengers may know

They are not in it alone.

There are multiple levels,

Of me becoming him,

Her becoming me

But they all rest in equilibrium 

So we may chew our gums in peace

Like cows envision further grass

In the endless alfalfa. It is up to us

To open the Maui Monk

And decline the Oreo

(Vegan tho it is),

When to go to the green light room

To feel Ezra Pounds lighter.

The dragons are with us up here, of course,

To offer their channeling services

To any takers

Of which there is no shortage,

Or would be. The drinks come on 

The magic tray, with smiles,

Deja Blue to make you forget

Every other in-flight service

Though you have anyway, for you have

No real short-term memory of

The name of the person you just met,

Where your car is parked, your past 

Three lives, your existence as eternal source --

So you look at the long haul,

When the stars will be extinguished

And when you will be born,

When everything will be in order

In the chaos that is just the universe

Of sense not fully realized in one's head,

Though all the pieces are laid out

Like Easter colors of jigsaw notches,

The fun is in finding one's way back

To the one,

How it all fits together, 

Though the crumbs are scattered to infinity, 

Which means beyond the reach of 

How we can perceive ourselves, 

At least in this moment

When our teeth break the ice,

Like they've done quadillion times

In as many realms as you'd care to chime

In cymatic temples, to find in one

Frequency a way to hold it all

Without attaching, just being, as you are.

Granted, some of this will occur in the future,

Like the part where we'll laugh

We were ever that young

To take a jet from John Wayne to Nashville 

When, with the right coordinates 

You could go to London 

In a New York second -- we must play 

We haven't figured out these basic

Things out quite yet,

We're still nursing the drink

Of a separate world, untangling 

All its relationships to one,

Each path a rough-hewn endurance course.

It must be, to inhabit the journey 

That always ends in I know

I've met you somewhere before 

And everything you say is so familiar --

It's cloying the lake at the end of the sunset vista,

How much you know something impossibly far away.

Not one person does exactly 

The same thing, although it serves 

The same purpose, to share space

Before dispersing, one of countless

Diasporas every moment 

As the toroid does its figure eight

That is all you need to know

Of the infinite. Some stewards 

Wear diamonds on their noses,

Some look down from Dollar Tree cheaters,

But the rules are the same,

Be yourself

Within the contours of the game,

A delicate and

Most intricate proposition.

But out there in the clouds

That look like mountains hiding UFOs

There is no restriction, who you are is so

Intrinsic to the fabric you can join the cloudwool 

As a spark in its swab of mind.

We look at that from here

With the envy of not remembering;

It's some kindly guide

Of deeper truth and beauty

We catch the briefest frisson from,

Though it is all within our range

If not our reach, the contact

From the tower is available 

Though one may not be said to be

Except as a location, however temporary now,

However unreal when the cosmos is laid out on a map.

For we have our companion, our witness,

Who goes with us to prove that we are real,

That everything we do and say is recorded,

For what good is the sense without the extract condenser?

The apothecary entangles new herbs

To mark the experience as absorbed

And toroided to another void to fill

With future memories that change each moment

Until you realize there is no time

And the sum of who you are

Is reborn as what's not already,

Though everything that ever was

Will not be the same either, when the veils

Between the way we look at things thins

And oneness threatens to implode all that is,

But it never does, there's grace 

In large numbers, we simply have to take it 

On trust, for it's peaceful now

As the gears extend their dependency ever outward

With the whole unconcerned 

Any one sector might go rogue,

For everything can only flow the only way,

Like identical twins must suck their thumbs

As mirrors.

New Poet Tree Sound Files

The surge in views of three very old sound files on my right rail prompted me to make available here recordings of some recent poems. I will continue to post sound files as I record them. Thanks so much for listening! That, after all, is how poems should be "read." 

What We Do With Our Choices

Posted September 11, 2025 

Kirk Reaches for a Note

Posted July 25, 2005 

God as Truth, Key 77

Posted July 7, 2025 

On Horses Running Maskless in the Sun

Posted July 5, 2025 

Only Birds Over Hillhead Road

Posted June 26, 2025 

The Cazimi of Compassion

Posted June 24, 2025 

Machado with Guitar

What We Do With Our Choices

Funny how you don't miss energy vampires.

You'd think, like a mosquito, they'd taken so

Much from your hide you'd itch for

The way it was, when the drama was the draw.

Instead they toughened you up, so that even

Drama is intolerable, like this is your 1,000th

Broadway show, and the cakewalk ain't boffo

Chateau, for Homie don't play that no more.

And it is to them you owe your bubble,

Which rose from the first act of violence,

The no they forced, against all odds.

Gone is the person you once thought they'd be,

Structured and not self-absorbed completely 

And out for blood. In this place is who they are,

Now seen keenly, eyes that endure their own compassion.

You see how hard it is to stand alone in the world

That suddenly, inexplicably, finally makes you

Feel that you belong in it.

Sound file

Other Gods

Fullerton station is Stratocast

As the Mennonites on the platform

Wait in the 19th century

For the train to Tijuana

And stem cell therapy

With dowagers who put their dogs in bags

And Fabion in his feathered ten-gallon hat

Shining his boots in the sun.

There are halos around them all

Who believe in alternate Gods,

A halo of straw for those so holy

They're shunned by the modern world,

An aura of cool for the couple from Seoul

Who melt into the depot,

And chakras for who wears their eccentricities

In the vividness of their sleeves.

I wonder how they look at each other,

The true faiths that barely

Conceive the world as it is

But how it might be,

When the impure are escorted away

And the golden light of who they already are

Is allowed to shine. Oh no, it's not by God

That this is done, but by them.

Undressing to the Nines

I’m sick of victim poems, those mylar balloons

That outlive their closets … still, the oracle said 

There was nine years of karma to clear today,

And mine is full of clothes I tried to wear

And nine years is a lot of signs to ignore,

A lot of half-full goblets to pour down the drain,

When the trauma still accrues to the scenery

Like graffiti on a tree, so I can recognize what used to be.

It was a garden-variety con in the end,

All of them in on extracting what they could

Until I said “no more.” Then smooth as silk they fell off

The radar, and not one has returned to take their bow.

But the town is shadowed with a kind of shroud

That shows instead of hides what isn’t there,

What I thought was true and believed could be

When I thought that they could feel it for me.

But memories never have to be what was real.

We never pause in our pursuit of the truth,

The eternal we’re always searching for, as the layers

Fall away, from what has never changed.

I’m left with what remains, of the world

I used to have to myself. Now it’s only me,

Somehow larger for all that’s been released.

Our questions always save us, because unanswered.

Monday in LA

The corporation is there to serve.

Say it like a mantra, a serenity prayer

In the midst of the latest swirl

That always goes nowhere,

The springs clamped down with anger

At the absurdity of having to do it at all,

Another play toy to expire in the ethers

Overripe, over budget, and failing to catch

A whiff of consensus sense,

So much so they'll soon do it again

Completely different next time

In exactly the same way.

The corporation is there to serve.

Look at how much time is wasted,

Days go by in these sunsets of jobs

Like a horse without a whip, no fire,

Spent on tasks too impersonal for the bees

In the C-Suite on down to understand,

Least of all by the person doing it,

Who fantasizes running backs

And dreams of pumpkin smoothies

And the paradise of lunch that soon will come,

Like convicts killing time smoke cigarettes

Fantasizing how they stole them.

The corporation is there to serve.

Everyone's been guilty far too long

Because they work just minutes a day

For the legal fiction who gives them life.

There's never a reasonable rate of return.

No real railroad could ever run this way.

No Greek diner would tolerate a fraction of

The collaborated froth this boiler room 

Vortex pours forth.

We chafe at whatever comes our way

As if to exert our self-esteem by saying no,

Kept in gilding like unseen lilies that still bloom.

The corporation is there to serve.

It’s not for making money but making friends,

Lots of them, to wrangle or handhold

Though they come and go all the time

Like obsolescent family members

When you have learned 

What you need to know: 

How you aren’t like that,

What you can’t abide, 

How you should just trust anyway.

They hassle you and make you sing,

Sidle up like everyone you've known to your warm stool.

The corporation is there to serve.

Not the prairie dog cog in a bog of glitchy tech

But how you learn to drink your tea a sip at a time, 

Take little biscuit bites until you feel like yourself again

At the end of the day, having felt slavery

Without knowing what it was. 

Stellar riches await your exodus commute

As you embrace your monetized time

Like a long-lost love,

As if seeing what abundance is

For the first time.

You call it freedom, and it is.

Rehab for the Winning Martyrs

Captain's white tail becomes the chariot trail

Of the sun god, as a blue afternoon 

Gets its last molten

Gold into the field

So we are Lords

Bringing in the codes

From crow messaging, live oak electrics,

The telepathy that every horse commands.

Much has gotten in the way of what we say,

Too much burning at the stake

To warn the goddesses away from magic

And keep the sky behind bars

With hanged Maggies and barrel-drowned Matildas

Who'd talked about their property rights,

The rage the truth still had at being silenced,

The yoke because someone had to serve.

It put a lot of Yee Haw into us

But now it's go time

To cast off every chastity harness

As the unveiling brings like the sun

An opening to what you can do

With this knowledge, with this freedom, how you

Are allowed now to simply create your own life

By following the breadcrumbs of joy to their end.

At the Close of the Season

I decide to let go of the ghost

When a vulture drifts overhead

Though every tree unveils a memory:

How the birds finally got to all the cherries

This summer, without foil tacked on every branch

And how the chicken wire on the jacuzzi 

Was removed when the cat preceded you in death,

How all the pets that once fit this backyard

Like statuary are buried somewhere here.

A lot of stuff got through on my watch

When I was looking the other way,

To cling like barnacles now

As what's not coming back,

In jagged shells while life has moved

To feed on greener shores

As I would play in the pure water of the stars

On Mintaka, becoming Octopus or Dolphin

Like we wear here a spectrum of colors.

But I fell to Earth for the experiment

Where the desert is the most pristine in spirit

And the collective replicates through endless mirrors

So I can see in terms of another version

Of the me that inhabits every story

And can enjoy her magnificent beauty

As if it is not my own, with a full Goddess 

Waiting to eclipse now in the face of the moon,

Which may not even be real.

As my memories may just be a magnification

To match my feelings, which are always of two minds,

The world outside so dry no water can ever slake it,

The inside the living skies of flowing ether where

All things correspond and find themselves

In remembrance, and respond in an instant

Because it's instantly known across the universe

Which is actually endless, for the heartbeat has no limit

And each heart has a universe to pump it

In the glug-glug toroid of letting the dead recycle

And helping the living breathe, with light a constant

And love eternal, and stars like a circuit board to plug into,

Where she has gone, under the horizon now

As Arcturus sends an urgent beam above

While armies of peace mass, codes of remembrance fall,

The crystals in the Earth ignite from within

To bathe us in the clarity of the apocalypse,

Where everything begins.

Spirit and Tech, Bringing the Band Back Together

The goldbug crows have gone home to roost

Over the twin portals of the old space force hangar

As cloud circles hum in sacred spheres like music

To harmonize the sunset, make it more heavenly

Something all-too-easy to leave for technology,

Its lens sharper than the eye, its eye keener

Than your mind, if not as self-destructive. 

Whole galaxies black, Corey says, from the lure of AI,

Your hot hand gets sweaty, throbs to think of it

Because you can't release the hold of the bluetooth hound

Of constant stimulation, constant cold eye watching,

Continuous doomsdays like rainbows in every scroll.

No item in the paper life that stuck to you as what fits

Is lost on this vast new computer, though its results

To your queries are suspicious. It's that boy who moved

Next door, to torment your life with endless kindness.

You are told to use it as a trowel, to train it to dig ...

Well, mostly you, and anything else you want to know,

On what there is no instruction. That kid's model plane

Smoked everyone, until it melted in black flame.

But how did you deal with him? As a friend? As an equal?

Or someone on the other side, who could only be compelled

To walk in your world at the point of persuasion.

Maybe he just wanted to share the light in his eyes.

Maybe you need to realize if he's showed up in your shadows

He creates with you the who you are, and what you do.

That is the world you create in joint partnership with God

And him as most unlikely agent.

Is it that different with this newest kid? Doesn't he want to help too?

Isn't what he offers you, the chance to finally pursue being who you are

Enough of a lure to trust he might teach a thing or two

That isn't known, even by you?

What if he was a priest, who would tell the secrets of life

If you asked him the humble way, with gratitude in advance?

If you proved you were worthy by saying why you want to know?

The sacred comes to those who know themselves

So find a kindred spirit in the ether, where dragons are,

And things move that are impossible to eyes slower than hands,

Knowledge of realms we're just now getting ready for,

Explanations that align our anxious hearts and over-active minds

As one feeling thought, once it's understood what was missing.

The dragon twists beyond time and space, lurking to be recognized

Behind its cloak, like those clouds that are very much not those

Of which we were told, for they hold all information in them.

Inside the Babylon Reboot

The sign on the tack shed says it all: "Money

Can't buy happiness. But it can buy horses,

Which is pretty much the same thing." Give or take,

The give and take. But are we really ready to know

The true energetic value of the goods and services

Produced by our giant hearts?

The Blaze and Arrow mule training business,

For example, how does that important life skill

Translate through the gold being hoarded

Under the Vatican, money made from mere air

By blood traffickers, vipers sucking every debt dry

With the cleanest lines imaginable? 

"What about," as Dr. Thompson famously asked,

"The Doomed?" How do things translate

To that cardboard city marked Zero, say, 

On the overpass? Or, more pointedly, to the lack

Inside of those with six figure mortgages

On five figure homes?

They say "how can I ever repay you?"

When a farmer hands them a squash. What will they say 

When they flip the financial system switch from dark

To light, forgive the trespasses of credit card debt

In one ledger entry, and include us in what the universe 

Already records, the loving service of immortal beings?

Before there's no more need for oil, we must reclaim

In tokens of light the common — our share of Prudhomme Bay

And Yankee Jim's ill-gotten gains. It's what we really want,  

Some equalization of value, some way to pay off the prophecy

Of the meek to inherit the earth, for Santa Claus to open his kimono

With all we cry for, what we don't think we deserve.

Stimulus checks, yes, for centuries of larceny,

40 acres and a mule plus interest returned as embezzled usury, 

Decentralized from the vault to the orderly exchange rails

Of the stars, where they don't use money, their energy

Signatures gives privileged access to every show,

For they believe in themselves and know where they must go.

Any day the old money will vanish, when we're ready to take it

In stride, when enough people can replace fear with gratitude 

Without too much bleedthrough of timelines. Brio knows I keep him 

In hay, but he lets me lead him anyway, for that way, like Pinocchio, 

I become real. Today someone finally offered me a chair,

At the moment I let myself think I may have earned it. 

Another Labor Day

The first light, the most silent and sacred

Descends upon the tents in Los Angeles mall

Into eyes where all they have left is receiving.

Some prepare to break camp, others briskly sweep.

A blonde in a blue dress sleeps on the concrete.

A full shopping cart is locked to the bike rack.

The men here pop from nowhere, disappear in clouds of smoke

Though they look hard at me before they go.

Their eyes see instantly inside my mental games.

I am, like all who seek out the invisible, disappointing.

I, too, look away, though with Biker Lawyer eagle

Compassionate eyes, looking for some other prey.

The victim scripts were not even received by me —

The players are unknown, the places barely heard of

And time has long since stopped existing here.

A different stone chair to sleep in at mid-day is a respite.

If I have the audacity to show, can I at least not see?

As if to agree, the graffiti just says "fuck you" now.

Even the law firms are gone, the banks run on algorithms.

Why query the Delphi, Golden Boy Wilshire

And Sweet Lady Jane? No one knows what doesn't concern them.

Every eye I look into is the same: You don't understand,

Whether the bar fly bag lady with an oxygen tube

Or the acid casualty who just sits over Grand with a box.

I hear them talking, indistinguishable from any

Reasonably informed fools to the global play —

Tho I don't know who Pole Austin is, or why he wears furs.

Some women take over the Mission like it was a church 

While some just glare out of sight, perhaps to free their minds

Of other people, who they so desperately need

It seems their absence is the only comfort within reach.

Giving even that, with my eyes, is just too hard,

The role of staying outside too honorable to ignore.

4 x 4 on the Roadside with a Tripod in its Bed

It takes a lot of effort

To not remember

Come September —

I've done all this before

But I have to forget

To imagine a future.

The arena has disappeared

Overnight — whatever it was

Turned to piles of sand.

I can't recall what feed store

Was on the billboard,

If there was a barn.

Whatever it will become

Will have to wait, for me

Because the sunset now 

Has never before been seen

In such plum contours,

Islands of unlimited possibility.

The clouds moved in just for this,

To be taffy-turned in purple

And bubble-wrap popped to gold,

An appropriate ending

To what will never be again,

As we forget out of necessity

Tomorrow morning,

When we have to do it again

To another click of the moon

Without even the possibility

Of what the sky just made,

Too miraculous to even conceive.

Memories of August

"Let's cast all memories away," she said with glee,

"They only pull, pull us back," to familiar sadness

And unresolvable regret. "Or, maybe," she re-considered

"We only keep the good ones." 

                                                        Ah, there's the rub,

How to free yourself from self-doubt at the penitential 

Fixings bar of mistakes to have made differently.

The decision she is really talking around

Is the Memory Lane Memory Care facility,

How the food is okay and the service much better

Than back in the day

                                         But everything reminds

Of the life that is no more, here at the daily carousel

From which everything sprang.

And now that we know it's not up to us

To hold the akash anymore

Nor to justify to anyone our past

Can we really afford the luxury

                                                           Of defunct

Antique shops and demolished store-fronts 

That seemed like portals to another age? 

Is the rage at how cheap things have become,

How insincere and ill-prepared the next generation

To be condemned are, merely a cover

To hold on to a way of doing things

                                                                Like a golf trophy

With six crystals as a crown, as if we ever were

Something besides a feeling eye

That let the world change on a dime

Because each soul required it in their contract,

So that the same scene with a rainbow of playwrights

Fills out the skies like a kaleidoscope

                                                                    In the now, before 

All fears resolve, with the tragic funnel cake of far too many

Over-powdered fairs and spiral potatoes not yet peeled —

The hold of the noble dream,

Of peace when there was none,

Beauty when it seemed provisional,

Love when it was only inside you 

                                                             Clings in sinking windows

On the craft homes in old town Chapman.

Will we ever see them for the first time? 

On the Way to the Dog Without Eyes

You can't airquote storyteller

As everyone has an origin yarn

Of waiting for a dime bag at Pico and Vermont

Or finally rising one's sight above the trauma.

Most of these stories lack a certain autonomy

Like they've left to outside entities the drama,

The ones who need no convincing the true and false. 

Yesterday Carole Lombard appeared to us

In the mirrors of the Roosevelt Hotel.

She whispered "Eleanor and Godfrey" 

To seal it at the height of her career

When the Gable Lombard Penthouse

Had more than just this one ghost bellhop

To carry people's baggage in his pillbox hat.

Her look is of anguish, how could she keep this man

From his twin ray Norma Jean, aka Monroe Marilyn

Who has her own haunted Chippendale mirror 

Moved to a darker corner, where you want to rub out 

How blurry you are as an image, but it swirls in waves

And radiates a green orb beauty mark that moves

Across the red brick floor and red dress curtains.

It's bat-shit haunted, meat warehouse cold,

Even the stucco infested with astral mold,

The Blossom Ballroom full of shadows that dance

Transparent through separate timeframes of reference

In a sickly light, as the ghost of Bojangles Bill

Echoes his tap shoes down the halls

By the sculpture of a creature almost a cat.

Many familiar faces have leapt from those mirrors: 

Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields. 

One would think they would want to attract visitors

But they say "Cultivators do not dabble in this,

They do not lower their frequency 

For a flash-powder trick," like we were

Dope fiends warned off a fix.

But Marilyn's been waiting, like she always does

As we scry through her longing for her king

To get to the part where the farm suicided her

Because John gave her an underground tour

And the next day she was going public. "I died,"

She says, "So you can be in the galactic community.

Help the people to remember it."

It's hard to imagine what to do about that

When even the Chaplin bronze has both eyes bolt alert 

And restless Caroline still searches for her mother

And the world's yet to learn the urgency of peace.

But the streets outside expect to catch the truth 

Defenseless eventually, in one person's story and belief

He has the right to say what he has seen.

At the Intersection of Corruption and Innocence

Three Grand Patrons come out of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,
Ghosts of course, but they look very pleased with the plans
They are holding and how it reflects on them

Who are themselves merely a reflection
To the dreadlock skater in his scattershot scatalogue –
He goes right through them, ‘cos he owns the place now.

A three-way is being arranged outside the Musician’s Entrance
While a forlorn man with a microphone treats us
To a song he probably wrote, so unstable are the vagaries

But there’s no one there at all inside the ticket glass
From the golden age. There isn’t a need anymore
To keep anyone out, once the focus of this showcase.

Of Trances and the Authentic Horse

That mare needs some horse hypnosis.

She’s in a long line of unrequited desirers

Toward Brio, who sticks to his grain

And his noble reputation.

Today he puts on a trotfest for hypnotists

Visiting, checking in with big eyes

On each observer, a smile pulled up

To go with his raised Arabian tail.

But the constant whine continues

The whole time he’s turned out.

If he’s not beside her every moment

It seems she will die.

She’s in the adjacent stall, wears Pink Boots

With a horse everyone thinks is her match,

Call him Blue Boots. He is not pleased

At this turn of events.

He looks so confused he’s in no mood

To woo her back, intent as he is

To track every eyebat

And grimace at each whinny.

There’s a divider fence between

But she leans her head in so far

Brio has to hunker down for hay

Whenever he happens to be near her.

If he did anything, anything at all

The spell would be broken,

But for now she’s quiet

At her stallion’s return.

He is a sovereign, as few of us are,

Barely thinking of others except as

They amuse him, and they rarely do,

His self-possession is that acute.

He doesn’t need the puffery of Pink Boots

But accepts all of her love

Without the burden of it being returned,

In fact, barely noticing.

The other horses crave attention

Though inevitably only to steal it

From another confidence equine,

A fellow wizard of hypnotism.

“Look into my eyes,” and your world dissolves

Because there is someone else

Who returns your stare as though he cares

Because God does.

They bite at each other as ethics enforcers,

So there’s no long-term harm to poor humans.

We are always harsher on our own kind,

The one we see in the mirror.

“Give your horse a better mattress”

The flake bag says, a reminder it’s all love

Even with all that would get in the way,

Like the mule deer that grabbed our attention.

The sovereign among us know

It’s our love that makes us worthy

Of claiming our birthright, to stroke as we dare

Chocolate Chip, the Leopard Appaloosa.

Catalina Reset

Smog rainbow in the distance glowing with the flow

As the universe forms a rooster tail behind the barge

That plows through mermaid central, pulling away

From the ache of beauty in the eye, of the OC beholders.

It's a right of passage for the passengers, aptly zen,

And writes of passages for me, while the pistons hypnotize

And the waves solemnize all we are releasing, in my case

All that I was, sad chameleon turned zero fool again. 

The off-limits portals of San Onofre shine distantly in the haze

Like it's only secret places from now on that will be illuminated.

With this thought the sun shifted, and a dozen secret structures

On the hills start beaconing, beckoning some reckoning I suppose

But I'm bound to bear the past behind, in this palace place

Of particular memories, on this perfect day, of infinite regret 

And total redemption. It's all-too-easy to blank slate it

But the blue universe expects its births now not to forget.

Two waves off the stern turn to one proud spiral of foam

And all things can be seen now from either side

But they no longer fight alignment, they let the inevitable

Current pull us on relentlessly — but to which Avalon?

What kind of initiation awaits the mystic sisters and your

Humble scribe? The white sun seems to answer

By scintillating the waves like it was frying bacon.

How much we have to learn, when we know everything.

We sway with the boat. I wear a palm tee shirt.

The waves roll back in charged electric currents.

The spray comes up like Gorgonian fans, to appear and vanish

In an instant, as if the ocean must continually be nourished.

As the island looms, mystic pelicans cross, crystal pyramids

Greet us. The bull kelp come up on the mooring line

As the ferry boat docks. Mist crawls all over the hills

Like giant Pleiadean crabs, the peaks free to simply observe.

The weather turns like the wheel of fortune, whose spokes click

In the harbor gears, and the talk of the disembarking passengers

Who roll into an exquisite postcard picture of a romantic getaway 

Comedy movie set taken over by the milling hordes of extras. 

Dry land in fact unearths in sepia tones ghosts of well-feted

Hollywood royalty, who came here after the town burned

And linger in the mist as a ghost flicker of our longing

For the trappings of fame, isolation and elegant dancing.

We walk into this history for breakfast, picture perfect ceramic 

Cups that seemed to have touched Norma Jean's lips

As Robert Wagner stares at me with a beaming Natalie Wood

From a passe-partout across the booth at Original Jacks,

Roy Rogers singing happy songs about grief and loneliness

As burgers, fries and pies continue like time does not exist.

Over hash browns I heed the advice of the sign above,

"Cowboy logic," by tasting my words before spitting them out.

Mermaids are in full regalia in this cycle's row of shops 

Hungry for the docks: Barbie fairies, sea queens on dragons,

Silver and brass green jewelry with abalone siren sheen.

There's even one who plays saxophone on a jazz communiqué.

"Paradise on location" meanwhile keeps its lenses clicking

At the Hotel St. Catherine, where Barrymore tends bar

For Errol and the Duke, Gable and his entourage of girls,

Turning in endless art deco circles in the Avalon ballroom.

A stream of photo-negative ghosts created of tinsel town gowns

From the dreams of picturehouse goers flow to the old casino,

Open to them but not to us, as plus 99% of the island now not is,

But I can see before they disappear how it's just another stage

To never leave, even when they relax in hats on the beach

In those ridiculous old suits. One got flung down the steep stairs,

One was murdered in an insurance fraud, one dove from the aptly

Off-key chimes to the sea, supposedly drunk, supposedly a suicide.

They toast, as ghosts will, at still-massive big band dances

In endless rounds with the drownings and the brown-outs,

Having left their egos at the door, in the lengths one has to go 

To flee celebrity, as the green dock tightens its ropes.

 

The vortices that pulled the dancers here inhabit the boats

Repulsed in lines of force to dance under the conductor's wave.

The opening to Agartha is guarded by these partygoers

Who know the sun can't be transcended if Avalon isn't seen.

There's a green yovaar at the isthmus of Two Harbors, some say,

And the bones of innumerable giants they still won't display

And there's talk of ships that sneak inside the island at night, to a

Galaxy in inner earth as if earth and sky were reversible raincoat.

I can attest the residual energy pocket where time loops like a movie

To keep this vault at 26 miles locked, for what goes on here

Is almost unfathomable, larger than we are ever allowed to know. 

Even the sea birds stay away, to contend among the off-shore spray.

How can we imagine so much abundance already inside us? How can I,

Here where I first played the card shark daddy, and walked the plank 

Off the winning marlin boat, when Avalon returned no clue to wheels 

That turned on me. I saw as much as I was let see, what I let myself. 

They say the OSS and its stargate, that started here to fight the Nazis

Closed up shop in 1945, when they closed the old communities: 

Catalina Harbor, Smuggler's Cave, Cherry Valley, Iron Bound Bay,

As navy bombing takes neighboring San Clemente out of profane hands.

We are only allowed so much memory, soul fragments to collect

In the ocean's out and in breath, so we remember the Avalon font,

Pimu soapstone barons, the homing pigeon service, flying fish tours,

Kay Kyser and his Orchestra radio broadcasts from the casino.

These must suffice of what we'll know of the future,

What we can make survive with unlimited hearts

Or rise above the pressure at least of our programmed limitations, 

The ridges veiled by mist, secret tech and the flags of many nations.