7/31

a sojourn
on bare talus
(not far off the trail)
we fail to note
the falling cloud cap
trapping us
in gray white mist

on barren rock
cairn blazes useless--
invisible from above

a reconnoiter fails
to find the trail--
we could whistle & shout--
instead choose to wait it out--
preferring silence to the loud
betrayal of this space-- to be
displaced is small discomfort
to one who acclimates
to waiting
lost in clouds

7/30

on shore
flow--
ghosty fog
wafts
salt water made
morning mist

cedars-firs-hemlocks
reduced to suggestions
& silhouettes

as soft
molecular memories of
San Francisco
Spray Park
& North Pacific strands--
wisp lightly
my face

7/29

out walking
the imagination

(that that's still
functional after
extended subjugation
to a monetized
corporate zeitgeist)

aesthetically pleasing
locales are nice--
a coastal track,
an Olmsted park--
but track home
ticky tack
can suffice--
the real work
is inside:

the bubbling battles
of ego & id--
freeing hid-
en connexions--
neologistic dictions--
the algebra of rhymes--
& buried fictions--
metaphorical reflections
in mirrored time

live to amuse a muse
& ye may find yourself gifted
with something you can use
once the lid is lifted

7/29

we are told
the saurian giants
of the cretaceous
were destroyed
by an asteroid
impacting the earth
at hundreds of thousands
of kilometers per hour--

with power enough
to heat the air before it
to temps exceeding
the surface of the sun

--launching a
shock wave @ velocities
approaching the speed of light

& a roiling cloud of darkness
--silent--
faster than sound--
engulfing the horizon
--annihilating on impact

followed by
--hurricanes of burning stone
--a twilight darkness covering the planet
--months? years?
of sunless days
-- a millennia
of climatic instability

asteroid strikes--
say astronomers--
are not predictable--
unlikely to be noted by
scope or radar--

unseen
before atmospheric contact
ignites a fireball
(a second or so before impact)

otherwise--
complete surprise

7/27

methinks my humors
may be misaligned

too much black
bile while
cold & dry
of spleen
(I've seen
this correlates as
SJ on the MBTI)
o my!

do I need a bleeding?
should I reach for a leech?
maybe Rudy's harbors
a barber (no doubt
nattily tatted
& profusely pierced)
who is deft with
blade and bowl
& may make whole
my elan vital

I want
to cook with phlogiston--
move through
luminiferous ether--
embrace all things
discredited & old

& spin some baser matters
into gold

7/26

one can hope
irritation
may some day
produce a pearl

that nacreous
iridescence might
come of perturbation--

that mantled
conchiolin circumstance
could convert
grit to gem

7/25
In the event a Beer Summit with
Shirley Sherrod, Van Jones &
the President...

...one could ask,
Sir, do you
remember principles?

& that
it's alright to fight
when you are right

see
when the accused
is so ill-used as to be
hurled from the sled
for what was said
(or not said)...

& when,
at hint of attack--
he/she
is sacrificed to the vulpine pack

it really doesn't slake
their bloodthirst
does it?

such profiles in pusillanimity
only feed the enemy

better to grow a spine
while there is still time

7/24

free language!

verb nouns @ will!

kill the shibboleth
that syntax best
follow the grammars of Cicero!

no! let new referents grow
on words
like notes to tunes
spun by Diz & Bird!

let the Fiddies & Snoops
of the future obfuscate
with new feats of diction
to new beats
before bewildered
Mr. Joneses !

watch words morph
as twits text wildly
a-twitter on their mobiles!

watch the beautiful bastard
of ten six six
learn new tricks
as it waxes global!

7/23

bemoaning the body's betrayal
I note a crow posed
on the rail
of the deck outside
the kitchen door

hungry for portents
I look on--
a shrug,
an acrid call
from a blood red mouth
& it's gone

resisting the easy metaphor
I'd still be cool with nevermore

7/22

on shingles

an ill-named malady--it
lacks the fearsome respect
of an -osis or an -itis

physicians ask me to quantify the pain--
to rate it on a scale of one to ten
and after assigning agony a score
to describe it with an apter metaphor...

you know how when somebody stabs you in the back with a butcher knife?
& then comes back every few minutes and gives the handle a good whack?
or
...how the invisible dwarfs who live under your skin all open up on your
nerve endings with their flame throwers?
or
...when a pack of starving wolverines launch a feeding frenzy
on your armpit?

it's kinda like that

so be so kind as to suppress your smile
& urge to ask me
cedar? asphalt? tile?

7/21

the bee remembers
lavender

dances to say
here is the way

invoking a mystery
encoded in her molecules

that rules the shared
genius of the hive--

a gestalt that is itself
a thing alive

7/20

hidden pictures

northern portrait:
alaska in winter--
"bon (h)iver" calls
the deerhunter...

.."let paper figures take
final spins over the
painted hills so
phosphorescent
plants & animals--
fleet foxes & caribou may
say hi &
spoon
over
speck mountain in
the broken west"

who knew
the quiet ones--
the very sexuals
washed out?

we were promised jetpacks just
as cymbals eat guitars
& twin tigers throw me...

...the statue sucker's
systems officer searches
new faces in
the midnight masses
on the human highway
of loveland


(lacking anything profound to say,
the writer buries the names of
30 relatively obscure pop bands
into a facsimile of a poem)

7/19

what's going on?

looks kinda like
some sorta
blend of
haiku-ish minimalism
(Gary Snyder--merci)
interspersed with
rhymes of opportunity
(Kay Ryan--grazi)
-a propensity
to eschew
the first person singular
if possible (not to disparage
introspectionalism should
such a movement exist)
-a tendency to list
that lacks elegance
of syntax
& an awkward voice that's
not so much a matter of choice
though--it's
just the way the dendrites
flow

7/18
from the gurney he muses on mortality

the prospect from here--
out on a limb
on the tree of life...
looking back
at X billion years
of evolution...

still just
one molecular mistake--
one quirk of DNA
away from
the cracking branch--
& the long fall

but then aren't we all?

7/17

an angry red light
glows in the night sky
high atop a steel
girded tower

its mission:
to broadcast monetized superstition

the message
if heard and dismissed
as absurd
condemns the hearer
to eternity
in some twisted
Medieval nightmare

note the ethics of this equation

then change the station

7/16

the text:
beat poets

anthology?
or imperative sentence?

OK
the pretense & drunken absurdity
can sometimes border on twee
when viewed from the 21st century

still I'll
dig the black
garbed beret-ed
cliches
let them have their say-- a
scribbled middle finger
hurled
at a button down world