Blue Moon Actuality

August 31, 2012  (I was 67)

         Blue Moon Actuality

Only once this month

overcast cloud cover

rode in on air from a colder place

permeable filter to screen the full moon

of warm tinted low frequency light

allowing only waves of quicker pulse

to stain the darkness indigo blue

I attend to the higher pitched chirps

of a cricket universe I cannot see

I hum low tones of conscious breath

and expect no revelation beyond the sound

more Gemstones

August 30, 1973  (I was 28)

more Gemstones

         4

It is a sad fact,

the government does matter.

We are men who have made our own master,

one we thought was benevolent,

above our petty apprehensions.

But now his fears are our own.

Gordon Strachan is alone in the vacuum between planets.

He says, Do not come with me.

Senator Montoya is satisfied to have asked a question.

We each occupy our own vacuum.

         5

Lowell Weicker leads a cheer.

The poor guy has grown hoarse;

someone get him a beer.

He’s a damn good man and he works hard.

He’s not a loner; he’s just dedicated.

He’s going to get to the bottom of all this,

and by God, this won’t happen again.

He is obviously outraged.

He has historical presence.

And ambition must recognize opportunity.

         6

In the heat of August

the snake sneaks off to the woods;

his cold body likes the shade.

His split tongue practices speech,

My notorious reputation is undeserved.

Let us not let the past stand before the future;

Let us rather slide together into the winter sun.

         -Gemstone was the name of Gordon Liddy’s “dirty tricks” proposals to upset operations of the ’72 Democratic Convention and to counteract protestors at the Republican Convention.

Blue Moon Presentiment

August 29, 2012  (I was 67)

         Blue Moon Presentiment

The month stretches long enough

and the moon speeds fast enough

to reflect its full face twice

and to illuminate an unscheduled wisdom

It’s the kind of game we attach to anomalies

in hope they will portend a significance

we can identify and divine

to an authority greater than our own

I’m pagan enough to tend to ritual

shamanistic enough to count the nights

til under its light I will rattle awareness and look

in successive moments of quiet respiration

Gemstones: the Watergate hearings

August 28, 1973  (I was 28)

Gemstones: the Watergate hearings

         1

Old Sam Ervin

keeps rollin along

All pools and reflections

on the surface

but the undercurrent cuts strong

From a course set young

Old Sam Ervin keeps rolling along

His gavel is a gift from the Indians

who know when a treaty is broken

A Washington tomahawk

just west of the Watergate

         2

Mr. Erlichman’s hair sweats.

The House audience does not like him.

On TV his eyes look like arrow holes.

He is not a good liar;

fear and guilt tinge his motions.

I find this admirable,

mildly redeeming to be unaccustomed to such pressure.

But for this my wife finds him despicable,

not full of character like indignant John Mitchell

who can lie

(and know that his lies are known)

without flinching; steadfastly,

nonchalantly playing the game.

         3

Howard Baker tires;

after eight weeks his versatility’s gone

and his conservative indolence shows.

His initial analytical interrogation

has gotten fat-

superfluous and verbose.

Perhaps he begins to wonder

why the truth has not told itself,

pulled itself from its secret file

and run its verbal images

across our magnetic ears.

         -Gemstone was the name of Gordon Liddy’s “dirty tricks” proposals to upset operations of the ’72 Democratic Convention and to counteract protestors at the Republican Convention.

Cold Mountain life

August 27, 1973  (I was 28)

Cold Mountain life

is compact;

it is eco-

nomical

clean and

sturdy

like a washed

carrot.

         *

Upon Cold Mountain

no moment is humble.

Every action is magnificent,

there is no hearth to sweep.

         *

I know something of Cold Mountain

I have been there alone.

Summer nor winter did I see Han Shan.

No doubt he resides there.

We did not find each other;

we did not drink tea.

Upon Cold Mountain

no man speaks to his reflection,

no man speaks to his shadow

from the dream records

August 26, 1991  (I was 46)

from the dream records

         In the side yard of my mother’s house in Keewatin I sit on the simple wood-frame of a go-cart made by my young son Nathan.  I position myself in balance, then I fly it over the fence and across the sidewalk in front of the house. The town looks rejuvenated.  The Itasca Theater is back, merchants are flourishing, a street sale is on with goods displayed.  I’m at an altitude of six feet and run into Elizabeth Michelich and her daughter, Betty looking as they did thirty years ago.  They are amazed, as are others on the street, to see the bare frame fly.  Elizabeth says, “You should make more of those.  You could sell them easily.”  I know that she doesn’t understand, and I don’t explain, that the vehicle flies by will, not by any source of power.  It is actually I that is flying.  I take it to about fifteen feet and soar down the street.

The Shadow Puppet Theatre

from this week in August, 2016  (I was 71)

The Shadow Puppet Theatre   (a work in progress)

The shadow puppet theatre

cast upon the walks and lawns

presents a new production daily

directed by the wind moving leaves

Negatives of movement projected below

To see it as representational

may miss the point

Anything interpretive is an imposition

Eyes are unreliable receptors

Seeing should not be believing

The mind seeks shape

patterns seen against closed eyelids

Once recognized form persists

just as sub-atomic particulars

called into being when sought

Items in the bay we didn’t know we bought

Just the other day

I watched the shadow puppet monkeys play

before behind and in between

the foreground and background screen

Movements defined by their shapes

animate the little apes

They bend bound stretch and descend

Three sit together on haunches

pausing together on lower branches

Darkened eyes do not see

Covered ears do not hear

their unuttered sound most profound

Having discovered the play of the monkeys

many look for nothing else

Imposing interpretations obscure

the other actualities blown in

In the shadow puppet theater

sets change with the season

The best productions

appear without reason.

While I grew up I thought I was a town kid

August 24, 1998  (I was 53)

While I grew up I thought I was a town kid

not a farm kid or lake kid

not a highway kid

A town kid, though the town

was less than two thousand

and the closest city was eighty miles

and that was Duluth

A town kid didn’t have to know cows

didn’t have to catch fish everyday

didn’t have to hope a friend would hitch-hike by

Town kids knew sports

and hung out at the fields the rink

the bowling alley the Itasca theater

Everybody went to school in town

and everybody learned something about iron mining

The open pits are in town at the edge of town

along the highway ranging between towns and lakes

The pits  You do not imagine them vast enough

nor deep enough  The tires on the Euclid dump trucks

are taller than you  Looking from the edge of the pit

those big trucks look small traversing in and out

Sometimes it takes fifteen years to shift gears

even when you’re running without a load

I never had to churn the Guernsey nor convert a pig

into pork  I fry the fish if you bring it cleaned and scaled

The trucks were too big for me to fight

Hitch-hiking with a friend can be an adventure

You thumb alone out of love and off to school in Duluth

where there were town kids farm kids lake kids highway kids

and city kids  Some from Helsinki didn’t know anything

about iron mining but quite a bit about geography

MVP

August, 23,1975  (I was 30)

         MVP

The school board is Charlie O. Finley

It gets off by winning cheap

gets off on the concept of ownership

Its his farm and their system

I recognize fiscal responsibility

I understand public service

but I’m a Reggie Jackson or a Catfish Hunter

at fifteen thou a year

Man I fill the house everyday

and it’s a long season

I’m a skilled seasoned veteran

deserving some monetary recognition

Check my career stats

My work is art  I’m a student of the game

I go hard in extra innings every day

Social Science and General Business

August 22, 1974  (I was 29)

Social Science and General Business

When I was in 9^th grade Mr. Drobnik wanted to know

what a city manager was or

if you didn’t know that he wanted to know

the price of eggs in China

If you didn’t know he wanted to know

what did you know in no uncertain terms

You knew this was high school

He wanted to know specifically

how to balance a checkbook

and how much you paid for eggs in China

if you paid by check

We studied occupations then did oral reports

I learned some people laugh when you say

you are thinking of becoming a barber

so I added meteorologist to my list

Eventually I never cut any hair

and I only tell the weather if somebody asks

Everyone waiting for the train to come

from this week in August, 2010  (I was 65)

Everyone waiting for the train to come

That big iron horse steaming from the past

Big black engine puffing up the track

carrying a load of whatever got on before

to a place where more got on and some got off

Waved to the engineer or said a prayer

that they might someday ride with him

Waved again at those on board

some of whom waved back

Many just want to see the red caboose

and hear the diminishing clackety-clack

take its future out of their now

Others just want to jump in front of it

before it passes them by  

There is a way in which time has stopped

August 20, 1998  (I was 53)

There is a way in which time has stopped

Fewer moments distinguish themselves

as attached to hour, day, month, year.

Fewer events materialize

with an objective reality so defined

as to be difficult to displace from mind.

A young mind needs more milestones

reminders of where it’s been

on the geography to where it’s going.

Eventually things appear enough alike

to be destinations

and we are satisfied to know

where we are is where we’re going.

Truth evolves and dissolves

sift of fact, color of emotion.

I’m not concerned that yesterday

be remembered tomorrow

as it is remembered today.

I am concerned about our perceptive abilities

to support our testimony

that yesterday ever existed at all.

When as a child I first learned

August 19, 1998  (I was 53)

When as a child I first learned

three dimensional perspective

on a two dimensional surface

by drawing partially overlapping squares

then joining like corners

to show three surfaces of a transparent cube

I was impressed

by my new grasp upon reality

My wordless hope

that all the secrets of artistry

would reveal themselves

by similar manipulative trickeries

fit so conveniently into that hollow box

that never became a brick

nor book upon a shelf

It has been the magician’s box

Things put into it disappear

though you can see right through

It is an icon

for the boxes of misery and treasure in legend

or the cast of the cosmic die

in a child’s understanding of things.

Action at Hapuna: just like a commercial

August 18, 1992  (I was 47)

Action at Hapuna:  just like a commercial

She was just another young blonde on the beach

trying to keep certain local boys just out of reach

but most certainly standing within their sight

They panted long enough to hope she also might

She thought she was cool as a rule

knew how long she could tease and fool

sifting hair in the breeze putting lotion to her legs

She doesn’t notice any Kane who sits up and begs

She wants the hunk hunched over plate lunch

knows his indifference is the coolest of stunts

She ambles nearer keeps the pack at bay

and thinks she knows exactly what he will say

Then a long brown nymphette in a g-string

hands a Coca-Cola to the Real Thing

“She’s so So-Cal, mama Hawaiian, she only 16”

whispers muttered by the dogs on the scene

The couple dash with boards to the surf

the blonde takes a towel to old people turf

You’d think some gentle kanaka might

hula on over with a lei and a Sprite

incident at Mt. Lassen

August 17,1969  (I was 24)

incident at Mt. Lassen

granite peak

blue mountain sky

august snow

dirty even from a distance

hundred thousand green trees

like a fence behind which rises mountain

where upon some rocky cliff

trying to install a communications reflector

a ranger fell to his death

though we may have wished it

the mountain did not move

Spending our time

August 16,1977  (I was 32)

         Spending our time.  Isn’t it a marvelous phrase?  An honest idiom.  Do you want to make an investment?  I spent a lot of time on you.  I spent time up in the hills.  I spent time creating ways for others to spend time.  I’ve spent time as if time did not exist.  I spent time watching the elderly spending time wisely or childishly.  I’ve spent time like money, expecting a guarantee.  I’ve bought entire years I can’t remember and inexpensive moments I’ve never forgotten.  I still find myself spending time regretting time lost and time spent waiting for another time.  I may have arrived at an awkward time for you.  You are racing with your own time.

Overall

August 15, 2010  (I was 65)

Overall

I have no bitches about my britches

I go to Bermuda in my shorts

Capri in my pants

I deer hunt in my buckskins

prance with buffoons in pantaloons

I embrace a waist in hip huggers

spelunk for guano in dungarees

dodge the bull in toreadors and

prod for bivalves in my clam diggers

When smoking weeds in my tweeds

I may be lax in my slacks

but never loose in my tights

in my pedal pushers on my bike

Ever stretching in my sweat pants

and sweating in my stretch pants

The menehune are serious folk

from this week in 2014 and2015  (I was 69 &70)

The menehune are serious folk

you can tell by how they play

In the dark it’s go for broke

on lava slide they made that day

Serious are the menehune folk

You hear it in their songs

sung in throaty lower notes

against the throbbing gongs

                  *

The menehune are serious folk

they plant and pull and pound the poi

they be tough and gruff as any moke

to pry and punch and poke be joy

Serious ar the menehune folks

they peel your fruit and steal your tools

practical are their kind of jokes

they no suffer gladly any fools

Health care for all sounds so automatically correct

August 13, 1994  (I was 49)

Health care for all sounds so automatically correct

it couldn’t possibly be profitable except in some abstract sense

or to those who will steal from any plan we have.

And it tends to democratize accessibility to expensive care.

Global classism is not confined to religion race or place of origin,

it’s who gets the human organs and who gets the orangutan’s;

and of course who we get them from.

There always has to be someone to get them from.

It’s hard to realize the haves like the have nots,

there is so much evidence to the contrary.

Every little lobby group seems to need support.

The individual is just a collection of groups it supports,

just like God on a smaller scale

with not quite God-sized weapons firing at semi-automatic clip.

We allow the magnanimous gesture of the ape.

The heart of an orangutan

gets transplanted into some hyperactive chimp

who then eagerly displays problem-solving orientation,

trying in this way and that to elicit our attention.

The self-contained visionary orang goes unnoticed as he dreams.

The poet of the apes is irreverently disinterested

in our antic striving.  Mentally poised

his comic pride is such

that his laughter is repressed,

the humor of the swampy woods of Sumatra.

His demeanor remains subtly impudent

even as we give his heart away.

Hirth From Earth/Hirth Martinez

August 12, 2005  (I was 60)

Hirth From Earth/Hirth Martinez

Warner Bros. BS 2867 released May 1975

         Hirth From Earth is the album I’ve been waiting for, the album I’ve been expecting Harry Nilsson to make ever since Schmilsson.  But Hirth Martinez is not Harry Nilsson –or is he?  Compare the cover photos with those on Nilsson’s Duit On Mon Dei.

         From Earth is a superb album.  Robbie Robertson’s production is a part of the talent operating here, but all the songs were written by Martinez and the resemblances to The Band’s music are fleeting and understated.  There is a large orchestra, fifty musicians, twelve violins, but the orchestration is never overwhelming.  The strings, horns, synthesizers, congas and concertinas appear selectively throughout the program.  This is nicely embellished Roll and Roll, vamping from New Orleans jazz flavors to neo-vaudevillian ballad, and Martinez’s guitar work and vocals are the featured instruments.  Singing stretched postures, he evokes characterizations –at times the rasping madman of the mountains, at other times a Gaspby romantic playboy.  Through it all it’s the persona of Winter Again, that of a recently-aging poet, which seems to be the most personally reflective.

         My wife looked at the pictures and said, “Ah, that’s not Harry Nilsson.”  A friend who visited a few days said, “I played it twice.  I didn’t like it at all.”  So play it more than twice.     

Now that I’ve spent much time doing little

August 11, 1992  (I was 47)

Now that I’ve spent much time doing little

there seems to be quite a bit less to do

A life of intense sporting pre-occupations…pastimes

The stunning arrogant occupation of teaching

is now humble efficiency –a way to get a little money

unencumbered by much moral compromise

The teenaged knight of Catholicism

tries to be a good guy now

and succeeds on isolated occasions

Sooner or later the kids need less watching

and start to watch you with some chagrin

that every age they are you’ve already been

Everything I learn about the world

makes the world bigger and life smaller

I’ve read too much to understand anything

can’t even make a long distance phone call from a pay phone

Good thing there is nobody I want to call

I never knew ambition and would never consider him a friend

coqui frog

August 10, 2009  (I was 64)

coqui frog

small vague

new plague

I hear soon as I here

so near here I hear

coqui it’s me

coqui it’s me

coqui frog creak

on a bed that squeak

she play piccolo

contrapuntal

zing to cricket ring

almost pipes

melancholy baby

from mountain vog

he coqui frog

seeks dialog

choose me

whistles he coqui

he coqui availability

coqui be still

folk out at night

with net and light

if found we will

end your sound

and our ennui

coqui ennui

Begun on this date, the theme continued

summer of 2011…& since

I inch along at a pace I understand

August 9, 1970  (I was 25)

I inch along at a pace I understand

when a spring snaps and I land

somewhere I had not planned

And the sand slips beneath my feet

before I can greet the new air

or meet the inhabitants there

It’s hard to focus and I become afraid

when I can’t determine the locus

of my points  Still I would not yet trade

with he who has stiffened his joints

and become crass in his insistence

holding numb resistance to whacks on his ass

from the Dream Records

August 8, 1991  (I was 46)

from the Dream Records

         Before an upcoming performance of OLIVER at the Amador High Theater, an announcement is made saying the audience will be treated to a short set of solo work by drummer Mickey Hart.  Having attended the World Drum Festival in S.F. shortly before, I was elated.  The theater was open-air, covered with tent-like banners (more similar to the Disneyland Videopolis than the Amador Theater).  Hart performed both on trap drums and some more exotic ones.  I felt it was a fitting encore to the Drum Festival.  The audience dispersed quickly and Hart was standing alone in front of the stage.  I spoke to him and he seemed genuinely pleased when I mentioned his friends at the festival and how impressed I was with the event.  I spoke of Seiichi Tanaka, and momentarily mind-blocked, had to ask about the huge drum he played.  Hart reminded me that it was a Taiko drum.  I also told him I had seen a news spot where he had spoken before a congressional committee with Dr. Oliver Sacks on the benefits of music for the ailing and the aged.  He was a bit surprised that the news reached California.  I shook his hand and the dream ended. 

In the dark all other is alien and obstacle

August 7, 2005  (I was 60)

In the dark all other is alien and obstacle

no gradation of layered shadow

no dimension to propose definition

no hues to confuse judgment

In the void no foreign whisper alters thought

no debate is stirred by falling tree

From the constant taste of self ingestion

nothing swallowed poses question

No fragrance to become odor no ripe to rot

no crawl no shiver no sweat to skin

Only in the bright world of gravity and sky

we begin to sense the depths that lie

And this night at the crater was like that

August 6, 2014  (I was 69)

And this night at the crater was like that

The smoke and clouds obscured the sky

above the bursting embers of Earth

To prove brilliant sparks are not exclusive

another in the dark near me said

“If we could only see the stars above as well”

I recall my progression of thought last night

and note how instinctively we look for a way

to put perception into a proper perspective

Life is good but if I don’t bitch it might get worse

from this week in August, 2014  (I was 69)

Life is good but if I don’t bitch it might get worse

Tomorrow I’ll go to Halemaumau

wait til it gets dark as it gets

then go watch the changing glow

billowing from the pit

hear the oohs from the awed

Retreat to a cabin at Kilauea Military Camp

The darkness at the edge of the rain forest

where churning above in full dimension

the billions of stars forgotten in the suburbs

Emanations from goddesses and gods

to whom Pele bows

The scent of floral vegetation

August 4, 2000  (I was 55)

The scent of floral vegetation

that had hung in warm morning air

is dissipated by the ocean breeze

that also chases remnant cloud tissue

up the slope toward Mauna Loa

The laps of relaxing repetition lull

the senses into timelessness

Billfish Tournament boats pace the sea alleys

First the pair of magpie then the doves

make their rounds on the lawn

Cheryl does her languid morning crawl

flick plash forth and back across the pool

Hands of articulate palms practice

delicate gesture and reflective hula

both on the air and over the water

The charter dive boat bobs off the point

Swimmers join the flight circles of mantas

to feel the proximate terror of their mass

and the jolt of awareness

to perceive the self within the greater realm

The quiet pulse of surf plays the lava shore

while summer leaves to become summer

So goes the tropical pattern in days

of here and there over and under

until from the mountain the thunder