Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty (6)

August 31

   Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty  (6)*

In the time of the old nations

people knew the pantheistic landscape

The beings of hills and stream were seen

the scope of each domain was understood

The movement of the day and year played

against the patience of oak or rock

and the great beings issued powers

that moved the sky and earth

The obvious was not to be ignored

Phenomenal relationships were perceived

The truest were as direct as cold breath

blown by North Wind through the canyon

Now folklore is impractical and vague

We see more subtle seismic implications

when she awakens to stir in her bed

and runs her fingers through her hair

*From a series written from 1998-2001 (I was 53-56)

Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty (5)

August 30

   Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty  (5)*

The days she remains invisible

behind walls of gray air

something substantial in me is obliterated

patched over with vague recollection

More real then is every daily revelation

of her form whether in pastel silhouette

or stark as Cezanne against the blue

and more remarkable in her vital reality

And the constant passive security posed

from turned face and breast

to open hips and rising thighs

unique in every light

causes me to consider her dreams

to be the fabric of the dawn

into which I move

and against which I disappear

*From a series written from 1998-2001 (I was 53-56)

Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty (4)

August 29

   Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty  (4)*

I walked the ridge trail olive groves

above the southern access to the hills

climbed deer and critter paths

through the oaks to summit roads

my point of view now more western,

more elevated; turkey vultures overhead

Afternoon sun colored but did not warm

the wind blowing my vision eastward

Pieces lay in colored cubes of her

abstractions on a newly ordered horizon

separate recognizable her parts

to be reconsidered there from here

This old beauty anew again

the possibility of always fresh

she provides in a smile I assume

is there but still have not seen

*From a series written from 1998-2001 (I was 53-56)

Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty (3)

August 28

   Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty  (3)*

There have been mornings of firm intent

when I have anticipated the moment

and lost myself in premature reverie

As I approach her she is my focus

I analyze the distance between us

the color and texture of the air

the tone of the intervening time

whose notes I count off one by one

By some autonomic breach of perception

I discern the drift of banal traffic

conversing loudly across my lane

and I maneuver around the thought

Or some cleverness plays my attention

a momentary implication looms large

Then I sense the wrong light passing

and immediately know I’ve missed her

*From a series written from 1998-2001 (I was 53-56)

Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty (2)

August 27 

   Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty  (2)*

The fabric of the canopy overhead

and lie of bed clothes around her

varies with the morning weather

and colored light dawning over her knees

I have turned to look upon her hidden

under a silvered veil of sheet

forehead, shoulder, knees in silhouette

slumbering in fog of sleep

And I moved that morning in sleepy fog

about my business with underlying hint

of familiar form beneath subliminal cloud

and rounded edges of reality

The perfunctory memory of the hand

working routine daily tasks

frees the mind to drift in search

of a familiar naked form

*From a series written from 1998-2001 (I was 53-56)

Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty (1)

August 26

  

   Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty  (1)*

Each morning the lady reclines

at the same angle of repose,

as I roll around the same curve

to bring her into view

I first see the left rear profile of her head

turned away from me in the pillow,

a curl on her forehead,

eyelash, tip of nose, satin cheek to chin

I turn upon her shoulder,

soft quarter of her breast

under which left hand has come to rest,

and other lies beneath, fingers over navel

The foliage suggestion of discreet bush

lies beneath and between thighs

which rise to smooth angular knees,

then pleasing drop of calf to feet

tucked under a verdant sheet

* From a series written from 1998-2001 (I was 53-56)

Another crusty evening

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

Another crusty evening

old black and white movie of yesterday’s fools

Nothing changes in five hundred years

of yin and yang transactions

promise of future redemption

in exchange for present drunkenness

a ridiculously perfect rational rejection

of the soul sold to the devil myth

Not pleasure now for a future forsaken

but a numb shadow in the night

in exchange for the promise

tomorrow I will be Jesus

It don’t mean nothing at all

from this week in August, 1973  (I was 28)

     It don’t mean nothing at all

I used to be funny

before I started making money.

The days were sunny

and my nose was runny.

Now I’m clean like a machine

I do what I do what I do

and I’d probly do it again

but I don’t know when.

Sometime back I started to think,

what a dink,

I shoulda skated around the rink.

Soon as you jump in you start to sink.

I planned for summer nights in a tent

August 23,2010  (I was 65)

I planned for summer nights in a tent

set up in the back yard

from where we could control the dark

and rule the infinite stars

until we died in a sleep from a fatigue

we thought we’d defeat until we could not

Stupid guilt for nonexistent crimes

stripped and robbed me of the times

left only rich when they could have been opulent

I do not know why we didn’t enact these schemes

that might have fulfilled our dearest dreams

now split into aged wonderings

how we could have lost such sacred plunderings

The politician is no artist

from this week in August, 1972  (I was 27)

The politician is no artist

expediency does not allow it

he is in a hurry

between Fairbanks and Little Rock

he has airplane disorientation

as he reads speeches written by a man

who used to be a switchboard operator

His thoughts no longer mix with his dreams

as he drifts slowly conscious this morning

examining sunlit greens upon trees.

He is awake already

organizing and plotting with top advisors

He has the computed pulse consensus

the voting public opinion upon the key issues

The speech writer is busy he types

This is a man of the people

or a man of a sizeable percentage

He does TV commercials for us

Spread the margarine become a king

Drop bread in the toaster

Vote for him and hope he’ll remember

once he gets to sleep in November

that virtuosity opens opportunity for art

Up on Cold Mountain

from this week in August, 1973  (I was 28)

Up on 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.

Personal Physics

from this week in August, 1991  (I was 46)

            

                        Personal Physics

Knowing the importance of will and the force of control

Believing the strength of self-induced motor stress

Understanding the absorption of focused orientation and

Having the basic food-security relationship criteria

Has not broken the material reality anchor chain from me.

My escapes are without reform, my recidivism chronic.

I’ve created then ignored the crises which momentarily

Made my impoverished view of reality whole.

The paraphernalia of pharmacology and hypnotism work for me

But in the end I do not seem to work for me.

In the natural awakening state I do not awake awake enough.

Each day’s attempt to learn addiction to will sinks in addiction to non-will.

My little misery is so precious I cannot let it be.

from the Dream Records

from this week in August, 1991  (I was 46)

                                    from the Dream Records

            I am at the Hopkins gym in Fremont California helping George

Taufer teach basketball before the start of the first day of school.  I

recognize only one boy, a former student, Phil Richards, a pain-in-the

butt, egotistical poor student. The basketball ends and George and I

herd milling students to class, when another boy sets of a sizeable

spark from a device resembling a wand or “magic flame” barbeque

lighter. 

            I approach the boy to discipline him with the intention of

letting him off with a warning not to bring the device to school.  When

he balks, I tell him he is now going to the principal, explaining that

Hopkins students followed teachers’ orders.  He remains mildly insolent

until separated from his peers.  Then he tried to get off by being

apologetic, but I say it’s too late for that. 

            We approach the office by crossing a street, which becomes

Howard Avenue in Hibbing, Minnesota, to the State Theater, where I

find Principal Tim Reichert in the lobby.  I hand the boy over with an

explanation of the situation.  Tim asks to see the device, then asks

the boy to demonstrate it.  The kid says he can’t because it needs to

be recharged, and it costs ten dollars.  Tim remarks that at least it no

longer presents a danger.

            I awoke and later realized the device seemed similar to a

description of a “laser ray” in a science catalog my son Nathan

received in the mail the day before.

That man didn’t take a jet

August 18, 2010  (I was 65)

That man didn’t take a jet

     nor any slower vehicle of flight

He didn’t board a cruise ship

     or any thing else that floats

He didn’t ride the rails nor any kind of road

     never dreamed of leaving

     couldn’t read a map

     wouldn’t believe the traveler’s tale

     any more than he believed the wind

He cared not where the ground sank

     not where the mountain rose

     stopped drinking before the well went dry

     didn’t want a piece of the pie

Out of the house before anyone knew

August 17, 2015  (I was 70)

Out of the house before anyone knew

across the park behind the band shell

at the village hall library read a mag

around the school closed for summer

past the Catholic church under the water tower

Through a neighborhood where neither of us lived

I saw the ghost in the trestle underpass

looking for me as he waited there

to walk beside along the tracks

The few who knew him didn’t see me

The few I knew did not see him

We walked past twilight in solitary accord

eager and content in the presence of silence

shared a language of few words

and other sounds drowned in darkness

It is necessary to know

August 16,1998  (I was 53)

It is necessary to know

the greatest Western religious truth

is the guilt of man

and the only sin is the sin of being.

We each change the environment

and our changes are unnatural

because we are aware of them.

Decisions made with self-awareness

are susceptible to contradiction.

The only redemption

is the oneness of all.

Such intensity of competition

August 15, 1994  (I was 49)

Such intensity of competition found in petty amusements,

international humiliation and murder in World Cup Soccer.

Some actually dream about Dream Teams.  The homeless do not

care if the city loses its franchise.  The stadium could

become their city.  Ball players strike and no one laughs.

Team owners need special rules to prevent themselves

from paying high salaries and special dispensations

to declare their game a National Treasure to protect profits.

Boys stay boys until they are cut from a team.

Some never make it.  Prosecutors agree great running backs

cannot be truly criminal in our truly criminal sense.

I say stab any tennis player in the back

and break the knees of any skater who dares to play
before a paying audience.  Then arrest the audience for solicitation.