There are worse virtues than courtesy

from this week in January, 1976  (I was 31)

There are worse virtues than courtesy

even for the revolutionary.

In fact, identifying the proper enemy

before opening fire

becomes an essential weapon

to insure sympathy for the cause.

How often failure to exercise this mere gesture

is read in the biographies of dead soldiers.

I have never had a human Master

January 30, 2014  (I was 69)         

I have never had a human Master

or I have had a failure of recognition

I have had inspiring teachers of particular knowledge

None with an overall conceptual guidance

to which I could commit adherence

Any who assumed that elevation soured within me

The submission was distasteful the creed questionable

I have found serene paths among masterful trees

stone thrones from which to contemplate

Wind fills and drums the lungs

gives voice to tree and every aspect of geography

Birds offer the element of inquiry

The message is of the moment and present situation

The promise is of continuance but not of eternity

It Don’t Need a Priority

from this week in 1976  (I was 31)

        It Don’t Need a Priority

The horse is attached to the cart,

impetus and payload.

Just because it ain’t overturned yet

don’t mean it won’t.

One hoof in a gopher hole

and there it goes like a thirty-year old bomb,

apples all over the road.

There it is; the crop is already sold.

Impetus and payload, what can happen will.

It don’t matter;

assuredly the broker is a dead man.

What’s left is what always was;

don’t it become humorous?

The inevitable cannot become more so.

As the train reached town

from this week in January, 2013  (I was 68)

As the train reached town

the intermittent roar of it’s horn

over the growl of its engine

transmitted an impression of

the MGM lion announcing the arrival

of the main attraction  The engineer

created the effect from memory

He announced it to assure attentive audience

before his flashing leaps

bounded past foggy crossings

into the wooded canyon

By now I have seen many

January27, 2013  (I was 68)

By now I have seen many

that wore their honors out

runners whom renown outran

They newspaper the past

of many an older man

When I first read of Houseman’s dead

I inscribed my volume in dedication

to the demise of that year’s youth

nodding my head to A.E.’s truth

After fifty years it seems not smart to slip away

much smarter not to play

Athletic scandal is a national pastime

Better it is to own the Grecian urn

depicting the laurels Ernie earned

After a period of time people become afraid

January 26, 2012  (I was 67)

After a period of time people become afraid

to open storage units they pay for

month after month for years

beyond the worth of anything inside

The loss in value to our past

may be the root of that fear

To open to nothing worth keeping

is too great a recognition of failure

not in what we did or what we collected

but in recognition there was a time

we should have thrown it all out and started over

Now it still needs to be done years later

Month after month we pay to keep that door shut

Politicians tiptoe around Iraq

from this week in January, 2007  (I was 62)

Politicians tiptoe around Iraq

say they were fooled by intelligence talk

The agents of businessmen told them what to do

Ignore UN investigators and what they knew

Any Middle East Muslim is a believable suspect

We can control the valves on the pipeline

Aggressive capitalism we tell the Iraqi

is what we call democracy

Any Hussein we kill will be revenge upon a villain

and Muslims are looking to love us

for ridding them of their oppressor

And our military said it was time

for a national fireworks show

Less than a few urged any they know

to volunteer for active duty

Those sub-listed in the Guard to protect native soil

for a monthly stipend and minimal intrusion

now walk a foreign pipeline pumping oil

and walk the bottom line of national confusion

Anyone who saw the international press

didn’t have to guess that Bechtel and Halliburton

will profiteer from catastrophic destruction

they can build upon

I’ll Be Your Sky

January 23, 1977  (I was 32) 

           I’ll Be Your Sky  -song

Airplane lover workin’ under cover

Fanjet sucking up the air

Roar so load, head in a cloud

Won’t take long to get there  

You can drop your flaps

You can raise your gear

Pull back the stick and fly

I’ll be your sky

I’ll be your sky

I’ll be your sky

Traffic stacked up, flights are backed up

Wheel me down your runway

Standing-by’s so hard I’ll cry

and we could travel the fun way

So drop down your flaps

and raise up your gear

Pull back the stick and fly

I’ll be your sky

I’ll be your sky

I’ll be your sky

The air’s so blue at high altitude                    

Don’t think I’ll ever touch down

Kiss on the mouth then fly south

Off to get a sunburn

You can drop your flaps

You can raise your gear

Pull back the stick and fly

I’ll be your sky

I’ll be your sky

I’ll be your sky

Drinking Alone in the Woods

from this week in January, 1975  (I was 30)

Drinking Alone in the Woods

Here’s cheers to the continual rebirth of wonder

assuming a position of dance

with the trees in the woods

Hurray for un-shattered naiveté

who pays the daily price of innocence

with every amazingly fragrant step

Willingly suspended disbelief flees

Moss illuminates gray rock

Every bird a messenger every song

an intelligible vibrancy of hermetic synapse

Celebrate the isolated ego erupting from the throat

Pitch the burning stone down the abandoned well

There is no one here to disbelieve

The Ballad of Iron Mike

  From this week in 2018 (I was 73)

   The Ballad of Iron Mike

Iron Mike in the cold dark night

climbed from the hole to walk the town 

In a cloud of breath he might be death

or so thought the wailing hound

                  The ore I sold set him free

                  and me, I’m homeward bound

Any who saw doubted their sight

A miner phantom out from the ground 

striking his pick like a walking stick

Twelve times I heard the sound

                  The iron I sold set him free

                  and me, I’m homeward bound

I could not call, my lips sealed tight

my knuckles white my chest did pound 

What he struck made my luck

He left for me what he had found

                  The steel I sold set him free

                  and me, I’m homeward bound

Think back to a time you believed in myths

from this week in January, 2007  (I was 62)

Think back to a time you believed in myths

were a part of the myths you believed

The place you lived then was your true home

and home was another myth

the warmth and safety and assurance

That someone knew what to do

and someone understood why it was done

was something you believed

and the belief made it true

until you knew better

You are in another country

January 19, 1979  (I was 34) 

You are in another country

Had I asked you to be here

you probably would have stayed

I told you to go

You are in Mexico

I don’t voluntarily go places

though I have been lured to a few

I have not gone to Mexico

I think of second marriage

You are in Mexico now

living for awhile in Mulegè

and it is January

Maybe you think of having babies

and maybe I’ll resign myself

to a life of fatherhood for your love

and hope that the price in years

is not your love

And in Mexico I imagine you toughening

like a native in the sun while I’m soft

and white as the underbelly of the U.S.

Orders for the Borders

From this week in January 2017  (I was 72)

       Orders for the Borders

Mexicans don’t stall building that wall

American labor cannot savor it

If army engineers are sought it

will cost more pesos than you’ve got

O Canada I can understand

why you’d fence in home and native land

With glowing hearts we see it rise

strong and free against True North skies

Oregon we think you’re okay

as long as you don’t come to stay

Tijuana we’ll rename Tunnel City

to keep our farmlands green and pretty

In California we’d desire

chain link and barbed wire

all along the great Sierra hump

Separate us from red states that putin Trump

There is a melody in the background

January 17, 2014  (I was 69)

There is a melody in the background

a melody you may not hear

but the xylophone notes that float

in thought sound clear

There is a tune I hang the word upon

and the word is carried along a drift

from the tones of the vibraphone

serenading the cerebellum

It hums a song of balance and dance

It is a presence a pose and a posture

The inspired movements of romance

an equilibrium in which you’re lost

There is a consonance of concordant harmony

the incidental music of the mind

we find synchronized and euphonious

waiting for your expression

Tom, the Cat, Berkeley in the 70’s

January 16, 2013  (I was 68)

            Tom, the Cat, Berkeley in the 70’s

Tom had a cat named Mandu

He lived on the corner of Ashby and Adeline

with Elaine whose cats were also so named

street cats as it were

She had a thing for live fur

and a claw proof water bed

so it is said a hippie pad

black light postered walls

billowy pink parachute tacked overhead

paraphernalia and junk overspread

all over the place like college degrees

and former families  And they had parties

that brought out characters who knew Weed

Steven Weed and had partied with him and Patty

Clever names catch the cat’s eye

Once a bomb blew the door at B of A

just down the street as was the custom

of that day of re-invented freedom

and unconventional convention

Easy to agree what is shouldn’t be

not so to know whatever will be when they go

Both were both mathematical and philosophical

but artistically inclined they never

cleaned up the mess and distress of dissolve

Catoptrics explains the green reflection

from the feline eye  I cannot

Tom gave up his ninth to a mechanical blast

Elaine knowing my indifference to pets

passed Adeline on to me  Mandu

disappeared and Elaine took Ashby up another street

Ocean ends

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

Ocean ends

clutching sand

grasping rocks

Over neutral shells

that man walks

past stiff star

and fly-infested fish

He walks the fringe

The sea reaches

the mind reaches

The sponge dries

Slowly

sun fingers

fall from the horizon

History is a foreign country

January 14, 2018

History is a foreign country

they do things differently there

They don’t allow tourists

Those who live there never left

those who left never return

Everyone tells you what it was like

but no two tell it the same

Nothing there ever changes

the stories always do

Lack of equipment made it simpler

I did not say easier

What do I know I left long ago

and I was with strangers before I went

The Cow in the Road

from this week in January, 1976  (I was 31)

            The Cow in the Road

Hello.

Welcome to your real life

(remember the other

the one with the golden hair

the one on the rocks by the sea

and the wind and the wave

that broke in trembling tetrameter

o’er myriads of naiads

gamboling upon the shore)

All that’s given way to tap dancing

up and down the stony steps of Sproul Hall

and all kinds of other groovy things

All that ended when the war did

All the soldiers were underground

waiting again to inhale the smoke and breathe the fire

Then came who cares leading up to now

and the ha ha of personal commitment

sitting on its own lap on our doorstep

saying its been there all the while and somehow

that has to be the truth and suddenly you know

you’ve been to the beach again

and there’s an oh-oh from the basement

and a rustling in the woodwork

and memories of the night the bats were loose in the house

But then all those things went by

not for everybody, but at least for us

We didn’t know the beginning

though we kept on surviving the end

and we will until one of us

fails to recognize the cow in the road