Tribute to WCW

May 31, 1976  (I was 31)

                                 Tribute to WCW

                                           upon

                   a lot depends                      the unreality of

                                          sunglare

               off everything                           after rainfall

                                           glaze     

                 red convertible                     blinding white chicks       

I’m going to vote for George M

May 30, 1972  (I was 27)

I’m going to vote for George M

There aren’t any boats on the horizon

and only two birds in the sky

If you want to play at all

you gotta play by disagreeable rules

and it’s the only game in town

If you want to play that is

if you don’t that’s another story

They can’t have you wandering round the field

They’ll need rules for you

I’m voting for George M  He knows the game

I’ve seen him play it on television

He’s not the greatest of the decade

but he has potential

if you value potential

and if you can trust advisors

kiss of a shadow

somewhere in the air

There’s nothing else flying

The source of reflected light is insignificant

from this week in 1997      (I was 52) 

The source of reflected light is insignificant

Any dim illumination is appreciated

Whether off the fog bank from a point on shore

or rebounded through clouds from the sun

matters not once the thought of destination is dismissed

Adrift however does not mean directionless

Preoccupation with waves keeps one afloat

I am not in the same place I would have been

had I not been paying attention

Nor am I in position I might have been

attending to some other 

Never somewhere to get always someplace to be

Colors of inspiration reach me indirectly

then glance off and onto something else

My diminished vision of what is there

is all I have to distinguish what is not

Brightness is enhanced with a little imagination

That has always been my occupation

and I’ve done it to see where I am

before I glance off and onto something else

At the Dance At The Land

May 28, 1977  (I was 32)

At the Dance At The Land

We got lost getting here.

Can you believe wrong roads

Named Woodstock and Altamont Avenue?

Barn hall open-beams, plank floors

Map of The Land tacked to the wall.

This knowledgeable collection of hippies has survived

Without a change of clothes since 1968

And they were here to dance tonight.

After a wine and pistachio stop we wound

Up Moody past Foothill College and down again

A number of times; gas station maps were of no help.

Everybody danced all night long.

The band was hot and we were addicted to bliss.

We were lost until we resolved to keep driving up

Roads we couldn’t believe –narrow hairpins

Moonlight reflections off hills, tunnel through tree shadows.

“Chains,” brought on the floor stomping

And the bass and drums rebounded off the walls

Right through your chest to end the first set with “The Shape I’m In.”

The band left them screaming for more.

It is as if I have decided

May 27,1998  (I was 53)

It is as if I have decided upon

a certain incarceration

which I have resolved not to escape.

It feels like a chosen sphere

of mental limitation.

It is selected repression

taking up ugly residence within me,

commitment more oppressive

for its lack of physical restraints.

It is a bondage and servitude

without redemption.

No devotion, no holiness, no light,

no ecstasy, rapture, hope of nirvana,

no grail nor golden fleece,

no solace in the ridiculous.

My vision is tainted with clarity;

no mist of compassion

blurs the view of artifice and deceit.

Not obliged to stay non-judgmental,

no amusement tempers disgust;

no match kindles the incense of freedom.

This small discipline

May 26, 1974  (I was 29)

This small discipline

The little monk

kneels in sealed rooms

to pray away various dooms

He expects enlightenment

He expects a vision to shatter his brown world

a gift of tongues a voice of fire

He chants the sun and forecasts rain

What is this practice of limited ingestion

these weeks of rice and lettuce and cheese

this fine attunement of visceral media

manipulating wavelengths of the nervous system

What is this small carpet from which to see the world

this drifting lily pad this flying prayer rug

from which to flick a sticky tongue at sustenance

Ritual diet floating in the middle of a ripple

jes sittin’ round home

May 25, 1969  (I was 24)

jes sittin’ round home

         stringin’ some beads

me an’ mah wife

         eatin’ cherries

smokin’ a few weeds

aint got no troubles

         don’t really need none

but give me a life

         of eatin’ cherries

in the noonday sun

I’ve folded my books

         opened my mind

with a musical knife

         and smoky red cherries

that taste real kind

why don’t you join us

         just loosen your grip

breathe on some air

         grab the cherries

and give ‘em the lip

it all happens on the hippo campus

May 24, 2012  (I was 67)

it all happens on the hippo campus

where the walnut man lives

He is not a tough nut to crack

has a list to survive in the wild west

seems drawn or easily slips cross campus

for another journey to the east

toward the light so as to chase it west again

a swirling sort of Asian balance

that leaves him feeling like Rod Serling

back on the Hippo Campus where in

a bicameral shell the walnut man lives

Certain nouns

May 23, 2010  (I was 65)

Certain nouns,

things, have parts to be named

like Henry Reed’s rifle

with its breech bolt and cocking piece

Updike’s telephone poles

with insulators and such

Frost’s wall in need of mending

with its round stones that refuse to sit

without incantation

Pinsky’s shirt buttons sizing and facing

Objects of mankind

need mankind to point out their insignificance

someone to balance the weapon and the garden

to spike the trunk of the greenless tree

to refute the wisdom of division

to set flame to the parachutes of commerce

(title)

May 22, 2010  (I was 65)   
   

In a book of poems I saw each

                    (title)

set in parenthesis

                         (like an afterthought)

(or a secret) that might otherwise escape

(a pair of icons) signifying ‘If You Insist’

(a full moon) reflecting everything inspired

(summarized here for you)

(a direction to the destination)

on the trail that follows

Anonymous is the author

of the best work in each of us

the one who uses us to say the best truths

in a way so clear it’s obvious to everyone

that no one wrote it

Another slight man

May 21, 2011  (I was 66)

Another slight man like me

declared today eternity

This may be the last of the last I write

but that is my same thought every night

What should I do if it be true

that this mark may be my final dot ?

And what to write that might be new

should it happen that it be not.

I read slow

from this week in May 1978  (I was 33)

I read slow

real slow

I think I read good

but I do read slow

I have to say the dialog

at least in my head

sometimes 3 or 4 interpretations

I want to know if I would have said that

or how I’d inflect it if I did

Sometimes I don’t think I see the print well

it kind of disappears

or the words turn around

until I say dyslexia

then they line up straight again

(that’s why I think it’s just me

rather than the equipment)

I’m not a patient reader either

I mean I’ll wait for awhile

but I’d just as soon go throw Frisbee

or just daydream as I look at the words

I’m pretty entertaining myself

Even when I’m attentive I read slow

Yesterday I climbed the hill

May 19, 1971  (I was 26)

Yesterday I climbed the hill

and found myself

communicating with

the transcendental truth

I came to understand

that being one

also meant that I could not know what one was

And that one way to not be one

was to alter consciousness

and then I could not be sure I was really being

more than one

let alone all

I came to think also

that guilt once recognized

was not useful

Sin has already been died for

and when I questioned what to do

I was told to do what I do when feeling true

That was what was required

I knew that if there was a time I forgot that

I would be told again

in a voice both gentle and subtle

My great great grandmother

May 18, 1971  (I was 26)

My great great grandmother

used to talk to any snake

who’d come wandering through the grass

Times have changed a great deal since then

but not at all my great great grandmother

Let some old rattler come up shaking his tail

like a kid tapping a penny on a candy counter

and it don’t faze her a bit

She just stands there with her hands resting lightly

on her hips and says “What do you say snake?”

and like or not the snake tells her something

My great great grandmother says

there’s a lot to be learned from snakes 

I guess I take after great great grandpa’s side

I never heard one tell me something useful yet

and a lot of people I hear

don’t pay snakes any attention at all.

I misplace things

May 17, 2009  (I was 64)

I misplace things

hard to have a place

for each and every

after every use

things quickly

resolve into nothings

The mind moves on

before the body picks up the tools

You could be known

May 16, 2009  (I was 64)

You could be known by the things

you did not write about.  If you wrote

thoughtfully about something you thought

about things of which you did not write.

Composition is what it is called.  Composing

is what you do when you don’t

choose certain thoughts or certain words

because they are uncertain.  Uncertainty

in meaning or how the meaning is perceived

is taken into consideration when things are unchosen.

This does not mean the unchosen ones

are not revealed.  Their invisibility

is a strong presence in every written line.

They express the doubt the indecision

the fear the disgust the nakedness

the unspeakable truth you do not want

to reveal.  Watch what you do not say.

The Credo of Hypocrisies from pro athletes

May 15, 2009  (I was 64)    

The Credo of Hypocrisies from pro athletes

makes us all look like idiots:

We’re grown men here

we take responsibility for our actions

We create extraordinarily high

expectations for ourselves

We have impeccable work ethic

We always give 100% but

we know how to step it up when we have to

I live for the pressure of game seven

It ain’t trash talk if you can back it up

I know I am blessed and ordained by God

I believe everything happens for a reason

We’re done talking about it

We were embarrassed

and it called into question the character

of some of their players

We’ve had tough ones to swallow before

but this one just snowballed

It wasn’t nerves

it was just a matter of settling down

We regret that it happened but

we’ve put it behind us and we move on

The message to kids should be

you don’t have to talk like that to be successful