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 Davis 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

The Smoking of the Universal Joint

 

January 25, 1974  (I was 29)

 

The Smoking of the Universal Joint

 

The dip stick was dry

and there was oil all over hell

I was a defeated man

so I left it there down at the garage

I went to Ben’s for a beer and a pepperoni

sat on the bench in front of the store

Windy as hell too blowing dust

The damn thing smoked like hell

The mechanic was the garage owner’s son

overworked and pissed off

He could bury it for all I cared

Damn rolling jail

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 -song

 

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

 

January 20

 

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.

A twitch a tremble a tremor

 

from this week in January 2011  (I was 66)

 

A twitch a tremble a tremor

We hold on to one another in fear

The result is a chain reaction

worry anxiety protective paranoia

We have no charms

no amulets no taliman no mojo

The beads have dissolved in tears

It is not fate destiny or karma

earth moves and we are of the earth

It jiggles it shakes it shudders

Everything settles into a low spot

The effects cannot assume a cause

Purpose is a cosmic conception

black hole or anti-matter

beyond my walnut mind

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)

 

 

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

old man where is your wisdom now

 

January 12, 1972  (I was 27)

 

old man where is your wisdom now

now that you have learned all your lessons

outliving Faust Lear and the Don

 

the great wars were escapades

once past great dreams and great acts are the same

paternal ghosts in the fog

a precious flaw in the wall between lovers

silent thrill of a laughing mute

or cut heard by Van Gogh

 

how big is the puzzle old man

and how will you face tomorrow

polarity is our only certainty

Keep Your Distance

 

from this week in January, 2020  (I was 75)

 

         Keep Your Distance

It is the distance that creates the reality

we are able to construct in memory

Distance conjures the details

we did not sense at the time

The soul paints what eyes had failed to see

and hears the song from the fear and anguish

Tastes of bitterness become tart then sweet

Once a cause to spit now to savor and swallow

The cold and heat of our nakedness

now insulated by distance  

The bottom of the hill resided in clear air

 

from this week in January, 1998  (I was 53)

 

The bottom of the hill resided in clear air

The ascending road climbed into cloud

The air wetter than fog and warmer

got under my collar as I walked

The sound of two rocks clapped together

hung loud and long

Someone else was on the way down

She passed by a hundred yards later

hurrying her pace to a clumsy trot

soon as I broke into her view

revealing her wordless fear

as if she had not also split my solitude

I knew the sound had been rocks

she plucked from a roadside land fall

Cracked together like experimental gunshots

I continued into my own invisibility

Rising deeper into thick illumination

the road undulated onto the invisible summit

The nearest oaks to where I stood were trees

The shapes beyond were something other

I want TV shows and video games

 

January 9, 2013  (I was 68)

 

I want TV shows and video games

that put reality in my life

I want to see

people screw extra-maritally

I want to hear them shout

when spouses find out

want to witness them caught

for whomever they shot

want them to talk filthy

when they’re guilty

want their mug shot to linger

while I give the screen the finger

I wanna cut down terrorist hordes

with my lasar swords

They scream in agony

when I drop them off my balcony

want their blood to spatter to antimatter

realistically right next to me

before I push the button to be

someone else in level three

We are grown children

 

January 8, 2012  (I was 67)

 

We are grown children

attentively inattentive to our parents

as our children attend to us

We want the care for our family

despite the family’s care of us

 

We are the grown children

cynical skeptics of our children’s dreams

doubting now we would ever dare

dream the perfect worlds we saw when

our parents dared their incredulous sarcasm