It is hard to attract our reading attention

 

from this week in March, 2008  (I was 63)

 

It is hard to attract our reading attention

What’s the subject in what form

What does the block of print look like 

How long is it 

Is the language ponderous or just difficult

Will our eyes focus  Will we be captured

or will we feel we’ve read it before why read it again

You can walk the stacks of a library

feel like you’re being attacked

outnumbered by everything you don’t know

take refuge in a few familiar shelves

where even the light seems better

and all the good ideas are not from foreign countries

Travel is always an adventure

It’s where we create the resolve to work at home

if we can overcome the presumption

that we know something worth doing

Sunrise Litany

 

March 30, 1976  (I was 31)

 

         Sunrise Litany

At dawn someone always comes

to the church on the corner

the only one coming this morning

to climb each small step up to the heavy door

which holds the odor of prayer inside

the first to echo down the long aisle

the first to see which candles expired in the night

the first to dent the kneeler

the first to ask forgiveness

the first of the congregation to dampen a veiled forehead 

breaking into a sweat for the Lord

I’m going to pound my feet on the hill

 

from this week in March, 1979  (I was 34)

 

I’m going to pound my feet on the hill.

I laugh when I hear Dylan sing,

“I’ve paid the price of solitude,

but at least I’m out of debt.”

I’m going to hit the deer trails,

look for a blue deer.

The trees laugh when I think of tomorrow.

(They lived all those years

so they could live today.)

I understand their laughter

I’m going to trot myself under their jocular leaves,

find myself running alongside a blue deer

who finds itself running alongside of me.

Even with brittle cracks

 

from this week in March, 2011  (I was 66)

 

Even with brittle cracks

childhood has a coherence

a comfortable unknowing

a willingness to resort to faith

and submission to authoritarian presence

because it is so comfortable to do so

An inability to achieve that comfort

is called adulthood

for WCW

 

March 27, 1971  (I was 26)

 

         for WCW

I was arrested

in the woods

smoking a joint

and reading poetry

I do not think

I’d have been arrested

had I not been reading poetry

This is the Drug Abuse Workshop

 

March 26, 1974  (I was 29)

 

This is the Drug Abuse Workshop

After school the bells are still ringing,

the teachers will not come to order.

“This is the drug abuse workshop:

on your 3x5 card write

5 causes (person or societal) of drug abuse-

that is, list 5 factors leading to drug abuse.

If your 3x5 is white go to room 7

yellow go to 8

green to 10 blue 11

and goldenrod stays here for discussion.”

I go out to the car and smoke a joint.

 

Out in the canyon

the green road curves around the swollen creek

and the railroad has secret tunnels.

A lone bicyclist braces the wind around the bend

then buys it, like a hawk falling out of a stall

downwind.  Tight muscles are stretched loose.

Cartesian Humor

 

March 25, 2009  (I was 64)

 

         Cartesian Humor

Rene Descartes went into his favorite bistro

“Will Monsieur have a croissant with his coffee?”

“I think not,” he said and disappeared.

                         *

Two student friends were on the way to an exam on Cartesian theory. 

One stopped instead at a brothel.  He missed the examination. 

The professor inquired about the student’s absence.

His friend replied, “He would not put Descartes before the whores.”

One keeps pace

 

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

 

One keeps pace

in increasingly

smaller space

The enormity of youth

fills the entirety

of its perception

What it cannot comprehend

it will surmise to satisfaction

relegate the unknown

to the unnecessary

Later holdings are more precious

revealing nuance of introspection

off surfaces cast in different light

facets aglow beside the flash

deeper shades of recognition

requiring less space to occupy

more time

Do you suppose

 

March 23, 1971  (I was 26)

 

Do you suppose

everyone prowls around like this-

clandestine chemist

discovering ingredients at every encounter

Each time testing circumstance

with a taste or a swallow

and a lot of waiting eagerly

for the metamorphosis to follow

 

And do you suppose

we all worship within-

kneeling in our sepulchers

to the one true god of self

and chewing our nails the while

with a taste or a swallow

and a lot of waiting eagerly

for some real Messiah to follow

Air Play

 

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

 

Air Play

sitting in the studio longing

egg cartons stapled to the ceiling

listening to the tapes again

damning the fidelity

praying for air play

everybody’s gotta have air play

all we really need is air play

 

Diving from planes like bombs

We had to have a note from our moms

saying it was alright

she gave her permission

for us to have air play

air play air play

How can you open your chute

if you don’t have air play

 

Maybe the mikes are weak

but the voice is cutting

even on the tapes

through all this smoke

you can hear it it’s there

Programmer give us air play

air play air play

We deserve and demand air play

Who gives you the air play

Good Friday Night

 

March 21, 2008  (I was 63)

 

         Good Friday Night

Late in the vigil the votive candles flicker

wicks float in liquid tallow

contained in cups of crimson glass

pulsing the sanguine light

like a hundred flaming sacred hearts

emanating at once the scent of the tomb

and the waxy cool of the white lily at sunrise

The empty tabernacle waits to consume

each dry wafer of flesh

offered by the absent congregation

A flame is a first magic

 

March 20, 2012  (I was 67)

  

A flame is a first magic

a life active but not animal

Its birth an ignition

upon something it can consume

Its extinction a darkness

a burial in air

a visible spirit

dissipates to an odor of memory

The instrument intones

 

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

 

The instrument intones

the life of the player

Notes are conscious breath

the breathing your song

Play your flute for me

No sound vibrates wrong

Energy occupies matter

in compatible manner

Like a flight of doves

we love in the morning

that airy existence floating through us

The little business on the block

 

March 18, 2009  (I was 64)

 

The little business on the block

gave its name to the neighborhood

The canned goods required dusting

two or three times before they were sold

The National Cash Register was mechanical

and ornately clad in leafy brushed brass

the wood floor swept and polished by the boys

Everyone in the family stayed out of the service

so we must have gone there for ethnic reasons

The guy who owned the store

also ran the one where you came from

You remember

He was never that friendly

as if he knew customers were inevitable

Religions lay away days of the year

 

March 17, 2014  (I was 69)

 

Religions lay away days of the year

to commemorate their saints and saintly events

Governments for their leaders and victories

Families honor their comings and goings

In this way we give meaning to each day

just in case there is nothing happening now

 

Of course there is a now worthy of note

To recognize it is merely to hold it like a flower

Hold it like the breath between breaths

Let its bouquet inspire a complexity

to which master vintners can only dream

It is a fragrance and taste that touches

an idea that embraces all my ideas

and registers them in the moment that is present

That recognition is ever available and always enough

He chose it

 

March 16, 1970  (I was 25)

 

He chose it

God everyone knows

it is just that very thing

that makes us men

We always bring it on ourselves

(and then we scream

The bastards screwed us)

Doesn’t it seem we must

own up to half of what we are

Of course there is that far chance

he was innocent

and if his truthful ardor is constant

he will accept the nails

Of what use is a living martyr

Yosemite Another solitary walk

 

March 15, 2014  (I was 69)

 

Yosemite

Another solitary walk from Happy Isles

above the back road on the horse trail through the trees

following the Merced whose flow is the predominant sound

and the only traffic is the half-hourly valley shuttle bus

The occasional meeting with bobcat or coyote

introduces a mutual trepidation and rapid assessment

of escape routes acknowledging possible danger

even from minor beast or minor man

I imagine ventures of Miwok children playing

among these boulders two hundred years ago

where now a family of four deer cross my path

with the presumption of protection a National Park provides

More Postcards from Hell

 

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

 

More Postcards from Hell

Of course there is respite

The deepest agony requires contrast

 

Up there you got pals

Down here you got mals

 

No flint no matches no butane lighters

no Irish sermons

our brimstone is ever aflame

 

They like to say there is no hope here

but they cannot dispel the obvious

If there is a just god there is always hope

 

Graffitti tends to the positive

Message charred to a chimney:

There are no lackeys here

 

Up there seven deadly sins, here:

         sloth?  can’t be lazy with nothing to do

pride?  not even in jest

         lust?  needs a hunger

         anger?  requires someone to blame

         gluttony?  you can only eat so much shit

         covetousness?  if you want what I got take it

         envy?  and you can keep whatever you are

 

Ask anyone here, “What did you do?”

Invariably they answer, “Not enough.”

Among the world class climbers

 

 

March 13, 2014  (I was 69)

 

Among the world class climbers

ascending El Capitan and Glacier Peak

or those in the high country snow-shoeing

or cross country skiing to distant campsites

or hang gliding with the raptors

or the even more mad cliff divers

who put their lives at the end of a ripcord

I will apply antiperspirant and ride

a rented bike around the valley floor

I know what happened to the other half of Half Dome

Merced River Underlook #1

 

from this week in March, 2009  (I was 64)

 

         Merced River Underlook #1

From ripples eddies and surface whirlpools

from flotsam and water bugs

projected shadows play over river bottom rocks

in such a way as to reveal movement patterns

not visible watching their objective correlatives

Their swell and floe individual yet repetitive

teach the physics of an unformulated text

blurring distinction between mass and motion

Beyond the now recordable observation

the phenomenon reminds us

to seek for new ways to look

They haven’t yet found reason

 

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

 

They haven’t yet found reason

so I must be under the radar

not under the gun not on the run

out only in day away from night vision

cameras everywhere miss obvious disguise

don’t speak in gatherings only in code

empty languages without rhyme or reason

inane non sequitur is the way to go

words without rank  I am an army

discreet and quiet drones

pollinate the flowers

why wait for spring

the globe is warm

and reason will be unnecessary

unsought and suspicion is enough

so anonymity shall go nameless

still out in the open not in the home

still moments they do not own

William Saroyan wrote of fractals

 

March 10, 2018   (I was 73)

 

William Saroyan wrote of fractals

fractal Assyrians the whole race of them

present in one young Assyrian barber

in San Francisco in 1932 the whole of them

compressed not condensed in the barber

He went on to fractalize the Japanese

from the particular farm workers he knew

growing up in Fresno one at a time

perfect representations of their race

The human race extrapolated in each person

and in his Armenian uncle his own troubled people

troubled by nature and the un-named enemy

that slaughtered so many in fractalic wars

that man by man were all mankind

The infinitely complex pattern self-similar

across divisional and multitudinous scales

driven by the recursion of each of us

He explained the human geometric

forty-some years before the concept was

Ancient history certainly began

 

from this week in 2013  (I was 68)

 

Ancient history certainly began

twenty years before my birth

Half century before that inhabited

only by the dead buried in books

Before that only myths

who rode on beasts or borne by sail

to lands and societies unknown

And seasons were what seasons meant to be

created by the greater astronomy

We were the objects not the subject

of such incomprehensible responsibility