Change

 

May 31, 1975  (I was 30)

 

         Change

Blink eyes turn pages switch books

Go through doors fall down

manholes climb ladders

get on vehicles

spin dizzy

do drugs

lie in white beds wrestle

get your teeth fixed grow a

garden record your pulse stretch

thigh muscles with daily calisthenics

Dream of your hometown

its streets snowy springs
driving automobiles out of another winter

Correspond with strangers whose functional

letters never let you forget how

they came to be written

Go on vacation

at home don’t vote whisper

sit on your jury and hear your case

Greet expediency embrace ambiguity

order a single scoop of vanilla

say not guilty and use your napkin

Mourn the athlete who had

no time to wear honor out  Run

his track spikes daily over his grave

and over those old folks lying around it

Avoid bullets and strong tea

sodium bicarbonate is the practical antidote

and abstention is a better remedy

Anniversary of My Father’s Death

 

from this week in May, 1967  (I was 22)

 

Anniversary of My Father’s Death

 

If after my dissolution

Another life shall be,

I must confront my father

To see what part of him is me.

 

We both were young for death

So now we would renew

With mellowed eyes the expired years

In a consummate review.

 

But if (and more likely so)

The grave grants no volition,

I’ll lie cold and stiff and still

And rot in ancestral tradition.

 

 

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

 

The United States is falling apart

because I am falling apart

and I don’t think I’m going to get much better

I think about but do not sustain an effort

to regain physical fitness

I look at books that propose to redirect us

I don’t believe the matter is in the reader’s hands

Relationships are cold chipped and cracked

held together by homeostasis and habit

Like my country I don’t do much good

without expectation of better in return

Like me the country doesn’t travel well

We take way too much of our stuff with us

whenever we go someplace else

No place much better off for my being there

I’m inept at home repair

Hire someone who needs a job

later someone who can actually do it

Spend way too much money on stuff

we promise we will never use

Keep it in deep basements across the country

that cost more to maintain

than all the homes in my hometown

Officially we call it homeland security

I call it fear  Bill collectors at the door

 

May 28, 1998  (I was 53)

 

Fatigue ought to be a reward, a gift

a welcoming offer of respite

when productive work is done.

It ought to be a surrender

soft as diminishing light

when the sun settles on the horizon,

acceptance of accomplishment

and promise of replenishment,

ache of muscles worked

toward more fine-tuned conditioning.

It ought to possess the mind

the way an artful poem settles

its sound and rhythm into wisdom.

 

It must then be a different weariness

I fight against to prolong the day,

unearned and unaccomplished

to feel so hollow and smell so dank;

my pores function differently.

I never felt this greasy

nor smelled so sulfurous.

If heaven is sought within

so must hell exude from same;

if I ask salvation

I ask in my own name.

 

from this week in May, 1985  (I was 40)

 

Practice writing exercise #4a. 30 min.

from John Gardner, The Art of Fiction

         Nine o’clock and not even the borrowed hour of

daylight saving time could hold the day.  These were

her own hands looking knobby on the back posts of the

oak rocker.  It swung easy now, it swung light.  Beyond

the chair and the porch the oaks reached one by one

across the field to the dry hills.  The peaks had obscured

the sun an hour ago. The shadows had taken all the

reflective colors.  The purple remains of leaves and

branches played as optical illusion with dark sky.

Branch became sky and sky became branch.   

         She broke the spell by shifting her head, and she

sat in the chair and rocked.  Beneath the roof line the

breeze brought the cool scents of the forest.  Old smells,

moss, rotting bark on enduring trunk.  She watched the

trees fade into hills already indistinguishable from sky.

She listened to the crickets and timed her slight rock in

tune.  The wooden arc on the wood floor chirping and

pleasing, not so heavy as to mar the grain. 

Do you own an intellectual domain

 

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

 

Do you own an intellectual domain

Actual real estate has become so expensive

Used to be foreigners were the only ones

who couldn’t afford to buy

Now they are the only ones who can

They bid over the asking and pay cash

We the country sell not only the land

we sell the faith in the dream we promised

our own children  We fight absurd wars

of big dog belligerence

then fear every bark and yap we hear

Nothing sets the teeth on edge like fear

Diplomacy takes so much time

We can bomb tomorrow

Actually both are daily behaviors decided upon

with the false reasoning of preconceived notions

 

Radio Free China

 

May 25, 1973  (I was 28)

 

         Radio Free China

The radio is on to a Chinese station

I am listening to cadences separated from sense

It would not be possible with most European languages

but I can’t even say hello in Chinese

The music sounds like a wall hanging

serene Asian women with sticks in their hair

Between the instruments an announcer sells me

something important something sincere something helpful

More music and a drama is introduced

then interrupted by Robert Goulet singing in Chinese

Finally the announcer is back

and so is that delicate music

and the importance of tea and contemplation

of an ignorance from twenty years of silence

Underground Basketball

 

May 24, 1975  (I was 30)

 

         Underground Basketball

As the videotape of Abbie Hoffman’s putty nose

was readied at NET, the wild prairie fire

golden state warriors

taught new lessons in cadre effectiveness

in the nation’s capital.  Abbie would say they are

communists whether or not they admit it.

Violent revolution was probably necessary

(Washington’s bullets felled Celtic institutions)

but the warriors’ meditative defense left blank

stares in front of the humming tube;

Abbie dribbled off the courts without a shot.

There it is Again

 

May 23, 1977  (I was 32)

 

         There it is Again

Parachutists think it as they step from the porch

Deep sea divers hear it crackling in their ears

Race drivers feel it run through the transmission

Dogs bark and cats walk circles around it

 

It is on you now and you are clearly not bewildered

An unembarrassed shiver and a smile of recognition

Suddenly quieter and more aware

I always watch whenever I can see it

 

How amusing always to realize there is nothing to do

But let it go release it or pass it on

Noticing my attention you turned to the west

and laid it upon the girl in the golden blouse

Birds fulfill expectation without obligation

 

from this week in May, 2015  (I was 70)

 

Birds fulfill expectation without obligation

Their voices are always welcome

I don’t care who they are or what they say

Conscious awareness translates even the wind

The song Sunrise Serenade evokes WMFG radio

in Hibbing Minnesota winter 1952

lying on the carpet feet against the steam heat register

The theme and title of their morning programming

music and announcements of school closings

It was the season I learned to love the crows and owls

who stayed with me while the others flew

to Minneapolis and south to Iowa

Here in Hollywood the skree of turkey buzzard

is the archetypical sound to indicate desolation

desert isolation and desperate circumstance

The owls and crows asked and answered

They give their temperate and tropical cousins

the humor of contrast in their suburban tunes

I am not one to belong

 

from this week in May, 2012  (I was 67)

 

I am not one to belong to an organization

but I am not disorganized nor am I

anti-organization for the common good

commonly decided unionization

for instance to negotiate contracts

with financially advantaged

politically influential partisans

who call themselves management

without the mis- so often apparent

 

I want to flock with right wing pacifists

who know they can’t fly without a left wing

I play golf like a right-brain leftist

with a gang playing like left-brain rightists

and a guy named no-brain-Wayne

who hits the ball long and says fuck ‘em all

from well inside his flask by the fourth hole

And its okay by me nobody plays by the rules

I got my own game and guess they are the same

We are given to play with the light of day

 

May 20, 2019  (I was 74)

 

We are given to play with the light of day

given to fright at the dark of night

taken to mark the sound of the lark

bound by the pound of waves on rock

halted under the echoes from caves that talk

ponder what is meant in the lavender scent

chill in the taste of a scavenger for waste

We thrill at the touch of velvet on skin

Such is the sense of enchantment we’re in

I don’t tell stories well but would like to

 

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

 

I don’t tell stories well but would like to

I either meander around the shrubbery

or blow the plot with immediate revelation

of anything relevant with nothing left to tell

I’m not keen enough observing details

of mechanical workings to teach the reader

the mechanism while showing how it works

Too impatient to know too eager to tell

And it takes me a long time to read

the life of another’s seamless fabrication

I inevitably ride some implication

right off the page in a reverie

that reveals the author’s genius

and forces me to pull the beast back on path

I’ve played in the realms of altered perceptions

 

From this week in May, 2017 (I was 72)

 

I’ve played in the realms of altered perceptions

most of the years of my life

crossing the seams of seems to escape

until I no longer need radical means

There are many internal avenues of departure

obvious and subtle and easily ignored

by our fascination with the exotic

when every room is a different library

and every scene a new environ to inhabit

In mechanical sense when the equipment differs

an altered product is produced

Minor movement changes point of view

Reaching an age where shadow monkeys shared

might raise suspicion of diminished capacities

rather than a vision of all that’s there

I’m in the van in a thunderstorm

 

from this week in May, 2012  (I was 67)

 

I’m in the van in a thunderstorm

At Leopard’s Chase Golf Course

A woman in black spandex trimmed in red

walks toward the cart barn with a purpose

A young man in a red polo shirt meets her

She has a glove on her left hand

After an exchange of words and gestures

they get into a cart together and ride

back toward me on the cart path

I hear her say as they pass

“My whole life is in that cell phone.”

He says, “Here’s what we do when this happens,”

They splash up the cart path from green to tee

It reminds me of a time I never did find

the keys to the rental van

I was more frantic than she

even though my whole life was not involved

and the sky was not pitching rain

The false pride of one who buys a house

 

from this week in May 2015 (I was 70)

 

The false pride of one who buys a house

after familial generations lived in huts

to live now among the estates others were born to

It is a failure to recognize the nature of humility and station

Wild plants grow only as tall as the windbreak

and as strong as the seed from which they sprout

Often the migrant in flight from one desperation

must learn to survive in another unaware

of new masters who never show themselves

behind the brand names they’ve invented

We are ever left appreciating pebbles among the gems

seeing through a magnifying glass while hearing

of the wonders found by those with telescopes

It’s the pretense of accomplishment by one

among those who own the accomplishments of many

 

Beginning the Overwhelming

 

May 15, 2013  (I was 68)

 

   Beginning the Overwhelming

Some images are iconic

portrayed in literary and dramatic arts

jumping on a moving carousel

speeding at you and flying away

catching a moving train

leaping from a horse to a stagecoach

or onto its galloping team

stepping out the door in a driving storm

making the momentous phone call

the first step on the green mile

the setting of life against powerful oppression

The gut-wrenching undertaking

always hinges on catching the momentum

a confident turn and grab-jump

doing an Einstein relatively speaking

gaining a foothold on the thought system

and a stomach for the motion

Emily said there interposed a fly

 

from this week in May, 1998  (I was 74)

 

Emily said there interposed a fly

between her and the light

at a most inappropriate but perfectly ironic time

as if to let anyone who noticed know

the inconsequential accompanies the substantial

and only perception regards a difference

The fly detained by the glassy pane

cares less for the light than the freedom of flight

in the world beyond the bright barrier

awaiting the slightest opening to slip through

as did she to record the passage

foretold before the occurrence

Playing Guns ca. 1953

 

May 13, 1976  (I was 31)

 

   Playing Guns ca. 1953

Pretend this area is the swamp

you can’t go through here

or you’ll sink in quicksand and die

You hafta go around this part past those trees

or over those rocks the mountains over there

No using binoculars they are illegal weapons

When you shoot someone you gotta say their name

not just bam bam bam but bam bam bam and their name

otherwise they’re not dead

and you gotta shoot loud unless you say before

you got a silencer on your gun

And then you can only use it for close kills

and when you’re dead shut up

No telling where anyone is

or pointing at ‘em with your gun either

Taking prisoners is dumb

there’s never anything to do with them

So shoot to kill  Okay you guys hide first

I’m teaching again

 

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

 

I’m teaching again

the little I know

about a few good poems

with enough disrespect

to get students to believe

they can do it themselves

and with enough love

to make them want to try

Nowadays I sit to write

 

May 11, 1998  (I was 53)

 

Nowadays I sit to write

with whatever purpose for initial motivation

knowing that it is only a game

to get me in proximity to paper

with a pen in hand

and that whatever will be written

has little to do with any thought

preceding the writing

It is a comfortable talent

something akin to navigation

by the seat of the pants

an aptly cynical metaphor

for an activity whose source

is conventionally considered to be

anchored in intellect