November 30, 2010 (I was 66)
Though I am a citizen and I live here
this is not my country
No matter that I always vote
and campaign for those who speak my voice
Our arrogant governance in the world
humiliates me
the autocratic savior complex
I am told and I know
what we do maintains the lifestyle I enjoy
But there are many lifestyles I can love
and the enjoyment of what I have
is relative to how many others have it too
and what we did to get it
So this is not my country yet
from this week in November 1971 (I was 26)
Everything I focus on
is only a fragment
perceived by a fragment of attention
I flash
like a Picasso person
pure sense essence
without grotesque flesh
or reasonable circumstance
from this week in November, 2015 (I was 71)
Considered before sleep
Avoided Nam being young and dumb
student deferment through ’66
Graduated married a teacher a father
classified exempt until the lottery
Then turned twenty-six too old to be taken
reached a militarily untrainable age
locked in my recalcitrant ways
Dumb luck the smartest thing I did
November 26, 2013 (I was 69)
The DELETE is the great key to success
it sends the highlighted mess to cyberspace
Errant thought and sloppy construction
erased without scar or cover-up
Physical ineptitude of fingers keyboard
mistakes that multiply in the awshit of their discovery
Gone with a single stroke
A little light above the heavy curtain of the confessional
changed from red to green upon your exit
to indicate unoccupied but to me a symbolic message Go
Proceed With A Clean Slate
even though I never believed it true
I believe the DELETE
An hour later in the street I don’t remember
the ill-conceived foolishness and there is no evidence
of damage nor inkling of wrong-doing
If in the life of bricks and blood
a touch of the REGRET upon mindful memories
could restore the mindless innocence
which preceded our momentary ignorance
I would be willing to recall and relate
every awfuck revelation that occurs to me
from this week in November, 1972 (I was 28)
It all seemed so real at the time
and the reality froze the moments
accessible cold and clear and I burn
a sacrifice of this moment
to lie about a little of it
One ember upon the hearth is a lie
The hearth keeper won’t let it burn down the house
He snuffs it
I may not be able to get at it
It’s tricky telling a lie so as to reveal the truth
I admire people who can use the truth to lie
What could I having thus spoken
say further
November 24, 2012 (I was 68)
All the storybook lives are not in storybooks
The ones that are will fit into movies
whose conventional length has shrunk in my lifetime
from two hours to ninety minutes or less
a reduction of twenty-five percent
while life span has increased considerably
and we think more complexly so
there ought to be material for more involved
story-book lives in multifaceted detail
but we think we’ve seen it all
know how it should end
don’t like it when it doesn’t
like in our own lives
where heroes are as ambiguous as the side they’re on
Common local villainy is inconspicuous
lost among our blatant international piracies
in explosive color and surround sound
a cover-up on an epic scale
from this week in November, 2012 (I was 68)
Someone before me decided rain on my roof
should not drain directly off the slant
but caught in gutters to downspouts funneling
to corners of expedient convenience and past logic
This delivery system is quite efficient
as long as there are no trees nearby
It was devised when the neighborhood was new
trunks still held by stakes below the roofline
We live among foliate monsters now
whose sheddings fill the aqueducts in every season
to decompose into mushy verdant gardens
At an inconvenient time they must be cleaned
accessed by slippery ladder moved station to station
shoveled out by hand then flushed by hose and still
there are storms each year that overwhelm the system
pour off the roof in the most direct manner possible
I consider appropriate truisms of our existence
a zen acceptance of a waterfall in the window
Thankful for a roof overhead
from this week in November, 2017 (I was 73)
A half century is a blink of an eye
same old catcher in the same old rye
shots still fired in downtown Dallas
same old hatred same old malice
Took a road less traveled and forsaken
wish it had been the one not taken
the one called Hope to a land called Promised
to lay by still waters where breezes are warmest
but we rode the bullets down the cross-haired sight
to end somewhere else than we thought we might
from November, 2019 (I was 75)
So often with partial mind
thinking seems inept
yet one-eyed sight is not blind
common sense and image kept
Inspiration needs a spark
deep thought seeks the dark
Most time we avoid the glare
to see our dappled shadow there
When rid of that shade inside
comes a task in view
Art and focus must decide
what half a mind can do
From this week in November, 2019 (I was 75)
The longer the story the less I believe
particularly if I’m telling it
The certainty we seek in detail
is obscured in patterned perception
related in rhetorical embellishment
Synonymous-ness is what we seek
to explain the inexplicable
What else was like what just happened
what other creature behaves as such
when was it we ever felt like this
In exacting a classification first
is found correspondence then distinction
Immediate constituents are purposefully adjacent
a functional significance in both
similarity and difference
November 20, 2007 (I was 63)
Is it the command over another’s decline
that makes one age? It seems so.
Deciding what is to be discarded,
what was written that will never be read,
what in the closet will never be worn;
it makes one more than the specter of death.
I have discarded wardrobes of the soul,
eliminated expressions to a savable few.
The Grim Reaper is a heartless editor,
humility a byproduct of playing that role.
Where is the repository of life?
How careless of any Grand Design
to leave it to those left behind,
to one who may have read Sound and Sense
but survived only through expedience.
November 19, 2017 (I was 73)
Robert Zimmerman and Me
I was in a brick school building seven miles
from the brick school building he was in
and that was further away than Hollywood
He was closer to NYC than anywhere near me
From our common geographic start
we grew up a few years and a country apart
Somehow he knew he had something to sell
while I thought maybe I could learn how to spell
November 18, 2015 (I was 71)
Poi Boy
Morgan Toledo farms kalo in Waipio Valley
he and his family crew (it’s taro to you)
In watery fields they plant the shoots
nurture the leaves that broaden in the sun
as the roots swell in the sodden soil
They harvest bulbs bigger than grapefruits
From each they trim five new buds
then scrub and chop the dense tubers
They’ve mechanized to a mechanical crusher
eliminating the tedious pounding
Brother Henry tends to the mashing straining
mushing bagging and labeling by hand
manhandles maintenance of the new machine
Lavender paste with almost no waste
The demand is far greater than
five thousand pounds produced each week
Morgan Toledo has plans to expand
five times the plants next season
from newly cleared fields to nourish the industry
Locals complain fresh poi is five dollars a pound
When they think about it they pay it
from this week in November, 1971 (I was 27)
Everyday that man wandered in the woods
and he watched all that happened there
but especially the leaves which fell in time
and broke brown upon the ground
He did not know what to think of this
Some leaves drifted others dove
That man watched while seated on a rock
Reasons are alien to my comprehension
he said to himself as he watched the fall
And each day that man wandered from the woods
with bare limbs and leaves left still behind
from this week in November, 2010 (I was 66)
If it was a test
I tried to do my best
just like all the rest
but if I had to guess of it
I’d say I made a mess of it
I always saw the jest
that gave tears their zest
When the bird left the nest
I took flight and headed west with it
where I guess I made a mess of it
Indistinct dreams are lost
when the pair of dice is tossed
Got symbols and signals crossed
and slogged through the cess of it
after I made a mess of it
November 15, 2012 (I was 68)
This dumb duck would take off
fly in a circle then splash down in the same place
swim in and out of the reeds
duck his head preen the plumes and take off
for another lap He seems to have forgotten
what other ducks know when they take flight
to wit which way to go He missed the flock
north in the spring fall in the south
In his tightening orbits over the pond
the dumb duck quacks after every take off
apparently surprised he knows how to fly
from this week in November, 1977 (I was 32)
Dumb Ducks
The thing is, it seems ducks will live anywhere.
They are quite indiscriminate;
more than a few find their way out of the woods.
They populate roadside drainage ditches and swamps;
they live with pigeons and gulls in city park lakes
floating among the paper scraps,
feeding on a diet of popcorn and white bread
and lead bb’s to aid digestion.
Dogs and kids break their legs.
They swim in circles.
These are not old ducks;
they did not know to think and became unable to fly out.
from this week in December, 2011 (I was 59)
Rothenberg at midnight in December
The night watchman has cleared the streets
We emerge from the smoke of the Altfrankishe
and a deliberate encounter with strangers
The cold air is good in the lungs
we exhale frost against the moon
We walk frozen stones under St. Jacob’s archway
permitted a quiet encounter with history
We follow the church shadow in the dark
as so many have done before
Peter the Rock asleep in the Garden
Moonlight falls upon the Lord in Prayer
depicted precisely at his desperate hour
We are witness with new awareness
At this time the city is ours
The chill plays upon my spine
from those other centuries
those other December nights
Those other walkers welcome us
into the niche of their granite company
I give it solitary contemplation
across the cobbles to Rodergasse
bowed to the wafer moon
November 13, 2010 (I was 66)
Those boxes in the garage
packed and labeled and stacked
from an other part of life
we never intended to abandon
when we renovated
A pyramid of cardboard stones
where a car should be
a monument instead of a movement
Somethings create their own past
somethings entombed we never meant to bury
from this week in November, 2019 (I was 74)
One learns the rules of the games
most common to the region
fields arenas or stadia
casino tables and race tracks
Games about winning require deception
How much can I get away with
It takes more skills than game skills
subterfuge something under the table
city council and Chamber of Commerce
subtle maneuvers and crass power grabs
psychological chicanery extortion
Stock market or bowling
It’s all about the roll over
How big are your balls
from this week in November, 2019 (I was 74)
The Perfect Fifth
Not the life within but the inner life
the two are not the same
The life within is of heart and lung
the vehicle we strive to maintain
The inner life floats parallel
but may drift ahead or drop behind
Llife within feels its mortality
Inner life invents eternity
riding on a cloud
*
If a story be told in verse
make sure the story may be sung
If the tale should languish on the tongue
attempting to tell more than it knows
all that language becomes a curse
and probably better laid out in prose
November 10, 1980 (I was 35)
When I used to be Catholic
prayers earned indulgences
Years ago people saved S&H Green Stamps
On the west coast people saved Blue Chip Stamps
Maybe some people still do that
but I don’t know where the hell you get the stamps anymore
I haven’t seen a premium catalog in years
As you received them one for every dime spent
you’d paste them thirty to a page into thirty-paged redemption books
Sometimes you’d buy an electric fry pan and get pages at a time
More often you got a few buying a buck’s worth of gas
I remember a crazy car dealer once on TV
He offered stamps on the down payment for new cars
You had to go to a redemption center to redeem the books
You could get redeemed for anything
a TV or another electric fry pan or a dozen golf balls
The redeemers wore aprons and rubber fingers
They flipped through your pages
handled the spit and wages of your accomplishment
They gave you the reward you saved for
a little bit of heaven with every visit
November 9, 1968 (I was 23)
Fog morning mist
most delicate of webs
of the astounding variety only seen holding together the green
in loose shrubbery when the sun is right
or when traced against gray in shattered glass dew
Your creator walks upon eyelashes
seeing all things forming and un-forming
in its strict infinity of patterns
devouring insignificant morsels
allowing their clarity for only a second
and planning new threads even as we dissolve
