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
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
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.
from this week in January, 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
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
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.
January 18
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 talisman 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
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
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
January 15, 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
January 7, 1998 (I was 53)
Some words hide in books
that hide themselves on less accessible shelves
in the darker parts of the library
Some words arranged in difficult combinations
seem never intended to find their way out of the dark
Beads of nearly foreign dna
rosaries of dead religions
non-sequential twists of syllables
Snakes of obscurity whose lairs are unknown
to even the chronic habitue of the stacks
and never once re-shelved by the oldest librarian
(whose only hobby is to make rice paper rubbings
from the tombstones of the unknowns
on her visits to small town cemeteries)
Risking the disrespect of their dead authors
I speak of their existence
January 6, 2013 (I was 68)
Wherever I have been I’m not quite there
there is always the place I just left
and the one I never get to
I’ve been detained in the woods
and lost in a cloud regretted the dreams
with accompanying schemes spoken aloud
When I look at them I’m among the stars
Out of sight in the daylight I find they’re out of mind
The more now to be done the less I can do
Satisfaction has no expectations it is
the now to be lost in the now to be
repeating the unlearned from my history
from this week in January, 1972 (I was 27)
her
she follows all the rules
she believes every one
she stayed in school, rose two degrees
she is beautiful
following the most important rule
she believes every one
she tells all the truth she knows
in any language with a smile
men admire her
January 1, 2010 (I was 65)
Who Decides?
I sit next to her wheelchair at lunch.
I feed her. She eats everything.
She drinks juice milk water then coffee,
coffee with her cake. I make sure
the pieces are small. She looks at me.
She likes to hold my hand.
I stroke her cheek and her hair.
She looks at me as if she knows me.
A caretaker comes by, says, “Hello Rose.”
She looks at him and points at me.
“You have a visitor today, how nice.”
She looks at him and points at me,
“My father,” she says and looks at me.
The caretaker moves to the next table.
She looks at me, You look younger,” she says.
I smile at her, “So do you. You look younger.”
I take her hand again. I remember the coma.
I remember the pneumonia, the conference
regarding extreme measures. My wishes
my instructions, her comfort, her quality of life.
Now she finishes her lunch and looks at me
puzzled. Her forehead wrinkles in thought.
Her lips move soundlessly. She looks at me
and squeezes my hand. “Who decided?”
She glances around then looks at me,
“Who decides?” Instead of answering
I squeeze her hand. This Christmas
my family gives me things I need,
they are sure, a different car,
a computer with much more memory,
a subscription to a movie service.
I protest, I don’t need all this.
They say I deserve it. I look at them
and wonder who decides?
