Everything I focus on

 

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

Everyday that man wandered in the woods

 

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

Cabin 89 Sunol

 

September 21, 1971  (I was 26)

 

         Cabin 89 Sunol

There’s something about wood

that makes me feel good

Walls stained only with age

ceiling and beams

exchanging breaths with me

open and receptive

rather than painted reflective

I believe they release energy

to make room for mine

and what I breathe of them is fine

old images mellowed myths

fit for ballads sung with lutes

secure fables from the past

Truths lived here seem to last

Misunderstanding your soft shape

 

July 22, 1971  (I was 26)

 

Misunderstanding your soft shape

under thin summer blanket stirring

and the delicate murmuring dream

into which I so easily slipped beside you,

my smoothest hand

drifted across the cover of your possible curves.

I believed the cooling lie

of my warmth against your thigh

and breathed your rhythms in colored currents

flowing from each sigh.

Then as the first bird called warning

into some distant morning,

you turned to deeper sleep

and I turned to philosophy,

hand stroking cheek unshaved this week.

That man climbed his mountain

 

July 17, 1971 (I was 26)

 

That man climbed his mountain

with a prayer for a pack

and the peak rising in his eye.

He walked easily, rested where he sat.

On the first night he exhaled poison

resolved to be reborn every moment

and gravitated toward universal sleep.

 

Ascending winds of space cooled his feet,

rose with him up cold stones

to unconscious climbs,

each step exhaling past moment,

each moment a frozen blossom.

 

And as he breathed his sacred hum

under stars bursting from pulsing darkness,

the third day dawned on the summit

hot to melt his tingling skin.

Echoes of his roaring essence

entreated admission for his presence.

And as he viewed the peaks below

the mountain let him go,

finest powder with wind and snow.

Tom Taken

 

July 14, 1971  (I was 26)

 

         Tom Taken

Cross-legged on the porch at dusk

surrounded by trees and even the sky is green

Just now got the point of a thick joint

A jay informs me and leaves

air so soft I don’t know whether it’s wind

or trailing breath of an extended limb

Mosquitoes shoot up on my arm and ankle

Randomly I kill them or let them bite and fly stoned

Kaleidoscope of leaves and vestigial branches

Calliope of dogs music and laughter in the canyon

Meditative melt from shadow play to star show

I’m perplexed and I just don’t know

how the rest of us just go on with the flow

after you’ve gone  And all of us still

taking you along

poem by freak on the midway & I went to the carnival today

 

June 14, 1971 (I was 26)

 

poem by freak on the midway

 

They come to see me not by plan but by style

and their faces look so sickly

hidden behind a struggled smile

 

Betrayed by Curiosity hurriedly they pass

and I try to show them a soul

with my face pressed against the glass

 

They follow the call of Calliope out the canvas door

and they forget the wasted ticket

lying on the sawdust floor

 

I sit alone again now in my corner of the zoo

and wonder if there is anything more

a freak can hope to do

 

  -written two days later…

 

I went to the carnival today

first time in awhile

I even walked the midway area

and was attracted to a side show

IKON THE INCREDIBLE

An Electrifying Emotional Experience

it said and I paid my money and went in

Pitch dark

and there was a hairy guy

huddled in a glass box staring back at me

and I didn’t know what to do so I left

The sun made me squint

and I felt somewhat hollow

and people were looking at me

like I looked at him.

Winter Evening in Kilkare Woods

 

February 22, 1971  (I was 26)

 

Winter Evening in Kilkare Woods

The sun is set below my sight,

I shiver in the half chill of half night.

The leaves of trees and grass are wet,

silver coated in the cold.

 

The sky reflects an empty mirror;

the wind makes haunts of dog howls.

Oaks grow gray and twisted as martyrs

beneath the Eucharist Moon.

nude poems

 

from this week, 1971 (I was 26)

 

(for Sandra, while modeling)

 

nude poem #1

Line and form

from surface and substance

Drawing a nude is a process of elimination

and another of translation,

Look and what is it?

get it out

or get it down

 

nude poem #2

Body bulk demonstrated

mass of flesh and gravity

underscored

 

nude poem #3

When does the student become artist?

When does he legitimize the model’s nudity?

When does a zen koan have answer?

 

nude poem #4

All my poems are nudes

and some of them have names

separate from their parts

or gestaltic sum of them

 

I have defined for you

feet shoulders and forearm

but you see only thighs

and utter praise of my substance

 

I have posed forms

athletic graceful and constant

but you see only a reflection

of your own transient sensuality

 

nude poem #5

How you sit there

feigning unaware

just as I ignore

all I knew of you before

to turn your body into words

Out the window

night birds cut your curves in air

Art’s Event in Shallow Water

 

October 12, 1971  (I was 26)

 

Art’s Event in Shallow Water

 

Arthur Octopus has got

all these tentacles which extend

out and over around and about;

      one carries burning torches

      one orders all it touches

      one flexes all it’s muscle

      one drifts on every current

      one probes to break the surface

      one buries the dead

      one counts the other seven

and one strokes his jellied head.

war god

 

October 3, 1971  (I was 26)

 

       war god

I was sitting on the hill

breathing my fill

and the kids in the canyon played war

They chose up their factions

and described war contraptions

from fragmentary shells to flame throwers

They gladly died un-terrified

resurrected bad and power mad

until with ironic thought I picked them off

from where I sat each one of them

laid to peace just like that

Last Night September rain

 

September26, 1971  (I was 26)

 

Last Night September rain

began to launder the trees.

They will shrink, fade and run,

lose leaves like buttons.

 

The cold clotheslines are bare,
we hide our bodies in thicker coats,

play ballads on the phonograph,

the tragic refrain in the air.

My great great grandmother

 

May 18, 1971  (I was 26)

 

My great great grandmother

used to talk to any snake

who’d come wandering through the grass

Times have changed a great deal since then

but not at all my great great grandmother

Let some old rattler come up shaking his tail

like a kid tapping a penny on a candy counter

and it don’t faze her a bit

She just stands there with her hands resting lightly

on her hips and says “What do you say snake?”

and like or not the snake tells her something

My great great grandmother says

there’s a lot to be learned from snakes 

I guess I take after great great grandpa’s side

I never heard one tell me something useful yet

and a lot of people I hear

don’t pay snakes any attention at all.

Revolution is a bomb and a prayer

 

April 6, 1971  (I was 26)

 

Revolution is a bomb and a prayer

that something anything at all

will be there once the smoke clears

 

Bombs are that way it seems

Planning ahead of them

is like trying to live off tomorrow’s dreams

 

If the times are bad, the situation intolerable

tell me that without a promise

Say only What the hell let’s rebel

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

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

Young Poet

 

from this week in February 1971  (I was 26)

 

         Young Poet

There was a time he could not hold a thought

together long enough to make much difference

Day passed upon daily poem of 7 or 8 lines

and each of those only echoes of the others

The nowness of now and thenness of after

occasionally lost in a myth of careless laughter

He had lost the overview of time’s continuum

or had given it up for a longer look at the moment

and still he found far too much to see

trying to decide whom he ought to be

Finally resolved that all was all

he considered these choices:

1)    a life of arbitrary resignation

2)    scoff at the absurdity

3)    gather more evidence

4)    hide from the fact

Realizing he might have time to choose all or none

he began doing number four for now

Everything I focus on

 

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

Everyday that man wandered in the woods

 

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

Cabin 89 Sunol

 

September21, 1971  (I was 26)

 

         Cabin 89 Sunol

There’s something about wood

that makes me feel good

Walls stained only with age

ceiling and beams

exchanging breaths with me

open and receptive

rather than painted reflective

I believe they release energy

to make room for mine

and what I breathe of them is fine

old images mellowed myths

fit for ballads sung with lutes

secure fables from the past

Truths lived here seem to last