It doesn’t surprise me

 

February 6, 2011  (I was 66) 

 

It doesn’t surprise me

     you were the one to become a soldier

and there are a dozen more

     my mind would place in uniform

You never expressed the wish nor willingness

     but I would have guessed you sensed aroma

in the stench of heroism and duty

     Now you’ve lived long enough to taste the rust

from the rotten iron of irony

 

I understand the choices were few

     for all of us in the cold

We took hold of the life lies in front of us

     pulled and were pulled in return

Some got the short string

     others tangled in the knots

A few untied a packaged gift

     they assumed they deserved from birth

with that bow around their little finger

What became of the social contract

 

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

 

What became of the social contract

I remember when I first came to live here

in the fall of 1966 When all was so new for us

driving the Nimitz freeway to the Bay Bridge

when the traffic moved both fast and smooth

in time to the music on the radio

Cars signaling changing lanes even trucks

in mutual trust and respect for right of way

It inspired confidence in the grandeur

of civic behavior and cooperative effort

to attentively assure we all got to our destinations

in that alluring city on the Hill above the blue and windy sea   

Moving smoothly through the tunnel of Treasure Island

to emerge into the loveliness of accessible possibility

Just another manifesto now lost to the worm of cynicism

and recalled only in fictional idealism of old lyrics 

 

You are in another country

 

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.

Tom, the Cat, Berkeley in the 70’s

 

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

        

History is a foreign country

 

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

The devalued photo

 

December 26, 2008  (I was 62)

 

The devalued photo

on the two-inch screen

taken two seconds ago

shows a tropical butterfly

in a tropical forest exhibit

at the aquarium

The photo snapper

looks at the photo

a foot in front of their eyes

their finger still on the trigger

ready for another shot

while the butterfly

still jiggles like a puppet

in the leaves of the mangrove

 

Our photographs used to fit

in a single oversized family album

with an extravagant cover

deteriorating from useful love

across three generations

looked at studied

again and again

They were history

now we have blips on a chip

They never leave the camera

just a confirmation

that what we actually saw

is virtually still there

more proliferate images

than moments left in our lives

I remember when Disneyland was fun

 

December 21, 2012  (I was 68)

 

I remember when Disneyland was fun

a time when you would notice everyone

who was there and what did they wear

and where did they want to go first

I sat on a bench on a porch on Main Street

as if I were a resident of the town

Neighbors strolled by whom I would greet

with a nod or a smile and they would slow down

to respond before traveling to another land

And I was there again yesterday I think

along with everyone and their kitchen sink

The population explosion happened right there

much more crowded than ever in Times Square

To keep people moving took a squad of Marines

No Little Mermaids just Tiny Tot sardines

squeezed from no place to no place to go

Out the gate it finally felt great to forget

you had been taken

 

It all seemed so real at the time

 

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

Those boxes in the garage

 

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

 

When I used to be Catholic

 

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

Today in Waldport Oregon

 

October 1, 2015  (I was 70)

 

     Today in Waldport Oregon

Forty-five years after the date

I optimistically predicted it would happen

smoke is drifting into the body of the legal system

I also thought it would alter attitudes

Such are the musings of those who think

they have encountered a path to a universal logic

An older friend raised a brow and dropped a jaw

Not in my lifetime he said and was tragically correct

Sometimes it takes a mobius path of persistence

to be turned down and around again at last

to come upon those whose motives methods and modes

only vaguely relate to my initial perceptions

I planned for summer nights in a tent

 

August 23,2010  (I was 65)

 

I planned for summer nights in a tent

set up in the back yard

from where we could control the dark

and rule the infinite stars

until we died in a sleep from a fatigue

we thought we’d defeat until we could not

Stupid guilt for nonexistent crimes

stripped and robbed me of the times

left only rich when they could have been opulent

I do not know why we didn’t enact these schemes

that might have fulfilled our dearest dreams

now split into aged wonderings

how we could have lost such sacred plunderings

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

Medicine man mind your apothecary

 

from this week in July, 1970  (I was 25)

 

Medicine man mind your apothecary

your manners are atrocious;

your father knew better,

respect.

He’d never leave a customer

to stand unattended in some corner of the store

without so much as a good morning

or how can I help you today.

And you could see him mix the potions

and package them himself.

And you point, “Top shelf, middle of aisle D.”

When you left the store in the old days

it was known who was sick and what he had,

and you felt better

because the prescription was for someone,

even while he was preparing it.

Where the hell is aisle D anyway?

Yes.

You did feel better, and another thing,

small to you maybe-

you use these imprinted slick bags.

Your father used green paper

tied with string that came up through a hole in the counter.

Secure,

a package recognizable on the street.

A dollar seventy-three,

God, it used to be forty-nine cents.

Nobody calls you Medicine Man either,

do they.

We all called your father that.

Apothecary-

that sounded mediciney.

Pharmacist.

Sounds like a farm worker. 

Did you get my change right?

Oh, and don’t forget the Green Stamps.

The essence of memory recreates the details

 

June 13, 2014 (I was 69)

 

The essence of memory recreates the details

as needed to sustain the story

nuance to ensure the progression of events

will lead to an understanding

of whatever the memory meant

Chips cashed so we can see the money

the pony in the corral at sunset

a reason for the life beneath the tombstone

There is the lost trail in the woods

and there is the bright view from the mountain

D-Day

 

June 6, 1969  (I was 24)

 

D-Day

Men met in bars

to again take up

the question of why

they did not die.

 

Their sweetest eyes

were not punctured like purple grapes;

they were not buoyed-up

by lungs knotted at the throat.

 

Now beads of sweat crystal

in their few black hair;

they nod and muscle shut their lips.

Between tender sips of old-fashioned

their eyes clank among the cubes.

 

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

Joe’s Bar When I Was Nine

 

April 4, 2009  (I was 64)

 

    Joe’s Bar When I Was Nine

You’ve heard of Joe’s Bar

everyone has

Lots of people have been there

Joe’s my grandfather

I call him Grampa

He’s bald and he always needs a shave

He was from the Old Country

too poor to stay there so he came here

He opened the bar before I was born

He doesn’t remember some stuff

so he doesn’t have to talk much

He talks Bohunk best

It’s only a three-two joint

so he sells bootleg shots under the bar

We don’t do stuff cause he doesn’t know how

He gives me pop and candy all the time

Some old guys sit at the bar all day

They smoke and spit in the spittoons

They have false teeth

Grampa tilts the glass when he taps beer

then he uses a plastic wand to level off the foam

He puts the beer on the bar

rings up 10¢ on the cash register

In the backroom I check the jukebox coin-return

I find two nickels and leave by the back door

bike through the alley to the park

I don’t know why his bar is so famous

Kidhood

 

from this week in 2016  (I was 71)

                 

                  Kidhood

We skated in our socks across a polished floor

We decided what everything were for

We could discover a shieldin a garbage can cover 

Cardboard toboggans raced down grassy hills

Rocks could express many skills

We saved the age of savage kids

reinventing civilization every day

abandoning it each night

when with the bats we took flight

blindly on bikes to improve our sight

Took typing in high school

 

From this week in 2021  (I was 76)

 

Took typing in high school

ensured a life of sitting

in poor posture and lousy dexterity

with wrists arched and fingers

that couldn't quite retain exactly where

each key was located to translate

clear thought into clear print

I spent more money on correction tape

than on typewriter ribbon

I think the same lack of facility

screwed up any chance for a music career

an instrumental dysfunction

It's a hell of a note