Catastrophe and Bliss

I find her this way

2011-10-16T06:34:00.001-07:00

face drawn in deep concern, something being turned over in her mind -- the memory of a lost loved one? pain over a relationship in transition? I find her this way in Walgreen's, feet set apart, body pulled back, staring at the chocolate rack in the candy aisle.

end of an era

2011-07-29T22:00:00.001-07:00

My last day at the office,
trying to say goodbye to callers,
lying, saying,
"Au revoir" instead.

Scribble notes to myself on the backsides of used notebook paper --
RE: autobiography --
make it true, but make it sad....
No,
make it sadder than sad...but funny!

Lettie calls
three times,
once to talk about her cats and then to say goodbye,
a second time to say goodbye again,
a third, to hear me say, "Hello, this is Marc..." and then hang up.

I am reading a poem out of "The Big Book of Daniel".
I read, "Didn't I, your thief of thieves, your dream thief,
Share sleepless nights, mumble in the moonlight,
'Reach for the sky?'"

sparkler

2011-07-10T19:50:00.000-07:00

There is something intimate
about holding a sputtering, silver sparkler
while on your balcony
at night,
alone,
on the 4th of July.

My case manager had put the idea in my head –
“No plans for the 4th?
Come on, Marc,
light a sparkler or something.”

Truth is, at 44,
I had never lit one.

When we were kids
(it always starts with “when we were kids”, doesn’t it?,
as if past parental negligence could explain
why we are lame today.)
When we were kids,
my sister and I weren’t allowed sparklers,
not even matches;
no snap dragons, let alone bottle rockets…

(…so of course only my best friend knew of my pyrotechnical propensities,
honed in the back yard on the stones
with wispy, flying Kleenex’s, alive with flame, floating toward the house,
and little plastic cupfuls of kerosene spilt over the rocks and then set afire...)

Even a mama’s boy can get his hillbilly on at age 44 –
let that pyro out of the closet in a little 4th of July tribute,
share a moment with his inner child
on the balcony
with his lone starlight spewing against the darkness,

coincidentally,
at a time in his life when his love has finally become a thing to explore,
sweet strange strawberry
to be kissed
before tasted.

yeah, yeah boys

2011-07-10T19:47:00.000-07:00

yeah, yeah boys

boys don’t really know
the secret of their wanting,
of summer girls in jean shorts
with long, chestnut hair
and sweat propped on their upper lips

but they do know that Aslan
and the Beatles
and expensive whiskey, stolen by the thimbleful
from Dad’s unlocked liquor cabinet
hold them…
(tumbling somersaults down
ravines they were warned to stay clear of)
…eye level with the mystery.

The Rescuing

2011-07-03T11:57:00.001-07:00

You couldn’t force it in your life,
couldn’t change her for all your might,
your wisdom wasted, your heart fated
to scorn of angels, to fading light

Her own self grown older
her colors grown bolder,
you didn’t say what you needed
in the thousand times you told her

Name your poison,
choose your weapon
night, it reckons,
your voice, it beckons you home

You are the one this night will change
not the world, not its ways, not hers,
but for certain
your own

at the frequency of unmade babies

2011-06-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

the naked branches of trees
float, reflected in the fluid
of forest pond,
the panorama of sky
drifts in the retina of a young man
thrown out into the world

by a father, wasting his allotment of humanity

couch-surfing in friends' basements;
he often walks the woods as penance
for faults not his own

but today,

stoned to the bone and amazed,

vibrating at the frequency of unmade babies

in the flux of womb waves,

of amniotic nirvana,

his awareness opens

to the scintillating energy around him,

a sparrow alights on a tree branch…

he stops

to count his breaths;

he deliberates

and then smiles…

he is remembering a time

when he was not breathing

as we do,

with lungs greedy and isolate,
when his heart was beating
in synch with another's,
with a mother’s,
to the rhythm of the Universe,
when all was well,
when she still knew possibility
and could feel
pain

OUT

2011-06-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

Home bound

Stone ground

Laughing til it’s holy

Loving life only

One way down

From the upper room,

Climbing out

Your father’s womb,

All that noise

All that crying

Pop stars mop bars

Wrong way moon down a one way tomb

The light can’t see

The fingertip feel

Itself, it’s sealed

It sells

Like sex on Sunday,

Gloria Mundy,

Solomon Grundy

Driving a Hundai

One more word --

third eye groping,

And heaven opens --

OUT,

I am out,

Inside out

No doubt,

No dust clouds

Hanging over me

And I burn and am free

In the strange, incidental truth of it.

Driving through the Bronx

2011-06-13T17:08:00.001-07:00

Driving through the Bronx

Driving through the Bronx,

parks run for a couple of miles,

rolling woodlands and open fields

in a 500 foot strip along the freeway, slumped

beside broken buildings,

piles of projects,

products of some god’s idea

of a joke

or of a tentative mercy –

house the poor, but don’t keep them safe or happy…

And the poverty and the crime

are hidden from the night

in daytime, a deluge of light

just past a week of bad rain

and overgrown anxieties

and domestic pain

skulkers

2011-06-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

They skulk

And that is the only way to describe it.

Cats at night,

Homeless and home-free,

Prowling the Universe, the hood,

The protectorate of Isis,

They, pussy-footing down driveways

Across street ways;

What is their point, what are they trying to say

Why do they look at me that way?...

…Like I’m crazy

Well, it’s not my idea

to fawn over the cute little f'ing things, “Well, HEY there, cutie. Well, HEY there,”

As if I were talking to a one year old child;

It is they who cull this ninnyish salutation from me,

They who make me feel like a warm mammal in pajamas,

They who, concurrently, make me feel like…

…I am an affront to sanity, talking to stupid, skulking, prowling, pussyfooting,

Conniving, feline, fraulein, fornicating, free-basing, drug-smuggling, embezzling,

adulterers!, adulterers!, MURDERERS!!

They think they’re so fucking intelligent,

Pretending they know what the hell I’m saying, what I’m thinking,

Then looking at me with necks haughtily cocked back a fraction of an inch,

With eyes appalled,

never thinking to validate me in my insatiable hunger to feel okey-dokey.

Well, all I want, after all, is just to pet them.

But they spot it. They sense the neediness. Run off like beauty queens

From an old pimp.

Not so unintelligent at all really.

Self-protection. Intuitive creatures, indeed.

The short of it is, she’s gone,

And I dreamt about her last night,

Petting her, she on her back, pawing my hand.

And if I would have only held it together in 1999,

If I wouldn’t have kept cutting my wrists, I’d have kept that apartment,

Not had to give my poopy-butt,

my black cat Audrey,

up to the APL for adoption

or for slaughter.

the new homeless

2011-06-05T07:29:00.000-07:00

books in nooks of crooked
libraries, taking in overdue book fines
from the pockets of the pocketless, they oppress
the lackluster, the moping gayboys and dykes,
the new homeless,
unwanted therefore relegated to nowhere

they can no longer borrow books,
owing on their cards a sum that exceeds
the price of pissing,

and so it goes, the uneducated get more desperate
while the straights
are the only ones finding
true love on the
silver screen.

haiku for Nenette

2011-06-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

Nenette, subject of the film "Nenette" is a rather large, 40-year-old orangutan. Bored-seeming and coyote-spirited, she looks out on the passers-by at the Paris zoo.

you laze on the cross
of your daily lassitude,
orangutan-Christ

objets d' desire

2011-05-31T17:21:00.001-07:00

I will be trying to post at least a few poems a week, to see if that increases readership. I think it's a worthy experiment, and certainly a harmless one, as I have a lot of old poems unread by anyone besides myself.

temple of ants

2011-05-31T17:18:00.000-07:00

hear the chanting of clacking pincers,

guiding the way to

bits of broken pretzel,

crumbs from Hostess Twinkies,

sugary goop from a root beer Dum-Dum

all dropped by a small child

wending his way home, not wanting

to lose the trail back

out to the world

and the ants marching home,

with offerings for the One,

the mother,

never breaking free from the womb,

the scent of the great mother,

larger in her fecundity

than 20, 30 male workers,

fragile in her vulnerable

centrality

to life under ground

to the mound

to the hearts of thousands,

to the health of devoted followers

running unpatterned unpatterns

through sand, through soil,

through composting matter

and constant, exacting chatter

first blue

2011-05-06T15:12:00.000-07:00

first blue
written one morning -- about the process of sun rising

a taint of quavering navy,
blue of ghosts and blue of dark, sad thoughts

the part of the brain that distinguishes color,
discerns an infinite shades of azure,

the flight of birds
against the punctured sky,
the inception of creation
at first blue light

a palpable powder-blue, incurably rising now,
a baby-boy-blanket blue, a faded blue-jean blue,
a sentient hue

it knows its own self,
and it may know me

better than I do

leaving Sarasota

2011-03-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

Written in ATL (Atlanta airport) after leaving my Mom and Dad in Sarasota, my Mom, in the hospital.

ATL,
courage, brief
candle,
out-out,
come together,
nothing short of Apocalypse
could tear us apart,
but it will
because
all things must pass,
all matter degrade,
dissolve,
to the finest essence, to the poorest street-corner hustler,
to the thing inside,
the soul that hides
waiting for us
in our paper-bag coffins

some bombs are good bombs

2011-02-14T17:05:00.000-08:00

some bombs
are good bombs,
the ones that don't go off,
for instance,
or the ones that are left incomplete
on the assembly line,
the factory workers
gone
to celebrate
the Armistice

long wait

2011-01-15T15:30:00.001-08:00

long wait

for infinity to end

might as well wait

for her mind

to change

or for your heart

to choose another,

for your mother

to stop loving you

better to accept

what will not change

as fixed,

the rotation of the Earth,

the tilt of its axis,

things that can be tested

and measured,

meeting the standards

of infallible science

yet there will always be anomalies,

those places where the Universe bends

such that 1+1=3,

where infinity ends,

and heart’s mend,

our love, a hypothesis

that has been proven correct

2011-01-11T08:11:00.001-08:00

more

more –

more more

more less

more sex

more less sex

more renunciation

more meditation

more self-abnegation

more excruciation

more ascetic bliss

more nothingness

more suchness

four more lines of this

more stigmata

more zenyatta mondatta

more holy Madonna

more nirvana

not much to say

2011-01-11T08:07:00.001-08:00

my mind --

not much to say,

to sing

unbring this

conflict,

undo its

denouement,

arms entwined,

a mass of struggle,

pushing,

urging

upward, inward

no dawn

for a sleepless night,

no day --

too much light,

nothing ventured,

nothing right

cutest couple

2010-12-16T16:38:00.000-08:00

big light

through a narrow window,

cutest couple of the week

talking over coffee, one table away,

he, nerdy and handsome,

she, smartly dressed with black vinyl boots

I sit and read about the latest music

in a 2007 Paste magazine,

thinking of how

I sit alone

courage is not a lion

2010-12-02T17:16:00.001-08:00

courage is not a lion…

but a hamster on a wheel,

running in place, never growing bored,

never not sure, one with what it feels,

patiently pecking at sunflower seeds

I've laced with raisins, other things it doesn’t need;

it runs and feeds and poops and runs

and pees and runs and runs then sleeps.

yes, the measure of courage

is not a hugeness of shape

nor beauty and grace

– it’s running in place,

not a roar or strength,

but persistence and faith,

a warm tousle of fur

against a child's face.

four poems

2010-11-21T12:59:00.000-08:00

autumn cold,
I am not as old
as I sometimes feel

in mythic winter,
pink and blue aster bloom
from desert of silence

work is a blessing --
work is all of my messy moments
from past lives
bearing fruit
in present joy

thoughts weave
watery webs,
I fear to pass through,
not wanting to get wet

kasls in the sandh

2010-11-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

it's nice to build castles in the sand,

yet the Earth shifts

by frenetic hand, does it not?

the sand, by science,

constantly undermined

we want what we wish,

may, at times, to degrees, accomplish it

but no amount of weeping,

wheedling or wondering why

will bring to fruition “a dream

that wants to die”.

with handkerchief in hand

I walk away from my castles,

let the sea and the wind

and the Earth do its work,

I head for home

to face the grieving

that will clear a space

for the fulfillment

all my striving could not attain.

fighting myself

2010-10-05T16:01:00.000-07:00

fighting myself,
hardest fight
of my life,
like 8th grade,
when I first wrestled,
which was when I first lost a match,
the sweat, the stink of body odor,
his? mine? no difference, we were like
one being in conflict with itself

fighting myself,
the knock to the bone above the eye,
the lingering, the smarting following
the cold numb of ratcheting pain,
I am out of breath,
I grope, something deep within me
knows the rhythm of death's ocean,
I can't remember my name,
and then,
then the answer surfaces.

Note to Self

2010-06-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

I've had enough
of these erudite,
witty word-plays,
idea-games,
tales with twisting tails,
subtle stories with subtler germs of a gist...

just say it.
just say
you either hate this life
or you love it,
in as simple words as you can,

and you can say both at once,
in fact, if you don't,
you're lying,
and you're not a poet,
you're a politician.

Ramble about seeing 2001:space odyssey sequel

2010-05-22T11:43:00.000-07:00

I arrived at our storefront church last night with key in hand, armed with chips and honey-roasted peanuts. Made coffee quickly then got on a computer, put on the Phoenix Project's soundboard and speakers and checked e-mail while a U2 youtube video blared and I waited to see if anyone would show up.
I figured I'd be the only one this movie nite. El pastor was out of town @ another church's event and she and one other had been the only ones at last month's movie nite.
I left my e-mail on and popped in the video. I'd seen 2010 before, 20 years ago or so, at my parent's house, the same house I still dream of right before waking about 3 times a month.
I will divulge some here, but not enough of the movie so you won't want to see it. It is based on Arthur C. Clarke's sequel to 2001, and, in a deft way, answers all of the questions that Clarke, or maybe it was just Stanley Kubrick, left so wildly flailing in the space above Jupiter in the space odyssey. (if you haven't seen 2001 -- see it...now!)
I watched the first few minutes, as 2001 was cleverly and clearly summarized. Then I pulled out the peanuts, poured some coffee, and settled into a couch.
A few minutes later, my friend Andy showed up, walking in through the front door with his characteristic entrance -- think Lenny and/or Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley. (or think Kramer, if you like).
It was just the two of us that night.
The movie was seamless. Bright, interesting, sexy with no sex scenes. (did you ever think you'd want to make out with Helen Mirren? Just flashback thirty years or so).
The ending, some might call it corny, b/c as i said, all of the questions are answered. But hell, what good are mysteries if there's no answer? There will be enough mysteries in this life, don't worry.

Monk

2010-05-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

Oh, jeez, no entries in April. Someone has been mighty busy -- or just frustrated about his blog (readership). Well, I wanted to put this one out there, even if it's a shout out in outer space, because, I LOVE this (old) poem.

I am a monk
I effort to stay celibate.
I am a Samaritan
I do good deeds.
I go get drunk
because I feel lucky tonight.

I do not know myself

I hang out with my friends
because I want to know warmth and happiness

I say goodbye to my friends
because they don’t live up to my
impeccable moral standards

Truly, I don’t know myself

I scratch my head,
puzzle at the wonder
of who it is I am

I beat the ground
I break the timepiece
I cackle into the night,
“I am mad. I am free.”
But I am neither.

the new science

2010-03-31T12:09:00.001-07:00

time shifts
it's hard to believe
continents drift
is this
where we're going?

are the Florida keys
really to be
consumed by snow,
Haiti, by gold?

the world moves
into the end of the
beginning;
what we once knew for certain
we can no longer accept;
the new science
is hard to believe --
can it really add up
to happiness?

the material world
an illusion
human life
obsolete

we live now
in love alone
and everyone is equally wealthy
with absolutely nothing

behind every closed door

2010-03-13T11:42:00.000-08:00

gravel fills my mouth;
I bide in the great northern lights
of my heart of hearts.

talk of me
is cheap these days;
those who attended my funeral
put on a good show,
but they can't keep from backbiting
in private.

that's alright; I bless them all
from this place of unimaginably sweet light
and ethereal vision
where we breathe wisdom
and spend our days handing out
fountains of love to each other.

I forgive them;
I was a bastard, after all.

and what they're doing is nothing
I didn't do,
with every death,
behind every closed door.

the soft-blue of unlearning

2010-03-05T17:29:00.000-08:00

a mobile, overhead, dangles;
a solar system of
soft blue plastic
commanding a trail of angels,
warding off danger,
blessing the head of a small child
with starshine and mercy --

a brother's sling, shot hard and wild,
the rock diverted by the rotating toy...

helpless as a baby,
or so the saying goes,
helpless? -- perhaps and maybe,
but this child seems to know
visions of things sublime,
and a magic in every wonder,

though "well-meaning" people and time
will tear this heaven asunder.

attunement

2010-02-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

song of light
the blazing sun within my heart,
I see all by the light of my eyes,
anything I do not understand,
I must just not understand
and not despise.

the soft light of mother heart,
the searing discernment of father's
the perfect attunement of brother's, sister's, friend's,
we are on different roads, you and I,
both to the same end.

take a flame within your palm,
close upon it, feel it's warmth,
open now and breathe it in
watch your soul renew and spin
a flower in a flower within
a world within a drop
of water suspended finally mended
a life that sits in the still center
of a careening top.

first contact

2010-02-18T17:01:00.001-08:00

having wandered from his mother,
he walks the lobby into the synagogue
and up to the housing
of the Torah.

he pulls on the cabinet door,
stares at the ornate scroll within, laden with silver and bells,
at the embroidered cloth covering.

"BA!" he shouts,
touches the scripture;
the words within the labyrinth
of rolled pages stir.

he pulls at the tassels
and handles,
pulls harder, pulls and falls back on his behind,
and the books of Moses
come clamoring down on his 1-year-old head.

stunned for a moment,
he begins to laugh, giggle,
shriek with delight.

and a strange musical tone,
a choir of millions in one note,
a simple ringing in the right ear
which never will leave him,
which none of a string of physicians
will be able to cure or explain,
will become his companion and solace in loneliness and loss…

and beginning to feel a need inside himself,
he wanders off to find his mother.

building lights

2010-02-16T11:01:00.000-08:00

building floodlights

surreal through

scratched and worn plexiglass transit windows,

emulating stars,

crosses,

underwater spotlights,

the light at the end of the tunnel

Nefertiti and other mentionables (discipline)

2010-02-14T14:29:00.000-08:00

Nefertiti,
the Mistress of Sweetness,
stole
cookies
from her father's
pantry
as a little girl;

Moses was a
compulsive gambler
at age 14;

Gandhi
corrupted all the kids
on the block
with lurid stories from
the Mahabharata...

it is not from
discipline
that discipline springs,
but from devotion
and passion,
from radical turning on
and turning in.

grace of growing things

2010-02-14T14:28:00.001-08:00

grace of growing things,
tender and green,
touch my spleen with your
skillful means;

and turn to tongue
my brain undone,
that seeks to speak
yet being meek,
will so long wait
and cogitate
until the truth
has passed my tooth.

pall

2010-02-08T17:08:00.001-08:00

pall over land of plenty,
geese soar above hoods
where the county hands out
public housing
like a miser hands out
Christmas bonuses,
draining patience
with paperwork perpetually in transit,
with paper walls,
inefficiently drowning out
sound of gunshots.

like a clenched fist

2010-01-18T14:36:00.001-08:00

tower of Babel,
spits out,
spins down
creation
in a fable,
conquistadors,
groping
to hold on to
ill-gotten
power,
we are not understanding,
we are not able,
but somewhere,
spring blooms,
curls of leaves…
opening.

once I thought this was a big deal

2010-01-18T14:34:00.000-08:00

I sing to myself
to ache the fill;
I snort song,
then puff it out my mouth
in little clouds.
I, the immaculate.

once I thought this was all a very big deal,
this emptiness,
this pursuit of sustenance,
but it is not;
it is rather common;
it is you
and I
sharing a thought,
each of us
in neighboring apartments,
sitting with our backs
up against the same wall.

Fairy Story (after a George MacDonald story)

2010-01-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

The mystery

of longing and need --

the story of a young boy

who kissed a fairy,

she, the beautiful,

light sparkle, gold soul,

raspberry lipped.

She had told him,

"One kiss will

drive you insane."

But what a kiss it was,

the marriage of the sweetest softness,

and the most unbearable burning --

I take the bait,

take the bit,

bite in deep,

rest in it,

and then

find myself

falling gut-first

to the ground.

My weight heaves me,

my breath leaves me,

I am empty of everything, of any longing, any longer.

And there is only the realization –

that fairy was preaching some kind of Gospel

and that I am the willing sacrifice

on the cross of my own foolishness and desire.

(but what a kiss it was)

momma baby

2010-01-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

baby asleep,
wrapped in fleece,
baby momma
draggin' her butt
from work to day care to shopping
with baby in arms, soft and warm,
momma's asleep herself on the RTA

free jazz

2010-01-04T11:53:00.000-08:00

the day before New Year's Eve;
no money, no plans for the following night,
no spark, not seeing any kind of light,
wish I may, wish I might
have some kind of fist in this fight,
this mentally illman's plight --
never feeling enough,
always having to fight a battle
to get to the battle,
war drums rattle,
off in the distance,
I can wish it but can't fix it...

NPR, free jazz,
time, no time, sound and hands
on hand-crafted instruments,
radar red,
radio says,
"you are here, man...
follow the groove...
listen for your Muse…
this is the battle."

when that which harms feels right

2009-12-16T06:42:00.000-08:00

The years
have lined up my spine,
traced its route
from heel
up to where
neck meets head,
where my hair is fluffed,
innocent and unaware
of this injustice.

All this time,
I thought
this stiff cord
drawn against the length
and the loss of my soul
would hold me up,
suspend me,
make me the iron warrior
I thought I wanted to be.

Did I want to be a warrior? Yes.
But one with heart of duck down pillow
and purple irises.

This yardstick of titanium
that works so well in the movies,
has broken my creative hand,
my freedom of thought,
my ease of Spirit.

Since it was implanted for me
when I was a child,
my back, my will have been broken.

to want again

2009-12-11T13:18:00.000-08:00

To Want Again

Funny how it
desists flowing for excruciating periods,
and depression is then something,
an awful real thing.

But then some conspiracy of things,
like a book,
or a new coffeeshop
or the vision of a lady
with legs bare in the harsh cold of near winter
literally dragging two huffy beagles down the street
outside said coffeeshop,
or…like a book,
strike you flat on the head.
And not only can you write again,
but precluding this,
you want to write again
and you want oh so very much
to read again, to read more and more.

But quite simply,
You want again,
For want is of the heart,
And your heart had been closed –
To friends, to self, to the hope of ever finding love again,
And not least of all to poetry.
And now you want, just want, not a thing
or a circumstance, but wanting like the impetus
that rises us from bed in the morning, from the womb.
Maybe you just want to sit and give thanks.

sunfish

2009-12-11T13:17:00.001-08:00

leaving
town;
leaving it down the road,
down the
down
into the ground,
grave thoughts,
grave graves,
buried,
I am buried alive…

yet on the other side
I see reason
(hope)
mope toward the light,
reach with full spine,
into the future,
into now,
touch what is not possible –

it surrounds,
permeates you
like the ocean beguiles a sunfish

feel it

2009-11-29T15:53:00.001-08:00

total acceptance
of the moment
and everything in it,
feel it,
know it,
glow it alive,
inside out with your heart,
blow the flame
into the glass,
make it drip sweat
and sear with end of steel rod,
seeing red,
sparks golden,
metal molten,

and blame no outside agency
no person
or institution
or idea
or convention for what you find here;
blame nothing,
just be with it,
blazing light into your secret, sodden places

the ones you dread

2009-11-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

we are the chosen ones,
the illegitimate sons,
the incested daughters,
the smudged faces
of orphans,
kicking a dirty soccerball
through dusty, drunken lots.

we hold a secret
deep down in our shirts,
a midnight cry, a city scream,
a heart-hurt,
like an M-80 frozen
halfway through explosion.

we are the ones you dread,
the same ones you put hope in;
for we will find our way,
and in finding ours, we will find the map
for you to
find yours.

dog -- GOD

2009-10-22T12:24:00.001-07:00

dog -- GOD

it is God who is weeping
as that dog,
moaning
for its owner,
a molecule of pure feeling
surrounded by energy fields
woven into energy fields –
that are manifesting the body of a mongrel.
that dog knows a thing or two
about how much
it sucks,
cheeks puffing,
eyes glistening,
yelps minutely escaping jowls,
jowls clenched against
the whole fucking WORLD!

loss and love and longing
and loss and loganberry pie
and licking his feet... licking, sniffing,
and licking, kissing his feet...

he is now licking the feet of the beloved,
who has stepped out of the cafe
to retrieve Him,
the now rejoicing God-dog-doggy-dog.

and in His lowly eyes,
savior and salvation and Self,
are all reflected;

in the eyes of this beagle who watches his life
slip away
and be resurrected
every single night at around 8 o'clock
outside of Caribou coffee,
in those eyes of innocence and Infinite depth,
are the beginning and ending
of everything,
and the beginning and ending
of everything.

jars of green glowing

2009-10-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

jars
of green
glowing silver-blue,
overflowing,
flowing into the sink,
circling down,
counterclockwise
into the disposal

little beings
of sun-stricken grief,
struck to heart by
desire to see
the sun that has
given us energy
and a hand up the puppet's
neck to belief;

the star-blue star wreck
of impossible broken heart healings;
lift color to a new zone --
zone of evolutionary knowing.

shortly after dawn

2009-08-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

this one kind of says what it says, then skeedaddles.

grey,
everything grey,
the pavement ---- grey,
the black chairs and black metal tables
on the coffeeshop porch,
dulling grey in the pale grey light of early morning.

only the tall-grass blades by the window
shine with their sheer openness,
green and light-green,
kelly-green and yellow-green and white-green;
the poms on the tips of the burlap-grasses,
a hint of red
and milk-weed white,
shy, blissful rejoinders
to a sound of wind and voices and traffic I cannot hear
behind this window,
here,
sipping sugar-cream coffee and ice-water.

what I did at work today

2009-08-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

the reading material
I brought
is coarse
and luscious,
brimstone, treacle
and transcendence

love the taste
of those
Buddhist heart
murmurings,
love the
songwriters' tales,
the unknowns and
halfblown geniuses
and the Kenneth Rexroth poetry,
Chinese style shorts
and original, leaf-turning
chicken medallions
with honey barbeque
glaze

I could give up this job
and pile books to read
for endless anonymous afternoons,
but I don't think I'd enjoy
them as much
if I weren't sneaking them in,
paragraph by paragraph,
between clients

my books

2009-08-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

had been thinking of the insight meditation books I've been reading when I wrote this, but it applies to Ursula LeGuin and all of the poetry I've been reading (Rilke, Neruda, W.C. Williams, Lorca, et cetera) and other books, of course.

my books
old friends
dead letters
living under
leaf
of dried, browned, bound pages,
lifting life
to new heights,
new levels of light

and each new breath,
each word or phrase,
each mark of punctuation
a new step
into deepest, blackest night,
forevermore...

no return,
no retreat,
no hope
of scaling
a peace that takes
no prisoners,
with not a word,
without a
fight

what it has all been for

2009-08-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

why friendships have broken my heart only to heal it again -1) because, until recently, I hadn't had friends for years and years and became a kind of social moron, and 2) because of the below...

blossoming
heart,
fire in belly,
burning through,
water flow,
fresh, free and clear,
stone at foot of mountain,
layer of rock and rubble
holding up layer
of rock and rubble,
holding up, carelessly, ceaselessly
until peak is reached.

whole Earth, bare,
rooted in ether
and swirling
rivulet streams
of golden light,
moving, living gold,
watching --

we are not alone,
this I know,
this is what it has all been for --
we are not alone.

introvertabrate

2009-08-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

Wondering one night at a coffeeshop how I can be a dazzling social butterfly, but only until I turn back into a pumpkin.

garrulous
tonight
for short shocks
of sullen,
sorryass
5 minute
bursts of conversation,
bumbling at the end of each
then leaving off
and going back, going back,
to put my face in a book.

Rod McKuen Was Not a Poetry Ho

2009-07-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe he was, but it doesn't appear so from my perspective. He was one of the best-selling poets of all time, which does suggest he must have been a ho, but...well, I like a lot of his stuff because it's like the MacDonald's of subtlety and innuendo and meaning. If you want some smooth poetry in a hurry, pull up to the drive through and maybe order "ONE" from Listen to the Warm, stolen and posted below.

This is the way it was
while I was waiting for your eyes
to find me.

I was drifting
going no place.
Hypnotized by sunshine
maybe,
barking back at seals along the beach.
Skipping flat stones on the water,
but much too wise for sand castles.
My castles were across the sea
or still within my mind.

There were the beach bars
and the other beach people
sometimes little bedrooms were my beach,
but I was drifting.

I must have thought the night could save me
as I went down into pillows
looked up through dirty windows
smiled back from broken mattresses
turned in Thunderbirds
and kissed in elevators.

I cried too sometimes.
For me.

I loved every face I thought looked pretty
and every kindred eye I caught in crowds.
But I was drifting
before you.

chapbook sneak peak -- "breathing out"

2009-06-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

he flew into the bus shelter,
blinded
by his passion for flight,

crashed into the glass,
hit the ground
and hopped, flapped,
stunned.

he offered no resistance
as I lifted him into my palm,
and changed plans
so I could take him
to the Nature Center
on the #26.

he just sat there,
warm and pulsing,
yielding.

the bus driver,
when he saw him cradled in my hand,
shooed me away,

but that was alright;
I laid him on the ground
near a sprite little tree
on a breezy, park foliage-island nearby
and walked away.

She Heals with a Word -- my second chapbook

2009-06-25T13:01:00.001-07:00

I will be creating a new chapbook soon, filled mostly with what I call my more "pretty" or "healing" poems. They will be twenty pages at five dollars and proceeds may be going to a mission for orphans in Kenya. If you'd like a chapbook, please contact me at jazzcoffeefreak@yahoo.com as I am only creating about 50 and will make more if need demands.

when I am difficult

2009-06-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

I actually don't feel this way more than 25% of the time.

Indifferent,
I turn away
from the levers
that control the Heavens.

One pull,
one crank,
and you could thank me
for making your life better.

Yet I refuse
to put myself in the mood
that contorts my face
into a warm smile,
that lightens my limbs
to the point where
they raise of themselves
to reach those levers.

I am indifferent, but I am not selfish.
I am simply sluggish with melancholy,
lacking vision to see any
hope
in any venture ventured today,
in any attempt at the supernal,
whether lost or gained.

"donkey" and "tantric healing" (two haiku)

2009-06-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

first, it's the carrot,
then, Friend, the whip: Dear Donkey,
find your true longing

I wanted you to
heal my heart through tantric love.
You did, you said, "No."

What She Knew

2009-06-18T14:28:00.001-07:00

Bless Mark Hopkins soul for wanting to publish this in the Cleveland Reader, while his dratted foil (okay, Nick's a cool guy too) passed it over. I remember things like this to the minutest detail. I can tell you how it felt to be there. this happened circa -- 29 years ago, written four years ago.

The kid had skipped out of practice
and had just arrived, halfway through, out of uniform.
But with one sentence to coach Terrengo,
all was forgotten.

“There’s a girl choking by the lower field.”

We had never seen coach T. run,
let alone run so fast.
He was a huge guy, in height weight and muscle.
He just flew down that hill
and the other coaches managed to keep us up there
until everything was alright.

We followed down then
to find her on a bench,
turning back from blue to peach,
coach T. standing next to her.
The story was that he’d
Heimliched a piece of gum from her throat.

The next day,
I looked over at her a couple of times
in Spanish class.
She sat there in a grey sweatshirt,
and I remember noticing how frail
and, for the first time,
how pretty she looked.

The drone of Ms. Coffey’s voice
hovered over the room,
odd and dull,
while Ginny gave off this aura of humility,
real and palpable,
as if she knew something
it would take years and years
for any of us
to understand.

ZION

2009-05-30T12:22:00.001-07:00

Gee, another Cleveland transit one right after another. An old one but one I like. At least I'm learning how less to use commas.

Hands-down,
the
most
beautiful
scene,
with soundtrack,
in Cleveland –
riding
the Red Line
over the Cuyahoga mouth,

graffiti
unfurls
down below,
buildings emblazoned
with words,
misspelled, meaningless,
non-existent non-sequiturs –

ZION
DIZER
GERL

not all of which I understand,
but they seem to belong,
along with
this river of suggestion,
the dirt and grime,
the hands of ghosts
worked to the bone,
the businesses,
restaurants and clubs,
trying to keep hold,
boats,
towing freight
out to the lake,

and me,
30 yards up, looking down,
humming, REM’s “S. Central Rain”,
to myself.

transit, TV and graffiti

2009-05-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

an old one which I think I read once at a poetry reading then never shared with anyone else. self-inventory -- I put the boring ones in books, send the boring ones to contests, and generally keep the good ones to myself. must remedy that. may that this be a start --

houses appear behind hills;
snow lauds, litters brush-strewn narrow ways;
brush, brown and bright red,
usurps like a tangle of bodies in Purgatory,
longing, reaching for release.

warehouses graced by graffiti,
schoolhouses,
bored spouses behind hidden windows,
TV screens onto TV queens
watching machines that make them forget,
carrying a nonsense of history,
a litany of
the banal, the barren, the crude, the crud,
clogging memories down to the pixels.

and more graffiti, more,
“VERBS” and “DANK”
and things I can’t even make out or understand.
the sides of sitting trains and abandoned factories
where it is scribbled,
comprise a television for our time,
for two decades of RTA rides.

and in this space, these artful young hooligans
are the producers,
are the stars,
and the set designers
of shows for which
the commercials are the show itself.

but no money flows in
or out
of their hands;
barren of all but a glimmer of hope,
their hearts starve for the doing,
for the living, and the aching;
and no respect remains
for the walking of other peoples’ straight lines.

open and close

2009-05-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

this one was such a delightful discovery. I don't know how I got in the mood I was in when I wrote it. but I'd like to find the stuff, bottle it and sell it.

open self,
see into
heart space,
close
and open,
flutter
like butterfly,
beautiful, beautiful
butterfly,
opening and closing,
like a shy little child
opens and closes
her hands
over her eyes

The Unraveller's Son

2009-04-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

I will give him forgiveness
when he ventures
and stumbles,
and I will stand by him;

I will be his steady rock,
take him in my pocket on travels,
unravelling mysteries
(that is my profession).

I will take him to worship
in the House of Love,
to teach those impoverished
but by nomeans unworthy;

I will give him wide berth,
an open field
in which to express
in letters and pictures,
in music,
to sing his song, compose harmonies,
one, tenor, for him,
-- and a higher harmony for her,

and she will sing with him,
and he will know her heart,
and thus know his own;

and they will know the mystery
that begat all mysteries,
and they will wed
and explore the wayward world
and seek its corners and tiny places
for the mystery
that ends all mysteries.

and when she passes
into folds of white sheet,
he will remember me and call to me,
the one he held high, always higher than his own head.

but for once,
I will not answer.

and he will grieve;
he will mourn my loss
as he mourns her loss,

and then he will know
that knowing mysteries
does not a life complete,
but resting in the silence one
has dug out of the raucous world.

learning how to fall

2009-03-02T16:54:00.001-08:00

I count on you.
I count on you.
When you burn from under me,
I will either levitate in mid-air
Or I will fall, hard.

What of it?
Falling is a precise science,
a worthy exercise.

Let me fall if I don’t understand
how to fly.
I will hit the concrete 7X7X7 times.
And I will repair and heal the same number of times.
Calloused and strong of heart and bone,
levitation will become
obsolete.

innermost sentinel

2009-03-02T16:52:00.001-08:00

out, out,
out on Erie,
frozen chunks,
broken, raw, cut blocks of lake –
sullied water…on the rocks…with a twist.

behind the miles of liquid expanse,
a lone building, weather station rests,
seagull love nest where people barely visit
but to run tests on weather and water quality.
a monastic it is, with no one to speak to,
nothing to share but for blips and dots,
waves and numbers
spewed inland
to encumber machines and minds,
weary with information.

and with the din of sunken ships,
sailing in, sailing in
to break walls, to dead loved ones,
boats bounce off rocks,
seafarers clock hours til tea, til time for lunch,
til it’s time to come home to arms of loved ones;

and in, inward in,
past Halite factory,
streetlamps, shoreway,
fence guarding nothing down that forlorn hill,
trees, weathered, wintered,
sentinels before all,
broken, leafless, snarling, gnarled,
standing farthest in, but for one more sentinel
taking precedent –

the cold, the chill of grey frost in the air,
from the horizon to here;
my face feels unwelcome
in its red wonder at the beauty of solid desolation.

Prophets and Physicists

2009-02-10T12:48:00.000-08:00

“Each sin brings an equal and opposite wrathful act of God.”

Moses was Newton –
He brought the law.

“Your sin is relative to where your heart is standing.”–

Jesus was the spiritual Einstein –
he brought relativity.

And there will come one who will demonstrate that
all is Love,
that a vast Unified Field of Love
underlies all of the fields of energy, all of the matter,
all of the Beings, all of the suns,
all of the comings and goings of the Universe.

And along with the Nobel Prize for Physics,
he will win the Pulitzer Prize for both Fiction
and NonFiction,
for his “Bible of the Heart”,
which will be touted as both the funniest
and the saddest book of all time.

And few will see him as the second coming of Christ,
but those who do will certainly not know him
as the 12th incarnation of Vishnu,
the last Qu’tub,
and the final manifestation of Dorje Chang, the Universal Buddha
– as he truly will be.

And after a “scandal” trumped up by a jealous young physicist
who was once his most promising student
(something concerning a hotel-roomful of strippers
and a weapon of Universal destruction),
he will retire in relative obscurity,
and will be virtually forgotten by the greater part of humanity
until long after his death, when a desperate government
will exhume his body to extract its relics
for the blessings
to repair a now impossibly catastrophic and jaded world.

And all they will find
will be a rubber nose and plastic moustache,
crossed by a rose.

the vocation of a water drop

2008-11-09T17:27:00.001-08:00

water drip
dropped from
busstop
crossbar,
strikes my back
at my shoulder,
cool,
collecting neurons, united in perception;

fire on pretty babies,
this is the best thing yet this week –

snake-skin alive with visceral sensation,
likens the autumn
to the wind of a little world of
feeling and finding,
a little taste of ecstasy
on the tongue of my shoulder-blade.

Time-Clock Oasis

2008-10-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

“One day, you’re gonna realize
who you are.
I never needed you
to tell me I’m a rock star.”

They are sexy, real sexy. Oh, so rock and roll.
Ideally, I would be talking about seeing a girl band, hard rock, punk, or bubble-gum indie. But, unfortunately, this chord-crunching ecstasy is elicited by some middle-aged dudes with convex bellies, who couldn’t turn on a horny light switch. Well, I find them sexy.
Daddies they must be, and day workers. And I guess those are their devoted wives, up front, cheering, snapping photos.
The lead guitar player is shredding some pretty serious sound. A beautiful inlaid instrument graces his sure, steady hands. The drummer is soloing over distorted screeches that do not beget images of the insurance salesman the guitar player probably is.
The singer and the bass player are real classic rockers, the only ones who look the part, with their long, unkempt hair. The bassist jumps on and off a beat-up couch, at intervals.
Tonight for them is like some sonic trip through the 80’s, through days of high school, AC/DC, The Beatles, The Eagles; young, rebel hell-raisers, smoking and toking and beer-bonging their way through the education they didn’t choose, but now, barely, begrudgingly appreciate.
And this waking dream, this weekend avocation, is an oasis at the end of a time-clock week. It will break its momentum only when someone’s hip goes out, or Alzheimer’s makes it too hard for someone to remember the chords.

the same blanket

2008-10-03T12:25:00.001-07:00

the air is grainy,
like an old-time
phonograph, scratching away;
a slight tint of blue
pushes through my
seeing of sidewalk and storefronts.

I am in dream time,
riding my lady’s bike
down the sidewalk at noon.

I did a deed today, a good deed;
I volunteered for a couple of hours.
And, riding home,
I realized I am something more than evolved primate,
something less than Mother Theresa;
yet I am under the same God’s blanket,
hiding from the sorrows of selfishness

He Is What You Are

2008-07-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

I sing the body conscious,
(I plead with its flaws;
pull up my drawers)

I step out of my skin,
drink the ocean we are drowning in,
drink only that
I may not drown,
as all is drunk,
and I am drunk,
on my every breath.

Jesus gives me
the secret, special handshake.
He winks, twists my hand,
and we both laugh,
laugh, ascending nigh to Antares
and points beyond,
hearts bursting with
pain of breaking,
ecstasy of aching for the surrounding Ocean,
rushing in,
Love,
completing the broken.

But,
how could this ecstasy
of falling into place
be free?

God is not what you think;
He is what you are

If I Get Lucky

2008-05-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

This one is based on a dream I had as a child. The people from Scooby Doo and I were hiding under a giant jellyfish's tentacles. When he discovered us, and we floated toward his sharp-toothed mouth, I prayed (I didn't think -- I prayed) "Please, swallow me whole." In my mind, the jellyfish was a God image, or a Life image. Life will chew you to pieces, it really will. In the dream, I decided I would rather be swallowed whole than bitten into.

If I’m Lucky

Please,
swallow me whole;
do not chew me up
into little,
nerve-ended pieces, parts, pickin's
me having to pick
through packages of,
legs, arms,
brains, heart,
and other plump members of me
to put myself back together;

your sharp, Infinite teeth, grope for
gaping wound, open door
to every swoon over shock of pain
I deplore, insane,
your craving heart at no cross-purpose,
slobbering over morsels,
Munch, crunch, munch, *cough*,
spit, +spew+, slaver, *hack*.

So swallow me whole,
please,
the phantasmagoria of life’s
incessant digestion,
a bane to my soft-covering,
self-mothering, human,
hypocritical, selfish, wanting,
self-daunting,
tripping over the shoelaces
I refuse to tie,
identity, self, distinctive me, I.

Because the stomach acid
may just kill me
on contact,
if I’m very, very
lucky.

Someday Will Be Our Time

2008-04-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

He’s never at a loss for words, for a smart remark or for an executive decision. But, as we talked about the election, Dan got sheepish.
He said, embarrassed, “I was on my way to the polls, and – I still didn’t have any idea who I wanted. So, I got there, and I looked at the ballot, and I had no idea.”
Jim said, “Well, you’re voting for whoever you think can beat McCain.”
“I know, but I still didn’t know. And when I left there, I was, like, did I make the right choice?”
I had never seen him like that, not even in high school. We’re 40 now, and he’s an executive with one recycling company, and an owner of another.
I just thought he was making a big deal about nothing. You vote for who you want and let it go.
But, deep down, I think he was feeling scared because, maybe for the first time, he had realized an inability to effect the world.

* * *

I was watching the outcomes of the Ohio primary that night. It generally stayed at 60% Clinton , 38% Obama. Dan had voted for Obama.

* * *

Who knows how elections are decided (for the last Presidential election, it seemed like some kind of teeter-totter of fate), how world events develop, or explode into war, fall apart, lead to poverty, etc.
Usually, we apply very rational systems of thought to try to understand how major events occur.
But when I child’s dog is hit by a car, he is looking for deeper answers. And the answer his mother gives him to “Why?” is “Maybe it was his time.”
Could this be how everything happens?
How could we allow George Bush to invade Iraq ? So many of us didn’t want it (and so many of us blame ourselves – somehow we didn’t try hard enough). The world, at large, didn’t want it. Yet it seemed inevitable.
Could we really have stopped it? Could Dan have won Ohio for Barack Obama? Could Obama have? His campaign workers?
Why have so many innocent Iraqis died?
“Maybe it was just their time.”

* * *

When will equity exist in the world for all of its inhabitants? When will violence end, when will hunger end, when will discrimination end?
Maybe, someday, it will be their time.
If enough people want it, if enough people have worked for it, maybe change will be some mysterious cumulative effect.
Maybe it is a matter of the will of the heart, pushing for these things, until critical mass is achieved.

wide open spaces

2008-04-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

wide open spaces,
beautiful, placid(ifying),
a rain of warm drops
from a light gray sky on an arid, summer day;

like the endless Midwest fields
(which I have not truly witnessed),
or the fields of grasses, surrounded by stands of trees,
in the SOM Metropark,
or the endless ocean,
seen from the white sands of Sarasota , Florida .

even those places
that aren’t so wide,
yet which are open to the heart’s imagination,
can have this hidden spaciousness;

like the mouth of the Cuyahoga River
as the Red Line pulls out, east,
from the W. 25th rapid station,
into the valley, gulls soaring,
serious for fish, hilarious for play,
the hillside, a quilt of foliage and condominiums.

and, actually,
any little, open space you can find
in this world of crowded developments and hopscotch, commercial zones
can add a bit of breadth to the mind –
the view down the street from the Cedar Hill-bottom station
into the arboreal University Circle ,
or the space of the heart, itself,
expanding upon your seeing a loved one,
or even your seeing a stranger, welcomed with heart ajar.

approaching W. 25th

2008-04-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

fallen leaves – neon green;
underbrush – fluorescent brown;
graffiti – acid rainbow;
rapid transit, rushing through town;

approaching W. 25th,
art town, somewhat bigger than myth,
creation of incandescent objects of art,
in industrial town with an underdog heart

city, eating gravy,
waiting for the next big win,
conspicuously not as concerned
with the state we’re in

but art knows no sides,
it’s not set up to win or lose,
just putting it out there, praised or panned,
you’re saved, you’re bruised, you’re healed, you’re true

As He Supports You From Within

2008-04-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

I've given away as many copies of my first poetry chapbook as I have sold. And that's fine by me -- as long as people are reading it. "As He Supports You from Within" is wisdom in the form of poetry, from a man who has seen a lot of wisdom in his life, most of it in other people, and birds and squirrels. And cats. Influences include Hindu and mystical storytelling and the pop lyrics of Paul Simon. So, why not enjoy the sweet ache of the blues from a light-hearted, care-worn soul. $3 is the asking price, including shipping, $2 if you catch me in person, and maybe for free if you say something nice about me. You may contact me at jazzcoffeefreak@yahoo.com