Zoomity

I sit over one bourbon and one beer thinking about the great poem of life. It is the same exact spot I sat in almost exactly 12 hours ago thinking these same thoughts, only then it was a cappuccino by my side and the sun was rising in my face instead of setting at my back. The great poem is the thing, the only thing.

The great poem is the unimaginable breadth of living matter repeatedly being born to be extinguished in a flash because it’s never had a self-aware thought and then WHAM! through eating an apple or whatever you want to name the alchemy we have the schism – the thought – the sin – we left our father behind, spat on our mother, slipped out of the stream and proclaimed ‘I thought therefore I was!’. And what a Fuck-Yeah moment for life and the planet!

And then we dug up the earth (with gusto!) and formed enormous mounds, and grew wings and jets to speed us around, and we wreaked a joyous havoc upon the earth and finally we constructed a phallus (which we hid under the earth, natch) sufficiently powerful enough to bugger both father and mother, hoo-ray!

Nonetheless and despite our scientfical triumphs we spent most of those moments which we’d crafted out of the etherous death afraid, hunkering, clinging to obsolete mythologies.

And then for the fuck of it we began teaching rock to remember, and then to think –

June Gloom

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the west coast’s early summer climate – the daily fog-battles between sea and land – and how it’s all caused by the imbalance between the water temperature which is still cool from winter and the inland areas which are already doing their mid-summer bake.

June Gloom

I look up from my second cup
at that moment of mid-morning brightening,
light and blue unto laden greys
– Triton’s slipping in his squiddy grip to
burn-off and sun-heat, earlier every day too,
Mexican Tropic of Cancer waters
sloshing north for summer.

Summer

the day

the god overhead

the swing swinging and swung

the water warming swarming with fishes

the lovers walking on the purple buds

the cart coming while the horse is already waning

the grapes ripening in their rows and roses

the apples and squashes getting starts

the peaches and apricots coming in

the lives ending when they were just beginning

the year just born and already dieing

the king fattening and fading

the world revolving

the time

Poetry

Jerome AZ from the Asylum Looking northeast towards Flagstaff.

The Homecoming

front porch of Garcia’s Home 1890

Jerome, Arizona, Verde Valley sunset shaping up

– always wondered when my gramma said

‘San Francisco just felt like home to me.’

now I see – San Francisco peaks from Jerome!

and in this copper town high in pines

overlooking Cottonwood and Clarkdale

mi abuelita ignorant of Assisi

humped & humped with a miner she loved 1935

inside, and no coat,

an act which begat my dad and thus

watching this Verde Valley sunset 2007

is something of a homecoming for this boy

another future grandson’s ghost

whose San Franciscos feel like home.

Poetry

How could we make such messes!

What I should have told my mother

when she’d scold for a messy room :

All living beings exist in a loophole, mom

a bargain if you will

made with the Gods and

all metaphors you could choose to use –

that in drawing this inner here

we will muck up out there

often ridiculously, apparently

to drive as a 30 year old man and see

our world strewn with our bantaloons

and poopatroons and crapola

s-h-i-t, to use specific terminology

all expressed scientifically :

‘a loophole allows entropy

to decrease in a limited area

provided that greater increase

occurs outside of the area.’

– Robert Shapiro, SciAm, June 2007

a rationale for messy rooms!

on earth as it is in heaven.

Dawn

First thought this morning

those crows are at it already

cawing away at that kestrel or kite

come round at the crack to snatch

quivering eggy breaks and fats

– for the unborn’s only ever future : a life?

or a bite, sustenance

– for that raptor, his belly empty –

– for those crows, their life’s work

encased in delicate shells, proteins –

i get up, shake off the cobwebbies

walk to my cafe for a slice of quiche.

Poetry

Manchester Washington

At the Capitol Tavern in Manchester Washington

you can lean on the doorjamb with a pint in hand

and look out over the town, the pier, the Sound

Blake and Bainbridge Islands

Seattle inlaid into the opposite coast

her towers like features of the land

the Columbia Center dominant from her flank

pyramid tipped Wah Moo, the lunar ship Needle

wonder, what’s going on in those towers?

and underneath and between those towers?

from here there’s no sign these features are inhabited

by any species, any individuals, any persons like us

maybe there are bird men, or crab men, or ant men

salmon men spawned from Puget seas?

in our Manchester bar we five man men

at three in the summer Northwest afternoon

drink beer, see a pair of man men backing a boat

watch a baseball game being played

under those Seattle towers

in a spaceship stadium where supposedly

thirty thousand man men sit seeing a game.