JUNE 29TH, 2007
By M. OROPEZA
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 –
- Jon Oropeza
JUNE 24TH, 2007
By M. OROPEZA
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
fog morning, midsummer’s June
california coast, 113 in Imperial Valley
yesterday, on Laguna pine ridges
big blasts of convections causing
fog forms tonguing coasts from San Quintin to Aberdeen
Pacific seamounted dragon from Japans
whisping, waving, rolling up Garnet Avenues
entrapping Long Beaches, red bridges, Crescent Cities.
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.
- Jon Oropeza
JUNE 21ST, 2007
By M. OROPEZA
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
- Jon Oropeza
JUNE 17TH, 2007
By M. OROPEZA
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.
- Jon Oropeza
JUNE 16TH, 2007
By M. OROPEZA
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.
- Jon Oropeza
JUNE 5TH, 2007
By M. OROPEZA
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.
- Jon Oropeza
JUNE 3RD, 2007
By M. OROPEZA

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.
- Jon Oropeza