Self-Portrait in Rags

By some

    strange

           calculus

    my step

           son Aiden has

become my

               Dad.

~~~

Am I not

         famous?

Google is the

    Pope of

         soft rock.

~~~

Psychiatric disability

      is too strict,

          too tolerant;

Advanced

      Witch

         energy,

I figured you,

      Gonzalez,

         would

               know.

~~~

Wheelchair

    Inaccessible 

           the Clouds

    As they Always

                  Are.

~~~

The Love,

  why can I not

      sing about the

                  Love?

Because they don't 

      sing, I

   can only

             guess.

~~~

Death brings

      the center of

          the tree

  Into focus,

      how everything 

                grows

                out of me.

~~~

Big Daddy

       Bear

Why do you

    cry so

    and never 

        show a

             tear?

~~~

Why am I crying

     for you

          when no tears

     for myself

  Come through

           except as fan,

           as Audience?

~~~

Who are they,

     these Whitney's,

     these Patricia's?

Is it really

         an end

     with no end 

And the fool curse

         of trying?

~~~

I have created

    a Timeline

Where Xerox

       won the

              War.

~~~

Irvine OK?

I have to ask

        my Boss,

Who came by way

          of Rego Park

    and the furthest

               Exurb

                 of Kashmir.

~~~

I can't be

     in the

             collapsing 

                       city,

Showing its dinge 

     as the morning

                    sun

          turns pretty.

~~~

I collect

          whites

    on my

        Notebook

                 arm

    and write

        while Aiden

        recounts 

              how he

        Manifested

              the

              No Worries

          Grim Reaper

                  Last Call 

                      T shirt

A stranger left

                   in his hamper

              after the 100 drunks

      party he threw 

                   when we were

                      out of town

      and not looking.

~~~

I am the

   Primary

      Caregiver,

which became

               the truth

         the moment

      I said it.

~~~

Still, the mesas

      in Alamogordo 

  hold my interest

             more than

      what happens

      in front of me,

  in my bubble.

~~~

Aiden 

      negotiates

         a New Life

   with new skills

         as my old

               skull

    blows its

            cover.

~~~

On Donny

            the

      Magnificent 

  with his New York 

            hiss,

  George C. Patton

         sobriety,

               the scent of

     Jesuit piety --

   how could you fall

         for such a tender

                      trap?

~~~

Kubla Khan

     wasn't 

         written in a day

     like the world,

            so easily

                  undone.

~~~

Is it baseball,

       baseball

           season?

Is it time yet

        for 

             1935?

~~~

The Bengals

     are good,

The Bengals

     have won,

The Bengals

     almost crossed

          the Super-Rubicon

               again;

Cris Collinsworth

     sits disconsolately

           at the 

                bench.

~~~

They way they

     Invisibly

            pounced

       from every tree-

   like TV antennae 

       flashing orange

   in the blue-grey

                 world.

~~~

Year of the Tiger,

   Homage to the one

                 that purrs,

   like my ex, when

        she was aroused

               to be

                   cautious ...

  Oh how you

               honor

        the brave,

the word

     said right.

~~~

This plotline works

      because everyone 

   knows where it's 

                           going,

Art's surprises 

      are the only

               predictable 

      part of life.

~~~

Brian Wilson

      in the Sand,

the name of the 

               book

    I'm supposed

               to write,

On Dunhill

    and the Gold Star

         abduction

             ascension.

~~~

I have not

    been not

    a Scholar,

most particularly

             when my

             Scholarship

   is all made up,

       immaculate,

             authoritative,

                     precise.

~~~

So many

    ways to be a Writer

           back in the day

When the doors were locked

                         and now

           there are no doors,

                    no place to

                               lock

    except in a library

            of light and

                     treasured ruins.

~~~

The COVID gift

             that keeps on

                     giving,

that you can 

             live your life

    and never have

                    to leave

             your porch.

~~~

Many are bass-played,

             Few are

                      Bass,

The full bottom

     glass boat

                 translation 

to heart frequencies

         where we live

                      alone.

~~~

I was just trying

          to be accurate,

I would never talk like that

                     of course 

          in tones so

                  unhindered

Where we cope with the rope

                  to which we are

         tethered.

~~~

She believes

     that she is

                fat

       and presto

     she is fat

and no diet

     will visit her home

          and leave her

              in peace.

~~~

The Bearers of

          The Truth

   as much absorb

        as explain

When so few are listening,

        when one has to

              understand.

~~~

The Superworm lady

        was so darned cute

I had to get the

                   frozen rats

        despite my vow

                 not to.

~~~

Miles pee'ed off the hotel

                         balcony,

Cindy Jr. set her house

                 on fire,

Mike Jr. will pull out a gun

     if you dare point out

                 he was not

          the bass player

                          of Sublime,

And then there are

                  the crazy ones,

like Hanna, muse

              of my

                         darkness.

~~~

All politics are 

               local

But the mind

            is not,

    no matter

        how much

                       incense

            was spread.

~~~

They back off, in time,

                 the tyrants,

When we get tired of them,

        tired of opposing

                           a demon

and supporting the clean

                city hall

                        candidate

        who does not know

              what bang flash

                   or truthbomb 

                         is.

~~~

The quickest way

     to a Middle-Aged man's

                   heart

          is through his

               Nostalgia.

~~~

Yet the only sign

     that we are Gods

To those who go

                after us

Are the photos

         they find

                    of us

     in 1970's clothes.

~~~

The Raven feathers

         flutter through the

                     air

              as the door

                     slams --

Something always

                                falls,

     Gonzalez,

         into the darkness.

~~~

Arizona, 

        where all 

             my conundrums 

                        end

        and all roads

                       lead

     to ascend

         in the deadly 

                           sky.

~~~

Raptures of

        the Afternoon

Open and then close

          like lungs breathing;

    There is always more to do

          to get away from

                     speculation.

       He who is self-conscious

                           is lost.

Rain at the Imaginary Border

You said I had to stay here forever 

Yet I've left nothing behind.

Geronimo's spirit stayed in the grass

Between Douglas and Chiricahua.

Neither the prairie dogs of Casa Grande

Nor the Tuba City vendor in the fry bread stand

Can say if I was ever there, what secrets I shared

With the land that remembered me.

You waved your lordly hand to let me pass

Into an empire of wind and sand

That turned out to be fields of gold in the end.

They needed this old Hohokam brother to know that, only.

Arizona Highways Scenes

I. 

No Tequila Sunrise

This year

So the old man

In the chair

In front of the Morning Glory

Will not have to carry

Students out of the planter beds

By the Navajo Mission

In a wheelbarrow.

II.

The gold grass of the old 

Potato field is still,

The pinecones fragrant,

Gold frosting on the ponderosas 

Where needles fall through sun

To a blanket of circles.

The mind must slow

To the whispers of the trees

To even see the jays.

III.

The faces let you in

The fat old Chinese bastard

And his friends 

Their heads still hold

In the sky

Nothing surprises them

No matter how low we've fallen.

The saguaros on the other hand

Have thrown up their arms

In a kind of surrender.

They'll give you photos

And give you codes

But what they feel about it

You won't know

It is what it is

So it goes

No word can even stand

In judgement

Although we try to talk it up 

As if this eerieness

Is a passing phase

And the trials of the desert rats

Are merely nothing to speak of,

One quotient of madness

In a day brushed with chaos.

You go into the dust and the spikes

To find the desert's heart

And go farther than you'd ever imagine

You could go

And it only opens up 

When you've given up hope

Of ever finding a home.

Amitabha and the Incidental Perfection of the Chimes

The winds turn paper flags

Surrendering the lotus

To vulgarity

The only peace we'll ever know

The prayer wheels are spun

Into the spiral

Sending the sorrows and virtues

Simultaneously 

Into the valley

That receives what seems an insurmountable 

Amount to let go:

The heart, the mind, the soul

Hands turn with the weight

Of immersion in suffering 

And cannot release

The head to the ground in prayer

Brings the emptiness 

At the world's center

Where everything will begin

At the second prayer

Even the birds start to laugh

From a Bed of Red

Time has dissolved

     in the white grass

     there is no end

             of birds

               or flies

     or snorting ballerina

             javelinas

They stay as permanent

     as stone and sky

             despite the wind

     whispering

             the minutes

And the birds slowly turning

             into songs

High above the rock, trees wave,

      berries are forever waiting,

             branches reaching,

Leaves fill out the chasm

      with the happiness of being,

             the lichen makes love

                            to the rock

Dead sticks caress soft grasses

       and grandmother tree 

             is as a child

      knowing what she's seen

             is but a shadow

                     rippling

          at the edge of evening

A Bird at Lizard Head

The blue bird is blurting

     "don't use your words,

Breathe into the wind

     and let the trees be in you.

Feel how the rock is as hollow

     as a heart,

How it hums 

     your spirit song.

"There is one desert, here,

     in this moment,

In that distance is only pride,

     regret, sorrow --

The white beyond the red's but

     another foreign perspective,

Those things you say

     you want to leave behind."

"The crackle in the branches

     is the buzzing in your ears,

The tree is merely a sphere,

    the grass formed into spirals,

And water spills down the wash 

     from alternate frontiers,

A different red-brick schoolhouse,

     different planks of juniper

"Existing not in other times, 

     further distances,

But in the book -- already written --

     you are reading,

In the clean lines of the wilderness,

     the wound of the trail.

Feel the pull from either side,

     build the cairn."

The Music at Bell Rock

The two walled cities are impervious

To even the most orgonite-enhanced,

Salt room-washed neophyte. For them,

The twisted pines must suffice, 

The rusted charge of the root red trails,

The manzanita, Mormon tea,

Blue winter fat and soapberry ...

The fortresses retain their shapes

Against all metaphors.

And the path of creamy pink boulders

Poured from an ancient forge goes

Wherever it wants to go,

And the walkers become subject

To what it shows them:

Silktassel, crucifixion thorn,

Sumac with the audacity to turn red ...

Yet giant slab faces are submerged in the sand

When they no longer have the capacity to scare

And still they guard a certain area

That humans can feel but remain too far

To pierce its veil, except for, maybe, tonight,

An October at dusk, when the spruce has its skin

Pulled away to the orange brown of the berries

And the pines pose as our primordial fear,

An elixir almost too much to bear ...

The seeker walks the serpentine through fear, 

In the mad desire of belief

To a sun that is already setting, 

And no destination indicated ahead.

Is the thought of a sunset ritual enough 

To call forth the temple from the sand?

There's music from Bell Rock, pouring forth

From the silence, from people who've become,

With only flute and drum, coyotes...

Then the Gaelic fiddle jig begins

Under centuries of stone melting.

It seems we can't reach such realities,

They float in air forever too far away.

But everyone can meet at the Cathedral,

Take our flashlights to the top

To populate the ledges, laughing and singing,

Dancing and drumming, believing in an

Event because there are so many people ...

Impelled by some force to crouch by the moon

Or as close as these monoliths will allow.

Vortex by the River

The river calls the trees into it

To materialize

In the mind's moving lines

Stones underneath in gold

Despite the care taken to be separate

They are inextricably part of the whole

And — trompe de l'oeil — one never knows

If the tree is in the water or the sky

— It could be both, so deep is its green

And in the sheen

Black branches rise

Like arms to be lifted skyward

And braver rocks try the island life

In the oncoming flow

Dry in a world of water

They pop up at distances apart,

Different sizes, colors, dispositions —

But there’s no escape from the whole

Framed by the river 

As part of its murmuring prayer

Even as they stay still as pines

Shards of blue come between 

The long black alder limbs

And their twittering boughs

In the slow migration of leaves 

Free to leap, to disappear into the soil

Of a different color, or to follow the river down

The sun's come over the ridge to mark the wrinkled bark,

Each tree a university of individual expression

In the white and mute spotlight

Then a curve of rapids are mountain tops moving,

A response to a theoretical actual alpine source

Also moving away, down an unquestioning course

The force of an idea is such, such is gravity

And such is the inevitable need to reply, as water does,

Raising its hackled mane as it slides through the sluices

Only to smooth again

Into an undisturbed surface of everything else

Until the next turbid fall into foam

The poplar responds, also, 

To the softening of the sun

With a gold brilliance, a kind of wisdom

Their leaves dance at the wind's hand 

Down to the ground,

Making a sound the cicadas complete

As do the rapids that curl and balance

In a sharing of force,

The power is somewhere else

The leap of white comes 

From a familiar 

Yet unknowable source

Though it seems the leap

Is water's own, willful and spontaneous, 

The eccentric harmonized just as it lifts

Water drips across the stones 

To the stream from someplace else, 

But there is no place 

But this for it, as it folds inside the accumulate,

Where every thought that ever was 

Blends into its perfect expression

The trees and the grasses are mere fans 

Waving along the chasm

As the cheers roll along

Then the river gives way as the sun moves on

To white, the mirrors have turned to light

Observing only the motion, the process

Of thought thinking, 

Ideas being conditioned,

To be reformed at a further bend

The Bird

For Jen

You flew over Thunder Mountain,

        While sleeping below.

As long as love is held

        Wings won't release,

The bird will be silent,

         Sleepers will sleep.

Until all identities peel away

         From chrysalides 

Love will be a gift

         Of the conditional

To bodies still as stones

         In star-webbed night

That wait to be forgiven

         For having to exist,

When all that is created

         Flees the womb

To be the void of bird,

         Bringing thunder

Without a sound, the wordless

         To the song.

On Mother Mountain

The gray humpback whale on my shirt

Gets the animal communicator going

To another griot story with Lakota drum.

It's one on one, the personal relationship,

Not religion's man-made black and white,

The tye-dyed butch from Toronto decried,

"Ah, but there is a choir!" But from my

Perspective it had nothing to offer,

By way of explanation, for this vista;

What is, it appears, cannot be explained

By even the holiest scented robes.

Yet we come here, unreformed, 

For frequencies not to be squandered

But held through the cold of Vail and Detroit,

Every destination we wayfarers will go back to. 

We watch how the pinyon pine branches are peeled

Away into whorls by the vortextual spiral,

Which seems for the moment to be lost and looking for

The confidence of the agave, unselfconsciously

Holding its own curls like a hair-weave from Mr. Ray,

But it sees, divine wind, how we too are peeling back

Our identities, until there is nothing, not even a name,

Left but love, as natural to catch as this breeze.

The energy rolls down the stone like essential water,

Glinting the same, in another sensory wavelength.

The Hopi forehead, high and full of shadows, gives her 

Away, Kachina Mother, her hair held aloft in a bun 

That is part of her quest to separate from the sun, 

To be at one. There are faces everywhere, guarding the sky,

On the adjacent cliffs and distant mounts, faces that

Have seen too much, looks of awe and laughter, sadness 

And surprise, wearing the masks of hawks and lizards

But, despite their hard mein, they have nothing to do, 

For what they would protect can only be sacred

Despite the pull of finer vapors from the deepest densities 

Of beer and pork chops, to this top, uncovered 

Except on our heads. She is impervious still, in her bruised 

Red rock, to the ascent of the white man upon her mane,

Such patience and grace, to feel so much to forgive,

A lot of wearing away, a lot of sorrow endured

In the cool, merciless wind. The suffering of a mother

Knows no bounds. Cairns of temple stones in piles

Around her base, oblivious to the distances

To its sister spires hanging in the mist, in equal silence,

Layers and layers away from this center, that is really 

No center, just a face, seamlessly woven in to the web of faces.

In ruined columns, high rises extend along the Mogollon Rim,

Each chamber an eye, looking out on what we observe.

The bottle blondes in spandex urge me to silence

As they sit cross-legged by the cactus -- but the gap

Between words grows so large so quickly -- and the pine voices 

Start, cacaphonous as any party, a language and reality so strange

It coalesces almost instantly to a cicada frequency in my ears,

What I could regard as lost, a ghost, in the lounge of the vortex

Undertow. The stones that have acquired such heat turn into steps

Toward a pagoda, where buddhas in the guise of monks

In the guise of modern women sit, contemplating the leftover 

Nothingness from the roar of the canyon void.

Stoned from the ions, we murmur small mumbles,

Rockgroking like local reptiles, as tuning fork vibes

Come between our heads and the stone committee.

We all are free, to figure it out for ourselves, to find some

Community no matter how imperfect, the only requirement 

Is that the current cannot end, that the seemingly endless 

Valley will be washed in light forever, the same desire as

Lovers clasping hands. Conclusions seem so small 

In the face of such vast empathy,

Integral lines extending like a rope across the skies.

We hear the actual wings of the crow, as it flies.

Rainbow in a Drop

The colors blend 

          Effortlessly

One into the other.

How little distinction

                        There is

When there is one.

Faces in Sedona

Every cloud a face,

Every blackened smoke tree

Bearded with thick golden hair,

The rust grass that blows like a whisper

To the purple atmosphere.

The tall yellow flower stares down

The prickly pear, the molting 

Mountains, the rainbow skies

Over the pot o gold fields,

Very stern, very dead.

I have left so many lives behind.

I don't recognize who I was.

There is no help for who I am.

The seed I grow could be anyone,

Everyone, whatever is needed

To fold back to the source as a memory,

Of the way I felt by the mimosa tree,

The ponderosa chaparral tones,

The red that remains something more

As it is almost infinitely less.

The mountain cap says "don't mind

The aching beauty of old, piled codes,

There is something that I want to say:

I am whatever father you need, I move only

In your mind, do you see -- it -- crackle?"

Along the burgundy ridge, shadows rest 

In looming thoughts, complete with silence

What is already whole, and so realized

In holding such magnificence,

The steady drip of light does all the work

To explicate the contours of a thought 

Worth keeping, as it fades away.

We do not have such thoughts, except in

Our highest moments, where nothing

Needs to make sense, the light is enough 

And infinity is touched without reaching ...

Only to find the stones hold on, too, 

Against the thought, of having to be that idea,

Trying to ply their form as formlessness, 

As true identity, finally amassed.

A wise old tree stump is missing an eye

But not much else. These are faces you know, 

There is nothing to fear from loved ones, 

Despite the scowl and the silence, 

The stillness when you move closer

And leaves transform into light on black wicks, 

Cactus spikes hold spiderwebs incandescent

As the pines swab with fire the air.

The light is such, the red rocks cool it off

Like blood from the hills to soften the trails,

And indeed there doesn't seem to be a limit 

To how deep the redness goes

As the contrast of sky dissolves.

Even what wasn't red before 

Becomes so, in sympathy.

It becomes too much, so the sun must, finally, 

Take it away, in a blaze of nebular blue, 

As if in a final taunt not to touch 

Our trusty cameras, but to look, simply

To look, unbearable as it is, to look.

Secrets of the Valley

In my dream you threw a Mexican hat

Down on our sand, and danced, if not

For me, at least alluringly,

Like you cared enough to cast me

In your spell. In reality, you had the house

And an ex and a boarder with a retriever

Who left the TV on all night 

While you drank pinot noir in total darkness

When the desert crackled outside — 

Your makeup showed her face

In the invasions of moon through your window

As you shared dark chocolate and darker eyes

And a spacious enough couch for the biggest ideas

And a voice that wanted to believe all my lies.

But the cactus outside was inside too,

In the turquoise pastels and copper fires 

Of your refuge, as you held me

The only way you knew how, at a distance,

But not the one beyond the housing tracts,

Where not even jackrabbits can hide

And all things blow into puncturing traps.

All of my friends soon ran for the hills

And gas log fires, cats in windowsills

And pools, as if this holiday would last

And there was no such thing as Sun Ra 

Or psilocybin in the Third Mesa red.

The desert woman warned I was a fool

To look back, like Lot, for a wife.

A First for Me: A Poetry Reading Video

I finally joined the 21st century by getting of those fancy smart phones, and playing around with it I noticed I could make a video of myself, so I thought it would be appropriate to read this poem from 2007...

The Drummers of Summer

A heart beats alone
                                   in the center of
                                                              the circle

              the other drummers pound
                                                              around its cue

                       and soon it disappears
                                                              in the swirl

                            of Persian dancers
                                       red bonfires
                                     flying dreads.


A person's only ever wholly a person
                                                             in the whole

                         completely dissolved.

Once Again in the Intergalactic Sweatlodge

The treasure in the hole

is there to hold

as long as it is not

defined as treasure,

a little off

the answer

when being given,

the path to home

must stay on course

despite the missed

and incorrect directions

like a memory of something new…

Temperature rising

to check the mind

awakening

the spirit with its

gentle membrane wave

proceeds…

The eyes are always crooked

adapting

to the outside

and self-created mirrors

so we can see ourselves,

while the glass which

holds my image is

a fraction of my form...

The water carries

toxins out

as water brought them in,

exchange

and in between

a breath

choosing

to receive

and when to give...

Unrecognizable endings

as the balance always settles

at a different place

in the motion,

the distant bells

remembering

what I scarcely recognize,

between the hum and the silence,

as I leap to cast my figure

moving through the space

as inside source,

a quickening

runs on forever

where my mind

so mercifully

cannot go...

Empty mind,

abundant heart –

I am born into

a towel

and at the whispered ending

released from all

but freedom’s feeling

going on, going forever on.

Bare Fingers

The desert rivers took two wedding rings
Jealous sajuaros

The eternal people hope to have and hold
Just gold dust in the streams

Where salmon give it all up for their children
I sacrificed my faith for love each time

Another Town

A response to Hannah Stephenson’s Town

It starts with a railroad, a fort nearby
with plenty of guns in its armory,

and a promise of gold, silver, copper, oil, coal,
for the hills to be bowed toward the practical,

extractable enough for Eastern financiers
to send along their goonies and their threshers

and hang posters that spoke of a heroes bounty
to every down and out outcast who teemed in the cities.

They brought in the necessities: a saloon, a smelter,
a brothel, a bank, a slaughterhouse, a factory for plaster

and inevitably, ministers, to teach about the curse of Eve.
As families and graveyards grew, they believed they’d never leave

but the children soon became bored
with the choice of liquor and the lord

and moved upstate, to get away from all the gratitude
for the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ, from the attitude

of acceptance for the losses in the mines and the fires,
of reverence for the well-connected vampires

who owned the town whole as everybody knew
and mixed its rivers red with the cadmium blue.

The price of silver dropped, and the town just dispersed
but something stayed behind, a right to be there, with the curse

that hung inside the lace, the last trappings of an outpost,
the god-forsaken hideaway of ghosts.

How we cherish them now, as we walk this blessed town.
How we pray that we could raise it from the ground.

Commencement

The sand is patterned now with blooms.
The phallic cactus holds still for pictures
on voluptuous hillsܔjust married
toilet paper on its sides. Quails trill
their plumed heads bobbing. I wave
a snake skin that casts forms across the sky.
It's magick but it's only the wind.

The Poetry of License Plates, Volume 3

A final installment of found phrases from Arizona's highways

HOPEY
YIPEEE
RLXDUDE

CHEDDAR
CHEEEKS
BAD HBT

INVERT
TONETGR
ARTWERX

LUKNUP
CHIKEET
OVERNOUT