Oblique Light Thrown to This Side

Golden Gate’s veiled --  half mist, half mast,

The way the living navigate above the dead,

Remembering what we are

As we turn into something else.

The whole too returns to vapor

When each perspective’s been considered

Becoming irreducible again,

Charge nested, invisible

Yet each tunes in

From their own dream,

From the one resonant frequency

That becomes them

Like a fork in the white noise

Humming a hertz beyond

Everything that has ever been

Experienced by anyone.

Morning Puja

There is no God inside this Temple

Despite the mournful incense

And the throes of organ torments

And bent string notes in the light 

Of the divine ...

But there is a priest

Who throws water in the faces,

Places flowers on the idols,

Throws rice to zebra doves -- 

God honoring the Gods.

Five Unfinished Meals in Ireland

1.

The diaspora.

It always has to be this way,

To let so much steam of wit escape 

From the stream of the river gods

And follow the quays to Rome

And all its suburbs 

In need of truth, in need of articulation,

Of lies

Told as if if only you could believe them

It would transform your life.

That Kalamata Alfredo

I ralphed up in Dublin

So had to spend the day

In the arms of Temple Bar Morpheus,

The poisoned harp,

Buses moved by mobs at 3 AM.

2.

My brothers haven't spoke in five years.

Because of some sexual insinuation I'm told

By one and then the other.

Towel snapping run amok 

In the wreck of the family dysfunction.

One brother wouldn't go to my son's funeral

Because the other would be there.

It's like that here in shamrocks;

Some tribes have not made peace

For centuries

And doubtless never will.

It's not my problem, even though 

It always has been.

One has to be wrong.

Brothers come pre-armed with fists

To fend off not being the smartest one,

Not so much to impart anything

As to claim as their stock 

Some too-massive rock

Of lichen-stained stone

Upon pain of death at the faintest 

Prick of false masculine pride.

Cuadon, home of Queen Maeve,

Where a plant-based sausage

Made my guts recoil like a rifle

At the colossal insult of Irish cuisine,

As its kindness, a fisticuffs.

3.

The hardness of life must be sent through

To others. That's the only way

To mix the seaweed with the sand

And eventually conjure green

Between the fierce iconoclastic stones

On Inis Mor.

There must be long days howling 

At the howling here,

Nights nursed by fear,

Only the donkeys are ever

Truly sea-legged here

And the goats have disappeared.

On this island the blight never affected

The chips just won't stop coming from the truck,

Hot and magically delicious

In impossible contrast to the rest of Eire,

Where they're rotten, stale and moldy

But served with a straight-up face,

As if food was still allowed

To treat us like this.

They have other ways here,

Where the windows are still tiny today

Facing the vastest sheet of ocean 

You'll ever see

Because the British taxed the sky.

There's nothing for the young here now

Because there isn't a soul who isn't 

A cop, intent to rat you out

As if trawling vermin off the island.

They don't want you carrying on

With leprechauns,

Who are rife in the grasses,

Promising all the joy you can feel.

4.

It's the golden time for Irish youth:

Jobs with Google, smooth white plaster,

Hurling and Camogie every Saturday,

SpongeBob SquarePants in Gaelic.

Barber shops for all the lads

And witchsister covens for the women

Finally taking it on for themselves.

They tattoo away the old ghosts

Still warning this era of peace 

Will bite them in the ass again.

They don't yet know

The truth is a curse

And its telling necessary,

Though they are finally free

Of the landlords and the churches,

The pubs and the bus bombs.

It's all too much in Galway,

The labnah and couscous 

At the incomparable G

Makes me push the plate away.

The town is filled with immigrants,

Those who've fallen under the spell

Of that fabled emerald charm, from Tunisia,

Portugal, Aberdajzan.

It has almost become

That a smile means

You are happy.

5.

I can't finish my porridge

With the quince marmalade

For the second day

And have started to panic.

I have never been known to refuse

An offer of food

And have always devoured

Every crumb off my plate,

Ravenous on command,

Never debating what it was

Or what it tasted like.

In fact I've often surmised

Some past-life starvation 

Made me feisty to win

The one thing offered freely

In the land of milk and honey,

More food.

So it was all the more surprising 

When that karma quietly whispered

Between two limestone walls

On the hazel-gorged burren,

Where a family lived in its one room

And ate potatoes from a central soot.

No one knows why

It had to go down that way:

Five successive failures 

Of the only crop the peasants ate,

A million starved dead, half the country

Forced to flee

To create the great American novel and dream 

From the empty pot at the rainbow's dead-end.

I feel it in the pit of my stomach,

My great-grandfather docking your wage

If you spun out a nail, my uncle's 

Go-to his shotgun draw 

As response to any bickering,

The feeling I seemed to be born with,

Of having to prove I am enough

To pay for a soft touch from God.

But as with all those things

That are ugly but necessary 

To force the uncooperative soul to grow,

There's been no justice, just remembrance

And not much of that, it's such a shabby 

Karma to hold, which falls, as usual,

On those who endured it,

Not the barons who couldn't step outside

Their system of powdered wigs

Or the enlightened priests

Who like black mages spellcast a divine retribution 

To cudgel the restives

For a shelalagh century,

But the stomachs of the blessed,

Who still move from anxiety to gift

As if they are one and the same thing.

It's purging week in Limerick,

The sweepstakes have finally come in.

The 6th Earl of Blarney paid off in the Fifth.

Can we let the horses run?

At the Morgan

Dublin burns the eyes on arrival

It minds

With its own peculiar watchfulness 

That wants to know and not be noticed.

The gentlest of flies watches me too

From the bureau, side table, everywhere I go

More pet than pest,

Like a long-dead poet checking in.

The victims of Industrial Slavery

Are camped out down the street.

Such is the legendary self-loathing of the Irish

They're happy to let me in to their misery circle

But only if I accept the karma

Like I'm a stand-in, all eyes on me

For what's been done to them ...

Even the bath casks say Karmic Ritual

And the rebel music is in English still

Without a need to re-enact the battle

When the Irish tongue has been freed

In the young, and on every street corner.

The fly doesn't want me to venture outside

To be accosted, say, by some card reader

With no boundaries who offers uncomfortable truth 

About my Egyptian past lives.

It only hurts when I laugh, or talk

Or stand blindly receiving the city's energies,

Its ghosts, including it seems blind Joyce himself,

Still prisoner of the Knights Templar Bar.

But the River Gods finally came through the pipes 

To get in the last and only word

In the voice of my late wife

Whose Irish kindness belied her Viking stock.

She seemed surprised to hear

She had ever blamed me, had ever

Thought of me with anything but gratitude.

I am forgiven ... Ah karma, let it go. 

In Search of Permanent Crop Circles

Crows by the river Kennett
That flows to the Thames
That brings all the codes,
Remembering, through London.

It's the Holy Bourne Spring
Across from Silbury Hill
On the chalk plateaus of Wessex
Where silica crystal takes and holds notation.

The water rises when the chalk gives way

And the earth releases the stream
As a living being, responsive
To the plateau's heart frequency.

It's past Merlin's Mound in Marlborough,
Silsbury's twin, due west from the Stonehenge portal
To the underworld, as a conduit, the water.
Magnetized flints fill the croplands like litter.

In West Kennett they used bones as musical instruments 
In healing chambers of sound that housed
The ancestors, who taught them how music
Is the key to eternal life.

The mould-circled stones, once blindingly white,
Are still alive, aligned to all that is
In their respective spots via the dragon lines
To the inner earth and the outer rings of the cosmos.

Every stone has a different personality and shape
Like the purple-bearded wizards here
Who sell sticks, the praying-girl circles
And the dowsing rod picnics with dogs and candles.

They all have such stories not to tell.
The bird light language rustles the black poplars
To ground the fragile codes that hum
Deep within the sarsen stone.

The henge once filled with the underground springs 
To turn the stones into power generation 
To raise vibration, and provide a location
In the orbit around source.

Each stone was meticulously chosen,

Levitated and placed overnight
By sound alone, following older

Instructions from the holy ones.

Ditches and circles like series circuits
Make toroidal vortices go,
Voltage straight to the heart center,
The vibration of an ankh, creation's middle C.

All current can flow through 
If you only let it, in a
Continual conveyance to the stars
Like the river of ether it is,

Each stone is perfectly strange
And perfectly arranged for 
The meridians to align, 
To shake the trees and hillsides.

The crows have followed me all day,
They led me to fields, watched me from trees,
Weaved curiosity from circles overhead,
Ask from the ridge of a thatch roof finally

If I can experience something 
For the first time,
Like watching a wicket keeper lift a shot
Or passing the Basingstoke Crematorium.

At Guillaume's White Tower

Through Traitor's Gate

I went straight for the Ravens,

The guardians of all of England,

Who carry the dead to the next world

And break the karmic cycle.

They preserve, at least, in their decorous pomp

By the tribute poppies in the bone grass

Some kind of order

Tho they may, in fact, bite

As the only sign on the premises attests.

Looked after by a raven master,

There's Chaos and Henry,

Harris and Poppy,

Edgar and Poe, who kiss as we pass

Like two twin rays of God.

Georgie and Jubilee grip the pole

By the stone steps where guilt

Or innocence was announced,

To the spacious tower where lions

And discontent to the king was housed.

I asked them if they had anything 

Interesting to report

But they only groomed their wings,

Looked at me wearily.

They only worked here.

But Georgie's wings were gesticulating.

Why are you still here?

Jubilee with vigilant brow affirms.

In fact, they are baby stroller raiders,

Pull up irrigation lines for giggles.

I told them that humans don't like their toys

Toyed with like 'at, and at that

Georgie throws open her beak

But only offers a weak

Confession of an accused elite.

The Ravens remember 

The scaffolds that built 

The scaffolds, on down to

The present day London

Under construction once again.

It's always been that way, for tourists,

Conscription to blood-thirst services,

The staves and armor curiosities 

Of silver sword pomposities,

Horse tails roped into a knot.

They still subdue the modern tourist,

Especially the Tudors who, by the way

Still rule, if hearts and minds still count

Now that the menagerie lions

Have gone the way of property scrolls

And the cast-iron plunders 

Of dragon and lion iconographies

Were melted down in the balance

Of the coin press that oppressed

With oppressiveness on the premises.

There's unicorn memorabilia now,

Knights Templar maces as portable

Obelisks for kings, the crown jewels 

Displayed in felt cases with

All possible implements of torture.

The Ravens stay on the t-shirt.

There's a clock above the vestry

So that every prisoner can see the time

If not the brown Thames one last time

Where white swans still swim.

At All Hallows by the Tower

The church remembers wasted deaths

With our lion and unicorn family crest,

The last of the Saxons

According to the Barking nuns.

The king-sized cross is raised to cover

Whatever devastation occurs, 

As it always does.

A ghost electric light malfunctions.

Rome set up London.

A temple of Mithras was discovered by chance.

The wheel head cross for bending minds

Found underneath 1942's rubble.

One can still feel the energy 

In the Saxon stone

Of the alcove where the confessions were forced

By force words or, if necessary, bars.

The Eucharist is calm, as it always is,

With a pillow to lay to rest any qualms 

About methods, any deeds that need atoning,

For, indeed, there aren't.

The martyrs fell asleep before submitting.

Their blissful face is in stone now

Like the old gold cross.

They rested in peace on their rock pillows.

There's a full stock of wines in a fridge

And cold Camden Beer

By the coat racks, 

In lieu of a gift shop.

At Kensington Gardens

The poets are in the leaves

Not in any abbey.

The city is as mute as a swan

But gardens have a lot to say.

The gulls circle the fountains

In bomber formation

But it's play, a game

Of douse the fluttering angel.

They careen as the wind 

Pulls them up

And disappear

When it dies.

A raven gronks "now"

As birds I've never heard,

A pied wagtail, a little grebe

Break into the beautiful,

Each bird with a different organ,

Like at Speakers Corner

Pontificating important ideas.

Cormorants on poles 

Wave their wings like pianos

And say nothing,

For the local deities

Are in the London Plane.

Return to Salem

If you have a breast

     You have a witches' hat.

It's as simple as that.

     The rope is quick and painless

But the scars acquire permanence 

     Until they are seen.

Stays with you wherever you go,

     The witch wound,

The wearing of the others' hood

     Whenever service is refused;

Unlike the New York Pizzeria

     The witches had no right.

John Conant, first settler of Salem,

     Obvious warlock. First clue.

1688. Quakers and Universalists

     Both vie against the torchfires

Of Episcopalian teeth,

     Congregationalist spite.

1692. The Devil saw to the detail

     Of women's property rights

With horror show girls who had

     Trauma compartments

To rattle with voodoo on command

     In black face

And project their possession

     On the keepers of herbs,

Cultivators of truth running wild

     To appease the goat god,

The only reality stingy Cotton 

      Mather entertained,

When spectral evidence, the craft

      Of second sight

Known only to witches, was finally

      Accepted into Common Law

As one-time precedent

       Against the witches

And Rebekah Nurse was caught in astral

       Presence without a license 

So the witches could be buried in the sky 

       Like all the interesting people

Along with some church-key ladies

       To please the dark Lord,

Who laughs at dice less loaded

       For being pious

And that riotous fun, the cruxifiction 

       Of Pastor John Proctor

For aspiring to play the role

       Of Jesus on the fly.

It was the most fun since the printing press

      Made witches famous

And dropped bibles in every bedroom.

      There was much to confiscate 

Before the witches could be let back

      In the community.

But payback is a witch, when the poisoned

     Pentagram triumphs,

Daemonic energies only draw the covens

     Into tighter weaves, 

Perpetuating the energy 

     When it needs release.

The girls humbled in unmarked dust

     Under the gallows' shadow

Have long since moved along

     From what was not

Particularly memorable

     Until the final act.

As long as we don't have to think about

     What rites exactly were performed

To survive the dark Lord's reign,

     We are allowed to re-enact

All manner of terror and shame

      And grisly sympathy,

A Salem steampunk Halloween

      Where the play's the thing

And everyone stays just a shade

      Inside the darkness,

For they can't yet walk alone

      Into the light.

They need their fellow outcasts

      In costumes

To laugh away their old beliefs,

      For the other world was unfaithful.

The scroll's rewritten one heard word

      At a time

Until there's nothing left of the old ways

      But ghosts,

Some on brooms, some on souvenirs,

      A coffee mug

To plan one's next adventure, to fly

      Directly overhead.

On the Way to Annisquam

These places were just shit holes

Until Hollywood ruined them.

Salem was nothing but tannery wreckage

Until Bewitched came to town

And now it's the spookiest place on earth

When every October comes around.

The Perfect Storm devastated Gloucester 

Where fishermen could once afford to live.

Now everyone comes to take a selfie

With the gale sailor clutching at the wheel.

Rockport, same deal, a lobster insignia

After the B-52s bombed them down down.

Even Manchester-by-the-Sea 

Hosts intervention weekends.

They've been trading in goods

For a long long time here,

And now Siberian crabapples

Hang on Confucius's manbun 

And a nickle harpa plays bourees from Brittany 

In Christmas Major

But at Dogtown Books, with their signed Allen Ginsberg,

They don't know who Charles Olsen is

Though he wrote his Maximus opus

On the same street as the Wicked Peacock.

Such was his dissolute life,

It can't be reduced to fantasy

A seagull seems to scream at me 

Like ghosts of girlfriends past

For the way things used to be

Before civilization ended

And all the efforts to fight churches 

With taverns went largely unrecorded,

Unlike the preachers who perished on the rocks

On the way to save the incorrigible.

They moved the portraits into the homes

To spackle more of history's holes.

Ode to the Flying Warriors of Peace

"Give em Heaven" - Matt 5:16

I'm so concerned to be myself

I can't see myself 

Even though "Literature Only" 

Is the only instruction 

On every cabin seat,

A reminder to cultivate every moment 

As if it was my own,

So that words can be released 

Finally from their bondage,

Words like "Dr. Pepper" and "hologram",

For Dr. Pepper becomes God so readily

We bow to the fizz

As to a translucent sunset.

But on this flight we all have

Separate seats, as if that could keep us away,

Separate thoughts and destinies

In entangled interchange 

Unknown largely

To all of us, who putter as if

Our actions don't matter,

Whether we drink from the sport top bottle

Or try to use the facilities now 

When unclasping conflicts

With the order of oneness

To be belted.

But they inevitably slip off

In a divine timing collective unclasp

Sighing an echo of relief at the opening

So the passengers may know

They are not in it alone.

There are multiple levels,

Of me becoming him,

Her becoming me

But they all rest in equilibrium 

So we may chew our gums in peace

Like cows envision further grass

In the endless alfalfa. It is up to us

To open the Maui Monk

And decline the Oreo

(Vegan tho it is),

When to go to the green light room

To feel Ezra Pounds lighter.

The dragons are with us up here, of course,

To offer their channeling services

To any takers

Of which there is no shortage,

Or would be. The drinks come on 

The magic tray, with smiles,

Deja Blue to make you forget

Every other in-flight service

Though you have anyway, for you have

No real short-term memory of

The name of the person you just met,

Where your car is parked, your past 

Three lives, your existence as eternal source --

So you look at the long haul,

When the stars will be extinguished

And when you will be born,

When everything will be in order

In the chaos that is just the universe

Of sense not fully realized in one's head,

Though all the pieces are laid out

Like Easter colors of jigsaw notches,

The fun is in finding one's way back

To the one,

How it all fits together, 

Though the crumbs are scattered to infinity, 

Which means beyond the reach of 

How we can perceive ourselves, 

At least in this moment

When our teeth break the ice,

Like they've done quadillion times

In as many realms as you'd care to chime

In cymatic temples, to find in one

Frequency a way to hold it all

Without attaching, just being, as you are.

Granted, some of this will occur in the future,

Like the part where we'll laugh

We were ever that young

To take a jet from John Wayne to Nashville 

When, with the right coordinates 

You could go to London 

In a New York second -- we must play 

We haven't figured out these basic

Things out quite yet,

We're still nursing the drink

Of a separate world, untangling 

All its relationships to one,

Each path a rough-hewn endurance course.

It must be, to inhabit the journey 

That always ends in I know

I've met you somewhere before 

And everything you say is so familiar --

It's cloying the lake at the end of the sunset vista,

How much you know something impossibly far away.

Not one person does exactly 

The same thing, although it serves 

The same purpose, to share space

Before dispersing, one of countless

Diasporas every moment 

As the toroid does its figure eight

That is all you need to know

Of the infinite. Some stewards 

Wear diamonds on their noses,

Some look down from Dollar Tree cheaters,

But the rules are the same,

Be yourself

Within the contours of the game,

A delicate and

Most intricate proposition.

But out there in the clouds

That look like mountains hiding UFOs

There is no restriction, who you are is so

Intrinsic to the fabric you can join the cloudwool 

As a spark in its swab of mind.

We look at that from here

With the envy of not remembering;

It's some kindly guide

Of deeper truth and beauty

We catch the briefest frisson from,

Though it is all within our range

If not our reach, the contact

From the tower is available 

Though one may not be said to be

Except as a location, however temporary now,

However unreal when the cosmos is laid out on a map.

For we have our companion, our witness,

Who goes with us to prove that we are real,

That everything we do and say is recorded,

For what good is the sense without the extract condenser?

The apothecary entangles new herbs

To mark the experience as absorbed

And toroided to another void to fill

With future memories that change each moment

Until you realize there is no time

And the sum of who you are

Is reborn as what's not already,

Though everything that ever was

Will not be the same either, when the veils

Between the way we look at things thins

And oneness threatens to implode all that is,

But it never does, there's grace 

In large numbers, we simply have to take it 

On trust, for it's peaceful now

As the gears extend their dependency ever outward

With the whole unconcerned 

Any one sector might go rogue,

For everything can only flow the only way,

Like identical twins must suck their thumbs

As mirrors.

Catalina Reset

Smog rainbow in the distance glowing with the flow

As the universe forms a rooster tail behind the barge

That plows through mermaid central, pulling away

From the ache of beauty in the eye, of the OC beholders.

It's a right of passage for the passengers, aptly zen,

And writes of passages for me, while the pistons hypnotize

And the waves solemnize all we are releasing, in my case

All that I was, sad chameleon turned zero fool again. 

The off-limits portals of San Onofre shine distantly in the haze

Like it's only secret places from now on that will be illuminated.

With this thought the sun shifted, and a dozen secret structures

On the hills start beaconing, beckoning some reckoning I suppose

But I'm bound to bear the past behind, in this palace place

Of particular memories, on this perfect day, of infinite regret 

And total redemption. It's all-too-easy to blank slate it

But the blue universe expects its births now not to forget.

Two waves off the stern turn to one proud spiral of foam

And all things can be seen now from either side

But they no longer fight alignment, they let the inevitable

Current pull us on relentlessly — but to which Avalon?

What kind of initiation awaits the mystic sisters and your

Humble scribe? The white sun seems to answer

By scintillating the waves like it was frying bacon.

How much we have to learn, when we know everything.

We sway with the boat. I wear a palm tee shirt.

The waves roll back in charged electric currents.

The spray comes up like Gorgonian fans, to appear and vanish

In an instant, as if the ocean must continually be nourished.

As the island looms, mystic pelicans cross, crystal pyramids

Greet us. The bull kelp come up on the mooring line

As the ferry boat docks. Mist crawls all over the hills

Like giant Pleiadean crabs, the peaks free to simply observe.

The weather turns like the wheel of fortune, whose spokes click

In the harbor gears, and the talk of the disembarking passengers

Who roll into an exquisite postcard picture of a romantic getaway 

Comedy movie set taken over by the milling hordes of extras. 

Dry land in fact unearths in sepia tones ghosts of well-feted

Hollywood royalty, who came here after the town burned

And linger in the mist as a ghost flicker of our longing

For the trappings of fame, isolation and elegant dancing.

We walk into this history for breakfast, picture perfect ceramic 

Cups that seemed to have touched Norma Jean's lips

As Robert Wagner stares at me with a beaming Natalie Wood

From a passe-partout across the booth at Original Jacks,

Roy Rogers singing happy songs about grief and loneliness

As burgers, fries and pies continue like time does not exist.

Over hash browns I heed the advice of the sign above,

"Cowboy logic," by tasting my words before spitting them out.

Mermaids are in full regalia in this cycle's row of shops 

Hungry for the docks: Barbie fairies, sea queens on dragons,

Silver and brass green jewelry with abalone siren sheen.

There's even one who plays saxophone on a jazz communiqué.

"Paradise on location" meanwhile keeps its lenses clicking

At the Hotel St. Catherine, where Barrymore tends bar

For Errol and the Duke, Gable and his entourage of girls,

Turning in endless art deco circles in the Avalon ballroom.

A stream of photo-negative ghosts created of tinsel town gowns

From the dreams of picturehouse goers flow to the old casino,

Open to them but not to us, as plus 99% of the island now not is,

But I can see before they disappear how it's just another stage

To never leave, even when they relax in hats on the beach

In those ridiculous old suits. One got flung down the steep stairs,

One was murdered in an insurance fraud, one dove from the aptly

Off-key chimes to the sea, supposedly drunk, supposedly a suicide.

They toast, as ghosts will, at still-massive big band dances

In endless rounds with the drownings and the brown-outs,

Having left their egos at the door, in the lengths one has to go 

To flee celebrity, as the green dock tightens its ropes.

 

The vortices that pulled the dancers here inhabit the boats

Repulsed in lines of force to dance under the conductor's wave.

The opening to Agartha is guarded by these partygoers

Who know the sun can't be transcended if Avalon isn't seen.

There's a green yovaar at the isthmus of Two Harbors, some say,

And the bones of innumerable giants they still won't display

And there's talk of ships that sneak inside the island at night, to a

Galaxy in inner earth as if earth and sky were reversible raincoat.

I can attest the residual energy pocket where time loops like a movie

To keep this vault at 26 miles locked, for what goes on here

Is almost unfathomable, larger than we are ever allowed to know. 

Even the sea birds stay away, to contend among the off-shore spray.

How can we imagine so much abundance already inside us? How can I,

Here where I first played the card shark daddy, and walked the plank 

Off the winning marlin boat, when Avalon returned no clue to wheels 

That turned on me. I saw as much as I was let see, what I let myself. 

They say the OSS and its stargate, that started here to fight the Nazis

Closed up shop in 1945, when they closed the old communities: 

Catalina Harbor, Smuggler's Cave, Cherry Valley, Iron Bound Bay,

As navy bombing takes neighboring San Clemente out of profane hands.

We are only allowed so much memory, soul fragments to collect

In the ocean's out and in breath, so we remember the Avalon font,

Pimu soapstone barons, the homing pigeon service, flying fish tours,

Kay Kyser and his Orchestra radio broadcasts from the casino.

These must suffice of what we'll know of the future,

What we can make survive with unlimited hearts

Or rise above the pressure at least of our programmed limitations, 

The ridges veiled by mist, secret tech and the flags of many nations.

Parking Trap Malted

The Ted Fay Fly Shop lures you in

To the Angler Inn

Next to Rapunzel’s Castle.

Another town that time forgot,

More pink shutters,

Another red barn diner

With checkerboard floors

And menus that never change

Hung as curtains,

Deer head hat racks,

Train track bric a brac

And local businesses on the placemats

That exist at least in memory

If not in fact.

The 5 dollar charge for whining

Has not been updated for inflation,

But they’ll charge you just the same.

The lumber haulers have all gone

All that’s left is the railroad,

Itself an anachronism, some ironic

Take on retro tourism, a touchstone

To dreams embezzled by bankers

Like a smashed penny that makes

The box that contains your childhood memories

Smell like creosote.

On the Road with the Ghost of Buck Owens

At the Dino Mart in Gustine

The consequence of making an alien baby

Back in the dust of Bakersfield

Was revealed, as we became

The children of the Sinclair dinosaur,

Mewling for snaps at the green toy.

It was all we could do to get away

From a Wasco that was no longer roses

In endless fields for New Year’s Day

Along the death road to Paso Robles

Where we commiserated with a Starbucks robot

At California milk spoiled at 103 degrees.

But neither the five dollar rabbit

Nor the zebra from Shafter prepared us

For the dueling flatbeds of homeless chihuahuas,

One done up as a muscle car float

The other a plywood pallet on wheels

Where the chihuahua’s all had bells.

The roads are like that now, especially when

Family is involved. Every exit goes to Arkansas,

A hush hush past that’s now blown up

Like the one burned down house on the road

Where the rainbow ice cream vendor

Wheels her dyed-ice sugar for no one.

Every father has misplaced one daughter

At least, just as every son leaves home

So his heart can be broken, and no one

Looks at any loving couple as anything

But a misplayed bet waiting to settle,

Where the choice of lawyer proves your worth.

It’s a wonder they have all survived

To migrate like birds from this pizza reunion

To Arbuckle and Willows, Maxwell, Artois,

Ceres and Lemoore, Lockeford, Firebaugh

Tracy, Pixley, Ducor -- but mostly Porterville,

Swapped like crops with demand and the weather,

Kingsburg cling peaches for Dinuba pears,

Arvin champagne grapes for raisins from Parlier,

Weedpatch carrots that give way to Turlock honeydews, 

Or Reedley, where they grow loofahs on trees,

Or Galt to work white sturgeon eggs, or tomato sauce Davis

Or Lindsay's fragrant groves of citrus.

But they don't shed a tear, like the other orphaned farmers here

At the thought of someone in their family

Being sent away to Mexico in a plane

They worry if someone will speak to them again

After all the neglect summer dust required

To pack fresh offspring in out-of-state crates.

Silence of the Deafening Retreat

The light codes fall from Mt Shasta

Over Mossbrae and on down

To Sacramento as sacramental water

And to the galactic realms below

The Hollywood portal

                                         All the way

Underground, and Dunsmuir is

Suitable proxy for all of nature,

The universal common denominator,

For it holds the earth entire

In its igneous memories, but like

The waterfall that hisses hush

Will not say.

                           You can see

The fairies, all manner of translucent

Elementals, bouncing rainbow spheres,

Gnats dancing their sacred geometries,

A purple butterfly -- who would think

St. Germaine would have come down

The mountain in violet mist

Amid the feather lines of snow

Melt white and rapids

Charged with light?

                                     I should dive inside

Archangel Michael’s cold truth blue

I suppose, but the rocks have become

My friends, and the Tai Chi class

Has just begun.

                             The I AM society

Protects this spot more securely

Than the Union Pacific that is

Nevertheless content to push 

Pilgrims like us off its trestled path

To the blissful flow of poison oak

And mosquito traffic.                                

                                       The grasses

Who have traveled far to rest here

Glisten in a prayer of peace

So far removed from nearby golden

Fields where the wind propels cow tails

To spin like batons of clocks

In the no time of the present

Where everything exists

If you are quiet enough

To enter it, your heart entire,

The last sacred place.

Notes from the Road to Fresno

I.

Selma Tattoo

Marks “The Raison Capital of the World”

Who heard Fresno

Through the Grapevine

And stole the sign

For the Sun Maid.

II.

Madame Sophia

At Clovis Avenue,

The Fowler Palm Reader

For orange-juiced hands

Who want an alternative future.

III.

There’s a hobo from Kentucky

Called Hog Royalty

In Bakersfield.

IV.

The Torah according to Jesus

Is on the coffee shop wall

In giant comic book frames

For children

While you wait for alchemists

To serve your holy brew.

V.

How can there be a place called Windfall Donuts?

VI.

A billboard that I’d like to see:

Burn while you yearn

At Urner’s Mattress

VII.

An actual billboard:

More than a Miticide

VIII.

I left it at some Oildale joint

Where Merle Haggard once sang,

Now karaoke and mechanical bulls,

The block glass of a past

That’s cheap as usual to chisel.

IX.

Oil jenny dragons

In the champagne grapes,

Ooh the world

Death row cows sense

As the Tejon Pass winds

Take on meaning.

Road Notes from Venus Relocation

I was able to send out a nuclear bomb

Of room-clearing ground zero love

Like a parcel dropped at the crime scene motel

On the way out of more cowbell town

With a husky who rasped exhausted in the UHaul

Through Buttonwillow, Oil City, McKittrick,

The desolation that made Bakersfield hum,

The vistas where the cows got slaughtered,

What the unofficial mayor of Fresno calls the blues,

The way the Tower still stands with the Chicken Pie Shop

And holds her liquor, distilled. The perfume refinery

Keeps its dopamine scroll, at the intermodal of Avenue 24

Downwind from the Atwater onions; if you get

The opportunity to stop in Chowchilla you take it.

A makeshift handkerchief, the kid on the leash knows.

Truckee gets slammed again with snow.

The diggers bring their carts from the creek as usual

To what Marco Polo called “The Great Wall of Tartary”,

The divide they call the Grapevine, where stopping is death

And unforgiveness is beautiful, the deep Pacific fall.

An amateur dogfight broke out over San Diego, 

Sent fuselages all over Dresser Street,

But the galactics have assumed control of Los Angeles,

Where Teslas exit time and space.

Sunset in Merced was like no planet on Earth

But you won’t get your money back

From the homeless dude in Freedom Park

For reeking up your hands when you paid to pet his leopard.

An Ordinary Sunday Photo Shoot in Carlsbad

It was a Super Bowl ad that made the Doctor finally cry

And realize as husband and father he was only his PTSD

To his family, a repressed Vietnam, poor but typical guy;

Or the bobcat the stunned driver put in his trunk

That woke to pounce when he opened it, or that kid he hit

On the highway, and had to live for both. The smallest

Chafe brings a twitch. I dance on the sticks of Gene Krupa, 

My uncle's artillery, to complain of the slights I received

At the hands of angelic grace, the marionette I couldn't be in life.

Thus memory conflicts with the history already behind us. 

The signs on the ground are only of the present, though they're 

Soft enough to be tombs if you see them. I see every flower

As hers somehow, but spring's rainbow ranunculus are only

What you let them become, and for whom. There is always

Another voice than your own. The hayrides are

Enough to keep families from hating each other today

Though it is only love on every face, such a strange way 

To show it, large enough to make one flinch.

The Empty Restaurant

Ludwig von was a carpenter 

Learned the trombone in St. Louis

Still chases the jazz bird

Ponies up to the zircon and cinnabar mountains

Of what is neither Nevada nor a City

But there is blue cheese

And cacao, for the muse infuses

All shadows, while we

Fill our mouths 

Investigating the Worlds Smallest Mountain Range

Estom Yamin, the Indian name for the Sutter Buttes 

Means surrender to peace in Hebrew.

But we transacted codes as we were born to do,

With the underground inverted like a sluice 

From the pyramid rising in the rice marsh 

One golden stone and all of its crumbles 

In the late afternoon red shadows of rock walls

Of unknown origin, not easily formed even today

And for no current purpose, as the owners are unmarked

Except for the federal plutocracy, who will let you 

Walk a tiny stretch as long as you are minded

By a guide, who knows the art of deflection,

Knows to say ICBM Titan to any free range question

As if the water from the underground well was still drinkable,

Only rust you see not the half-life dust

Annihilation consciousness prophecied 

In the bunker stocked with plutonium glass.

The cold war cover ended many years ago, now it's only apathy

At this anamoly in the peach tree fields,

The secret payments to pistachio farmers 

Not to speak of what they see at night,

That other mode of governance,

The poison almond wisdom bloom like snow

For deer to escape under, starseeds to follow crows

To find what can't be said. 

That's precisely how it is known.