The 47 Days in a Mexican Jail Diet Plan

Six days on the road with Russell, Blaine, Jesse and Robert

The cloud chakra on the outskirts
of everywhere
tests how cool you can be
when facing the Antelope Valley
reality:
Diamond Jim’s Casino again,
morning gamblers, no cash
advance ATMs, chewing tobacco
prohibited in the urinals, and a
calming desert pink after you lose all
your Lancaster cash, grass so gray
it’s alien blue.
I don’t even want to step on the cracks
of clay with dirty-ass Jesus feet.
Each shard of trash is perfection.
You can ignore the rickshaws
‘til you get out of town
but the concertina wire
and armed guard towers
seem odd in a casino parking lot.
Officer UPS asks about me and my boy –
“They are strange but harmless.”
“Are you lost?”
Already by this time we’d become a song
played on our car by the unmarked Musical Road:
a clever set of grooves waxed in the warm cement
or part of an elaborating plot to plug us all back in?
It seems there’s only so far we can go into the desert
before we notice something we’re not allowed to see.
The first of the military-alien complex: Edwards Air Force
Base, and the first attempt at a band name:
Savage Messiah.

Then it’s “Welcome to Mohave, Home of Spaceship One,”
which is apparently an Amphicar with a broken window.
We find in Red Rocks Canyon, though, an entrance
to the Portal. How do we break through the holographic
stucco that covers the passage to inner earth?
There’s a temple of stone stacked over the hole,
a carved heart, a smiling face. Rather than run through it
fearless but unprepared, we go up the dripping rocks
in sabertoothed dress shoes instead.
A silence of ears sucking sand. We talk of women
and the rusted soda can we found that had turned
to a friendly face by years-old bullet holes. We break one
Frisbee, and try to follow a crow.

Back on Neuralia Road (“dips next 90 miles”)
the mountains are lighter than clouds
and desert woman suchness emerges like a mirage or an oasis.
Then a bathtub crank town Randsburg comes
“Hopen for Business.” We stop at the General Store
for hand-mixed Sarsaparilla and a picture of Sacajawea.
Burlap was over the window. The proprietress shook her
tresses, holding back more than she revealed, as she gave
as sassafras the secret ingredient, only available (unlike wintergreen)
to pharmacists. As she spoke the sign above her glowed:
“cows may come, cows may go, but the bull in this place goes on forever.”
Outside, the Surcease Mining Company has set up a ghost town toilet,
“hern” and “hisn” (caked with chisom jizm), and for all your tonsorial
needs, a barber shop: “hot baths, fine cigars.” And Slim’s Place,
with its haunted ceiling, antique beer cans, staring dolls,
a Happy Holidays doormat with a gray Santa Claus, a “yes we have
used dentures” sign, and outside a bone-dry wishful thinking well.

It’s creosote weather. We’re growing food in our car as we travel.
There’s a rainbow-colored Petting Zoo by the desolate highway side.
As we pass Shambhalla China White Dry Weapons Lake
there’s an ordinary mining operation running 24/7,
pay no attention to the boarded quonset huts or the swamp gas pipes
from the green trapezoidal building, or the advanced radar tower
turning in a fenced-in field of no cows. By the raspberry road of Trona,
the Pinnacle Inn is at one end of town,the Nadir Inn at the other.
And nothing living is in between, just the sadness of cactus
growing through the cracks of an old high school basketball court
and a football field without grass, and a dude in full zombie makeup
lurching along the side of the road like a method acting class
gone tragically wrong. It’s hot and cold at the same time,
extreme micro-climates that shift in nanoseconds,
lifeless mountains of straw
then a redonkulous oasis with date palms and elephant ears

and birds like warnings crying.

Nearing Death Valley you can smell the geology,

feel the alluvial fans,
remember the aeons locked in rock

when Papa was a Metaphysical Geologist,
sense the quicksand underneath the salt table
and the elusive Chocolate River
Manson attached gas tanks on his car

('cos Charlie don’t stop for gas)
to find. It’s easy to see
why so much weirdness passes this way;

even aliens, who have no problem
converting sunshine to water, have the same

problems we do when it comes to finding

places free of dune buggies and Winnebagos,

they need a vacation without people too.

We can see their landing strips

and runway lights made of unnaturally angled stone,

the cliffside triangles (the alien yield sign).

In the late afternoon sun you live for, it’s movie time.

We got served with raindrops, and the rainy desert smell.

Skulls along the side of the road
remind us we are going to a place beyond death,

beyond love and mercy.
The rain on the plain falls mainly on 2 Skidoo.

At the first official campsite some nervous campers eye us

like mules, some mobile government meth labs
disguised as “Goldtimers” retreat RVs roll by

the last pay phone on earth. The smell of mkultra bath salts.

We freestyle it, decide to go wildcatting,
head down the washboard road that

leads to Heebee Jeebee Crater.
The raindrops are gentler

than the touch of any finger.

No chairs, propane or ladles
for these intrepid squatting fools,

just a panhandling guitar played on the side of the highway,

a 12-string trained at the Waldorf School,

some Apache drums, a Yaqui rattle, a Navajo flute,

and a recorder of course to attract a Sasquatch.

We had to leave the piano at home

- such brutal choices test one's will to survive.

We practiced the art of mishearing:

Savage Massage and Clown Chakras

became poetries bequeathed to the Gods
as we uncorked the resin of our souls
in an air without ghosts

(just the hovering lights of a nearby alien base).

We all felt our fear but we walked in the dark

to a visualization spot we named reality

we tried to claim if ever so briefly.

The desert gave us a fire in the morning,

sprouts grown in a jar, and the rain

as a blessing. No insects

or jackrabbits for hundreds of miles

 - no way to even pay.

In the dim morning grandeur

we decided to head towards

the center of our fears:

the infamous Scottie's Castle.

I could see the blood dripping

down its bell tower spiral staircase.

We couldn't find the underworld slaves

to free them but we could tear it open

by pulling its sick bell cord

 - veritas vos liberabit.

"Let's follow the road to Scotty's grave," someone said.

"We can put the body on top of the car."

We could smell the ghastly horror by now,

nearly hear the agonized howls,

every inquisition, every torture chamber, every dungeon

compressed into this bizarre but innocuous-seeming complex.

The perfect front to process kidnapped children,

turn them into the ruling class as sex slaves. To the side,

past the Spanish gates and Arabian arches,

thousands of thickly stacked railroad ties,

with no train or road in sight, just a locked entrance

at an endless and inexplicable hypermodern security fence,

with a sign on the gate that from afar seems to read "warm slaves."

It's for the crates they ship the children in, we thought,

but the truth is always murky, it's always so much more

hideous in reality than you can possibly believe,

for that's how they get away with something so big,

so diabolical, so obvious, this rule over all we see and hear

through chaos to destroy people's minds and spirits,

through alchemic creation of impossible conflicts,

hopelessness and addiction to methodically infect

the entire population. We saw a strange pile of wood

nearly fossilized in the middle of this, that looks like

the corpses of Auschwitz. The bells went off, in a sick

out-of-tune tone like no religious song I've ever heard.

The sign on the bell tower said "private residence."

We went up the hill to "Scotti's Grave", to see his

warlock statue, his Satanic credo "don't say nothing"

instead of "don't say anything," "don't explain"

and next to his formal memorial, a kindergarten grave

of fossilized turds like unnatural skulls,
and one word, "Windy,"
for all the sacrificed children. 

There's a cross, of course, at the top.
A crow whirred overhead, directly over me,
so I stayed behind when the others escaped
before the winged monkeys were alerted.

She landed on the cross like a guardian of the undead,

then, making sure I'm watching, swooped

magnificently down to the palm grove below

and disappeared, to show me

they are only fooling themselves

more than they are fooling us, that

even in this most damaged and desperate of

places life can hide, it can't be stopped,

love is the only protection.

The bells infected the air again, the last note sounds

long afterwards like a HAARP wave;

even the birds furiously screamed to blot it out,

and so shifted the energy, even here,

from manifesting its total desire.

I returned to the group as they're conferring with

a blind park ranger and a lady from NASA.

"Don't touch the rocks at La Playa," she said,

"there are transponders on them so we can 

catch them moving." Meaning of course

that they were there to catch us.

When we asked if NASA had put them there

the blind ranger gave us the crazy eye,

asked what kind of car we were driving,

and where did we get it, and said we should expect

to lose at least two tires on the way.

The crow returned as we revved up the engine

to remind me of our lifetimes together, and

that she was keeping watch, as I was watching,

her black iridescent on the parking lot.

We left before we got the glitch chip in our brains.

Despite the desert finches, hummingbirds, butterflies,

the mechanical goat on the hillside, it was

Racetrack Playa dust or bust, we had to

get away from the rat race of Stovepipe Wells.

Even one car passing us was like being in Walmart.

"We won't rescue you from La Playa"

echoed in our ears, as we eyed drone seagulls

and heard the alarm go off in the distance

to put air defense on high alert for us

because we weren't driving a Ford Sabotage.

We saw the rock the crescent moon launches from

and bravely strategized

over frosted cheese loaf sandwiches

("leave nothing behind but footprints and teakettles,"

"no placing bets when we get to the Racetrack")

as we bounced to desert mixes the 571 miles

riding dirty on a Big Chief Runningboard keel haul,

staying strong as they turned on the weather machines,

sending a tropical storm through the Joshua Trees

then, getting desperate, turning on the hail.

The place, when we reached it, had an

absurd inexplicable flatness,

a luminous glow from within.

The sun was only over the Playa,

making it superreal, Kubrickian,

so white it was pink, a creme

brulee of salt, with smoke at its frays

from white dust griffins like wild horse vapor trails,

silver rocks the size of mountains at its edges.

In ecstatic tranquility the original island

(what they now call The Grandstand)

lay in the center, with supercharged rocks

and primordial beach. We had entered

the womb, the earth mother's pussy,

it was here in endless linoleum tiles

the akashic records are kept,

and there was no judgment

for all the suffering and loss, so beautifully

felt on the dry slate. Soft rain caused the seeps

to connect, in the brainscape of the cosmos.

The wonder was not the perfect paths of the rocks

as they move just when no one is looking,

the wonder was that in that maelstrom of wind

the rocks didn't move at all. They were

the male, aligning with female energy,

magnetically, in concentric scrapings

against a truth impossible to bear,

the hieroglyphs of life itself

captured in the salt. Some of us slept,

some of us walked, none of us could say

the thing we felt. We were at

the center of the earth, the pure place

even mkultra couldn't touch.

We were sailing on a sea breeze

through the emptiness of everything

and thinking of only one thing.

"Why do five guys go out all this way

for a woman?"

"That's what we do."

And, again, in her soft soft voice

she then said "you must stop this pandering

and do things for yourselves,

for suchness. That's all we ever want."

Crazy Charlie might have had

a Nazi swastika tattooed on his third eye

and all that but he had a good band

and great visions of the Chocolate River

of which there was still no trace

along the Panta-Breath-Mint ridge,

the strawberry hillsides,

confectionary clouds,

the seven-levels frosted bundt cake mountains,

as we drove gaping chasms

in the crevasses of the earth

to try to veer in even closer
to the sweetest desert,

by the 700-foot tall Mammoth Dunes

made of disappearing dust

in the perfect curvature

of a woman's body. Sand

for five guys roughing it,

and hobo shoe print floor-mats

at its base.We went up

the slow dune lava

to the top, our tracks

reshaping what it was

but no longer is (ah, woman is the wind).

We rolled like whirling dervi down,

and ran backwards like a lost Beatles

"run for your life" film, and by the time

we made it back to camp

we looked like Lawrence of Arabia

asking for lemonade as he emerged from the Rub Al Khali.

As we had our tea and breakfast

of Motherground peanut butter

and Bilderberger Berry Jam

from out of nowhere came an F-16

that stood on its side in mid-air less than 10 feet from us

before sweeping away to some hidden base

in a Jack de Ripper yee-haw cowboy hat roar.

"At last I see my tax dollars at work" I said

to this gentle reminder we were not where we were

supposed to be. The park ranger who stopped by

almost immediately was almost apologetic, almost friendly.

And again there was no way to pay.

We'd been living on medicinal chocolate and Death Valley sprouts.

There were diners and hot springs up ahead we knew,

somewhere beyond the Bristlecone Pines,

the mountains glass-stained holy white,

the river that once was a sea where we measured

and recorded a sasquatch poop.

We found a tectonic blue plate special hot food

in the Giggle Springs Mini-Mart,

near the "mule capital of the world."

Sacajawea served us strawberry and rhubarb pie.

I wanted to ask to touch her.

Then the throbbing metropolis of Bishop

with its rodeo stadium, Vagabond Inn,

Choo Choo Swap Meet at the Railroad Museum,

Paiute Palace Gas and Casino,

of dark plush wierdness, real Indian croupiers

and customers counting Indians on the machines.

Blaine whistled "Paint It Black" as high lonesome

theremin dune blues. Robert said "Rare Brare Rarebit"

in Baltimorese on English as second-language headphones.

Russell regaled us with squatching stories

of how they sometimes dive in bear-proofed dumpsters

but they mostly eat deer liver because it's good for the eyes.

Jesse talked about his only pair of socks, one dress

and the other cookie monster - "I even took them to jail."

As for me I just did what I do,

melding my mind with a passing Airstream.

It was clear as we passed Convict Lake Resort

(3 1/2 star facility with turnkey service according to prisoner reviews)

and the Prison Outlet Store

that we'd left Desert Woman

and were nearing Mountain Man.

We found a place we'd need a rental dog for,

with a self-loathing Scandanavian dark sauna,

where we talked about stealing the keys to our wildman cages

when the Mother was so far away,

and played love songs to caterpillar greasewood 

on digiradoo kazoos, manifesting

the Kalamazoo New Kazoo Canoe Revue.

In the Death Valley Daze Ronnie and Snoop had become fast friends

and on the long lonesome road to Rodee-Bodie-O

had disappeared in a blunt skunk haze into Mexico:

"Whell, you talk to Nancy Snoop and say we'll be late for lunch"

"Put yo trippin' bitch in check, niggah."

We contemplated swimming in Battery Acid Lake

where you might lose your leg and all,

but the kids are now cutting off their legs

'cos it's cool to be a hookfoot,

it's like a tattoo as a weapon.

The lake was pewter blue, with a strange crystaline stillness,

calcium spires that grew and breathed and were

for all intents living, even human, and below

an eco-system of incredible importance:

alkaline bacteria eaten by alkaline algae

eaten by alkaline shrimp eaten by alkaline flies

(or as they said in Baltimore, "Al Kaline flies!")

eaten by normal horned larks and sage thrashers

in rust where the flies dance in suchness.

Just then a snooty Prius came along

with picture-taking zombies inside

to condemn Mono Lake as an anamoly

instead of floating in the saline salve of the mother.

Then Dream Mountain Drive, where we felt,

as Nero said "at long last I can live like a human being!"

And Silver Lake beyond the veil, in cold tar mud,

with dreamcatcher visions amid visionboard scenes,

and the name "Cal Ripken" carved on a tree.

And Rainbow Street where the late sun made it clear:

nature offers nothing more, nothing less,

still we judge ourselves for what we have.

And, as if to turn that incandescent afternoon into physical fact

we turn into an obsidian mountain, the black loving mother

from deep in the earth shining like the sun

in smooth compassion, glossy unrelenting love.

And then we went back, just like that

at the Ranch House Cafe in Olancha,

the scene of the water stolen by LA crime,

for Indian fry bread and a sign on the door:

"Wanted: Saw Dust Charlie, the Pockmarked Kid,

the expense of said capture to be borne

by one hundred substantial citizens,"

and the waitress from Texas was told us

as we left: "drive safely and take care

of your women."

Despite roadside dignitaries

like Hot Creek Hatchery and the Lava Girls

the only tree for miles was a rusted fake

by a lone Southern Pacific railroad car

in the sand outside of Inyokern,

where we picked up K-MKUltra's transmission

like a long-extinct star still shining its sun upon us

"coming at all you Death Valley alters

'My Guitar's Gonna Kill Ya Momma'

by Frank Zappa for Mother's Day before we

count ALL the way down to our all-time top-five hits:

'American Pie,' 'All Along the Watchtower,' 'Hotel California,'

'Every Breath You Take,' and, at number one with a Manchurian
bullet, 'Whiter Shade of Pale.'"

Then, like a bomb, Johanesburg,

its "knife shop and casino," "Guns4us", "Jberg Junque,"

dead gas station lots, flashing glass in the sand,

"homes for sale," a blank billboard for rent

(we wanted to put "MORE COWBELL" on it),

a "senior pot luck supper" in a teal Route 66 camper;

everything dissolves here like a boiled peanut

in a bottle of sweet Coca-Cola. Snoop is slumped

way down in the seat, amid imagined billows

of cannibis cloud eating twizzlers.

There's no time-bender button in our Chevy Vortex

just more road by stone-hard sand;

the Black Hole Sun Solar Collector Facility,

the battery for the Matrix, and a "Cactus Shop"

by the transistor circuitry. Then the Joshua Trees

began: the shiva brush trees, ti chi windmill trees,

stretching gymnast trees, pom-pom cheerleader trees,

edward scissorhand trees, universal restroom symbol

trees, Musso and Frank's hatrack trees, Leonardo

di Vinci man on fire trees, praise Jesus trees,

dancing children trees, flying Nike trees, shrieking fencepost

trees, crouching monkey funhouse chickens trees,

laughing squirrel porqupine quill condenser coil trees,

then Adelanto, "the city with unlimited possibilities,"

like, I guess, the Big Rig Tire Shop, the Federal Penitentiary

and Garbage Smelting Center, the look on everyone's face

for an alternative to the governing reality of hopelessness

on this stretch between long kitty litter highways,

but then, on Mother's Day, in the middle of the desert,

we saw a 20-foot statue of our patron saint Quan Yin,

the Goddess of Compassion, "be kind to your women."

Then Victorville, another parking lot, another crow,

as we cleaned out the "all-natural" GMO imitation snacks

only to encounter on the way out a Coyote Dog

that drank goat's blood and licked Jesse's hand,

who saw that was living his dream: a pick-up truck,

coyote dog, and a gun, with the Mexican jumping bikes

derby nearby, every weekend.

Down the bad hills of San Berdu

there was crystaline suchness

but it was 98 degrees in Rivertucky -

we went to Death Valley to get away

from the heat (that's how we roll),

team Savage Messiah, secret

artist heart, learning how

we are the change.

The Bad Hills

Off the Grid

To whoever it concerns, I will be wild-catting at the Racetrack Playa and other remote Inyo County locations for the next three weeks. I will return your call with new transmissions when I return.

Return with a Purple Heart

The bewitchment begins
Instantaneously,
With turquoise sand,
Those mountains without trees,
Those glassy lakes
Without water,
The quarries uncut
And the rivers of stones,
The patterns beyond any form
Of plant, animal, man -
A logic less simple
That needs nothing.

Nothing I can share
- Everything was left in the sky.

At The Stillpoint Between Earth and Heaven

The breathing eye
tries to get me to feel
with beautiful flowers
the work of being worthy
of no boundaries.

So you come.

You love the way your hair sweeps
in the density of air
as I love seeing plants
become vibrations,
yet nothing done alone's
not done together.

We are the glaze we see
upon the pond.
There is no limit
to how light I can become,
how deep you feel
the darkness of the earth.

The churches are but
unimportant spires
that cross the ruined brick
of sunlit towns,
the men and women
chasing other realms.

Your kiss becomes a river
filled with all the scents
I've given you
and every move I make
becomes, in you, a ritual,
an opening of doors
to step away.

I must give nothing up
except my will.

I thought it was some trick
to stop my music
but now I know how rocks
broke in my hand
for other reasons
—the music already existed
it was my heart that needed
to be created
behind Las Vegas curtains
inside heaven,
where I tried to feel
what I am feeling now
but how could I know
the cowgirl on the wall
was really you?
Like I see you now
with your own eyes
on a Melrose fire escape.
"Iglesia?" you say
as if my answer
came before,
as if I've yet to lay
down in that
dark hotel room.

The symbols
are now you,
keys that only turn
when doors were opened,
when watching something else
besides the knob.

And now the cops
have waved us through
'cos we're together
the speed traps and the time
and space continuums,
the things love never needed
but I held on to,
to catch that glint that
brought that scent
that sent that taste
that burned that touch
that now is all of me.

I won't go back to feeling without you.

I might not like how
honors
trail behind me
but without them
there is only
eternity...

Sometimes God's light
upon His dream
is so frivolous,
so full of desire,
we stand there gaping
at the houses and yards
as if they are
no longer real.
We become the
purple
that overcomes
the green.

Tears for Sereta

It's only the word of God if you believe it to be
but because your heart is endless that part is easy.

It's how nothing can come in between you has you beat.

Earth Day East of the Hudson

So the tulip blossoms fall to their death by St. Aloysius
glowing for a moment
                                     before bright mid-April sunshine
makes the slightest hints of green a portal to heaven,
the purple on the floor like Easter mourners
                                                               outside the void
of the hollow, blackened-out cathedral.

And spring won't even laugh,
its endless flowing like some rope in children's hands,
turning all that we remembered
                                                      leaf by leaf
            to something new,
                                           the emptiness of music.

So much that we do, as humans, is indigestable:
our thoughts of predators
                                           are in our water,
our wasted nervous energy
                                              blows through our air,
but somehow, we cannot believe
the earth that always comforts us
                                     cannot release what's stuck.

The fish are coming back
                                           to Antarctica,
the whales are going home because they do not need
                                to feel our pain any more.
New alphabets are forming,
                as always with our hearts to pick out words
from an apple tree that keeps on growing.

My Mother Earth News

The stars are arranged on the lawns.
Heaven is inside my blood.

I no longer need to be carried on celebrity's shoulder.

For Blaine on His Birthday

Anyone can put clowns where they don’t belong, you lug pianos
to the side of roads
          where hitchhikers thumb rides
                          in sight of the federal prison,
to the North Pole, where letters to Santa Claus
          are finally addressed by bureaucrats
                         with threatening notes to children,
to corporate boardrooms where men with paste-on mustaches
          demonstrate points by flicking a whip
                          to dislodge the cigarette from the secretary’s lips,
to wherever there’s a wooden cigar store Indian,
         wherever diner bread is broken,
                          and wherever eggs benny is served.

All this is miraculous enough, but your true gift is in no one noticing
        the pianos are missing
                          from the finest jazz clubs
                                                                    you’ve squirreled them from
        with your invention that no one’s yet seen.

“Dada must be lived,” you always say, by way of explanation, but still
         you’re gracious enough to call at your latest dark nyet of the soul,
full of meta-amphetamines and pantomimes
        and pound cake and bad coffee about 3 am
                          when Flo in the Dark, yer all-nite radio dominatrix,
                                              has got you tongue-tied.

Trying to keep it real compared to Watts.

But more often than not, after hearing one of my 25 minute rants 
        about, say, the lack of cactus East of the Mississippi,                   
        or how I almost took the train to Poughkeepsie on your account,
                                             before I remembered the yellow mustard
                                                        on the submarine sandwees,
                         and I remembered the blue meanies, and was afraid,
              you make me feel that every occult detail I’d shared with you
   was important enough to avoid any mention of the reality of its truth
except for all your usual, wistful questions:

        Have you considered the benefits of a small rabid pet?
        Would you happen to know the bridge to Kwai Me a Wiver?
        Is a purple spraypainted rat wearing an eyepatch some sort of
                omen?
        Did I mention the tomatoes were canned?
        Well gee boss, why you gotta go an say a thing like that before?
        Can I get that with a pigeon pie, some Blackened Alibi, served with
                sauteed okra and air of mystery, and ah the Harvey, smoked
                rabbit dressed in a nice rich velveteen suit with matching
                smoking slippers, served in a black tophat, with a side of half-
                eaten fries and an Ethel Merman impersonation?
        Did I ever tell you about the time Frank Sinatra saved my life?

Then you’d produce a photo of you and Frankie shaking hands,
              and that would be enough.
                                                             It would always be enough.

Or I’d complain bitterly about people playing recorders in the wide-open
       spaces instead of an honest wood flute,
              calling out our favorite squatcher as an example.
You wouldn’t say anything, with your look of concern like this was
       the most urgent thing in the whole world,
              but a few days on, I’d receive a faded newspaper clipping
                           – about how sasquatches are strangely attracted to
                                                            the sound of a recorder.
Is it one of your hoaxes become real or the real becoming a hoax?
                          Who knows or cares.
                                                            The Dada is alive.

You wear the bowler’s hat befitting your stature
         as an entrepreneur of magic
               but your eyes do give away a guilty glint
                         of a certain charlatan charm.
But there was that time we talked reality off the ledge
         through deep-fried summer woods
                                                                      when suddenly,
there were marimbas waiting for us at the side of the trail,
                                                                      and you would smile
                          for what I think is the first time,
        despite the reporter who immediately appeared to question us,
for here was a theoretical universe that was worthy of you, that you
        didn’t have to create
                         out of pipe cleaners and flasks of ovaltine.

Lyrics: Borrowed Love

Did the waves ever get what they came for?
Did the sand really lose any ground?
They left with what they had and nothing more,
There was no answer in that roar of sound.
We borrowed love to serve our purposes
Not knowing it could never be returned.

We watched the surfers walk upon the water
And heard the children sing of other worlds
But never could we put it all together
Through different eyes they seemed to be so plural.
I learned to use your eyes to look at you.
I used to not exist but now I do.

Maybe I will fall in love someday
And feel the moon possess me in its way.
Maybe there’s one star out there to see
That’s clear enough the lover can be me.

I love you more now that you are not real.
I hold you in my heart now that you’re gone.
I need your kiss now that it cannot heal.
I cherish all we shared now I'm alone.
The world is in my hand but I’m not free,
I’d rather give it back than have the right to be.

Poetism

Poetry is a net
so we can say we have one

Trying to Forget My Idea for Vietnamese Baseball and You

In mourning morning fog
when even birds are down below
the cherry trees that flower in the graveyard
call us to salute them
                                     as if they'd die
without our response
                                     not just their beauty.

We do not know, somehow,
this magic show of green
is how it is supposed to be,
there is no time
                            to end in
as there's no time
                            when sleeping.

And growing never ends,
the reaching for the one within all life.
At some point we must go there alone.

Notes While Waiting for the Knock on the Door

Meme me up Scotty there's a tempest in the bean pot, a Mass-Casualty Incident in Massachusetts (god bless you), one could call it a Mass-panic, Mass-acre, or even a Mass-querade, this Boston Terror-thon, a dirty o-bomb-sniffing yellow dog with blue balls bearing through the walls on the twilight's code red finish line, the false flag that didn’t hunt, the lone wolf pulling the willies over the red, white and blues of the sheeple’s eyes, the dog without a drone who ate the lambskin bill of rights homework with a cell-phone, at the “it’s only a drill” remote-controlled-explosion pressure-cooker of a photo finish, receptacles of fire played by Terror-Vangelis, a Greece-fire smoke-filled Cyprus room to jog our memories on the Oklahoma City and the Waco Anniversaries. Who will it be? The tea party patsy on saint patriot’s day (in a grey hoodie) or the ex-pat Saudi National “dark-skinned male” with multiple black backpacks and passports and a hillbilly’s smokebomb-making skills? Either way, the Gym Fixx is in, on Tax Day in Taxachusetts (god bless ewe), where the Sandy Hook kid was never killed, the marriage never proposed, the additional unexploded devices never disposed of, the 12 people never murdered, the Saudi National dark-skinned male never arrested. Instead, a Vox Publica Castor and Pollux stamp of disapproval as sweet as Tupelo ricin beans was sent to the suddenly syrius man behind the Terror-prompter curtain waving a smoking backpack and doffing his tin-foil black hat without any ricin-able explanation. There are HAZMAT crews in Saginaw, quarantines in Beloit, three cars in a hole in Chicago, and in Boston (lettuce prey) the Moakley courthouse is now flooded and the wounded have been medi-hoovered from the cold blood code red Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, as a fertilizer plant near Waco exploded (dozens killed), and the earth suspiciously quaked near the Oil-Opium border (hundreds killed). Ah, but our eyes are fixed like muskets on massholy Maskachusetts (god bless you), watching the Lord & Taylor surveillance camera for shoplifters instead of asking about the Navy Seals with wires and skulls and multiple black backpacks, hearing “is it safe…is it safe?” from Governor Devil in the Details instead of asking who is Silk Tork and Yohanan Danino and what kind of sick, twisted fuck would send such James Bond villians here? Ask not why the bomb went off in the library, ask why the library went off with the bomb! We want this all to go away so much we don’t notice that Boston’s in lock-down now like Manhattan after 9/11 never was. Americans are such irremediable wusses – this is a Boston cream pie compared to a drone strike, and we can’t even handle a morning of it without crying Uncle to Sam for protection, for our sense of fun and games has been rudely disrupted and we’re scared, they tell us, scared, and when that happens, certain people can do anything, and anyone can be guilty, even you.

In Lieu of Dreaming

I followed Jesus around Europe last night,
chilling on metal with German morticians,
filling prescriptions for piety with French pharmacists,
watching Scottish beekeepers argue with elves.
He said things like "drinking coffee is like kissing God"
and "Hungarians really get the importance of a violin to food"
without breaking that beatific smile, which he also kept as he freed
countless people over the course of a long and yellow night
from ancient jails of guilt, remorse and terror.

But morning came, the bars closed again,
the church swept all the prisoners back in,
and before returning to bed for a few precious z's
I saw Jesus again on a bridge in Trieste
with the morning light periwinkle right.
So patient he tried to teach me the secret
of hocking a surgical looger.

Because I’m Not Allowed to Talk to Children

The pain begins. It’s always
                                               in somebody
                            else’s
               face
first.
        I want to be
                            unhappy
like that couple
                            clinging
                                         desperately
and serve my children
                                     safety in the
       endless woods.

Here too far North
                                for the graffiti
they can make like
                                there are standards
                                                                 still
and towns, and I
                             fall into their spell
                                                            so readily—
I cheer for sons
                          who cannot throw the ball
pull daffodils for daughters
                                                who no longer
                          tolerate ballet
                                                 to get an ice cream cone.

I hear the explanations
                                       —everything that’s lost
                  from father’s mouth to son,
and see kids in
                  sharp dominance of voice
because there’s only
                                     so much pride
                 and adoration
to go around.

But then, amid the ducks
                                           and keening bleachers
I hear some parents talk
                                         of dismal holidays
because the rainbow
                                  canyons
                                                  and waterfalls
                 like emeralds
       could not be shared.

Their voices lower as I walk by
                                                     and despite the trickling
of the stream, the shush
                                         of distant motors
there’s still some
                             solitary thing, some
breathing.

The Need to be Watched, and Reminders I Am

Intelligent dust—
                              bobbing,
                                             to the birdsong,
interpreting the information
                                               from the rocks
who articulate the water
                                         pulsing
                                                     through them
—maybe no more intelligent
                                                than us
but willful, as we are,
                                    who hear
                                                     marimbas
in the stream,
                        but to them...

who have no problem
                                     dissolving in aetherial waves
it's natural to know that birds
                                                 are testing out melodies
along electric wavelengths
                                             of the spheres where music is,

and even the paper trees
                                          crackle in the orchestra
and things drop to the moss
                                                and whistle through the leaves
on a score that we can't read
                                                 by the rivulets of water like
some Austrian composer
                                          who rides his charges hard
because the sound it makes
                                               is true.

The train
                in full human cry
                                              decides then to come through
but it's silent
                      in the teething of the wind
and all its hidden
                             being.

I have nothing here;
                                   I'm allowed only eyes.
Squirrels paint
                         friezes of the trees.
Forsythia cleans
                            the early evening sun.

What was not there suddenly
                                                  is,
the world of skunk cabbage
                                               and daffodils
—enough of a world—
                                      turns
to allow a moment of grace:
                                               everything
is metaphor.

Thoughts on a Spring Day

Scientists say the varian nebula cloud
would smell just like hyacinths
(with a note of cinnamon)
if you could somehow walk through it.

Why, then, can't I get the scent of flowers out of my phone?
Are they that afraid of our poetry?

I won't settle for less than total sensory communication:
you being able to feel exactly what I smell
out of this smarty-pants device!

Shut NASA down for awhile if you have to,
I need this app to happen.

Lines Escaped from Lyrics

The mystique of interpenetrations
when alone is so much
more together
alone…

To serve your target eye
or fall to the conversant me
in all peripheral
extremities.

I’ll convalesce in madness from afar
or hold my sanity
inside a luminescent
jar.

My bounding was too sensible
because too mad for you
—my compromise with rhythm
had to leap its ruinous dive

to become the essence
of the lover
alone and swimming
backwards

though bare and thinking canyons
with negligees on trees
speared flowers
for the moon,

whose play is far too large
for humans and their grieving,
their need to fly away
in pairs

to not become responsible,
to lose something
and say that they’ve
been found

having so deprived themselves
of love
they find it
in another

who looks at them
with eyes that hold the world
but crave to know themselves
through other worlds

in smirkings
of a moon
that bares
its scars.

Still, horses cross the sky
and even I must carve my
naked purple
out of moon,

my love comes from
adjacent room
a million miles
within

but even she,
despite her
otherworldly blooms,
immortal songs,

who’s waited outside time
to breathe as one,
must bless me with
forgiveness first—

I the holy
stand before
confessor priest
so I can feel.

Sonnete/Godluster

You speak and hear but let us be the night.
In sight of your gorgeosity we know we own it
'Tho we idolize the voices that you use
And think we hear what your ears can't convey.

The world of birds and trees cooperates
That we make all these sounds and call them singing,
Because we still believed that we were beasts
Not thoughtless Gods who had forgot our other.

All that's left of you's a gesture, a hollow bead of notes;
You come forth like a figure out of stone
-- We call it art -- finally a thing
That can perhaps withstand our understanding.

You would be all too easy to find
-- Impossible to know -- unless
You swirled your dress round nothingness.

I pretend you don't exist, to dream you real.

At Mead Swamp

Two geese hit the still pond
like stones from a muscle-bound skimmer
and don't miss a step in their dance

The thistle has finally turned red

These geese would be lost without people

The Softness of Spring

New York
speaks gibberish
because it is so very old.

It deserves all its jewels
to cover up the scars it has endured
from a lifetime of watching
ground balls go under
the glove of the shortstop
over and over;
a lifetime of so much hope.

The only thing it is good for anymore
is to teach the young
with a kindly kick to the teeth
and a bill for how much it costs to be wrong
—the best way of learning—

and I, unbelievably, am young.

The Thought of Mexico

"Why, why, why" --
Don't you know that every answer
                                    leads to me?
There are no rules for how life is
                                    supposed to be?
All engines lock at times,
Complaints are barely read
                                    except as loud
                                    and foreign
                                    favors to you.
Do you really want entitlement
                                    for miracles?
Does that not defeat the point
                                    that there is something more
                                    behind this raggy, threadbare,
                                    see-through screen?

Something always holds you to the light
When all the engines rust in fallow fields,
When all the voices grate like friends
                                   who disappointed
                                   years ago,
When information swirls
                                   back to the source
                                   in wakes of chaos.

It's when you think things aren't
                                   as they should be
You must remember me
                                   I'm only what is
                                   always, always
                                   there.

Another Typical James Tate Poem

It's the word "chasteness" that the Earth hates so much.
That sound, for instance, is not a wheezing fridge
but a cricket accompanying dripping water.
Good thing I didn't kill it!

The cool winds are whipping the spring into shape.
Feeling at home is only a matter of getting the knobs right
in my Mansard-slate room at the top of this lit toy-train set
with names like Quotient of Pain (bread), Pinocchio's Pizza
and The Connecticut Muffin far, far below.

I am annoyed by the sound of my own breathing,
thinking it's another voice vying for attention
now that I'm the slattern catholic about incoming noises
be they door-handle gears, or geese cheering base-hits,
or the way the treetops moan each day at sunset.
I wish that you were here sometimes
to make me feel insane again, with your Chinese water
treatments and your entrances as sweeping
as they are traumatic to doors. A pitch-perfect prisoner thinks
these pirate broadcasts are catastrophies
to endure vicariously, when each and every semi-hemi-quaver
not approved by the FCC
is a reminder to be free...

like the postcard on the fridge from Mount Estes
reminds me of the grocery list, the door jambs, slippers, batteries
I need to start my new life
that has no past or future.

I look for clues in the entrails in garbage cans
and out comes my new friend the cricket
with what looks like a key to the moon.

The Financial System Explained to a Five-Year Old

Paper covers rock
Scissors cuts paper
Rock crushes scissors

Money covers gold
Trust cuts money
Gold crushes trust

Green Curtains in the Closet

The insomnia house
with its working-class planks,
now bequeathed
to a family from Queens,

while my fat candles burn
in Victorian spires
filled with Indian drums
and bookshelves of poems.

This facade that seems so frivolous
is the shell of my protection
for my own most peculiar religion
(the only kind that matters,
the one that accepts all others
(because it is so crazy
and so true to me)).

The birds and the squirrels
who were calling me away
are now looking in through my windows.

The town with the last reputation to uphold
wakes up in the glow of spring's promising

and I sleep
right through it.

In a Moment of Reversibility

The angels are shocked
at the blondeness of the wheat,
the horizontality of the trees,
how white the pines in morning light become.

Their customary purples
cannot describe this scene,
how things don't need to move to have a being,
how they're lost in some perpetual forgetfulness
where eternities are temporary, and continual,
how they have to make some pact with rocks and grass
and rivers that with their mirrors wash away.

The sounds these things make
are what longing feels like,
as if there's something real
to threaten who they are.

And then the angels feel relieved.

Of Rocket Scientists & Hedge Fund Managers

They think 'til every second is perfection
They strain 'til every moment is more pure
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

For only in their minds is some protection
Building to forever some vast sewer
They think 'til every second is perfection

They navigate the poles, collect the seasons
Have every guidepost marked along the tour
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

They circumscribe all peoples into sections
Apportioned 'tween the greater and the fewer
They think 'til every second is perfection

The borders that they make are grounds for treason
To teach the young who cross to be mature
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

They calculate by hand precise directions
But even then they really are not sure
They think 'til every second is perfection

They tolerate some crying within reason
Will let some longing sighs remain obscure
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

Erections for destructions for protection
The greatest minds find lightning bolts to seize on
They think 'til every second is perfection
They think so hard to earn their lives some reason

New Canaan Morning

A sunrise of pink lips
the lavender line
between love and lover
a wry smile
opening to forever.

A red opened bloom
new from the hibiscus
I drove here last night
in driving Easter rain,
the last thing to move
after I burned all the boxes
instead of the innocent house
and the only thing living they say.
She spread her leaves out
the open car window
and didn't complain
she was far too large really
for my car
but along the way she asked me to sing
"The Girl in the Other Room,"
the one that explains it all
while never once losing its cool.

This morning, my eagle's nest
pimped with my moments
glistens in infinite quiet
till I walk and it responds
with how large I am,
it's like a Studebaker long dormant
in a millionaire's garage
has been tuned up at last
as if time hadn't passed
(as indeed it hasn't).
At last I can live like a human being
crooked walls and golden-age appliances
notwithstanding.

What the Angel Said to the Insomniac

That sound is not the train horn
it's the universe trying to speak.
Without longing
what purpose would love serve?

Last Supper at Gaymoor

At a certain evening light
Connecticut gets creepy
for history's too full
and has never been resolved

Three Poems

Equinox
The birds are singing
The snow is flying
First day of spring

What the Light Says

My advantage is
I travel fast
so you think first
of the thing being illumined
not the source that gives it light.

Closing Thoughts from the House
I don't care

what TV shows you watch

or how loud your arguments get

or the chaos your children cause

with their saxophones and erector sets,

I care how the garlic is sliced to honor its life

and how the pasta is stirred when water boils.

I don't care about your dining room furniture set

or the giant swap-meet urn with nothing inside of it,

I care about the length of children's laughter

and how often you have an orgasm.

Just give me some spackle and furnace filters

I don't ask for much, just love and respect,

shoes taken off, clothes put away,

everything up off the floor,

cleanliness not Godliness for me.

I don't mind the weather and the dust

but the bannister, oh boy, when it sways

it's like you are taking my back out.

Don't think because you take care of me that I'm yours

just because I can't react in terms you'd understand,

but then again, neither do your children

and you take care of them, sometimes think

you own them. Well here's the thing:

somedays, when the wind blows through the attic

we share secrets adults must never know. 

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 Scream Heard As A Whisper

"Fortunately for us Van [Morrison]'s romantic bliss didn't last too long." - Joe Smith, President of Warner Brothers Records

Art is nothing more
than the humanizing of divine engines.

There's beauty in what appears to be loss,
a blanket instead of the girl

and truth in what appears to be hidden,
the betrayal of lovers before their children.

Morality protects one from self-doubt
but it is an illusion,
art tells us,
the eccentric opposite of what we're told to do
might be the only glimmer of sanity we have.

The Bakery Shop Chimney

I know its face will remain white
when I say my courage of truth
but I also know the nature of reality
will have been changed.

I know its breaths of smoke
are nothing but an illusion
still I look, and with me the universe
sees what's real within it.

I know its imagined ovens and unknowable fires
give some comfort of certainty
but the gold they provide is not bread
but mystery.

Some Implications of the Piri Reis Map

The polarities are melting,
glaciers flow like vast unclogging toilets,
and an albatross on a stony promontory
emerges for the first time from its nest
to learn all there is to know
about the ground
until it finally finds its eight-foot-wing true nature
and flies without the need to land again
from the Chrysler Building’s feathered spires
as from the pyramids, and below its windows,
like love, a flow, not black and yellow cabs
but Emperor Penguins tobogganing inland
to incubate eggs in what is now the most hostile place on Earth,
the South Bronx.

Everything has a purpose, towards a larger order, a larger justice;
it takes 1,000 lemmings a day
to keep the Snowy Owls in cubicles in love;
polar bears rip manhole covers off to paw at seals;
on an old New Jersey coastline
five million walruses lay on one beach
and bulls fight to the death
in front of the children.

Seaweed hangs like banners inside Madison Square Garden
as kelp waves from the rafters of the old Grand Central Station
to disguise the sharks and bottom-feeders who battle on the floor.
Killer whales can fit inside the subway tunnels now
to feast upon translucent grunts
swaying like no dance troupe
peeling back the blooming onion veil
in a universal spiral that furls and then uncorks
and baffles the armored sawfish
who subsist on rainbow smelts and hake hag slime.
The octopi climb cathedral walls in deft pursuit of mussels;
the black eels chase pink pogies through barnacled art deco;
dolphins circle round the tank that was the UN Building
- they like its peaceful vibe, and besides, they can hunt
the hammerhead sharks that lurk on Dag Hammarskjold Plaza;
tautog, cusk and pout
with eyes so blank and purposeless
all leverage in on a grouper’s food
to try to gain a crumb, and they all join
each others’ conversations, completing thoughts
with a wave wand of their tails;
and the dogfish swim the streets in the most
outlandish costumes, but no one blinks an eye
unlike in LA, where everyone wants to be discovered, here
everyone wants to disappear.

The Times Square lights have crystallized in mid-air
and even the headline reels have become frozen in time.
The Jesus Petrel minds the shop on the top of the Empire State Building
while shags roost on the ledges watching white wolves track musk-oxen
down the tundra hills of reddened Central Park;
the beluga blissed out molting over stones like a loofa
have gone much further north, past 86th and Columbus Avenue,
the caribou click their electric antennae
like no bulls or bears before could ever do;
there’s starfish all down Broadway,
sea urchins in the Bowery,
oyster beds at the Waldorf Astoria,
torpedo rays along the Battery,
sea horses run at Aqueduct,
skates glide like Rockette skirts through Rockefeller Center,
tuna in the Meadowlands are eating soft sea grass,
snails cling to the Village walls quivering in their shells,
bluefish are getting schooled at the project bball hoops,
but there are no fish in Chinese restaurant tanks,
some lobsters though are skittering through FAO Schwartz
and some are at Lincoln Center, it doesn’t much matter,
for their lives are far too natural for them to have a care
about the subtle structures of their templates.

The blue whale at the center of town
breathes in every fact with the plankton,
and unknown lips are kissing
the gifts of this remembrance
and the blowhole breath, having formed it
into a variable of useful truth
can exhale now something of its original state,
what no longer must be solved,
not scrambled as it was
when it was sought.

There’s no need any more for lox or jewelry,
newspapers or cigars,
vodka or watches,
ermine or guitars,
for the people are
somewhere else,
living with the Gods
they thought were killed
instead of grief.

Before the Self Finds Itself in Resistance

Crocus and frost
the kind of a day
between waking and sleep
where memory no longer warms
but hope has yet to seed
the kind of a day
where the earth is the same
without life as it is with it
when shadow and sun have reached
a kind of compromise.

One look inside the mirror
of the still and silver pool
and time disappears
and, with it, mourning.

The Reification is Proceeding Apace

I.
One glance unglues me,
the chemical question mark,
so I, insoluble, might fit, or
the exclamation point at my core
with outward roar that knows no limit?

My breath is a body of effortless form,
my being is light as language, and within it
a glimmer of me not yet swallowed whole
so I can still see that glimmer of you

in the fields where quanta grow
as the mind's dodecahedrons
create it all
so the heart can feel
itself
(all can grow)

with the lover always further away, elusive and luring,
the chase and play, the universe empty enough for that.

II.
The constriction of time and space
is the reason we have free will.
The lights on wet streets
talk to each other
and all of us are still waiting...

The Atlantean Hangover

The voice doesn't care
how listeners respond
- so much eccentric orbit each perspective -
but the mind that let it go, become another hearer
puts on penitential robes
to feel the slightest gasp
as thunderbolts from Michael.

Some Reflections on Freedom

Dedicated to Dr. Robin Smith

The prison guard is as innocent as the prisoner
yet such anger issues through from behind the bars
at behavior far too cruel and disrespectful,
that such could be regarded as a kind of love,
a part of killing numbers, as penance for a crime
he didn't even know at the time was committed...
Somehow they did all the judgement for him
and with that pulled inside
the feelings he could not bear to recognize:
the shame, the guilt, the resentment,
from remembering what it was like
to be a bullet that was loaded in a gun -
how it kept popping back out
no matter how strong it was shoved in,
how God will pay a heavy price for that.

Door

The moment between
spring is coming, oh no
and spring is here, oh yes
is the moment we free ourselves
from angels.

Through a Small Window

I woke up to a foot of snow
and no old life to pull at me;
the trees are stuffed with cotton now,
the houses packed in foam.

The wind is mad at something
but it finally is not me;
I watch it torture branches
and sip my tea

as bombs of snow go crashing down
dissolving as they fall.
Each snowflake with its own dance
finds its own way to touch ground

as each navigates the space
'tween earth and heaven;
a silent song of sifting snow
takes form from all of them

because that space is empty
and singing is what comes between
the giver and the gift.
I hear the train - a miracle,

there's no need for a me at all
until I hold one snowflake
with my eyes and they all vie at once
for each one to be noticed

and what had seemed so soft and still
becomes a universe
exploding into all its pearls
then necklace coalescing...

It's endless, notwithstanding what the neighbor
blowing driveway snow away
and pausing to talk with the mailwoman
about the weather might say,

for they are no closer to me
than the snow, despite what it seems;
it's all impossible - far away
except inside my dreams.

The Drone of Filibusters,The Filibuster of Drones

"The drone industry is pressuring regulators to loosen restrictions on decades-old unmanned plane rules, which are still applied because of the drones' high crash rates. But they are considered model airplanes, so we have the spectre of multi-national corporations applying for hobbyist licenses...Yet, when one [a drone] gets in the way of a commercial airliner, as happened in Brooklyn two days ago, no one knows whose drone it is."

"These predator drones were authorized for border protection and national defense and now they're loaning them out to local police forces without any debate... 'We don't call them in for everything,' said the local [Brosset, North Dakota] police chief."

"Drones can snap pictures far longer than airplanes."

"Now they can monitor if the magazine you are reading is offensive to public officials"

"Just because they can see everything you are doing in your hot tub in your backyard doesn't mean they have a right to look."

"Some of these drones weigh less than an ounce. When is there a problem, when they're 2,000 feet in the air over your house or ten feet away from your window?"

"Are these drones being used with warrants? Do citizens outside their homes give up their constitutional rights?"

"How long can they hold the drone data before using it against people?"

"Signature strikes [drone kills] on the Constitution party convention could be very effective since they've already said such party members might be terrorists."

"More evidence is required to do a wiretap than a targeted killing..."

"I don't want to wait around for the memo from the President on whether the low threshold for drone kill strikes abroad would be applied on American soil. I want the Senate to write the memo telling him."

"If you are in a cafe sending an email to your cousin in the Middle East you shouldn't have a Hellfire Missile dropped on you. That's not due process of law and not a legal standard."

"If we follow the official explanation for why the underage American citizen was assassinated that he 'should have chosen more responsible parents' then we've set a pretty low bar for our killing program."

"When Sen. Wyden asked nominee Brennan directly if they intend to kill Americans on American soil he said 'We need to optimize transparancy and optimize secrecy.' That's a direct quote."

"The AG says the 5th amendment doesn't always apply when we are at war. Who are we at war with?"

"No evidence or authority ever is released after these people are targeted and then killed. How can due process be administered in private?"

"How many people on the disposition matrix (targeted killing list) have been already killed? How many names have been added to the list?"

"Are we supposed to be placated when the President tells us he hasn't killed any Americans yet but he might? That he doesn't intend to send Americans to Guantonimo bay without due process of law as enemy combatants? That's not good enough."

"Why can't the White House end the debate by saying or tweeting they're not going to kill domestic non-combatants? Their non-answer unfortunately means that they think the 5th amendment is optional."

"A war without end and a constitution without limits leads to an endless imperial presidency"

—Quotes from the Senate floor on the evening of March 6, 2012 by Rand "McNally" Paul, a curly-haired Jimmy Stewart Senator from Kentucky doing an olde-thyme filibuster to prevent Americans from being randomly killed by the US government, in what was the longest continuous display of common sense in post-war American congressional history.


Our hearts are now so large
Our oneness is so immanent
The aliens use drones
To keep a closer eye.

We know that it is envy
Fuels the watching from the skies;
We want our backyard hot tub
Friend surveilled by insect spies

That criss-cross every inch of earth,
Each window with their sights
And look like model airplanes
Veering closer to girls' skirts.

They're there to kill us all, they say,
Because that makes us look,
For they too want to be adored
And thought a part of us

For we are all just aliens
And we all are terrorists
Trying to make sense of this
Enchanted and forgiving place.

To know that it is overseen
By God as well as Satan
And that we may be taken out
For no particular reason

Provides some comfort and relief
That we can feel some working
Of gears that shift above our head,
A gentle, silent whirring.

Waiting to Land

To make sense of it all
I created a story
and because it was a story
it was true
and because it was true
it was a lie.

How quickly has my life
become another lifetime,
the mirrors so I could
perceive myself
now portraits
of imaginary kings.

My Appearance on the Type of Jack Show

Join the mirth with Jack, Rhyann and myself in our without-a-net colloquium on internet poetry that went on for a couple hours after the recording devices were turned off.

We waxed polemic with glittering generalities on the online poetry world that included some love for my sponsors: Shay's Word, The Storialist, Walking Man, Sojourn(al), Photographs from a White Space and of course Type of Jack (cue right rail, please)...

Another Poem About My Wife

If a goon comes to my door
to throw me on the street
because I must pay for
those toiling years of love:
my careful repair,
paint for the sun,
landscaping stones,
of making my home more beautiful,
doing things for others as you would
have them done for you,

the gift I felt for my gift
was immeasurable.
So to see my landlord
pull up all the stones,
blacken down the walls,
take back
the damaged mind
he'd left behind,
there must be something more that I still owe.

And if those goons do show
my son says it's all cool,
the luckless on the streets
in cardboard homes
have Obama phones.

Light Into the Mine

This house doesn't tolerate the blues
but if you listen hard enough
to what the trembling floors are saying
it's a gospel celebration,
the rafters are a pyramid
volcano of light.

The words are so tragic,
the notes so rich with pain
but if you close your eyes
the long-dead child
that you used to be
will look at you with eyes
that shine light
on being human,
on finding the gift
in the illusion
of a world gone hopeless wrong.

Sparks

All you can see
in a beautiful face
is a soul.

Newfield Elegy

Port Chester in the morning
has a quiet, blue-grey light,
the stillness of the river
nearly glints.
They said that this was Springdale,
some tradesmen and a mill,
a florist and fishmonger side-by-side
a Catholic cemetery ringing Darien
and the train horn ubiquitous
no matter where you stand.
The closed and dingy now familiar
with the sun moved to a nearby town
and I a piece of driftwood
on a slate-blank foamy tide.

The church is wrapped in scaffold nets
like some kind of cocoon,
the only thing renewed
across the plank and shingle skyline.
I should add to my "to-do" list "grieve"
but memories pass on their own schedule
like tree-buds re-awaken
outside of time.
Trying to will these people
of the Cape Cod cul-de-sacs
to be somehow less selfish
only showed how selfish I can be
to expect unnatural things
from human nature.

Where the wave lands
I can't know,
for to let go
and somehow float
beyond the wake
is gift enough;
no ships to clutter up my view
and redirect my hopes
from the purity of the horizon,
the endless catapult of clouds,
and a sun that's always closer
than the ghosts that pass for faces
in the crowd.

If Death is the Mother of BeautyWhy is the Mona Lisa Smiling, Thinking that the Sphinx is a Buzzard?

It is because we are immortal
that the present moment is all there is.