since i've been loving you
there's a hurt inside because i don't know what to do
when you turn your back to me
when you laugh in my face
am i such a disgrace?
i've been a working man
toiling with dirt on each hand
i did what i could
i did what i thought i should
since i've been loving you
and now i'll miss you
disappearing into the fading blue
skies
taking with you my final cries
since i've been loving you.
i had a vision of a dirty bomb
tear my head completely apart in Vietnam.
i saw the mushroom cloud explode in ’45,
Trinity was born! i was barely alive,
fed a steady diet of black & white
watching John Glenn take his historic sub-orbital flight
into near space on a rocket ship;
he nearly died but i didn't know it,
hiding under the classroom seats
with Peggy Sue and her forbidden treats
so near to touch but i'd have to wait
for a more appropriate time to have a date:
i saw Kennedy get blown away
in his black limo on a late November day.
watched the flowers that people held
growing old until they smelled
like thousands of dead bodies in a distant Cambodian field.
i saw them & felt chilled
when Martin Luther was struck down
on a balcony near my hometown.
he was hit with a thud and bled and bled,
but it didn't matter what anyone said:
The Dream still lives, the body gone,
remembering the Selma bridge
hoping to see the promised land over heartbreak ridge.
and i heard Nixon really got pissed!
he put countless enemies on his list
& his White House was infiltrated by crooks
who to this day in countless history books
have an amazingly large asterisk by their name
believing Honor was just a fool's game;
it didn't matter that people died;
they still cocktail partied and lied and lied and lied,
believing until the end that God was on their side!
and i indeed saw their God walking across my rice paddy water
leading His sheep to another senseless slaughter
while i cleaned my gun under the afternoon sun
and waited.
save us from this killing beast!
it's been a long time since
walking in the distant primordial woods
morels and deer...leafy trees and an absence of fear: peace!
looking for a place outdoors to take a leak
exploring with youthful curiosity the nearby creek
i'm bemused, too, and puzzled by the latest news
remembering hours of watching middle school girls stroke their hair
me, polishing cheap leather shoes
remembering how the day comes undone
watching the setting sun
dropping through the soft and steady rain
now, heavy clouds hanging low
i'm forgetting the mayonnaise
forgetting where to eventually go
a happy dog and i sitting on a fallen log
peering through the lifting fog
feeling restful with extra love to give
together also with my lady and our fuller life to live
holding her hand
she holding mine
we're sipping wine
red in the nighttime and white during the day
remembering what else we might say
looking for adventure in whatever comes our way
and dawning, there are shadows on the high stone wall
the wild ravens float and circle and caw
the great men of old once so thoughtful and bold
in peril of being forgotten and sold.
musing, i'm wondering about lost arts:
valentine candies eaten like tiny hearts
my Halloween top hat and low-rent landlord cries
valued friends and great-grandmother's fresh-baked pies
an RCA transistor radio playing scratchy sounds of American trash
i've lost
in the middle of the Eisenhower Tunnel
looking for Mega Millions of jackpot cash
reciting Shakespeare and his thoughtful English verse
stuck in both forward gear and reverse
speeding on a northern boulevard
the world in my rear view mirror with traffic noise
remembering second grade recess and rowdy boys
a price tag hanging around our playground necks
saying NO CASH! please include only checks
Louis Armstrong and his band keeping the beat
shadows on an empty small town street
looking for my dreams in a black & white cab, which i eventually grab,
and notice once and for all time:
the world is too beautiful!
i'm standing tall
by my ringing anvil, hammer in hand, working the hot piece of glowing mild steel into a magic spoon,
having started at nine and finished up by noon.
here, i offer this word song as my spiritual tune.
i am always in my arm chair
or perhaps a comfortable chaise lounge,
sometimes watering my flowers,
but only if i can reach them.
otherwise i read, and often feel seduced by a book,
embarking on a secret affair with each beautiful page
as i finger its' edge.
when the air is dry as in a drought,
my flowers pen a quiet note for water,
and i spill the contents of a moist cup,
aiming for all and especially the white rose
near my hand, looking to solve actual mysteries.
what i find most clearly in reading is that
i am inspired by central figures, those larger-than-life
cubist personalities always at ease in traffic,
steering toward facts rather than faith, coloring outside their lines.
if it's summer, a fragrant scent will be painted
on my nose and the only evidence it might be from a
healthy rose is the soft writing inside my mouth.
roses do that to me, signing their autographs with love,
like a cubist personality.
and when it's winter, the nearby beach is closed, with many of the swimmers
waiting anxiously at home after reading the sign that says "NO SWIMMING!"
if a life guard is still on duty, it's to ensure there is no nudity.
but i can be nude in my arm chair,
or my comfortable chaise lounge.
i write while i'm thinking of you, watching your smile become an undressed white petal.
the whole white rose i imagine is freshly fallen snow or perhaps a distant star or the circling moon and sometimes,
it simply is a rose.
like a watercolor, i can make it become what i want,
splashing like liquid white color in winter or summer, running, sledding, sitting, writing,
designing my rose into a heart shape to win your love.
and before it is gone, i sign and date the basket of white fruit
and present it to you while we sit watching the circling moon.
this moon is writing inside our mouth as we kiss, and the white rose is on our nose.
he saw dead people
seated awkwardly in their streetcar,
unused destination tickets folded in laps,
forever lost in thought.
there were no secret military codes
littering the basement floor
where more burnt bodies were found
in early February, 1945.
an apartment bedroom became a tomb
when the old stone walls of a cultural center
without glass windows
collapsed under the defenseless German clouds.
it wasn't Slaughter House 5
where most human remains were seen
by those who went looking for answers,
but found only mountains of debris.
at an empty church near a smoking pile of books
where Vonnegut was told to load a small wagon
with a broken-down piano,
he heard a military plane flying low overhead.
nearby, a small group of hungry and frightened people wanted to shout,
but remained speechless, gazing skyward.
soon, they began to weep.
my left hip has fallen towards my knee
much as a loose boulder slides to the distant stream
heedless of any obstacle or imagined pain
disregarding the bombs
the thorns, dirt roads
the seasons and the daily orbit of the Earth
around the burning sun
heedless of the madness spreading like a violent plague,
a pandemic,
a rat infection spreading from the agony of the gutters,
the sewers,
the oligarchs with their fine coconut cupcakes
heedless of my wishes,
unaware of my existence, my humanness,
my left hip reminding me of what i could do
tonight,
if i were able to wave the magic wand,
but the wand would not be for me or my hip,
it would be for the safety of the child and to bury the guns,
a bomb defused:
the wand waving in the fine breeze,
seeking a cure,
to quiet the fanatic salutes,
to stop the rocks from falling to the stream.
oh yes
there are bones
skeletons of dogs
and sheep,
signs of neanderthals!
and yet the one impression that i keep
inside my favorite foundry mold
is of a long tall tale of being old
in an age of superlatives:
deadliest mass shooting
most post-hurricane looting
fires and piles of burning tires
a cancelled trip to the ruined Gaza strip
and i have a lot of others, sisters and brothers
because i'm working on the history of Man.
i see him crawling away from his trash can
artificially built up by reputation,
dreaming of a prolonged retirement vacation
with a modern holiday look
found between the pages of an advertisement book
claiming to know how all the marked cards are dealt
i watch his party ice melt
and his furrowed forehead become warm
the hungry locusts swarm
underneath fingerprints of a transient god
who had been modeled originally in clay
oh yes
someone please pray
for the tasteless party tray
where he's snacking and fracking and coughing and hacking
all the way to the poor house without a scheme
to achieve a globally inclusive dream
before the history of Man is over once and for all,
and my work takes a final curtain call.
Paradise Valley:
the turquoise waters
rising temperatures and soft light
hard granite rock glittering in white
precious gold
meadow flowers unfold
in the early summer sun
frolicking frisky and fresh
Yosemite Fall
roaring echoing teasing it all
with clouds of screaming blue spray
greening the eye
the eternal Ansel sky
a prolonged hush
whispering silence
quieting the rush
where lady bugs swarm
flying spinning sighing
red and yellow and wings
these are some of the many, many things
orange and purple colored in awe
it's not just what i saw
it's what i felt
as the Zen masters teach
while eyeing the peach.
Awe!!
ah, shucks
slapping slippery hockey pucks
for the winning points
getting free smokes in all the best hippie joints
while lounging under American skies
eating warm grandma apple pies
just about everywhere in the great prairie spaces
playing high stakes poker holding all four aces
watching forest trees dance
in an imaginative hallucinogenic trance
well, don't you know
from tip of head to toe
everything tingles
listening on the am radio to Wild Bill Hickok and his partner Jingles
getting lucky on a date
definitely has to rate
pretty high up there
where the rarefied air
is filled with exquisitely scented flowers
counting the seconds, minutes, and the elusive hours
sipping rich wine with a mouth full of poetry
anywhere from sea to shining sea
and much more such,
like a lovely skin to skin sensual touch
on a soft pillow made of comforting breast
give me this and i'll be tempted to give you the rest!
on the point of a needle our brief life pauses
immersing in irony and meaningful causes:
hundreds of millions of years gone by
and still we stand and wonder why.
well, something never to miss:
a soft, warm, lingering kiss;
an exhale and an inhale and an exposure to bliss.
and then this:
deep in the dark woods getting lost,
one toe stepping timidly and touching frost.
a deep breath yearning to be free
of the pressing weight of modernity.
Whitman’s wild children fully awake,
singing in the open air by a deep-water mountain lake.
Awe!!
the Two Nudes were magnificently
conceived as life-sized torsos
with astonishingly perfect breasts
schoolgirl toes
volumetric classicism
imagined at a school in Holland
in 1905
with a corpulent rear end
on both
arm in arm
a full painting
not made for alarm
but to hint at Sapphic sex
to polish a classic subject
in a modern shine
and yet
one wonders
who was inside the glass?
was this a picture of Gertrude Stein
and Alice Toklas?
i slept in the Victoria Hotel
down in old Mexico
and walked on handmade tiles
colored in deep indigo.
Eliot wasn't on my floor
nor was he at the bar
listening to the young gringo
strumming on an old guitar.
i heard he was swimming
in a pool without a sound
with a handful of wasteland dust
i remembered he once found.
he was wearing a huge sombrero
pulled tightly against his cheek
with a slip knot fully made
still showing the receipt.
my margarita had no salt
but i drank it all the same
to not offend the bartender
who asked me for my name.
a Spanish lady with the melons
she was proposing to sell
approached the nervous tourist
ringing the front desk bell.
i came to walk Copper canyon
so deep it smelled of death
where spirits wore historic masks
to take away your breath.
a train would leave the station
soon maybe the next day
and though tempted by those melons
i knew i shouldn't stay.
my coach was full of writers
down on their luck & drunk
on mescal which they all consumed
until their voices shrunk.
we stopped above the canyon walls
& began the long decent
into darkness at highest noon:
i wondered what it meant!
i heard the hidden waterfall
a primitive, lovely tune
and supped on poetry endless
beneath a Copper moon.
i saw little Red Riding Hood
sitting on a mushroom cap
looking like a caterpillar
simply taking her final nap.
The Tin Men surrounded her
each holding an Atomic bomb
while Captain Kirk went boasting
that he discovered Major Tom
who was lying flat on a city street
where a Mother would hear him cry:
fake news reporters flew into a rage
but no one asked them why.
And behind the door to nowhere
the White Witch drove his train;
he held the throttle open wide
to see what he might gain.
on her bouncing floor Miss Dorothy
kept piling yellow bricks,
so Alice called the Queen outside
and blinded her with tricks.
a space ship called Apollo
on a mission to the moon
found David Bowie singing
with his Ziggy Stardust spoon:
he pleaded for a bathroom break
as two riders came his way,
but Neil Armstrong told him "Negative":
we ALL were here to stay.
then a ghostly sound like sirens
came echoing down the hall
but Vonnegut in Cat's Cradle
used Ice-Nine to end the call.
the operator was intrepid,
ran outside and threw a fist:
he thought he'd remain anonymous,
but she found him on her list.
meanwhile, the White Witch in the White House
proved he didn't know the score,
but even when he was winning, he always wanted MORE!
we'll both start howling to the moon
you (Bush #43) were caught in the deeper shadows held between two lines
blinded by the crowd applause and couldn't read the signs
with arrows to infinity and a moon rise outside your door
you told a waiting nation that you'd lead them straight to war
decrying fresh aluminum tubes and biologic threats
with yellow cake uranium as secret as it gets
in Poland and Iran or was it Brussels and Milan?
smirking as the words emerged al la Cosa Nostra con
the bastards at the Pentagon had hoped you knew the score
with little donny rumsfeld sucking madly as your whore
he whittled down the numbers and sent US Marines ahead
in a lightening strike surprise attack to minimize their dead
it was cheney and mr chalibi who lied about the scope
of opposition in Iraq to give reluctant liberals hope:
yet no crowds of people were throwing flowers onto the road
as M1A1 tanks and troops in Baghdad finally showed
it's good to declare victory on an aircraft carrier deck
& then retire to Texas with a lone star on your neck:
but what's the carnage and what's the cost
when nations die and people cry for everything they've lost?
the Red Block
known also as Death Chambers,
a huge slaughterhouse for us humans,
sport no safe spots,
no friendly playgrounds,
no smiling children gossiping,
no lovers softly eyeing each other,
no fresh air,
no clean water,
and no football pitch for wildly cheering fans:
here,
underground with minimal light,
minimal sanitation,
minimal hope,
maximal cruelty.
here,
words unspoken,
blood soaked the dirt
after years of torment,
thousands of bodies crushed,
souls discarded,
where fathers sigh their final farewell
for a wife never to be held again,
for a cup of strong Arak never to be sipped
once more by the lips of a free man,
where hope is shackled
and tortured
until the final moments of darkness.
once upon a time the apes drank clean water from a wildly flowing river,
a small mountain lake, a pond, or a meadow stream;
no predatory tenderness or self-indulgent dream.
or maybe from a leaf collecting its' early morning moisture,
but never from the turning on of a kitchen tap
like a modern feckless business sap
who receives the two thousand mile Caesar's salad
and shirt made in Bangladesh
which are daily flown-in and freshly pressed
like a ripe avocado shipped all the way from mainland China!
once upon a time the apes did everything by hand:
love and communication they could easily understand.
once upon a time the apes joined up around evening campfires
without using FaceTime or the Internet:
at slower tribal speeds there simply was no disconnect;
there was nothing illusory or remote or overly complex;
no derivatives or obsession with balances and checks.
once upon a time there was thriving life on the fertile plains of Africa,
before the modern revolutions in agriculture and industry
made it ever more difficult to explain the expanse of human history.
and once upon a time the planet Earth was spinning freely
without an urban landscape of portfolios and fears.
before the flinging of the supersonic spears,
there were no technicians or aristocrats
for millions and millions of years.
a loyal friend said,
"The world i knew is now dead
and it won't be coming back!
Black bread
is what remains!"
i decided he was not thinking normally,
wearing his lucky charm while acting too formally,
in spite of the civil war re-igniting in Syria.
tears were flooding his eyes!
maybe he understood the terrible lies?
he kept swatting at a persistent ghost
who was offering him a toast
of the finest Iranian wine:
he knew it was made lousy by design.
of course the news could be better,
reading more like a passionate love letter,
but he had a point! too many factions and leaders to anoint
and each armed group has a consuming anger and a dream,
keeping them awake at night as they scheme
to trouble the world.
he lived in a large house
in a large garden
with flowers,
where a great many hours
were spent with spring time showers
and a lazy dog
with psychic powers,
licking a friendly kitty
not far from the nearest city
where in the end,
there was little
other than another cat fight,
although plenty nearby people were uptight!
a fading social light,
despite bouts of manic drinking
and attempted thinking,
he was a busted
but trusted
college grad,
at times both happy and sad;
who cleaned the litter box;
washed socks;
searched the sky for Venus;
played with Mister Penis;
confessed too much in autobiographical writings,
his entire face covered in stainless steel,
exactly how he wanted to feel
many an early morning
without warning
when he had to get back down to earth,
hoping to find out precisely what he was worth:
dancing to ragtime;
Louis Armstrong!
what more could go wrong?
he had the lucky number seven;
thought he'd try to live in heaven
with black tiled floors;
minimal chores;
cafe chairs;
an abundance of greying hairs;
phone calls not returned;
piles of seasoned wood unburned
until an alfresco dinner one winter eve
with nothing hidden up his sleeve,
he became a passing rumor
of black humor
and was found sitting comfortably by the fire,
a woman on his lap,
considering a nap
after giving him a French kiss,
which he didn't want to miss.
one he especially liked to taste;
her lips wrapped around his waist.
he could hear her sighs,
those soothing vaginal eyes,
sparkling like a unconventional art lover.
oh,
it's only a simple songThe Yellow River
with its' mighty brown flood,
and the Yangtze
with potent dragon's blood:
millions of buried ghosts,
tears dead and alive!
brave protesters in Hong Kong
finding it hard to thrive
inside Mao's little Red Book,
raising their heads for a gambler's quick look.
See! there's the Great Wall:
a Terracotta army of the first Emperor
holding swords and shields, standing tall.
Dynasties leading deeply into the historical past,
with echos of great tragedies
which last and last.
fields of plenty and loss
almost too far to walk across;
sprawling cities on the expansive coastal plains;
thunder over the mountains followed by torrential rains,
arriving early or leaving too late,
keen eyes sipping pearl milk tea from a special China dinner plate,
too proud to kneel
for another expensive Western meal!
he's still being looked for.
