Wild side walk

The cynosure of my recent blue-sky hike
was not the luminescent blue-winged butterfly
sipping a wee bit of sweet moist flowered perfume
unlike a neoclassical revivalist on a hurried mission,
but rather in a languid dream-like state;
or the skinny black bear higher on a swaying tree trunk
peering nervously near the ruins of an old mining tank
in eastern central Pennsylvania
where no honest reclamation had taken place;
or the unlucky snake sleeping in his dried skeleton
where no official headstone could be seen.
no, it was the all-important turn;
this unhesitating winding of my trail
around a rugged mountain; a reversal of one gnarly jeep track
of rutted rocky road, just as the late afternoon sun
soured & began to drop & purposeful strides were becoming more
hesitant, less sure of themselves. 
But at the certainty of this wonderful turn,
an alto saxophone immediately wailed with a clever jazzy beat,
the fingers of a great artist snapping me awake, poking my
backside with the concept of a burger and a beer, &
the wild-eyed pink Dogwood were heard barking excitedly, &
choreographed dancers jumped high-stepping from the surrounding woods.
Their infamous stage under house lights flashing was the tall dry grass
where i earlier rested with your juicy orange which i ate,
and my 4 hour walk on undulating ground and up steep & steeper which so
preoccupied my feet...
now and unmistakeably
tilted sharply downward to a still
far-away clear creek, but down down meant my mood was up up.
An amble on the wild side with peaceful intentions and a vow of strings of silence
(no mad helicopters zooming in for a closer look and photo IDs),
i without a topo map and going by old memory with even older notions,
would have a happy ending...
alongside the valleys' swift water always clean & pure.
i could almost touch my car,
and soon i would,
and then a beer.
i would drink to the butterfly and the bear,
while refreshing in your smile.

Native prairie grass

there is little to be learned from this trial by fire
if one is nude and tied to the most important stake
in the overwhelming presence of anxious enemies,
regardless of the time of day and in spite of several
persistent appeals to a hoped-for shared humanity.
not even half-hearted support seeps from the Speaker,
who has an embarrassing hand holding the doomsday gavel.
it doesn't matter if this speaker is masculine or feminine,
as a lusty sex is never part of their equation.
so i heard the deep bass sound of a 1980's Pink Floyd
tune and "I'm all right Jack keep your hands off my stack"
slipped insistently inside my spinning head, bounced me on The Wall.
When I moved closer to a full time job inside a virtual heart of darkness,
the beating roomful of intensity draped a single hood over my eyes
and from that moment i could not see from sea to shining sea.
the coffee chit chat space reminded me of a television reality show,
never to be canceled in spite of woefully low ratings.
outside, our great smoke is still visible, largely caused by fossil fuel burning
and often conjoined at birth by the charred corpse of a terrible irony.
during break time, a few souls volunteered for Yoga class and didn't seem
to mind trying to be mindful without the past or the future interfering.
their proud city high on a hill decked in white in spirit if not in style,
sits tightly connected in a fast 4G network, unconcerned that
the curtain is coming down, even while the audience shifts
uncomfortably in ever smaller seats.  all the house lights becoming dim.
here, ocean fish no longer go to school in abundance, & the glaciers melt.
no buffalo roam over running stretches of a once familiar world once
greenest with wildest native prairie grass, & the untamed Indians are gone.
no soft touch violet round-lobed Hepatica can be found flirting
with it's slender white eyelashes when a simple hiker pauses in search of lasting beauty.
there is much to worry about when the natives dance in circles
and Wednesday is always known as hump day,
even while the island sinks into the bay.

A Monarch butterfly

as i idled in the garden
while the sun came down for his visit
i heard a Monarch butterfly revving an engine,
squealing tires in a puff of foul black smoke
disappearing into a stealthy toxic haze
part pesticide induced and part no one gave a shit
about killing all the milkweed plants
and the larvae had no place to go because
a complex of concrete highways extended all the way to the coast.
the single Monarch butterfly heard the lawn mowers'
piercing growl and being an orphan had no one to be
responsible for, so in a brilliant maneuver
he got the hell out of there, but where he went
no one to this day knows.
despite the plundering, there are animals to be seen
but more of them are men.
men are loyal and self-serving, it's true, but without wings
they can not fly with the grace of a butterfly.

Le Bal des jeux (1922)

Man Ray snapped the shot
of Picasso's comedic eye
and there was indeed a wry smile
captured on film
which ultimately Gertrude Stein saw 
at a Beaumont party.
Picasso was dressed as a torero
and seemed happy for it, carefully
savoring extra caviar and sweet pastries
with his dainty cup of tea.
Olga made him do it, of course.
Were it his choice: hot beans,
cold sausage, and a few Bohemian friends
from the old days.
But, in this Paris spring and summer he was famous.
In winter, he traveled south, escaping
the fancy balls, masquerades, and the silly
Fitzgeralds.
He did not want to be an international
bird of paradise, as much as he admired birds.
He wanted to be Picasso, without upstaging
the invited guests.
His real eye watched the women, while
the real eye of Count Étienne de Beaumont watched the men,
and not very discreetly.
But he and Pablo remained friends,

even as they traveled to different parts.

Winter Landscape

so if he wrote with his blood
and exhausted the supply
he would certainly be dead;
much as using enamels
to create a path through landscapes
from black to white to red,
hoping to design a less wounded past,
he languished there instead.
and in heroic manner he drew
the unseen feminine roots,
which sank directly into brown soil
near where the distorted male tree,
agitated in a sexual fever,
grew heated into a boil.
two separate twigs, stretching, almost touched
until their final recoil.

Imagining Mother

like Wagner's operas,
her mouth ripened into an orange circle
uniquely her own when she tried to upstage my ambition,
but i continued to work even in the abstract.
in fact, when i finished a recent portrait
of my mother
it looked more like me than i did in infancy.
i'd guess she could have been my twin, but her hair was too
dark, the hard eyes very brightly German, and
even her pale complexion was not completely mine.
her head was drawn like a black grape
in a white glass
full of intrigue
and i heard her calling from the canvas
that i was late for supper.
i was amused by what looked like a case
of mistaken identity and
could not resist testing the limits, so
i continued to play.

Venice beach

with a subtle touch of
black charcoal, her green eyes disappear
where a moment before there was a muse
sitting under the Pacific sunset near Venice beach.
with her singular breath offering advice,
perhaps she was an antimuse when her dark hair
became red as the final rays of the strange day
transformed my outlook:
her face became an idealized portrait of a queen
instead of a wife,
a giantess replacing a slim woman of charm
losing her fire while my back was turned.
i saw an angular fisherman casting stones
into the water with a regular rhythm,
watching the tide move with his line.
and an Argentine child ran with a lively Spanish tongue
into the surf, splashing his small brains onto the evening sky.
a blonde girl rolling her way into town smiled
under a nearby palm tree, which gave me hope
that i could learn to skate with a steady balance.
and i grew satisfied with my painting, just as the
dinner crowd began to thin.
maybe my muse was amused.
i saw her on the boardwalk with an easel under her arm,
and it was a large arm, with a defiant eye watching my walk.
but i like Venice,
and it feels like home.

Burroughs

and if you think i give a shit

about william s burroughs

that skinny bugger wearing the infamous 3 piece suit or enjoy

his forehead wrinkles which give off a kind of mental smoke

as he slurs a beaten message with an ape-like malodorous ramble

about pissing into a porcelain sink in open view

of an innocent 1950s sweet little thing named LuAnne who has never seen a scarred penis

hanging from a dead man's hand or felt a loaded pistol inside her mouth

well, i don't give a shit

certainly not about any grandiose typewriter money

or his bowel movements in deepest penetration Tangier

where he goofed around smoking hashish, sniffing cocaine in Mayfair

atop a naked lunch counter where he ate big blackest meat for an afternoon snack

well, i don't give a shit

even if he was the only son of a bitch wearing clothes in a mad Warhol waiting room

when the junkie cops burst in looking for a queer saint wearing cheap clothes

and he quickly removed his tie and kissed each cop dead on the lips

and every one grew happy and every one began passing condoms

from hand to hand to hand, smiling in a soulful albino trance

well, i don't give a shit

and at the 34th street Greyhound station, i saw him reading the Herald Tribune

with a burning cigarette near his short finger, and

a Chelsea Girl showed him her pig face and he marvelously said

"You have no taste" but she wasn't paying him no mind chewing her gum

and she spit it away and began singing an old song about getting laid by an old man

but he was hard to get into bed while visiting friends in a New York city hotel

and if you think i give a shit

about william s burroughs

blowing white hot smoke up my ass or yours for that matter,

defending public narcotics and even hotter cocks in his ultimate hard core World

of knowing more about you than you know of yourself

well, i don't

i can't read Cities of the Red Night and i hate kittens, having

watched them frantically lap up warm milk from a tender bowl

he placed carefully on the carpeted living room floor

of his hidden house in Lawrence, Kansas

really, i don't feel at all comfortable driving around his legacy,

taking over the wheel and screeching the god damn tires and neither should you,

even if he is a corpse, walking or otherwise, half or whole,

puking or jacking off in a corner while looking you

straight in the eye, unblinking

so no, i don't give a shit

about william s burroughs

but he did have one hell of a ride.

Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892)

Whitman would tug manfully
at a favorite hat
upon his head or
without it on the ground.
He wrote promiscuous poetry
under an eternally erect sun;
in the darkness his night stars
like little captions of literary light
showed him what he expected,
not what others doubted.
In Song of Myself, he was
both the in and the out,
extravagantly
making a tune of considerable importance
for himself.
And sing he did, even boasting of
standing amused when he wasn't being very funny.
But he learned to carve a path to values
which he shared in his work.
And while he waits, with no misery on his beard
his eyes still burn.

Breckenridge, CO ski vacation

i didn't want to work
i wanted to ski
sliding from the safety of a chair lift
to the dangers of a steeply
snow-covered slope
i found myself caught in the middle
where an evergreen tree was dying in a beetle frenzy
leaning out of a wide sea of greener trees
like an executioner at a wedding
and even in spite of the beautiful view
i caught an edge and lost balance
momentarily lost hope but found myself
climbing that dead tree in spite of my most secret thoughts
or because of them.