Poetry

This is a duplicate that we are editing in the Poetry category

There had been small craft advisories,
Their boats were fewer,
Seas ran five to eight feet
With variable winds out of the northeast
Gusting to forty knots
Moving with the pod
Warm southern waters flowed into the currents.
As the storm abated and seas subside
We pass Provincetown
‘Round the horn
Passed the buoy
Into the sensations of the bay
Seas two to four feet
Sun obscured and waters warm
Echoes echo over the distances
Off the top and bottom
The floor and the air
Wave action pushing me toward land
Been in these waters before.
Now slightly disoriented
Separated from the group
In too shallow water
The waves are foamy
Something’s not right
Sensing hazard
The tides confusing
I bottom out
Helpless and alone
Sand below and around me
Socked in on my belly
I do not wrestle
I die, fin up,
Without struggle,
Resigned on the shore.

Gospel of the Redwood – A Song
When the poet asked the redwoods
About their long past lives
They laughed so hard their seed cones
Came afallin’ from the skie
We never die, said the mothers,
To the representatives of youth
Our roots they keep on propagating
New generations of same old me
And when we fall tall over
We’re still standing don’t you see.

Chorus:
We told this to the Yurok
And they quickly understood
No beginnings and no endings
Ever conscious, ever wood.

And what I asked of happiness
Are you only old and wide
Or is there something more to know 
Of what goes on inside
And again the mighty redwoods laughed
From their roots up to their roof
You humans are such dizzy folk
We’re not quite sure you’d know the truth
Our branches are in love with light
We’re earthly bound and heaven sent
Surrounded by our friends and kin
We see and feel without lament

On a humid, dark, cloudy summer night,
Temperature still in the high seventies,
Streetlights not working,
I step from my car as a huge fluttering bug
Flies smack into my lips.
I do not see it.
I know it is not a moth or mosquito,
More a furry flying beetle of some sort.
And just as I do not see it, I do not hear it.
Rather I feel its flutter and the soft thud
As it crashes straight into the very center of my closed mouth,
Smack in the middle of my pressed lips.
I blow and brush it away quickly,
Feeling its dimensions only slightly.
I respond in surprise and shock,
But without fear or disgust.
I know at once that I have been sweetly touched
Not assaulted or attacked.
And though my rational mind recognizes it as probability expressed
A happenstance of fate,
A random intersection of invertebrate and human,
I am aware instantly of having been kissed by a beautiful stranger,
A princess living in the body of a bug,
The light but explicit tap tap tap of god’s finger
Calling forth my attention

“Hey you,” the bug commands with her furry kiss,
“Wake up, we’re in this together, man.
Live life fully aware
And appreciative of me,
Fly around in the muggy dark night
Kissing strangers with me
Let’s be in each other’s company as much as we can bear.”

I dream that night I stand beside the rushing waters
Of a mountain stream which calls to me,
Bids me enter,
To be pulled along in the frightening, exciting, inexorable flow to the sea.
I imagine being in the water.
I imagine being water.
I am a furry bug
I kiss your lips.

There are many reasons
To travel to Egypt,
One of which is to inquire of the Sphinx,
”What should a man do?”
The instructions you are given specify only that you inquire
And make note of what you next perceive.
How you inquire is up to you.
 
1.

Approaching from the south
On your magnificent white steed
The sphinx faces east
To greet the sun, to thank the Nile
As it has every day
For over 5000 years
Over a million sunrises.
A lucky man may see one
A persistent man many
The same sun for 100 generations
Rises up and exposes the sphinx.

 
The steed and the man approach as close as possible
Close enough to see her damaged nose
Her whiskers twitching in the wind from the south
She can smell you before she sees you,
The man with the question.
It is noisy, you can hear the adjacent city
Horns, sirens, the sounds of other horses, camels, asses, humans, flies
You sit your mount hoping for the moment.
The constant Sahara stops whistling and biting your face
Then as if bidden, for no apparent reason,
The wind subsides, and the city stands still.

So you reach out to her, for the iron is hot
And say out loud, loud enough for a deaf sphinx to hear,
”What should a man do, Sphinx?”
And then you listen.
The high shriek of a hunting bird comes first
Then the song of many birds
Had they always been singing and you just
Didn’t hear them?
Or had their song just arisen?
You may count twenty thousand new suns
And still you will not know
Although it is now a little clearer what a man should do.
 
2.

Approaching from the north
On foot, as close as you can
Close enough to see her damaged nose
The sound of a muezzin calling
Signals the time to stop and be still.
A chorus of male voices joins in the chanting
Then another caller calls
And more chanters respond
All vowels emerging from the swollen gut of the soiled city
Saccharine, sacred
It is all too real
You must sit down in wonder
Awaiting quiet
Aware of the ancient cemetery
The clatter of camel hooves
The voices of your kin
When all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason,
But as you knew it must,
The hoof beats cease
The chanting ceases
The wagon wheels stop turning, stop grinding
The wind subsides,
And the city is still.
So you say out loud, loud enough so the sphinx may hear,
”What should a man do, Sphinx?”
And the voice of a young boy in a silenced carriage
Says,”Baba.  Baba.”
 
Did you hear that, Baba?
You may count your twenty thousand new suns
And still you cannot know
Although it is now a little clearer
what a man should do.

During the night a warm front
Passes over the frozen snowpack
And with it a sense of hope
And forbearance
Of limited visibility
Thickened air
And the pregnant
Odors captured in foggy droplets
That wolves and hunters know
Air warmer than the earth
Cats mewling
As we are mewling
In darkened bedrooms
Resentment, regret, and sorrow
All now like snow on the ground
Hidden in the wondrous fog

We stones don’t speak very loudly
Start there.
And although we can yelp and scrape
And bang into one another as well and as loudly as most matter you’d know of
The fact is that stones are mostly quiet
Introverted some would say
Not like creatures with their mouths open and life cycles measured in milliseconds
No, we go back before the stone age, waaay back,
Part of the molten age
After the gas age
When all was one blended brand
Before the Great Differentiation
Before air, before water.
Before I was whole
Before I was broke
Mostly quiet
Often wet
Rolling a lot and for a long time
And getting better at it
On a beach somewhere
Recently deposited
After many long journeys
Well rounded
Attuned
Mobile
Maybe even curious by now
Aware of the heat of the sun
And the cool of the night
The soft of the sand
And the soft of the hand
That lifts me
And numbers of my kin
And brings us to something called home
And arranges us he says
In some design he says
That is absolutely unintelligible to us.
But it is nice to be resting again
And I seem to be in contact with other stones
Who also came home with me
From the beach.
I like change
And I like rest.
And just bein’ a stone is alright with me.

I live among barbarians
People who fart at the dining room table
People who eat cows
And kick dogs
Business account executives
Wasting the gift of time
Negotiating abstractions
People living apart from one another

I hide from them
In the woods and the dunes
In alleyways and tents
Trying to move in obscurity and safety
To not rattle the rows and rows of opened cages
To not awaken their eager indifferent war machines
Their hungover stupors
Their trigger happy play
To not awaken their collective anger
And mythic gods
To not care about tit contour shaping brassieres
Golf scores
Relative wealth
Some daily disaster that passes as news
While all that is good and free is ignored,
Taken for granted, not acknowledged
Not honored
Not even seen.
Life among the barbarians

© 2016

Heavily armed police are everywhere.
The Pentagon provides these servants of public safety
With surplus offensive weaponry
The clock is loudly ticking
The Military Industrial Complex
doing well everywhere
Well-armed, well paid. 
Thriving in dysfunctionality  
Caught in a whirlwind of ill chosen choices
Toilets flushing shit into oceans by the billions
garbage everywhere
Many hungry and homeless
The hint of German accents in times of war
Of truly mad men
Unfortunate men
Presidents, generals,
corrupt corporate executives
unwilling to return to the dream time
unable to sing
in the wrong place at the wrong time
like a creature trying to find his way out of a pitch dark room
you can hear their shuffling pace
as they trace the outline of the wall
with their fingertips
bumping into chairs and bureaus
edging past windows and closets
trying to find a door which opens
to reveal the earth as she is
hurtling thru time and space
east to west
spinning deliriously
the hint of light
a bird so clearly wounded it has to be dying
by the woodshed
laying in gray and blue and soft white feathers
fluttering in leaves and twig
in darkness
to die
before the nuclear power plants kill us all
outdated, leaking, toxic
destroying the planet
poetry, music, song, dance
lost as midwives to unpredictability
humans unable to solve these problems
placing the death factories precisely where they will do the most harm.

The choice
Was stark
Sit at my desk drafting legal memoranda
Or go to the beach
To watch the sunrise.
The dog was very clear,
Wise some might say.
The boat with the red light on
Moving silently across the horizon
had also gotten the message.
The seals
The solitary fisherman
His baited hook sailing thru the air
The cigarette dangling from the fisherman’s lips
The brilliant colors
The couple hugging
Seagulls
A photographer
An infant
The dead creature the dog was rolling in
The hopes and promises inherent in the spinning of our planet
The spinning of the dervishes
The spinning of the hook

I count
as far as my eyes can see
North and south along the border between earth and sea
Between sea and sky
One hundred footprints
reminders of one hundred journeys
One thousand stones
rolled here by ancient glaciers
And restless seas
Stretch marks visible on their distended bellies
The light that travels ninety three million miles
To brighten the dawn
The first glimpse of mother’s face
The first taste of mother’s milk
Knowing what warm is
What winning feels like
How joy thrives in acceptance
The papers still waiting on my desk
The words unwritten
The thoughts unformed
Geese traveling south
Our earth spinning eastward
The black dog and the white dog playing
Glad the seasonal restriction on their presence has been lifted
Labor Day a distant memory
The fishing line cast
The tide retreating
The illusion of time
The growing space between the sun
And the distant sea’s edge
No longer daybreak
No longer dawn
The day upon us
The magnificent seal
now paused on her journey
To stare at the foreign shore.