<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Looking Back I See

I could’ov lived a poet’s life
roving ‘or the world of my dreams,
but wives ’n kids would not’ov stood
for unplowed furrows ’n nights unseen.
Hitched-up horses and dogs on leash
reassure more than mottled gleams
of moonlight shadow rippling ‘cross
tomcat’s wandering wild screams.

Longing’s fear in ignorance
threw chains on artist caperings
with love and safety held so dear
one’s spring and sparkle cooled and stilled.
An unburnt candle casts no light
nor wax-drip sears the hand ’holds it
but blaming others I cannot
for all my grasping at the wind
to root unlikely chance to ground
as time invisible slipped by.

Freedom’s mooring to throbbing life
is owning choices one has made
both all the triumphs and regrets
breath and heart have passed through beating
out life’s stream of incidents that
flow words thoughtless ’n wordless thoughts,
rising smoke in forgetting’s night,
mist burned clear in oblivion’s light.

Trust can be a rock secure as
haphazard happiness drifts by,
each man’s an island on his own
every woman’s a hurried sea.
The randomness of time and tide
lap eddies onto shores of mind,
a poet’s life must always be
lost starlight glinting on the sea,
harmonic chaos elegant
is understanding clarified.

Money is all evils’ flower,
evil is all money’s root,
Commodifying, life’s reduced
to lowest cost at highest price
in great lovelorn America
misled by those who make you see
the poetry in guillotines.
Why weaken truth, dull clarity
placating insecurity?

Poetic thought dissolves at last
in old hens’ prattling done and drowned,
Dylan Thomas died one night
from swelling of the brain, infused,
and so doth booze insight expand
the oft crabbed musing consciousness.
A failure I would bound to be
if questing life eternally,
but be assured this won’t be so
of me being free curmudgeonly.

12 February 2019

<><><><><><><>

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The Western Desert

Wild
expansive
empty
dry airless heat
choking windblown dust
the forgotten dreams of forgotten souls
now grains of salt
left by a lost ocean of tears
their songs now crunching tracks being laid
by chance wanderings of fleeting life
shifting from the unseen to the unknown
evaporating in time to ripples of light
and fallen crystals of grit.
My sunset will emblazon a vast horizon
for I jettison stuff in trade for space
and I jettison illusions in trade for time.
Tranquility, a timeless peace, is time with space
reconciled to casting away fear, desires and friends
illusions imprisoning bits of time
liberated for mindful living
all too soon just dissipated heat
the forgotten dream of a forgotten soul
empty
expansive
wild.

9 February 2019

<><><><><><><>

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Can’t Jump Out

The World’s on a careening joyride
snaking along Cliff Drive
high above the moonlit surf rocks,
with drunken Frat Boy at the wheel,
motor gunning, tires chirping,
and you blank-staring down the edge
married to Knuckleheads’ fate.

It’s not a tragedy to die alone,
but it is to die lonely.
How do I want to die?
Quick!
But if it has to be slow,
let it be with Brompton’s Cocktail
and a 100 micro-gram chaser
of L.S.D. 25, twice.

Enough plastic’s in humanity’s gut now,
38 years into the blinding dark,
to pop out shrink-wrapped shits.
My days are numbered
but I’m not counting
for I keep faith with Nature:
fresh nectar’s in the Hummingbird glass
and it’s December,
Flat Top Johnny’s 78th.

Postwar began 26 July ’53,
and the ’50s ended ten years later
22 November.
The ’60s launched New Year’s ’59
and crashed cold and hard late ’73.
The ’70s flat-lined sputtering out in ’79,
and America died 4 November ’80.
34 days later
the Bloody Blackness took us down
our hallucinating plunge
god-gifted insanity hypnotized,
untouched by real awareness:
if ignorance is bliss
this must be paradise.
My castaway’s wish for shining youth
is glorious triumph over our bones
and lost hopes’ ashes greening anew.

8 December 2018

<><><><><><><>

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Gone

I watch the rising sunset
as the world burns,
the blue chill haze in the canyon
rose orange above the trees,
the dry burn air sloshes listless
swaying fronds of dull stiff leaves,
the songs of birds are silence,
just a void of life is heard,
the light fades into flatness
horizonless blue-grey unseen,
lost thought entombed, enshrouded
in ashes of memory.

15 November 2018

<><><><><><><>

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

You Are That

If your happiness depends on others,
you will never be happy.

If your liberation depends on others
banding together to secure salvation
for you and your people,
you will never be free.

If you are waiting for humanity to awaken
to enlightened solidarity,
you will have wasted precious living.

Your happiness, your liberation, your salvation
will not converge on you
from the external world,
they can only emerge from you
if you choose them to unfurl.

The living body is the focus
of the universe reemerging,
the unclouded mind is the viewing
of that endless panorama.

You are that.

28 October 2018

<><><><><><><>

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Dawn Will Come Again

As our globe rolls towards the Sun,
our horizon flames into dawn.

The old white men
dour, dreary and dull,
have again succeeded in holding back
the fresh, vibrant, resplendent visions
of our young;
and have kept their arid world —
their gray, turgid, moneyed world —
safe from their worst fears:

the fear of
the magical power of women,
those incomprehensible creatures
that enthrall them so,
and own the womb of creativity;

the fear of
the fast scintillating rainbow of alertness
rampant
among the young, dark, numinous people
whose intense unfathomable awareness
is so confusing and uncontrollable.

But, once again, they have prevailed
in holding back the outbreak of rebirth:

so relieved
to have slowed to a standstill
the efflorescence
of those perennial human aspirations
that give warmth to the soul;

so relieved
to have kept their world safe for:
productivity, gains, exemptions,
well-funded exclusivity,
civility from the service class,
deference
from intellectuals, scientists, artists;

so relieved
in their continuing placid drift
of supreme satisfaction,
without impudent, jarring interruptions
of scorching reality;

so relieved,
as oblivious as possible in existences
completely superfluous
to the life of the human spirit.

As always, we await a new dawn.

I want to drink ambrosia,
like Apollo.
I want my mind clear,
I want my spirit drunk,
so I can regale you
with my lyrical dreams
of impossible happiness.

The dry leaves of exhausted summer
must brown, shrivel and fall
from dead brittle limbs
to crinkle underfoot,
beneath winter snows,
before a moistening thaw can return
budding hopes new and green.

And so,
praise be to the glory of youth:
dawn will come again.

5 October 2018

<><><><><><><>