Damn I feel happy
Walt Disney can eat my shorts
Craig Virgin can take people to the moon in his aero rocket for all I care
I’m going to grab the corners of my mouth and shove them up over my ears
gonna lay around the shack ’till the mail train comes back
gonna hop like a one legged crow on a day old happy meal
I’m going to bloom like a rhododendron looking to get his pistil wet
Oh. My. God.
It’s working.
It’s just words on a page
don’t simper or whimper
nasty is tasty
and wetter is better
than dinner details
or fan boy wails
the smell of rain
on hot cement
compels more
than impudence
Crouching Tiger
Proud Tiger’s lie in the hoary rough
Beneath Augusta’s august boughs
To the mortal eye would bring a tear
Yet the golfing god would acres tear
Until the lie became a slough
And if the slough be not enough
A lake would he plow up and swear
And toss his club, his face a rouge!
His reputation back to steer
To the lie where it lay
Not half so deep,
So beyond repair.
The man with the steel pierced lips leaned against the utility pole by the bus stop smoking. Blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth, he watched the cars on Broadway dart by like tropical fish returning from the feeding grounds. A heavy young woman with Downs Syndrome ate an apple and stared up at the man from her cross-legged perch on the sidewalk. Four number eight buses went by before theirs came. The man patiently waited as the woman got up off the pavement, counted her change and bought a ticket from the driver. “Things could be better, but they could be a whole lot worse,” he said to me, smiling, as he flipped his cigarette into the gutter as he got on the bus behind her.
the wind through the blue pine needles
kept thinking at bay
long enough
to enjoy your company
A fruit bat will hang upside down
all day at the zoo
waiting for a banana
so why won’t you wait
six seconds
for me to walk
across the crosswalk.
Asshole.
How detestable, how absurd
to be upstaged by an insipid Bird
thought Elmo with glum eyes gazing
as the puppeteer smacked him
with a six foot bird wing.
Masons laid up the basalt for the cottage walls between smoke breaks and beer the skeleton grew sideways first then a chimney spine and vertebrae
the breathing started later
rasping at first
then smooth sighs
finally growling at the end when the whole thing came down in an earthquake a hundred years later
Earth eyes looked up from below through the masons beer bottle glasses as they scraped the rubble away looking for anything salvageable amid the moldy fever dreams of a hundred years of nighttime wanderings.
I stepped out on the porch just now to see the light show in the evening sky. An hour after sunset, Venus is blazing away in the sky over Portland about 25 degrees above the western horizon. Higher and to the left is the stolid mass of Jupiter, somewhat dimmer but holding its own. I am told that even Jupiter’s moons are visible with a modest telescope tonight. Over the month Jupiter will descend in the sky, relative to Venus, as the fingernail moon rises from below. It as if the God of All Things Unknowable stepped out on his own celestial porch tonight, rang the evening gong, and lit these heavenly lamps to arrest our minds in wonder. How can one not be humbly grateful for such things?
After President Kennedy got rolled by his military advisors and gave the go ahead for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he upgraded his already man-sized stones to size El Duce and vowed never again. When the Cuban missile crisis came he was ready for the saber rattlers and he literally saved the fucking world.
Nobody sane would accuse President Obama of having a micro-pair either. He bet his presidency on little better than a 50 percent chance that Bin Laden was in Abbotabad, giving a one word order, “go.” Now, even after making the best of two horrible messes he inherited in Iraq and Afghanistan, he is again surrounded by the howling dogs of the war mongers and profiteers.
It will take a set of big titanium balls to back them all down now that Israel has made its plans for Iran clear and told Obama to pound sand. It’s go time, Renegade. All the choices are bad, but the worst is letting the Israelis and the Pentagon make the decision for you. Is Israel really prepared to say to the USA, we love you but we don’t need you? If Obama puts all his chips on the table, I don’t think so.
Watching the Republican candidates devour each other in an effort to appeal to their rabid but reliable base is like watching a guy in the arctic pee in his pants to get warm. It must feel good for a few minutes to hear the crowd roar about not paying for contraception, but the rest of the USA is thinking, really? I mean, really? What time machine did you guys hijack to get here? You want to take on the 98% of American women who have used birth control at some time? Why don’t you just put your dicks in a wood chipper along with your political careers and get it over with.
When traveling on unstable snow in the alpine backcountry, you sometimes get an unmistakable electric feeling a few seconds or minutes before the slope gives way. This American election is starting to give me that feeling.
My somber shoes lit flint blue sparks
walking over the best parts of your grave
Tell me, did they bring you here in a human bearing vehicle?
If so you could have saved some money
The supermarket
across the street is open late
I think I’ll go over
and get champagne and a single rose
for my next corporate values trainer
The waitress at the restaurant in Kapaa dressed non-threateningly in black pants and shirt. Her sleek, long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. Our eyes meet for a second and I hold my gaze for a split second longer than decorum allows. I see she is not another expat but a true daughter of the islands with the fierce beauty and wild gaze of a gazelle, her onyx eyes dark and lovely. She loses her careful mask for a moment, returning my look with unguarded island beauty.
I hear the paddles begin beating in angry rhythm on the sides of the war canoes. I have transgressed. I looked the chiefs daughter squarely in the eye, breaking taboo law. I am now subject to its harsh justice.
I am in the surf swimming for my life.
I have one small chance–if I can reach the outer reef alive ahead of the canoes full of warriors, my life will be spared. Spears shatter the water around me. Every gulp of air comes with the shouts of the blood lust closing in behind. My muscles are tearing themselves with the effort. Canoe paddles rhythmically vivisect the distance.
Shrill cries from shore. Mind split in two watching itself with odd detachment.
Vision narrows to a blue tunnel…can’t feel my legs…ears buzzing..floating…above the canoes…high over the reef…
Two Bass ales arrive at our table. “Your steaks will be up shortly,” says our waiter. A family with small children sits down next to us. The chiefs daughter picks up a stack of dirty dishes three tables away and walks back towards the kitchen. Someone brings a battery powered candle to our table. And I wonder if lived or died out there where that lone paddle surfer in the red board shorts is just now clearing the breakwater.
Steamship Carp
Lascivious Hibiscus
No-cheat Grass
Canadian Bunch People
Hearts of Commerce Lettuce
Lesser Ukelele
Runny Rubby Stuff
Posted in journal
Are we done shouting at each other?
Calling each other names?
Good, because I like the way you wear clothes
I like your smile— the same now as when you picked berries at twelve,
Waterskied at twenty,
Celebrated ground hogs day at thirty,
Leaving muddy toys on the back porch doormat for the kids.
Can you stop being such a princess?
No, on second thought.
Don’t.
Standing on our Kauai hotel balcony
At night
I see lights in the sea
Hey, Babe what are those
Unearthly lights like dolphins on fire
We finally realize they are people
Offshore swimming together
Wearing headlamps
Why are they doing that
Like they had nothing better to do
This morning clumps of people
Standing on the beach
Looking out to sea
Immobile, transfixed, reverent
Hey Babe, what the hell are they doing
Tai chi?
No one’s moving…
Then I see the whales offshore
Breaching–one after the other
Slowly like the children of giants
Playing hop scotch
Like they had nothing better to do
Oh
Last night and now
Oh
Kapaa, Kauai
Palm trees are built to feather the wind. In a hurricane they absorb the wind’s energy like a natural spring, releasing it between gusts. In a light breeze each grassy leaf acts independently, cupping and then quickly spilling the wind by pivoting slightly. The effect is to make every puff of the air flowing through the tree distinctly visible, while transmitting almost no energy to the trunk, having little in the way of a rigid branch system to do so anyway. Brilliant.
This morning I watched a mother sandpiper and her two chicks hunt for insects in the sand and dried leaves at this tree’s base. It was as tender a domestic scene as any family outing by any other species.
Woke up this morning hearing magpies calling to each other outside my window. Wikipedia says they are fiercely territorial and very smart. in fact they are the only animal that recognizes itself in a mirror. I’d love to know what a magpie uses this skill for. It seems to be a hardship to most humans.
The palm grass asks to be anointed
And lowly stalk becomes a bower
A sleepy sea minds not it’s mounts
Lifting armies to deliver
The requiem smithed from simple tunes
Rolls crescendos ever higher
A broken heart unseen in grieving
Hears heaven’s song in neighbor’s chatter
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
–Samuel Johnson
