... a kind of quiet resting

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2011

... a kind of quiet resting
keeping pace with thoughts
rolls along wave tops

Pacific is thinking today
gray matter drifts past
with fishermen

how is it so simple
and yet complicated …

now my thoughts and waves
compete for magnificence

Accident

Flickering green light stampeding through my eyes
Traveling vague dream roads with fleeting people
Whose luminescence stretches night shadow longings

Wearied ruinous sleep discomfits future meditations
Hammered by fluttering black walnut leaf breezes
Solitude creeps across the day like a missing jigsaw piece

Flickering like the light my thoughts struggle for solidity
Yesterday is gone again today has happened relentlessly
Tomorrow might see me speaking a new language

I am seeking new words to throw at my computer screen
To break my head into tiny pieces of immaculate sound
But the banging of leaves is asking foolish questions

Who delights in my walk at youthful tempo?
In what cupboard is my old face hidden?
What blood type is required to speak in prepositions?

Gathering my toys I drove west toward respite
In a vehicle too fast and too slow for thought
Once again reality interbred with my fading dreams

For greeting a bend in my road waving men
Thickened thought progress with semaphore arms
Circling their hands in downward spirals

Begging my senses to consider some new event
Directing my thinking into lower gear to observe
Single file traffic around an accident scene

This quiet rural highroad sun dappled
Wounded now like a broken blood vessel
An automobile rests turtle-like on its roof

Flipped to prevent escape from fate
One side imploded from sudden impact
Its armor of steel and glass shattered

Here and there other turtle like creatures
Strained necks or hove to along my road
Watching a dying creature pass on

Holding cellular devices aloft with concern
Waiting the arrival of emergency hands
Excited in the act of participation

One pacing pretty, a one-armed tigress
Charged a passing ad covered van reading
“Website development and maintenance”

Announcing to the driver her friend
A broad smile out of sync with events
That she was the messenger to 911

Our passing motorcade shook its heads
While someone on their knees spoke
To a life still inside its broken shell

Brilliant sunlight broke like a mirage
On the silver carapace with fat bloodied limbs
Waving slowly trying to achieve rightness

Gathering thought from the mottled light
And speed from a spinning earth
I pulled my head into the afternoon

Moment on moment dragged my road along
Under wheel memory purging memory
Rising gorge to crown despair

Jodorovsky's Principles

Using Jodorovsky’s principles
I might raise the Titanic just to sink it again
Or maybe I could reanimate Walt Disney
So he could see what’s happened in Tomorrowland

Wouldn’t I need to kill my father and fuck my mother
Like Pasolini’s Oedipus in an artistic tour de force?
I’d have to surface my unconscious longings
In boxing matches with Marcel Cerdan.

But really, really, couldn’t I just murder
CEOs of fortune’s five hundred plunderers?
I know a slaughter wouldn’t be surreal or sublimation
But it might just be murder fun in the first.

Using Jodorovsky’s principles
If I move my fingers into magic mudras
I conquer my primitive and murderous lustings
By simply steepling my fingers into a cathedral.

Sight

Photo: Diego Fernandes 2011

July 4th’s vigilant gaze above leftcoast cliffshores
Probe passions inside from landside an outside
Buddyless lone surfer surveys cold western swell
Where seafoam tidelines mark California edgerock

Green Pacific waters dissolve to grey Pacific mist
Fogs waft north to hide Marin and Point Reyes
Boredom of onshore hours in flat sessions
Send Buddyless and board wheeling homeward

Can the dragon guard of an approaching stormfront
Hear whispers of struggle between angry friends
C'est une question morale ancient exemplars adjure
Green eyes seek new horizons beyond the Farallones

Love Is Madness

This piece was commissioned for a wedding.

Love is madness

Bright sun entering my every pore
Must be your heat invading my senses
A cool tree shadow across my face .
As you look a question my way

Love is madness

Strange voices speak and I turn
Hearing echoes of you singing .
Any silhouette etched against the sun
I see your passing shadow .

Love is madness

Windows jumbled with exotic rubies .
I will throw them at your feet .
To moons above and seas green with longing .
We will ride paths of discovery

Love is madness

The blood red taste of new perfected wine .
It is naught a trifle to your briefest kiss
The shadow caress of floating silk
A hammer blow to your every touch .

Love is madness .

But here are we together now .
Fantasy at last wanting time
All my mad and fallow dreams .
Come bursting into bloom .

Fever

In the middle of my fever I see you play at understanding
My aching head repeats, “Mankind needs understanding”
Insects and elephants

And I hear Mr. Shah’s deep English inflections saying,
You need understanding in both ways, to be understood and to understand
Insects and elephants

I know you want to be understood, now desire to understand
My fever-racing thought of slaughtered terrorized millions
Insects and elephants

Recall this planet, the earth, The Earth, is an ark, The Ark
Not just to carry pairs of beasts of every kind, but you too, all
Insects and elephants

Of us, strange dark bushman strange pale American , them
Strange homo sapiens strut abilities for terror and empathy
Insects and elephants

But your capacity for them versus us fills you with pride
You understand who are the innocent and what is real and what is just
Insects and elephants

You know the who of we the why of them and the because of that
Our destinies never seem to intertwine our fate never to see
Insects and elephants

My fever speaks to consider shipmates, arkmates, them is us
Every strange I is you is we is us and to them we is us
Insects and elephants

Lost and Found

A chirping green light banner
Proclaim the caller searching
Our mislaid treasure, glass, steel, gold
So politely do I answer, surely will I seek?

Once upon a time in a seat
Still warm of transmitted body heat
I learn the seeing, learn the feeling,
Learn knowing the how of knowing.

Thwarted fingers, searching,
Climb through knots of hair
Seeking to loosen curled thoughts
Disturbed from a stream beneath.

The caller the seeker the search
Moving to a strange design
Breathing together across space
On the way to a weird objective.

Traveling tile to culmination
Our dance passes distractions
Reward for an unconscious
To bid a tender submission.

Gated together we succeed
To see a feeling of knowing
From under the shadow throne
To realize time under the sun.