Time was, when I thought it strong,
to hold back and block all my feelings.
Inestimable the emotional devastation
I doled out on those unfortunates who loved me.
How can you dam it up so?, said the therapist's stare,
still her empathy opened my mind to smiling,
chiseled my heart from the glacier.
And slowly I learned to act out my dreams,
the wounded clown learned to cry.
Pride bled in the thickets of human *******.
Now, when I dream of life, I am perfectly amazed,
my singular life drawn to those who loved me regardless.

Onyx night drinks up the stars,
swallows the moon alive,
a constrictor engulfs
my eyes as prey.

Ghost roars its displeasure,
lest mortals dare to stare,
past the line of trees,
that burns to galactic core.

My sight averts the horizon,
forcing this universe
to make quantum choices,
who sees what and when.

All elsewheres being equal,
the Monarch Butterfly
prefers to winter
in Michoacan.

You told me once
that even chairs have souls.
Since then I've grieved
for all the dim sum.

Imagination is so ******,
an odd portal
for poetry,
which explains the sweat.

I'd give all
the taxis in Vegas
for a do-over
before I'm obsolete.

So, I'm heading
for Michoacan
to winter
in the sweat.

I endured spiritual time dilation in life's stasis field,
held to a course you unwittingly set for us 40 years ago.
Back then, I knew instictively you were my beacon,
never doubted I should follow blindly, without question,
even when I lost sight and only drifted the cosmos,
always the gyroscope spinning in my head
whispered, She's still out there, leading.

So, I absorbed whatever light filtered in,
performing some manner of karmic photosynthesis,
noxious vapors escaping, replaced by vital oxygen,
a mere algae amongst humanities' phytoplankton.
And when the time-space coordinates aligned,
you re-materialized, as you'd always been there,
my sister, my spirit-guide, my love.

I cannot restore the lakes that teemed with fish,
nor the maples cultivated by the Mohawk,
the Adirondacks now more remote than boyhood,
a lost dark conversation with jejune oblivion.

Events became the storyline of my life,
and events were always stronger than resolve.
My journey took me inward without time schedule,
dredged up expediencies as layovers.

Still, I felt drawn to the people,
who bejeweled my dreams in neuron flashes,
became therapy, billboards along the escape route.
Turned out that vital knowledge would suffice.

Your promised proof lacks rigor
and riots down the corridors of logic,
strong women bleeding inside,
all their energy confined in a wind tunnel.

I am not persuaded that my sisters are a dream,
though they die the long death of injustice.
How their voices swarm in my windows,
like maddening windchimes in a storm!

Your promised proof a color on no spectrum.
I set sail with the tide seeking forgiveness,
seeking the Newland where men do not subduct,
where oceans merge with female currents.

You do the math and I'll provide the irrationals,
as I tend to cling to panic in the asymmetry of life.
In this Twenty-First century women still suffer
from laws streaming out of councils of men.
These are not self-stabbing heroines,
they do not ask the heavy deluge of derision.
They are faced with laws stemming from an abbatoir,
from men who wish to usurp the birthright.
Men who have become strangers to their own mothers,
men whose ***** dispense a fouled milk,
men who deserve an **** ultrasound colonoscopy.
So, I beg you to balance the inequality of the equation,
gather our sisters in this non-Euclidean space:
this is one we solve by inspection!

I am curled upon myself in eleven
hidden dimensions predicted by Superstring Theory,
confident revealing my whereabouts
precludes guessing my velocity.

Paradox of uncertainty handed down by
Heisenberg, mental Mobius of mind,
tethers my strong nuclear force,
I am King of Quantum.

I vibrate in energetic strings
octaves below scale of Stradivarius,
seeking a unified framework
for the duality of space and time.

Like a black-hole event horizon,
where no thought escapes
this gravity of mind,
I ponder blinking out of existence.

Between empty junction gullies of the Dogskin mountains,
the BLM has once again released their Judas horses
luring the free ranging mustangs into capture corrals.

Their crime --- thriving in a battle of survival.
I assure you the Comanche do not dance around the fire,
nor does the ghost of Cortez roll in the wildflowers of El Dorado.

Ironically this native species is now considered feral,
introduced in the very habitat which shaped its evolution,
arcanely empowered to exceed enviromental carrying capacity.

The lands of nature are so dear: rejoice their freedom!
The mountains do not judge, they merely shelter.
Let the mustang graze unfettered through winds of dawn.

I am the shy man
you see at 6 AM in Starbucks
umbrella cocked under my left arm like a guidon,
formless and murky as the latte in my cup,
neufchatel slathered on the bageled
cusp of a new day, one bus token removed
from yesterday's office, aspiring
toward tomorrow's and the next day's sunrise,
convinced of nothing printed
in splashy headlines of USA Today.

I am the strong man
who smiles at the concept
of growing *******, watching women
surrender their eggs, take on new testicles.
I would eagerly belly
your child, assume your burden,
let you envelope me with velvet
***, dream submissive destiny
in the absence of Bodhisattva's caress,
if delicious debauchery empowers you.

I am a Boy Toy on the half-shell,
a nascent embryo filled with dread
of wombs which recently had bound me.
You offer deliverance. I am seed
in your fertile loam-brown soil.
I germinate sinking roots in your mind,
fully conscious I will flower,
a stubborn hybrid planted for your pleasure.
I am a pilgrim without a rock,
the twilight sky beneath your periwinkled heavens.

Summer struck with the fist of Chicxulub,
incinerated spring in a blinding flash.
Abruptly the pond on Chehalis Trail
was topped with water lilies,
where famished families of water fowl had
festooned the serenity of the surface;
now vanished for cool Canadian climes.
Racoon eyes peered in night shade green,
Foxglove and California Poppy brushed
through blades of overgrown grasses.
Crow song battled with Stellar's Jay,
the morning's true American Idols.
I stirred from slumber to impatient cawing,
chiding --- The best of day's awaiting.

I was off to savor summer's sugar,
lest autumn slip in unannounced
on the coats of Quetzalcoatl.

There is a balance between science and intuition;
only the myths of priests can disturb that account,
can sadly arrest the bloom of human consciousness.
As we look deeply with telescopes into the cosmos

or inward to the radio-waves of cranial thought,
the No Smoking sign of religion holds humanity back.
There is no Paradise Lost, only that not yet attained.
Silencers muffle, as if the skyes were empty,

the mind subordinate to some Proper Name.
If we are to Live, we must go there.  Out where
the nebulae birth new stars, in there,
where the id recklessly whispers, Good-Bye.

To this life,
replete in unconnected fragments,
           you are glue,
                       bonding disjointed existence,
                       exhalting impassioned communication,
                       raising love beyond visible heights.
                                       There are no sounds without receiver;

what good are nimble thoughts,
           without the same --- a lover
             with whom to share?
                       Every separation is a link,
                                making closer the rendezvous.
                       Every revelation a mortar,
                                 cementing admiration in opposites.
                                           I need to know

the unknowable you,
            dissimilar as we are,
            routinely disagreeing,
                        reinforcing our mutuality.
                                             O delicious paradox,

delight me,
           in the not knowing
           in the riddles
                     of relationships.
                                          We both appreciate

Carroll's Rules of Jam ---
         Jam tomorrow or jam yesterday,
                      but never jam today.
                                           My trusted ally,

who but we,
           shall prevail against such logic?
           Let's share
                     *six impossible beliefs
                                         before breakfast.

Staring at the contours of the hours,
I watch the minutes and seconds
drift across the dunes of time and
realize my life is blown away.
The tectonic plates of months and years
have slipped across a hot spot of
final days, left only volcanic peaks.

Sorrow picks the lock of my future;
yet, you somehow shimmer,
a mirage on the horizon, an oasis
in the desert of time's geography.
Seeking perspective, I've climbed
the eons' highest mount to view your waters.
I will not thirst, saved by your river
running silently toward the ocean's expanse.

At the going down of the sun
will the world be less complete,
the cinched robe of night less intolerable,
as she ebbs away on cosmic string,
emulating a massless, dazed neutrino
blinking in and out of existence,
unobserved and uneffected,
liquored and unloved?

In the wake of a June flowering,
when foxglove lures the honeybee
in six day flash, bud to corolla,
blossom to blossom, parade of stigmas,
digitalis stamen braved, anther at his back,
the bee comes gathering where none else dare.

In parlance of the street he's a dumpster-diver,
scavenger of non-losing wager or proposition tickets.
You'd see his fragile frame each night
walking the isles of the race and sports books,
a condor's aerial eye trained on the floor,
back visible only to casino surveillance cameras.
Seated atop a barstool at the back,
I watch him bend, examine and discard,
through the prism of my scotch glass.
Every food chain has its bottom-feeders,
he brings efficiency to the gambling ecosystem.
Likely not the life that you or I would chose,
but then he has no monthly credit card to pay.
Just now, I saw him straighten and smile,
a parlay ticket will pay for tonight's meal
with just enough left for a brown-bag.
He does not go uninvited to misfortune,
the streets tonight are lined with chance's down.

It'll all be over in about eight minutes,
Give or take, depending on your side of the Earth,
Plasma therapy for the masses.
Just like that, we're all crispy critters,
Pork rind skins flavored with dehydrated sea-salt.
That beautiful aurora-generating magnetosphere,
Shrinking daily, as the planet's poles reverse,
Will puncture like a too thin prophylactic.
The Christians will have just minutes,
Reminding us that we were prophesized
To all go out in fire and overlooking
That we're actually being ionized with radiation ---
A mere trifle to the True-Believers.
Will the Dow-Jones sell off in those final moments?
Will the Russians attempt to launch a Soyuz?
The Brits will take it all in stride with another pint;
Aussies venture on their final walkabout.
As for me, I'm gonna saddle up a pony
heading straight out to greet the Joshua trees.
I want to meet annihilation on my own terms.

We sat in the overlook above the Serpent Mound
in the heat of that garish July afternoon,
sunlight scorching our pallid skin,
like rays through a magnifying glass,
till we could endure no more and
sought the shroud of skyscraper elms ---
halfway houses of leaf, bark and cellulose.
Minutes before we'd signed our names in the visitors book,
like giddy high-schoolers autographing a yearbook,
recording our wayward lover's sojourn
to a site the Hopewell worshipped in celebration of existence.

For what purpose do we worship this ground?
I wondered as we walked beside the curving icon,
that undulated in rolled earthen coils down the *****,
sine-waves loosed from a colossal oscilloscope.
Are these coils symbolic of our future's meandering relationship?
Her exploring hand upon my ****
drew me from thought to evaluation of this unexpected caress.
But for the heat, I'd have shown her what idle foreplay begets!
Great Serpent, this was not Eden's carnal karma
acted out in a second Genesis! ---
though a symbolic egg spews from your mouth.

This sleepy little galaxy,
lost in the milieu of a billion others,
is filled with song and the finite
thrum of human hearts.

This glow-in-the-dark Milky Way,
whose pinwheel arms
are spun with satin stars,
emits Mozart from its crevices.

This nondescript spiral,
axled upon a super-massive black-hole,
frisbees across the universe,
curving it with the maths of Einstein.

Space travelers are we all,
learning the gravitation-crawl.

Did your English toughness lead you to reject
the ancient discontents of history,
to rather seek modern realms of ethical choice, Wystan?
There were no streets named after you,
nor monuments sculpted in the parks,
nothing that would say more than your words.

Words read and pondered in ritual
to better grasp the gruel and poverty of my own.
You talk in my sleep, Professor,
staring back at all that I am not,
teaching that art is born of humiliation.
Did the shaving mirror stare as cruelly?

The task is in the present moment,
Auden's poetry civilly requests a comment.

Memories diffuse,
like sunbeams glint off a lake,
become phenomena, evade the tangible.
In unsteady light I see my father
rowing toward our favorite fishing cove,
the wavelets of our wake
real as that late August evening.

We bait our hooks, conversation
merely phatic communion\ I know he's cheating on Mom.
Words anchor heavy.
As my face turns into the wind
to dry tears without his seeing,
questions rise in my throat,
like a volcano about to erupt,
but I have no voice to ask them.

So we sit, dangle mono-filament
thoughts in dying twilight.
Father and son,
brooding statues of Buddha,
mute as bullhead on the bottom.

Epiphany from the Berry Fields

You would not come with me
through constellations of Jack-in-the-Pulpit,
your reasons shrouded in obscurity.
I went there once to pray ---
Did I tell you? ---
I spied a grey squirrel
gnawing a cherished butternut
in a fury of drunken hunger;
forgot at once my prayers.

You went instead, alone,
to the Kingdom of the Mushroom.
I sealed my mouth
afraid to enter there.
You saw violent phosphorous rivers and
vivid galloping colors,
that were of mystical internal origin.

We might have eaten
vine-ripe strawberries and
drunk cold mountain water,
that gushed from the mouth of
the cave under the cliff.

Perhaps, like me you were afraid,
terrified by florid fields and familiar female.
How sad ---
Sometimes I am so dense ---
I should have told you,
I went there in the distance
as a girl.


       *Coincidental Drift

Through the airport window pane,
isolated, I watched the jet
traverse the field in silent shimmering motion.
My vagrant gaze remained
fixed upon the infinite horizon
long after the shadowy
plane had passed from view.
This seemed to me to parallel
my motionless furtive feelings,
as after one I've loved
has migrated in another season.

It was not long after this
that she re-entered the room,
bathed in the murmur of
alluring fragrance which
quickly drew my mind from
the solitude of thought to
a sensual appreciation of her perfume.
How easily she drew my mind astray
from pleasant thought of you and yesterday.
I recalled how earlier this morning,
as she lay neither asleep, nor awake,
but somewhere in between,
I had tried to touch her outstretched hand,
yet, uncannily she had withdrawn it.
The smoke that wafted above our bed then
was the only pervading reality and
not the Mona Lisa smile on her face,
nor the emptiness of my longing hand.

She's said, *She's ready ---
--- that her bags are packed ---
and shouldn't we be going?
Yes, Yes I suppose it's time.
And a wind howling in my brain recalled,
I'd either been here once before or
seen it etched upon an empty sky.

She has decided to grow her hair.
Not for frugal reasons, mind you,
rather, to see the extent of the future.
Or, how tangled it might become at length.
Why do women grow their hair?,
she postures to the mirror.
It's like deciding to go to market,
when there's already sufficient in the pantry.
Pouring water through the tresses
to cool like an Icelandic fjord,
trickling bubbles down to a spurious sea.
The squeakings bring enjoyment,
a sense of karmic victory.
*Knot it and make mysterious!

Celebrate the invisible embrace.
You will be quite alone,
When the altruistic deed is done.

Content your heart in silence.
No choir will raise its voice
To sing your praises.

Consign your life to anonymity.
History no longer needs
Martyrs to fill anthologies.

Comfort your dreams in oleander.
Flowers are an appropriate caress,
For love conferred in obscurity.

Cultivate a flair for solitude.
Isolation is the purifying fire
That steels a damascene soul.

I have hidden incognito a decade in this desert,  
enscounced in the Bad Lands of a wasted life,  
evading both politics and the Bureau of Statistics,  
immersed in maths for senseless games of chance.

I forget promises and birthdays with equal disregard,  
attempt mental reconstructions of past events,  
seeking the forgiveness I have no power to grant,  
all my atoms expanding heirlooms of critical mass.

The gravitational attraction of lifelong friendships,  
dithers perception at the horizon of a span of years,  
warping the wormhole space between our arms, our minds.  
I need only for you to ask that I should stay.

In soft darkness my aura of sadness emanates.
O'er cresting notes my lonely whistle treads.
Night birds sing to me their potentate
And lull the drifting images in my head.

All this my emptiness devours,
It feeds upon such times and moods.
My youthful optimism cowers;
Ideals tonight are mere exotic foods.

Do not look for me 'neath street lamps.
I shun the light, as wolves would shun a fire,
Preferring the company of street tramps,
Who seem to understand a man's desires.

So foolish are the rash, deceiving hearts,
Which convince our minds that love is rare,
For not infrequently a couple parts,
Never realizing the secret was to care.

She came down from Mt. Rainier
wearing khaki park ranger's garb,
a female Moses descending Sinai,
clutching a leather chapbook,
survival notes for a “Dangerous Life”.
Nightingales were songbirds for the grief,
as MS stole in like 'Frisco fog,
unnoticed by a comet-blinded public.
And when the awards came,
strokes of jackpot luck,
acquired enthusiasms soon were
dropped in excruciating back spasms.
She touted poetry as civic-glue,
paste for a populist purpose.
Olympia’s oracle rarely leaves the house,
curtains drawn, newspapers unread,
writing feverishly, as “The Body Mutinies”.

Swirl devil wind,
reek dusty havoc.
A mustang watches.

Silly hermit crab,
try on a new home,
a Budlight can.

Longacres racetrack,
ghost horses called to post
by Boeing trumpets.

I would decoupage
our love.
Life for art's sake.

My hanging fucshia
attracts a humming bird.
The nectar's on me.

Regardless how precise the assay of their life,
Most men must remain an enigma;
Their motivation fired by inner strife
A polymorph for which no sigma,
Nor algebraic symbol will suffice.

No If and then which personality
To a course of action thus relates,
Nor can it be hypothesized conditionally,
The turmoil emotion intrinsically creates,
When alone they stare into death's reality.

Two dimensional is the biography of any man.
We see his length and width, never grasping depth,
Though fortune deems we live within his span.
Much like this into my life have crept
Those I love, yet may never understand.

The dealer's upcard is a bust prone six;
The count screams my two tens should be split.
But the pit-boss glares like Charon guarding Styx;
I fear an obolus chip could serve as passage bit.

Surveillance cameras peering from above
have most surely pegged me as a counter.
I want so much to give my chips a shove,
But back-room paranoia renders me a doubter.

I stare into the frenzied dealer's eyes,
Concern says she knows I know she knows.
A prudent man would be saying his good-byes,
taking win or loss as fortune of the cards bestows.

Discretion and all that, I shall be sage;
I scoop my chips heading for the cashier's cage.

Granite plaque in a tulip bed, end to the Oregon Trail.
Teminus for ordeal by ox and prairie schooner,
where slight survivors began rejuvenation,
the wretched fortunate refusing a backward glance,
children with ancient faces set atop skeletal frames
tried desperately to remember what it meant to play.
Manifest Destiny's broken terra incognitae rested.

Swamp Mama Johnson's concert in the park,
a blues-to-the-wall celebration of life and love,
was a saxaphoned shibboleth for offbeat orphans.
Homeless youth played hacky-sack in time;
a baglady danced with the little girl with Downs;
a camera rocked on the shoulders of the PBS man
--- Olympia gave hommage to ghosts in the gazebo.

Dusk and dust envelop this intriguing Amish couple,
as she watches through the windshield of her parked car.
She's been observing sporadically for well on seven weeks,
as they've taken the old relic of a house
from disrepair to today's refurbished splendor.
It will be their home.

Away in the adjacent field, his straw hat barely visible,
an elder guides a team of Belgians five across
from the furrows of the tract toward the dying sunlight.
She follows them with her eyes, marveling their magnificence
and his unassuming control of their power.
They are the source of the dust.

Outside the house another Amish woman, perhaps
their mother, unhanging clothes, while a baby
plays upon a blanket on the ground. Black bonnet on her head,
flowing soft blue dress, and bib apron, she works
serenely as the sun melts warmly down the western sky,
leaving in its wake the dusk.

Dwindling moments of a day that mark a turning point
for the young couple and their unseen spectator.
For them a place to make a loving home amongst
their brethren and for her a revelation in her life.
She's committed once again to love's entanglements.
Dusk and dust have claimed another.

On chilly, weird wet nights in Seoul
lonely trash cans cuddle up for warmth,
feral alley cats zydeco in the rain,
street folk sip from brown-bags,
that will get them through the night.
Our umbrella slips through fog,
stealthy as a U-boat through depths.

I confess a fetished fondness for the click
of her heels upon the cobblestone walk;
the Angel Falls of raven hair down
the leather shoulder of my trenchcoat.
We will harbor heat within the sultry sheets,
toss carnally upon waves of sensuality,
opposites secluded in the Yin and Yang of night.

Standing alone outside the Mirage,
I felt like the only gambler in Las Vegas.
The parlay ticket in my pocket guarded,
like a Top Secret document,
loss would do me
"grave and serious damage".
But don't we all thrive on taking chances?
Some of us simply lack the courage to admit so.

I saw her legs first, emerging
from the limo in nyloned perfection.
Now a valet opening the casino door,
words gathered, a stone in my throat,
"Would the lady care for company?"
I made myself a dog at odds of 8-1,
yet, a crooked finger beckoned me follow.
I felt like the only gambler in Las Vegas.

By 1959 the only labels that she wore all said drip dry,
but as I peered through the sliding pocket door
into her master bedroom, there was Mom
holding against her slip a satin blue Coco Chanel.
She smiled in the floor length mirror\ I swear that dress smiled too.

Instinctively, I knew there must have been a time,
when that dress could tell a story that would be sensational.
Then she sighed, re-folded it and replaced it in the cedar chest.
Clothes are always designed for the young, and
unless it's worn, a dress has no life of its own.

Nowadays, when I see the ocean foam
slick the beach like a colossal latte,
when the autumn forests change
their primary colors playing leaf-frog,
when the jonquils fight up through
springtime snow-melt in defiant coalescence,
I remember that last day I saw you,
your *** swaying in those white shorts,
a mesmerizing metronomic heat in pants.
Ordinarily, I would not speak such things aloud,
but then, regret tends to amplify
walking empty streets at night
with only icy stares from stars to reprove me.
Eventually, I'll slumber beneath my satin comforter,
and dreams will dance like the aurora
at the foot of my half-empty bed.
It's then I'll see those legs again,
emerging from the white cotton shorts,
yet, no cosmic connection will bring
this vision to the woman haunting it.

The Saturday night crowd, all here to see Dave Van Ronk,
sit huddled in the fashion of Antwerp diamond cutters,
sipping cinnamon/marshmallow coffee at the tables.
Caffe Lena is Saratoga's happening place in the 60's and
we're here to forget the war and civil strife in the ghettos.

Sister Mary Katherine, sans frock, is the warmup act,
but no one really gives her any mind,
as she struggles to seat herself upon the stool
intended for the six-foot plus Van Ronk.
Joan Baez prepare to eat your heart out!

Without so much as introduction, she
breaks into a high soprano Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.
Heads pivot like synchronized swimmers toward the stage.
Her silken voice emits notes blinking
into reality from quantum fluctuations in space/time.

Every quivering high-C grafts the audience together.
She's spinning veils of sound,
the like of which our ears are unfamiliar.
The quavers in her throat match the tremors in my coffee.
In the back of the cafe a drunken Van Ronk passes out.

Sadness never signalled us a sign from the cosmos,
left us to decipher the bones of history in quest of omens.
Unheeded, despair overflowed us like a desert sand storm,
buried us in credit ennui and economic laissez-faire.

World leaders formed escalating groups, G-5, G-12, G-20,
still the banks camouflaged in oppressor's language,
invented derivatives against all uncertainty, save their own,
till Wall Street acquired the stench of backed up urinals.

Only when the desperate sallied into the world's streets,
emoting songs that gushered from the wells of outrage,
did rolling blackouts of democracy unearth the buried cities,
freeing a wind that whispers ruin in uncompromising sunlight.

The fundamental phenomena in nature are symmetrical
with respect to interchange of past and future.* --- Richard Feynman

                 Millions for Defense

In the Cabinet room of Monticello, clutching Decatur's letter,
the President removes his wire-rimmed glasses ---
Frigate Philadelphia has been burned.
Decanting a bourbon, he pours and quaffs.
Outside in the piazza the cicadas' din is unbroken.
The Pasha of Tripoli has his tribute!
In three short hours warm rays of sunlight
will greet the outstretched arms of Earth,
but for now the bourbon scintillates.
Ink splatters on the blotter,
as he pounds a clenched fist upon the desk.
Not one cent!, he pronounces to the wall-clock.
Cicadas hold sway in the Charlottsville night,
but on the Barbary Coast a fire is raging.

She's manifested today like a ghost
appearing from a haunted house.
Desertion is that inhabited manor
from which the voices in her head
urge her into exile, urge her phantom existence.
Sitting upon the berm overlooking
the beach and lighthouse of Coos Bay,
she wishes she could ride the setting
Pacific sun to New Guinea or beyond.
Below five athletic young women
contest the physics of a soccer ball,
imagining the red-white lighthouse a goal.
In other times she'd ask to join them,
but she must lose her personal history now,
remain hidden in plain sight.
The loneliness of this subsistence
a charnel house blackening her heart.
She's Amelia Earhart about to crash
the Yukon's heartbroken cry.

They had begun to question consciousness,
turning solid matter into fuzziness in their brains,
rendering not atoms, nor photons, nor particles,
only cold energy, halucenogenic stardust joints.
For the exclusionary few to whom the material
had never meant **** to a tree or a **** to a rabbit,
it was the cash-cow of quantum reality,
ambiguous poetry for a Beat Generation,
Uncertainty in free verse chapbooks.
So they wrote of our interconnectedness ---
the Ginsbergs, the Levertovs, the Ferlinghettis ---
till the gravity of space-mind curved imagination,
a nation falling unheard without a whimper in the forest.

Changing buses at Flamingo and Decatur,
a Sister ogles my comped leather jacket,
while braceros mill about across the street,
awaiting any drive-by job offer.

This is the Vegas never seen from the Strip;
a town of cheap gifts and off-the-books labor,
where paychecks disappear in Dollar Loan Centers,
every cranny packing a local's casino.

A hundred taxis queue outside the Palms,
like pilot fish seeking ectoparasites upon a shark.
Inside the thousand dollar escorts hustle
overextended gamblers busting hard 16's at the tables.

I told the Sister I'd won the jacket. Impressing
her that anyone would ever be a winner,
watched her intentionally cross the street
to invite a bracero out to breakfast.

The 103 bus downtown ran late.
Leaving my losing parlay tickets on the bus,
I walk through the parking lot of despair,
the casino's glass doors awaiting me.

The stars once more have lost their race
Through night-sky versus mercurial moon.
In this defeat no dishonor will debase
Futile efforts to intersect upon the lune.

Desert scents of juniper and Mormon Tea
Waft fragrant above the comfort fire smoke.
Banana yucca roasting at my knee,
Fleshy fruit consumption for us hungry folk.

Nevada nights nip raw this time of year;
Our lot is cast by glowing embers,
Whose reflector stones essential to survival,
Stave off cold that we need not fear
Frostbite to peripheral members,
Till sunlight returns with warmth's revival.

I.

Sunday mornings in Vancouver
even pigeons sleep in till 10 A.M.
Undaunted, I walk down Granville shortly before 8
seeking lox bagels with capers, red onions and cream cheese,
two breve lattes, and a newspaper. In truth,
panhandlers on the corner of Robson
have far greater chance of scoring.
An unexpectedly sunny February morn
suffices to spur me on. I am attuned to all vibration.
Breath of the awakening city
exhales manna upon the shop awnings.
Bagels rendered superfluous,
I scarf images instead ---
trolley buses, an umbrella shop, falafel stands ---
delicious Canadian visual cuisine.

                                 II.

Vancouver is a nymph. Of that I'm sure.
I hear flirtatious giggles trill
from darkened alleys between hotels.
Spotted her once across the street on Dunsmuir,
seated on a walk bench reading a Margaret Atwood novel.
Bus passed between us and she vanished.
Caught a later glimpse through the window
of a walk-up dim sum restaurant in Chinatown.
Flew the stairs, only to find an empty table and
discarded napkin smudged with candy pink lipstick.
She watches me.

                                                III.

Turns out there are no Sunday morning papers in Vancouver,
but I locate the bagels and espresso backtracking on Helmcken.
The barista smiles as I approach, sets down her Atwood novel.
I leave a Toonie in gratuity.
B.C. wind pushes ******* my turned back,
as I rush our breakfast back to the Executive.
A nymph goes roller-blading by toward False Creek.
The Gastown Steam Clock whistles that it's 10 A.M.
A flock of pigeons lifts in flight.

Black lake reflects a trail of ivory plumes,
Cockatiel's alabaster tail of feathers.
Such loveliness can only be the moon's,
Which skinny-dips in lunar altogethers.

Raccoons catch fish along the shore,
Fastidious paws clutching their prizes.
She paddles her canoe with silent oar,
Observing nature's soft nocturne disguises.

Silhouetted loons rock low upon the waves,
Asleep till sunlight sets them to their songs.
Her wake bisects the path the moon engraves,
As wilderness whispers tranquilly she belongs.

She'll stay the night foregoing comfort fire,
Moonlight enough by which to pitch a tent.
And come tomorrow should anyone inquire,
No trace reveals her overnight encampment.

Redds shine like new nickels on the dark river bottom,
salmon have returned to spawn the Deschutes,
navigating by primal memories written in DNA,
an internal Tom-Tom GPS wired in their brains.

Watching them struggle up the ladder,
consumed with a drive to leave offspring,
they are herculean athletes battling
the current and the inexorable pull of gravity.

Were these the fry I helped to seed four years ago?
A Squaxin woman told me once,
ghosts of her Coastal Salish ancestors
ride the salmon out to sea and home again.

Roe in these redds dream also of the sea,
their salty eyes and nostrils perceiving
spirits in secret claret-red kelp beds.
The waters ask only to be haunted again.

Mr. Ivories

entertains with elan,
daily during cocktails on the mezzanine level.
Jolene always orders a Black Russian,

mine is a Dewar's and water.
We drop a fiver in his basket on the Steinway,
along with a request for "Ebb Tide",

Jolene's personal favorite.
He conjures an image of Fred Astaire at keyboard,
his tails flipped elegantly over the piano bench,

like long black raven's plumes.
Jolene points out two announcers from CNN,
seated opposite. Makes us feel

important by mere association.
Our waitress asks, would we like another round
before the hour's end, as we speculate

about Mr. Ivories' musical propensity.
Time escapes in moonlit harmonic vapors,
leaves us already longing our next soiree.

Third day of this trek descending
rapidly from cloud forest into high jungle habitat,
alive with hummingbirds and orchids,
her Q'ero porters guide the tour group
to Intipunko, "Gate of the Sun".
At 4:30 AM and 10,000 feet altitude
biting cold cracks stone, eats exposed flesh,
stealing breath as she gulps pale sunlight.
Coca leaves wadded in her cheek
forge mind against the acts of atmosphere.
A lifelong pilgrimage to this purpose,
observation of the sunrise over Machu Picchu.

The Q'ero pass around a sack of pemmican.
What meat it is, she doesn't ask.
It smells of canvas, but tastes of apricot.
Her fate entrusted to these guides,
she eats what they offer.
This Inca Trail is marked with their scent;
they follow signposts painted on thin air,
read morning mists like road maps.
They have brought her to this citadel,
Lost City of Peace and Power.
Her life for now at equinox,
shaman-guides have opened her vision
to the hitching post of the sun.

pour some words into my ear
make a nice stout aural darjeeling
no need to sweeten
i like mine hot and strong
in turn, i'll steep your cochlea
Senno Rikyu at your service
master of libidinous liquids
ceremonial titillated ears
then we'll make oolong to each other
i'll brew your longing leaves
ferment your black dragon lips
sip the liquor from your *****
write it up for the society page
tea today at four and Thea pours

Outside the miner's shack Joshua trees stand silent vigil,
expecting his imminent return, or perhaps his ghost.
Horn silver, weathered by rainwater from volcanic rock,
no longer strews fallow ground to lure the miner back.

In lieu, small succulents feed tortoise and jackrabbit,
replace the metal which only men could value.
Nevada gains a confluence of life in the exchange,
dry-lake flora and fauna bartered for chlorargyrite.

Barren mountains surround this desolation,
where nothing more than fungi lie in vapid dissipation
before the relentless punishment of the sun,
a lattice-work of valleys dissecting their *****.

I ventured here to purge my body of poisons,
exhale the vapors and biles of city living,
to rid the alien presence in my mitochondria,
and let it go the way of Silver State.