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!

"And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger."
                                        --- Leonard Cohen

I'm the most surprised person on the planet.
Your coming to see me off at the airport
has my mind scratching glass seeking words.
Why is it that in this relationship,
you seem to have gotten all the speaking parts?
You're well aware that I have loved you
for the better part of two years,
bottling that emotion, afraid to pop the cork.
Your eyes implore mine, rotating like
a searchlight over Baghdad seeking
the stealth laying carnage to your heart.
Twice in the last week you've made it evident,
the Grail was mine, but for the drinking ---
That and finding a shorthand for adultry.
I'm guilty courting the love of a married woman,
made worse, you're here at my departure
telling me we aren't free to choose who we love.
I know my desire must die of thirst,
so I turn, boarding pass in hand,
the last words I ever hear from you,
Write me! --- Thirty-five years later I have.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

"Boy were we wrong!  We're the oddball.  We're the freaks." --- Dr. Michio Kaku

We looked at trillions of those stars and knew,
that somewhere out there was another Planet Blue.
Those were not canals we saw on Mars;
optical illusions, lensed figment memoirs.

Stare into trillions, space mind overwhelms.
Rimbaud entrapped in countless ethereal realms.
Not the goal of evolution, merely happenstance,
the search for elsewhere leads a merry dance.

Planets a dime a dozen, yet no Goldilocks Zone
produces signals bearing SETI transient tones.
Birds more subtly impact our lives,
than do the aliens our universe provides.

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.

It had been one of those enervating days,
when officialdom and red tape paperwork
had ****** the yolk and marrow leaving only
a dullness that yawed the ghost ship of her frame.

She decided not to cook, as much as
payback for her ordeal by proper channels.
And so to the "Toilet Bar", cafe of choice
for malicious villagers, though rarely women.

The men folk hardly stared upon her entrance,
by now they knew those leopard skin boots,
that packed a wallop they grudgingly took
stock of, then returned to their cheese and wine.

This was her quarter of salt cod with cream,
prepared by owner Paula and daughter Carolina,
the only other women tolerated amongst the chairs,
that smelled of tar and testosterone.

Lacking collars three tumbled to the stony street,
drunken mechanic, one armed plumber, peg-legged sailor,
the kerfuffle amusing her, their wicked aunt.
Another Lagoan night that shimmered out to sea.

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.

.                                I.

The sand is perfect ripples undulating to the bay,
as the 6:00 A.M sun flashes open a sulfur-eye,
yawns and apologizes for its January warmth.
She emerges her tent, much as she has entered the world,
naked, but filled with wonder and an attitude.
The glassy water winks her an invitation,
morning's blank canvas beach
etched only by random footprints of seabirds.
Taking advantage of the serenity,
haltingly slipping between the waves,
her skin bristles, subsumes cool ocean freshness,
surfboard bobs obediently at her side.

                            II.

On this planet we have friends, who
pose no questions and pass no criticisms,
who the more they trust, the less
we can afford to make a mistake.

                            III.

Like a pat of butter skimming a hot pan,
she lolls blissfully on the board, soaking up scenery,
heedless to the approach from the rear,
yet, sensing she is being watched.
Dorsal fins break the water's surrounding skin,
as a pod of bottlenoses dance and play,
pretend to be oblivious, as she floats within their sights.
Their presence startles, still, she quietly observes their folly,
willing them to come ever closer ...
Her outstretched hand beckons them to
circle with puppy-like curiosity.

                            IV.

Arguably, the perfect couple is a mother and child;
babies do more to females than make them mothers,
they bond them in a sisterhood of knowing recognition,
to which others need not apply.

                          V.

Coriolis swirl of scarred dolphin bodies evades inquiring fingertips,
eye of the alpha-female fixed intently on the floating visitor,
who in turn looks back in shared wonder ---
between two mothers of the Earth, a psychic trust is formed.
The bottlenose rolls a streamlined fusiform body,
revealing  a smaller version of her own,
tucked safely against her white underbelly.
The sun was racing Apollo's arc, as they silently
slipped beneath the plane and were gone.
She knows they've been fending off shark attack,
wishes for a way to fend off trawlers with gill nets.
A singled tear rolls down her cheek,
trickles off the board to merge with salty blue beneath,
reaching compassionately for her sister in the sea.

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 was my best friend who asked me
what I'd choose to be in my next incarnation.
Honestly, she caught me completely off guard,
intellectually dumbfounded by a prospect
I'd never considered, nor felt I deserved.
That night I wracked my brain searching for
a suitable chakra from which to derive an answer.
I know she believes everything is renewed,
so, deferring to her convictions,
I chose a jaguar, as suitable for my solitary way.

She's always had a knack for surprising my existence,
deflecting the metaphysical, steering for spiritual shores.
I recognize this power she exudes, though she dismisses me.
The jaguar I'm evolving divinely subsumes her virtues,
is cognizant of the heroine from Mumbai ashrams.
I'd like to tell you I hear rumblings in the sky,
that there's a certain path beneath my feet,
but my destiny eludes all outward signs,
striving for that inner love that has no name.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To ghosts which walk about our imagination,
we have surrendered counsel, yielded consolation.
They are the souls of the might-have-been,
kindred brethren yoked to our liquid center,
who've never endured the pain of intelligence,
never walked the bed-of-coals of perception,
yet, they have wisdom nestled on ethereal neurons.  

To semaphores which count a poet's unused resources,
written in the higher code of life's metaphor,
iteratively substituting words to distill a truth,
a single universal life experience upon which to dwell,
all taken from myriad axioms of cerebral ecstasy.
This is writing, confrere, and you have tasted it, as well.
We are craftsmen in the medium of language,
poets following the involuntary way.

Put on the old LPs tonight, Alex,
from a time long before you were born.
Top of the queue was Petula Clark
belting out Don't Give Up,
defiant as an alley cat in a street fight.

Remembered how in her heyday,
she'd been forced to conceal
the fact that she was married ---
all performers being mysteriously
virginal in those days.

Thoughts segue several years
to my time in the service and
a female lieutenant who was my OIC.
Served a 20 year career,
but never knew a finer officer.

She realized leadership was saying
the things that made you want to follow.
Just after making captain,
due to pregnancy, she was forced
to terminate her service career.

Today, women routinely travel in space,
perform extreme surgeries,
design skyscrappers;
one just might become president.

And somewhere in the tenements of NYC
a young poet spins metaphor
straight from the streets and the cosmos,
constructing a world in lines
we'd all wish to enter.

She caught on to algebraic notation, as if,
she'd been born in the 64 square matrix,
whose precise logic spoke her mother tongue

They discussed, at length, the fianchetto formation ...
... how the defensive fortress of the castled King
was akin to the monarch's personal Masada

... how the power of the doubled Rooks and Queen
in the latent lance of Alekhine's Engine
gored the other position in thermodynamic dissipation

When he pointed out the cloaked irony of
Queen being strongest, but King paramount,
she shrugged, as if it were to be expected

Shaking hands, agreeing to the draw,
she smiled, joy precipitating from her face,
knowing there could be a world without losers

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.

Concinnity of rapid motion in balance and proportion,
round the ballroom, like the synchronized frequency
of vibration in a crystal quartz. Whirling contortion
of bodies embraced in movement's revealing intimacy.

They are partners. They are dancers. They are lovers
wantonly stoking libido's hot glowing embers;
promenade affirming keen awareness to the vigors
of the steps, footfalls and technique of its pretenders.

Gown and tux attired, passionate accessories to the cult;
merengue, fox-trot, rhumba, abandonment's fertility rites
to gods and goddesses, danced with such elegant result,
they are immortalized in time --- divine service to the night.

I would like this life of endless
Greyhound time schedules to cease.

What self-inflicted alien abduction
tore me from the valley of my birth,

leaving me to wander empty streets,
each the branch of a coppiced maze?

I grow weary of quotidian fastfood buffets
downed with the aid of espresso baristas.

My legs have lost the muscle-memory
that strode the river cliffs with no regard.

Time to end the sleepwalk of forty years;
rejoin the forward guard of Iroquois.

More a French shave than five o'clock shadow,
the young artist's way of backing off,
announcing danger, an air of the unexpected,
as the King snake has evolved to feign the Coral.

Yet, where camel hair touched canvas calm,
where quintessential light met quotidian ennui,
not the advertised blackened rose or orchid,
rather the sizzle, the honeyed-heat of azalea.

Each stroke portended floral intifada,
pastel yellows and oily greens igniting
upon a fired-umber background,
threatened to melt the easel into tar.

I stood gape-jawed, nodded approval,
eyeing the second creation within a single flower.

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.

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.

As a teenage boy I used to fall asleep at night
listening to the graveled voice of Ernie Harwell
fashion for me word-images of the exploits
by a band of superheroes called the Detroit Tigers.
In those semi-lucid moments before slumber,
I could see the shimmering outline of my destiny:
you see all American boys are meant to be Tigers.
So imagine my confusion, when I fractured
the right talus bone my Junior year of high school,
even putting on weight around the middle,
where no athlete worth his pin stripes would gain.
My karma had begun to take on mass.

I began to acquire knowledge, as the only perceived defense
against some parallel universe impinging upon reality.
Oh, I had everyone convinced, even my keenest teachers
believed I was destined to make my mark in scholarly pursuits.
But no one saw the crying ego of one meant to be a Tiger,
nor how that bottled up the emergence of the Man.
Never reconciled, the Man curled up in fetal dormancy.
Lifespan became synonymous with interstellar drift.
And every encountered star of knowlege was dwarfed,
having long ago collapsed of its own gravity.
Still the heavens of knowledge are auspicious,
so I looked outward, when all the answers lay concealed within.

Only as my life left the outskirts of occluded reality
did I then begin to inherit from my instinctual id,
begin to listen to disconsolate internal voices,
who had known me all along, perhaps better than myself.
The thing is ... the stage has long been set on middle-age,
what props lie about are encrusted with patina,
laden with a dust impossible to gauge or preempt,
made worse by the lack of cast, save one.
Neither Beckett, nor Pinter, could have absurded this.
So, when my acts strike you as quixotic,
when I cut with a penknife through propriety,
it's because I finally remember what it meant to be a Tiger.

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.

Toss away sheltering umbrella,
Seek to samba triumphant in the rain.
Edit dramatic doldrums from the novella,
Relate an easy tongue of the urbane.

Call a friend as helpful lifeline,
Castle Queenside for defense,
Debate the speed of light with Einstein,
Let love be your sixth sense.

Swim out through the breakers,
Surf the hurricane back home,
Reject the quackery of fakers,
Let rain cloud be your geodesic dome.

Vilify politics of standstill,
Wink the lowlands of the moon.
Pitch an idea to the gristmill,
Sing impromptu to typhoon.

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.

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.

her fantasy fulfilled
she guides him by pack-horse
up the craggy mountain trail
restrained by his inexperience
their destination above
her beloved secret valley
river far below, a faded blue memory

spying snow-coned peaks beyond
she fights the urge, for his sake,
to gee her horse the last few feet
almost there, past the jagged rocks
gap's a beckoning finger now
welcoming her home
so many years of separation

the valley bursts upon them
a composite of wondrous sights
compelling her to bring him
quickly through to hallowed ground
how many times she had returned
alone
she turns to him, a stranger here
only he deserves her secret place

watching his face
seeing elation and her radiance
mirrored simultaneously in his eyes
an expanse of horizon
mountain, aspen, florid fields, and water
nature's precious jewels adorn the vista
dressed with utmost care
to steal the unsuspecting heart

she leads him into the meadow
overlooking the turquoise cirque
cool waters in which she bathed
naked and contented
when last she'd journeyed here
meadow flowers cloak
the blanket she spreads for him

her fantasy fulfilled
his body framed against the sky
-limitless as their love- and
boundless beauty in this valley

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.

Meteor streaks an onyx sky,
thoughts vaporize without a tail

Words have seized the winds,
usurped control from ideas

Page absorbs a mutant slang,
lines malinger with an attitude

Inspiration silhouettes reason,
unblemished by banality

Grant language mellifluence or
condemn the poet to monologue

Lost are themes, jewels of a lifetime
separated by melancholy vicissitudes

In those days all thinking took place in his heart.
It had no favorite suburb, no shelter that was home,
immersed, as he was, in the Mojave of humanity,
memories of only former places through which he'd drifted.

Yes, there were women, storms of passion, brevity in bed.
Today, they only took him back in time,
reconstructing scenarios more of actions never taken.
Bedposts served as bivouacs for the nomad.

Here in this desert water assumes a circumstance,
the nomad becoming as fond of it as ambition.
Here silence need not be kept at bay, rather welcomed in,
though it looks down upon him in uncertainty.

Out there on the horizon he hears a sigh,
a mother tongue corresponding to his own.

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.

The hiker cannot dwell there long,
concealed on a high gull-lined cliff,
overlooking the grey of the Sound.
Framed in a solemn March day,
two curiously juxtaposed species hold her gaze.
Silent as a fawn she watches
a black wolf beneath her arboreal outpost,
hunched in the fashion of Asian street vendors,
observing the other creatures.

Great humpbacks frolic in icy waters ---
spouting volcano plumes of spray
that catch the freshened wind ---
riding white-capped waves,
till entropy dissolves their mist to atomized brine.
Whale-song, too distant for the hiker's gentle ears,
comes rolling in tsunami-like
to the aurally attuned wolf,
which ***** its head and nods
in musical agreement with the odes.

Then little lupine brother
rears back his head and howls,
so sorrowful a moan, as she has ever heard ---
answering his water-brethren,
hunters of krill upon the seas.
Giggling at the incongruity of this lone celebrant
singing pack-songs to leviathans,
she hurries on her way,
lone wolf herself returning to the pack.

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.

Seafood stew
A basil, saffron brew
Sea Robin, Congre, Scorpion Fish

Pernod provides a hint of flavor licorice
Vegetables and shellfish help complete the dish

For authentic travel to Marseille
Ambrosia's put in play
Bouillabaisse

There was much in her madness to draw us in.
Poetry was payback, electroshock for readers,
collusion between self and the culture oppressing women.
Rebelling against the limitations of a woman's sphere,
seeking refuge in career, a feminist before it was chic,
writing poems as a poultice against death
lurking in the shadows of a conflicted mind.

Sylvia, what was the dialogue you had with Death?
He deceived you in the mirror,
made you tremble at the foot of the stairs,
hissed from the potatoes in the kitchen,
till you sought solace in the oven's jets.
You were an artist out of time.
It's safe to come in from the depression now.

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

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.

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.

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.

Beware the ugly woman who thirsts for admiration;
She's apt to take up the violin with zeal,
Or keep a parrot as a sign of independence.
Her envious heart makes treacherous her words
To pretty women with their petty self-idolatry.

Did Marie Currie suffer meekly the debutante?
Was "Little Women" a Louisa May ambiguity?
The ugly woman burns monopoly on praise,
Like coals shimmering in a furnace,
A night without neon unthinkable.

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.

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!