~one more for Joel~

The “valuations” methodology taught me forty plus years ago,
now rendered valueless, and yet,
the devils remind in
humongous whispers,

confuse not price
(or reads)
with value!

To a man I never met, and now,
will not yet on this Earth,
this process, to estimate,
what a man’s worthy words
are but worth exactly,
how much???

It matters greatly,
for one has come to realize
these scattering of poems
will be my repute,
my legate in reverse,

to see me forward,
you will need to see me
in reverse.

The Smell of Honey,  Coffee and Apples and Messes of Words, but
No Love Poetry

<^>

my poetry suffers from a literately literacy,
the adjectivally of imagery wears away with
time and age eroding the imagination, when one’s
days are numbered, being serious is an natural
unpleasant hazardous haze, never in doubt

The morning meal of cooked oatmeal, steel cut,
laced with wildflower honey, slices of honey crisp
apples and Hawaiian coffee brewed,  
singes the
Tropical Storm Ophelia thrumming humidity
that overhangs the ugly grays of NYC sky-paths,

one tickles me awake with contradictory impulses:
sweet and sour,
a robust stimulative, competing with the smothering of
grayling clouded weather weariness of
48 hours of rainy continuity,
a spirit suffocate

you see!

give you myself, my environment, in précis,
unimaginative exactly as it occurs to me, sensually, yes,
but cannot shake my disappointment that no,
can’t combine visionary notions that spin your swivel
chair around, powered by your exclamations of
ooh, ahh, and little stabs of weeee punctuating
our shared atmosphere
and bring forth
only love poetry

but no mas,
the love poetry doesn’t comes to the fore,
the forehead stuffed with words best listed as
basic, observable, factual,
Miley Cyrus, accuses me of being jaded,
but not with accuracy, more straight jacketed,
way past that half-way point of no return,
turning back is not a listed menu option

love poetry
demands, requires and requests
envisioning, precursor to dreaming,
but I am choking on matters-of-fact,
questions of survivability,
that do not
shed love poetry words,
I
love exclaiming
to any and all within hailing distance,
my loving firmament, but the damp atmosphere
swallows my hopes and sounds, even though
still can smell the lingering nearness odor of honey and apple,
yet, other hints of memory beg to differ,
and I sadly and easy confess,
this is not a lovely poem…
- * -

“the unbound unbinding: an admixture of words and swords…
that will cut a newborn cord of reciprocity of thee and me,
miracle!
thereby, an unbound binding that ties and frees us from
and connects us nonetheless by our shared senses…”

<!>
these words, recalled well,
for they but a newborn issue of a few days, and the notion of binding that
frees us into reciprocity yet buzz~hums
in my brain

the contradictory nature of a cutting
which ties us together,
that an unbinding binds us even more tightly,
I struggle, to better understand the nature how an unraveling
of our connection somehow ties us closer

but re-envisioning
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel in my mind’s eye,
that sparking space tween God’s finger outstretched
to bring the enlivening of his spirit to His first enervate, Adam,
the original of we humans,
somehow sates my confusion

to touch each other
at the most primitive basis,
we require a space
between us, in order to fulfill,
a contract contact
of completion and binding

and this bestills and bestirs
my puzzlement,
a space electric necessary
to permit us to
close the human circuitry

!and I am contented,
the contradiction
no more, I sense the
need to close gaps
tween us certify our human resources
for it is the permanent invisible grasping
of our loving minds that transcends
overpowers gaps,
bringing tears of joy to my eyelids,
even as I write these words,
and greet this morning
with
optimism
that every space
brings a richer
closure!!

~My portrait was painted by Jackson *******~

<|>

“there are no lines or lies in my writings
there are no definitions and perception is only your truth.
Therefore,
my poems are splats and drips, you make them into paintings that hang in your own private museum,
but signed by me as first passenger”


<|>

when did I write these words?

can’t recall, though undated,
they seem all too familiar, and thinking that if I didn’t,
I should have…
for the title of this ‘poem painting’ has lain in quietude,
a resident in my file of
“someday writs, awaiting,”
when the itch demands you will
essay
the admixture of words and swords
that will cut a newborn reciprocity of thee and me,
an unbound bind that ties and frees us
from and by our shared senses…
today, an  inadvertent blinding sunlight stumble is demanding a
fulsome scratching

<|>

the portrait of each is the irrational intersectional of splats and drips,
each viewer, reader, filters the image through a common
uncommonality,
which is as it should be,
for if we are each created in His image,
how glorious is the diversity of our deities,
each of us a tiny drop of paint on a tableau
of a small planet, insignificant but
uniquely beautiful intelligent species of godlike creatures,
human

<|>

the précis of this conundrum conversation bewilders,
a single word drops,
of plaint, paint, blood,
a seconds blush blurred
that is the building blocks of imagery
I state is mine,
but now realizations swiftly fertilize,
the portrait is not of me,
but of me blended into thee,
and this poem,
is our composition
that hangs in each of our primary
museum,
newly re-titled,
**A Passenger, Realized

Everything is BIG here.

Meals are big, bums are big, cars are huge and the skies are a million miles wide.

Janet and I are travelling in the Northwest of the United States of America, spending time with Boaz and Lisa in Idaho, Steve Yocum in Oregon and Greg and Linda in Washington State.

The trip is a "quickie" in that we are fitting one helluva lot into just three weeks duration.
Never in all my days have I seen such huge quantities of food served up in restaurant meals, plastic bags discarded, American flags fluttering and all the young, blonde girls in tattered, impossibly short cut offs and sleeveless tops talking loudly, incomprehensibly at a million miles an hour ......Just blows you away!!
Monstrous pickup trucks, Rams, Broncos, big V8s travelling the freeways continuously. Sheriffs, troopers and Road cops all wearing firearms on the hip, in their souped up pursuit vehicles parked on the roadside shoulder, eyeballing everyone as they pass, with a mean, accusatory glare.
Out on the range there is a million square miles of nothing but sage brush and basalt rock....and searing, baking heat.
114 degrees in the painted desert of Moab. Beautiful though with vaulting red sandstone cliffs and rearing stone arches against the blue-est of blue skies.
Standing pillars of ancient sedimentary rock born in depositions laid down in vast oceans of bygone eras, millions of years ago.

History is painted vast in this immensity. The gigantic and abrupt catastrophic inundation of a vast and deep inland sea, swelled suddenly by floodwaters of rivers diverted by lava flows from subterranean fissures....Unimaginable torrents abruptly released, gouging out ancient lava beds to create gigantic waterfalls and deep, sheer sided chasms.

Cascades that constituted the biggest river flow ever known in the history of the planet, washing away everything from the epicentre of the continent in Utah through Idaho to the Pacific ocean in the rugged coast of Oregon. Such was the Bonneville flood of 12,000 years ago illustrated today by the gigantic chasms created in the beds of basalt and rhyolitic larva throughout Idaho and the fields of massive, round, house sized boulders strewn from the floods origin near what is now, Salt Lake City in Utah to the coast in Oregon, a thousand kilometers away.

The two weeks stay with Boaz and Lisa just disappeared in a flash. They took us down to Moab painted desert, Zion National park, the Craters of the Moon, Monument National Park and up to Stanley and the Sawtooth mountains by the mighty Salmon river. Janet and I took advantage of a couple of push bikes hanging in the garage and spent most days cycling the local trails and visiting Starbucks for a celebratory cappuccino or two....Those bikes saved our bacon, walking trails in that heat was ******. Great hospitality enjoyed here. watched reruns of Sopranos on Boaz's 70 " SmartScreen TV and enjoyed Arnie's escape from postwar Austria to Mr Universe and fame and fortune @ Hollywood with Boaz whilst enjoying chilled margaritas in the hot tub.

The camaraderie of meeting an old mate of 45 years past, Steve Yocum of Oregon  a fellow writer and author. Both of us intent on shooting the breeze, putting the world to right. In some ways a sad exercise in that no longer can either of us make things right for with age upon us, neither has influence. We can huff n puff n blow the house down....but it seems, nobody pays the slightest bit of attention. The penalty of age is invisibility. The relief in it all is that, really, nobody actually gives a hoot!

Just two Old Dogs letting off steam..... it's rather cathartic actually! Thanks to Stevo, Ian and lovely Heidi for the accommodation, great hospitality and warmth.

The cool atmospheric relief of the serene and calm, Puget Sound in Seattle, Washington state gave welcome respite from the intense heat of the interior and the serenity of our cottage accommodations and startlingly beautiful garden surrounds. A forest of conifers and deciduous trees harboured gardens of blooming roses, hollyhocks and multihued cone flowers, emerald lawns carve swarths of sunlight in avenues of deep, green shade....a delight for the sunburnt brows of yesterday's heat.
Woken by the bassoon blast of the passing early morning ferry out in the waterway, to stroll out to sit at the very edge of the sandy, pebble beach and gentle surge of the deep, clear saline waters of the magnificent Puget Sound.
The peace of early morning crisp cool air, a seascape of moored fishing boats on mirrored waters, the distant Olympic range rearing to its' full 7,000 ft against a powder blue sky left us quite breathless with the utter beauty of it all....add to that a lovely breakfast offering of fresh berries, kiwifruit slices and yogurt and a chilled glass of fresh squeezed orange juice...and we absolutely, couldn't want for anything more. To Greg and Linda our love and thanks for giving up your beautiful bed, travelling us around beautiful Seattle and being our airline coach to and from Portland. We shall return the warm hospitality next time you hit NZ and Taranaki.

Vulcanism has dominated the terrain in Idaho, Montana, and Utah. Continental drift westward of the land mass has brought about a steady transference eastward of the massive geothermal hot spot which currently lies in Yellowstone park and which is the source of all volcanic activity within the park..
Idaho, in ancient times, wore the volcanic mantle of the region in having truly gigantic rhyolitic ash and magmatic eruptions. These cataclysmic eruptions emptied deep cavernous, subterranean magma chambers which collapsed under their own weight leaving vast circular calderas in the landscape. Subsequent plate tectonic activity caused deep faulting allowing huge flows of sticky magma to surge to the surface like searing hot black toothpaste, spreading across the plains obliterating all evidence of the rhyolite caulderas, surfacing the state, to this day, with millions of acres of hard black basaltic rock.
Here and there, rhyolite has wormed its way to the surface building gigantic domes, over the centuries these have weathered leaving statuesque, dramatic flat-topped mesa scattered across the landscape.
Altogether a truly unique and enthralling terrain for visitors to behold and one which reveals a dramatic insight to the volcanic and tectonic violence of the recent past and gives a definite air of mystique to the beholder.

In a land of 360 million people, supermarkets are downright huge...and they contain the spoils of the nation's plenty.
Acres of dazzling variety... and cheap by international standards. The very best of prime beefsteak, sides of pork, Alaskan cod freshly caught and displayed in rows of chilled enticing exhibit. Every possible vegetable and fresh picked fruit known to man in piled pyramids of brilliant, colourful display. Beautiful ornate furniture, beds, mattresses, tiers of car tyres of every conceivable brand and size, wheelbarrows, fertilizer, fresh flowers in mountainous display, ***** in barnlike chillers. Supermarket trolleys for giants..... and gird yourself for a marathon hike in collecting your basket of groceries...and give yourself half a day....you'll need it!

America has momentum, huge momentum. Across vast tracts of country lie networks of highway. Multilane concrete that tracks mile after mile carrying huge trucks with 40 tonne loads. Incessant trucks, one after another,  thundering along carrying the lifeblood of America, merchandise,  machinery, infrastructure, steel, timber and technology. Gigantic mobile freezers hauling food from the grower to the markets. Hauling excavators, harvesters,  bulldozers and giant Agricultural tractors. Night and day this massive source of production careers across the nation transporting the promise of America, the momentum which drives the Stars and Stripes onward, ever onward.

On the margins of the cities of Portland and Salem the unhoused gathered in squalid tent communities. In the beautiful city of Seattle I saw many down and out unshaven, untidy individuals with hopelessness in their eyes, pushing supermarket trolleys containing their sparse possessions. I drove through rural communities, some of which, reflected hardship and an air of despair. Run down dwellings in need of maintenance and repair, derelict rusty vehicles adorning the **** strewn frontages.
Not 20 kilometers away in Ketchum and Sun Valley Idaho the homes were palatial in grounds tended by gardeners and viticulturalists. Porsches and Range Rovers graced the ornate, rusticated porticoes. Wealth and privilege in evidence in every nuanced nook and cranny.
America is, indeed, a land of contrasts, a land of wealth, privilege, and plenty..... and yet a land that, somehow, tolerates and abides a fragile paucity which emblazons itself, embarrassingly, within the national profile.

On a hot day in Twin Falls, Idaho, I walked into a huge air-conditioned sporting goods store specifically to look at guns....and in the long glass cases there were hundreds of them. From snub nosed revolvers to Glocks, 38s, 45 caliber even western style Colt 45s and the ***** Harry Magnum with the long, blue gun barrel and classic, prominent foresight.
In the racks behind the counter are hung fully and semi-automatic rifles of myriad types...all available for sale providing the buyer has appropriate licensing.
In a land where mass shootings proliferate weekly, I ask myself....does this availability of lethal weaponry make sense?

The aching beauty of the mountain country in Northern Idaho, Oregon and Washington state cannot be overstated. The Sawtooth mountains, the Cascades, Mt Ranier, Mt Hood and the Olympic range. Ridgelines of towering conifers as far as the eye can see, waves of green deciduous running down to soft grassy clearings with boulder strewn, rushing streams and the cascade of plunging waterfalls. The magnificence of the natural beauty of this rugged, heavily timbered mountain country just defies description being far, far isolated from the attentions of man.

To happen upon this country from the far distant reaches of the South Pacific is a culture shock, to be suddenly exposed to the extreme largess. It is difficult to calibrate, hard to encompass, impossible to assimilate....but the people encountered warmed us with their generosity of spirit, their willingness to welcome travelling strangers into their homes....and, of course the invaluable time we spent with our family….and for these factors alone together with the huge magnificence that is this........
GRAND AMERICA.
We are truly, truly grateful.

Janet & Marshal
Foxglove@Taranaki.NZ