I can't blame the teenage girl for being forward,
then passive aggressive. It shouldn't make one angry;
she has her interests and that which bores her.

Or the adolescent boy for being antsy, a little loopy
and aloof. Under that hat he wants to be good,
is deeply disappointed with the world (and the food).

Robert Francis: the finest poet no one reads.
We care not. Such prisms of philosophy need
no acknowledgment. The catamount is only believed

to be extinct. The wildlife tree, a mere bole,
deep in the forest, far off the road, when it falls
takes many squirrel turbines and spider spans down with it.

Noon, Julian has nothing much to do
and likes it that way. That way nothing much gets done today.
Every man, every tree, lives with disabilities.

Crooked finger, rotten bole, under stars, over soils.
The I in my old poems is no longer me. The one
in this one will be someone else soon.

Might as well go to market.
Gather money, kindling. The economy
scary, debt deep, winter coming. Reminds
me of my youth, cold poor and scared
but living truth? ****. Never
have I understood life's meaning,
significance. Not to say there is no purpose
necessarily, just I don't immediately get it.

Other hand, if you don't think too deeply
about death, this being but a dream, sleep
of a god snoring with apnea or whose alarm
goes off, wakes up for work, spring and expecting
spring's good as it gets. Rhodora in winter
completely forgets what its blossoms looked
like, how attractive to bees and flies!
It's probably healthy that everything dies.

The dire economy can bring us together
or lead us to war. It's cold then warm. Your lover
doesn't write letters anymore giving
thanks or encouragement.
Friends never really know each other,
nemesis. Just as it is impossible to say
what you mean, your closest lover's near but
external, forever. You're alone.

More than ever men have one mind
and finding it's as easy as flicking on the
tv, huckleberry, but that always was
the problem. We march to war in rows and back
in columns. Learning who you actually are
is difficult as sitting still
ten minutes without a thought or want.
Nothing to say. Nothing to do.

Interior solitude, imperative belonging.
Repetitive dreaming. Until you draw
a circle with a dot
at the center. Stop. Full stop.
On a dry rocky ridge, hot
or in a frozen swamp. One heron
and yourself. It is possible to hear
not far, a car, a train, a plane.

Cold, a killing cold
is the best defense against aliens. And viruses, bacteria
are our friends.

Perfect rest, perfect motion.
Another autumn, another election.
So aimless and sublime.

Back and forth, forth and back.
Rock and roll, spoon and bowl.
What a symmetry, calculus, trigonometry.

Measurements reduce violence.
Makes sense. Temperature measures change. Time's irreversible.
Change is all that's visible.

Learn the changes, then forget them.
Lost my timepiece, lost my metronome
now my music is ethereal.

Ethereal or dissonant,
the clash that brings you home from winter and starvation's wisdom.
"Unit, corps, God, country!"

There is no religion in meditation
but it's worth visiting with your mind
in the morning. What will you find?

Equally, think about the moose and nation.
Cleaning house no less than apocalypse,
food rations. The mind lights at random.

Sit ten minutes. Breathe in, out.
Counting, or imagining the mind's a horse
galloping leads to other thoughts, not

catastrophe but also not allowed. Visit
with your bones which will outlast
words and desires. In them there's a fire

banked low, where particles of sun are
stored and slowed, or stilled entirely.
That's where I reside. Not really,

not certainly, not virtually. Then
eyes open, flowering or snow falling, the day begins
no wiser, happier or myself.

Yr cancer is inevitable as love.
You didn't last forever. The pain
wasn't the main problem, unconsciousness
was. Dad cannot see or hear,
the walls of the house contain just dust,
that's it, and if he shows up as a ghost
I'm lost, all my theories false.

Dr. Cherry certified my cancer as a cyst.
A drupe, a stone, a past mistake.
I left the examining room elated,
and have gone on to conflate my happiness,
relief, with that of the whole village.
The message is: to the east and west, the self
which is carried around as a pound of garbage.

"I like to be kissed before I'm ******."
And what is poetry anyway. Its role,
local and global. Well, I for one have no
friends or family sufficiently interested
to come to a reading. Don't take offense,
we prefer novels, and especially movies,

coffee, sugar, oil, parrots, ponies, you
name it. Seven goes to six. Prices
bust and burst, but life (and school) goes
on, or whatnot. Atomic bubble gum. Protein computer.
Grass roof. Sun spot. Perfect error.
In the mirror where everybody hides the body.

Finally, I have been going for walks, girls
with protection dogs, black flies in my eyes.
Peace of noon, bird siesta. August returns,
the snow flies. Did you survive summer,
beat the reaper? I hope so, and yr fern allies.
Perfect rest is priceless, paradise.

Two fine films: The Lost City and Blood Diamond.
I joined Blood Diamond during a village massacre
and said to my wife A gun in every home.
Those devils would think twice
before razing the village and seizing the boys.

A well-regulated militia.
The local militia the most interesting moment
in a strong film with motive (economic, emotional), action (chases,
      fights) and a ****, sexless love story.
Use of violence by the local militia for a limited purpose: protect the
      community, the young
from the janjaweed. The crop from the ****.
Limited scope and defensive posture
but armed and coordinated, cooperative, the men (and the women)
      side by side.
Warriors at the gate, you will not run, you will not bargain.
Just violence = limited scope, defensive posture.

Great music. Cuba, Africa.
The Lost City, when the communists tell the club owner under threat
      of violence
No saxophones in the band. The saxophone!
Invented by a Belgian--Look what the Belgians are doing in the
      Congo!
When the state's violence is turned against the citizenry
for non-violent acts.

This quiet neighborhood, July,
undergirded by violence, force. That's a given--
any farmer, custodian, EMT will tell you that.
Without just violence
Gandhi's scope, and King's, might be vanishingly limited,
negligible (but not non-existent)?
                                                  ­     Regarding King
the matter is simple -- he was non-violent but dependent upon
federal force to counter the South's violence.
No doubt without the larger force, the non-violent would be
      overwhelmed by southern violence.
Here, non-violence was a tactic, not an ethic.
Gandhi, however, had no violent partner to protect him from the
      British. Or did he?
1. There was the potential violence of the population, which Gandhi
    restrained but could release which the British feared, and
2. It was the restrained (limited scope) violence of the British that
    allowed Gandhi to exist rather than be extinguished--this restraint
    was a (British) cultural imperative (limited scope) as well as
    emanating from Britain's view of India as a protectorate and
    valued citizen of the United Kingdom (defensive posture).

What about violence or threat of violence to compel compliance with
      community
as in mortgage foreclosure, driving without license, drug possession.
Perhaps it is necessary violence to maintain orderly commerce, the
      common space, and preempt bad behaviors associated with
      otherwise neutral, private acts.
The defensive posture is the common good; the limited scope is
      forgoing deadly force.
But the citizen, too, must maintain a disciplined, armed non-violence,
in case the state (the janjaweed) engages in an unjust, autoimmune
      violence.
Hence, a gun in every home.

Herpetologist meets actress (Cameron Diaz).
If he's funny he's me.
South America or Africa (on location).
In a diamond mind.
The protagonists (lovers), the diamonds, the miners and the minders.
By minders we mean watchers, organizers, supervisors.
As all art must: choose a focus.
The personal is political said Cameron on the night bus to Quebec.
I had never met a girl so willing to make love in public.

To what extent is violence necessary? And
is that the essential question or
should violence be accepted as man's state, fate
a more essential question existing beyond or below
peace or war. Perhaps
the religious and (for the irreligious) sacred injunction
against egregious violence exists
to still ourselves
to open ourselves
to the deeper question. That Cameron Diaz is funny and beautiful
is hopeful. And the telescope and microscope have extended
the eye's appreciation. Under the microscope
Cameron becomes a collection of foreign, alien, uncompassionate,
      selfish, self-organizing
organisms. Frightening, inexorable, fascinating
to the scientist in you!

To the telescope
vanishingly small, infinitesimal as the farthest sun
only smaller
smaller by magnitudes of magnitudes of ten
and incinerated in a nanosecond. Gone
from the movie (photographs the contents of which move
for the naked eye).
I cannot help what I do or hope.

Anyway, it's a love story
or science project, socio-political documentary. An essay.
An essay about how it is actually impossible to say what you mean
but it is possible with a lifetime of meditation and study to shut up
and know what you meant.

Now I'm deaf.
I can see Cameron Diaz but not hear her.
The guy, the herpetologist, at first colorless turns out to be
colorful as a bird or snake!
He knows a lot about snakes, and birds! Not only how they mate
but what they eat
(amateur botanist)
where they rest
what they do with their pain. Do they get depressed?
Can they have guests?
How do they judiciously employ violence to organize and defend
the nest.

The international collective remains insufficiently organized
resulting in violence and threats of violence that interrupt
commerce, procreation (love) and the pursuit of happiness (Cameron
      Diaz)
at least for certain populations, sometimes.
Otherwise, most men, most times, live in peace excepting
flood or fire God or man may
choose to impose.
I lay in my bed and listen naked.
Have a good day (Diaz).
The goddess does not exist, except as bone.

Around this time (July)
the queen yellow jacket (redcoat) searches
blind and deaf
for a ledge or cavity to build a city of her descendants
safe, that they can defend.
Most cities
prosper, undisturbed
and sleeping peacefully, overwinter. We, however,
remain active, Cameron Diaz makes winter movies or
love stories in South America, and I
delight to imagine her herpetologist. Or one who
discovers the sun
around which a habitable, understandable, compatible
orb orbs. Or
maybe the movie's about the revolution, soldiers dying defending
this dictator or that dreamer
and the movie completely failing, not even trying, to explain how
the sons and daughters of the dying soldiers (miners) feel
fishing alone, hunting for wisdom, thereafter.
Sure, these men chose violence, not Cameron Diaz, and were not
farmers, botanists or herpetologists
their tools could have been and should have been the telescope or
      microscope
but are there enough microscopes and telescopes to go around
and did we not (taxpayers, moviegoers) encourage them to
defend Cameron Diaz?

Man's world is insufficiently organized to preclude violence
in allocating resources (Cameron Diaz).
When we invade Iraq
to defend our allies and interests
with rockets and rocket throwers, Rockettes and Cameron Diaz
each man (each Diaz) must make his
own individual choice
whether this war
is worth fighting for or the next or the worst.
Go to jail, go directly to waterboard, at the hands of
your local police, chamber of commerce.
Learn how to walk the desert and the universe.
The names of rocks and planets,
that being the only answer to the hyperorganization that is a cancer on
      our insufficient organization.

I was reading Foreign Affairs
The Case Against the West by Kishore Mabubami (Cameron Diaz).
How can I relinquish my privileged position
sit still, lie naked
until what constitutes consent of the governed and non-violent change,
      Cameron Diaz,
to her herpetologist
is known.