3900 light years from earth
a mere 1.2 billion miles across,
makes me wonder who your master is
and what magic it takes to fill
your feeding bowl

I wish I could ****
the kiloparsecs keeping us apart
and see you, unleashed, maybe chasing
Frisbees left by the barking big bang

I hope you don't bite

I knew Pearl, comely, calm Pearl
eyes as blue as the skies
that warmed her sands
where we walked and talked
dreamed the days away
her voice so sweet on the Pacific winds
it made me forget about home
I was breaking daily bread
dipping it in the
yellow yolk promise of eggs
when little gunner Joe
said come down below
to see the kitty he found
crouched in the shadowed corner
no bigger than the rivets
get her some milk he said
when we placed the offering in front of her
she roared a lion’s roar…
and the roar kept coming
and the young living
thing
disappeared into the darkness...
the stench of smoke
the screeching screams
the fierce rocking of the hull
and blackness
which came too fast to touch
all spoke with equal madness
telling us doom
can come on a sunny Sunday morn
in Pearl’s land
falling,
is something we all know
in the flat land of dreams
in the lucky light of day, and
on that Sunday morn,
in the boiling bowels of our ship
slowly,
with some giant hand in command
the water, the water,
the water we all had grown to love
now taunting our feet,
then our knees
the pounding began
the eternal pounding
the pounding of the hopeful
in Pearl’s blue skies
and our pounding,
the pounding of the ******,
without any eyes
the water
now at our waists
now at our chests
and then only our frozen faces
against the hard steel that had been our home
had the last few breaths of air to breathe
heard the last few gasps of desperation
and the feeble futile pounding
of those in Pearl’s darkened sun…
now we rest in this sunken tomb
the guests roaming above
with cameras and tearless eyes
for they were not
the ones who heard our cries
those who did, do not return
for Pearl is no longer a sunny beach
and a stroll in a dream
but a place where the pounding started
and never stopped
and where the world changed forever
when the first bomb was dropped

he slammed his cup on the counter  
not to get anyone’s attention
though his cup was empty  
I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes  
of course they were bloodshot  
and of course he stank of nicotine
and of truth that he said could not be found
in the bottom of that coffee cup or bottle of gin  
though he ****** up both  like…
hell, I can’t compare it to anything  
and he would think a simile was a waste of words
he told me of a lover he once had, Elisa  
with hair so long she sat on it  
and a thirst as ravenous as his  
which led her to an alley in South Chicago
where the ***** or the H put her to sleep
for good, and how he buried her in Peoria
in a hard freeze, beside her brother
who got killed in Phu Bai, by “friendly fire”
but Bukowski laughed through his tears
when he heard that ****, “friendly fire”
and he filled his glass again,
with Bourbon I guess--I wasn’t at  Elisa’s
numb mother’s house that day
and when he lost another ****** lover
to a drunk driver, he didn’t say anything about irony  
just said, ****, it hurts to be close  
and he didn’t trust this happiness ****
because it didn’t last, but pain, hell,
you can count on that ******* and if he leaves,
you can make some up on your own…  
the waitress filled our cups to the top
so there was no space for the cream  
I sipped slowly to make room
he took a swig that had to scald his tongue
but I could not tell, for he was already on the death
of lover number three, sitting there with me  
waiting for him to stop the foul flow of truth

a cairn on every mountain
chronological tricksters stacked
by near naked natives, or frat brothers
who pointed the way there
with crushed Bud cans?

fossils were less disingenuous,
treasures from a Jurassic sea, staring  
back at me--coprolites a fine find, evidence
our voiceless progenitors also
squatted and shat

after days of wilderness
wandering, I found a lonely menhir
tall as two men, wide as one, in no
particular vantage point
to the sun

who carved this monolith
I'd never know; how it was dragged here
would vex me even more

I sat beneath its shadow
until it stretched a desert mile
all the while watching, waiting
for someone to return
to claim it

when no one finally did,
I rubbed my hands on its weather worn flanks,
and bid goodnight to ancient strangers  
who worshiped this silent stone

we are clockwork creatures  
with phantasmagoric features  
precisely ground and divinely wound,  
we measured movements, prosaic and sublime
our cogged kingdom, cherished chunks of time  
our ticking, a marching machination
our faces, a reflection of the lost
a prediction of the found
we now make simpering sounds
on our path to rust
made obsolete by the silicon effete,
the cyber elite,  that-which-who
never succumb to rust, or join us
in our reverent return
to dust

I began writing of thee, 63  
but after considerable effort and time
belched out only glib rhyme  

when I recalled my last walk,
however, it was in winter woods, only yesterday,
the frozen ground crunched under my ancient boots,
speaking to me in its own verse  

“move fast,
this white art won’t last,
make your tracks deep, soon
we’ll not make a peep”    

so I complied,
stomping on the frigid frost
shuffling with aging caution on thick ice  
watching my breath mist gray
the still air  

was such the entire walk
one foot after another, making tracks
lesser numbered beasts would sniff and see…  
fading remnants of the me    

then I saw you, crystalline knives  
hanging from brittle branches long ago grayed  
reflecting all that came within your sight  
in your solid time, dripping drops slowly,
silently, before freezing once again
in the approaching night

After you involuntarily defected
I managed to find words others selected
to grandly commemorate your life

When I read of the third person you
and try to embrace elegiac points of view
I have to admit I feel…nothing

Maybe there is some cyber symphony
playing in the sky you can no longer see
pounding on so many drums you can no longer hear

But I keep reading my “google bible” verse
and try to imagine the funeral crowds disperse
once the scripted lamented chants are silent

Soon the vicissitudes of chemistry will prevail
and the third person you will set sail
to the land of oblivion, until I find another eulogy
or someone writes one for me

Morning

caffeine
traffic’s smell
radio’s spell
ends
at my
dead desk

so keen were his senses he could
discern differences in grains of sand,
hear gulls' calls long before others, and
recall the number of footprints
he left on his stretch of beach

yet he spoke not a word
since she passed, stolen from him
by a fever he felt from across the room,
while others had to lay hands
on her to know

the doctor would come
and go, whispering words to his father,
not realizing the boy could hear: "typhoid"
lay in his lexicon along with "suffering"
and "death"

then the priest and prayer
too late for the woman--there
for the father, son, and her ghost;
beguiling words like "comfort"
and "eternal life"

the boy did not reveal
being mute was of his volition
allowing less sentient beasts to believe
his silence was a manner to grieve
"ruse" he also knew

months did pass, and the
others implored him to speak;
he would return again and again
to his shore, where he heard
wings and winds and more

but there no creature
asked for his tongue to move;
his naked feet in the surf were enough
and when his tears wedded the waters
the sea made not a sound

Fifty years ago today

A half century. Yes--seems like a long time when we say it that way, sublimely forgetting time is a dimension we chop cheaply for convenience. In earth time, in galaxy time, the vast blue stretch since the cosmos’ first coding coughing of carbon, that five decades has been but a clipped comma in a thousand page tome, with a single stout capital letter being the history of a country, and a verbose sentence or two being the tale of our two legged species. For me, the 50 years since that day has been most of my book--nearly all that has been written since the dawn of light.

I was on the Kanto plains of Japan, so it was already Christmas--though I guess my world has always spun faster than most. During the night, my father had assembled my new black three speed 26 inch Raleigh English racer, a serious upgrade from my red 24 inch Schwinn, my first bike, long lost to spinning memory, and likely the property of some dump in the heartland.

The new bike stood beside the table in our large combination kitchen/dining room of our temporary officer quarters. I can’t recall if it was too cold to ride that day, but I probably ventured out, either in the real rays of the sun or in the land of imagination, the two being of equal measure in the realm of memory.

A month before, my father woke me with the news of Kennedy’s assassination. Like others who were old enough to remember, the events of that November day have much crisper edges than any other, including the Raleigh racer Christmas or any Christmas I can recollect.

Tomorrow is another Christmas. I won’t look at that day too much when I am walking in the park this afternoon, for tomorrow is not waiting for me at all. It will be there even if I am again dancing with stardust. More likely, I will be here, on the same rolling rock, eating the flesh of a fallen gobbler and making new memories I will recall only hazily in fifty hours. And if I were promised another fifty marching years, I might lament their passing before they arrived, knowing full well they too would be filled with forgetting.

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

I did not go out to see it  
the winds were too cruel  
as April’s cocky currents often are  
though the sky was a clean black palette
on which it painted perfect its orange face   

inside, in the incandescent haze
you were restless, reaching up from the bed  
at ghosts I could not see  
you were seven and eighty,
and there were many
who haunted your nights,
especially now, when the doctor had said
nothing  was left to be done,
but the watching and waiting    

he had given you little
of Morpheus’ sweet sap, as per your request  
and I left the light on, as you demanded  
what about the dark did you not like  
save what we all fear, as the end grows near?    
for whom were you grasping?    

I suspect I knew, from the old days,
when I would sit on your knee,
the other big people there with you  
swapping stories in the gray Lucky Strike air  
you thought I was too young to understand
(and I probably was)  
you thought my mystic memories
of that slur of beer buzzed words
would trail into the city night,
like your smoke  
(but they did not)  
sooner or later, mostly later,
you and your buddies
would get around to the ships  
I would see sails and pirates
but your tongues would paint thunder and steel
(which I somehow could taste)  
Eddie the **** and David the Jew,
those were the two, the ones
you let slip through your hands  
the ones the salted sea took too soon  
your eyes were not bleary
when you told the tale,
every sentence punctuated
by a swig of Schlitz, a drag off a ***
your buddies told their own stories  
of those who slipped through their paws  
or were blown “all to hell and back”
or drowned, without a simple sound    

those were the spirits
for whom you reached,
anemic apoplectic apparitions
in the indifferent  air, but still there  
for only you to see, waiting for you
while I wondered when you would join them  
and if I would yet brave the wailing wind
under the blood moon

the atom waits, patiently
he knows no haste
has no grand plan
but when it comes to waste
he is THE proverbial man
we claim to know
his magic and his math
though when watching his show
he often takes a capricious path
dividing and multiplying
when only asked to add
grounding us when flying
replacing haughtily happy with soberly sad

we no longer hide under desks in schools*
or worry about bombs being dropped apocalyptically
but we would be even bigger fools
if we expected him to behave any less cryptically

we are still on the beach
staring at the place from whence we all came
anguished that Eden is not within reach
but can the tiny atom shoulder all the blame?

Inspired by Frank Wilbert Stokes' painting, The Phantom Ship

gobbled ten years ago  
by greedy gales and warped waves  
the SS Wilbert lay somewhere
off the Grand Banks  

forgotten by all save
one sailor’s widow, who yet wandered  
the sands, daft they said, to wait
for the ship’s belated return    

no resurrection would occur
its oaken beams, cargo, and sad ******
on the ocean’s black floor, fodder
for creatures without eyes, ears  

yet she swore she saw
its billowed masts, its hardy hull
riding ready waves on a blue horizon,
dark, but safe from tempest

Will was drawn to that spot
spirits or not, something-body pulled him there
like a mystic magnet that attracts flesh

and flesh he found in that grove, between
a stubborn hackberry and twisted oak: mother and newborn,
their blood soaking the prairie grasses

he walked the hard mile to the pay phone
passing but one unfriendly ranch house on the way
a growling cur keeping him at bay

the operator connected him
with the sheriff who collected his one deputy
and was there in half an hour

Lord Almighty, Lord Almighty
the deputy kept saying, those chants hanging
in the hot air above the bodies  

while the sheriff checked for pulses,
his khaki pants painted round red at the knees
for he was too old to squat  

neither knew the girl, who couldn't
have been age of consent, but the baby looked pink,
strong, though still as stone

the ambulance couldn't make it there;
the driver and deputy carried them out
on one stretcher

both commenting how light
their fated cargo was, how it was a shame
they perished in that old copse

Will knew that was meant to be
when he found them: the little one first clinging
to a dark warm sea inside

forced out by time, her helpless heaving,
and some invisible hand that took part in all matters
of flesh, spirit and bone

the same hand that did not cradle them
but at least found them shade, a cool but cruel
reprieve from their terse time in the sun

Sweetwater, Texas, 1959

I do not have a picture of you
except the gray one drifting in my head  
I will feebly tell the world about you
and your three walls
the grated window does allow the morning light  
to shine upon the graffiti prophets’ words
a scratched and scrolled novella
on the ancient cold bricks  
the indelible tales they tell
hang above the pocked porcelain pools  
where the unclean
were scrubbed by the unholy  
who thought them unworthy
of their sacred soil  
some would scream during the rituals
not at the pain of the brush
or the eye sting of the careless lye,
their rabid cries
came from the vacant eyes
of their captors
who did not see them
in their naked splendor,
speak their forgotten names
in the dead morning air, or  
even hear them,
when they cried to their gods for mercy,
to be released from their pestilent past
and to be made blind
to the servant’s silent suffering
only they could see

***** and he
make their way
across the stretch
of sand

behind them,
the hard rock land
of memory

the crustaceans
will return--the tides
their clock

not he;
this march
is his last,
waves will
swallow him
gag him

while he briefly
forgets his purpose  
and clings to
this world;

soon though,
his lungs with fill
he will sink
to depths:

a blue burial,
a seaweed symphony
his dirge

the ***** return,
but not he--the ebb and flood
of waters no longer
his province

(poem's image: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1174175556043500&set;=a.102525519875181.1742.100003531994461&type;=3&theater;¬if;t=like¬if;id=14914495906541620

fishing the river is for old men,
solitary figures who saw their original sin
and now see darkness closing in

for old men, who watch
the leaves pass on soft singing waters
to them, it matters not if they make it to the black sea,
tarry a while on a quiet bank,
or sink into the silt

for old men, who dream while awake
whose eyes no longer flutter but squint
in the sun’s naked white journey
from shore to shore

when their line becomes taut,  
a slow dance will ensue, not a battle in a larger war
they once felt compelled to fight--raging, raging against the night,
for fish and fisherman know, when the conversation ends the line  
will again be loose, drifting on currents, bound for the certainty
of uncertainty

fishing is for old men, I
am haunted by waters

there is silence sandwiched between silence
thanks to the sudden cessation of their croaking
as if a plague took them, but it didn't

nor were they sleeping, nor were you,
at 0300 hours--you were between guard towers,
with an M60, and a hunger for sound

though you were picky about your song;
you longed for their familiar cadence, for
their green belched reassurance

that they would lay more eggs in the mire
and tails would grow, the swimmers would
become singers of familiar verse

but you could not wait for a resurrection
you did not know would occur--your duty would end
at dawn, and by then you could be dead deaf

from their silence

the old woman stopped crying

though she knew the tears would return
like the prairie winds, without warning,
from some place she could not see    

soon they would come for him,
place him on the gurney
cover him in white shroud
wheel him through the door:

a horizontal journey,
like the vertical one he had made myriad times before,
on two strong legs, to and fro the pastures and pens
where he did sweat honest work  

she leaned over to kiss him a last time
in evening's fading light

she had honored his final request and turned him
so he could face the open window--his old eyes then toward the red barn, the gray fences, the ground his livestock grazed  

past all this, to the flatland that seemed to go on forever

flung in the back of the '55
Chevy like another suitcase
the child knew not where they were going
only that they had been there before

more than once, when Daddy's
drink turned to anger, and anger
turned to fists pounding a boss
and another job was lost

and the child would again see
the lights of the town vanish: he, the car,
his preternaturally silent momma, his hung over
father would become part of the night

another flight, this time from Gallup
New Mexico, where Daddy had tried
to out drink every Navajo in every bar
and almost did

on these nocturnal hegiras, the child
would lie and stare at the headliner--the round
dome light a faint moon against
a mysterious sky

beams from passing cars
would roll across his otherwise
empty constellation, transforming dark
matter into fleeting nebulae

this, his wide world, while a slow
clock spun, and tires hummed, eternally,
until his father announced where they
were going this time

Iowa, a place the child
conflated with Ohio, vowel sounds
similar, soft and more meaningful than
marks on maps--Cedar something...

Cedar Rapids, and the child knew rapid
and rapid meant fast and fast meant soon, only
a few more saturnine stars around his dome
light moon, soon

on the rail, not far
from where a young woman jumped
to a lonely death in the cold bay
I found you, in the fog

someone's wedding ring
perhaps once cherished, intended to seal
an eternal bond, but now this band lay
alone, silent, still, on dumber steel

who left you there?
not the doomed woman, for she took her final leap
two Christmases before, and her ring was found
on her withered hand

soft rain began to fall,
like a million tears for forlorn lovers
yet I stayed on the bridge, frozen in time and place
not from the shivering shower

but by the sight of one round, gold trinket
left for fickle fate after another circle had been broken
forever, for my eyes to see, at the edge
of another promised eternity

a dad, two kids  
the latter running for the shade and shelter
of the picnic table--dad strolling behind,
with pizza and crazy bread  

one family of a dozen there
in 75 degree Texas sunshine  
mid winter, as russet leaves
and calendar attest        

now I recall my only picnic
a half century past, where I discovered
peanut butter could be made magical  
with marshmallow cream  

from this same walking
and waking dream, I see a star
hanging  between two oaks, and a sea  
of hip hippies dancing, rocking to
mystic chants of their own device  

for the music died
long ago, electric and eternal
though we thought it was  

today, in a sun drenched park,
it is calm breeze I hear, the sibilant sizzling songs
of my past are long lost in space, but the wickedly wonderful
white goop on that sandwich, I yet taste
with transcendent  joy

we are
all plagued
by some churning remnants
of haunting pain and shame
but we are not to blame
for repentance oft falls short
no matter how much we try to exhort
these murky maddening memories to depart
they flow yet in even the purest heart

for me
my crimes, too many to enumerate,
will all cause me to self deprecate,
but of the ones I seem to recall
the deed that taunts me most of all
was the simple thoughtless movement
of two five year old fingers
I used
to crush
two sublimely blue
robin's eggs
in a nest
on a promising bright afternoon
in the dark land of memory

Cool crisp half moon
sends shimmering shaft across charcoal lake.
A thousand winking waves blindly greet light.

White water foul
pedal silently across giant dark pool--
webbed feet wandering in black depths,
where teeming life hides without seeking
and does not disturb my walk in night air.

No sounds are to be heard--I don't utter even a noble word.
Inside in my own black depths, feet from the surface also stir the stillness.
When light of day washes this dark peace aside,
I will wonder where it went to hide,
and if I have another night under crisp cool light,
watching waters and birds in rest from flight.

I found you, in a stack of photos:
the 2D you, I can't touch, taste or smell

the first thing that came to mind was sharing a joint with you and spilling the chocolate ice cream cone on your skin-******* shorts

and sneaking into the Woolworth bathroom, and our freaked frenzied scrubbing of fabric with nimble fingers and pink powdered hand soap

and how we couldn't stop laughing
until a woman older than time caught us
before we could consummate

which we did after running the entire
200 yards to my van, wet white shorts in your hand, with me looking over my shoulder for imagined narcs and other freedom snatchers

when we finished, we shared my last Winston, blowing smoke rings in the gathering gloom

your shorts were dry, and our high
had worn off--you didn't kiss me goodbye when I dropped you off

between your pad and mine,
I hit a black mongrel pup wandering on the dark asphalt

I scooped him off the road
with my hands; lifeless, light he was...

I found you, in that stack of ancient
photos--that was the day we conceived a son, one you had shredded in a doctor's office for $300 in illegal tender

I see the messy ice cream, your naked nineteen year old flesh,  smoke rings disappearing, the poor mutt dying

though not for lack of trying, I can't see the child you had executed in utero--without trial, judge or jury, save an elusive dream
of freedom

Albuquerque, 1967

swish, swash
under a blue moon
you, in your chariot, racing north
on Highway 1

while I look for footprints
in the sand--five toed tracks to prove
you were here with me

swish, swash, sea songs
replacing your voice, like I had any choice
but goodbye

after your confession,
and your appeal for absolution,
on the same shore we first lay,
naked

and walked until the sun rose
above the silent cliffs--the same bluffs
you climbed now to be with him

would you two also tread a beach
and marvel at weather worn gems, the purple waves'
evidence time smooths and soothes all things

I don't believe it
even as I find and finger new green and amber shapes
on this eternal stretch of sand

black vinyl
dusty in crumbling cardboard
but dressed up with flowers
and candy cane towers
records much of history:
a war that divided a country
riots that demanded equality
journeys to the center of the mind
and words like "for (all) mankind"

black vinyl
electric poetry of a bejeweled age
exhorting us to unlock our cage
and soar blindly in blissful flight
before the soundless eternity of night

black vinyl,
now replaced by the "CD"
in a silicon world of even more "me"
and reluctant as I am to revere what once was
I suspect that is what everyone does
when the day slowly turns to night
and we truly contemplate our plight
on this revolving orb that spins only one way
whether it is vinyl or CD we had to play

I see black ones, white ones,
tall ones, short ones

the stops have no benches;
only signs, saying:

we stop here, to ****** you peasants
from the mean streets

some lean on the poles, weary
of waiting for their ride

or the winning lottery ticket
they dream of buying

others hunker, if their knees
still allow such a stance

or by chance, pride doesn't
keep them upright

the last one I saw was curled
in fetal repose

dead or just resting, preparing
for a new beginning?

I will never know, for I didn't
stop, at the bus stop

but I'm with them, traveling hope's
haggard, hapless highway

he runs not for the finish line
for he knows the setting sun is
only a melting chat between dark and light
between dreamy sleep and wakeful flight

his eyes tell a tale not of what he has seen
but of what lives in the space between
what can be and what cannot
and what can be sensed, but not taught

when we speak to him of earthly ways
and our conscious counting of finite days
his eyes can only partially conceal
what dreams we are about to steal

our chiseling chatter is meant to teach
but his drifting dreams are beyond our reach
and one day soon he will slowly awake
to the sorrowful sound we are forced to make
when we cunningly convince him his race must end
and that all his dreamy glory was just pretend

Langston* said what happens
when dreams don't come true:
they fester, stink, or explode

but hell, hear what I say
colored girls ain't got no dreams,
what we got is schemes to make it
from here 'til tomorrow

and we don't drown saggin'
sorrow in gin, or the big H--least ways
not all of us do

it's true, the man done piled
on ****, high as it can be stacked on us
but we don't all ride no pity bus

the streets don't weep for the weak
or those of us who spread our legs to get us
a baby--a toy all our own

cause when he's all grown, he ain't
goin' be there to fill our empty bellies
or make us proud

so go on say it loud:
black girls don't need nobody
show 'em the way

and one day, we goin'
take what's ours--we just don't expect
to reach for no stars

we be fine with settlin'
for someone callin' us by name
and not feelin' no **** shame

Covenant Avenue, Harlem, 1968

the words won’t come out…
it’s as if they have shut my metaphorical spout--
truly nothing verbally fruitful will sprout
maybe I am having a protracted senior moment
where nothing creative will attempt to foment
perhaps I really never had anything important to write
or my neurons have given up the fight
and my imagination has taken flight
and left me with thoughts of where to go for lunch
or whether I’ve had an accurate hunch
about where the market will close tomorrow
sad that I once could write on the nature of the Tao
and now scribble numbers about the falling Dow
tomorrow may bring more creative flow
but for now I’ll decide where for dinner I will go