I -- A Pleasant Afternoon

                for Michael Brownstein and **** Gallup

One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-
        tauqua tent in Aurora
listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating
        words singing by in mountain winds
on a pleasant sunny day of rest -- the wild wind blew thru
        blue Heavens
filled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central City to Rocky
        Flats, Plutonium sizzled in its secret bed,
hot dogs sizzled in the Lion's Club lunchwagon microwave
        mouth, orangeade bubbled over in waxen cups
Traffic moved along Colefax, meditators silent in the Diamond
        Castle shrine-room at Boulder followed the breath going
        out of their nostrils,
Nobody could remember anything, spirits flew out of mouths
        & noses, out of the sky, across Colorado plains & the
        tent flapped happily open spacious & didn't fall down.
        

                                                        June 18, 1978

II -- Peace Protest

Cumulus clouds float across blue sky
        over the white-walled Rockwell Corporation factory
                                        -- am I going to stop that?

                                

Rocky Mountains rising behind us
        Denver shining in morning light
-- Led away from the crowd by police and photographers

                                

Middleaged Ginsberg and Ellsberg taken down the road
        to the greyhaired Sheriff's van --
But what about Einstein? What about Einstein? Hey, Einstein
                                Come back!

III -- Golden Courthouse

Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent
        Prisoners, witnesses, Police --
the stenographer yawns into her palms.

                                        August 9, 1978

IV -- Everybody's Fantasy

I walked outside & the bomb'd
        dropped lots of plutonium
        all over the Lower East Side
There weren't any buildings left just
        iron skeletons
groceries burned, potholes open to
        stinking sewer waters

There were people starving and crawling
        across the desert
the Martian UFOs with blue
        Light destroyer rays
passed over and dried up all the
        waters

Charred Amazon palmtrees for
        hundreds of miles on both sides
        of the river

                                August 10, 1978

V -- Waiting Room at the Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant

"Give us the weapons we need to protect ourselves!"
        the bareheaded guard lifts his flyswatter above the desk
                                                -- whap!

                                *

A green-letter'd shield on the pressboard wall!
        "Life is fragile.  Handle with care" --
My Goodness! here's where they make the nuclear bomb
                                  triggers.

                                        August 17, 1978

VI -- Numbers in Red Notebook

2,000,000 killed in Vietnam
13,000,000 refugees in Indochina 1972
200,000,000 years for the Galaxy to revolve on its core
24,000 the Babylonian Great Year
24,000 half life of plutonium
2,000 the most I ever got for a poetry reading
80,000 dolphins killed in the dragnet
4,000,000,000 years earth been born

                                                Summer 1978

sour hardy orange juice
that'sboiled in a honey water
refreshing orangeade

plot out distances between freckles
and count the amount of hairs;
in a beauteous analysis
a cold witnessing
of)a featured lifeless gaze
projected onto windows
refracted in time with the pounding
from lost soulless ghouls
in a dank puddled basement
as we stare through keyholes

the length of life waits to rescind
to wash up on the shoreline
anew, once refreshed
with Angina on

wading in cyclic waves
in deposits of reveries
stale orangeade sonatas
and dull area tirades


the purpose
economized

every axiom
americanized

and as your atoms become depersonalized
tension is materialized, in ornate ivory
shattered brass instruments rusted by
novels written to god
in a
fractured light
and range

cramped in a curtailed distance
a brickwall deadend universe
gnashing with frustration
****** yawns of futility

closed viaducts
and vacant lots
deafened eyes, grey
glimmering in retort
to their own expression


blind sight was squandered by the snapback, of all the
strings of the orchestra as they were simultaneously snipped
by sharp prying eyes, listening to the mixing of paint
to smell the music, its arms limp, vivid
wishing to pull you back (in hindsight)
with dreaded, deadened incantations
a dithyrambic liturgy to the drunken thoughtless night
of slurred litanies and unappeasable, irascible deities
lonely and immaculate, all-powerless and deft
in irksome quarrels and arguments
glossed over by the fine print of another
exalting the vainglorious self-inscribed paragons
and revelling every inadmissible mistake

gazing past to a solo star
dumbstruck and dead
from an evaluation
and dehydration

dying to know
forget it.

Born at the age of sixteen
To again experience the cusp of noon sun
At the bottom of orangeade syrup
Indelible on your tongue, permanent
In a mid-summer twilight
At the touch of sweat skin and wet ears
On maple arms and black foot night
Singing to the will o’ the wisp
(Leather bound a thought
They will read it, perhaps pay
And take pleasure in your hymn
As verse of summer knows the animus
Which lightens the load of e’ryone)

Ineffable are his hands on terra cotta walls
A hot whisper in the ear and cotton lips
Which press the skin on beachy nocturne
To the ocean, the unforgiving expanse
That vomits all my woes
Which I throw back into it
To again experience the cusp of heat
And boiling blood and salty extravagance
The emotion at an apogee
That makes the world a rumination of wonder
(Not to live without fault
But to thrive in its decadence)

The heat of twilight cakes my legs in shorts
On yellow sunspots, glowing in his amber eyes
Soon, to appear on the cusp of gothic moor
During the late ombre effect of dusky sky
When its nighttime cataract reveals, the moon
A pitted moonscape
The moor is silent and whispers to its dwellers
If I were to find him there, in the fresco
Etched into the crystal caverns of night
Would he respond in the marsh
With the crickets between the reeds
Or the owl on the ground mole
As the whispers of naiads?

Its Friday and school is ended
Home we run, both trying to win the race to the garden gate
Hot and red faced, my brother beats me by an inch
I tell myself "I let him touch the post before me"

Into weekend scruffs we climb, piles of school clothes left behind
For mum to gather, washing to be done
My brother and I have something more important to do
We need to make sure they are ready

And they are, all washed and clean and ready for 7-0'clock
When the pop van comes.

4 empty bottles, waiting to be handed back and reborn
4 empty bottles, worth 5p each off the next ones!
4 empty bottles to exchange for 4 full
But what will we choose
When the pop van comes ?

7-0'clock
4 bottles, 2 each
We march to where the van full of wonderful fizziness will stop
My brother and I stand in line, there are children all around with their bottles too
All waiting for their turn to swap
1 empty for one full
with 5p off!
When the pop van comes

My brother chooses first as he beat me to the gate (I let him win)
Raspberryade!
Now me, Shandy please, (I like to pretend its beer)
Finally mum joins us and chooses orangeade and a bottle of dandelion and burdock for dad
We take back our bottles, excited, thirsty,
Into the glass I pour my 'beer'
Glug glug, glug, glug, fizzzzzzzzzzzzz,
gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp.
Too much!
Bubbles tickle my tongue, I lose my breath, too fizzy
Buuuuuuurp!
I love it when the pop van comes

plot out distances between freckles
and count the amount of hairs;
in a beauteous analysis
a cold witnessing
of)a featured lifeless gaze
projected onto windows
refracted in time with the pounding
from lost soulless ghouls
in a dank puddled basement
as we stare through keyholes

the length of life waits to rescind
to wash up on the shoreline
anew, once refreshed
with Angina on

wading in cyclic waves
in deposits of reveries
stale orangeade sonatas
and dull area tirades


the purpose
economized

every axiom
americanized

and as your atoms become depersonalized
tension is materialized, in ornate ivory
shattered brass instruments rusted by
novels written to god
in a
fractured light
and range

cramped in a curtailed distance
a brickwall deadend universe
gnashing with frustration
****** yawns of futility

closed viaducts
and vacant lots
deafened eyes, grey
glimmering in retort
to their own expression


blind sight was squandered by the snapback, of all the
strings of the orchestra as they were simultaneously snipped
by sharp prying eyes, listening to the mixing of paint
to smell the music, its arms limp, vivid
wishing to pull you back (in hindsight)
with dreaded, deadened incantations
a dithyrambic liturgy to the drunken thoughtless night
of slurred litanies and unappeasable, irascible deities
lonely and immaculate, all-powerless and deft
in irksome quarrels and arguments
glossed over by the fine print of another
exalting the vainglorious self-inscribed paragons
and revelling every inadmissible mistake

gazing past to a solo star
dumbstruck and dead
from an evaluation
and dehydration

dying to know
forget it.

The Paratrooper

I was falling through the air couldn’t see a thing, opened up
my ******* umbrella and descended in an orderly fashion.
A scythe of a moon gave enough light so I could see the coastline
and the dark, menacing sea just waiting to fill my lung with water.
By manipulating the umbrella's ribs, I landed safely on the beach,
folded the collapsible and got away as foam and horrid sea tried to
drag me under. To get home I had to walk through a monocultural
nightmare of pop music, endless Fado, and orange trees the bore
nothing, but yellow fruit no one bothers to pick up as the land
is drowning in sticky juice and no gin. Anyway, supermarkets sold
virtual orangeade. I was walking uphill now, downhill too, but
mostly uphill. From a hilltop, I could see my cottage; noticed the yard
light was still on and hear the desultory din of an aeroplane circling
looking for a lost passenger

I walked along the shore,
   orchestra of shushes
as water slopped
                        across my bare toes,
jangle of pebbles
as I placed one foot
                                 in front of the other.

In the distance
                         the orangeade tang of neon lights
                         punctuated the view,
electric hyphens
from the arcades
crammed with Irn-Bru-skinned tourists
   there for a week
on this comma of coast.

In the winter          it is different.
A silver fug that sweeps the streets
     like the cocoons of a thousand ghosts,
machine jingles muzzled,
cafes only drip
                        fed with regulars
                                                     from around the corner
coming in to pick the horses
for the 2.10 at Uttoxeter.

The phone quaked in my pocket -
   my mother, calling me home.
I passed the sandcastle rubble,
   slobber of seaweed
   like the drool of a kelpie,

my socks speckled with sand
as I texted back
on my way