poems by blake more
contents
two haiku
post millennium I, earth
Pandora's Chest of Picassos and Square Cut Diamonds
about das facing
Whose Pair of dice
drowning in the flames
Happyland To Headless Point, a homecoming
NASA narcissi
suburba Ma
brut baby
yet another poem to my father
pain of assumption
Highway One
Mendo Wonderland
Home On the Web
riding Habana
brief boyz
Museum Formula for Modern Excess
heading homeless
Michael's Wish
in response to new games
whose shooting whom
ow wow Tao
dragon countdown
sand painting path
fishing for stars
winter solace
moon tribe
el cuerpo es fuego (the body is fire)
conceive me
written, but untitled orgasm
boletus coitus
sushi me
pink paradise
pussy's, champs, & eve
rides of spring
ink syringe
blue drug
words
empty neighborhood
workying assets
dot.com
two comma zero zero zero
zero
the Bohemian Grove magician nearly rented a space shuttle
champagne flutes almost clanked high above six triennial masses
their imaginary sonic boom toasting dateline hoppers
lotus sitters assembled in fairy rings
beside Fijian taro farmers
incense prayers wrapping long, thin fingers
of six packs and sequins
while the prepared huddled around radios
listening for disaster
Art Bell salivating on cue
and still fallen apple gathers fruit flies
in Times Square
everywhere people drank and danced for cover
small change hoarded, dollar bills stuffed
in PVC pipe, buried if there was dirt
(mattresses were for the last Armageddon)
apartments, garages, trunks heavy
with preservative-brushed eggs, beans, rice
a retailer's paradise
and still fallen apple gathers fruit flies
in Times Square
two comma zero zero zero
it felt like Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve
October, when the producers gathered
the pretty young girls and boys
dressed them up in silver hats and heels
paid them to shout Happy New Year on three
smile for the cameras
untouched by Thanksgiving, Christmas
that mourning for the twenty-first century
was sport, a Mahabarata monopoly in the back of an SUV
the FDIC watching CNN film it for microsoft
life hasn't gone now here
cause banks, stock markets, sewage treatment systems
presidential races, fiber optic cables
weapons arsenals, dams, missing trees
haven't gone anywhere
our timeless disease so arrogant
it failed mass millennial suicide
but always there's the few
the self-chosen not many
whose gravity begets levity
bones on earth
ribbons of mycelia caressing skin soil
salmon threading the silted rivers
planting rows of hope
non gmo corn grilling on the fire
listen, can you hear the free
we are laughing
this game of numbers already won
we are unpaved, twists and valleys away
from the marketers, the mavens, the money
we know the millennium starts this year
when the calendar turns to one
the zero year over
a world saved
from Y2K by life.calm
what else?
pandora's chest of picassos and square
cut diamonds
How many myths are retold
through the lens of community
the scratched and polished screen
lifted from the hollow box
to reveal the TV suitcase
carrying fantasies beyond city spill
where stage meets homestead and ocean froth
lifts the curtain for rainbow skulls of time
to unravel quadratic underpinnings
leg kicking calemba picking voice ripping
halt the raid of little boxes on green hillsides
if only for a single night
of presence drawn like a pistol
smiles as clear and exposed as Hearn Gulch
on a sundae Spring afternoon with doughnut sugar sand
dusting thawed limbs
limbs used to erect the great box pyramid
of Pandora, douse it with gasoline
nearly drive through our Cybirk Cecil B. De Mille ascension story
as the landlord soundtrack screams
what the hell is going on here…
hidden cameras rolling in the dusk wind
coaxing almost flowers toward their yellow dance
flowers nobody notices under cardboard and wheels
flowers that bloomed later, like they were supposed to
within view of the editing desk that kept Alice on that trampoline
held one hundred seventy something eyes
like a T-Rex baby emceeing the apocalypse
blue light teasing a Diaphanous moon
laser float through angel honey siren
das Machinezen ecstasy flashing
white polka dots over Robotecha skies
trapeze liberation front reporting to flag duty
(if only useless concepts ripped like paper)
fiddle and saxophone lifted in star spangled salvo
a tattered couch casting a sit down dinner for three
your choice of two entrees: canned spam or cheeseburger pie
pink frosted animal cookies ground into El Mundo floors for dessert
astro-forested Tane's only hope was not in
the cereal box
senor heart Veles is almost beguiled by BassOmatic breath
glow-in-the-dark Astlik tosses multi-pharmaceutical consumption into Hephaestus
fire
lightning feathered Pele Lite tests Seattle PD and discovers bunnies on Nutrasweet
violet Vanth eyeballs lemming patriotism for dad and wins a free box of syringes
peely fingered Sir Handsalot unplugs as he never exhales David Letterman's
cigar smoke
bottlecap butterfly Xochipilli's garter poll reveals we've all gotta see it
prism-shelled Kurma wonders why Nicks isn't the worst single thing Zeus made
for kids
doric ivyed Thalia knows people do when they say yes, yes, yes to Alpha Centuri
glitter-gilled Pescadoman honks when vacationing with valium-infused, fresh
frozen toastie-O's
pollen fluff Monju's lollipop chemistry lives by collecting Walmart's taxes
sunset-yarned Sunnydae pops them in her mouth for the makeup on her labia
Comitrag blows and blows baby
Extra Extra naked butterfly polarized truth
salmon
swim wherever and whenever they can
Oh Johnny, are we still awake?
about das facing
artifice
interface
on the face of it
face value
face up to
face down
face off
face reality
face card
face the music
face lift
face your fears
face of the nation
save face
face to face
whose face are we en mass mask masquerading
side by side wearing the features of looking, avoiding, evoking
conjuring to love and be loved by
envision the mask of flesh
face the face of faces
revolving doorway cycling karnak sky ladder of real and imagined
blaze eyed visage of alkaline tinged earth
Internet rummage for "face" summons
a monitor stare stacked with tongue twisting eye gleam glam
scrolling through the web of yahoo google dogpile
eight million nine thousand seven hundred thirty eight faces
found in 0.2746 seconds of search time-
race cars, hair removal, pokeman death, identification technologies
cindy crawford, plastic surgery, face on mars,
dan das burningman-pre-register now to watch the archived broadcast
28,000 tickets sold-and I mean souled-at preeminent
face value
(how much have you paid to face yourself in the desert?)
with 40 thousand smiling and beguiling guises expected
in the media fringed frenzy of spectacle
our exhibitionist mecca art paradise carnivour-carousel come political purgatory
brings MTV and the networks to this shanty metropolis
to Patricia
to our rejected lover burning ocean beach mythology
now littered with lasers and laws (except for John)
land sailing yachts and other capital acts of graffiti
banned on this side of the orange fence
(be careful Mongoloids or you might get Dusty)
penis and garlic vagina unscathed beside the anal orifice
flanking the fronted foot and mutant vehicle path to the wooden man
where a ribs cage waits for your breath in windless dangle
and smelted hearts smolder the communal commotion locomotion of creation
grunting and disgruntling artists rolling around
in the self-induced hedonistist pig slop, soap opera yin yang puppet Shangri-la
come let's pipe the tree tones baby
"what are they"
"whose are they"
"why are they"
countless freaks with training wheels inquire in driveby curiosity
but don't ask another, ask yourself
who what why the trinity is your face, my face, the human face
ancient encounter with all semblance of form
like the hundreds who shall remain headless
mindful in the wake of the tinkerer tweaks
torquing and torting the already crowded ceiling
how many faces can fondle the air at once?
touch ground as they lean outward in promenading sprawl
like this drifting determined grass wood copper tripod tabernacle
peering and singing through dust water and flame
what choice is there but to lift our faces to our own ecological disaster
hold hands and handcuffs around the fenced in burn barrel, sand trough, sod
patch
thread the eye beam through the neon draw
why struggle for beach front property when the entire playa is an ocean?
envision the mask of flesh
face the face of faces
revolving doorway cycling karnak sky ladder of real and imagined
blaze eyed visage of alkaline tinged earth
fuck the 5.5 mil in ticket sales
the emperor would be naked
without the clothes we fly in the name
of our late evil renaissance countenance
the peek-a-boo glitter dingleball cowgirl and boy pierced and ducktaped outfits
the driving tessla resonance spreading its blue boned sunset
amid the strewn and unidentified flying objects d'art
extraneous lunacy bobbing and cavorting down the promenade in dayglo fur
dragging dangling scrotum through boa crumbs
[red's scrotum song]
burningman dragon year 2000 is not a mask
it is an open, breathing face
it is a body, an em om elohiem carcass diablo
zephyr rocketing the chromozoom to completion
bumper to bumper shouting
through the directional devotion bodhisattva parade playground exhibition
[justin's orgasm]
hi domo arigoto, goziemashta, it is honorable
to rest
in the near garnet shade of orgasmic underpinnings
endure wasabi scarification for the love of Israel
to rise in tuba revelry and full fill the sunrise hot tub vision
but one doesn't need a fine road warrior with rebar to be happy
needn't rank a cherry picker crane duo
or a microwave washer dryer blender quartet to be virtuous
in playa petri pleasure pressure cook
registered or not, media dogs be warned cause
we have immediate
up to date, on the spot coverage of ourselves
and we, not you, shape this iris kaleidoscope
put this cauldron of liberation back onto the map
envision the mask of flesh
face the face of faces
revolving doorway cycling karnak sky ladder of real and imagined
blaze eyed visage of alkaline tinged earth
remember to forget and memorize yourself as
nightline mainlines our sand mandala magic
to feed our nihilistic nakedness to the nudity cowering beneath middle American
bathrobes
permit them to watch the spectacle one dimension removed
wallow in the square screened fascination and horror
cast by our mendelbrock Mardi Gras
let all wander through our sociological about
face
reflected like a mirrored discoball love trench lighthouse on the open frontier
we are wagon wheels circling the evaporated watering hole
to drink from our unquenchable minds, virtual wild west outer face
polka dotted with you other, me other
neither me either lands of friendship and contemplation
graphing local color trails
as they spew and ricochet from camp to camp
bounce from earth to sky in moon tinged sunrise
we are not afraid to play the phoenix potatohead
rearrange ourselves into billions of full length features
hamlet skulls rising from apocalyptic exhale
to stand in the bare welded skeleton of presence
to decipher the brow eye body in sanity
be art in the marrow of time
face the facts of facing ourselves
envision the mask of flesh
face the face of faces
revolving doorway cycling karnak sky ladder of real and imagined
blaze eyed visage of alkaline tinged earth
Whose Pair of dice is it anyway?
"I was in that heaven which receives
the most of his light
and I saw things which he who descends has neither
the knowledge nor the power to repeat."
-Dante, Paradiso
what is Paradiso but a jackpot moment of breath brain fire
licking the spherical lips of life
bone pink tenderness catapulting gambling pilgrims
beyond the secondhand scribe of consciousness
where words are abandoned like a groom's mind at the writhing bridal alter
her light orifice unspooled into nine orbations
both of them walking the synapsal jump up the limitless sky ladder
as far as love will take them
until words return and they tumble back into the gray matter of honeymoon
tales
two wrinkled love letter gods in a steamer trunk
beside grandma's dusty reportcards and papa's alter boy war medals
something so immediate, so real
now reeking of mothballs and dictionaries
canto I
staring into Beatrice's order, I see cathode ray enlightenment
the golden globe of holywood, everywhere wood
transhumanizing souls into animal cookies
pink frosted rainbow sprinkled factory Kenu's to gobble up
with spice girl communion crackers spiked with cybercherries
and crap tables piled with million dollar corn porn chips
snake eyes as red as the vision can stand
canto tutu (or to the Moon)
Dante's Moon food, bottom of top sphere nebulous wonder electrode ballerinas
peeking past promises, revolving into flesh, again and again, maybe to discover
why
birth is necessary, why captain crunch gets soggy too quickly
why we read the lifestyle section and skip the world report
canto a tois
why the depressed, ex-nun bride Piccarda forgot her enterprising captain
lost her teleological order, started spouting AT&T
and littering kitchen tables with dime line literature
abandoned her habit and vows, mistook a husband for god
if only for an instant before returning, before ascending
sacrificing herself to the moon mark logo lamp of Beatrice
the angel creature Beatrice, whose photosynthetic conviction convinces
those who want to know but know too much about not knowing to let ourselves
in
canto quatro
while waiting to take off from McCarran International
I read in Mountain Astrologer that Plato was correct
in believing pilgrim souls return to their home star state
as in "born in St Louis, silver threaded to St Louis"
no matter how many camels you've stepped over in Da'hab or Las Vegas
it is always the giant flipped over U elevator
going up and across and down in arching people mover madness
or to paraphrase Beatrice, it is Divine Justice bending absolute will into
external net worth
like what happens when you go around the corner for cigarettes
and get stuck playing poker on the backside of the moon
canto five six, pick up shticks (as in Dante's
Moons to Mercutroids)
on the moon only to discover your free will was skewered
and served up as salty scriptures and buy a vowel vows
at the 24 hour sacrifice and original sin barbecue
5 billion faces twisted and tied in all-you-can-eat ecclesiastic authority
but, luckily our heros rabbit feet work and the pilgrim slot machine changes
loooooooooooooook
the countless bulbs of Mercury speed into view, third rung
red orbed Justinian desert codes Romanizing, polanski-izing life into empired
art
DNA cars chasing the blest out into the open y2k imperialist fastlane
where clearinghouse sweepstakes award gazette headlines and vaudevillian strap
ons
lessening beatitude, warns Beatrice
but who the fuck cares when people turn on, really turn on
virtual heaven is still heaven ain't it?
canto seven, ate, nine & ten (or turn
up at the Mercury spiral and hit your head on Venus)
yes, Beatrice smiles in bipolar Pepsident sparkle
if the pilgrims can reformat the subliminal snake fate the gardeners ate
superconduct adam and his apple atop the apostles table
overlay the thorny crowned cornerstone of necropolis
we can all forgive that guy who came later after the crowds
had left their after garbage in the waterways and streets
Jesus, she called him, mercy and justice turning flesh
into the roulette wheel of human redemption
LAST JUDGMENT spelled out in black and red on Circus Circus billboards
as backdrop for the popemobile hood ornament telling the audience through
a rubber bullhorn
that the catholic-as in generalized-body must resurrect and join the immortal
soul
blind to Venus's voluptuous body soul pirouetting above his silly hat
blind to the pilgrims climbing over the white wash like cascading ants
freak pilgrims who dance in the center of the sun without church or state
where heinnas and Aquinas sing and turn in such marveled exactitude
that their harmony casts the odds for the rest of creation
canto eleven to eleven times 2 (or the spun
run to the sun, Jupiter, Saturn and the Zodiac constellation station)
all may fatten if they don't stray
all may fatten if they don't stray
didn't you say, all may fatten if they don't stray
so goes the refrain radiating from the fourth sphere
the firey ray spoked wheel of the Sun
Beatrice says the sun, the sun claims
all may fatten if they don't stray
but who's to say the fattened won't be boxed and sold at ivy league cult auctions
while the lean stray into double rainbow helix rose garland scoops of ice
cream alchemy
which meltlessly circle each other under the glitter mascara scrutiny of inner
eyeball gaze
singing pilgrim songs, dancing pilgrim dances
circling, encircling flaxen wreathes
like city sidewalk twinkle lights dangling from birch and jacaranda
innocent, still innately innocent as they pull into in the fifth sphere
the drivethrough crusader casinos of Mars
guided by Beatrice's waft tuffs of stuffed stellar dust, glow-in-the-dark
Christs
emitting Latin lounge lizard hymns in torchy monk overbite tongue chants
(breathe)
yet the pilgrims don't stop, can't stop rapping, their words too ancient for
language
particularly a dead romantic one, Willie B and Dali on the future sidelines
drawing families circling star jeweled nosegay boutonniere families
in consolation of Dante's historical name dropping, example setting, bitter
exile elixir
just as the silvery sixth sphere of Jupiter thuds open its gold-lettered Book
of Wisdom
the "mmmm" in wisdom clearing a path for the pilgrims to reach the
limbs of higher justice
thrill themselves where mountains fly like molehills in the wake of pagans
and eagles
soar the lights till the seventh sphere of Saturn comes into view
music and smiles shaded by gas rings to save mortal ears and eyes from blissplosion
[insert deafening shout, strange and thunderous]
the pilgrims cower under the one hand clap sound of karma falling in the whirlwind
lotto
and rise up the ladder to the Fixed Star doublemint poet host constellation
of Gemini
and land at the foot of an eight tiered cupcake
topped with a plastic Mary and Jesus rotating on a bible
canto twenty-three ska do all the way to you
(the Gemini train to Primum Mobile and Empyrean Highway)
seeing the Virgin Mary in matron mandorla drag
her downy chest hairs reaching out of her vestal neckline
doe eyes cocked in abstinent submission
the dogma ladled pilgrims can't take it anymore
and in a fit of sex positive rage, they topple the cupcake
fling Mary off the rotating bible in a collective sulfuric burp
whereby the bible self combusts, leaving a greyhound track of fire
which catches Mary's skirt and ignites her sex drive
so in a colossal clitoralrific orgasm, they all erupt into the ninth sphere
the Primum Mobile, the hip, halo deck high roller VIP suit
where the pilgrims bump and grind to the grooviest hosanna glory be to god
in the highest
peace be with you beat since the big bang
dancing as Beatrice's nimbus stands straight up in paternal erect- if-eradication
and looking like Eros in feathers she demands
that the pilgrims pledge their allegiance to Divine Knowledge
the pilgrims, thinking she wants them to evoke the John Water's protégé
immediately go ma ma mao mao ma ma mao mao
circling Beatrice and her band of angels three times
in a synchronized cancan genuflect turned topless showgirl strut
as the celestial divas purr the coltrain quatrain faith-hope-promise-love
in perfect tune time
to the lap dancers riding St. Peter, St. John, St. James and St. Gregory
now Cheshire grinning in the blacklight bar of judgment dayglow
can you hear the chocolate cherubs crooning, Holy, Holy, Mole
Listen to us Brother's and Sisters
now it's not long till humankind changes its course and
realizes the general disorder down there on earth is due to the fact
that you can't legislate freedom, can't tie it to the dock of ebay
and let it twist in market wind whim and pray that some truth comes of it
ANGELS ARE STARVING cause some CEO looking out godzilla buildings
told them red wasn't delicious, that a McIntosh keeps you dry
that granny smith has crabs and only oinment.com keeps you safe
But they don't know, don't know what Dionysius was up to
when he revealed the Abby Road
backordered the nine orders of angels and elected John, Paul, George and Ringo
as defacto governors of the nine spheres
made them magical mystery tour parish chefs of group soul soup
made us all come together in beyond bacchanalian nougats of pure love
raise a shopless center for the nuclei promise of our very own Empyrean rose
garden
we all live by subversive means, subversive means, subversive means
and we escape suburbia like a river of grower pilgrims
floating down the white lightening boogie borealis
into a cobalt stone mosaic mandala of distinct petals spoked from our central
Self
as in our once one language I Babylon self who evokes the Happyland Arena
Christed shmisted, believing not believing never thieving or deceiving receiving
St. Lucy, Queen vagina and her court of merry drooling fools
setting our comedy delve arty farty in quarking motion
directing our playground prayers into the dangling body axis
Cum let's face the graces to feat our journey
through this Hell Purgatory Paradiso
to a nouvou Dante bare boned, null denominational world flash welded
into a sudden, single marching drum unified daily three
the feather, the song and the honey toast together
gazing, lazing upward through the pilgrims mind
illuminated by the big spin win
stained glass truth granting a window of tight sight
were all bets are on the house that love built
"Here vigour fail'd the tow'ring fantasy:
But yet the will roll'd onward, like a wheel
In even motion, by the Love impell'd,
That moves the sun in heav'n and all the stars."
Or, as Einstein said, "God doesn't play
dice with the universe"
drowning in the flames
Can we feel the heat
through pores of rainbow latex
live with playa-encrusted upturned eyes
as creation casts plumes of dioxin
into the hologram night
smoke thick in the battlefield
of this war already won
bards are burning the bardo
can we ignore it?
the charge of imagination
will it cost us more?
Bugless, plantless, reckless
Lake Lahotan is engulfed
in urbanity, post renaissance sea
of time and space
anarchist bodisattvas
pedal past on winged bicycles
silver wigs dragging along the ground
a Jolly Green Penis looms behind a group
of women laying on golden eggs
someone walks by and whispers
"human thighs at flesh camp"
a naked man hands out orange wedges
a painted gamine ties herself to the desert floor
so she can cry out for water
each vision swifter than light
a gong that cracks its flames against callused alkaline
witnessing as saber tooth bones peer up
through the thousands of portholes
dug like sores into this Black Rock City
leaving our children's children's children
row after row of virtual Swiss cheese
bards are burning in the bardo
can we ignore it?
the charge of imagination
will it cost us more?
Every day of his desert existence
the man goes up
the man comes down
fondled by an inner crew
who tweak his neon
pack and repack his explosives
caress the mala of his sanded pine flesh
until his night finally arrives
and he transforms into the scarecrow of Disney's nightmares
as people pray and scream and dance and trip and weep and run and sleep
tessla coils spiking the sky
accordions and polka dancers dodging the flame machine
all pretend nothing is happening
all pretend everything is happening
someone tells the reporter from the Times
that the "Man" represents liberation
collective individual release from the bullshit of this culture
the guy from the Post reports that the Man
is the crucifixion of the 21st century
a sort of second coming of artist messiahs
Larry Harvey says nothing
or at least, he used to say nothing
back in the days before insurance premiums and the media
turned BurningMan into a business
bards are burning in the bardo
can we ignore it?
the charge of imagination
will it cost us more?
each naked body spiraling
through the masks of its genius
limbs dangling in the pyre
sweat tinged with the thrill of cyber blood
spilling, spilling as night spends into morning
leaving a graveyard of stereo carcasses
burnt pianos, strange colors of fire
twisting and driving
driving, driving
driving back to what's left
as the rest of America celebrates labor day
with only a few left to pick up
the traces spectating in the open sun
the man is ashes now
lost signs become cardboard tumble weeds
going nowhere in particular
FRENCH TOAST FOR FOOT RUBS
Guilt Dies Here.
I denounce the dryness
Happyland to Headless Point, a homecoming
this September Tuesday post burningman 2000
morning
pillows tumbled, blanket in a rumpled nest
ground, piled purposefully like the back of my hair
nothing but sunlight to hold onto
the golden outline of my undamned reservoir
mingling its moat onto wine red cotton
the perfume of him tucked safely
into the fold of my desert hued legs
sky eyes drifting toward the impatient day
this first day in a month without sleeping bags and campstoves
crates to unpack
telephones to entertain
email to delete
bills to rearrange
and still the wayward DPW desert rats to feed, allow
our conceptual abstract politic poetic heaped in a 72 hour communal landing
feast
arrival and departure drifting among the livingroom den of undefined bohem
lingering stories that can and will be shared
some on paper others deciphered from the crusting pile of costumes
heaped atop the Marlboro studded deck planks
framed by electric smokestack bayview bridge and ducktaped Venus of Deusledorf
naked woman folding herself neatly beside menacing blades of salvaged wood
breathing as an alp of green heafty bag luggage closes in on her
when is it time to post the no more vacancy
sign?
empty the bus, say not here to the wayfarer's need to crash somewhere?
when is the broken leg mended?
when does the tall tale grow stale?
when it is repeated six times, eleven times, one time?
how many ropes does a 23-year-old lost child trick-turning drug-hawking honey
soul
deserve before both ends are thrown back into the torrential stream of conscious
unconsciousness
the reigns returned to the overdosing friend in the hospital who owes
more than the discounted C note he borrowed
when does saving the shelter mean abandoning the red eyed, crusty nosed girl
who calls herself Karma on the streets
the good bad pagan angel who would tap us all with her amber veined love
is it before she uncorks the dusty man
passed out in a sea of empty vodka bottles
still gathering the last threads of himself in the bitter valentine-tagged
school bus
of his own creation, his pain laughing and dripping from head to taillight
in the neon spraypaint of some other diablo street angel
a pink dreaded fire dancing muralist punk he romanced with his cult laminate
---propane, daily showers, trucks, in and out privileges---
for two weeks in the budding city
a midwestern gypsy-to-be who wanted to find satan
but needed to jump box cars instead
save yourself, yes save yourself first, before
the martyred art
hums its familiar back beat, backtrack aint-got-no-one blues refrain
wipe away those crocodile tears before they
seep and harden into everything
like the Black Rock City we've barely left behind
cause we are in plutonium bay now, hunters point SF
just around the low rent corner from BM headquarters
camped in rows of time, just as before
our month long sojourn in the desert telescoping
the elements slightly closer to the body
branding our constellations on headboards of flesh
like chips of paint rusting in a last chance nuclear nucleus ease
where sexy women give birth to rib cages, dance to the clatter of air compressors
where men eke existence out of plasma, battle the stock puppets of each others
ego
freak family offering dime bags of playa dust for working hitchhikers
an infinite piece orchestra of post human instruments
humidifying the alkaline-tinged geiger tease, love please respect
that holds art together amidst the condo-threatened pompas and poplar bowing
in the wind
NASA narcissi
where is she inside the astronaut suit
the travel protection insurance
that lets her boomerang out
get lassoed by some creative predator
a human comet
strap him on for power and adventure
see how far off course
she can let him take her
and still find her way back to the mothership
when the shuttle cracks
this time, southwest flight 214
destination: Dallas Love Field
purpose: save family pizza business
purported goal: begin country retreat and labor camp for artists fund
actual goal: SLOW
as in S.L.O.W¾soul liberation & oracle wakeup
mission status: dangerous
eeeeeeep, eeeeeeeep, eeeeeep
warning barbara barbara barbara warning
eeeeeeep, eeeeeeeeep, eeeeeep
yeah, she knows, the whole operation sounds
a bit big hat brained at best
country artist meets city artist
at Mendo ridge party, altitude 2000 feet
sparks fly, but ambitions soar
a Cecil B DeMille Star Trek sitcom
complete with a near year of pilot episodes
in and around San Francisco
with monumental faces
newspaper paparazzi, geiger counters,
Hayes Street galleries, hillside gunfire
swashbuckling slips and shows of snake
only now, she is prisoner
Princess Ipanema in a Dallas pizza matriarchy
smiling at the million frozen boxes
of sausage, pepperoni, combo
that go out to Jabba's huts in trucks each week
observing Barbara
listening to her lawsuits
watching her two sons duke it out
for her love of big cheese
one who stayed, made a palatial mausoleum out of life
the other who left to return
as artist cum prodigal-acquisitions-efficiency-expert
toting wonder gal
Yeehaw, grab your Mercedes and ride
the charge card as far as it lets you
of course, as fate would have it
the she astronaut turns out
to be a mere social humanist
with pirate robinhoodisms
a sky nurse, which is to say
she prefers dutch to strings
making the outing far less glamorous
than that 80's television show with JR
you try walking into a factory at 6am
when the illegal immigrants
belly up to the conveyor belt
and the crusts start cruisin'
watch your lover jump on the conveyor controls
and play big god peabody with their robot hearts
you sit in an office all day
push efficiency around
mop up old miscommunications
juke the digs and jabs
of an existence impossible to please
you lay naked in bed
wide awake and alone with this poem
pizza maven and the man she abuses
snoring in the next room
lover asleep in the middle of your orgasm
leaving you at the alter of this pen
forced to tell the truth
to anyone who'll listen
for a good reason, cosmically speaking
the she astronaut remembers her home planet
but the pizzanauts don't notice
her orbiting the spiral ovens
as she returns to herself, pippylongstockily exploring
the city she calls LA without culture
on Barbara's brand new, two year old red bicycle with a bell
they don't see her skipping blithely through Target in a synthetic gorilla
coat
on a hunt for striped toe socks to turn into gloves
don't see her snorting a single, lonely line of cocaine from the mirror on
the pool table
beneath the bookend oils of Earl and Wyatt in the mayors mansion
on the one and only night¾a Monday¾
she went out in Dallas's Deep Ellum alone
to death does she fly
Suburba Ma Goes Home
There is a gated community inside me
my secret LA suburba ashram
immortalized, fossilized, Elvis proselytized
in a two bedroom communion wafer
fortified with palmed greenbelt and pool
where Cape Cod found Mr. Roger's neighborhood
amid chicken skin skies and speed bumps
it's my hidden temple of lemming track blues
a private confessional flanked by widowed Mrs. D's
vacuum cleaner soundtrack on one side
the Paterson family's DVD subwoofers on the other
in flesh, I Shuttle by United
to my mecca twice a year
in Mother's Day and pre-Halloween pilgrimage
yet I was born a stucco priestess
genuflecting before intercoms
closet humming doorbell hymns
behind the double lock
dead bolt safety of childhood trundle bed
gibbous moon shining
onto the plastic covered cream couch
to illuminate me through the pre-fab peep hole
just below the ceiling
My inner Suburba ma is about being at the
mall now
mutant avatar drunk on pop grape culture
her concrete beat toasted by Trader Joe Chardonnay
brunching the memoisa Korbel fizz fuzz
like the Mervyns version of Martha Stewart
in country club epaulets and coin fringed sandals
her shrunken nose and over budget boobs
accentuated in Palm Springs hue
Praise be Safeway
she is a bleached-blonde bob saying no to everything
Owsley sold to the university professors
thank visa, yes, thank visa
I embody this la la boddisattva
of white linen asphyxiations
specter in all-you-can-eat smorgasbords
belly to the bar code of fads and labels
because she is enshrined in sitcom conversations
anointed with the oil slag of five-story parking lots
with no spaces because everyone forgot to carpool
before putting the down payment on a car
that won't fit into the compact space anyway
because she is my covenant with madness
But listen, listen, can you hear one hand
packing
a Zen audible despite the logging rigs roaring past
her gravel driveway in their quitin' time funeral parade
it is the hand of the other woman
the one who hoisted a backpack to her shoulders
made it out
moved away and around
eventually up the state
outside an ocean town
with a third world bar on Main Street and
poetry readings at the art gallery
across the double yellow line
from the slacker hippie hick grower cafe
a town where you can eat organic popcorn
on red velvet seats
blast off on vaudevillian seas
do lots other stuff
like river stuff
political stuff
big bellied roper pot smoker stuff
stuff which reads like the national inquirer
after it ate the funny cookie
fell through the rabbit hole
chasing after something even Alice
couldn't find
but she found it
out here on the faultline
in the summer fog and autumn sun
away from Kansas, Missouri
all the other places
that also belong to somebody else
places that only emerge
for those who stay long enough
to remember to forget to remember
Come, Suburba Ma
lets use both hands
take off our orange terry cloth robes
board up the sacrificial patio
feed your breaded fish sticks to the weeds
so we can paint eyes along time's sandbar
lace ourselves in aurora borealis dream catchers
to ride with the human sling shots
boing boing boinging past tales
of subdivision and cellular rates
believe me, this Ipecac lifeboat
floats down sublingual gutters
slips through the grated manhole
into the river's mouth
where filmless cameras record
a future of hound dogs and frogs
of not-quite dinosaurs set free
to roam the congregation of earth
a land far from the Cheered lingerie
that struggles for space inside a dusty, swollen garage
bras and slips dripping amid the tide
of wedding waffle irons, pool floats, photo albums
competing for incandescent acknowledgement
while the ray soaked deck
remains clothesless by decree of
The Royal Nouveau Condo-shwa Owners' Association
keeping the underneath inside
creating socio-economic distance
from the underwear lined barrio
stippling the apartment facade just
outside the gate
brut baby
when I was born
Mama says I had three chins
a Buddha belly, cheeks red as zinfandel
first and only
she says I slipped through her
like an acrobat on a slide
my cry eager, raucous
baby toes tumbling their soft round rocks
into the next river
all of me wiggling from doctor hands to hers
proud smile entering my gaze
in the one motionless moment
before my elbow leapt and dove
into her eye
this is why my newborn albums
are filled with shots of me without her
me sleeping in a basket of willowy arms
me laughing on the knee of homemade Capri's
me, already a circus clown with an anonymous mother
a three ringed love framed
by the delicate edges of southern vanity
your silence still sits within me
not like a park bench at dawn
or the redwood patch behind my house
its needle lined path flanked by naked ladies
their pink and sleepy perfume
reaching for my knees
as I disappear into thick light
instead your silence sits within
the burrow of my stomach
a stark cavity begging to make choices
I've learned to avoid
the unsettled gaze of a boyfriend
with your distance in his eyes
planting his love inside me
as I plan my escape
but I can never escape you
the planks of my house
were assembled with your flesh
I chew my bottom lip
like you when I read the newspaper
I smile at fast cars
know the freedom of soaring
rudder in hand
plane tracing a circle in the sky
I even say stupid things
for the expressions they evoke
see if people are paying attention
to their heart
so when others ask
I tell them of you
of your absence
the things you did
the hate-filled wife you use
like a Doberman to protect you from yourself
it is as if I'm still trying to evoke something
thaw out my tears so I can float down
the river of fathers who revere their daughters
like Richard and his virgo girl
how he makes tea for her friends
accepts her collect calls from India
asks me to help her in ways I didn't learn from you
not as often as I used to
I wonder if you still read the morning paper
sneak past the murders and sex scandals
without her watching
your black and white crime covert
as you glance at the forecast map
checking the weather 500 miles away
remembering how you once said you looked
every single day of my three years in Tokyo
feeling the rain, the humidity, the winds of change
through the pages
carried me with you
through the events of the day
I'll tell you dad
it is cold and cloudy when I think of you
a hollow, icy chill that takes work to love
pain of assumption
I want immunity
from the pain of assumption
a free love to wear feathers
leave nakedness to the light
of self-possessed wings
not collapsed, but full
flying under the weight of no projection
devoid of preachy assumptions
sentencing me to the past
a past I speak of
reveal
accept willingly
only to be corrupted
by unquenched desire
I want love
I have love
I am love
the wellspring is always full
only judgment dries
highway one
winding north
wrapped in wind and fog
wishing both, either
something could mend the cleave
in the ground everywhere
footsteps dare travel
so many on the move now
(or glued to their TVs)
awaiting a geographical sentence
forecast in flapping flags
each direction fortified
by impenetrable double yellow
and 800 billion barrels of righteousness
driving toward each other at countless civilians per hour
the ordinary human caught in the headlights of
holy imperialist soma
drunk in a media spin as common as the dirt
covering Kennedy's grave
my old car pulls
to the side of the road
someone reaches down
turns off the ignition
silence and surroundings lost in streaming mind
till an orange tabby
leaps through the open window
and nestles into my lap
demanding love with her kneading paws
I look up and out, see a field of tombstones
rising above pink goblets
the ripe, deadly sweet belladonnas of September
offering a 911 reprieve
we will all die
I open the door and step onto the road
a dust-caked 4x4 blows past
stars and strips as big as the truck bed
rising from the roof
a Subaru station wagon with a fish
on its license plate frame
passes from the other direction
"bomb them and let God decide"
finger scrawled on the dirty back hatch
does that include you, I wonder
as the all too ubiquitous red, white and blue
suddenly reveals itself
as a freedom lover nailed to a cross
its message emaciated
martyred and distorted for power and control
a raptor soars overhead
in its wings I hear
the revolutionary hymn of Betsy Ross
beckoning from behind gray granite
needle and thread defiant
her hand-wrought patriotism
burning at her side
we can make a new one
she says through the wind
across the road
a cow flaps its tail
and I begin to sew
Mendo Wonderland
Arena sings, are you listening
in the pipes, green is crystaling
A beautiful sight,
we're happy tonight,
smokin' in our mendo wonderland.
Gone away are the coppers
buds so big we need the loppers
we voted on a measure
that legalizes pleasure
tokin' in our mendo wonderland.
In the yard we can build a green house
Then pretend that we are chech & chong
we'll say: Are you stoned?
They'll say: yea man,
Cause we can do the job
Like no one can
Later on, we'll conspire
as we trim by the fire
To brave unafraid
Our plans for indo waves
Rollin' in our mendo wonderland
In the woods we can harvest green, man
and pretend that we're a circus town
We'll have lots of fun on mister taxman
until the summer numbers get us down.
But when it grows, ain't it thrillin'
Though the pockets get to emptin'
Soon it'll be, that time of year
Smokin' in our mendo wonder land
Token' in our mendo wonderland,
Rollin' in our winter wonderland.
Oh! give us a home where the Internet roams,
Where buses and trailers park free
Where the Squid List is toured for encouraging word,
And the sky isn't smoggy all day
Home, home on the ridge
Where the phreaks and the country folk play
Where seldom is heard a traffic cuss word
And our time just putters away
Oh! give us the land of Mend O Cino,
Where pirates avoid copter flow;
Along river banks, where seldom if ever,
Any impotent herbage doth grow.
How often at night, when the monitor's bright,
With the light of those fiberoptic stars
Have I sat there amazed, and asked as I gazed,
If its pixels exceed that of ours.
A home! A home with the net!
Where bands and the avant guard play,
Where word gets around that a party's goin' down
And the little man's havin' his day.
riding Habana
Knotted long at my nape
black silk curves
waves and rolls before my eyes
a motion of wind and circumstance
its sheer fabric dancing in deference
to Santo Havana's long burial
her soil dripping blood, white and blue
odd devotion carried across lawns of morning
mansion by mansion
framed in tree-patched sun
their rusted concrete and underwear-lined balconies
absorbing the shadows of past and present
words like Batista and Fidel absent only in sound
The easy talk of neighbors, families
of new friends, old
conceals a want dollar stores can't fill
cooking oil, soap, powdered milk
even Nike or Tommy Hilfiger can't dam the tears
only force them backwards
until veins overflow with sobs
beg strong hands
to lift rum to parted lips
swallow deep, outlawed places
break around walls
imitating the sea
in its nightly dives over the Malecon
barely a stain left on the sidewalk by morning
On this ride, I roll past those stains
another and another
including one dumped near the curbside memorial
to the USS Maine, its iron columns
emptied of their eagle by Fidelistas
eager to rid themselves of Imperialist perch
this ritual act of dethronement
adding another casualty
to the powdered bones of those service boys
who, once intact and trusting,
played decoy for eyes fixed on shore
An outlaw, I ride along that shore
George Washington in my wallet
me and the sea, both of us occasionally buried
beneath plumes of exhaust left behind
by timeless Caddie's, Chevy's, Ford's
ninety miles from the master and I fly
a raptor exposed, talons of curling cloth
two tires as wings, potted asphalt sky
taking me past all the curious, hungry winks
whistles, kisses, hisses, shouts-ooor coontray?
Fr-an-cais, Can-a-da, Sweeees-never
guessing the flag which broke
my fall from the stars
When I can, I smile, reveal my span
how it reaches like the scarf my grandmother wore
over her salty, swollen eyes at papa's funeral
its airy shade too sorrowful to mourn
and remember the language of light
beyond letters, mathematics, past physics
where the gutted halls of Alexandria beckon
something primal, like the generations of grandparents
of soil, mixed into my USA blood
Inoculated and infected
my only medicine is flight
to come and go in each revolution
pray somehow this funeral
can bury the dead
honor the living
brief boyz
you dream of California
as if it were a dictionary of Kevin Cosner subtitles
a landscape of Michelle Pfifer's cantering
along the freeway-lined beach to the thunder of Harley Davidsons
the teenage tastes of your manifest destiny
bound like your hard won pectorals
squeezed and stuffed into the green polo shirt
I gave you three dollars for-60 pesos
three weeks of vegetable money
so you could wear Ralph Loren against your heart
accent the Tommy Hilfiger letters
professing across your waist
creams, lotions, bar fly aftershave
impossible to buy here
somehow orbiting a waft around you
one of the lucky few
who can speak to extranerjos-foreigners
without fear of arrest
at least inside the middle class doors of your parents casa
my rent money subsidizing your name brand success
you rode overnight on a train from Havana
when you heard of me
burst into the pig rimmed patio
during a spring rainstorm
to find me cutting and gluing
my gaze firm in the eye of collage
barely noticing your archetypal beauty
not so easily impressed by your sculpted arms
marked with club scene tatoos, rare as Nikes
claiming you as an aspiring member of the Calle Ocho
weeks later you came into my room
sat on the edge of my mosquito net and whined
that I was not what you expected
said you couldn't understand
why I didn't giggle at your winks
why we didn't go out drinking rum together
why I had not become yours
the rooster outside my window sang
as I told you I was a different sorta Calle girl
one who'd moved from south to north
had already dipped into the labels, the house, the job
that I saw you hanging out on the wall
crumbling beside the colonial church in town
sweet girl under your arm, both of you laughing
that I was holding out for something truer than need
staring back into your silence
I am a death sentence to you
single in my thirty-three years
my existence destroying every Hollywood fantasy
as you pray I am an aberration
I rub your hands into mine
tell you I'm not the one to take you from Cuba
and speak of resources beyond possession
the mortal magic I have found on your streets
suspended in time like one of Ruben Gonzalez's hands
Los Van Van wailing from a boom box
in a windowless dance studio
old men on the malecon crooning Hotel California
across from a rusting Yemaya alter
all more alive than any TV screen
any backroom broadcasting deal
between Ted Turner and Fidel
you dolefully stroke the yellow horse on your
shirt
and tell me that maybe when you get older
you will understand
but for now
could you borrow $1.50
the guy down the street has some
Calvin Kline underwear for sale
Museum Formula For Modern Excess
where are the underdog world exhibitions
pitbull art box cars dripping with mushroom scat
the small town, small priced delivery of local express baggies
that aren't tethered to Emily
at the Post post modern museum
art can only be the element of surprise
the flash of McSatan passing a vegi burger
through the back window of his disenfranchise
like an illicit pachinko prize
"if you tell anyone, that's it
after than, it's meat for you forever"
which used to be true at the only food joint
at the alkali-caked retreat and labor camps for artists
flesh and sustenence, cro magnem bottles of champagne
to bubble like a hot spring bordello
month long dry mouth rolling in cotton mind fields
ice debacles and three story faces
lungs bellowing their organ song
of pastel cocktails with cyber umbrellas
holding back the rain
the reign of dot
cum royalty
the blue trash peasants wear nothing
under their coveralls and bodypaint
they see your jack-o-lantern faces
twisted into a pilgrims lot of Christmas trees
noisemakers blazing a trail for hollow bunny hearts
and Mother's Day Cards, six month credit deferment due
around the time of Father's Day ties and Grad gift certificates
your fornicating numbers delivering a different fortune
a fortune with grinning mason eyes
and Giza-nosed memories of Freud's second favorite decadence
(the one after pop psychology)
your coca cola dreams powdering watered art for the masses
Today it's Sol's SF MOMA pencil boxed walls
hip to be square 6 week repro
of those after hour LSD nights
when the paisleyed geometry begs for immortality
and the walls want to complain but can't
and the bridge and tunnel ravers keep coming
paying to line up around the block
tell their cubical mates
on Monday that they got in on Saturday
a sold out rave, an oxymoron in reel circles
the round kind, with barefoot voices stretching past the moon
circles orbiting beyond the plaster facade of Formula SF
where guardian gargoyle gorilla hands
will still carry Fay inside, her fate flanked by bottled water
both entering through the service door
in a BBC -that's the Bay Area Beverage Company-
sanctioned party crash, leaving us $20 even rather than poorer
in the fashion candy crazed, soapy-flavored throw-up television truth
overworked, freakless, copless, prefab board of directors
version of a party
that wanted to be the train that could
but couldn't
couldn't because the doors were on payroll
and the browser-fried masses
couldn't look long enough
to see the goofy tribe art or diatribe trying
launch of dorkier things
on the other side of the remote control
down the street, where people, I hear
are moving out, squeezed out by for formula SF
Heading Homeless
what advertisement are we in
whose cyberclopsied vision scaffolds this culture
of pixelated pupils poking through dot windows
who posts internet cookies at the fiber-plied
Poseidon Gates of mysterious union meltdown
oh, but aren't we a willie-nillie and bush-wacked
allotment of dis-inloftment
enduring the sub-urbanification of this city
mission mind hole hideouts of convergent creativity
nearly purged of their foragers
the lucky few quietly vacationing in asia on move-out funds
some praying for the benevolence of spare couches
others limping back to mom and pop
in dallas, kansas city, cincinnati
guitar and easel a heavy burden to bear
under the waiting of tables
in cities where no one wants to live
what if someday, nobody's left
nobody to put their fingers in the dam of gentrification
nobody real holding their head high in the city of love
to the beat of the red heart
ready to crawl through the walls of despair
and leave mural tracks
nobody like you and me to turn incommodious
as in not condo-odious, space into room
will the haves, ensconced fashionably in their four walled rooms
scrape peanuts off the floor for creation
so hungry minds can eat?
Or will they count paper and watch tv?
(rearrange art and you have rat
rats arts rats arts arts rats)
our shifty artsy ratsy crafty warehouse promenade---our
western frontier---
our alamo---is being baked into microchips
for the roaring appetites of haute greens and jaunty fusion fashion palates
who meet for redbull & vodka South of Market
an exclusive meal plan which cultivates cavorting gastrofication
amid the institutional desecration of we the people
look, there goes a silver SUV wheeling
across the red carpet madness of more NSDEQ bullshit
traveling down the pavement of blue collar sweat
to prop up the mud flap market
ticker-taping its mind tricking undertaking of Caesar's vision
look, its another white BMW driving past
the heavy shopping cart of a street sadhu pushing on
another gold mercedes speeding through the slumped bodies
begging for leftover zeros
look, do you see the drunks spitting teeth at the executive alarm clock
planting their nihilistic prayers like pomegranate seeds in persephone parking
lots
will the concrete earth forever swallow whatever
knowledge
the Street Sheet has for sale?
you were a voice of reason
my 16-year-old mind hungry
for what you wanted to show me
the world was yours
you said it could be mine too
no longer me alone with everybody
or you with everybody and alone
together we got on our knees
touched the grass reaching
through the cracks
to live again
you were the sophisticated one, traveled
gobbling Hollywood and it's films
video camera and tripod with you always
as you interviewed, poked
excavated truth whether tape rolled or not
people ducking into themselves
to find you on the inside smiling
laughing back at them, reminding
that there is no place to hide
although sometimes we hid in there together
during lunch break, 7th period, after school
at football and basketball games
we retreated into a wide swirling pool
where we found ourselves
lost ourselves, emerged again
only to discover some new crevice
waiting to be opened and explored
where are you now as I explore myself
put on the scratchy Walking On the Moon
still with me, like you,
from that Christmas when you gave me four
Police albums in a red box
said I needed to listen to the poetry
think about the world
as you went out and learned about whiskey
part of film school research, you said
the fast life
Sometimes when I dream, I feel your hands
like an empty screen on my stomach
the movie rolling with deep, black space
the stars of your young stubble
against my check
loud, laughing voice in my ear
shaking my heart
Then I awake, remember the day
the day after you drove off
that onramp
70 miles an hour the Police calculated
from the skid marks
you flying through the night air
like a jaguar hunting its prey
not to be found till morning
everyone else's mourning
eyes black and blue, limbs swollen
broken glass and red everywhere
whiskey still in your veins
you drove out of my life
left me to this free way
alone
I still cry
for the freedom
I found
without you
In Response to New Games
(at the High School Youth Empowerment Retreat)
Is life a new game
a place to put on a face
show respect because
we're supposed to
or because we feel it?
inside the hearts of the disenfranchised
lives a willingness
we could not survive without it
but it is a delicate poppy
papery petals golden in the sun
you cannot pick us
we pick you
last week I had a dream
it wasn't Martin's dream
the one before the nightmare
nor was I dreaming about Jeannie
tiny woman in a bottle
slave to astronaut hands
because of her magic powers
no I was dreaming different
high school kids and me, their drama teacher
running across a freshly mowed football field
under machine gun rain
red puddles pooling under my pupils
their screams becoming ravens in an apocalypse
led by a single outcast
fifteen year old messiah thrusting himself farther
into an abyss too real to startle me awake
his were the tools of the 5 o'clock news
trench coat, semi-automatic weapon, geek epitaphs of despair
yes, right there, in my sleep,
the cheap thrill adrenaline tricks of the Hollywood
I refuse inside the movie house of my mind
breaking and entering
like a video isle lined with gun barrel fingers
uncle sam progeny
WE WANT YOU red and blue
pointing at me from one box to the next
recruiting me into the collective nightmare
the TV arsenal which stockpiles ordinary humans
marches us toward death between bugles of commercial interruption
every man woman child networked to a cathode ray straight jacket
potato chipped and remote controlled for consumptive contentment
a greater violence from which to view a nowhere life
via the insidious murder marathon loop
of soul sipped dreams
ah, but nevermind the harbingers
the mirror inspirations of violent horror
what about the bystanders
thirty "at risk" high school students, country kids
self described throw aways who've become my friends
what about this afternoon, wide awake me
driving ten of these young friends over a mountain road
after a radio interview
where we talked of making art from broken trust
of the much needed psychological services being cut
of them, the latinos, the jines, the white trash
already being taught the world isn't theirs to conquer
what about all of us as the van
becomes silent for the first time in an hour
nothing but breath and engine as the newscaster announces
another intrusion, too much like my dream
another kid blowing holes in the fabric
of high school life
of skin and organs
gentle fibers of light
turning technicolor
ripping apart the butterfly cocoon
too soon
too soon
ow wow tao
OW
don't give me yesterday nailed to a cross
or some bitter fruit sideshow opera
trite melodramatic minutia of past lost lover tale
refine this awareness to the admitted distrust of an eyelid
the nose flick of a gaze
let every gesture, glance, flinch
be an offering of truth, of presence
the scar of vulnerability worn straight across
a face open to caress
before succumbing to anonymous assimilation
folded and planted like another mirror
in the mindfield of two-dimensional memory matter
WOW
blue clouded clown pants dangle from rainbow suspenders
like a bridge uniting sky and cartwheel
red and white stripped smiles worn through open toed shoes
as they tap their shinny sing-a-long song on down the sidewalk
to a backbeat chorus of "good afternoon", "go baby", "yeah,
you got it"
the groove a secret to no one in particular
when mama embraces her everyday stage
accepts each bus stop as a cow palace
every queue an opportunity to thrill herself
amid the eye turn merry go round of lookers
the entire crew in the bleachers together
playing twister on the ground
coaster of funk
TAO
empty classrooms are ghosts of a hungry mind
much like two am highways heading home
after a long mountain of social climbing
mambo mumbo jumbo mumble calypso
casting the same, tired and cool
50s cosmopolitan drink ticket chips
into the 21st century, velvet crooners wailing
long into the casting box of amplification
all ears on the door prize
barking and trolling a game too big to replay intellectually
some things just got to be felt to be heard
the stakes have grown bigger than before, smaller
hopefully sharper
Dragon Countdown In A Finnish Sauna
Northern Tropics, Feb 2000
Let's divine the zodiac now
swallow all twelve pieces at once
walk our animals fortune through scrolls of ink
give ourselves to sauna
lie down beside a hissing, cherry glowing
flue of hewn steel shouting flames into the sky
metamorphose thoughts into naked, sweating beast bodies
roll them out, spread them around
air their tongue-timed shadows
into loyal strands of DNA
Tonight, the Chinese New Year's chime drapes
a soundless sound
over the BC mountains
moonless laps of icy sea
ripple a hexagram of seaweed
atop jumbled round rock
some changing lines, but all
broken
broken
broken
broken
broken
broken
the Receptive
emerging sages making their patient tread
across the acupressure beach
clan dancing the Tao of extreme, fire and water and mortal meat
gingerly stepping, diving
between hot and cold
as soft rainbows distant borealis
lifting our vision toward northern night
peel back their northern lights
our water plunged flesh
almost kissing the Pacific anemone
limbs lanking double time along
the skirt of Queen Charlottes Straight
fanning water born fungi
beneath our heaving chest chill
ten breaths before returning to
red cedar walls
scaly womb of Fin fire
tight skin, taut mythology
our Val Hala bridge to Buddha raised
in a toast of dragon flesh
the note I left in the sand
the reminder, the asana
the mosaic of my new cubana soul
returns to the sea below this old Boeing
planted like a hieroglyph of momentum
a two month lifetime fingered
into a winged heart outlined in shells and rocks
filled with bits of seaweed, fronds, a bodyprint
all fading with the sun
rising tide ready to smooth its cement
across departing monument
wash away fleeting canvas
my ode to campos, cacao,
to companeros offering irrefutable life
open ojos and never ending conga lines
in exchange for promises to post
hastily penned letters to relatives in Miami
extend a spare lighter, soap
possibly a dictionary or reading glasses
if I return
hand deliver the sacred belongings
so the socialist bourgeoisie can't take them
can't resell them at a diplomatic supermarket in Havana
miles from the nascent memories
of fruit gathers gapping at the folded woman
the piles of children giggling, crowding in on her
attempting forward bends and back arches
before somersaulting into the delta
the strangers greeting her with namaste hands
as they cycle past, four or five smiles on a bicitaxi
nearly believing that this husbandless creature
could survive at the boca de rio de meil
the mouth of the river of honey
alone
fresh young coco and a journal beside her
standing on her hands
so she could leave
footprints on the sky
Carefully I plucked
the yellow cup
crafted its long green stem into a loop
tossed it into
the midnight shining on the lake
laughing, knowing
I'd never caught the sky
with daffodils before
it took a while
a bat dashed by
a frog said something ancient
my feet began to needle, tingle
guiding me to move
slightly
barely disturbing the grass
then I saw them
iridescent silver
flashing by in fleets
tails casting a plume of comet dust
and for me,
that was nourishment enough
If winter solstice were a vegetable
it would be a candy cane beet
deep, burrowing ornament of inside stripes
sweet baked in a bed of chilled soil
it would be swished and washed
swirled down to the far meadows of darkness
with hot chai, dark and spicy beneath peaks
of white froth
it would ride a horse drawn carriage
down a tree sheltered path
narrow and straight into the longest night ever
wearing a cashmere wassail coat
midnight blue with blood red silk
circled around the shoulders
nothing underneath but spells, potions, prayers
to soften the cold floors
of the ebony shadowed months to come
it would clop clop clop along
to the scamper music of mice
waltzing through leftovers
the Cheshire-amused cat looking on
too well-feasted and glassy-eyed from
lapping up cheese and turkey
to stage the great chase
Instead letting the tilt chase the sun
all the way to Australia
surfing and sunning down
under that other solstice
6 months away
from winter waking the Pacific Coast
solace
the planet turns.
stories drift into rippled reflection
as the Liberian moon surfaces just this side of sunset
weeks of coaxing exploding into communal expression
drums gathered on sacred sand ashes
fire licking, spiting a center of cherry golds
heating the naked feet of you and I and we
twined in ancient snake coil
unwound monthly like the wax and wane
of iridescent breath mirrored against light night sky
penciled white contour circling, joining eye and orb
as silver waves rise and fall
rise and fall
rise and fall with hands joined in sound
and women voices reaching deep into the earth
like underground rivers of sight
where rock echoes reveal
the empty vessel of truth
silent earth walker whisper
knowing
the future is here
healing is now
the lost world has ended
it can never be found the same again
life is forever
the hallway follows a spiraled corridor
past time and tales
winds and twists in infinite art cycles
creation the only constant
in this age of destruction
we are the children of the sky
found at last amid a graveyard of tree bones
returning to land after lifetimes at sea
Neptunes's gates thrust open
by whale tridents of primordial pitch
calling us up from the bottom of ourselves
up from the bottom
from ourselves into our Self
one, the collective
unanimous tone of reason
vibrating its taste
through blue jaws
teeth baring stars
tongue silently cupped
around the moon
howling
el cuerpo es fuego (the body is fire)
In Havana, dance is the pyre
fire is the body
one two three
one
two
three
eyes flame
glow like papayas
spread open in the afternoon sun
one
two
three
hands melt air
twist it into long strands of breath
boiling in and out and up
snaking a course through tenement incarnations
along corroding balconies
their baroque pastels
now chipped and dripping with the runoff of time
clotheslines heavy with shoes and sheets
-the necessities of dance
one two three, one two three
drum fragments reach
from windowless holes across the city
grabbing hips as they pass
pulling companeros into their moment
tobacco stained hombres, spandex chicas
madres in plastic curlers dragging daiperless ninos
caught in the street cauldron
of tone, slap, bass, heel, tok
dance fuel
Rumba molting their flesh into the single
red rhythm of rooster and hen
Yoruba kindling the wide-eyed
lightening spit of Chango
blood pumping with Salsa
spiced hot enough to ignite
the ashes of this Periodo Especial
inject Fidel's sugar-spun phrase
-of rationing and dearth
of fire with no lighters, matches carefully doled-
with clave and conga
one two three
cow bells lifting feet toward the alter of lovers
flesh and fire
body and dance
Cuba
in out, in out, in out
up and into the stars, their love sound travels
man woman motion of breath and moan opening
into origins, where a hungry sky pours cream into flesh
forms the nascent doorway of me
their eyes, that ground, our heavens
lit beyond time and place
the next body's journey forming
in the corona of a comet's tail
like a diamond-faceted question mark
Down and to them, I speed and spiral
cascading past an hourglass nebula, the blue eye of God
growing with me until I am so small
that I become the entire sky
the "O" in Omega, in Om, in orgasm
a single shooting pleasure
sculpting my ability to breathe
to ride the family helix
as it births my wand of light
soaring me into that dimension
ready to ride the magic carpet of bone
as they pull and push me in out, in out, in out,
farther, closer to where love
walks on two legs
I am the crescent moon rising
nipples lifting the dew
strong white shivers of your hands
coaxing my blood, my woman
the stars make love through your eyes
meeting mine
I am the nebula
blue floating in shadowed candlelight
eyes flickering open
open, open
the gold within me
rushing upwards
as laughter, moans
orbit your tongue
pulls you into me
floods the morning with sun
Now that the rains are here
I look for you every morning
your shinny head
hard, ready, poking out
from earthy covers
shrouded in moist greening hair
How I want you
virile king
mycelial talons unbuckling my dreams
sliding off each night
slippery, wet feet
diving into hunt
I carry my box
open, ready, a crevasse
for your long white flesh
the many faces of you
invite, coax with scent
thread me through naked blue and fallen golds
past deer bones, deserted beer cans
teasing with jacks and agarics
every sexy spotted red nub
making me want you more
there, right there
here
jutting like a bull pine
ripe, thick, ready
you dance me to you
I squeal, you wait
a fixed flower
microscopic pulses
patient as I coo
pull you into my world
lips moist
fire hot
ready
naked on a table intended for twenty
candle poised between my breasts
its flame casting a hub for the tall votives
glowing at each corner of our Bedouin refuge
I forget the desert storm raging
outside the canvas walls
anything could be calmed by the two women
piping wasabi into green florets
around my nipples, guiding the filigree tongue
ever so gently to circle my belly
dab each toe with a kiss of burning heat
one woman in an open kimono, hair swept and
pillowed
body exposed like the plate she is serving
her breath-engorged lips hovering half open, maguro-like
below the glitter lidded spaciousness of her touch
the other a porcelain doll buttoned in silver silk
white brocade clasps hugging
the serpentine banks of her body
raven eyes echoing the black ship imperialism
of me immobilized by our desire to wet
to saturate the appetites of others
I shudder deep inside-it is all they allow
as they balance raw sustenance on my ravenous skin
rendering me motionless beneath their tittering
slave at the banquet ledge
captive to every hi domo moan of imagination
roll by roll
they rub ocean flesh to mine
dripping moist stickiness
pungent seas spreading across my abdomen
mingling down my thighs
tickling, teasing
they dollop a triangle
of ginger at the mouth of my current
trace the rivulet of juice as it tingles
into a rosy pool below my delta
their fingers trawling a fish corset
till I am only breath and gasps
riding epicurean waves
centerpiece rimmed in wild sage
and twigs of tumble weed
my open frontier fenced by chopsticks and wine
a fresh plate of hunger to devour
clit I've known you every day
seen you growing everyway
I've never really looked before
But now you take my breath away
Suddenly you're in my life
Part of everything that's mine
You've got me working
Day and night just trying to get a hold on you
Here between my legs is my paradise
My lasting chance for happiness
If I lose you now you know I will die
Say you'll always be my labie we can make it fly
We can last forever darling just a finger at a time
More than a pussy
You are
More than a pussy to me
More than a pussy
You are
More than a pussy to me
I was born in the dragon of a travelin' star
My drama was to prance for the sunny guitar
music would brew whenever I stood
Preach a little tantra, swill a couple bottles of precious Good
pussies, champs, and eves
We'd cheer it from the steeple of our gowns
we'd call us pussies, champs, and eve
and every night all the earth would come around
And lay its honey down
Picked up a strip just south of Mobis
Gave me a ride, filled me full of hot bliss
I was upteen, he was everyone
Rode with us to ceaseless
And the rappas shoulda got him if they knew what was fun
pussies, champs and eve
We'd hear it from the innards of our minds
we'd call us pussies, champs, and eve
and every night all the earth would come around
And lay its honey down
I never needed cooling cause I held so deep
and my labie used to ache for the stringers I'd keep
breathing would go wherever I could
sneak a little quickie, share a couple cuddles with dr wood
pussies, champs and eve
We'd spear it to the voices of our times
we'd call us pussies, champs, and eves
and every night all the earth would come around
And lay its honey down
pollen kissed
stamen risked
pistil pistol
raised in the bulls eye of pastoral chaos
row after row of velvet petal galaxies
churn lilac butterfly skies
eyes reaching sunshine pink
cresting lily bed
and veined leaf popping love rocking
hillsides wave their rainbow flag
glory-orbed morning blanket
snake rattled, bedazzled
flower stories flow
through hand to vase
body urns sliding down the stem
of showy little deaths
la petite morte
fleur
de
lys
or go 