backward forward - poem for 8/31

 

backward forward

my ziggurat ing self is walk ing

backward to the hemp arts school  

my hand back up befronts my face

reflecting a watch mirror’s face

image to see where I am going

or is it to see where I went?

Evening Window - today's poem

Evening Window

Up from the ground

as an orchestra hums La Mer

a spice aroma scent, up and up is sent

lanterns ascend, their glow lost

in stars

like glowing wheels over a blue sea

A long marsh with forest beyond

circled by night sky

is foot-lighted but growing dim

to distant hills shadows resolving

in darkness, losing their form

Sleep is descending, casting its veil

the breeze upon the night scene

sheer as silken mist

waving

this one here - today's poem

this one here

feels trapped -

searches beyond each horizon with

EYES of swimming suit blue

contrasts a green business suit to

HAIR of bullet-casing bronze

to seek royal typewriter blue with

NAILS of striped bandana red and white

 

but if consciousness is a spiral

but if audacity is a plus-plus

but if work-life takes a stitch

 

seeming to be lost

EYES un-focus a cumulus MIND  

as Booby traps capture silence

HANDS shield soundless EARS

as Booby hatches enclose innocence

MOUTH a void open-oval landscape

as Booby nests fill with hatchlings

and above, birds riot in insect-spinning air

 

then all is naught all is fraught

then the freight is staged

then lost are found, found lost

 

 

 

Boat - today's poem

Boat

 

Let the boat drift into a quiet cove

Behold a bush of stars radiantly shining

 

agape as a talking deer nears

telling woodland secrets

 

Julius Caesar in robes and laurel wreath

wanders Druidic woods slightly obscured

 

the Emperor, his time interrupted

seems to say, this is all your fault

 

just as a cork bobs on an undulating lake

drifts slowly away from its silent cove

 

untying water and sky from time and land

On not being oneself - today's poem

On not being oneself

 

Oneself who wasn’t one

but instead was a tree

likely was someone else

to begin with, not a self

but more of a woodland elf

and not a munchkin cowboy

 

By living in the plant world

one such one lacks insight

outright dismissed and is so

to the point where it hurts

and no one sees the truth

punching and roping cattle

 

One who also wasn’t oneself

or who was more apt to be a bloom

was unlikely to be someone else

yet lacking outright insight

but perfectly home on the range

couldn’t point to where it hurt

 

you are here - today's poem

 

you are here  

thinks a horseless headless horseman

loudly. sitting in a windowseat

as a sunshine pig sniffs the screen

farm after farm beyond breeze sees

green fields wifed in ocean waves

in a frame of beige room shadow

as I sip tepid timesqueaks of coffee

the end - today's poem

the end

snail darter

versus human

corporation

by what measure

who decided

who has, what

are, rights? 

after the storm - today's instant poem

after the storm-

Royce strolled over

his 1948 convertible was filled with water

he got in without opening the door

and the car started like a champ

as he drove off 

the water up to his shoulders

he thought: I'M AQUAMAN

amidst the fish nibbles

under the re-percussing wavelets

one hundred years of solitaire - today's poem

one hundred years of solitaire

 

I am here to count pigeons in the park

that makes 221 straight losses

but I just can’t defeat myself, I know

 

Once in 1960 I won two straight games

without any fast shuffles or sleights

It’s odd that the odds are so against me

 

33 pigeons now are seeking after crumbs

12 have wandered off pure indifferent

isn’t that just spud-wonderful?

 

Ducks on the pond; another game lost

Only 13 cards moved up, 13 free pigeons

return to gobble wobble over the walks

 

Clevenger and I played Hearts, Spades, Rum

but when he moved to Kokomo I had to switch

back to old Sol and to my pigeon inventory

 

So it’s not worth playing against myself

if I cheat myself - it wouldn’t ever end

but make bad worry and unrest on my mind

 

Enough bad things in one short life happen

hidden within my heart’s walls enclosed

without adding trouble by petty conniving

 

Years roll human and wildlife filled by

summer and winter weather, strolls, echoes

me, my games tatting along park seasons

 

 

 

ghosts - today's poem

ghosts

in Chicago’s nighttime air

light and sound is late to expire

as spirits pick spots to re-appear

and disappear; ebbs and flows

through scarce concealing shadow

fleeting fire specters in darkness

out of ancient campfires’ echoes

rise above temporary elevations

with swamp gas and mist from streams

underground, around, and inside her

strong buildings all over town

blue lights flash hidden from prayers

in candle corners and graveyard bones

the same as ever they visit home 

there goes the postmodern strip mall - today's poem

there goes the postmodern strip mall

 

when not in a stupor

stumbling sidewalks

shambling shopfronts

between the nail spa and gym

methadone clinic clients

start selling gratifications  

to swollen-faced gym rats

on hotly contested tarmac

in cars as county officials

pass them on their way

to the happy-ending

massage parlor nearby

Reverse Pilgrim - today's poem

Reverse Pilgrim

 

Haven’t we all become house-tra-nauts

     wintry, unpleasant folk

propeller headed to an inner peace

     while spring machines crash

and split to pieces lost in space?

Summer free of this schmuck-fest

while the world around us ends

     will we deploy The Robot in our stead

or   will we fall as lazily as we scheme?

"more Chicago breeze" - today's poem

more Chicago breeze

 

       deriving how no one knows

   when you’d choose to

meet small-fry siblings

of the winging wind

 

       a quiet whistle-up Avenue

   cool upon your face

down cross streets

north and south

                                          

       a friend to make you think

   of luck with fortune dead

for retreat to be victory

encore after encore

                                          

       peaceful, serene

   staving not starting

weather war

a calm and steady wave

 

       count the breeze

   as a constant friend

someone to lean on

when the going goes bad

 

a whispering spirit takes away the pain 

today's poem - Broken I-Pad

Broken I-Pad

 

I half-heartedly attempt reasonable thought

at a phone-charging station in a glitzy mall

inert while Apple diagnoses Patricia’s I-Pad

 

Unreasonably - I worry about ubiquitous actors

like Jake from State Farm and the woman’s name

I forgot selling their futures to hawk fear  

 

After wrecking careers via reasonable sell-outs

their days number professional hopes subsuming

in greed and need to build a personality brand

 

in unreasonably expensive cars, taking meetings

buffeting around L.A. getting pitched and angling

for favorable positions on a scrap heap of hedonism

 

I worry they won’t invest in their futures in time

after shedding reasonable pride for insipid roles

and presumably lucrative temporary paydays

 

doomed by years of method acting, falsity

and plastic surgery to create an imaginary reality.

-should I attempt reasonable thought elsewhere?

 

When will that I-Pad be ready? 

today's poem - "hypotheticals"

hypotheticals

 

when misinterpreted

the maze of science

leads into darkness

 

when recognized

the gaze of love

leads into light

 

today's poem: man standing on his head in front of a jazz bar

man standing on his head in front of a jazz bar

 

A sidewalk looks like

as good a place as any

to stand on my head

 

Do I note some nut

wobble-wailing in full screech

walk by rubber-legged?

 

Always cops appear

arriving flatfoot, horseback

and paddy-wagon

 

Upside-down-edly

they siren him off

as forlorn he moans

 

Standing on my head

in philosophical thought

gives me perspective

 

Will this world remain

unexpectedly intact

fifty years from now?

Today's (not really a) poem: Definitions - beat, Beat Generation, beatnik

Definitions – beat, Beat Generation, beatnik

 

beat (adj)

Worthless, bereft of value, irresponsible, anti-social, indolent. Like a dead beat.

 

Beat Generation (noun)

A small number of writers and artists who lead a ‘beat’ life and who produce unconventional, un-heroic literature and art.

1958   Daily Express 23 July 4/2   This [San Francisco] is the home and the haunt of America's Beat generation and these are the Beatniks — or new barbarians.

 

beatnik (noun):

1. A media darling stereotype prevalent from the late 1950s to  present. The beatnik is universally depicted as lazy, unmotivated, idle, worthless, cynical, world-weary, shambling, sexually-promiscuous, godless; cheaply and shabbily clad, hyperbolic, kinetic, unkempt, unsanitary, the butt of derision, artistic, slang-prone, politically radical, shiftless, and behaviorally unpredictable.

Other elements of the beatnik persona include pseudo-intellectuality, jazz fanaticism, drug use, disassociated poetry spouting, unreflective booze influx, and the continual cartoonish depiction and dismissal of square (conventional) thought teamed with an identification with the Far East spiritual quest of Jack Kerouac's rhapsodic fiction and Allen Ginsberg’s confessional poetry.

 

Beatniks seek an invisible world.

 

2. A person who participates in a social movement stressing artistic personhood, mysticism, and the abandonment of conventional societal values.

 

3. broadly : (usually) a young and artistic person who bails out of the status quo of war and money-obsessed squaredom to pursue ecstasy.

 

4. A person, especially a self-identifying member or follower of the Beat Generation cultural movement, whose behavior, views, and often style of dress is emphatically unconventional and non-conformist.

 

5. A conflation of the Soviet space satellite term ‘sputnik’ with ‘beat’ in an attempt to pigeonhole the far out mentality of a bohemian individual.

 

6. One who sniffs out the holy in any scene, scenario, or person, however unlikely.

Today's Poem - Racing Bulldozers 2

Racing Bulldozers 2

At the Plantation Wedding

of Indolence to Avarice

raging bulldozers race

sun-horse-stealthily roaring

ever near the lawn pulpit

My wrist watch has died -

cocktails, hors d’oeuvres

and brain-dead dancing must wait

not anticipating this

heavy equipment malfeasance

shrieking on the Kokomo 

today's poem - Racing Bulldozers

Racing Bulldozers

the daily bus to Nowhere  

passes plantation weddings

sun horses pace fast

racing bulldozers

toward privileged pleasure

toward perilous pain

towing sandstorms behind them

snaking into day’s bloodshot eye 

"Detroit, 1984' today's poem

Detroit, 1984

 

In January 1969

we agreed to meet

 

greet the new year of 1984

in an abandoned warehouse in Detroit

 

-a perfect gesture

in the mind’s eyes

of Midwest college

freshmen absurdists

 

But by the time

that Orwell milestone

arrived

we were all long gone

 

no longer conspirators

 

likely no man would have

left wife

children

 

life

 

for such symbolic foolery

with such marginal reason 

 

But I did think about it, sure

many times 01/06/69 onward

and on 01/01/84

 

and I imagine

Larry, Mike, Terry, Ken, and Doug did too

 

at least they did

in my magical

revisionist history

of the 20^th Century

 

where naïve chords of freedom

ring on in fleeting years

"don't argue with a rattlesnake heart" today's poem

don’t argue with a rattlesnake heart

clever efficient

amoral yes but should you

subdue the world?

"duct taped to a dream" today's poem

duct taped to a dream        

scrubbing bubbles like Mr. Clean

I sham wowed my memory

and plumb washed away

my personal inventory

of all my troubles

if you know what I mean

today's poem - "the only thing you need to know is"

the only thing you need to know is

 

a citizenry of oblong chemical rosebuds

unhinges in chasms of disaster

as manifest emptiness dwells

 

within them where whirlpool clowns  

in burnt criticism gape untroubled

at all trivial sinister things

  

we conjure exacto charcoal blooms

bringing forth a false carbon destiny

a million furrows carved into truth

 

and forever dull faceguard catastrophes

are held fast by pink yard flamingos

outside the realms of significance

 

now I see contour chicken flowers

string barnyard shaped glories in vain

above the silent, sleeping coliseum