Ambassador of the Sun

Ambassador of the Sun

An essential comedy is

all extremities

rocks, streams and forests

in our absence free

 

In imagination’s death

Earth will prosper

elixirs and bitter tastes

unmeasured near and far

 

Liberty unaccounted  

 

Firing Squad

Firing Squad

Firing squad 1 set up to shoot prisoners

Firing squad 2 set up behind them

and squad 3 behind them

Fire 1! Fire 2! Fire 3! shouted the Komisar

Then squad 3 was set into a circle and fired again.

Everyone was dead and bull-dozed into a big hole.

Let this be a lesson, said the Komisar to no one.

today's poem is "out of jail"

 out of jail

       on July 4

            sky above

                   birds on wing

                            feet above the ground

                                        I feel like flying

                                               and I'm alive

                             but I drop

                       to one knee

                 to cry

          where do I go

                  and what

                       do I do

                             now

I want to see a river flow

    hear soft wind in the trees

         feel sunshine

                and fly away

                    far, far away

                           to glory

Two Imaginary Lawn Chairs in Chianti

 

Two Imaginary Lawn Chairs in Chianti                                         

 as a day’s sun’s heat reissues from the ground

            Tuscan grass darkens around us

-any sunset minus a confluence of phenomena

is only so glorious

a setting may be renaissance perspective perfect

sky Sistine Blue, genius rainbow colors freshly mixed

and all the world’s glory doesn’t matter

as I take your hand

and see into the promised land of your twilight eyes

 

gilded ages are resolved to dusty beauty like postcards                                                  Chianti wines open pandoralike to mix with sky

they pour single notes, mix with your voice

and nameless colors elongate - infinite, articulate

 

time stops, time starts, time forgets -

throw away your scorecard of indifference

                                   and rate the sunshine

faraway blooming over rolled Etruscan hills

                 in the movement of subtle sensation

 

nothing but hills of fading light soon            and

without you I lean dreamless,  foreign,  dimmed

shoulder to a crumbling wall                  

                                               where leaves fall

today's poem Away From Bogs

Away From Bogs

and from swamps, dog days

and the buzz and yap  

to shirk unrest and malaise

beyond failing precincts

beyond the limited self

to bright havens we go

in search of herbs, curatives

in forests, meadows, fields

to seek rest and peace

to put awareness on pause

today's poem is two poems, Greeting Card and Old Photographs

 

Greeting Card

 

Too soon summer falls to winter and leaves us

before spring again trickles back into summer

Long, hot days shorten; nights lengthen, our world ebbs

as sun, earth, and moon stream in fixed progress

 

You are not getting older, you are seasoning

 

 

 

Old Photographs

 

Approximate souls lit on paper

embodied in momentary ideas

Ages of frozen time are perused

snapshots, portraits, studies

groupings, divisions

seen through moving contexts -

phantoms become physical

 

Someone something somehow somewhere

in light’s passage through air

where physical artifacts store memories

accurate but false, misleadingly true

boxed, indexed, stuck, lost, ignored, or forgotten

 

Eyefuls of daggers, of clouds or of nothing

commemorative two dimensional renderings

keepsakes of empires sent to fade

personhood stolen and sealed away

essence and presence wed

 

Out the In Outbox - today's poem

 Out the In Outbox

 

Cold and unbelievable, slowly crumble

sidewalks shed thawing morning ice  

aggregates and disbelief causes disasters

as if a dark force erupts within ice particles

 

For shards of ice fly in turbulent air

Within the raw reality of polar beauty

in the frozen air appears without warning

where there is in no case non-life factors

today's poem is "Poetry Festival"

 Poetry Festival

 

Creative writers in a state of brain death

neglect to tailgate the poetry festival

 

Their readings echo tinnily in a labyrinth

which on first blush seemed navigable

 

but the lack of Dionysian frenzy blinds them

all walking identical paths suddenly are lost

 

Their mishmash words drone haltingly  

as panels debate orthographic conventions

 

Someone nervously mentions the Minotaur

in the drifting haze from a subterranean river                     

 

Out beyond the literary muddle profuse fireworks

crackle electricity in stormy bright white pulses  

 

Mayhem! Chaos! The beast is loosed on the crowd

Poets scuffle and run knocking each other down

 

The festival like a San Fermin raceway surges wildly

as the Minotaur gores, stomps and snorts angrily

 

From a swaying flagpole above the battlefield dais

I survey bloodshed, screams ringing in my ears

 

A great bronze-sheathed god leeringly appears

There is no escape from the cockpit of death now

 

Clubbing, spearing and hacking life from the bards

The steely attacker seeing red is bereft of mercy

 

Relentless rage pervades the closing ceremony

leaving plentiful food for vultures, flies and rats

Listen: 1st post - It's No Secret, Marty Balin

 

Listen: It’s No Secret, Marty Balin

At age 18 I was unprepared for the sheer passion of Marty Balin singing “It’s No Secret”.  With Jefferson Airplane backing him at full-blast in a dim, worn-out psychedelic ballroom, this performance whacked me upside my head. 

Sure, I knew that people could get worked up and express emotion, but this was incomparably more intense and overwhelming than any previous artistic proclamation of emotionality I had ever experienced.   It was the pure expression of distilled, undiluted LOVE that I heard in his song and  voice. It fairly turned me around and shook my whole rocking world. I remember thinking something like, “Holy Smokes, now I GET this song!”

I believed Marty: he absolutely cut through the murk¹ and communicated real feeling.  Friends, this is a rare thing when a person can summon strong emotion and then communicate it effectively to another person. It’s even rarer when the hearer can feel that emotion 53 years later.  The lyrics are pretty simple, “It’s no secret that I love you, yeah I love you”, but I could internalize it whole and feel it.

I can still feel it.

Beyond the fact that in the original recording of “It’s No Secret” (from 1966’s Jefferson Airplane Takes Off) that Marty fairly leaps off the turntable, grabbing your collar and proclaiming his love and the necessity and primacy of love.  One can hear the so-called Summer of Love straining to jump off the vinyl, but not quite reaching an adequate pinnacle. Still, this initial blast of unfiltered love is astonishing to hear.  My “live” hearing of Airplane’s jumped-up 1969 live version is an after-echo of the feeling the hippies were trying and mainly failing to get at.  Love. I could vibe it there at the Aragon Ballroom.

There are live versions of the Airplane and Marty unchaining his heart on this song, notably on the volcanic 1969 live recording, Bless It’s Pointed Little Head.  There, Marty and Grace Slick are off to the races, duetting madly. It’s a fairly Olympian speed-acid rendition. Though this recording is better than good, it pales to what I heard when as a college freshman, I hitchhiked home to see Jefferson Airplane in Chicago. Many things stand out about this experience (such as being absolutely transfixed by Grace Slick) but the intense emotion delivered by Marty Balin and the wild range and dynamism of his tenor took the melting icing off the cake.

Marty Balin is something of a dis-remembered hero of the rock sixties. His songs perfectly captured the ideal of love writ large. On the Airplane’s breakthrough album, Surrealistic Pillow, his two ballads, “Comin’ Back to Me” and “Today” were its most powerful expressions, even in a setting featuring the hippie warhorses “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” (featuring Grace, not Marty).  Marty’s was the voice of real and complete romanticism.

One can add in the Summer of Love echoes Marty later recorded, like his solo record, “Hearts” and the gigantic Jefferson Starship hit, “Miracles” as evidence of his continued emotional effectiveness.

Jefferson Airplane was originally Marty’s band and helped establish the sixties folk-rock, psychedelic and counterculture scene as they recorded hit albums and played the Monterrey, Woodstock and Altamont festivals where Grace, not Marty consistently got the spotlight.

It’s somewhat difficult to remember what things were like way back when “It’s No Secret” was recorded, but the romantic sound of Marty Balin’s voice points the way. Marty Balin was talented, extreme and authentic. He captured, sang and probably inspired the dream of the Summer of Love.

1.  There was a lot of murk in 1969 psychedelic ballrooms

today's poem : man standing on his head at the end of the world

 man standing on his head at the end of the world

insects buzz hover dart vanish

past arboreal ashfalls’ burnt taste

spire weed breezes tingle lips, nose

grasses and evergreen scrubs below

shudder with birds wings flapping

inner and outer dimensions interswirl

air past ears skin of arm hair tickles

looped steepled globed circle-horizons

tiring, head-top set in tufts of grass

roseate view of sun through eyelids

the abracadabra of this world, those

litanies of sorrows and joys mingle

mangle memories like wash water-wrung

laundry of long ago water rushes afar

sleeping head clears breath outside-in

dreams mixing with emptied worlds freeing

streams running distant water falling

throwing everything at non problems

today's poem (cat in a windowsill)

 

Silver and golden

windowsill cat

past whose backlit

window-screen

seems to blaze as

motes float along

filtering sunlight

in laser streams

down to the floor

as the cat purrs

today's poem is Middle School Dance

Middle School Dance

Her recent charm discovers upward

the entertainment of eager eyes

as dancing she and he interlock, boy

who stands upright, full of fervor

senses a scented paradise in her sarong

languidly wrapped as her limbs ease, flex

and receive as both caress the shared vision

of a rapid jungle daydream rapture:

Youth is rowing into a slippery cove

where passion’s sweet tang slaps time

in tidal rhythm as each surge washes

across the festival gymnasium dancefloor

Mountain Dog - today's poem

 Mountain Dog

A dull boy on a walkabout sees stranger fauna

than back down home - menacing dark souls

and big wild dogs that lurk in biblical fog

and powerful ladies menacing and solid

 

The lax boy meets the bright girl in the fog

as a mountain dog on a crag barks resolutely

When the boy kisses the bright lass in the mist

she decks him with her quick hard right fist

 

The punching teen leaves him alone to perish

but steadily he wakes as the dog licks his face

whimpers and paws in the moonless darkness

He shambles down the path at the dog’s lead

 

He thinks Tennessee is just a microdot away

drawls slowly in down-mountain canine mentality

The holy boy, his mind doubled by events

like a horse is wary of his legs on slippery tile

 

Long exertion deposits him upon a boulder

with dog at his feet waiting for his recovery

till slowly sun dawns on broken jaw pain

and his spirit guide leads him to deliverance

today's poem is "passenger"

passenger

sometimes I’m a lead soldier  

standing in a dim locomotive cab

I see no engineer, a phantom

controls roaring nerve trains

 

the quickness with which I move

is befogged in the harsh din

derailed nomad in a spirit world

a moth trapped in a light globe 

Idling Across Great Expanses (today's poem)

Idling Across Great Expanses

 

as I eat my chili mac

super bus, my shiny metal friend

          goes faster than cheetahs

slower than a mistake

          crisscrosses country

                    back and forth

                       like La Nina   

            as forces of nature fade

 

on the Overland Express

 

my friends are all here

          dealing penny ante

poker, spades, hearts, canasta

                as we discuss our youth

not listening as the bus calmly rattles

             over prairies, bridges, mountain cuts

swerving roads on our curving words

                       ambiguous

          chowder for sharks

past graveyards, churches, steeples

 

                    I pull the cord

                    to de-bus

but there is nowhere to stop the travel

          as my nerves unravel

             tires spit gravel

                    O Super Bus

                      rumble through orchards

                            one last turnaround

                              to make a daydream spin

today's poem - 'between asleep and awake'

between asleep and awake

a note strikes a fan blade and warbles

bends upward then downward rapidly

shears like a drum beat seeks dimension

                                distending outward

                              as if a bird in a tree

singing sharply at dawn

ascends circular, elliptical to scribe her arc

quavering awake mid-air

night train - today's poem

night train

the Lark requests that I bark like a hound as it passes

but of course a train never makes requests

a thing of steel without a soul it roars through the night

leaving me to wonder where it could take me

 

somewhere inside myself I know everything about it

cold iron rails beneath steel wheels forged in a foundry

it can’t know what I know, can’t ask questions for itself

yet, the Lark requests that I bark like a hound as it passes

race cars run on a deep-grooved blacktop - today's poem

race cars run on a deep-grooved blacktop

rubbling car tires spline ribbed surfaces

while rpms register on cockpit tachometers

like a Camaro briefly reflected in mirror sunglasses

or sound furrowing like needles into vinyl records

 

our human race considers oxen-dumb jibber-jabber

like a wind blowing no good over a race track

and meandering day after night both to be sensible

going further faster to no avail like a 45 on 78 rpm

 

today's anti-poem is "IN MONGOLIA"

 

IN MONGOLIA

 

Surmise that on merit I am the Emperor of Mongolia at such mercurial time and circumstance that this is the needful

 

Might I order my awesome imperial complex built on the plain where currently dinosaur fossils proliferate

 

Shall I send my otherworldly emissaries with meticulously crafted plans to Patagonia to isolate, quarry and cut the exact stones needed for my re-creation of the Great Pyramid of Cheops upon the Mongolian Dinosaur Plain at the center of the Imperial complex of Luxury – yes, I think so

 

And with stones dressed, finished, polished and blessed they become the latter day instantiation of the Great Pyramid of Cheops (only better) -- with the all-seeing eye at its pinnacle, glowering down at ancient, current and future worlds at my whim-behest shall I beam with pride

 

Certainly no one objects and everyone leaps on-board with this pleasurable program; and schedules, tariffs and rules are devised for all to visit this Mongolian wonderland to be-pilgrim, marvel, and study fossils, wondering about the rise and fall of the ages of reptiles without regard to how that reflects on my contemporary age

 

And I assume to execute orders for operations to maintain the Imperial Complex Status Quo for millennia, indoctrinate world citizenry and create belief systems such that humanity obeys my silliness re: the primacy of the pyramid complex with absolute blind devotion

 

Whereas plagues are inevitable I arrange abolition by assembling a really smart team of epidemiologists, doctors and pharmaceutical research and development teams; environmental engineers and climatologists to work full-time on health control and population maintenance.

 

On the other hand, I might choose to do none of this and just remain an anonymous poet with no sway in Mongolia or anywhere else and merely await implementation of this brilliant scheme someday haphazardly.

Today's Poem is "Walking a Small Dog"

Walking a Small Dog

A bird wrinkles a low branch

as a hawk pierces the stillness

and in a swoop a bird

passes the wrinkle deeper into shade

 

I see motion, I hear the shrieks, see color

brown against green through leaves

Something is about to happen

beyond my inattention

"Routine Business" today's poem

 

Routine Business

 

Levitation
Blindness
Inaction                                                                         

Escape

Motion
Velocity

 

A building high above the mist
The moon standing still in the sky
The forest casting living shadows
The wind blowing with abandon
Do not hesitate
Escape!

Together in movement
Moving                                                                                                                            Scrambling                                                                                                                           We must go!

 

The building glows from on high
A place of gold and comfort
Radiant with brilliant color
After you enter, realization comes to you

 

The skeleton of our leader is found in an automobile
Its motor is leaking dark oil and stink
We must drive it away from here
To a remote, alien place

Come along with me, we are going now

 

Escape!

 

The reptile within is taking control

We cannot deny it

Our span of control is infinite

Stop the Earth too, in its tracks

Crawl to the pavilion in the whirling sound

Escape now!

Pink Ginger - today's poem

Pink Ginger

 

Flailing nixes of cruciform thunks

flunked as badly as the skunk stunk

warbling junk to monsieur le drunk punk  

or so informs a crunk quidnunc monk

 

Ginger got her jack-in-the-box gunk  

which went funk and clunk into a trunk

then slunk downward and sunk

away from he who plunks a song chunk  

 

Who warbled and what song was it when

the downward spelunk spunk clinked and sunk

What nixes fixed the stinking rupture skunk  

to the libelous brotherly rapscallion-men

 

Now, Ginger Pink suddenly slinks down to sink

into the drink in her jack-in-the-box mink

today's poem - mountain whiskey

mountain whiskey

with clear head freed of media

water-conjured I swig

rivulent ancient essence

cold met with grainy heat

and time to unite

invisible spirits

of unknown variables

pickle barrel - today's poem

pickle barrel

 

brine cumber cuber seedsmore

sharp system stave

rationally reified unusual usuals

float forever jar retraction

I am a man wandering in to buy

realms of pickles the stars of which

fabricate smiling Czechoslovakian

sandwich blue plate specialities

down home not loose enough

to remember bright greenery

via pickle juice transparent hands

flown like birds down into green air

snack and tartar sauce garnished

in Friday night fish fry apogees

 

Today's Poem - Euphonic Dysphonia

Euphonic Dysphonia

An annual hemispheric exfoliation sequence is a testament to celebration, sharing of food and drink that runs through the history, legacy, and plans of our agency; signals the passage of seasonal life, like signal flags turning in the wind exploding in bright and colorful traditional folk costumes, native dresses forged in patchworks consisting of cookie-cutter styles per the ancien regime method as teardrops fall into a silent lake.

Underground ox-wheels maintain illusions fluttering in the air as the festival capers on instant by instant before the first freeze tinges with sadness.

People lined up in the distance smile widely, laughing while shouting vivid sayings known for happiness day and night. Children sneak in and out of doorways where stockpiled sweets draw them the delirious village offspring whose laughter echoes down the stone streets pursuing pinwheeling stilt-giants and feathered clowns with an unheard loon flying over that darkness in  light.

The chickens stutter and dance as heads bounce in anticipation of the revelries. Foxes, wolves, raccoons and other nocturnal bandits in constant crowd evasions list from events. Dogs, cats and domestic birds become invisible in buildings and under them, scuffling amid the lighthearted danger.

Rudely hewn barns, shops and huts festooned with dyed streamers and woven straw around colored pebbles seethe like heaven in the starbright autumnal sunlight like a celestial city of admiration constructed by magical golden sheep as the shepherds, rangers and cowhands roll into town. Random frowns cross some brows.

Dance, sports games, music, parades, care, joy and soul renewal;  declamation of heartful speech, vocal recitation of song, storytelling, poetry and group inspirational recitations.  Exchange of seed and goods, handiwork of men, women and children. Pennants, flags and banners waving. Frivolity. At the equinox.

TODAY'S POEM - "word by world"

 

word by world

 

the world keeps speed-reading past me

while I slow down to savor each phrase

it rattles off words like a ticker tape

words ideas and ends I don’t care to hear

 

the olive oil universe is fast and thin

where it should be slow thick perpetual

it is momentary fragmenting temperature

burnt from the grate in a dulled instant

 

a smokiness instigating clangorous alarms

where lubrication and frictionlessnesses

should abide to counteract toxic ice storms

hovering just beyond our insufficient reason

 

the words and worlds steal slowly to a crawl

to listen one by one sentence for sentence

today's poem - Four Dope Jams

 

Four Dope Jams

 

life   popeye and olive oyl simulate and repeat till now is it real now   cartoon things think already things I didn’t think thought   put upon put up on her shelf upon a shelf   just like themselves   thinking thwarting ly things situate always to cartoon my mind	cartoon   unlikelinesses and it’s in a blink dazily dozily done astonishedly   gravity-defiantly shown through practice makes perfect momentarily forever   fictive surrogates in pre-visualization objects unconscious revolve in still time
on-line   a mere representation quicktimes its own   daydreamily droned self wrinkling away from   heavenly obstacles and protrusions of grandeur   over and over then it happens transcendent   I watch again the againing a burnt imprint of a dream   all ideas being all ideas that are stuck in place	dream   emblem at the hearth a speed of light error subconscientious nature bwanahat geological movements as tangerine universes spin in a big oozing sacrifice and eons by moments blow my collective mind in observational blips as clattering chatterbirds of capitol everyworld streets radiate a radiant static