It All Comes Out The Same

I am pretty happy with this one. There’s a voice here. It’s not really mine. That means, if I can do it again when I want to that I might even have a novel in me. I have always claimed I can’t do dialogue to save my life, but many of these poems are dialogue bound, headed that way. This one is especially so. That’s why I like it so much. Technique.

It All Comes Out The Same

I am not graceful
and you tell me to dance but
I'll fall on my ass,

so I says to you
that fat men can't dance so well
and you say so what
because it all comes
out the same in the end, hey.

That's what I mean, you
old fart, you just don't
notice who I really am
when you pass it on.

April 1, 2009 1:26 PM

The Gerbils In My Head

Yes, indeed. What if they get out? C’mon…this is serious work, deep, allegorical. There is an esoteric spiritual meaning. This poem took decades to get the experience to stand on. I wrote it standing up wearing my hair shirt and cilice. I wrote it at the high desk in the ink I ground myself, writing by the light of a tallow candle flickering and sputtering. I muttered as I wrote, a kind of breathless prayer that He who left me here would support my hope. The poem I would rather have written is fathoms deep, embedded in the words of this one. See past the gerbils if you can. Or not. Heh.

The Gerbils In My Head

It was bad enough
when I had gerbils running
on the little wheel
in my caged old head
all night long but then they got
loose and are chewing
new holes in my brain
where I don't need any holes.

What if they get out?

March 31, 2009 12:37 PM

Bird Questions

I have as I am sure I have written before, a bird feeder right outside my kitchen window. It hangs under the eave, far enough down that squirrels can’t get to it, because it hangs under and that means getting back to the roof is very difficult for them. They would have to drop to the ground but there are far too many cats for squirrels to care for that very much. So they leave the seeds alone. It is much to high for cats. So I get to hang out in my kitchen with the birds, who still prefer it if I am not there at all. The “he” in this poem is a house finch or a gold finch, fat little things who have a route. My feeder is on that route.

Bird Questions

He came and asked me
what's with the glass? He sometimes
forgets it's there. It's
against nature, he
says adamant and angry, but then
he admits we are
better off inside
where we do so much less harm
than we otherwise
might.

March 30, 2009 12:36 PM

A Fat Icy Ride

This has to be allegorical, I don’t have a bike. There is no ice in Portland at the end of March. I wouldn’t be on a bike at this point. A few years back I got a wild hair and decided to try for a recumbent bike. They gave me the chance to test drive it. I was doing okay but then in turning I took it too sharp and then corrected. I stuck my leg down as I am used to on upright bikes to guide the turn but it didn’t work the same. My leg folded up past me into the position it takes in the jazz splits and I came straight down hard with the bike beneath me. A recumbent puts your leg out nearly straight. So with my right leg folded up under me, my left was stuck out straight and I really did do a jazz split with the bike under me. I slid, bare right ankle grinding the pavement for several feet this way. When I got up something didn’t feel right. I picked the bike up and tried to walk. My left leg folded up right out from under me. I had hyper-extended the ligaments in my left thigh, and partially tore at least one of them. That was the last time. I will not try to ride a bike again.

As a child I was one of the guys who could ride long distances, no hands, using balance to make turns.

A Fat Icy Ride

A hard ride is ice
on the bike you gave to me
though I admit it,
I am far too fat
for riding and my bike screams
for mercy with me
grinding it into
the ice just by pedaling,
by standing upright
and bearing down, and
pulling at the handlebars
when I push again.

March 29, 2009 8:50 PM

Spring At My House

The dates are getting closer, though a year apart. Do you notice? I am nearly caught up with myself, not even two months behind now. The dates will start to get confusing, maybe. It is not yet spring but it is really close now. The trees are thinking about budding out. I am no longer writing enough poetry to replace what I use. I have posted 638 poems to this point, this being the 639th. I have 377 in place waiting, including this one. I have 53 poems stored in the not posted folder. That is 1068 poems in less than two years. If I never write another poem that is still a credible portfolio. I wrote three poems this week. I imagine that I will continue at a rate a little like that. Right now work is too much to allow taking the extra odd fifteen minutes out to write one of my nine liners. I still get around and read you guys, just don’t have the time to comment so often. :(

Spring At My House
The crocus came out
again, a weedy color splash
beneath the dogwood,
itself beginning
to stretch out above lilies
who are waking up,
and the gold finches
never left but their color
faded in winter.
The boys are growing
brighter now, bolder, louder,
calling their mates close.

March 29, 2009 8:16 PM

What The Rain Can Do

Some people don’t’ take me very seriously. I can’t help that. As an adolescent, I nearly died of it though. I was an emotional cripple, unable to grow up, desperate. I knew something was way wrong and had no idea even what question to ask. I went through changes that cost me but saved my life. Part of that process involved no longer caring that some people would sooner pick on me than bother to get to know me. I am just too strange for some. Adult society is far more civil than adolescence though, at least it is if you stay out of bars and jails, stay away from 1% bikers and related users of violence. That too has helped. I spent too long in the pressure of illness and ostracism though. I am convinced it is a message of destiny, formative for a reason, revealing a personal truth. I take these kinds of things seriously and my childhood and adolescence is first among such equals. I was isolated by illness in certain critical parts of my childhood and ostracized by some in high school, especially in the first two years. When I took up drugs it was with great relief, nothing short of salvation. The drugs saved my life in very real ways. That was also the cost.

I love the rain, still. I never complain that there is too much of it, even though I am in the temperate rains of the Pacific Northwest. I especially love the storms that approach hurricane force. Once in East Pakistan the monsoon pattern brought in a storm of sufficient force that a tornado touched down on the other side of Dhaka (then it was Dacca). This storm put joy in my heart even while it broke the young papaya tree in our back yard in half. Just before that storm broke, the clear sky overhead had turned chartreuse colored. I have never seen anything like that since. It lifted the hairs on my back and neck.

For years after I returned to the States in my twenties and early thirties I would say of myself that I would sit on the roof sipping brandy watching the monsoon storms pass nearby. I never actually did that, but I still love the image today. I also said I did the same watching the revolution. There was one. We left East Pakistan not long before the successful break with West Pak. that made East Pakistan Bangladesh. That bit of roof sitting never happened either, but what a satisfactory image this is.

What The Rain Can Do

I live so lightly
on the planet that stepping
into dreams is just
what I do. I breathe
and go somewhere else where rain
turns into mirrors
reflecting the truth,
calling me out of myself.
I become a mage.

March 29, 2009 12:20 PM

Human Nature

Here is something that is really true. In music, sad is a bunch of things and one of them is slow. This means that anyone learning to really play actual credible music will tend to develop sad songs first. This does not mean that sad songs are simpler in general, but that up tempo adds a whole tier of difficulty in this one way: up tempo music happens too fast for the mind to guide things in any conscious way. Up tempo music requires the complete training of the body mind. This is especially true when a musician adds the lyrics and voice which will often be similar to rubbing your belly and patting your head.

There's another piece...sad is the minor keys. It is easier in the minor keys to stumble around and accidentally make music-like sounds as long as you stay in key. The rules are more rigid in the brighter major keys. Here again the structure of things favors sad music because young musicians like the grace of making mistakes that don't sound like mistakes. The sad keys are in this way easier to play. It is even easier to play in the major keys but in the minor modes.

So want to sound like you are a musician? It is much easier to play slower in the minor keys. I know this from experience. :)

Poets have the same experience. You can write a sad poem that has credibility and feels real far easier than the happy poems. Writing happy and avoiding sappy is just not that easy.

Why is this??

Human Nature

If I thought, only
me, the only one who feels
empty just like this,
it would be too hard
to live even one more day.
That's when you write me
a few short lines that
show me I am not even
remotely alone.

Have you ever thought,
wondered why it is so much
easier to write
the empty sad songs
than the brightly wrought dances?
I truly wonder.

March 29, 2009 9:18 AM

What I Do

Things get a little weird out my way. Here is a little story that illustrates how it is…

"Once Huangbo and another monk were on pilgrimage. They came to a wide stream, almost a river, and planted their staffs, standing on the bank silently, watching the water go by. Finally the monk hiked up the skirts of his robe and walked across, gliding on top of the water like a sailboat.
Huangbo muttered in disgust, "If I'd have known you were like this I'd have never agreed to go with you!" and he turned around and went on his own way."
- Norman Fischer

Recently time has come up, as in not enough. We know that the very fabric of space/time is expanding, that things are getting farther apart on the largest scales because this is so. It is said that no matter where in the universe you stand, if you measure things you will get the same result, that everything is moving away at the largest scales. Not only that, the farther things are away, the faster they go. Even worse, for the math and science to work, there had to be an inflation in this process, where things moved much faster, then slowed down. That happened early on. Now it appears that the rate is stable. Things farther away appear to be going faster because every location in space/time is expanding. The rate everywhere seems constant. What is behind this is what is called dark energy and it is a very large portion of all that is. The reason that things farther away are going faster is that we see these things through longer expanding space/time distances. Farther away equals more expansion equals higher apparent velocities. These velocities are so high that light is shifted toward the red. That means that a significant percentage of the speed of light is involved in the velocities of the farther objects. There are no blue shifted objects except for those within our local galactic cluster.

There are people who speak of time these days and suggest that time is speeding up. This might be related. However there are others who suggest that we are heading down a funnel of some sort and time is being compressed. Something like that. They say that 2012 is the smallest part of the throat and then time will start easing off and we will find the pressure come off us a little, maybe a lot, if we survive.

Here is another way I know to not have time. Things get a little weird out my way.

What I Do

If I had the time
I would give you such complete
love you would lift off
the ground just amazed
at the lightness in the air
and the glow of me
as I hold you up.
But I don't have any time
nor any money,
nor do I have breath
since I smoke so much, and drink
and get thrown in jail.

March 28, 2009 2:21 PM

Finding Comfort, Finding Salvation

Adam Zagajewski...I never heard of him but ran across this quote. In this quote he refers to the writing of one of the French existentialists who said, "Hell is other people" in one of his works. I quick perusal of Google, Zagajewski is an internationally renowned Polish poet. I didn't have time with my slow Slow SLOW system to learn more tonight.


We find comfort only in
another beauty, in others'
music, in the poetry of others.
Salvation lies with others,
though solitude may taste like
opium. Other people aren't hell
if you glimpse them at dawn, when
their brows are clean, rinsed by dreams.
- Adam Zagajewski


The way he puts it, that's the reason I am not a monk. I see you guys this way too. I know this life makes it hard in precisely the sense that I wrote the other day...it is hard to remember your original intention when the alligators start biting. I have that challenge every day in my project work in corporate-land. But it is a general lesson. Here is the basic form. You have to catch us all in the special moments, the brief ones, to see the holy beauty without confusion.

Most of the spiritual walks on the planet ultimately demand community even when they claim that the highest path requires relinquishment in the end. I won't argue all that, just want to wish you all, "May you be rinsed clean by your dreams, over and over again."

The Evergreen

This poem is about a tall evergreen that grows on the property line, probably more my tree than my neighbors'. His house is just about minimum distance to the line as is my garage. This line is defined in the front and side by a fence buried in ivy and overgrown with a stand of bamboo. Then toward the back, this tree towers over everything nearby. It has dropped branches occasionally, sometimes on my neighbor’s house and once in the yard between us, more or less on the bamboo. So far it has not dropped a branch to my side. This may be because I am to the southwest of the tree, the side that gets more sun. Perhaps this extra light makes healthier branches.

Oh yes. I did dump the next poem as I said I might. This is the one after.

The Evergreen

I fret. The tree is
too close and it has twice now
dropped branches safely.

Someday it will drop
a dark arrow through my roof.
I can cut it down,
save my property,
but that squarely puts the dart
deep into my heart.

You told me real
fearlessness is the product
of a tender heart.

March 27, 2009 12:37 PM

Returning To Work

I rejected three poems in a row, not suitable and the next one is marginal in my eyes tonight. I think I am not okay with my own work right now. I think I am right on those three poems, which lacked heart, or coherence. The first one had a good theme but the poem was garbled and I don't have the time or heart to fix it. Maybe someday. My pile of rejects might be salvageable. I so rarely go back over territory I have already crossed, though. That is one thing about me that I know very well. I don't go back.

I return to work tomorrow from four months off. I had to take medical leave and then I had a bad car accident which added another month on. More medical leave. I am okay now, I hope.

At The Zoo

Here's my take on that old Simon and Garfunkel song. I don't think animals are very happy unless you give them the stuff they like to do. That stuff is hard wired, at least a great deal of it. The big cats are supposed to hunt. There are many other examples of that. I imagine most of the animals are disgruntled.

At The Zoo

Peering through steel bars,
grasping hold, shaking them with
sweaty hands, gave up,
no way out of here.

I'm all twisted up with it.
If my face looks strange
and my fur all wild
I suggest you go look at
someone else, okay?

March 24, 2009 12:14 PM

The Truth Tonight

I am not sure what this poem means. I guess it is true enough, that I think you women are more courageous than men when you get your shit together. I think you are more pain tolerant too. On the other hand, I also think you get a built in connection to the planet that lies deeper than we men get. I don't think you live longer on average than men because of your grit, but because of the connection. This alignment of woman and earth is on display when you give birth as the umbilical chord. When it is severed the woman child can find it again within, but the man child has lost something and he seeks it the rest of his life.

He will project it and invent patriarchal religion. Women tend to keep the mysteries when freed of patriarchal societies. But just as gay society shows now, there are men with enough woman in them that they don't fit the mold. I am not gay, but I do have enough feminine in me that I do not fit the mold. Somewhere in my twenties I stopped caring about that.

What I do care about, the yearning that I am left with ever since they snipped the chord and my foreskin, has bedeviled me, forced me to make up all sorts of crazy shit. At least I have gotten good at it and write a pretty good poem now.

Oh by the way, you women are not exempt. But if you yearn like me, that means you have enough man in you. :D

The Truth Tonight

If I had courage
I would have been born female.
I bargained carefully
and came out a male
in this timezone, for this work.
If I had more grace
I would honor you
with crimson flowers to match
your deep warm red blood.

March 23, 2009 8:33 PM

Bad Cess

Here is a disgruntled poem. Where I came from, bewildered rebel driven by spirit, sure how wounded, how wrong it all must be, hoping the awakening was true enough to actually mean something, from this stance on the board, I've been scudding before the wave of mortal terror, hanging ten in defiance, hoping to make a difference somehow, calling us all back home.

One of my musical mentors is Bruce Cockburn who has figured out how to make music from the disfigured visions of war.

This is too big for anger.
It’s too big for blame.
We stumble through history
so humanly lame.

So I bow down my head,
say a prayer for us all
that we don’t fear the spirit
when it comes to call.

That’s the chorus from “Postcards From Cambodia”. Jesus.

Pray for Michelle, my Australian friend. She has had to say farewell to her mother. I weep.



Bad Cess

Not original
sin, is not original
blessing either, no.
It's original
sanity that drives me on.
This yearning within
me is wanting worlds
that match my earliest sight.
Since that sure won't fly
I trim me away
until I fit what they say's real.
This gives me bad cess.

Now I feel crazy.

March 23, 2009 11:23 AM

Another Song For Spring

Now this is just spooky. Here comes a linguistic poem. After all this linguistic writing here comes an irregular verb. *Spring* is both a verb and a noun. It is one of those words. It is very old and mostly unchanged in its form.

As a noun, it reaches back to *gispring*, Old High German for a spring, probably as in a flowing spring of water, as in melted, as in not winter. As a verb it reaches back to Old Norse as *springa* meaning spring in the sense of to jump.

Then in this context the linguists draw in a Greek related word (this is a not at all the same language group but also comes from the ancestor language, showing that *spr* is the ancestor root of the idea of *to jump*. To anchor this, the *spr* connection to *jump* is also found in Sanskrit (the ancient language of India) as the thought behind what we desire. Jump is behind what we desire in the sense of how we are drawn to what we desire and may jump toward it or across something to get it. Thus movement demonstrates and stands as proof of the presence of desire.

The word has been around a really long time, and linguists will tell you that this means to jump is a core concept, so important that our cultural memory keeps the word basically intact. Spring jumps forth from winter. The earth desires the return of life and melts the ice to this end, and the spring flows. This means that the parent Indo-European language of over five thousand years ago or longer comes out of sharply seasonal annual cycles, connected to the ice melt. I just love this stuff. *Spring* is what you would call a conserved word, which is why it is now an irregular verb.

*Spring* is so old that it has a very large number of usages and meanings now. It takes a full dictionary page plus another full column and a third (my dictionary has three columns of very small print per page) to deal with every form and context of spring. I need a magnifying glass to read these words.

I swear to you guys, I did not plan this.

As for towhead, I was born a blonde, with straight hair. It turned brown and sharply waved and almost curly as I approached puberty. Then it slowly lost the wave as I aged. I had lost the wave by the age of 38. Now it is thinning but at 64 still a full head of straight brown (no red in it, not auburn) hair with only a few gray hairs. However my beard is almost completely gray. Never mind about the rest.

Another Song For Spring

On the trampoline
as if I could do these things
now, now, now, no more,
far too gone (said right
don't quibble with it, nor with
springs springing, sprang sprung)

In the sun like that,
like the child I once really
was, a true towhead.

March 22, 2009 9:47 PM

That's The Fact

Er…I don’t really have to say much about this one, do I?

That's The Fact

I am getting old-
that's the fact, Jack. I shall say
my piece, write my words
and watch things grow like
spring's best work headed toward
grand orgasmic bliss
and let you know how
I remember what that is
Oh YES I really
DO!

March 22, 2009 8:07 PM

I've Kept My Feet

Here is another whimsy. There is an underlying truth. I don’t really like being practical. I don’t have the instinct for it at all. My astrological natal chart places everything in all the signs but the earth signs. I of course was born to a Taurus woman with the same birthday in May that I have in November. She was my earth. I do have good logic and math. I reason my way through the practical things, and that is why I can survive in engineering. But I truly don’t have the instinct for it and so I am a terrible mechanic.

On thing I heard in the AA meetings a long time ago: My head is out to kill me and doesn’t worry about it because it is absolutely certain that it will survive the death of my body. That is the kind of thing an alcoholic thinks. I got sober, came back down to earth. Still don’t like it.

I've Kept My Feet

I write poems about
floating, flying, might as well
be footless, rootless.
I was getting to
just chopping my feet clean off,
dead weight, not needed.
Then you said this book
would change my life, maybe has.
I laid down my axe.

But I still hate socks.

March 22, 2009 9:20 AM

Something Happened

I have no idea what this is about. What a difference a day makes. Yesterday’s poem was so, well, limpid. Today’s poem is anything but. I think it’s about anger and fear. Or illusion. Possibly this is humorous. Humor is another great word, a word in transition, I think from the old meanings to the new. A humor is a fluid? Not any more. Or is it that laughter which arises from one’s sense of humor is a moistening of the dry heart? That feels right to me. Humor used to be black bile (that which colors shit), yellow bile (that which colors piss), blood and phlegm. How the hell did it get to mean a matter of character? One had a sanguine character (bloody…sang is French for blood) or a phlegmatic character, for examples. How did it go from there to comedy? This poem then could be humorous but not comedic. Jesus. I do go on.

Something Happened

Whenever you stare
at me with eyes slid back to
the sides and your hair
all strange and bubbled,
when your color gets cartoonish
and your nose severe,
that's when I get wired
myself, electrified, head
straight for the front door.

March 22, 2009 9:02 AM

The Limpid Path

Here comes a complex post. You guys speak of favorites among my poems. I have my own of course. This poem is one of them.

This word Limpid is one of my favorite words. I also love the etymological thread of the word limpid. Limpid is related to lymph and through lymph to nymph and to nuptial. Limpid means clear and serene as in a limpid pool, but also as in a limpid style of writing. Lymph once meant pure and clear water, and then the sap in plants, and now the colorless off white fluid similar to the plasma of blood but filled with the substances and the white cells of the immune system.

Nuptial is related to wedding and to the primary point of wedding which is procreation, and thus as a fluid would be the potent sexual fluids. To say Nuptial Fluids might be unusual but would be obvious. This is a bonding of light as in how it passes best through transparency and sex. The sexual light might be an unusually clear light that can penetrate deeply and change things.

This word complex also demonstrates several linguistic substitution rules. The L of limpid is similar to the N of nuptial. Notice in sounding the L and the N, that the position of the tongue in the mouth demonstrates this similarity. The I and the Y and the U are related this way too. The MP in Limpid is the MPH in Lymph and Nymph, is the PTI (pch) in Nuptial. The MP takes the closed lips of M and adds the plosive of P. This is transformed to the fricative F in MPH. Finally the M is dropped, leaving the plosive P joined with the soft CH sound spelled ti in Nuptial. These transforms are all "legal" and commonly used in linguistics to trace the evolution of a language.

Finally, while Limpid comes through French from Latin, Limpa or Lumpa (water), alternatively Lympha, all of this is a modification of earlier Greek Nymphe. A nymph is a semi divine figure evoking the rise of life fluids in men and women both and also meant bride. Nymph is also connected to feminine sexual parts, the labia minora, which are also called the nymphae, nymph in plural latin form. The labia minora are the inner lips of the vulva.

Wow. It is this kind of connection which reveals the wisdom inherent in language, why it is there is magic in words, even when you don’t know it. This is one rich example of the interconnections, clarity with light and with water and with life fluids and with sexual bonding, and the very gate of love. Using limpid brings this all to the sentence, to the poem.

Before getting to the poem itself, I want to add something written by Natalie Goldberg.

The Importance of Illusions

In the beginning, our illusions are important. In some ways, those illusions bring us to practice. Hopefully, in the process of practicing, we wake up to how things really are. But it's not bad to have some dreams at the beginning. When I started writing, I didn't know what it was to be a writer. I didn't know what basic hard work it is. But my dream to be a writer brought me along, and then I met the task.

In betrayal and in failure, there are some real jewels. But wouldn't we much rather have a relationship in which we mature slowly? For instance, isn't it better to have a relationship with your parents in which you grow up and move away from them in a natural and beautiful way? Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. And in spiritual communities, it doesn't always happen, either. So what do we do? We take what is in front of us and wake up from it.

- Natalie Goldberg from "Beyond Betrayal", Tricycle, The Buddhist Review (Spring, 2005)

The word Limpid evokes the kind of clarity Natalie writes about.

The Limpid Path

At a loss for words
about the broken winged
bird who flew away
except to say one
small word of true love above
all others set free
to fly after her
along the limpid path still
high above her pain.

March 21, 2009 9:33 PM

Draining The Swamp

In AA we say, avoid then the deliberate manufacture of misery. Remember that God didn’t do it. If trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize on it…

That is not so easy to do, for guys like me, anyway. It is neither easy to avoid self created disasters, nor to cheerfully navigate my troubles. I would feel especially miserable about this except I know I am not the only one, not even close, not even among the worst of them by a long shot. Staying alert is part of the solution. Defusing the inner turmoil is also part of the solution.

However, I am leery of outright positive thinking. I am not sure I am qualified to take it on, fairly sure that I am too susceptible to fantasy for the positive attitude stuff. I used to be sure positive thinking was just wrong, but I have watched it work for others and so have come to the conclusion that it is my quirky challenge. Positive thinking when it works is a tremendous tool. I guess it doesn’t work for everyone. Nothing does. So I am left with how imperative it is that I know myself and what works for me. It is my survival that is at stake.

I am not sure about the rest of you. I know about people like me. We never get far from mortal risks and are in the business of remaining alert to the unkind and implacable parts of staying alive. People like me seem to lack the capacity to distance themselves from the territory close to outright disaster. I admit it is a little more exciting to live near alligators. Lacking that capacity to achieve sensible distance away from alligators is not really that serious, certainly not hopeless, but it does sober one up.

Draining The Swamp

I keep forgetting
and this is no joke
when alligators lurking
are just inside me
waiting to burst out
through my freaking skin and turn
snapping at something
precious I might hate
to lose - need to stay alert.

March 22, 2009 9:14 PM