In this life
Of mine,
If there is any good
In what I’ve made
Your hand not mine—
Only has shown it fine
Should my son see this
The fact alone, makes me truly Pater families
This time left unto me
Secretly, leave me
in need of no help
From any one but You
That help I could
Give to any who
Would accept that same gift from me
Though it comes truly from You
Category / Poetry
still life of elephant & schizophrenic woman in Clinton era
hot late August Monday 1994
in Oregon & the papers say Sunday a schizophrenic
woman in a sack dress clutching
a wailing Siamese cat and a sixinch
knife comes in the super
market complaining that she’s thirsty
enters the soft drink aisle
grabs a can of Coca Cola,
pops the top & still clutching the
moaning feline & the knife
puts a Winston in her mouth
& sits down on the floor lighting the
cigarette as she crosses her legs
& tells everyone her grandmother
is a satan worshiper, as the
employees barricade her at the end
if the aisle with grocery carts
& she starts yelling for the police, who arrive
all eight of them to spray her with mace and she,
in the indelible strength of her mental
disorder defends herself raising the knife over head
& the cops,
the frieghtened cops,
shoot her once in the neck &
three times in the chest,
in what is termed self-defense,
but is the doublesided evil
fear and loathing of
the unknown, unfamiliar and the long awaited chance to
use the hand gun on a fellow human being?
Within hours of this Sunday event
in Honolulu an elephant is spooked
in the circus by an inexperienced circus
hand & this 21 year old pacaderm tries to kill
the nineteen year old man who foolishly came up behind
the elephant & placed his hand on the leg of this
African beast which has been very unnaturally transported to
this paradise of blueness & money..
the beast’s trainer tried to intervene and it turned
on the circus man and killed him instead,
in India the new mahout is consdered expendable
in these circumstances..
& then the elephant broke free sending circus patrons
screaming for the aisles
the ensuing rampage of the rogue elephant
took to the chase thru
downtown Honolulu where the legs began
a pitiful escape attempt,
dwarfing toyotas sent to this island
by former bombardiers whose sights set only
now upon franchise & profit
before the police took a high powered rifle
& fired seven times into the beast’s neck to bring
it mammothly to its knees & animal control
attendant’s administered the final
downtown lethal injection,
the associated press did not
report what was done with the 9000 pound carcass.
“America’s pure products,” do “go
crazy,” thank you Dr. Williams & the
Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence
& the Constitution are all held @ bay by
P.T. Barnum’s hucksterism,
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Patterson, New Jersey is now adjacent to a toxic waste
dump & the Federal Reserve Board which operates
upon Barnum’s theorem funds a process
in systems theory which keeps us all
here paying interest to an invisible elite
thank-you again, Dr. Williams
only we’ve not awakened yet,
almost fifty years
after you pointed this out & one hundred thousand
new police on the street
will not make a difference, the ones we
have now can take care of rogue elephants
& the knife wielding schizophrenics.
& the new ones will only enforce this theory of control.
The elephants eye comes to the surface
of the wire service photo & the quick action of the policeman
who killed the woman w/the cat,
this lie, much older than the past two millennial shift that sends
itself again & again as both disguised order
& undisguised disorder..
the seven dollar an hour job you can
get if you are lucky & sober
$4.25 if you are not..
coupled with the $1000.00 a month
for the decent house for you and your children
& then add on the security deposit and the last months rent
That same rage of the elephant’s eye
in your own good right hand and the blue
juice of the lethal injection is for you,
the one hundred thousand
new police wait are for systems theory & for all
who cross over the line, the white line, the picket line or the red
line that takes you to aisle number 4 for soft drinks.
In America magnum ordinance awaits ready in the holster for the angry
beast, or disordered cat-lover because of our unconsciousness of good as it really is
division upon division having paid only lip service to justice
contention, coupled upon contention I wonder what 12 years will bring &
in the street gangs of fatherless children arm themselves against an enemy
they cannot identify, yet they know exists
it’s two pm & my wife informs me
after arriving from the store this hot August
afternoon that there is
a forest fire one mile from our home.
Missing the Mark
there are two toady men
sitting at a black formica topped
table, in a college cafeteria,
they calmly discuss Armageddon,
how Russia will start it,
where Egypt will move,
what Israels plans and counter plans
will be, they speak of the various
contingencies of this country, they
are adamant about biblical prophecy
that foretells all of this.
their movements are of an inert
manner, with one of the hands
& a self-assured sweep
of the table, crumbs &
Hawaiian islands leave the face of the planet,
a fist pounds down and Baghdad is gone,
the table where they sat
is still very much
intact after they have left
given present technology
& political uncertainty, it is possible;
however is not prophecy in any form the
basic psychic emetic for the doom foretold?
a deep gut wrenching, face straining puke
for the advent of what may be averted
instead of synchphatic applause
for everyone’s untimely funeral?
first contact
complex
the scion of ourselves
together,
Jesus coming in a leather jacket,
love being binding truth
whatall & why not w/ everything
connected to everything else
the small joke being incessantly
onus, the sleepers, compartmentalists,
bureaucrats, casual Buddhists, fundamentalists,
clients, zombiebodies in the unemployment line,
the men’s business breakfast, all up
& down cannery row
save the faithful @ mass
but all equally guiltily asleep
in the church, the chapel, the synagogue, the mosque,
the Buddha boy’s temple
& everywhere else & the numbers
click & tabulate & go ’round,
as the gas pump goes ’round
there’s been a lot of hands reaching up
there’s been only one reaching down
& the all & all being
accounted for in an extraterrestrial plexus
of where we’ve been
where we’re going
& what we shall …or
or cease to be
unless there is acknowledged–first contact
Poem for the beer drunk fishermen who were lost @ sea off the Crescent City pier in the tidal wave of 1964
fools on a spree
six-packs underarms
waving at deodorized
fumes of unreason
before the surf was up
lost long before they
were found between sausages
hamburgers and the
necessity of a mortgage
to come home to
filleted and floundered
between fishing boats
and the fuel of the barge
flipping end overend on
what was to be
the flotsam and jetsam
of what cannot live
in the terrible sound of
creation and beauty
in cataclysmic mandate
as water arcing over league
upon league roll over roll
fathom upon depth naming
an unforgiving–”You!”
@the beer tipping
realization of the mistake
about the smallness of what
was thought to ought to be
Decent
she handed it to me
then I dunno,
how I did it—knew I shouldn’t
but I just sliced me a slice
of fruit w/ the ol’ barlow knife
while I was looking at a coiled up snake,
who’d been talking to my woman,
& then first thing I know,
I was making moonshine
Skip & go naked foolin’ round til waay
after midnight every-night
everything seemed clear for a while,
but trouble was I ended up havin’-to-get-a-job, plus
plow the farm & then the woman left
& I had to take care of the kids too,
& keepin’ the house from fallen apart..
no more huntn’ & fishin’
just makin’ mortgage payments
for a farm I was given free and clear
long ago before the bank was even a notion
seems like there was a time
when there was just the plants & animals
& clear blue sky, white clouds
& the low and high blue flint hills
& the woman had really just been apart of me
that couldn’t no more leave
than I could say anything bad about anything
& hav’n kids didn’t involve them growing up
& killing each other
& back then I don’t ever remember
screaming in the middle of the night either….
this abundant life
I can no longer call them homeless, not because they aren’t,
I’m not relegating them to the planet, nation, community,
or under an overpass, card board box, tent in blackberry bushes, & not because
I’ve seen families living in Africa with as much—or much less..
I can no longer call them homeless
I chose to call them Rotarian
that we may work for relief of especial needs
of others out of good will
see plight, acknowledge pain, knowing
we all need four walls for this abundant life
One of them told me, “I stopped being able to live indoors about 20 years ago.
Don’t know what it is, I do alright..,” he said, as I dropped him off
to go under his favorite Oregon freeway bridge,
“except sometimes in winter I worry about losing my toes.”
I know a preacher who regularly sits among them
rarely preaching Jesus, because he often finds Him there,
but instead buys them cigarettes, gives clothes & pocket-money for cheap wine,
brings them food, or a tent when he knows they would use it
all to relieve pain, prays with them when they ask,
directs them to missions & shelters if they don’t know,
takes them to the emergency room if they need to go.
Rotarian’s in our midst, a few of them better than we,
when living a fast paced life in conceit..
some of them are insane, some of them thieves,
all have had something stolen,
many without learned skill of hygiene this
left behind with four walls of normal life,
they wheel on, on bikes, grocery carts in whining dull roar of traffic,
all of our pain and bliss is somehow connected,
moments of delirious uplifting sunshine
& anguished biting cold, moving south, a hitch-hike,
a protected end of a grain car
makes trek a possibility, peer passed on whispered knowledge
of the “best missions” with good food &
where they will not shame you
This past Christmas morning I saw two
in back of my motels’ outside wall, under eve, arms
& legs entwined for warmth,
but yet sparkling with frost,
asleep, on crisp north California December asphalt
I know another preacher who gives them clean socks
washes their feet.. if they will let him.. washes
them lovingly in warm water, & spreads
antibiotics over sores & soles
while he shares the Gospel…
I can no longer call them homeless,
these Rotarian who sometimes righteously rage at being killed
& destroyed beneath this crushing wheel.
St. John One: One 