When
I was in the army
I came across one
Bill Smith,
who had lived
on Main Street
in Pleasantville, New Jersey
and was no ordinary man,
other than that,
there was nothing
remarkable about him.
Tag / poetry
If I look out the window
Blonde, sunglasses
Dark suited miniskirt
Large belt
w/tight beige pants
Could be a model..
Standing at an outside table
Of this coffee house
If I look out the window
From drinking my joe
I can’t see anything else but her
Talking through her cell phone device
Clipped in her ear, just barely perceptible
Adamant, using both hands
For expression, articulate
It seems, making points,
Striding around a little round table
& between chairs
As if a stage
& this was performance.
This is all normal now..
Less than twenty years ago
This would have been observed
As psychotic behavior,
Talking to someone who is
Obviously not there & not holding a phone,
Or rehearsing a play
My friends (some of them)
Think the same of me
When I pray…
Guns
Sporadic gunfire
in the distance
of the hills,
& the Fall’s hunt
was always
the Octobered drysmell
of chaparral
& that clean mean click
of manzanita breaking
through the drivers,
coming down & out of
far recessed ravines,
where the large
lone black-tail bucks waited
their solitude
for the coming rut,
only to be flushed
out of almost impassable
hiding, & then the high
powered velocity of the crack
of a modern firearm
would deliver the yearly venison
tabled later
in the fall,
perennially seasoned
w/salt & black peppered
for biscuits & gravy,
the crisp taste of the High Cascade,
I remember how,
our bitch border collie shepherd dog
would cower in her corner,
teeth chattering,uncontrollably and shaking,
shaking, at that near& far rifle fire.
OMG!
My God lives, and lives
Eternally, untouched by blemish, & across time between past & present,
My living God outside Creator of time and space
Lord of my life keeps me beside
Still waters of His own breast
Dew dropped sweet smelling
Aroma of the just about to rain summer cloud coming soon like,
& to me always….
He is lifting up my soul amidst all
That will fail, my God and Lord
Of my life lives apart from a back drop
of false certainty, lives brighter than shining
Metal of commerce & moves
Fulcrum of universal sprawl unconcerned
By the mere motor freight..
Of an Atlas rocket, my God’s mighty
Hand is on the back of enemies,
He lifts up my friends, & makes enemies friends, my God lives in
Surety of my own life,
Finally grasped, at the lofty position I fall
On my knees, bowing head, knowing worship
& utter insignificance of self, though juxtaposed to Your love
Lifts back up turns, round & I see..
Here there are riches in poverty, & meanness in prosperity
Thankfully, now this is turned upside down because of our daily bread, on earth as in Heaven & hovering beside an estate of evil in residence, a side show..really
& then turning again to see power in the seemingly
Ineffectual stillness of a quiet dawn,
Love behind the giving way of hate,
Oh, my God, personal.. and there, my Lord, Christ Jesus
Who drug His cross, who heard,
“Where is his God now…why didn’t He…
“Get a home in the Jerusalem suburbs, “or, “build up
his fathers business, so much talent wasted?”
and. “He coulda retired in Capernaum, had a couple of boats,”
or, “Why-didn’t-he-just-take-care-of-his-mother?”
my God sweet loving victorious failure to reach this material world–as it sees itself
Lord, two thousand years of sorrow & faith, pulling
Up the dying , pulling up & hoping the hopeless, straightening crooked paths..
reaching out in Love, & Life & Word to lift us to abundant life.. as
An eternal priceless gift…a secret revealed so simple,
So complex—you must understand I-am-the-richest-of-men-because
this salvation changed all the rules in space and time!
The Forester
He twisted his head
his blond hair and blue eyes
underneath the tin hat with
the rain dripping off the back, then
peered down at me and with a
shovel in his hand I got my answer:
“The clearcutting of Douglas Fir
in this particular coastal range is
better for the trees we plant,
better for the soil we plant them in,
better for the animals that live here..”
I shut him off for it was
a company answer, much like
a telephone company recording
that repeats itself, if you
haven’t anything better to do
but go on listening.
I finished planting a tree,
his answer didn’t bother me,
even when I raised up and saw
off to my left, a mud slide that had
been the side of a mountain and now,
was at the bottom of a ravine,
making good time to the Pacific.
The trees that had been there were
of no consequence either,
for as far as you can see
they had been all cut down.
I know a logger that would give
away his chain saw to be able to
confront a Sierra Cub member
while standing on a stump in that exact spot,
and with a gleam in his eye he’d say:
“Yep, that’s the way to do a
logging operation. You cut ’em all down!
Look man! Now you can see!”
His answer meant full bellies
for three children and land payments,
the company man was answering for
people that shuffled lives and papers,
ate in fine restaurants whenever they want,
drove expensive german cars
and ship whole logs to japan.
I have learned to reconcile all of this,
it’s the way things have been for a long time.
What I could not reconcile was that
later that same day I heard an Elk bugle,
twenty minutes later a cable screamed
dragging a log uphill to a high lead show
and they were in the same key.
Trout live here and fear me.
Evening hatch Sacramento River
Two voices
Two voices from a campfire
Long ago–or how,
According to Stumbling Bear, the dog
Animal came to run w/man
“Let us go kill this dog
animal/use his fur &
eat of his meat
we can trap him
with snares
for he is greedy
for offal from the kill
his fur is thick &
sticks tight to
the pelt.”
“No! He has keen
eyes of a hunter,
cares for his family
& is loyal to his mate,
he can smell the stag
two mountains away
Let us wait to
talk to him &
his wife, boast of
our kill, for this
year is very full
We will ask them
to run w/us, they
can smell out game,
eat their fill of gut
& then stay close
In the winter
when the herds are gone, then we can use their fur
& eat their tender children.”
In this life
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
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.
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
St. John One: One 