A Notebook – Since 2007
, and the Doodles on the radio
just before the power grids out
sing of the last rhino ringed.
The past is not enough to live on
to make ends meet.
The colony runs consistent lanes
running in opposite directions
like lines of ancient text
the queen home her future
near but never quite here.
Let’s make our planet good again
think pigeons their T Rex origin.
Oh wings of flesh and steel to fly
you must first grow feathers.
What cares the sloth slug squished
by dino or sprayed with Ortho?
As for Anthro won’t he be petrified
up to his waste in his own coprolite?
Rid us our original sins
let us be innocent again.
Imagine no water no fire no air
worse called in sick your au pair.
Earth responds ever was I a grand hotel
now is checkout time fare-thee-well.
In backyard rock lined pit dug underground for roasting of pig.
This yr pig day a hot one. The pig on a spit put into the pit by two strongest men, kneeling over the mouth, where a wood fire burning overnight has heated the rocks molten. The prepared pig at rest in the hot rocks, a sheet metal lid pulled over the hole. The pig cooks in the ground all this long hot day.
Waiting while pig cooks, drinking beer, young men throwing horse shoes, kids playing capture the flag in the closed street, salads prepped inside in the kitchen (where a ceiling fan famously spins), watermelon slices and water balloon toss in the front yard.
The pig pulls out early evening, after the old folks nap in the shade of the dusty eucalyptus.
The planet spins, spit pointed this pole toward the sun, one hot stone roasting a pretty blue pig, green apples popped in its mouth.
General agreement this yrs pig tastiest on record.
“This heat keeps up, soon be fixing swine in the shade of the sun,” Mr. Picbred says, mouth swill of pig, popping a fresh beer, sitting in front porch rocker, plate on lap, feet up, breathing from his belly, watching our sun go down.
He ate no more,
“Please me no tuna
dish at your open door,”
around the room a moat
filled with stone worms.
For bait he’d chummed
kittens cutely perched
in nooks of paper cut hearts.
A trawler he rowed to catch
the bones of relict relish.
He went on like this and on,
a sophist uttering disgruntled
guttural grunts mistaken
for charms by gullible
attendants on holiday for good.
His gig whirled on the briny beach,
bodies of ditched sea snails filling
with new fats and oils and muscle.
He stow away in a cave,
plenty likes to last a new day.
on and on the walk the low wall climbing of something not
the walk and come bestrewn the hill a wall of lifted stone
and come to a low or down the hill a noisy neighbor
to a low wall built ascending or descending harmonica
wall built of loose so much depends on blazing a path
of loose stones deep ends to hegemony
some fallen on perspective from lines
fallen strewn which comes from punctuation
strewn dry weeds seasoned start to and fro
on this side of a mending walk meandering
maunder and you reader on the other side other side
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a simple moon
once worth two bits
now a bucket of silver dollars
won’t buy a room with a hotplate
view of the polluted lake.
when all universe
was still local
we slept in the sky
now moving stairs
carry off the awful.
the moon we have lights
a dark gold daylily closed
the mope maroon dragon snapped
June dropped apples in grassy shade
a few listening pray.
the moon lost recedes
we can no longer even point to it
a pearl moon our best friend
the moon we want grows cold
our bare feet burning.
| ant arpeggios ascending across apples |
bassoons beached |
catalytic converter clanking clanking clanking |
dogwood drowning |
| each easy |
fustian frolic |
guitar gig |
hot heavy hair |
| itch it | juxtaposition | kissing kangaroos | loose |
| monumental moment | neononesuch | operatuneditty | pick pick pick |
| quick quote | roach run |
saturnalia socks |
tunnel tumult |
| umbrella | vexed virago | waddle will | exegesis |
| you’re yours | zone |
zero |
zonk |
She came from around the sun
in cherry blossom time
and paused, here, on this spot
, <
and found she could not
continue
blind to the irises and black
dots spotting the hawk
on its back
< ~
their ships were nothing like
the science fiction versions
more like eyelashes
and eyebrows
^ ^
* *
The good sister could not
hide her red cheeks
as she left her red checks
across their papers
hips swaying
up and down the aisles
of her universe.
City park a bench come Spring
passersby doing their thing
King slips into Queen being
antique clown bums a smoke
everybody doing something
and those have nothing at all
nothing their thing this Spring.
Cool cat gesticulated crouch
down by the empty reservoir
live on social media channel
pothole posts and midnight tweets
comic flickers flower round the pole
breaking beaks on noisy bedspring
like every Spring that’s ever been.
Now Jack and Jill dressed to kill
over the hill they spring and sing
shall Jack hath Jill and nought go ill?
or doth not Jill make a good Jack?
spring seeds put to bed then will time
Summer rest before work begins earnest
August and lugubrious September.
The ambiguities of Spring befuddle
tulip mania in all this muddle the old
let the thistledown grow those
with little to increase shall not spray
the unwanted children free to roam and play
the glow of a new Pentecost settles
over a movable East and festive West.
The Age of Privacy is over
all must now show their hands
still the war the weather the constant worry
but another night passes in local peace
and the coffee house on the corner
open as usual still a few things
we might rely on not to our detriment.
Words were never so simple as we were taught to believe. Tricksters of the trade make things look like all the chess moves were preordained. And if we are reading second hand, through the prism of translation, so much the better for our lack of understanding!
Words are not to understand, but to experience, to share, the ordinary daily world we work so hard at from being cornered.
Do we understand the invisible string of musical notes? What do they mean? Already heard and gone, and where did they go, these industrial sounds?
Words work within their industry, economy, structures.
Dust particles, falling, drifting, piling up, the tongue the only rule, the teeth, lips, mouth.
The poem is an old thing, some kind of tool, maybe, an implement, but what was it used for?
He started off so serious, as if he were out to save something, someone. But first he had to persuade there was some danger. These comics, by the way, these unsophisticated, small-scale drawings, are made with fingers on the simplest of phone apps, with just a few basic colors, and no tricks.
But mostly at night, in the middle of the night, when sleeplessness becomes comical.
The Coming of the Toads 