White Pond

I stand beside, no, sit,
No, it’s just that I am
Beside a nameless pond,
Or rather, it has a name,
But I don’t know it yet.

This much I know: Electricity,
It resides, a lingering wire
Along an old railroad line.
Near Walden, Thoreau’s ghost
Is standing right beside me,
But I don’t know it yet.

Let me observe. That’s what
I do best: To the East, the wall
They call Atlantean; to the West,
A mighty mite mountain of dust
Remains unclimbed; the South,
Framingham, donut shops,
Phony malls, mills that send
Phosphates down the stream,
All the temporal things
We coil ourselves in as we
Give names and bar codes
To every teaming brook,
Book, photo snap and animal.

My stomach grumbles.
How I will feed it: Steak,
But I don’t know it yet.

To the North are witless warlords,
Mercenary media whores,
Slayers of the icons of polarity.
The winners, the losers, a blank page
That I can’t read yet. All I know
Is I am neither light nor dark,
And the barren moon
Is a fair maiden of death
that looms, a husk of loam
and nameless pillars of salt.
It is I. I just don’t know that yet.

My stomach grumbles
But I choose to swallow
The emptiness of a moonless cold,
Rather than just eat, as opposed to
Taking a big snatch out of life,
A mouthful of light, since energy
Is everywhere, right? In the tall pines,
Spindly trees, in the supposedly
useless leaves, in Indian summer slumps
Of swampy foam, the great houses
Beside the shore of the nameless pond,
The name of which I know not yet.

I just followed the wind here.
It was traceable in the mere
Swirl of leaves, all brown spirits,
Supposedly dead, brought to life
In an eternal returning from tree tops
To pine needles fallen to hide
The nameless track to Watertown,
But it’s in plain view, not hidden yet.

I am an angel. There are many others.
We are far more wired up and free
Than the bogged down corporations
Of fear, Sears shears, bulltets and gloom:
O pale and empty pathetic moon,
Your laser science cannot dissect,
Nor even connect to the southerly
Breeze of winter to come. Much less me.
Nor will you ever completely plunder,
Lineup, signup, gobble up or devour
Our slender curve of bonding synergy.

Someday, I’ll leave my life husk here.
My blue bubble will be on that swing,
Which is tied to this tree, I’ll let go,
And float above this no longer nameless
pond, no mere place near a poison sea.
I will be White Pond energy. When?
I just don’t know that, not quite yet.

The Trouble With Laundry

The trouble with laundry
Is that I let you see my soil
And you told me I never
Learned to fold.
Now I fold in my own way

On a windy Sunday morning
After a short drive to see wave caps break:
I got home, turned off the car, and sighed,
“I’m free.” No more technology.
Then I went down to my dank cold cellar,
Hauled a blue laundry bag over my shoulder
And pulled taught its string. I skipped a peace
Down the hill to the ’mat, remembering.

It isn’t easy being clean, this much I need to see.
Can’t even tie my own shoelaces. It’s a motherless thing.
But more than that, this ongoing entropy
Is a shudder in the halt of who I will ever be.
I have to practice the art of being slow.
Around me now even the tossed churchgoer,
The hurried newspaper I never completely read,
Forgets to know.

And somewhere back
In the long gone dung of my brain
I recall a bum who called himself, “Change.”
He told me about what it takes to survive,
A laundry list better than at least three
Commandments. The first was sleep,
A good night’s sleep, and a place to bathe,
A post office box, and you can always
Stay warm in the library (which is why
Many destitute men are so well read).
But more than anything else,
A place to shower the baptismal self,
And a laundry, now boy, that’s the key.

I enter the rows of circles and machines
And carefully pry my prickly dirty things apart.
This takes so much care, Oh God, the anguish;
My shoes are untied again. My mother gone,
My father isolated in a city of noisome dream.
All things I failed to learn, I’m really learning
Laundry now. I crawl a pace, buying
A little orange box of sandy blue and white soap.
My dirt is the cause of a loss of no small fortune.

Then I remember to take out the change
From my pockets, I’m richer than I think.
Small wrappers and pocket tumbled follies
Spill into my hand. I’m just a beat up shirt
and wreckage in the wrinkled land.

What else, there’s this: The little shortcuts
I learn from making mistakes. Not my mistakes,
So much, but the machine’s.
Not so much the machine’s mistake,
But a failure to meet the tumble dry
needs of man. Redemption goes on a spin
and returns again as you fumble for buttons
at the bottom of the pan.

Then I wait. Then I wait some more.
Then I walk down the street, smoke,
Buy a fifty cent piano for my daughter’s
doll house. The wind up part still plays,
“Memories of the Way We Were.”
I wince but I do not weep.
My laundry is my dirt to keep.


Cat and Andrew’s Ring

Your ground is weeping
The humid air soaks
Wrinkles into all my
Categorization. I am
The air, ever changing
And it’s easy to see
How my inability
To be ever present
On the earth
Is enough to send
You beneath the surface.

He was a fair-faced man
With a smooth baby face
And a soft tone of mouth
That would easily shatter
But he could shatter none.

They bought a wedding ring
And experienced love
Well before the mildew
Of everyday things
Could wear the heat away

She would talk talk talk
About the little things
I couldn’t see, or believe
My wind heart hardened
Into storm clouds
Into a rain of gloomy
Terror in a private sky.

Mostly I was jealous
But realistic, knowing
Love is a survival game
Old as the dirt and sun
And if for just a while
I consider the trees
As I blow through in ill ease
Of temperature and pain
Let me for just this once
See the majesty
In the impermanent
Pebbles, and in tenderness
For just this one day
Of weather, remain.


Ipswich In a Time of War

Rebuilding a doll house
Piece by piece
Little wood beams
Adjustable walls
Suitable for child safety

Out on the street
Flags at half mast
Raised after one official
Week of mass mourning

Cinematic violence
Blowing a red leaf
Through the dented car:
You know,
Our separation
Is bigger than
The both of us

We are memory,
Clinging, clutching
And a prayer
Each stranger
We meet have
The same stones
Of shock
Eye to eye


Birth Canal

Before I was born
I was an anxious
young man.
A premature baby
Crawling in a toxic
Sea of sand.

Oh harsh light.
Oh mother. I left
You for this?

The panic I feel,
The destruction
that saves me,
Is older than I.

Now my birth
Is wearing me out.
I leave the birth canal,
And looking back,
Am born again.

Which is why
Creature comfort,
The soft, wet womb
Is a fire that lights
A furnace beneath
My eternal arse.

Which is why
My escape imprint
Has been lifelong,
A pattern to understand,
Address and alter.

So I don’t gasp
For air in your
Loving arms,
Or take the back door
out the burning fort.

Boston Harbor

So I descend into the dark city
Beneath the sea
Singing and swimming
Asking, to myself
Why do I want to go
Down there, the deep diver,
saying, to the first fish I see,
“Jeez, my wife says
I gotta quite diving
Or she’ll divorce me.
God how I’ll miss her.”
Then I return to the surface
All mangled from the currents
And dodging sharks and seaweed,
Navigating by sun streams
Of electrical light through
Green eddies and mysts of mirth
All wrecks down there,
Oh lord, I know. A lot of them.
And sunken treasure, too,
But not much worth taking.
A lot of it is heavier than whole
chains of rusted anchors.
My tanks of air get clanking
Silly, all choked up and gasping.


Sanctuary

Alone in a one-room sanctuary
A girl wants to give me a TV
And I resist
I say no, I need to hear, well,
More like filter through
To find
The voice
Of myself
In my head

Life in war sharpens senses
And I am well prepared
All stocked up
On shock

The city is a skin
I embrace or feel
Or shed, depending
On what time of day

A leaf falls outside
My window
I take this
as a good sign

Everything amuses me
And the ephemeral
Clutter of my life
Reminds the voice
To remember
clearly


The Fire Mound

Stand on this mound of stone.
Look around. Energy is fire,
And fire is everywhere.

You are afraid of fire.
Do not worry. A fire hydrant
Stands nearby.

Controlling mechanisms
Are everywhere. Public
Safety is ubiquitous.

This quarry is holy land
Overlooking the city center,
Once a great seaside harbor.

Mitigating factors include:
One park sign full of don’ts;
A church, an Odd Fellows hall.

We tolerate witches now.
They, too, are needed:
Human spirit pushing up.

The fearful want to burn us both.
Hot and cold is the way. No matter.
We walk the stones, simmer down.


Your Moral Authority

O haughty hard one
Why add to the troubles
Of the world?
Seems to me all vessels
Draw from the same well.
Your pinched fundament
Squeezed me out
Like a pressurized pop bottle
At an impossible altitude.
And as you fret and threaten
And beat me over the head
With a sequence of sequined
Dreams, a Bible black.
Your lesson of God’s love
became a lesson to avoid,
an institutionalized
classroom, a system,
a lie. Better to live
with plastic forks
than silvery knives.
Better to walk
In the rain and woods
than put on a hood
and cover my eyes.
All winds blow
From the same
Direction. This much
I know, this much
Is wise. Self-same for me,
Prophets and gunmen,
Cathedrals and wives.


Deirdre of the Sorrows

Hello. You must be Deirdre.
Don’t be scared. I stole your name.
I’ve been looking at you.
Stunned me, really, yes,
I know, even without
Your makeup on. All
Tumbled red lock
And breasts as in
The promise of an
Unfortunate evening
That never lets go.
Even without makeup,
Jesus, how they cheat us
With paint on the face
And the faint memory
Of the afterglow. Deirdre,
You become a slick magazine,
All shiny and glossy,
Tantalizingly so. But then
I get inside and struggle,
Swimming upstream
Like a salmon, working
Toward a deadline
That never ends.


Cops and Lovers

The first
casualty
of love
is war
Irrational
bonding follows
Whole families,
Neighborhood
policemen
embracing
the big lie
And when the truth
is gone
Nothing left
but a cubby
Little hole
Where God
is the last safety net
a security,
a delusion
We need
like light
in the darkness
as love dies
with a whimper,
when you really
need a bang


The Time Capsule

My car is covered
In autumnal leaves,
Stuck wet in the morning,
Wind-plastered, reds, yellows
And faded brown bumper stickers.

My car is just me, being natural.

Your car has a tempermental sound,
A whine, just coming from the hood.
Runs hot, and oh how it purrs.

Another’s car is a time capsule
On the passenger side.
These crates of care,
Being all that we are
Or ever will be.

Coffee cups, papers, flyers, books
We’ll never finish reading,
Crumbling crackerjacks,
All the things we’d rustle around
To fix in shame, because nobody
Wants you to see their dirty car.

My car is clean, ‘cept for the ashes
That have gone out of control.
Leaves just blow through
And I leave them there, amused.

My time capsule is tapes and little scraps
Of nature. Once, I just threw everything
Into a pile because I was consciously
Concealing myself. No more.
I just open the door. Let nature ride
On the passenger side.

When the plague or atom bomb
Or sun burns out, some future
Archeologist will be able
To read us this way. That is,
If we are truthful
To our car carpets.

Too Many Horses

Automobiles owned,
driven and reacted to,
starting with the one
that ran over my dog,
but not limited to,
includes this mortal list
of mechanical turmoil:

One 1965 Ford Mustang,
which my dad owned
as a shiny Great Society driver.
We put ice in the air conditioner
and it melted into cold air
from Texas to Arizona.

One green Oldsmobile station wagon,
my mom's, which we drove from Dallas
to the far west corner of Wyoming
right at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
into the denoument of a late 70s green bomb,
a handover in high school. Mark Hirte,
my so-called neighborhood friend,
put dog shit on my windshield once,
but I forgave him after he died
in a restaurant robbery.

I pass by all apparently random,
thoughtless acts. Not my job
to write people up for transitional,
indescretions.

One highly efficient blue Toyota Corolla,
four-door, another hand me down,
which I drove to college in Arizona,
then to a grisly death toward a U2 show,
where the real streets have no name,
then got married, went off the edge
of the financial world. Oblivion bound,
oh, the vast emptiness I have found.

One hitchhike out of that desert,
home in somebody else's white truck,
the wind in our hair, grit in our teeth.
In other people's cars I get careless and free.
Though, at times, my century makes me
go for the brake on the passenger's side.

Hard to trust when your are co-commuting
on the drag strip of fools.

One series of turnover cars, gas guzzlers,
four-door, family friendly, snow weary,
lacerated dents over one wheel well,
chains coming apart in a storm,
the motor a drum of pain on the paint.

One red Nissan truck, a mighty steel stead,
drove me from shifty Phoenix to New England,
out of danger I, the rising Phoenix, out of danger,
into trouble, into a world of need.

One silver Datsun, sporty, or so I believed,
kept me well until the ghost in the machine,
the Kachina spirit of my dead mother,
blew a motor for lack of oil. Death to husk,
no oil to very little soil. Sold it for one-hundred
single dollar bills.

All the high-end hijinks
of Porches and Jags,
all rented to decive me, so I bought
a Volkswagon Rabbit, with plates
that rang, "Live free or die!" May oui!
Part of my mapped-out plan for eternity.
Bought it for two hundred dollars
as an act of rebellion against
the smog-belching stink.

One Taurus, circa '94,
fast as my over-boiled underhood,
forty miles one way to work,
a lifetime to get back,
the stereo blasting a skin
to shield me from the world,
until the day that I,
a red bull in a colonial china shop,
got too many horses spinning
in my head.

Oh, the cosy little hobbit hole
expectations of me.

One two-thousand dollar Honda Civic,
belching smoke because, truthfully,
I know nothing about engines,
only the high-beam up ahead.

Now I have to fix it. That's my responsibility.
The heart burns fuel, and it's expensive,
the engine wears down with each little decision,
each bump, each turn, cracking the crankcase,
chipping the paint around the chrome,
the crunch of each microbe
cracking the windshield
in a terrifying roar
only mites can hear,
the mirror getting dull,
dislodged, dangerously so.

Then the door handle breaks.

I mean, it's cheap stuff, this flesh,

The tires will eventually go flat, or worse,
and before you are there, here, or anywhere,
this thing, this life is just a shell of scars,
reminders of cautionary tales to tell.





Wellington Station

I saw you across
the commuter aisle
twitching and huffing
at Wellington Station.

I, too, am a loser
in the war. I lay
down my sword.
Set my auto alight.
Left it a funereal husk,
just a memory
to the challenges
of sunny October days.

Be still, my brother,
my angel of anxiety.
I see you gasping,
reading the news,
oh so careful
about what you touch,
what we all touch.
We meet in common
places of terror, our
shared communiques...

Oh veteran.
Oh war lord;
I lay down my arms,
I comply, I let go,
I ride smoothly
into the inner-city
bowels of tension
and glittering dreams.

Then I will take on the attire
of Napolean's three-pointed hat.
I will curtsy, bend, that is,
into the sweet reflection
of what a peaceful city
wants to be.

The war news is hard,
ubiqitous as pearls and steel
and mobile phones.
My train runs silently,
beneath the stars and stripes
of all conquering heroes.

The Bunker Hill spire
is muted through glass
running by in the opposite,
direction. I descend
down the catwalk
of morbid hell. Silence
encloses me in a lightless
pipe of dread.

I am a monster.
I confess it all.
Just this, please,
after this night,
on the battlefield
of Boston,
willl you let me
safely caress
my love, my sweet
daughter's face, or,
anything else I can keep
perfect or sane
for a whole rail yard
of days.

Let me retreat
with my bag of games,
my pen, my spear,
my telefrantic machines.
Let me walk, just one more time
into the target valley
of technology.

And though I will breathe
the very microbes of hell,
through pile drives, tunnels,
lost wheels and poisened wells,
the endless botched catacomb
of the world you made:
Oh Wellington, allow my return
to Corsica, even Elbe, I will allow.

Where I can be at peace.
With who? Myself, at least,
as I wait for the night
to fall upon your victory.
If Napoleon could stoop
this far into the refrigerator,
he would have become
a suburban monk like me.

The Land of God & Cannon

With nothing but a compass in Concord, Mass,
I landed at the Milldam cobblestone street square,
head aching, ancien' General Gage on my tail,
too much God & cannon coming up the road,
I scribbled a few now-forgotten notes
and moved into the spoiled woods of fabled Walden.
I made a roommate Of Henry David Thoreau.

Now Plymouth Rock leads to
a bloodline of highways with no horizon,
A string of tree-lined tunnels, dirty snow,
Beer cans and cigarette butts
sans a sniff of smoke for a soul.

The cool clear impossible place of my desire
Became my jumbled and jumpy New Jerusalem
of steel and stone. The pond was surveyed and sold.
Henry David, he became a bit of a bore,
What's worse, he snored. Now he's a new shoe style,
Sturdy and rubbery and oh so multi-dysfunctional,
All sold over the electronic Web of Life
via a mass major national megastore
From sea to shining shore.

So I moved West, following the tattered map:
Where the Tasty Freeze is going to be,
Next to soon-to-be the Banco de Mythappropria,
Next to the next nouveau salon of old Saint Lou
And Noah's last unnamed flying monkey of Ozone
is fat and happy in the yet-to-be named municipal zoo.

Still I trudged, and entered a golden stolen Anasazi ruin
Of sun-baked clay, jade, rubble, a chimney for a tomb,
a below-ground tunnel temple to the last great escape
for threadbare me, impossible though rational you.

Somebody, some angel, fell right off the map,
And left me here to consider both an arc of light
& the fly-shit tempest of a teapot domed scandal.
They left no other marker, but a megalith, pointing up.
My compass spun wildly, and the wind swirled up a scare.

And now we pass through a narrow port.
See the signs in the synchronistic stitching,
The seeds of the new in the decay of the world.
Can you hear the slow steady rumble
of tumble and dry and decadent dreamtime?
God's washing machine is working overtime.

From Concord to discord … eventually …
Ah, I know this much: There's no such thing.
There's a long-running song on an ever-running string.
All ripples, known or unknown, will eventually still.
I moved further up the hill, following a wire.
The wire led to a hook, and the hook led
To a phone. But the line was dead.

Finally, I thought: Paradise, silence.
This last great emptiness is my consolation,
This last dime I spend, a mere donation in a dollar nation.

No Joy In Mythville

Pundits will argue
(Though I tend to disagree)
That Casey shoulda' bunted
And not swung at strike three
But for all the verse's best intentions,
For its limitations, let us not dwell,
Because Icarus was on deck
With an average in day games
At below-zero, bloody hell


Opening Day

A shuddering light, the bleeding light of Fall...
The manager, owner and general manager,
attended by a host of legal personnel,
enter through the weak beams
of the sad spotlight,
weary with entropy,
wheeling a body bag of Leda
through a side door
and into a shaft, no,
a back hallway elevator,
the shredded remains
of a losing season

But in March, no, April shall come one child,
though the Swans could use possibly two,
and that one child shall own the golden arm,
kicked from high in the womb
of the team mother

At a quarter a two,
lo, she shall rule the mound;
she shall unveil such wondrous things,
such wonder in the shudder
of the team monther, so sprung,
by the brute seed, the cup of coffee,
oh caffeine king, oh father,
as to make all dimpled chad
doubters believe in spring


Transmutation

Turn the bad into good.
Glass into sand.
The agent, the pulverizer.
Beat up the plastic.
Improve the soul.
Trauma seperator.
Matter turning to smoke.
Three moon shots separatin'
nine stages to nirvana,
seven steps to satan.
Think of performance art
and persecution
as one. Fear nothing
and nothingness will run.
Embrace everything,
everything will come.
Leave this place clean
as when you came.

Reflective sand,
driveways paved
with Cibola gold,
mustang mosaic,
round Indian shield...
creativity expands,
censor's cage contracts,
the tao of two is whole.

High performance standards
increase the odds of survival.
O protected one, carry us,
to a higher plane.
While it may not be apparent,
everything is in order.

Mobius strip, everything eternal,
ebbs out, then in, then out again,
the feedback loops gain force
or devour, depending upon
the potency--or, poison,
of the form. Interfere,
as little as possible.
Live in the present.
Study the past.
Know the future,
nature, soul fire,
is a never ending cycle,
real time is irrelevant.

Strip mine Mobius:
Reduce, solve, practice
what is preached.
Wear often,
a plastic pop bottle hat,
corrugatd cardboard shirt,
shoes and old rubber tires,
for a head like an alien.
Who says Augustus
would never amount
to anything?

Lascerated soul, bloody heart,
righteous math that counts
a living hell. Too much input,
output, weak. I take and take,
and then I take more,
throwing cig butts
into the forest of my brain.
Please, Taiowa, please,
forgive me for setting
a fire in my soul.

Explanation of Arizona

See there, south, over the range,
down the road past Ralph Lauren’s ranch,
the sandblasted expanse, the holy lands--
Arizona looms, a dime in a dollar nation.

Hear the rumble of cattle trucks at 3 a.m.,
the tumult of Ohioans fleeing tornados,
bankruptcies, divorces, economic forces,
see nickle-made cowboys on false horses.

In Chicago they read magazines
about Sedona roads and they run there,
trampling the Navajo, the Apache, the Hopi,
who are holding back the end of the world.

Feel the hot winds smooth the sandstone,
the cold river California drinks.
In another time, they’d be a happy,
redoubtable people.

Count the three million men, women,
children, dogs, llamas, elephants,
and, oh yeah, proud monkeys, too.
See the pyramid perched at the zoo.

When the army came
to inprison the Apache
they left experimental camels
to wander from Yuma to Harqua Halla.

Get a good price for a skull
in Skull Valley. See the hollow
nostrils, blood fright, little white lies
about real estate & the fourth estate.
Touch the bomb trigger
that killed Don Bolles.
Feel the dying pulse
of Goldwater Republicans.

Glimpse the ancien’ regime,
the descending gyre
of infused Northlanders
from New York, Minneapolis,
Acropolis, too (two).

See that man is a city
& the city is a man.
Kiss the fine girl there
with a Greek name,
buttery desires.

Read her awkward green eyes
on the way to her dead-end job
in the half-filled
office complex.

Analyze her weakening resolve
at the touch of my hand
on her smooth brown knee--
her shudder engendered there.

Then see her drift away,
seeking younger men,
who keep coming, coming
from California,
which is pushing pestilence
like a saleman,
carbon monoxide in winter,
the angel’s breath in spring.

Alta

Wooden boards, rotted ghosts,
a mountain tilted toward fate:
Could be a year before high altitude
breezes wreak inevitable change.

The fear we face here
is changeless and ever changing.
Lizard's Head Peak stares across the valley
& telephone lines hint at the advent
of the first cross-current electricity.

Tesla's electrochemical blind alley
is the Philosopher's Stone.
The humankind who filled these homes
were hard as nails and cold as night.

Tourista legends tell of screams:
the echoes of old mining accidents.
But why would phantoms linger
in the freeze at twelve-thousand feet?

They had brave, wise hands,
time to read in flickering firelight
& dragged supplies up steep inclines:
timber & soap & Joe Smith's
betrayed final words.

Snow-crested mountains
scattered the sky
while pioneer intellectuals
drove the American man
to its alchemical peak,
then fell back down the hill.


Circuitry

God created man
in his own image
Man created computer
in his own image.
Computer re-created man
in God's own image.