Train whistle blows on cold night
All those friends caught inside;
Owl and hawk diving unseen but felt tangibly outside.
I just see my grandfather’s kind hands-
Palmed and ribbed for kindness, and endlessly open
Even in his own casket,
As the mouse and moles scurry
Towards their own homes
Tonight.

Train whistle blows on cold night
All those friends caught inside;
Owl and hawk diving unseen but felt outside.
I just see my grandfather’s kind hands,
As the mouse and moles scurry
Towards their own homes.

“Good art never settles”

Heidegger’s a fool
To sit and think so long
But Buber went to pubs
And invited him to come along.
Martin talked to everyone’s thous
While Heidegger read the room.
A metaphysician’s bar is transparent
People see light through glasses
Hegel never came in, dead by then.
But at least those first two
Had a nice dialogue.
One had their own experience
The other was floating round the room
Like a Chagall painting
Where nothing ever
Is settled.
//

//
We come to this bar
For our own reasons
Me to learn love
Or be loved or both
Some to escape boredom
Some to actually be alone
But we come each day
And somehow make this home.
Playing trivia, doing crosswords
And watching jeopardy
Or even playing chess in passing,
Beside an enormous unseen fireplace
Where everyone is welcomed
To gather each day.
Maybe someone will bring pizza today
Or a new puzzle, or a car wreck will happen
Or something. We all come here
For something.
Perhaps, as well
A place to keep life’s pulse each day
To make sure we are all ok.

//
Next door,
The mother and daughter
Live together alone.
They look like one another, by now
Aside from bones and age
They both smile kindly
While raking, reading or
Today going to the doctor.
She has taken a fall backwards
She awoke and thought she was a little girl
Her daughter holds her hand
And tells her they are going
To a play lot today.
The mother walks slowly through each new door
Hoping to meet an old boyfriend (or even Jesus)
On the play lot’s long slide.
//

//

A Priest’s complaint

Writing and prayer take time
You can’t turn the soul on a dime.
If you want me to prayer for you,
You gotta let me step outside time.
Don’t worry, I will stay aware of it, my dear.
I’ve never fallen off the Wire, but when I do
There’s always a safety net.
And besides, God doesn’t need my prayers anyway.
It just lets us talk.

//
Wheel-chaired by the end
My friend
Still dyes her hair red for life,
Wears cool hats for costume,
And keeps it funky.
Her body hurts worse these days
But she refuses
Style to leave her yet
And her wheelchair
Is just another prop
In her theater of life.
When my mom lost her hair
She immediately remembered her theater days
And the wonder of wigs.
It’s all about how thankful
You are for your hand
How you are enabled to respond
And not just become react-
That is, how everything is potential performance art!

Even death is an art.

//
I told them everything I knew thus far
The story was as I said. Relentless Love
Defiantly breaking in despite all performances.

//
Spider’s gossamer strands in evening glow
Are enough to know and see through shimmer,
And remember
Forever, in tremble

our endlessly glorious networks.

//
The origins of water.
First a sound, even
Before the light
A sound in the dark
Then one enormous drip
And everything was born.
//
I just want to sneak off
Back to Vermont or those kettle ponds on Nan Tucket
Or her body that day slowly sinking into gold light…
Or Albuquerque during hatch season
Or Jerusalem on any roof at sunset
I just want to sneak off
To Flannery OConnor peacock farm
To Carl Jung estate in Switzerland
Or to a bare cabin the alps
Or to any of their bodies exposed
In their particular glories
To stone star skin again Jemez Hot Springs
At night with just bodies silence and crouching wolves unseen
Or elks stampeded above
Or angels wings which kept touching us
I just want to sneak off back into myself
Back when I could say life well by merely being
Me, a great idea of God to see through
Me wearing a suit of chimes in my dreams
And just walking in slight breeze
Just enough to be a good sound in other’s hearts.
Me living in parks and under bridges
In women’s homes around the world
In churches, and synagogues and whoever would shelter
A sound which sneaks off just after you hear it fully.
//
I wrote on everything
Receipts, gum wrappers
Even underwear, whatever
Was bare
A tabula rosa all around me everywhere
And each time I wrote again
I felt eternity. That is near myself.
So, I wrote on everything.
//
I was in films
Back before everything
Was seen.
I was writing novels
When they became obsolete.
I was taking photos in my sleep.
And every day was performance art
A cinema to see
When I could barely walk
When I could still be me.
//
Take three from,
The editing rooms

There are no more takes today
That’s a wrap. So let’s survey, edit
Redact and cut where necessary.
Life was a short comedy animation, and
No scene was as I saw it
But some still shone some light
Like an endless hall of keyholes
Behind which are only rooms made of light.
For the end is the beginning of the eternal editing process.
And the projection room is where it all goes down.
//
And I ended like a Muse
In the meantime
I was an amusement park-en-styled as,
An electric carousel in Paris in the 40s
With children and beautiful women
Going up and down all night.
Where I stop on a bridge on the way home
To help a man not jump. Instead I invite him
To the park to watch with me
The circular delights of carnival life
As they pump like an excited heart in the dark.
//
You have a lot of pressure
To do something remarkable
Important, with impact.
The pressure keeps you
From doing so, but also
Forces you not to.
//
Everything is about what you do
While in the waiting room.
It’s never about seeing the Doctor
But being healed while you wait.
//

What is the one thing you can’t not do?
And don’t tell me it’s women or smoking.
Tell me something true.
What is the one thing you can’t not do?
Don’t tell me its travel
Cause that’s just what you do.
What is the one thing you can’t not do?
To Express is closest without further adieu
//

Thunder sky in endless bliss-
Now in Texas, then in Carolina’s twisting hills-
While here down below, my wrist are tired
And this time not from writing for the choir.
When will we kiss again, My Love.
I miss your touch.
Let’s do it here, now, beneath the storm.
Let’s do it wet, in darkness like this.
Or in grandfather’s old shotgun shack
Before he blew his head off., back then
I’m ok, mine were other wounds
But I blood-lined them back into mine.
A hand slipped down my pants too soon
And she, the sitter, got away. I’m fine now
But each storm reminds me
Of his face I never saw buried in fall leaves
As another storm passed by.
And when will we kiss again my love
And our bones stand up and begin
To dance beneath clear skies.
And his body, crippled by self inflicted blow
Start to glow and rise up again my friend.
Thunder skies in endless bliss
I only pray for a kiss of sun like this.
My wrist are tired
She found the gun
And I am still the only living son
Who remembers all this
On nights like this
On a night like this.

I’m a good fisher
I can catch a bass (big or small mouthed) in any pond or lake.
I can catch brim and perch as well.
I know poetry and people, was all I was saying.

My heart fluttered twice today
Seriously..
Not like the bright yellow warbler, that comes to my window daily,
whom I have come to love
By name…
But more like the blue jay squawking and stealing cat food at dawn
It was a deep smokey feeling more like a wet chiminea
After it has sat too long for a season and you try to light
It back up. I hope it is just my usual restlessness stirring.
But I suspect it is more like my dog’s slipped disc,
Something you have to learn to live with that is.
A fluttering heart, which still soars like a hawk’s would
Want to, but sputters and coughs out a few jokes
when overwhelmed by life’s cacophonous rhythms.

On my walk in the neighborhood today, encountered….

The little old lady who is thankful for each day of sunlight in winter and says so as I walk by daily. Didn’t lose any plants yet, today she added.
Our old dentist next door retired, then died a year later-boredom I suppose, he was a people person, and helped people smile in more ways than one.
Now a gay couple lives there, they’ve already started fixing it up, but their flag is as big as the house.
Also saw my photographer friend who talked to me at length
About the necessary silence of seeing well! We get along.
On the warblers and albino squirrels are back
And the winter evergreen stand out today. Park is empty
But for the nervous girl who got a new puppy and is trying to figure the universe out in a new way.
She feels very potentially judged by everyone who walks past, so I make a wide berth so she’s not self conscious.
Next my musician friends who were on the road
And returned to busted pipes, yikes. Something is always
Going wrong with musicians.
Those musician’s houses always have creatures living in them (raccoons and possums most often round here)
You can hear it on their records.
Got to help the bass player fix his mainline pipe!
Then the old folks garden across the street
With the man from Chicago who yells out encouragements to all
Passing by, but in a tone which scares people…
He always tells me I’m smart, and that it is good I like so many people!
Glad he is still yelling out encouragements, at his age
And that Chi-town accent, I like too!
Then at the end, saw two hawks circling—those clever circling seers!
At the very end, my elderly neighbor who used to be a librarian
And still goes daily, and brings home another stack of books,
told me the sun will come out tomorrow son, don’t worry…..

In winter

the few trees

With leaves left

Get to hold the whole sound

Of wind for us all.

How privileged

They are

And burdened

To chime well.