Lost

Lost town

Hidden deep in hills and shadows.

Abandoned homes bleached white.

Fragments remain,

Memories.

Beginnings

First star.

Final embers of cosmic birth.

A bang, they say, profound.

Eternal dawn

And night.

Always

Soft silk,

Like the first blush upon your face.

The quizzical stillness

Of our first kiss.

Always.

Family Snaps

Gelatin-silver, shadows fixed,

Tiny frozen snaps of time.

Old photos poorly stacked

In a box at the closet's back,

Buried in a crypt of

Mothballs and old coats.

Three generations reaching back.

Faded memories of picnics and

Birthdays and dinners and trips

And so many poses with so many folks

With the same bewildered

Frozen smile.

I have relatives I never knew

With names I rarely heard

In family tales that only

Grandparents ever understood.

About lost family friends with

Their ancient cars who drove

Just briefly passed the camera's

Impassive lens.

Perhaps, I think, one solitary

Figure may be my great-grandfather.

In a field somewhere, here or there,

Since a plain is a plain,

Hungarian or Midwest.

This one fuzzy photo is

All that's left, like a ghost

On a summer's afternoon.

A Thought on Herman Melville

That Melville guy did a number on us all,

Don't you see, when he

Struck the one great metaphor

And stole the perfect symbol

Of a doomed American dream and

Then, like a drunken sailor adrift

At sea, the ruined search for that

White whale indeed, that Moby Prick

That roiled its way into the canon

While leaving us, his inheritors,

Doomed to the dark eternity

Of referential scores.

State of Disunion

Do not turn my drama

Into panic

Simply to rob me

Of my self-indulgent fit.

Oh woe for me,

This narcissism is our

Common currency.

Irony is the singular curse

Of the cheaply jaded;

Glib and often meaningless

Like wilted roses

In an empty room.

We have all become

A lonely dancer

On a crowded ballroom floor;

Spastic motions of

Disharmony

Set to the beat

of a drunken drummer.

The commonweal

Broke up online

Abandoned in the rain

Like a rejected suitor

On a tea party afternoon.

Thinking of William Blake

Oh where are you Willie boy,

With your bowl of burning gold

And sword unsheathed

In poetic might against old

Satan's mills?

That sweet Jerusalem

You never found

Among the pastures green

And ancient footsteps still

Unseen in shadows lost

Among the hills.

A vision as pure as dreams,

More beautiful than any tiger,

Brighter than any flame.

Like your arrows of desire

From which Jerusalem

Yet will spring.

November 1963

Once, when you were

So near the Sun

As with eagle's wings,

Another Icarus so you seemed,

On a late November day

When we found ourselves

In free fall

Along a nasty road

Best not taken

And the hapless journey

Has continued ever since.

I was in Fifth Grade

When the world went hush

Between each breaking bulletin.

Such a silence, such a stillness

Except for a lone girl

In the back of the classroom

Softly weeping into a grammar book

She hadn't opened since last June.

Tarnished armor and tattered tales

Cobbled into a mythic flame.

A legacy of images liberally mixed

With facts as well as fiction

In a Hollywood blender,

Half tawdry in its grandeur.

It was the first revolution

Broadcast live in Black 'n White

With wyrd sister Cronkite

Spinning a convoluted tale

Of mindless mad obsession

That still plays like the climax

Of Oz where the man behind

The curtain stands naked

But unseen.

Devote we were

In those golden days,

At prayer every week

In the school house basement

With our heads between our knees

In quiet meditation to

The holy missiles that

Moved like shadows

In our dreams.

Those were the wonder years

Of the American century

As it glimmered and flared

Like a bursting star.

And even you were like a nova,

Intense and brilliant

For one brief moment

Then quickly dimming

Like sullen embers

Turning cold against the night.

Once, after a flood,

I found an old Civil Defense

Barrel water logged and open

And spilling out its treasures

For life in Armageddon.

A bottle of stale water and

A pack of moldy crackers

And illustrated instructions

For turning the barrel into

A post-atomic toilet.

It was an age both different

And the same.

In a single day was

Childhood's end

As cynics came to play.

It really wasn't the end of

Innocence for that had

Vanished long ago.

It was the end of something

Undefined.

The end of some conviction

Yet divined.

In the Future When I'm Gone

In the future when I'm gone
Which is a lousy proposition
Based upon a half-baked circular
System devised by a second-rate
Creator who couldn't figure out any
Better way to end the story
Except by bumping off every character
And then discovering that the audience
Was gone despite a pitch for
The Heavenly Gate which plays like a
Pointlessly over produced “sequel” that
Leaves us stuck with every one we ever knew
(Some of whom I could easily do
Without).


So in the future, if I'm gone
Which is open to debate
Because I have some definite objections
To any ideas that were never vetted
By my lawyer and even if he were
Sober enough to deliver an opinion
I already know which way I lean in
My decision and all in all would rather
Be in Philadelphia as long as it isn't
That Sixth Sense kind of deal

And a steak 'n cheese is in the mix

With a good slather of onions

And fries on the side

And even then I am not going

Since it doesn't suit

My taste.

Sweet Dreams

Sweet dreams
Lost at the
Penny candy stand,
Somewhere next
To the nickel cigars.


Desire flows like sand
In a summer rain,
Clinging tight
To your fingers
Till the sun
Dries it hard
And bakes it brittle.
Then it flakes
Like a snake
Shedding skin
And drops like the past
In your way
Across the floor,
Crunching loudly
With every little step.

Toward the Canonization of Philip K. Dick

In the shadow of

That High Tower

We still abide,

Between a Roman wall

And Earth's green fields

And otherworldly spires.

Pray for us, St. Dick,

Pray for us all

As we ponder every vision

From every Revelation

You had received

(Which, oddly enough, were

More theologically precise

Than the average

Schizophrenic fit).

Half-sentient though we be,

For consciousness is a slippery thing

As we stumble through life

Like fleshy machines

With programs surely fried

By conflicting wants

And pinpricks of desire.

Cogito no ergo sum,

Ergo ego zoom

Vast are the hymns of

Active praise

Longingly sung to such

Infinite wisdom and

Saving grace.

Infinitely is the answer,

Which is why the questions

Are more profound.

Amen.

The Notebook

Opening an old notebook,

Ink stained and brown,

I found a note from myself

Like a private code

Barely readable,

Sounding like a stranger

Who once used my name.

Philosophy says “I think

I was, So therefore

I must have been.”

Nearly forty years ago,

In student days with

With a bearded frown,

For only the young can

Waste so much time

In a studied state

Of seriousness.

I spent a lot of time

Jotting down quotes.

So many pages of

Thoughts profound.

Now they all

Sound like postcards

From a clown.

The past so often

Stays elusive.

It's like bumping into

A forgotten mate

Who knows your name.

They speak in such familiar

Tones of days you find

Best forgotten and you

Quietly wait until they leave,

Seeking inspiration from

Their absence.

Maybe Sometime

Maybe sometime,

In the last and

Lingering light,

Where fingers

Roam

In child like play

Across a pane of

Icy glass,

Tracing pinprick paths

Along the frost.

Brief trails

Connecting you

And me

In lazy rivulets

Intertwined in

Merging circles

Of warmth and cold.

Nouvelle Vague

Always in Paris

Gray and chilled,

 Just after a rain

With mist in the air

Like a smokey room

Filmed in thick grains.

The sheer stark beauty

Of Tri-X film

Pushed two stops

Like a slow jazz riff

In black and white.

The cafes seemed better then,

So littered with American signs

And the pre-Mersey beat

Of early rock n roll

In a post-bohemian sigh

Laced in Gauloise Bleu and

Where the women were

Sleek as sorrowful fawns

With Botticelli eyes,

So studied in the ways

Of Montaigne and Marilyn Monroe.

The frantic roil

Of each New Wave

Childish in its feelings

And ancient in its thoughts,

Until it vanished

In the Merry May

Of a Maoist haze

And a Los Angeleno

Daze.

Each Day

Each day
Dissolves
Like dew.
Each day
Descends
To darkness
Falls.
Each day
Repeats
Its dawn.

Scattered lives
Entwined like
Webs.
Scattered thoughts
Unwound
So slowly
Like tumbleweed
In a desert
Breeze.

Nothing last
It seems
And nothing
Adds with
Interest
Till all the
Zeros
Tally in an
Endless row.

Once, in the
Facing mirrors of
A barbershop
I could see the
Future.
An Infinite loop
That stretched
Forever
Like a dream.

In a Time of Disorder

We live in a time of disorder

Where every feeling has been devalued

Like tarnished gold in the back

Of a cluttered closet with a door

That has warped from a long rain

And the water pooled along the floor

Soaking old diaries till the ink bleeds,

Like tears smudging every page.

It is a time of disorder

As people lumber through life

As sullen movie-fried zombies

Staggering in shock and stupor

In a panic search for some

Dim memory of passing joy.

Perhaps forgotten love or

Fleeting glimpses of vague

Passions that once seemed real

Like an old aching bone

Until a terrible shadow stirred.

A rude awakening that was neither

Real nor dream but some poor

Land strangely in between.

Neither act nor shadow,

Neither life nor dream.

For we live in a tide of disorder

And the old bearded man

In the junk yard screams

That the dialectic is not a dream.

More a burden, it sometimes seems.

Never ending, sight unseen,

Relentless and unbending.

More remote than any star.

More relentless than any sea.

The River

The muddy river

Spirals like a striking snake,

The shore always moves.

The Deer

Deer in the cross-hair,

Eyes focused on the twilight.

Life should be so calm.

A Bird

The bird trills each day

In dank woods and dry fields.

I can never sang.

Early Spring

The cherry blossoms
Fall and drift in currents free.
I must sweep today.