On Mortality

An avocet dips wet sand

And lifts me in his bill

I am flung back to the waves

Diffusing salt and ocean’s will

And is this God? And can God see me?

And are God and me the same?

There were tender words for starlight

Before heaven earned its name

And the nuanced scent of longing

Still beckons worker bees,

The fluttering leaves of August

Glint the sunlight through the trees,

And the ruddy-cheeked old woman

Stoops to tend the babe up late,

The lover's kiss departing

Is but surrendering to fate,

The trusted intuition

Comes from weeping through the night

And the gift we never asked for

Is still always given, right?

There’s a galaxy inside me

That burns away my fear

While the quietest of whispers

Shakes me trying to make out ‘here’

Or is it ‘hear’? Or is it ‘listen’?

Perhaps only space between

Where the rainy pebbles glisten

And my path has never been

I am trying to swallow planets

From behind a clover leaf

I crawl a cloudy staircase

On the weak knees of my grief

I am a flitting swallow

Feeding, swooping over lawn

I must finally yield to stillness

And become certain of my song

So the tender-hearted ease

Surrounding each and every need

Will not stay from me forever

And let me sing before I’m freed.

dukkha

dear god
if choosing
were not so large
i’d send it back
unopened
cats and dogs
still live with
light lit eyes
and deciding’s
frequent burden
is made heavy
informed by worry
while a chestful
of conditions
nicknamed dukkha
by the buddha
i can’t know in
english words
except in cracking frame
and broken handle
of trying to lift
when not so young

although i found
your good intention
i also came to
barney’s death
and sarah too
and amy three
and could not
disregard the earth
which grips me
by the roots
and pulls me
down eventually
a choice you give
to my perspective
but not to my will

all posies bloom
uncertain limits
and you recall
from grandpa’s garden
where first i saw them
how he brought
a burger thickened
by being bit and
cooked for me
many languid moments
intensely bent
and sighting for croquet
across a greener lawn
than ever
graced a sunday
since

with grandma’s
crystal ball
still gleaming
on my sill
won't you explain
how glass can be
less fragile
than a soul?
i gaze forward
and look back
breathing
pipe tobacco scent
and nothing else
no revelation
only a tinted
afternoon
a hint of smoke
and present absence

like my struggle
with cramped up hands
to grasp and hold
the looking glass
and magnify
this fervent hope
of finding
that very one
small spring day
never ending
being rescued from
memory’s decline
a peace preserved
as here in heaven
unwinding time
while petals cascade
off my sunlit face

The Ballad of Joseph Hofer

(You can hear the song and view the video here: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKAsCOtXKTU)

In August, 1917, we were summoned

To Fort Lewis, Washington

Michael and Jacob and David and I

All refused to put their dungarees on

So they took us together to Alcatraz Island

There they beat us with clubs

Until we wished that we were dying

Then each to his own private hole

And in the filth I prayed for their souls

Then the guard threw this uniform in

He said “put it on and you’ll see home again.”

He told us, “just stay quiet.”

They put us on a starvation diet,

Made us stay on our feat

While our comrades were beaten

And tied to a hook in the ceiling

Soon we collapsed from their violent dealings

They put me in this uniform for the hate

That they were feeling

Please take comfort in knowing

In spite of our pain

We die for them in God’s name

Oh, forgive them, ‘though they know no shame

I believe somehow we all are to blame

Lay me down near the banks of the Missouri

Lay me down near my kindred and friends

Can you see where the currents run deeply?

There, the soft Kansas rain meets its end

Oh, Maria, do not cry

‘Though in uniform I lie

We all suffer for their fear

We must be brave, Maria dear

Could it be wrong to hold no gun?

We have been strong; we did not run.

They spoke falsely but God still knows.

They cut the oak tree but the seedling grows.

They dam the river but the water flows.

They kill the body, oh, but not the soul.

Divine Old Tree

(listen to this song here: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ReLmxlbsGc)


oh my dear,

hear this shuttered

shambled amble

bending in

to lean on myself

salt, dust, tear,

 near mist I utter

gambling rambles

ending in a ream

on my shelf

maybe to

be listened to

finally to be sung

flung like seed

in sediment of star

say we grew,

we missed a few,

deny,

we still have won,

and strung poetic sentiment

 thus far

staring, fractured,

frightened,

stoned to weary worthlessness,

daring, raptured,

lightened,

honed to nearly earthlessness   

when little’s left,

leave life to sing you,

mend life

and little leaves

it brings you,

send life what’s left

of leaves you cling to

divine old tree

beneath this shade and dignity

repair, reprove

the true in me again,

an ending

mind made free

unsheathed from

self-malignity,

aware, remove,

renew in me

a friend

unending

oh my fear

hear the broken battle drummer

drawn and seeking silent

summer’s hope

go fly near

steer the yoke

and sharpen thunder

awe in speaking

sign and wonder

 

cope

LEAPING

(Listen to this song here: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wqXodiuk_c)

As the sun sinks

Down into infinity

And lifts on its wings

In the very next day

Of all the gifts I can give,

My serenity

Is the one I receive

When I give it away

Oh, to reach past

These ugly routines

The uncaring chains

To the lifelong machines

To set all that I have

At the curb of my being

To then act and not speak

What I mean

Christ washed the feet

Of the poor,

So they say

Mohammed made a guest

Of the one turned away

How often I wonder

To which God I’ll relate

In expecting a world

I must try to create

Oh to reach past

These selfish concerns

The preoccupations,

The twists and the turns

To be willing to fall

So to rise up and learn

To be willing

To always return

The river flows and floods

It won’t be disregarded

I can push on the current

Like Moses trying to part it

No matter what I believe,

The flow’s already started

Am I a rock to wear down

Or a leaf or a garden?

To resist, to comply

To think nothing ever matters

To move forward and become

And risk being left in tatters

To die in my bed

Having lived my life sleeping

Or to awake for one second

And to leave this life 

Leaping

Unfinished War Poem After Fifteen Tries

here is the battlefield forgotten

where hope yielded finally

this poem i wrote for you back then

with fifteen tries the very

first to your left thigh

a VC round there

right eye twitch

i couldn’t trust a word you said

and from that time

you scheming con-man

son of a bitch

what made you think i’d know

to stitch the

open wound your warfare

dripped with

second generation seeds there planted

smoked

 us lost in weeds

a heroin dream

a federal team

third-verse assassins

my poem you bleed

grenada seeming very small

i don’t remember

huey at all but rest in peace,

he was dismembered

and panthers black and bobby sealed

 so white men healed

 their glance gone global but

god, i was already sick

of feral dogs

who run the show for

oil flow that on

July fourth know

I bought us both a fifth

of cuervo saying

peace reign and exploitation

drink and chase each penny stock

by pen alongside every nation then

such dollars made a sixth with you

and slop and bathed in muddy dew

the market wall street flop

into nine hundred thousand

tutsi lives that drop

(an intern thereby having fun

sucked deep

the president’s cigar

he grabbed at bush while

gore was far)

left to decide

what it might mean

to love the poor

or even to be blessed anymore

the seventh seal i broke

to make a newer poem

and flew back home

my father ringing all alone

in verses eight

the battlefield gone wide to state

our very jumping innocents

splayed at the gate

through smoke on cnn

which hosted hate’s

twin artistry

replay demise

replay demise

is that a baby?

asked my eyes

it is but number nine, i think,

i answered time

but times still stink

let’s all go in

and kill the fucked-up taliban

who make us sweat sharia law

we sold the guns

aimed at us all

but tenth the poem did toll

for who?

for me or you?

i’ll never write again, i knew

hypocrisy and metaphor combined

with columbine

in such a way

that no one cared

who won by then

and poems were history’s statesmen

stillborn, dead, my friend,

and super pacs

and all their rivals with survival run

but i had eleven times wrote none

and gatling guns mowed words

and daughters

and daughters’ sons

and daughters sent

to search an orphan’s pockets

for bombed-out blood-filled empty sockets

stolen to make dreams come true

who knew?

the twelve verse drumbeat we all marched

with freedom’s falsehood battlecry

made stiff with starch

a battlefield of true religion

now windblown drones

would spread bone dust

across the razor grass division

into the eagle’s eye

and make the stray dogs cry

through window, widow, widower

to smear the earth

for all it’s worth

with cemeteries  

cross and star

our urban spread

usurped the covert truth so far

encircled every shopping mall

and brown youth

served coffee at the pumps

to corporate kings

 and trinket makers

my thirteenth poem

all give, no takers

and money-love’s

new generation

stamped down

folksong blossoms’ filling station

spun star children into

reiteration

of tears and sweethearts’ fears

wept on trampled stone

of tribal land

god, have i grown?

my fourteen goddamn war poems

 weep near willows and the missing dead

for all the letters never read

the futile bullets now spend

and fall at pakistani tombs

recycled and resumed

and by this fifteenth poem

the battlefield

is still unbent

my poem defeated

 never sent

TWO HOMELESS VETS ON ELLIOT BAY

Raymond

Can I have your Army jacket?

I can swap you every color, every hue,

Certain scents and tastes you never noticed,

You’re about to punch your clock

And won’t need it anymore

That Army jacket

A flat seat cushion

Like an armor against concrete

Or to roll behind my lumbar

And you know my back is bad

Its many pockets

Hold an unused pouch of Bugler’s

You forgot the night I slipped it in

Let me have your Army jacket

I’m not holding out on you

I don’t have a goddamn penny left

Brothers-in-arms, you always said

I can trade this lowdown sun

Beneath a closed-down trolley stop

That warms the sidewalk here along the bay

Your sun is setting too

And I know what that coat’s meant

I’ll wrap it with my blanket

And I can’t help but ask

I’ve got to tell the cops

That coughed-up blood might be TB

You always said that your own passing

Would be a siren in the night

Am I a veteran?

You know the answer

I’ve been a soldier all my life

What will I do?

I’ll take your place on point along this shore

Where wind blows hard upon a sentry

And you’ll be gone, so what’s the difference?

It’s not just that, it’s more that I

Don’t have a thing to give to you

Where you’re going

I’ve no remembrance

No purple-heart medallion

But for the wounds that kept this crowd safe

Who swing their eyes so far from us

While we’ve carried one another

Crucified for forty years or more

I’ll still be shouting ‘Corpsman!’

And they’ll never understand

But you can look down from up above

And maybe laugh

Your Army jacket, so old and torn

Here on my back

And I’ll be flaunting what we both know

But they can’t see

Corpsman!

You’ll be invisible to them

But not to me

WE'RE IN CHARGE OF WHAT 9/11 MEANS

Despite how the terrible sadness and grief of 9/11 gets linked by many in the media to justification of our country's rampant militarism, I propose that we as American citizens are totally in charge of what that day means to us. I feel the freedom to challenge the mostly sentimental and vacuous interpretation of the press is not only about my right to free speech but my duty as a citizen. 


For me, the massacre of innocents on 9/11 was also a slaughter of my own innocence. Thus, I refuse to be lulled into warm and fuzzy feelings about what our country did both before and after that terrible day. We responded by prosecuting a war for oil against a sovereign people instead of a police action to bring the perpetrators to justice. In doing so, we may have 'liberated' them from an awful dictator, but we sparked a chaos which has led to the documented deaths of over 110,000 Iraqi civilians.  Our military-industrial complex thrived, our mega-corporations flourished, and we continued to perpetuate imperialism rather than diminish it. All during this response, I felt my voice as a citizen undermined by the power of money, which both before and since dominated America's foreign and domestic policies in utter disregard of the intentions of a free democracy, spending my tax dollars on violence to such a degree as to bring about the greatest economic crisis in this country since the Great Depression, all while profiteers have fed off the massive expansion of surveillance and police presence in my life. 


In various ways, I am asked to believe that these developments are the fruits of terrorism but I see them as the bi-products of fear, ignorance, and hatred. I see them as the epitome of self-interest among a ruling class. President Obama recently declared an adequate response to our economic crisis should not give rise to class warfare when that is exactly what has brought it about. Poor young people who can't find work are persuaded by heartfelt sentimental media reports that joining the military and its nation-building in Afghanistan has some link to the injustice and hatred that brought about 9/11. Their own need to make money and livelihood is correlated with a war necessity dictates they join but, in doing so, they can rest assured that those in charge will continually reference the nobility of their sacrifice.


9/11 was never just a day. It's always been a time and not just a time from then until now.  I refuse to disregard the bold fact that we helped train those who came to hate us so much as to kill themselves while murdering others, that when it was amorally desirable, our government supported and fostered the Taliban in Afghanistan, supplying the arms with which they still kill our soldiers, our young people. The Taliban's fundamentalist religious oppressiveness never made any difference to us, except when it was politically expedient to deny their government formal recognition on human rights grounds, a refusal which made our leaders  ignore their offers to hand over Osama Bin Laden prior to 9/11. 


As to the 'never forget' theme, here's what I will always remember: the 9/11 period is a study of just how incompetent the government of our country has become, the incredible futility of both political parties in making positive change, and the culture of selfishness that has grown and prevails. To honor the dead, I accept my responsibility as a citizen in having too much tolerance for these developments, for our global actions, and also for the pap about 9/11 which assaults the dignity of our national day of loss. In memory of all who have died, I refuse to deflect blame for our loss of freedom and their loss of life away from what I've condoned, through the government I've either put up with or helped elect, one which continues to perpetuate hatred and self-interest around the world. On 9/11, I pray not only for remembrance but forgiveness.

THE POLITICIAN AND THE EGG

There was a politician who before a crowd of ten thousand and with an interest in getting elected swallowed a whole chicken egg, claiming to have done so without breaking it. Although they couldn’t verify this completely, the politician’s oratory was such that many oohed and ahhed convinced that the egg must, indeed, still be whole. The politician was elected by a landslide.

This was true. In the warm heat of the politician’s stomach, the egg incubated, surrounded by a variety of rich foods, creamed desserts, and liquors. Its shell became all the more strengthened by these many nutrients and it even withstood passing down through the politician’s cavernous digestive system without cracking. This was almost entirely due to a lack of intestinal fortitude therein.

Meanwhile, the politician attempted to make good on the many promises made to the electorate during the campaign. Despite vehement public accusations and targeted attempts to assassinate the character of all adversaries in the opposing party, exposing their ethical vulnerabilities, jabbing fingers at them, and offering new bills to rescind those bills they’d already passed, nothing whatsoever was accomplished.

The crowd grew displeased and several said nothing whatsoever ever gets accomplished by politicians. Many suffered, unable to feed their children or themselves, pay for their health needs,  or find employment.

Soon came the time for a new campaign. Before a crowd of ten thousand and in the interest of getting reelected and also in a moment of tremendous personal surprise, the politician laid a jumbo chicken egg.

The egg, very thick-shelled and long overdue, cracked open immediately to reveal a fully grown chicken.

The chicken squawked at the crowd and many laughed loudly. The chicken was very entertaining and the politician beamed at his creation.

The amazing ability of the politician to accomplish something was obvious to all present. As well, it was clear the swallowing of a whole egg had produced this chicken and hadn't been a lie. 

The crowd marveled at the idea of a truthful politician giving birth to a live chicken.  

Reelection came by a landslide.

THE LIFESAVER STATION

did you ever try to climb the lifesaver station

on the fancy sand beach at Del Mar?

the seabreeze is cold

the ladder is gone

and you aren't really sure where you are

you can stand on a post

driven into the ground

and then jump for a grab at the deck

try harder next time

'though your fingers are bleeding

and a muscle got pulled in your neck

grab a rotten steel drum

and roll it nearby

weighted down heavy with sludge

pushing and pulling it

seventy feet

now it stops 

and will no longer budge

pause for a moment

throw some rocks in the sea

watch the gulls as they ride on the air

look around to see 
is anybody watching?

find that there's nobody there

and if no one is looking, then who the hell cares

if you fall on your face in the sand

and weep, mercy, dear God,

let me climb on this station 

to be closer to hear your command

real tears have flowed

sincerity's been showed

try again your now-blessed assault

but you fall on your ass

and after six tries, you'll pass

and at least you won't think it's your fault

climb the viaduct

to escape this situation

who cares about a goddamned lifesaver station

on the fancy sand beach at Del Mar?

the seabreeze is cold

it's locked down for winter

you only wished to shake fists at the stars

swim 'cross the blue ocean

walk the high Himalayas

but don't try this impossible task

God makes a point here

you can't climb it alone

there's no way

I already asked

(1994)