Thursday, November 5, 2015

One Leaf Dancing

One Leaf Dancing

One leaf dancing
within wind’s capricious domain
flirting with gravity.

Charles river flowing
beneath
in endless currents.

Will this itinerant manifestation
of natural senescence
end its journey
carried upon the back
of a headstrong river or
will it instead
find final and earthly repose.


Tuesday, August 25, 2015

My Aunt

Born Yolanda
daughter of immigrants from
Italy’s eastern shore
uncomplicated village life
bound for Ellis Island and the
crazed energy that is New York.

Thrust into the tireless mayhem
chaotic pace that is the hallmark of
this fabulous city
new language
inexplicable customs
different values
driven to succeed and survive
determined to thrive.

Born in 1922
after one great war
just years from the Great Depression
that will mold and shape a generation.

My Aunt
raised with four brothers
Matteo, Attilio, Antonio and Victor
daughter to Michele and Teresina
experiencing the wonder of living
navigating through such waters
finding her own way
during such challenging
yet interesting times.

Embraced her children
with love only a mother can bestow,
lavished affection upon her grandchildren,
great grandchildren
having lived long enough to witness their arrival.

My Aunt
vigorous of mind and spirit
full of heart and love
to the very end of her 93 years,
determined to live fully and completely
as independently as her aging body would allow
died within the sweet embrace of her family
leaving a wondrous legacy
sweet memories embedded in the very heart
of those she left behind.

My Aunt
author of your own existence
full of life and love
dear to those who knew you

you will be missed.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Nooksack River




Nooksack River

Ceaseless rush
old river
ageless and tireless artisan
reshaping the shoreline with swift currents.

Keeper of the secrets of creation
flowing across
vast expanses of sweeping time
not moored to any place
not tethered to any
particular circumstance.

Water is your substance,
earth your dominion
deep verdant valleys your brethren,
beholden to no one
gravity your only master.

Old river
forever bound for open water
under expansive sky and sun,
journey never complete.


Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker




Mt Shuksan & Mt Baker

Surrounded by giant sentinels
holding us in their good graces
immersed in the sun’s favor
at least on this day
within the inexplicable now.

Almost boundless
masses of rock
tell us many stories
of earth’s majesty and dominion
of an ancient past
when the crust
upon which we move
through our feeble generations
folded upon itself
giving birth to mountains
in one massive heave.

Where molten rock
heated from the very core
of this planet
upon which we lurch and spin our tales
found passage to the surface
giving rise to volcanoes
whose intermittent bursts
laid waste to whatever
lived within their shadows.

We are here on a day
remarkably placid and benign
given the origins of
all this splendor.

For that we are
endlessly grateful.


Friday, July 10, 2015

Bound to Earth

Bound to earth,
roots embedded in rock and clay
forever anticipating the

quenching taste of water.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Guardian of the Desert



Guardian of the Desert

Guardian of the desert,
are your arms up
in supplication,
in reverence,
in defiance?

Guardian of the desert,
do you know as much
as your magnificent presence suggests
or is simple idleness your only virtue?

Guardian of the desert,
let us walk lightly by you,
so that you might allow us
to come again.


Friday, June 19, 2015

A Peace Poem




Broken skulls of impassioned warriors
adorn the oblique shadows of human history,
cult of death remains pervasive
dying for one’s country
dying for the wayward dreams of empire.

Empires come and go like a
dark-rooted perennial blossom,
savage winds of vengeance and retribution,
disfigured honor and overblown causes
wreck upon the pyre of human possibilities.

Mothers have lamented
over the staggering breath of generations,
the premature loss of husbands and children to
shrill reverberations of the macabre dance of war.

Impoverished billions of hapless souls
sift through the detritus of progress
in an attempt to draw sustenance
from stone.

Cycles of needless suffering
continue,
will to power drones on
erecting palaces among the
bones of the living.

Stark brilliant testimonials to the
industry of greed and ambition
rise like majestic spires
from a planet made feeble by indifference.

Ideas that need to be forsaken
still thrive.

Crimes against humanity
perpetuated in the name of the
god of the moment.

Cities are razed by
marvelous weapons of
insidious destruction
in the twisted hope that
rivers of blood can be used
to craft victory
without killing the soul of
those who prevail above the carnage.

Humanity is marching with
deliberate precision in a parade
that leads to a fiery cauldron of despair.

Humanity is dancing to a
rhapsody that inspires the
self-immolation of the human spirit.

Humanity is the rudder of a
magnificent ship that is poised at the abyss
with its sails billowing in a
tumultuous breeze filled with brimstone and fire.

Many voices call out from the centuries
though they can barely be heard
above the raucous cacophony of war,
they are joined by those still living
enfeebled by abuse and neglect.

Littered among the dead
lay the corpses of those
impaled by the reckless sword of
ignorance and twisted logic.


In spite of all the obstacles,
all the crazed indifference and
the barren vision of ideologues who
see nothing but the fruits of
extreme and impossible ideas,
all the pointless babble of material progress,
all the hollow ideas grown gravid
with the lure of profit,
all the smoke and mirrors,
the call for a peaceful world
can still be heard.

Peace is the way
out of the darkness,
peace is the light
that can brighten the future,
peace is the path to
true human freedom.

Only peace can unshackle the
spirit from the bonds of history,
only peace can save human kind from the
limits of its own conclusions.



Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Caught within the Fabric of Time

Caught within the
fabric of time,
embedded in the matrix of
earthly endeavor,
wrapped inside the
kaleidoscope of pleasure,
treadmill of pain,
we hunger for each other,
yearn for the
dawning of clarity,
hapless virgins of the clothesline.

The enclosure so
cleverly crafted is
occupied,
battalions of idle hungry hearts
roam the landscape
seeking answers to
nameless questions,
a rock upon which to hang
the core of elusive existence,
extruding meaning from
insubstantial air,
anticipating the dreaded arrival
of the interminable silence.

Monday, May 25, 2015

Gandhi - You are Sorely Missed


GANDHI you are surely missed


You chose peace over the darkness,
you offered up some hope to a world
lost within its bloody escapades
and endless cycles of retribution.

You chose simplicity and
unraveled your opponents by the
strength of your will and the
sheer power of numbers.

You chose a path where
compassion reigns and
love is the insurmountable
lever of change.

The human world was not ready then
to follow your guiding steps
to a better place,
it is not ready now
so inured are we to the
alluring potency of the sword that
brings us nothing but grief.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Norway Pass



Norway Pass


                                               Wind playfully tormented the rainfly on our tent,
hard ground rejected our affections and
sleep was left to entice but not to satisfy.

In the morning, the sky opened up,
Mount St. Helens revealed itself
to our startled  vision,
inexplicable force now resting,
inferno of fire and ash,
desert maker,
usurper of once mighty forests,
the fiery breath of god.

Many years between then and now,
we succumbed to the enormity and power,
we were enticed by the depth of the silence,
thankful of our brief yet wondrous witness
to the majesty of the planet.


Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Dungeness


Dungeness


Driftwood told us many stories
of storms and riotous oceans
and bottomless pit of winter nights
when the wind mourned loneliness and
stars themselves shrunk from the tempest.

Stones ground to a smooth polish
from water's relentless perfection
displayed their wondrous colors,
surely the creations of celestial dreamers
in their god-like sleep.

Seals broke through the water's surface,
their shimmering sleek heads danced and
spoke of the playfulness of nature
with marvelous tales of undersea kingdoms
where porpoises ruled and
children found solace from nightmares.

At the end of this finger of rock
the white spire of a lighthouse
maintained its vigil and remembered
icy and thunderous shipwrecks
along the Dungeness.


Monday, April 13, 2015

A Single Leaf


A Single Leaf

A single leaf
carried by nomadic winds
across thirteenth avenue,
caressed by the nakedness of traffic,
longing for a bit of earth
to fall into.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Hiroshima


Hiroshima

The city that death enveloped,
where black rain descended when
i was barely ten months old,
unable to grasp the horror.

At sixty years,
finally make my pilgrimage
to ground zero and became witness
to the madness that only war enlivens.

I made my pilgrimage
to ask forgiveness
for human folly and
speak silently my prayer for peace.


Sunday, April 5, 2015

Dancing Shoes


 Dancing Shoes

Two pairs of shoes
in the corner of the room,
waiting for the authors of their dance,
carrying the spirit of the feet they enclose,
captives of two lovers,
one in bed
in her sweet reprieve from exhaustion,
the other
trolling the shape and texture of existence
with his camera.

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Art is Carnivous



 

ART IS CARNIVOROUS


Art is carnivorous,
art preys mercilessly
upon the artifacts of culture,
digesting them and
ultimately spinning the remains
into dream-like consequences
that magically join
in grand coital reverie
with the human heart,
art keeps the hope of life alive.




Sunday, March 1, 2015

The City Engulfs Space



The city engulfs space
like a vagabond,
distorts time,
ravages sleep,
infests dreams with
voluptuous void,
induces a vague forgetfulness.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Love Blossoms


Love blossoms
love matures
a sumptuous wine
in its oaken cask,
rhapsody spun from
composer’s fertile imagination,
grand and stolid redwood
born from haphazard windblown seed.

The feel of you
your sweet presence
ignited many an afternoon
on hillside or ocean,
left the taste and texture of passion
in many locations around the globe.

These many years of our communion
sharing of intimacies
body and mind
delicate and timely
threads of wondrous memories
that i embrace with great delight.


Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Fire Up the Kitchen Baby


Fire up the kitchen baby,
i think i'm stuck on you.
warm up the blankets,
turn down the sheets,
i want to reserve your sweet tendencies
until only the morning light
remembers where we've been,
fire up the kitchen baby,

i think i'm stuck on you.

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Between the Scorpion Sea Bed





Marooned beside the vacuous ocean,
under a  millennium of rumors,
awaiting discovery
beneath the inglorious weight of
all our rude philosophies,
lying thirsty in our deepest dungeons
under the scant protection of a harlot's wing,

lives our brother, truth.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Cairo


Ancient egyptian hieroglyphic melodies,
carry my mind on crystal tides of windblown sand,
dreams take the shape of pyramids,
the equatorial sun burns my flesh
to leave me naked in the streets of cairo
lingering among the ashes of the pharaohs.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

The Lady is Naked Now


The lady is naked now 
she caresses her body
with stiff white hands,
her toes rub against the night,
her lips stretch across the open sky,
no one to receive them.

The lady has no ears to hear
the loves that have eluded her,
the walls of the apartment speak of nothing
except their own morbid perfection,

the lady sits by her tenacity 
forever misses the caravan outside of her window,
she knows no one else's story and seldom dreams.

The lady is naked now and weeps
between the abiding folds of her bed linen,
she will be mourned at the cinema,
the clock on the dresser has a cracked face,
the hair brush is pearl-handled and meticulous,
there is no mirror,
one photograph of mother and a box of kleenex,

the air barely stirs inside.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Concerning Constellations

The heavens will open up
through a pea green zipper,
the sky will leap out,
like air from vacuum tins,
dust from a million falling stars
will fill the grand canyon.

The earth will pop from the sun's heat,
men suspecting disaster
will suspend judgment
leaving lecturers deserted at the college.

Death swift
death orgasmic
will descend with the
wheels of the solar system in its feet,
will beat its galactic drum, but once
and once again the planet earth
as if life had never been.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Song of Parting



We stand on the platform of lost desire,
above the rift in our emotions,
we are immersed in the depths of
our fragrant memories,
we are caught in the
methodical dance of change.

We stand on the platform of lost desire,
the canopy of heaven is rich
with its enthusiasm of stars,
our spirits still nimble and joined
are more adept at change than
our feeble minds could ever know.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

The Technology Rag



In this land of one way mirrors,
and spermicidal sponges sold over the radio
with soft lilting voices
promising both spontaneity and freedom
from tiny rubbery embryos
that too eagerly blossom into troublesome adults.

In this land of Cola Wars
where fucking money is everyone's dream,
where sex  is carried in metal projectiles
from one person's madness
to another one's brain.

When i consider the labyrinthine ways
of my own stupidity,
and the crazed messages that are injected daily
by way of the tumultuous senses,
i wonder that my human skull
does not catapult my body into rage more often.

Moondreams


Moon ascending crest of hillside
above the rush of tumultuous river
caressing the nightscape with a
muted and eerie light
softening the rigidity of darkness,
gracing all it touches
lighting a pathway through
foreboding woods.

I catch a glimpse
my own moon shadow
a transient passenger

on spaceship earth.