47. Living In Two Worlds

.
One world provides order
requiring one step leading to another step
where action has consequence,
where senses are coordinated to the life
of f0rwardness and sequence,
aware of but not understanding the other.

And then, into the other
where everything is permitted and accepted.
This world has no awareness of the other.
This world takes you to everything, all possibilities,
all sequences,
moving in, on, around, back,
where time is not a substance that can be divided.
Understanding is not borrowed
and truth is not required.
All memories appear and fade.
A glade of consequence creating a memory
of infinite options.

The perfect time of day
sliding into bed knowing its over
and you can resume your journey
to the other land where what
happens is not constrained by the pillory of reality.

46. Religious Poem For Cosmologists Part Two

.
In the beginning came agitated fast stuff
creating some-where from no-where
spreading to every now-where.
There was no in or out, no up or down,
no cross town buses.

Then the slowing began.
Breaking apart began.
Waves of things appeared.
And the fast stuff began to lump
but not yet in the throat.

And the lumped stuff came together.
Hardness appeared.
Distance appeared.
Pulling appeared
as in the dance.

Pushing appeared from everywhere

Waves of time appeared.
Hard things began to stick to each other.

And in the end of that now
memory appeared on the face of the earth.
And, as in this poem, the error of completion
confused the understanding knowledge
which will never be complete
and gives a reason for moving on.

45. The Essence of Language

.
Gravity, the essence of togetherness.
Togetherness, the essence of matter.
Matter, the essence of structure.
Structure, the essence of form.

Energy, the essence of movement.
Movement, the essence of time.

Water, the essence of life.
Life the essence of continuity.

Poetry, the essence of language.
Language, the essence of civilization.
Civilization, the essence of our future.

Mindfullness, the essence of thought.
Thought, the essence of awareness.
Awareness, the essence of memory.

Music, the essence of joy.
Joy, the essence of loving.
Loving, the essence of being.
Being, the essence of living.
Living, the essence of remembering.
(The essence of love is the departure of self
into the essence of being)

Family, the essence of humanity.
Humanity, the essence of our definition.

Children, the essence of us.
You, the essence of me.

Death the essence of past.
Past the essence of future.

And we?
Together we are the essence, the protozoa,
of a future intelligence.

44. Religious Poem For Cosmoligists

.
There was now.
There is now.
There will be now.
Nows of knowledge,
nows of passings
and in-decisions.

Wave-arch, wave-fall—
conscription's of events
of doubtful doings
and ding-a-lings of reversals.
Until that end, the floating back,
to the next mix.

43. Old

(After seeing a photo of an old woman holding
a photo of herself when young)

I was beautiful
and sat beautiful
horses on beautiful days.
Thru parks of people
who greeted me
in recognition of my beauty.

On stage, at the end of
my performance, the sound
of clapping embraced me
in gladding affirmation.

Yesterday I became old
with slow needs
and memories of beauty.

Today, an old man winked at me
in memory of my beauty.
In gladding affirmation.

43. Three AM

The pleasure of waking
at three ante meridiem
to a cool dark quiet hour.
Then light and a book of poetry
that provides awareness of a defined complexity.

A complex awareness of a defined destination
finding a poem that scratches an itch
I did not know I had
in the certitude of night.

42. The Damn Thing

Having absorbed
metaphor and simile,
the old versifier
now knows
it is enough
just to get the damn thing out.

41. Nows

There was now.
There is now.
There will be now.
Nows of knowledge,
nows of passings,
and in-decisions.

Wave-arch, wave-fall.
The wonder of life,
living with conscriptions of events,
of doubtful doings, that include
ding-a-lings of reversals.

Learn to control the tumbling
so that at the end
there is a smoothness to
the floating back to
the next beginning to
the next mix.

39. Teeter Totter

.
A fulcrum is a point of love,
a point of honor, a point sienna.
The still holder, the center, not moving moves.

The Seven Just
mentally adjust
the lives of others by being the what
of what they are.

The lesser movers move to keep their balance
adjusting themselves by falling into current positions
thereby loosing their balance and falling into current positions.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch,
Tonto, not knowing the Lone Ranger
has disguised himself as a fulcrum,
shoots his point off.

Now back to out liaison, lesion, lesson.

The necessity of balance without awareness of the point
creates the necessity of balance
without awareness of the point.

The boy sits staring,
the girl sits staring.
The center moves, the thing is done,
no adjustment of your set is necessary.
Everything is there,
it always was there,
it will always be there.

A blessing upon us.

38. Old New York

.
Huge steel beams swinging silently
to the noise of soft skinned men.
Grinding fears driven by grinding gears.
A man made city making the man
with eruptions of living around distractions of events.

Streets of instant people going instant ways
with tubes of distant people lost in lonely days.

Tunnels of no love.
Drunk in roar, sunk in roar, drowned in roar.
I's eclipsed by it's.
A logical insanity.

Weak men made auto strong
with empty women made sticksmear pretty,
seeing what their words show them,
knowing what their friends told them,
describing this world as a fact
resting securely on what they dare not know.

37. You're It!

You're It!!

Of course
You have always been it
But you never knew it
But now you know it.

First the touch,
Then the run to another touch

The responsibility of being it
So be it.

Lighten Up.
To know it
Is to be it.

We its got to stick together.

36. Attention Artists

Attention Artists

A Picasso face is not a face that leaves a place to hide.
A Roualt face is not a face that lets the weak inside.
So wrap yourself in pure white sheets
and let the folds surprise.
Increase the feel of I release
to deep the higher sides.

Knock yourself against yourself,
your stranger,
and discover summer handles
turned by beginners rising to the lonely
awareness of unanswered singularities.

Become the shadow of your small desires.
Establish the boundaries of your aloneness.
Grow into the noisy limits of your awareness,
Realizing the inarticulate ineptness of your questions.

Construct a moment in your life that peaks the human tide.
Ma-tric-u-lat-ing
in all directions where
white has no limits and black has no boundaries.

35. Letters Of Transist

.
You have got to get out!

To do this you
must start searching for
the Letters of Transit that will allow you
to leave the foreign country you
have created in yourself.

The search begins with forgetting
that which needs forgetting.
The search continues with forgetting
the I, that interfering logjam,
the I-jam, that creates internal pain
causing you to create external pain.

Those tattered thoughts of broken aspirations
built around the requirements of others,
little hungers controlling your life.
Anxious continuums exerting sublime forces,
displaying hunger, desire, resignation.
Go-nows, see-alls, step-ups, fall-downs.

Learn to enjoy your own simple pleasures––
then, of course, you must begin
working on your Bono Fides.

34. Why I Read Poetry

.
The view of a stranger defining me
at left angles to my right,
causing me to avoid movements
that shrink into rinky-dink abstractions.

Pushing me to hunker down
and keep on growing. To mash the button.

Create your "list of executive deeds just and unjust".
Wrap them around and around, tighter and tighter,
avoiding endless conclusions.
Learning of "the power of personality".

That's all I wanted to say.

33. Backyard Sitting

Backyard sitting.
Book reading.
Sun feeling.

Up looking.
Kitchen seeing.
Wife seeing.

Down reading.
Up looking.
Wife be-goneing

Down reading.
Up looking.
Son sitting.

Down reading.
Up looking.
Son be-goneing

What magic, these creatures.
Image burning.
Mind living.
Appearing, disappearing.

Together we disappear.
As in here.
As in there.
As in gone.

Our lives are constructed,
defined, joined
by the presence of others.
Looking out, looking in.

Here, there, gone.
And always with us.

Loving these creatures is enough.

32. A Dream Epiphany

.
David and Kathie are dead.
They stand looking at each other in an isle of infinite length.
On one side a counter with strangers sitting and eating.
On the other side card tables filled with stuff,
odds and ends, a trillion tables deep.

Their choice; sit at the lunch counter and eat forever
or browse through the tables forever looking.

But!, and here's the catch,
standing in the isle looking at each other
if they ever turn away and not see each other
they will never again see each other ever again, forever
through the remainder of eternity, the end of infinity.

They look, laugh.
This is not good enough.
Not acceptable.
Pound the counter.
Knock over the tables.
Grow.

31. Quality

.
Quality of living.
Quality of time.
Quality of children
across the golden line.

Quality of friendship.
Quality of sign.
Quality of silence
between the rhyming line.

Quality of intake.
Quality of flow.
Quality of outgo
around the glowing line

Quality of look.
Quality of itch.
Quality of scratch
whenever you appear.

Quality of you.
Quality of me.
Quality of love
with jumps of inspiration.

30. Novices At Play

Novices At Play

Desire overcomes the nun's hard bench.
Girls play on distant beaches
tightness each in slow motion each
on remote beaches each.

Water, beach, woods, to a triangle,
an infinite point of unseen movement.
Wavearch, wavefall.
Chasing, yelling, hot sand on wet feet.
Watching black birds at the seashore.

The creating energy expands until
maximum ergs squeeze the universe
in the tight matrix of the born.
The dead remain unburied in their flesh
their strength holding the universe
as a construct
against anarchy
against chaos.

Rivers of life run over the chasm shore
and humans wreathe with anxious joy
that life has come and relief begun
in cells of hardness.

29. The Sea Of Me

"Man, that walking bag of sea water, is the the oceans
way of going ashore"

"I never knew I was the ocean of my own dreams"

The sea of me
rolls contentedly
over mountains of egos,
under volumes of sighs,
around runs of ruins,
and ends with a shhhhhh of pebbles
on Dover Beach.

The sea of me flows
through translations of pedestrians
betwixt cornucopias of sounds,
around tombs of literacy
and booms of complexity.

Tombs of literacy and complicity
that Dante never guessed
defending the shape of lunacy.

The sea of me
reserves this space to flow
on times continuity.
And down we go and up we flow
around lines of concinnity
that bind us to walk ashore forevermore
as bags of fluid flowing.
Liquids of awareness swimming on the surface.
An intelligent fluid rowing thru the universe.

28. Great Authors Revisited, Numbers One And Two

.
1
Come out Henry David Thoreau you old fart!
I know you're in there,
meditating over Troy's defeat, eating your
"Indian meal (cheaper than rye)".
You can't bullshit me with all your fine self quotations.
Living in the woods is a drag
and you damn well know it!

2
Don't shake your Moby Dick at me Mr. Melville.
Talk about cabbages and kings,
well ambergris and God beats all.
Although I must say,
being part of the connecting link,
I am not unaffected by
your vision-version.

27. Snowfalls

.
The quiet of:
The falling of:

The sliding of:
The fullness of:

The blessing of:
The coolness of:

The lightness of:
The whiteness of:

The wholeness of:
The brightness of:

The closed world of:
The surrounding of:

The love of:
The love.
Snow fall.

26. Wagon Trains

The children circle the adult table
Like movie indians around the white shirt wagons,
Yelling, whooping, performing, letting it all out
With physical dexterity.
The wagons, enclosed, guarded, keeping it all in
With verbal dexterity.

Off in a corner of the lawn a young girl
stands, watching with blank face.
The filling observation of a child growing
To be harvested in old age.

I do not know if she is empty with hate or fulled with love.
I only hope she will learn how wonderful it all is.

25. Earl Wild Plays Rhapsody In Blue

.
Listen up you guys.
The real thing.
Joy power.
Go power.

How sad that Gershwin missed hearing
his extravaganza turned into
this mountain of excellence.

This New York time,
in language of structural spontaneity
detailing the genetic history
of a people of exuberant strength.

Transfixed by a translation of events into sound,
from street sounds to piano sounds,
from street language to piano language,
the beautiful translation of randomness into
movements of feelings.

24. To Robert Duncan

.
If I had had a mother
named Minnehaha Harris
I too would have become a
famous poet.
But alas, my mother's name
was Turalura Epstein
and that is why I am,
Yours truly, A. Nonymous.

23. At Nine Years

At nine years old I knew
I would become famous when I grew up.
Thats why strangers starred at me,
at the bus stop, in the dime store,
walking to school.

They were from the future
and wanted to catch a glimpse of me,
the young boy who would become famous,
who would change the world.

Today I am the old man
who did not become famous.
Looking at the handsome children
enjoying their lives.

22. Where They Went

Nobby, Punch, Uncle Bill, Weary Willie, Guts,
Gone
Into
Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates, Evens,
Gone
Into . . .

21. Wagon Trains

The children circle the adult table
Like movie indians around the white shirt wagons,
Yelling, whooping, performing, letting it all out
With physical dexterity.
The wagons, enclosed, guarded, keeping it all in
With verbal dexterity.

Off in a corner of the lawn a young girl
Stands, watching with blank face.
The filling observation of a child growing
To be harvested in old age.

I do not know if she is empty with hate or fulled with love.
I only hope she will learn that it wonderful enough
to live with all senses open.

20. A Description Of A Poem By William Carlos Williams

.
Putting into words a simple observation,
wrapping it into a new beginning.
Defining the obvious from a new direction
as "the great number five" flashes by.
A phantazein of four dimensions
that smoothes recognition.
Turning a sideways thing
into an absolute gravity well of meaning,
of meaningful sound between
two breaths.
Overtaking and freezing in understatement
the greatness of now.

19. Pouring Milk

.
I pour the milk into the glass
And laugh aloud at what I see
Milk and glass are pouring me

Milk into glass
Milk into me
Me into milk
Pouring me
Into me!

18. Bukowski

Bukowski

Hello dead Bukowski, you SOB.
In most of your life a failure.
In one thing a success.
The touch of a true poet?
Knowing you are a failed SOB
but having in you something that is exceptional,
that strikes our innocence.

All that inside stuff
creating pressure,
creating urges,
out it must come.

You lucky SOB
what came out connected
to the other SOBs and moved us.

17. Out The Secret

Out The Secret

All poets only write one poem.
With scissors, knife, contortions,
they cut it into pieces,
some long, some short,
dividing truths and fictions,
creating a confession of singularities
around red wheel barrows.

Some poets leave out the best
forcing the reader to add lines
between the spaces.

This poem has taken over spaces near its end,

the empty spaces completing the

feeling of completeness in the

reader who does not know why.

16. Responsibility

.
Looking out the window
things are growing.
Things need to be cut back.
If they are not cut back
outside will not look Nice,
Nice is orderly, Nice is neat, Nice is human

But Great! is Bach's Praludium und Fugue in A minor, BWV 543,
Thank you Marie-Claire Alain, who-ever, where-ever you are.
As I look out the window
looking at what needs to be cut back.

What did Bach cut back?
I am flying with the Fugue.
I never fly cutting back.
Maybe tomorrow.

15. Sarasota Grocery Stores

.
On hot Saturday mornings
Sarasota grocery stores
hold revelations of people,
receptions of events,
details of loud exclamation,
movements of complex simplicity,
And isles of simple complexity;
a great level of noisiness,
the noise of exclamation.
The busyness of the market
On hot Saturday mornings.

The profits of complexity and
the prophets of simplicity mix,
exchange views.

The epileptic screams all to silence and stillness,
the absolute silence-stillness of a crowd.
The wonderful silence of the crowds opening awareness.
What was us is is now I
Alone.
It always was
its just that the us forgets.

14. Morning

.
In the cool clear logical morning
where walls of cereal boxes
and milk structures guard us.
A small red headed earthling says
"Last night I dreamed it was raining
and a elephant nudged me"
And there it is,
the world, the elephant, the nudge,
expanding the beauty of us all.

13. Old Ladies

Old ladies of the church sing a please god song.
Knowing him, as a good servant, who,
being aware of his worth, must be treated kindly,
and forgiven his god-awful trespasses.
Not answering when called.
Responding in silence,
not knowing silence is an answer.

12. Rouault, The Old King

Power and madness,
Eastern Cruelty (in western minds).
The brutal force of red
Isolated by conviction.
Cries with an unreleased tension
Between man and madness
Undreamt of in our aspirin ads.

11. Aunt Lou

.
The old lady leaves the old farm house.
A November day.
A ten below overcast gray day.
A chilling silence day.
An everything sleeping day.
Walks to the white mail box,
typical farmers white mail box standing
along the empty road in twig-brown November.
The old lady is thinking of her favorite brother
who ran away from Kingsville for South Africa.
Sixty years gone.
Sixty years without.
The minding love.

Long gone her sister who married an old man
who promised her a bicycle.

The minding love.

She had received a letter saying her brother had died
and his children were sending him back to Kingsville
to be buried with those he left.
The grave prepared, the minister ready.
Opening the mailbox there was a shoe-box.
Opening the mailbox there was a shoe-box.
The old lady standing in gray November,
Holding the brown box in a world disappeared.

The minister, the caretaker, the old lady,
stand over the open grave
surrounding the small box.
Home again!

10. Memory

To the little girl
on the bus
sitting next to the old man.
The little girl
on the bus
smelling of crayons
sitting next to me.
Thank you.