Kangaroo basking shark buffalo

 

500 red orange yellow leaves
Blown east down Harvard St.
Look like racing buffalo
Charging across the prairie
The rust bellied squirrels on 13th St.
That stand up on their hind legs
And face you
Look like kangaroo
Next to the liquor store
Leaves have piled up
Into an big oblong shape
A basking shark
Multicolored
In the middle
Of the sidewalk

Cumbia

 

Walking in a boring neighborhood
The setting sun is blocked
By houses
Flat land
Shitty clouds
And rain
Up ahead
An open garage door
A car with its hood up
Tables benches carts on wheels
Blinking electronic equipment
A ONE two three
ONE two three beat
Snakes out onto the sidewalk
Propels me
I can go on and don't miss
The setting sun

A paradox

 

I'm probably "woke," but I still don't know what it means.

big star

 

big star was
behind the times
when they appeared
in '72
too much chiming guitar
composed drum fills
heartbreak harmonies
not enough prog ascension
prog typewriter guitar lines
they broke apart
in '73
then they were
ahead of their time
they still are -
the pop song percolating across
the top of the mountain range
the trees below
turning colors
whistling in the wind

Guy

 

Guy reads
Six books about
Duke Ellington
To write a poem
Of six lines
About Duke Ellington

Night April

 

Sound of water spouting
Out of a drainpipe
Onto the pavement
Cars pass on the wet street
Music for a film
Rises out of a basement apt.
Sparse piano notes
A sustained tone behind them
Some final bird song
Floats out into the night air

Interesting/Neat

 

The Pentagon is the largest administrative building in the world. If you pogo sticked down all its hallways, one wing at a time, it would be the same distance as crossing all the bridges that span the rivers of Pennsylvania.*

I've found a fast-food restaurant where I can read, write and feel comfortable and it's like the soft roll on the sandwich I order inspires me and permits me to do some good thinking - like Richard Brautigan did on the #49 bus crossing through San Francisco's hills, like David Byrne sings about in "Cities" when gets to the part about the dry ice factory.

Neoliberal go-go capitalism is finishing off the historic buildings of Bucharest even faster than authoritarian communism did. But let's face it: They both suck.

*(I made that last part up).

A Poem I Lost

 

It was about the professional wrestlers of Milwaukee. Or at least I think they were from Milwaukee, since I was watching them on TV Sunday mornings in Milwaukee. They were jumping off of the turnbuckle. Slamming their bodies off of the not soft bouncy shaking floor of the ring. Administering headlocks, knee raises to the face, even tumbling oh out of the ring. How could their bodies take it? In any case, the poem meditated on each of the wrestlers' names that I could remember, all evocative of something, even to me as a child. The Crusher: mad, unpredictable strength. Baron von Raschke: cunning, with a secret weapon - The Claw. Greg Gagne: fair play and proof that a slender person could be a powerful fighter if he had intellect and quickness. Vern Gagne: a patriarch of the Gagne wrestlers, solid, wise, protective... now I didn't articulate any of this at the time - I was probably eight years old - but I sensed it. The poem was written down on a scrap of paper. Somehow it slipped away from me. Maybe it made its way up to Milwaukee where a retired wrestler could read it.

who's that group?

 

Sparse electric guitar
Sounds like it's played in the desert
How do they do that
Broadcasting to the vast field of stars
It has armadillo sand track movement
And the silence of the roadrunner gliding
It has Stratocaster ring and chime
Who's the group
Where are they now

(authors note: I really don't know what band I was hearing on a sound system, probably in a café, but maybe at my house... however, I could make a pretty good guess... probably a band I really started to enjoy listening to last year... los hermanos gutierrez...)

1000 Years

 

Tree with an ancient trunk
Split gnarled curled
An ant descending
A mountain behind
Still grows
Branches draped
With olives and moss