Still Hearing (for Marco Escalante)

 

Still hearing Philip Glass Mishima

On dorm room vinyl 1986

Still listening to Ry Cooder Paris, Texas

With Dunkin' Donuts dawn aroma

Rising up Maine Street 1987

Still the chimes from The Third Man zither

Zigzagging the streets of Vienna

After the war in black and white

Cassette from Glendale, California 1988

Maybe America

 

Maybe America
Is too strange
Too cruel
Maybe life birthed
From space debris
Coalescing and cooling
Is responding as it must
Even the plants
Who eat light & drink water
Hurt sometimes
Living light years away
From something that may be
Their kin

Where Did You See Bob Kaufman?

Where did you see Bob Kaufman? (3x)

I saw him down by the city gates

He was strumming on a paperclip banjo

He was painting the sunset yellow

He had an orange in his hand and a rose in his mouth

He had an opium poppy necklace

Where did you see Bob Kaufman?

I saw him down by the city gates

Where did you see Bob Kaufman? (3x)

I saw him standing on the desert sand

He was tracking a coyote’s pawprint

He was dreaming on a peyote button

I saw him swimming in the stream of a canyon

I saw him grinning with the eyes of a falcon

Where did you see Bob Kaufman?

I saw him standing on the desert sand

Where did you see Bob Kaufman? (3x)

I saw him down on the ocean floor

He was wearing an iridescent halo

Hanging on the fin of a narwal

I saw him sleeping in a cave made of coral

I saw him speaking in the tongues of the animals

Where did you see Bob Kaufman? (3x)

I saw him down on the ocean floor

"Vacation All I Ever Wanted"

 

When your time is not your own

When you rent yourself to others

For days weeks decades

And suddenly have free time

You don't know what to do

Ex cons know this

They learn how to do time

Not how to pass time

Or even kill time

Doing time

Years of regimented boredom

And not permitting time to kill you

When suddenly

They are on the street

Too many options

Or no options at all

Bewilderment

Paralysis

Years of work weeks are like this

Or maybe it's neurosis

Probably both

Well that and other health shit

All three then

But mostly work

Which means extra work

Or else no profit

So extra work hours

Neurosis other health shit

Cuz sporadic insurance

And suddenly some free time

Well not totally free

Because much of it is spent

Worrying about passing hours

Not making money

Mind is preoccupied...

Unteach the mind

To be bound to time

This way

Can I do that

Can you do that

Can we do that

Irish American

(Dan O'Neil front center in sailor cap, Joe Kennedy center back in straw hat)

Joe Kennedy & my grandfather

Are friends in early 1900s Boston

They are two streetcars

Running side-by-side

Until the tracks form a Y

In the chipped cobblestone

And diverge

Joe sends Dan O'Neil

A postcard from Paris

He says he likes it there

Because when you need it

The cops look the other way

Dan drifts through the city

Summers at the city beaches

Nights out with the boys

He's accepted into the police academy

And soon he's mounted on a horse

Looking regal in a black and white photo

Joe is negotiating deals

In East Coast cities

Charming or intimidating or hoodwinking

His way across time

Dan works 12-hour shifts

Sleeps sporadically

In pest-infested barracks

Pays for his own uniform

Joe meets with players

Of questionable character

In the European capitals

Dan & the other Boston cops strike

Governor Calvin Coolidge

Fires them all

Joe's fascist sympathies stall

His dreams of state power

Dan O'Neil meets Julia d'Oliveira

On the sands in the cool blue

Atlantic sunshine

He is 40 & she is 20

Joe's children ascend in society

But early death & misfortune

Are present always

Dan sells insurance door-to-door

Sees the Red Sox when he can

His ten daughters

A Boston sensation

Are in Life magazine

Joe has affairs with movie stars

Works more deals

In New York Los Angeles D.C. London

The Kennedys appear everywhere

It seems and build

A retreat on Cape Cod

Each of them Joe & Dan

Removes a stone

From the hill of their present

It tumbles and rolls

Ricochets into a multitude

Of other rocks which dislodge

And hit more stones

And I am one now bouncing

Into an infinite present

Lines between me and you

Between now and then

Proliferate shift waver

Book Club

Reading Jayne Cortez to Trump

Reading Ginsberg to Netanyahu

Reading Pasolini to JD Vance

Reading Antler to Jeff Bezos

Reading Paulo Leminski to Bolsonaro

Reading Wanda Coleman to Clarence Thomas

Pennsylvania Twilight

Buckling into the multiple

Blue arms of the guards

Moments unspool across

The rusted coils of his mind

Unhappy father grimace

Through a real estate mustache

A millipede climbing the side

Of a construction site shack

Apartment towers reflected

In a moonlit puddle

And the moment of the first lie

"I didn't take the fiver!"

Shouted across the kitchen

Toward mom by the blender

Suddenly there were two worlds

This one & the one he made up

And if they didn't believe him

It didn't matter

He would believe it

Or pretend to

And this would cause some of them

To change their minds

"To stop wildfires

Vacuum the forests"

Do they really believe

This shit

"The source of your pain

Is the workers toiling

In sun seized fields

And boiling kitchens"

The world is what I say it is

He thought

It's the grand gestures I do

He thought

Accordion move arms

In a boxy blue suit

Red tie like the tongue

Of a panting dog

A maudlin fist pumped to the air

In the Pennsylvania twilight