10/19/21 - Dispatches from the Big House

​
​​​


​I've been sentenced to a 30-day term in Facebook jail, so, having nothing else to do, this could turn out to be a long post.

My offense this time was calling a dumbass a dumbass. Of course I called the dumbass a dumbass a number of  times, determined by the Facebook Bot who rules us all, to be "bullying." My defense - reiteration is necessary when trying to communicate with the stupid, as in this case.

But the real dumbass is Facebook with their censorship by computerized keyword. All of my previous incidents of being blocked would have been recognized by any mentally competent human being as satire or parody. Facebook's little program doesn't allow any such humor or plain old human review. 

And perhaps that's the scariest part of it, censoship by computer, worse than "1984" which at least had human oppressors who could be overthrown, censorship beamed from the sky, untouched  human hands, even the oppressors oppressed along with the rest of us. Computer systems enforcing self-fulling prophesies.

Which is my second source of peevishness, there being no recourse to such misplaced censorship. The big Facebook in the sky says what it says and no questioning is allowed or acknowledged.

Which leads me to this...



Pimple-brained, nut-cake, nitwitted, thieving, sourball licking, witch-sucking, loony politic other guys


hark!

the blue open sky,
the trees,
the gentle -falling leaves
the sparrows hip-hopping
branch to branch
the church-clothed-clot-herd folk
walking bible in hand,
childen skip skipping so Sunday School prayers

now I sit me down to eat
and if I choke before I swallow
Heimlich me quick
and don't you tarry
cause I'd rather walk than be carried on a stretcher
on this autumn-bright autumn Sunday morn
in the southern provinces of you esse way

but politics swallows my brain today,
but trying to walk lightly slightly brightly
around the subject
because I hate political poison poems
and I know if I get to talking about all those
pimple-brained
nut-caked
nitwitted
thieving
sourball-licking
witch-sucking
lunatic political other guys
I'll never stop

but

hark!!
I say to myself

it is a beautiful open-sky Sunday autumn day
that shouldn't be spoiled by such thinking about
writing about
reading about
downtown downers
as politi-chips  and unsalted pretzel brains

look to the sky instead,
to the birds,
to the trees and the leaves
drop-dropping
to the ground of many colors

it is Sunday after all

let us pray-prey on happy happy day-thoughts
and be joyful to the sun and the mountains
and rivers and hills and streams -

all legal
now
and tax deductible in London and surround environs
from Sherwood flats
to Sherwood meadows
to Sherwood forest where the King's deer
now roam safe & unhooded

hark!
hark! hark!

goddamn it I said
​hark!


​
​
​

I wanted to write something outrageous today

but it's still too close to the election
and my outrage gauge is hung on empty

so I thought I'd write something serious
instead,
a serious consideration
of the nation's and the world's
condition, but that only ignites panic attacks
and howling hysterical laughter

then I was thinking I'd write about sex,
but I'm getting kind of old
and my memory isn't as good as it used to be,
not so stiffly resistant to the lassitude of time

so maybe I could write about love,
no one's ever too old for love they say,
but that's the problem,
poets young and old have been writing about love
for ten thousand years, longer than that
if you believe the drawings on the walls
in the caves of Poontanghia,
so how could I possibly compete,
what new is there to be said about love,
except that I caught it and, unlike a three-day cold,
it has stayed with me, fevers morning and nights
for 47 years, resistant through the liquid flow of time
to all natural or super-natual events
that might deny and discourage it

or I could write about my lover's legs
and the amazing way they join at the hip,
but I don't want to get too graphic this morning
because that would be outrageous
in this august company
and I'm completely out of outrage
since the last election


​

Selling my jams and jellies

Naked rolling, parts rubbing

a slow Sunday afternoon
and we were trying to decide what to do

and I suggested
we get naked and roll around
on the grass in the backyard,
rubbing
body parts togedther
fiercely

but there's a chill in the air,
probably too much chill
to be rolling around outside naked
no matter how fiercely
we rubbed ourselves
together

so I was thinking, well,
we could go down to the art museum
and take a look at the impressionist exhibitin,
settle down naked
in front of the Monet
and give him a real impression,
rolling around on the carpet
rubbing body parts together
impressionistically -
that might make the old guy
forget all about water lilies...

but they have these guards down there
that follow us around from room to room
and I don't know why,
except maybe they can read minds
and don't abide with people rubbing naked parts 
together
in front of their Monet -

maybe if we moved over in front of the Duchamp,
he did a lot of his own naked rubbing-around,
as I understand it, and what's that nude going to do
after decending the staircase
but some parts-rubbing
cause why else go downstairs
naked as a jaybird
if there weren't some parts-rubbing intentions...

but the guards are guardedly attentive
so the museum is out
and I was thinking we might take a drive
in the hill country - the way the leaves are changing
in our backyard, there must be piles of red and orange 
and yellow and gold lying on the ground
under some of those big hill country oak trees,
ripe for some good old rustic
naked parts-rubbng and rolling around,
but it is even colder in the hills
than it is here
so there's the chill factor to consider,
plus all those rattlesnakes
who love to hide in leaf piles
on these chilly days,
or  maybe up in the oak trees to sleep
through the winter -
and I think they might now welcome
people waking them up,
rolling around naked in the leaves,
rubbing parts together with sylvan abandon,
despite the fact it was a snake in a tree
that started all this naked rolling about
and parts-rubbing in the first place...

or we might just do what we always do
on lazy Sunday afternoons, could just
take a Sunday afternoon nap
you, in the easy chair
and me on the 
couch

just
like we
always do


​

Santa Fe Afternoon

Here are two poems by my poet friend Gary Blankenship, taken from his book The Poetic States, and a drop of sunshine. His book is a collection of short poems inspired by each of the fifty states and Washington D.C. The two poems I selected to use here are, first, Texas, my home state, and second, New Mexico, which, since my first visit in 1963, has held in my mind as the place I ought to be.


Texas

Larger than a Breadbox

You are too huge to be captured
in verse written by a minor poet
who knows it takes two days
to cross you no matter where the start.

And  you raised two modern presidents -
one mostly good, the other a bit less,
though they both seemed all to fond
of guerilla wars that couldn't be won.

Nothing more needs to be mentioned
in a short poem, but Dick's Riverwalk,
the perfect place for tequila shots
and buckets of boiled crawdads

as we forget which war explodes now
and the humidity blowing in from the Gulf.


New Mexico

Trinity's Hour

A new sun bloomed out of the desert
defying Sol to roast white powder
glazed like broken pottery in a kiln

The light separated from the dark
to illuminate playas taauarned to stream,
clouds the sudden color of hell,
gypsum dunes and salt flats

It shone on chaparral forest,
creatures that crawled,
burrowed and fell from the sky,
seeds and fish awaiting spring,
beasts that hunted beasts
and those that hid from the hunters

It lit a sheepherder in his hogan,
Alamogordo, Carlsbad, old Santa Fe,
lovers eloping from Las Cruces,
jingle dancer waking in her pueblo.
truth and it's consequences,
the blood of a Spanish Crist

Its flash found a vendor on Honshu,
pineapple farmer on Oahu,
ballet dancer in Stalingrad,
soldier dying in a Pacific jungle,
rabbinical student at the Wailing Wall,
man of independence

as time shifts to five minures
before the last midnight

​

It l

A good way to start, is all I'm saying

it's chilly,
that's what I'm saying

went out to feed the critters
and froze my jelly-belly
near
fa-telly

but the sun's 
arising
like an old man's hoosit,
when memories strike
with tentpole dreams
of that pretty girl from 1954,
all bobby-socked and whooshy skirted
rising all the way to her holymoses
when she twirled
to the beat of her rocker-roll feet
like Hermione Gingold
peddling her pettifogs
through the roses of 
Sangre de Chevalier...

but I was saying,
it's a chill-bill day
but the sun's arising in an all-together
encouraging way,
I'm saying,
​to kick-off the day

Rules suck - a libertarian manifesto

rules suck,
that's my conviction

except for those that protect me
from bank robbers and serial killers
and international assassins
and incompetent motor vehicle operators
and rogue cops
and Islamic terrorists
and Communist terrorists
and Lutheran terrorists
and Mormon terrorists
and Zen terrorists
And People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
terrorists
and Pat Boone fan club terriorists

and illegal Mexican aliens who want to behead people
and smuggle drugs
and steal my job picking grapes for 89 cents an hour

and cemetery plot salesmen
and term life insurance salesmen
and poison spinach...

wait,
I don't eat spinach, poisoned or otherwise,
so that rule sucks too, but the rule
that protects me from poison peas and corn,
and poison pork chops - that's another story

and the rule that says my employer has to pay me
when I work
and that my landlord has to fix my plumbing
when it leaks
and that I can take my AK-47 to church
to protect myself against international assassins
and terrorists and devil worshipers
and homosexual hippies from Harvard Square
and California surfer boys
and Lebanese switchboard operators
and gangsta' rappers
and Chinese tongs
and those damn Mexican narco-terrorists
and other nasty nabobs of nefarious negativity it's just the wa it is

rules suck,
that's my conviction

mostly

​

Twit about town

30 degrees
bright
sun
squirrels
shivering in the trees
and that's the weather report for this morning

but I have more important things
on my mind -

the whole naming thing,
my insistence on assigning naming rights
to creators

so, for example, I drive a RAV 4, so named
by the Toyota automobile company,
so named, I'm guessing, by the creator of the company,
Charlie Toyota

this principle is the source of my right
to name these little thing I write "Poems"
and I don't care what anyone else thinks
or wants to call them,
just like Charlie Toyota doesn't care
many think he should have named his company
Oldsmobile
or Tinkerpot
or Btristlebull;
or Upyourass
or anything else

I drive a Toyota because
Charlie says so

and I write poems beause
I say so

and it raises the question
of how a lion came to be called a lion
and a snail a snail
and a jackrabbit a jackrabbit
and me a man and you a woman
if you are one and if you're not,
I'm not saying anythng about the depths of your
masculinity, just saying that, for example,
if you're a woman how did you come to be called that...
assuming I'm correct that the creator gets to name
his creations,
then God the creator must have named me man
and you woman, if you... ectetera etcetera

but wait!
Genesis says God delegated naming rights to Adam,
who, presumably, named himself, and, face it,
Adam doesn't seem to have been the smartest dude
in the garden, even though, disregarding Eve's
sometimes bossy tendencies. he's the only dude in the garden...
he's basically dumb as the thing he sits on
and later called "rock" which is probably a good thing,
since if Adam had any brains he might have also have
had a sense of humor, a frequent affliction of those witih brains,
and the whole naming thing could have turned into a joke,
like the Abbot and Costello who's on first bit and,
who knows, I might now be known as the
Twit of the Hour or
the Twit about Town,
or in some cases Da Twit,
​
and who knows, my gosh,
what you might be today if Adam had a sense of humor
​

Shadrach In The Fiery Pit

​


​

Zulabulaland

9 a.m. and I heading for my new coffee house,
den of ocassional creations of a poetic nature,
one of those Presbotarianist places
where you get a blessing with each cup of coffee
and an invitation to donate to their mission
in Zulabuland, with nice art on the walls
and old furnitue and chairs upon which
a person of my substantial substance
can find adventure in intermittent creaks and groans

and I was driving to this place of ocassional poetic creation
when two yuppie-puppie vans raced right through a red light
in front of me and if I hadn't slowed down two blocks earlier
to get a better look at a house I'm going to buy
after I win the lottery tonight, they would have creamed me
as we used to say, havng nothing to do with cows or
milking machines, or haystacks, or sylvan pastures of green,
just plain run right over me, leaving me in a bloody twist
of metal and flesh formerly known as me,
pretty bad for the flesh formerly known as me
but not so bad for the wife of the flesh formerly known as me,
said flesh worth more in such mangled and dead condition
than unmangled and alive, making it possible for her
to move into that house I was looking at without counting
on lottery winnings...

such are the economics of life and death

`````

another sign of the craziness all about,
these yuppie-puppie moms in their yuppie-puppie vans
driving like Bonnie and Clyde running from the poooooolice
after a bank job - I'm telling you there is no safe place
for us sane people when yuppie-puppie moms
are driving their yuppie-puppie vans through
yiuppie-puppie neighborhoods, like Steve McQueen
chasing bad guys through the hills of San Franisco...

too damn many people seeing too many movies
they're not psychologically prepared for
​is what I think is going on

​This piece is by Stephen Dunn from his book, Different Hours.

Dunn is the author of ten previous collections of poetry, in addition to this book which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.



The Reverse Side

                      The reverse side also has a reverse side.
                                                           - A Japanese proverb

It's why when we speak a truth
some of us instantly feel foolish
as if a deck inside us has been shuffled
and there it is - the opposite 
of what we said.

And perhaps why we as we fall in love
we're already falling out of it.

It's why the terrified and the simple
latch onto one story,
just one version of the great mystery.

Image & afterimage, oh even
the open-minded yearn for a fiction
to rein tings in -
the snapshot, the lie of a frame.

How do we not go crazy,
we who have found outselves compelled
to live with the circle, the ellipsis, the word
not yet written.
​

new board

Double Trouble
​

As I mentioned before, I quit writing poetry several months ago. Most of the poems I've posted here and elsewhere for the past several weeks, came from this book, Goes Around Comes Around, my third book, second eBook. I've provided my own covers for all of my eBooks except this one. In this case, the cover is from a photo by Thomas Costales, an amatuer photographer I met at a book store. Thomas, suffering from insomnia, has created a wonderful collection of night photos such as this one. He also created a very good collection of portraits. I used both his night picures and his portraits in the old Here and Now.

I haven't had any contact with Thomas in years. I hope he's still taking his pictures.

As I've been reading the poems from Goes Around Comes Around that I haven't read in years, I'm impressed by my own work. The poems are loose and unpretentious and, often, humerous. It seems to me my work in later books tightened up and lost the free flow that I maintained in this book, as if I became to regard my self too seriously, losing the spontainity that made the poems here so pleasing to me.

My recent problem, and the reason I no longer write poetry, is I've lost the words and the free spirit. 

As an old man, 77 going on 78, I'm facing the problem of losing the right word. Most of my readers are writers as well, and I'm sure they know what I'm talking about. There are the "right words" in a poem, usually a familiar word that just won't come to mind, requiring substitution of that word with a second or third choice that flattens the poem and drains the fun of writing it.

So that's the reason you're seeing only old poems from me, old poems or new poems that end up as prose.

For example, a friend of mine died died last year, a friend of 60 years who I met in 1965 in Air Force basic training. 

We completed basic traing then went together to almost a year of Russian language traing at Indiana University. After that, another three months of of equipment training at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Anglo, Texas. After completing this year of training, we were both assigned to the same post in Gemany, traveling together throughout Germany for a year. After that we were assigned different post, he in Turkey and me to the Pakistanni frontier. 

Following military service, we continued to see each other for all the years, every year or two, meeting for a drink or coffee or a meal, despite living over 1,000 miles apart. As the years pass our own lives each went the normal way of lives, leaving us always something to talk about. 

Now, following his death, I remember the years of memories that we alone shared but that are now mine alone.

​And thus, this void is left, there being no one left who remembers it all as I do, no one left to talk about as we did.

This is a poem I would liked to have written. But this prose rememberences is what I have instead.

​

It's a fine day today

it's a fine day todaiy,

the sun shines 
on all of us, children
of the bright...

it's a fine day today,

three pages of dead people in the paper-
only five younger than me
and one of those
I think
was lying

a fine day today,
three pages of dead people in the paper,
and none of them
was me...

Day 24,387 and counting

another
day,
another
dollar,
a million
days,
a million dollars...

that's what the fella
down at the Happy Valley Home told me...

and, depending on your capacity
for long-term planning,
that view can be very encouraging,
even cominf from the Happy Valley cohort,
who, if you choose, can be seen
as not out of touch with reality,
living instead
in a greater reality closed 
to the ore prosaic of us -

or not

as for me,
I'm a believer in reality,
but only in romantic affairs...

when it comes to money,
I settle for no less 
than the wildest fantasies

which is why I am sure
I'm on the road to riches every day

and while I may not get all the days
I need to get there all the way,
being on to something good
is better than being stuck in the weeds
like a back-road vagabond with a flat tire
and no spare in the trunk...

I'm a human being of the American persuasion
after all,
and, like my kind, want to get
everything there is to get
and expect, by god, to get it...

day 24,387
and counting
​

Thinking of the state of the world, as well as my country and even my state, I think of this poem. It's an old poem, one that I've probably posted here before, but it's a rarity for me, a "message" poem. But I think it's a good message worth repeating.


Habits of mercy

I was thinking this morning 
about what I want to do with the rest of my life,
and decide it's the same thing
I want to do with the rest of my day -

kiss my wife
at least once or twice

eat some good food

write some good poems

sleep a nice nap

communicate with my better nature

& forgive myself
for all recent sins, known,
as well as those secret, even to me

easier for some
then for others, 

those with no true love
to kiss

no food to eat

no bed to sleep in

no poetry for their soul - those with no key
to unlock the door to self, their
true self as unknown to them
as a stranger passing dark on the street -

and most difficult of all for those 
who can't find withing themselves
forgiveness of themselves...

poor miserable, ego-obsessed creatures that we are,
sinners almost from our first thoughts,
if we cannot forgive ourselves,
how will we ever learn to forgive others

and if we cannot forgive others,
how can we ever live in this world
that needs cleansed hearts
as much as we need clean air and water

habits of mercy
are what will save this world;
human sins forgiven
by human sinners

​

​A minor poet explains it all

I'm eating breakfast north-faced
today,
unusual,
because normally I sit at the booth on the other end,
the one next to the electric plug where I face south as I eat

this morning, that booth was taken
by another south-faced keyboard clicking diner,
leave me at this end, in the only other booth
next to an electric plug
where I now eat breakfast facing north

I'm not sure what effect this will have
on the gastro-dynamics of my egg-over-easy
and super-extra-crispy bacon
but it does present a subtly different view,
which could have far-reaching psychological effects on
those like me, normally eat breakfast facing toward the south,
facing the oncoming traffic on the interstate
as well as those like me, today, who eat breakfast
facing north, facing interstate traffic going away,
this different orientation  the reason, I believe,
why south-facing diners are usually highly motivated people
with the supreme confidence required to write 
meaningless, totally trivial, poetry,
while north-facing diners
often suffer from abandoment issues
and are frequent victims
​of depresssion
​

Lost Jigger of Gin

The Hawaiian shirt plan

it's a kind of orange/yellow thing
with palm trees and some kind of liquor bottle
with sailing ships on the label,
it's one of seven Hawaiian shirts I bought
a couple of weeks ago -
the one I have on today
part of my new strategy for facing
South Texas Summer - embrace it!

no more hiding in my air conditioned house
for four months, tasting unprocessed outside air
only for the time it takes to get from my air conditioned house
to my air conditioned car

instead,
I will sweat
as one's supposed to when it's 100 degrees in 85% humidity

I will wear my salt-stained Hawaiian shirts daily;

I will work at least one hour each day in my backyard
in the cinder-toasting sun as lightly dressed
as allowed by law,
my fish-white belly and butt
will be brown like the  pecans that fall from the tree,
my feet will become summer rough again,
my hands black and bruised from digging in the dark soil
and sharp chaliche rocks

I will be like the ancient peoples who made their hard lives here
among the cactus and hills, and rocky meadows,
in the summer heat and north winds of winter

I will be seven years old again, when summer
was my friend

I will be summer
​again
​

My town, from my neighborhood

My town, round and about downtown

​

i heard a new song on the radio yesterday.

The line is, "I like Austin, but I love San Antone."

That's true for me except, while I like Austin in the late 60s early 70s, my son lives there now and I never want to live there again. In fact, I've spent time in all the major cities in Texas and the only one I'd live in is where I live now, San Antonio, a city of a million and a half people, including a massive influx of people from all over the country, that still has managed to maintain it's own unique culture.




Notes from slower regions of the universe

the first time
we made love
I carried you
to my bed, like
a leaf on a high
hot tide

````

Sunday afternoon 
in the apartment on Santa Fe,
lying in bed, watching it rain
through a damp window screen

watching the rain advance
in soft sheets across the gray waters
of the bay

`````

the house on G street

open ceiling, rain on the roof
pattering, banana plant
by the window weaving
green pataterns in the wind

like sleeping dry
in the rain

~~~~~

the first night home
from the agency

crib at the foot
of our bed,
we sleep lightly,
listen in our sleep 
for his beathing

~~~~~

we slip into sleep
flesh to flesh,
spooned,
soft skin
on soft skin,
my rough hands
cupping your small breasts

`````

I sleep,
my leg between yours,
your arm across my chest

the fire banked,
the embers still glow