HERE AND NOW
(AGAIN)
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Before moving on, I want to remind readers (I'm convinced, without evidence so far, there are some of you out there) that unlike the original "Here and Now," this version has a comment option. I would like comments, first to reassure me that I'm not just hollering down an empty well, but also because I think it would be great for this blog to become a place for critique as well as (and this is the exciting part), conversation. So talk to me, you presumed but not yet confirmed, readers. Now, reminded of an old friend. ELIZONDO ROAD I just learned that Freddy got himself a road… up near Bluetown, a tiny town a couple of miles from the small town where I grew up, just a cotton field from the Rio Grande River… a little Mexican beer joint there where I used to go to buy beer when I was about sixteen, no questions asked until a new guy asked me what year I was born and I couldn’t get the math to work in my mind so I turned around and walked out lucky for my drinking habits the new guy didn’t last long, costing the owner too much business, I’m guessing, so things quickly returned to normal… ``` (this is supposed to be about Fred, not me, which I often forget when in the midst of poeming...) so, as I was going to say before I so rudely interrupted myself, Fred was a very nice fellow... a nice fellow, my co-worker for a few years, a farmer, a social worker who helped farm workers and labor contractors find each other for the annual migration, a friend to all who might need a friend, and, come election time, a gatherer of Democratic voters, filling his big farm truck with farm workers, insuring they all knew by the time they reached the polls who the Democrat was and how to vote for him… a man with all the normal South Texas prejudices, but like with most of the kind, prejudices applying only to those he didn’t know, never to any he knew and made his friend, in short, a very nice fellow and a good friend to have in the best and worst of times… if I listed of all the people I’ve known who deserve a road, it would be a very short list and right at the top would be Fred from Bluetown, Texas, a man I know would be very proud of his road, a man i knew and liked many years ago BY HOOK OR BY CROOK  the prince of real and true in restless sleep dense fog time outside of time swirls sucks my reality-brain into realms where the prince of real and true lies huddled in the tiniest corner of a very large room done all up in shifting white he whimpers as he sleeps blinded by forgotten possibilities he dares not open his eyes, frightened that he might see again all the lost days wandering rootless waiting, hoping, for a clear day to find their way again WHEN NIGHTHAWKS FLY IN MEMORIES DARK (with a little unwelcome assist from my dog. my sixth attempt to record, frustration evident at at the beginning. not the recording I would have liked, but was determined there wasn't going to be a seventh attempt.) This poem is by Devreaus Baker, from her book Red Willow People, published by Wild Ocean Press in 2010. The poem holds a special place for my becauses it expresses exactly my reaction upon my first visit to the state, almost from the time I stepped off an airplane for the first time in Albuquerque. New Mexico Chant Whistles in the dark alleys of my mind Driving with the top down So stars fall into my mouth The desert is getting into my blook Night is doing her Jaguar dance beside the road Moon is leaving milky seeds in sagebrush hair My seed My love You grow so big in my heart I cannot eat you I have to devour you My Arroyo Seco, Ranchos De Taos, Paseo Del Pueblo Norte High road of my heart. diorama morning north wind blows hard against me, cold hand on the nape of my neck, trickles under my coat down my back clear blue sky sharp as a diamond’s cutting edge bright sun like broken glass falling long night’s sleep, waking to a five year old’s diorama world, construction paper city construction paper world bright colors sharp corners Another of my practice boards.  There are many wonders for us to appreciate, on the earth and in the heavens JOURNEY'S END NEENA AT LENSCRAFTERS a community college student getting the basics before dental tech school a little large for the glamour magazines, country girl large, shapely but substantial, a woman to hold on to you and be held and, the first impression, not her size, but her dark eyes and a wide smile reaching all the way to her eyes, then her hands, fingers long and strong and capable, beautiful in their dexterity as she maneuvers the little screws that hold my eyeglasses together and we talk as she works and I pose for the various measurements and adjustments… thirty minutes, enjoyable, conversational, so different from the drudge that usually moves you through such required processes… thirty minutes that seem like less than half so long… her beautiful hands and capable fingers, no ring, no sign of attachment - somewhere out there in the world, a lucky someone who does not know yet the treasure that will come Lady Bird Johnson Botanical Gardens, Austin  gone forever return after 30 years and discover you knew the people many streets are named for and they’re mostly dead still, you think, had I stayed here I might have a street too but you never think you might be dead, too… --- relief near joyous, discovering one of your favorite old restaurants still open and the food is still good --- 45 degrees at 5 a.m. - wind from the north blowing 40 miles an hour no sunny beach today --- eating breakfast in front of wide, high windows, waiting to watch the sun rise, instead a gray, sullen sky, daylight easing over a gray sullen bay, water lapping furious and frantic at the seawall but no sun no shining disc rising red over green waters that was another day --- crossing the Oso causeway high over white-capped water, the wind blowing from high distant passes like through a five-mountain funnel the car wants to fly with the cold wind --- the ferry will not run today, all the little bay-side villages will be bundled up against the cold and closed… no pictures anywhere, even on the beach, just dim sky, dull water, nothing on the horizon but more dim and more dull, sand from the dunes behind me blowing against my neck, the grit of it stinging, suggesting it’s time to go home... --- homeward against the wind that fights me, pushes me back, a longer drive with it in my face than at my back lunch at Oakville, half-way home, bar-b-cue sandwich, potato salad, and pinto beans with peach cobbler chaser… --- and the week-end’s over, Dee still down with a cold, but the dog happy to see me, thought I had left forever that’s the way dog’s think, sometimes smarter than we are… because that’s the message here if there is one - once a place is left, no matter how dear, that place is gone forever, old home just old now, never the place you remember teaching you, if you’re willing to learn, that home has to be where you are today or you will be forever homeless It's all about me. And why not, I'm the one doing all the work here. naThis poem is by a poet friend of mine, Arlene Ang, excellent poet, known from her Facebook posts to be a yoga master, lucky companion of a beautiful dog, and, early on, a friend of my own -work. The poem is from her book, Banned for Life. ANANOUNCED GUEST The day we burind my sister, Mimi came. The rings on her face dangled. Everyone watched her the way fish observed a hook without the bait. She wanted to have the cookbooks she had left my sister. I understood for the first time the word "lover." Mimi stood there and chewed gum. "You gotta admit," she said looking around, "there's something eerie about all these people who never knew her and are here now." It was April. Dead fish were washing up from the lake. There are smells you bring home that write themselves into a novel. In this scene, I was serving egg sandwiches. I was thinking about the hour on Mimi's digital wristwatch - 15:39 - and how it created a private neighborhood peopled with silence My siser's husband stood apart, holding their two children by the wrist. There was so much sun coming in through the French windows that I finally understood the concept behind alien abduction. A SHY MEXICAN GIRL I would get the call to pick her up several times a week always behind Chacho’s Bar on Harrison Street a beautiful ebony-eyed girl all done up, didn’t look like a whore at all, always a 75 cent fare to the Valley Hi Motel where she worked in small, one-room cottages beneath high palm trees blowing in wet coastal winds by a twisting, turning driveway of circles and switchbacks and small pebble gravel crunching indiscreetly beneath my tires… a 75-cent ride from Chacho’s with an dime for me then a call back 45 minutes later, for pick-up and the drive back to the alley behind the bar where I picked her up, a shy Mexican girl in a town not that large, protecting her reputation even though I’m sure everyone in the bar they knew what she did for a living… and so it went until one night the alley behind the bar wasn’t deserted as usual but crowded with men, drive on, she said as I slowed down, but it was too later, all the men’s eyes were on me and the cab, and especially her, not looking like a whore at all as she stepped out of the cab and walked between them as the crowd parted to let her pass knowing as she walked that what is known quietly changes everything when it is known out loud… --- the last I saw - her walking through Chacho’s back door hips swinging in her tight dress like they never did before looking like a whore advertising maybe she started doing tricks at the bar with no longer a need to be discreet maybe she went home and quit the business found a job slinging hash at a local beanery maybe one, maybe the other, I don’t know - she never called for me again Another practice board. I've been too busy preparing existing boards for show to get time to do new ones.  A final reading to end the post. LET'S GO SHOOT A BIG FAT CAPITALIST
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 concrete gardens with age, we come to accept the limited future of our own corporal self harder to accept, no matter how long our life, that all the works of our kind are equally limited to their own moments in time, longer moments than our own, but still all passing fancies, like us, that begin and end on a schedule unknown to us, inevitabilities unknown to us until their moment of denoument, the whens and the whys, the mystery lying before us, clues aplenty all around us, the how-we-will-end surely a final play like those of all who ended before us, most all, some version of suicide, a product of an aggressive, explosive nature or just the weariness of existence overtaking the will to continue, unrecognized until the final of the kind lifted its head and realized it was the last and that no more would follow… it might be there are no examples for us to study, maybe all kinds find their own way to kill themselves, all inevitable ends reflecting the truth that we are all part of a universe of both births and deaths, both equal and appropriate to the machinery that keeps all the universal wheels turning  I'VE BEEN THIS WAY BEFORE, I THINK I’ve been this way before I think and it did not end so well if it is you who follow so close behind me be warned, there are secrets on this path, furtive forms that flash and slither, all of them, shadows and forms and in the dim and hidden, clandestine whispers, dark mouth to sharpened ear all on this path patrolled by silent trees that shield the sun and guard untold stories of the dark I sense it, half-remembered from days I fear not passed.. secrets… do not ask, or it may not turn out well for I’ve been this way before, I think, and it did not turn out well  About 2015 or so, I published a book of travel poems. The book is titled Places and Spaces, an eBook, available, I am required to say, wherever eBooks are sold. The book includes the extended stories of five trips. The bulk of the stories are written in a more prose form, with interludes of poetry to record some of the more interesting sights along the way. For purposes of this blog issue, I'm going to select some of those more poetic pieces from the trip we made in the autumn, early winter, through the South to a passage along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The title of that poem/story is On the Cusp of Confederate Winter. For half of this journey I traveled alone, just me and my dog, Reba, who, before she died traveled 35 states with me. We picked up my wife, Dee, in Columbus, Ohio. We have traveled this way for years. I like to drive and don't like to fly; Dee just wants to get there so she flies, then we meet halfway. These little bits and pieces I'm posting are just that, bits and pieces, moments that struck me and were remembered in a poetic form later on. Don't expect them to advance the narrative.  tHIso Texas to Arkansas a pick-up pulling a horse trailer, alone in the back, one horse, a palomino, golden mane and tail and eyelashes flaring the wind, brown eyes watching as I pass .......... a hawk slips slowly from the sky to land on a fence post, watches, sees all with yellow eyes that view all that moves as prey .......... orange sky like mist through a forest of orange leaves .......... lakes and ponds and waterfowl, a crane passes over the road, low, long neck outstretched, wings spread, a dark shadow against a nearly dark sky .......... red sky in my rearview the road like a tunnel through the dark, tall, green forest on either side Little Rock to Nashville I wanted to write about the forests, the colors, gold and yellow and the red-brown color the Crayola people used to call Indian Red or Indian Brown, and in the middle of all that gold and yellow and red brown Indian whatever, some low bush that's flaming bright red scattered among the trees like little fires burning in the woods, and I wanted to write about the flock of ducks that flew over in perfect V formation, near enough to the ground that each duck could be seen and counted as an individual, close enough to the ground that I could hear the flapping of their wings and the mutter-quacks among the ranks, and I wanted to write about the hills, reminding me of the hill country at home, but soft hills here, none of the hard face of caliche and cactus and mesquite, just soft, soft forest-hills, trunks climbing close together, I wanted to write about the sun this morning and how it lit the colors of the trees and covered the sky from mid-afternoon, bringing shadow and mystery and darker colors of the night... Charleston, West Virginia The forest colors have changed, the yellows gone as we have journeyed further north, and the gold is starting to fall as well, a shower of golden leaves around me as I stand by a river a little further along, Huddle In, with friendly servers, dark thick coffee and pie, not homemade, I'm sure, but good, without the usual taste of something made by robots and child slave labor in East Berserkistan, all before 10 a.m. continuing north, the colors now are mostly shades of red and brown, on a hill surrounded on four sides by forest, a horse enjoys a pasture all his own in a dell, green as spring, a small church, white clapboard with a white wooden steeple rising twice the church's height, on a hill behind the church, rows of tombstones in rank and file, climbing the hillside like steps to an afterlife that, if we are lucky, woud look exactly like this little green dell and this little white church I stop just across the state line so Reba can walk and pee, just across the highway, three cows line a ridge, dark cut-outs against the sky the road rises in front of me, bordered, as always, by red and brown forests, at the top, a silver-dollar moon on a pale blue sky Charleston to Columbus lost, then finally straightened out, I follow the road, a narrow two lane that twists with the path of a river going north, on the river side, shacks, square little homes with junk cars and several hundred dollars worth of scrap metal in front, and on the other side of the road, great brick houses with wide green lawns and barns and horse stables Columbus another dark day, gray and overcast again, rain hanging back like the word that gets caught on the tip of your tongue, there, but not there, waiting in the wings, waiting for its cue to bring on the storm Dee prowls the shops of Old Dublin while I enjoy the luxury of a latte and a Times at Starbucks, this assumed as an entitlement a week ago, now joins my list of things to be thankful for finally, and by accident, we find ourselves on High Street, right in the middle of Short North, the arts district, but the galleries all seem to be closed, so we settle for lunch at Betty's Food & Spirits, named, it might be, after Betty Page, whose photos, along with other mid-century pin-up girls, paper the walls, the most vivid dreams of my 14-year-old days and nights revisit me as I enjoy a bowl of beef vegetable soup, a bit thin of broth for my taste, but full of vegetables, with thick chewy bread To Roanoke When I passed this way two days ago, it was dead-black dark and I couldn't see anything but the moving island my headlights threw ahead of me - today I appreciate the tree-covered hills and vistas as we curve around the mountain side, though the rain has stopped, most of the color on the hills is gone and what remains is draped in drab by the overcast sky a smaller, slower road with dips and turns and twists that take us across a river, then alongside it for twenty miles - people here are different from people in Texas who post the name of every river and creek whether flowing water or dry, that every road, paved, caliche, or blowing dust crosses - we value water for its scarcity and want a name everywhere it might be found, even if only a couple of days a year - here, even rivers have no posted name this river, wide with white-water rapids deserves a name we thought, even if only the name we give it "man with no name" river we have named it "El Rio Sin Nombre" a white house on a hill surrounded by leaf-bare trees, and behind them, mountains showing in bits and pieces through the fog on the road, short, thick-foliaged pines stand, crowded side by side, like spectators standing shoulder-to-shoulder, watching a passing parade, or, I think of the hundreds of clay soldiers lined in rank after rank, buried with a Chinese emperor - fog drifts around them and in that shifting fog, the soldiers seem to move, coming alive while their emperor still lies in dust In Roanoke A fellow at the produce market suggest Ernie's, right around the corner, a tiny little place, long and narrow, just wide enough to set up a line of booths from front to back and a couple of stools backed up against the grill - it is crowded, only one booth left when we slip in the door, with noisy, downtown people, hardhats to neckties, and all fashioned in between. - Ernie the proprietor is also Ernie, the cook, prepares the best breakfast in months - two eggs over easy, sausage patties, dry wheat toast and thick dark coffee Not much to impress us at the museum, except for the homeless man sleeping in the corner of one of the galleries, not real, of course, but a representation of reality, and essay on invisibility as museum visitor afrer museum visitor, myself included, walked past without seeming to see him, stipping and looking at paintings hanging over the space where he "slept" and not seeing, as if the homeless lived in an alternate universe, unseen and unknown to us until they panhandle us, or scream and rant on a street corner Jefferson's other plantation From his grand veranda, Jefferson could look out on the nearest of his 4,000 acres, large poplar trees, yellow leaves still holding on despite the lateness of the season, a gentle slope of close-cut grass; a creek running fast; another pasture, tobacco fields - in Jefferson's time, a crop he despised but planted anyway because he needed the cash; a forest of poplar trees broken by a winding crushed-shell drive - around the side and in the back, slave quarters, not for the cultivated eyes of the gentlemen and ladies of the Commonwealth of Virginia To Asherville and into North Carolina It will take all day, through the curves and thick forests of poplar and pine, leaves falling lik golden snow, we begin the climb a half-dozen wild turkery along the roadside, undisturbed by our passing, a fat deer I see ahead leaps across the road and through the trees bad weather gets worse, we are enfolded by the rain and the fog and the forest all around us grand vistas across green and gold hills around us, cleared pastures, little villages with little white houses and broken-down barns, and church steeples, and yellow school buses parked behind schools closed for the weekend the temperature at 3,700 feet is 37 degrees, a fierce cold wind blows through the wooded valleys and across the high crests, so strong it billows my Levi jacket out from my back like blue wings, almost lifting me over the edge - the chill factor is in the teens To Birmingham, Alabama heavy snow during the night has dusted white across the lower elevation - higher, thick dark clouds wrap aroiund the mountains, covering them like a dirty white blanket - our waitress at the Waffle House suggests we avoid the higher passes and stick to I-40 the soft, slow slur of a southern accent can make a Southerner sound stupid to many ears, especially when it comes from the mouth of a Southern woman, pity those who believe it true I expected cotton fields but found forests instead, still with all the colors of fall, turning more and more green as pines begin to infiltrate, the dominate, tall thin giants straight as fence posts with a bushy crown at the top To Lafayette, Louisiana lunch at a little truck stop in Pearl River County, Mississippi, three county deputy sheriffs at the table next to us, all black, making me think of my first trip through the south on a bus in the Spring of 1966, white and colored waiting rooms, white and colored restrooms, white and colored water fountains, all illegal since passage of the Civil Rights Act of a year earlier, all unmarked, but lifelong habits break hard, people still segregating themselves because that's the way they knew, but habits change and what could not be imagined, in time, becomes routine To San Antonio I am often told of the beauty of Louisiana, I see that, but I see the ugliness as well, the seediness behind the facade, like a middle-aged beauty queen showing the sag of body and spirit that comes from too many nights closing too many bars with too many men - I love the food and the music of the accent but it is not a place I could ever live crossing the Mississippi, a beautiful, broad river, like the Grand Canyon, a tale that lives up to its telling Back in Texas the passage of Ike and Rita and Katrina still visible in broken and fallen trees, blue plastic tarps over rooftops, piles of debris in fields and on the sides of the road, and a travel trailer graveyard, hundreds of travel trailer in a field, relics of FEMA and the storms Trails End Home! 3,986 miles 11 days 9 states Home Reba pees on her favorite tree Peanut pees on herself as she usually does when excited and Cat fusses - wants us all to go to bed so she can sleep on my lap again And in the end, well done there is pleasure in travel but comfort in routine and the everyday, so I'm back, second table from the rear, by the window, back to the river, looking out on the corner of Martin and Soledad, San Antonio, Texas, life in the slow lane, looking for a poem in all the old familiar places The next piece is by Audre Lorde, self-described "Black Lesbian, warrior, mother, poet." The poem is from her book, The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance. East Berlin It feels dangerous now to be Black in Berlin sad suicides that never got reported Neukilin Kruezberg the neon Zoo a new siege along the Under den Linden with Paris accents New York hustle many tattered visions intersecting. Already my blood shrieks through East Berlin streets misplaced hatreds volcanic tallies rung upon cement Afro-German woman stomped to death byn skinheads in Alexanderplatz two=year-old girls half=cooked in their camcots who pays the price for their disillusion? Hand-held the candles wink in Berlin's scant November light hitting the wall at 30 miles an hour vision first is still hitting a wall and on the other side the rank chasm Next, another of my early practice boards  Stories My Father Told Me A final poem before closing this post down. Piggly Wiggly promenade walking across the parking lot in high heels and black capri pants that draw attention to hips going a little broad and ass on the way to droop and a white cotton blouse tucked tight into her pants small breasts, nipples round and hard as marbles, nodding with every step she struts as she passes me and smiles, and you know she's having the time of her life, giving all the little bagboys mid-afternoon hard-ons, free in this parking lot for at least a while, free at least until the groceries are safely loaded into her Volvo and she's on her way to pick up little Brittany at ballet THIS POST IS COMPLETE
CONTINUE SCROLLING DOWN FOR PREVIOUS POSTS Main Plaza, San Fernando Cathedral, San Antonio, Texas A place to rest under plaza oaks, meet and greet, play, and pray A Introduction to my book of fiction, "Peace In Our Time."  In the Early Days of the War In the early days of the war, back when most had shoes and my baby sister was a virgin and I was in love and we did not yet know the taste of horse or pigeon. We had so much to learn. the story of our times so, I heard of this fella down where I grew up who bought a restaurant in the country... the restaurant had three very tall palms in front, so naturally, he named his new restaurant "Three Palms" - that was right before he cut down all three palms to expand his parking lot... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself, but am suspecting it might be a story of our times --- sleet on the northside snow predicted for this evening I'll stay up late to watch it maybe 8:30 or 9:00 o'clock anything that happens after that is not part of my universe... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself but am suspecting it might be another story of our times --- ducks on the river huddle in the cold not smart enough to get out of the river and go someplace dry - the comfort of the known trumps good sense every time... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself but am suspecting it might be even another story of our time --- I write poems even when I don't have anything to say but work very diligently to not say it poorly... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself but am suspecting it might be just one more story of our times --- so many stories of our time, you would think at least one would make sense... make of that what you will, I'm not sure myself but am suspecting that the story of our time is that none of the stories of our time make any sense at all Quilting Bee Smackdown  A few words of simple advice from a Texan to those who are not. how to make friends in Texas if it’s a man, admire his dog if he doesn’t have a dog congratulate him on his choice of firearm if it’s a woman, tell her you like what she did to her hair if she has no hair, tell her you think she has great boots and you’re thinking of getting a pair for your wife (being careful to enunciate clearly, especially if her husband is nearby) ---- possibly this advice is pertinent elsewhere, but Texas is where I have the most direct experience and it is with that stipulation I offer it One of a number of early practice boards that will not be seen anywhere but here. I originaly included phrases on my boards. but decided after a while that it demonstated lack of confidence in my art and and fear of leaving my words behind and relying entirely on images.  Next, I have this piece from one of my favorites, Polish Nobel Prize winner, Wislawa Szymborska. I love her very domestic poems like this one from her book Monologue of a Dog. published by Harcourt in 2002, with translation from Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Barancza. A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth She's been in this world for over a year, and in this world not everything's been examined and taken in hand. The subject of today's investigation is things that don't move by themselves. They need to be helped along, shoved, shifted, taken from their place and relocated. They don't all want to go, e.g., the bookshelf, the cupboard, the unyielding walls, the table. But the tablecloth on the stubborn table - when well-seized by its hems - manifests a willingness to travel. And the glasses, plates, creamer, spoons, bowl, are fairly shaking with desire. BB eastern sky the eastern sky red like an angry rose by any other hue would it sweet so smell end of days of 2012 approaching a new year’s ending beginning in two days and I have no reflex for an old year a new year an inbetween year a sky red as an angry rose the hue so sweet no reflex to measure the new number the old just a day you know like any other day no reflex for seeing new what I’ve seen before or new days or old days or roses angry red no matter how sweet hue the smell it’s just another damn day in another damn year just another damn moment just another damn angry hue and I have no reflex to understand or to teach it must another momentary rose angry then gone like me hasta la vista huesome rose  chill out chill outside more than expected from inside dark sky, moon in abeyance, stars like diamonds cold and distant. white clouds soft on the hard black sky, lit from below by city lights, puff and fluff passing low the night smells of three days of soaking rain, earth saturated, creek bubbling over rocks glistening in diamond sharp light cat stays home, doesn’t join our morning walk too cold, too damn wet for little cat feet I picked this up from a friend as part of discussion on facebook. It's a song by Woody Guthrie. I had never seen or heard it before. Jesus Christ was a man that traveled through the land Hard working man and brave He said to the rich, "Give your goods to the poor" So they laid Jesus Christ in His grave Yes, Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand His followers true and brave One dirty coward called Judas Iscariot Laid poor Jesus in His grave He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff Told them all the same "Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor" So they laid Jesus Christ in His grave When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around Believed what he did say The bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave And the working people followed him around Singing and shouting gay But the cops and soldiers nailed him in the air And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave Well the people held their breath when they heard about his death Everybody wondered why It was the landlord and the soldiers that they hired To nail Jesus Christ in the sky This song was made in New York City Of rich man and preachers, and slaves If Jesus was to preach like He preached in Galillee They would lay Jesus Christ in His grave Yes, Jesus was a man and a carpenter by hand His followers true and brave One dirty coward called Judas Iscariot As laid poor Jesus in His grave JACOB'S LADDER  mountains and towns early morning… dog walk… poem write at Starbucks… breakfast at La Fonda… routine settled in, a morning begun like the previous two days then, off to the mountains, through Espanola, then Los Alamos, through the national lab where they make things that go BOOM! (the road we need can only be accessed by driving through the lab, determined check point guard, picture ID from me and from Dee, or I can vouch for her and she doesn’t need to present an ID - “So do you vouch for your wife, the gate attendant asks?” “She’s been okay so far,” I reply... no hint of a smile in response just hand wave, passing us through) the bad news.. previous years’ fires leave their scar over slopes all around, great groves of aspen I was looking forward to, the brilliant yellow leaves that make their own light under the sun, the leaves wavering in the breeze, a hallucinatory trip driving through them on either side of the road, but not today, gone, burned, only white toothpicks reaching for the sun… the narrow road twists and turns as it takes us up the mountain, then down again, no wildlife except by a tree when we stop for Bella to do her duty, a black squirrel, small, not at all like the squirrels Bella is used to, but no squirrel disguise fools her as she almost pulls Dee over a fence trying to chase… and that the total wild life experience for the day…. except we stop at the broad crater left by a volcano eons upon eons ago, a great soft pasture, yellow grass, an elk crossing, a woman with binoculars says she just counted 150, with just as many as she didn’t count, way across the crater-pasture, lying in the grass she says along the tree line too far for us to see, a second-hand wild life observation to add to the experience of the disguised squirrel… we stop at the Jimez waterfall, sulfur-laced creek rushing down the mountain, the sight of it beautiful, the smell awful… a stop at Jimez Springs, tiny town, the three of us, lunch in the sun and mountain air on the patio, best part of the day so far… approaching the end of our crossing I am disappointed, the sights less then I remember from 40 years ago then I remember, that long-ago visit was my first mountain and forest experience, had not yet driven through the great forests and mountain roads and majestic vistas of the Rockies… easier to be impressed back then, still, the memory has held all these years… but the day saved by a side trip, a little note on the map, Garret Tunnels, and a quick decision to take a look, a tiny one and a half lane road, mile one then mile two and on to mile four, no tunnels and we consider turning back, but, one more mile, Dee says and then there they were, tunnels through rocky outcrops, built for trains, we read, now a road that essentially goes no where but here, and we are impressed, then seized not at the tunnels, but the sight no one told us to expect, the deep gorge alongside the narrow road, a stream bouncing from rock to rock at the very bottom, how many million years for that stream to make this deep passage… the day is made, a trip is saved, another Grand Canyon in the making, we're just several ages too early… back to Santa Fe, all tired, Bella grouchy, so I take her for a walk and an observation, 8 p.m. and the sidewalks are almost deserted, just me and Bella walking down dark and vacant streets, and I think of San Antonio, going to a bar ten years ago. downtown, to hear The Alloys, my son’s band, a midnight gig, the music loud, feet-stomping, jump-and-shout music, 2 a.m. when the music stops and, walking back to my car at that early hour, the streets are alive, crowds on the sidewalk as if it was mid-afternoon… different towns, different tourists here, like me, ready for bed by the time the sun goes down… Our black Manx, Kaitlyn, joined our household about a year ago when she was only about a month old. She quickly adapted to home-life living and over the course of the past year established her own place in the family. So well settled in she is that I suspect that she has even come to accept me as possibly an equal. We are considering adopting another kitten and are wondering how a new little sister for Katy will change the relationship dynamics.  OTHER TRAILS, OTHER TIMES AND PLACES there is a science fiction fancy that our life is just one of many in alternate universes so that that for the me that is here there are hundreds, thousands, even, of me in those other times and other places, a different me for each of the thousands of intersections in life where one decision, large or small, was made over another (even the smallest have consequences unforeseen and often later unrecognized) one of those other me’s might be happily married to that high school sweetheart, the romance that in this life fell through the first time we were not together daily… and in other lives I might have spoken my mind and heart to the girl in Baltimore before our separate planes returned us to separate places - in those lives I would not have stayed mum as she walked away, would have called her back… I suspect there are a lot of lives where I am a military man, that choice, in this life was a close one… or I might be a thief, a clumsy cat burglar, spending my years mostly behind the bars of bad choices on a rocky path… or a bum, drunk and homeless, sleeping under a cardboard tent on mean city streets - I can see that life easily as plausible as the one I have today, victim of ill-serving chance and my own dim-witted choices in many lives, it is likely I was never a husband, and in many of those, even though it most defines me in this life, never a father… all those other lives in places I have never been, will never visit including many lives where I am long dead, other lives where I will die tomorrow, and even others where I was never born, blank lines in the alternate universes of me… life is a path through a dense forest, the only path between the trees that surround us, passing all the other paths that branch out along the way, trails not taken in this life, but, in this science fiction fancy, as real as the one I walk today From my first book, "Seven Beats a Secod" Art by Vincent Martinez, my stories  church folk jump the fence sky light light blue thin layer of clouds moon still high in the sky Sunday morning, still quiet, noisy church people not out the gate yet noisy church people, piling in soon, many even more aged than me, assumed Catholic since they almost always have at least one priest tagging along, usually the older one, small, thin, skin stretched over his sharp-boned face like onion paper, St. Francis, prim, starched, crisply ironed in all aspects, still eats animals but doesn’t step on bugs or sometimes an even older priest, half-blind, pear-shaped, a tottering plop of frail humanity, doesn’t eat meat but probably steps on bugs just to reassert God’s natural order of things… both quiet islands, rarely speaking, in a crowd of obiescent codgers and codgetts, noisy people, trying to talk to each other and the priests, on their best behavior, hoping a good impression here will polish their key to heaven’s gate, doing their best to earn their place among the heavenly hosts, but willing to jump the fence if necessary… must be the worst part of being a priest, having to put up with such people just for the sake of a free meal… I could be a priest I guess, but only in the Church of Smiling Saints, with congregations of fun people, where priests are allowed to laugh at the absurdities of life, a church of whoopee cushions in every pew, clown shoes required to walk the gold-paved streets for weekly meetings of the heavenly choir, Weird Al conducting… but then there’s the whole GOD!! thing - all that flooding and smiting and divine jealousies and retributions, and pillars of salting and tossing good people like me and my best friends into the pits of hell, not much in the way of good humor there not enough for me anyway… city of slow water and beautiful women San Antonio women, long legs like liquid cinnamon flowing, muscles flexing as they stroll the Riverwalk, languid like the soft-shell turtles resting mid-stream, triangular heads breaking the mirror surface of dark green water placid afternoon on the river’s Museum Reach, great pecan trees a’ twitch with squirrels playing frantic games of chase up and down wide trunks, across, tree to tree, full-leafed branches that overhang the river’s flow, blanketing the rumble of cars and VIA buses crossing the St. Mary’s Street Bridge, the summer heat of the city above near-forgotten to the river-walkers like me and Bella and those San Antonio women, long legs under short summer dresses, like liquid cinnamon flowing, muscles flexing as they walk beside the quietly moving water... ``` this city of cinnamon women, city of multiple revolutions and many flags, city where history like its green river flows slowly through it, this city, already old when the first July cannons sounded half a continent away, celebrates again on this early July afternoon with those who came late to it The Magnetosphere is Running Down  a poem reminds me… a poem reminds me of a day nearly fifty years ago, walking through a forested park on the wet edge of late autumn, a narrow path in the shadows of tall trees on either side, great, wide trunks reaching high in the sharp sky the path, straight between the trees, to a small biergarten nestled deep within the woods a brisk day, but not so cold we can’t enjoy the outside tables, each of us with a liter of Runnels beer, the tall bottles, corks popping, like woodpeckers on an old tree, the beer, cellar temperature, thick and dark, the best beer drinking under the trees in the forest that afternoon, before or since, and, best of all, on an enlisted man’s pay, one mark, in those days about a quarter, per liter bottle… we did not go to the GI bars where the beer was watered and the women tough as any hammer in the tool shed and twice as lethal… our preference the bars where the locals met to drink, to talk, to play some kind of card game I never figured out, one in particular, a streetcar ride to the center of the city, with an old man we called parrot for reasons I don’t remember and an older woman - for us that meant about 35 - with an enormous bosom barely covered under a low cut peasant blouse… we drank there just about every night we weren’t working the swing or mid shifts, Runnels, our beer, made in Frankfurt, this a Runnels bar, like most German restaurants at the time, serving only a single house beer… quiet nights if somewhat hazy in the morning, the way of thick German beer - consequences unaccustomed to those brought up on the thin American kind… a good year, a taste of good life before the next year, drinking canned Schlitz under the desert sun on the Northwest Frontier, the Hindu Kush a like a shadow on the far horizon… look, please, at my beautiful pearls memories are like pearls, beautiful only to those who hold them, their splendor invisible to most others, look, we might say as we show them arrayed on a golden chain, look at my beauties, we cry to others who see only black and sooty lumps of coal on a string of brown packing twine and we do not understand our life in memories, our story, the wonder of “me” - how can others not see that wonder, how can others not love my moments as I love and remember them? how can I cherish these memories, such a life that means nothing to others? perhaps all has not been as I imagined, perhaps I can imagine better, become a star on the memory circuit, candidate for the applause my imagined life so rightful and richly deserves Black Orpheous  join the song the universe vibrates with the poetry of stars billions of singers in a chorus of life ever-affirmed by a carpet of lights visible to all from everywhere join the song, even if only to listen This piece is from my third book, second eBook, "Goes Around, Comes Around." Available, I am compelled to say, anywhere eBooks are sold. 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 coming from one of the Happy Valley cohort, who, if you choose, can be seen as not out of touch with reality, but living instead in a greater reality closed to the more 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'm sure I'm on the road to riches every day and while I may not get the days I need to get there all the way, being on the road to something good is better than being stuck in the weeks like a back-roads 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 This piece is from "Japanese Love Poems - Selections from the Manyoshu" published by Dover Publications in 2005. The Manyoshu is Japan's most significant early anthology, with poems dating from the 8th century and earlier with more than 4,000 poems. This poem was written by Tajihi Kasamaro for whom I can find no biology though, pulling pieces together I did discover that Tajihi can mean persistent and Kasamaro is a region in Japan. The book includes several poems, including this one, written while the poet was traveling. an old threnody (lament) The mallards call with evening from the reeds And float with dawn midway on the water; They sleep with their mates, it is said, With white wings overlapping and tails a-sweep Lest the frost should fall upon them. As the stream that flows never return, And as the wind that blows is never seen, My wife, of this world, has left me, Gone I know not whither! So here, on the sleeves of these clothes She used to have me wear, I sleep now all alone!  in a Mexican courtyard, 1959 a Mexican courtyard under a rhinestone studded sky on a black border town night… she dances, slowly, like a cat, around the courtyard, pausing before every table to stretch, again, like a cat, perfect in its shadow body, feet barely brushing the dirt floor, compact, sleek, full breasts, dark Indian nipples erect, no burlesque, no go-go dancer, nothing overtly sexual, more like a cat stretching, except she is naked and it is a whorehouse and it has to be about sex, sex as a cat can be like sex, slow and sensual in every step, every smooth, silky step a caress of the night…. 15-year-old boys clutch their tight crotch under the table and wonder if the girls they know could ever be like this The Spot  truthies fella in the booth in front of me is wearing a shirt advertising Squaw Valley maybe he went skiing there, or at least he wants us to believe he did, he might have just bought the shirt at the ski shop at the mall and has never seen any more snow than what he sees when defrosting his refrigerator you never know so many ways for people to lie about themselves these days, so many ways to create an image of themself, at least the self they’d like to be - just for the price of a tee shirt they can have been anywhere, done anything, with anybody… not for me, I don’t allow my body to become a billboard for anyone or any place or anything, my shirts purposefully “no-comment” shirts, blank, but for their color of the day, no products, no events, no vacation hideaway no sports team gets the pleasure of my promotional garb… if I’ve been to Squaw Valley you won’t know about it from reading my shirt, for my shirt includes neither truth nor lies, just plain old shirt that’s because I believe in truth in shirting, the old truth that if you don’t have nothing to say, don’t say nothing and I don’t have nothing to say on my shirt that’s because I do all my truthing and lying in my stories and that’s where you might find the story of my trip to Squaw Valley, if I’ve been there or maybe not that’s because truth in poetry is about the same as truth in t-shirts, you reads the story and takes your chances
THIS POST IS COMPLETE CONTINUE SCROLLING DOWN FOR PREVIOUS COMPLETE POSTS  if my mind was geography I hate to write poems about being unable to write a poem but let’s face it… if my mind was geography, it would be the Chihuahua Desert, nothing but dry sand, angry frogs, prickly pear cactus and ugly bugs… if my mind was a ship it would be saying, “What iceberg?”… if my mind was a parking lot it would be deserted but for oil drips and skid marks where glories past collided with reality present… if my mind was a coffee cup it would be empty except for coffee scum and a wet cigarette butt on the bottom… if my mind was a mountain it would be underwater, never seen and never climbed… if my mind was an ancient Egyptian it would be a mummy wrapped in sandpaper… if my mind was a burro it would be climbing the Andes on cracked red toenails… if my mind was a sentry at Fort Knox it would be asleep, dreaming of copper pennies and the baubles that bought Manhattan if my mind was a poet it would be writing about the twitchy fella in the booth up front, my god, he won’t stop talking, facing the wall all a ‘bouncing in his seat, perhaps he’s the poet in the woodpile, twitching with the trickle of a poem tickling between his ears a poem, I’m thinking nothing like this one Riot on Sunset Strip  barku express night an envelope closed around me - marked, “return to sender” --- parked bus rumbles - in the dark, writing my first poem --- crossing the continental divide - soft snow drifting, first snowball fight --- walking - university to downtown - snow, falling, cold, soft angels touching --- homes carved in cliffs, fires, cold relics, deserted - all lost --- Indian boys replay Bighorn revenge - flatten grass over Custer’s grave --- distant mountains - white on blue like clouds cresting - first snow --- dog pees intently, doesn’t see rabbits in the brush, watching --- journey ends for the day - dog snores, dreams rabbits - running my function it is a beautiful day today, the kind of day I love, temperatures in the mid-twenties, bright sunshine, the icicle splinters flying in the wind gone, the air still, trees reaching high to reassert themselves as tall guardians of the day… it’s the early mornings, before the sun has risen that has been hard on me for the past several days, the cold, colder in the dark, a silent knife slicing skin from my cheeks and nose… dog-walking in the freezing dark, the dog loving it all, sniffing and smelling every leaf hanging cold and crisp and dry on every ravaged bush along the way, looking for, who knows a dog’s mind, especially this dog, near strange in the extent of her curiosity, missing her cat friend who would walk with us and encourage dog along if she began too long dallying, pushing her cat head against dog’s neck, time to go, time to go, the cat, like me, not so happy with the cold as the dog, the cat, Mama cat, our morning companion, unseen for over a week now… I woke, as usual, at 5 this morning, lying in bed, dog, as usual, impatiently rattling her collar beside the bed, time to go, time to go, lying in bed, thinking of the cold and the dark, wishing dog had an opposable thumb so that I could give her the leash and tell her to go walk herself she would in a minute if she could, I know, my small function in our morning exercise, we both know, is only to hold the leash An excellent place to be leaving Even the non-believer driven to morning prayer I can see the moon through the large window by my booth, hanging low over the meadow like a silver coin on a black felt table, so bright and clear in the dry, cloudless sky I can see all its dark ridges and rills, and the face, a president’s profile, eyes watching resolute to the south, all clear and sharp, the president’s pigtail on the disc’s northern edge, “in God we trust,” it declares, a declaration of dependence, hopeful that he’s paying attention, that it’s his moon too and that his fearsome eye will not burn so brightly in the coming day, his fire banked and fresh breezes blowing instead The big lie  just like my first girlfriend my liberation box is tight around me today… feel like I should be doing something that isn’t this… a drive to the coast, or a slow dance on dusty country roads, or a jaunt out west, Hondo, Uvalde, maybe all the way to Del Rio… or stay at home, do those things I’ve been avoiding all summer - fence to repair, the volunteer oak up front, couple of feet tall now, too close to the house, perfect place for it out back with my other volunteers… but I’m stuck in idle, motor running but going nowhere but here in the parking garage of good intentions… dead time… and I hate dead time, too old for dead time, time too precious to waste, but brain too clogged with not-now, not-today, next-week, maybe-tomorrow to figure out what to do with it… everything sounds great until the first step is called for and it’s just too damn hot to take the call… but that’s just an excuse real reason is my brain waves have gone flat like yesterday afternoon black clouds on the horizon, the calm before the storm except the storm told us to fuck off and went east instead of south a lot like my girlfriend back in 1962…  thank you, Jesus I am thinking this Sunday morning of Sundays past, when I was a kid, in the back seat of whatever beat-down Plymouth we had at the time, going the eight miles to the Lutheran church in the next town over for a boring sermon by an intense, boring pastor, a middle-aged man with a little mustache like a gray-haired caterpillar on his upper lip, an old-fashioned hellfire and damnation preacher who taught us in confirmation class that fossils were left buried in the earth by Mr. Devil, crafty fellow, left there for us to find so as to tempt us away from the literal truth of the seven days of creation… half-asleep in the car, half- asleep during the sermon, except when the singing started, for despite the fumbled-fingered organist, ancient woman in a modest hat, butcher of music religious and profane, I loved the singing… the woman did her best, and was a volunteer, worth all the nothing she was paid, so everyone sang, loudly, in hopes, I suspected, of drowning out the organ, including my mother who had a fine high voice, and my father whose deep baritone vibrated the dark, varnished timber of the pews... I sang along, too, trying to imitate my father’s voice, coming out, instead, more like the crackling growl of a coon chased by the dogs up a hackberry tree… me and the old woman at the organ, we did our best, preserved, despite the pounding we were giving it the glorious old hymns, the beautiful, joyous music of faith and affirmation and although I haven’t passed through the doors of a church except for weddings and too many funeral in at least 50 years, music I still love to hear… “haven’t passed the doors of a church,” I said, because I enjoyed the benefits of an excellent education in the religion of my youth and later in other religions, becoming an atheist, as do so many well-educated in the mysteries of gods and their disciples, this transition from believer to skeptic, to the intellectual wakening of certain non-belief, coinciding, not entirely serendipitously with my discovery of the pleasures of slow Sunday morning coffee and a copy of the New York Times, my alternate sermon of all the truth that’s fit to print… it’s a long and not so interesting story, this passage from Pastor Westermania, earnest and determinedly ignorant for the sake of his faith, to the New York Times, but I am reminded of it this Sunday a week from Easter Sunday, remembering that my favorite church services were the sunrise services, the faithful gathered on the church parking lot on Easter Sunday morning as the sun rose on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God and Man, Bringer of the gift of eternal life to all who believed in his holy name and cause… it wasn’t so much the revelations that brought me pleasure, because, in fact, I slept through most of it it was the pancake breakfast that followed… thank you, Jesus, I would think, for delivering us unto these pancakes and can we do this again next year? lust like ol' Jimbo, I lust in my heart… for power and fame, for a lottery winning number, for another day, every day, for some good chicken and dumplings like my mother used to make, for a sweet tasting watermelon like nature grew in the field beside the swimming hole when I was a kid, for a more comfortable pair of shoes, for a flatter belly and broader shoulders like in days past, for hair to return to the spot its departure left bare on the top of my head, for fast cars and, occasionally loose women ol’ Jimbo, he got to be President, so I can’t feel too sorry for all his unrequited lusts, but me, I’m going to have to settle today for a meatloaf sandwich at that little restaurant in the middle of tiny Utopia, Texas, about fifteen miles down the road from Welfare, on the way to Comfort where the old stone buildings promise, at least, long life in a place where old people in short pants and flowery sun dresses and straw hats will come to visit and take my picture… --- but that won’t stop me from thinking about chicken and dumplings and comfortable shoes and fast cars and, especially, loose women Too early to declare this post done, so what to do next. Maybe a couple more photos. Mr. Wonderful just does the best he can the Wonderful Wizard of Oz wasn’t so wonderful but he wasn’t a bad guy either, just a piss-poor wizard though good enough, in the end, to keep Oz safe in his so-un-Kansas world with witches lurking at every point of the compass and flying monkey-monsters, and rusty tinmen, and highly-flammable straw men and lions who could never, ever be counted on when the chips were down, and munchkins, don’t forget the munchkins, everywhere under foot with their lousy singing, always singing in their fingernail-on-a-chalkboard squealy voices (how is a wizard ever supposed to get a good night’s sleep)… I mean, it takes a maybe not so necessarily wonderful but still a pretty good wizard to keep the gears of that kind of place running, keeping Oznians happy and content and not having riots in the streets and such and, not to forget, the inflationary spiral since the devaluation of gold bricks, simple things like Oz-bread going from two gold bricks to two and a half in just six Oz-months you pretty much have to have something on the ball besides blowing curtains and a projector screen and a booming, scary voice to frighten Oz-children who might venture into the wonderful palace of the mighty Oz… I mean you try it, even without that pesky girl and her vicious mutt it ain’t easy being the Great & Mighty Wizard of anywhere, especially a cockamamie place like Oz THIS POST IS COMPLETE
CONTINUE SCROLLING DOWN FOR PREVIOUS POSTS Nova through Saturn's rings revealed  remembering a summer afternoon remembering a summer afternoon sitting behind my parent’s house on a patio I made from bricks salvaged from a demolished building downtown, enough bricks for a fifteen by fifteen foot patio and a brick sidewalk from the back door to the garage, purposefully made rough, bricks not completely even, to give the appearance of great age like an ancient cobblestone street in an old and venerable city of my imagination the patio where my parents, unaccustomed to air conditioning until later in their life, would sit in the evening, catching the soft, damp breeze that blew from the gulf almost all the time, a generation from a time when stuffy houses were left behind at end of day for quiet talk in the cool of an outdoor evening, sitting, my parents, until squadrons of mosquitoes swarmed in with night's dark shadows, sitting, my parents, in the shade of a very old mesquite, lightning struck, a large hole in the middle of its trunk where it burned, a lightning strike many years ago fierce product of a savage thunderstorm from the northeast, a thunderstorm like the one approaching again from the northeast, black and swirling clouds on the horizon, approaching quickly from across the fields, the reason I rushed to finish mowing, to be done before the torrent came, to be done in time to sit here on my rough patio with a dew-dripping glass of iced tea, watching it come, a ready-or-not storm coming fast and strong… but I’m ready and will watch it all from there on that patio I made from salvaged bricks… --- many years later now, mother and father long passed, the house long sold to others, others I imagine sitting on that same old patio under that same wounded but eternal mesquite tree, leaving me to wonder, as I imagine, if they ever notice my initials outlined in bright red bricks right where to kitchen door step meets the patio bricks… wondering if they ever wonder… Eventually I'm going to run out of paintings, so I decided to include my photos as a part of each post. there is a thread there is a connecting thread that binds the world and all its parts, the new and the old the dirty and the clean the saint and the thief the chicken and the road the peanut and the butter the prince and the pauper the acorn and the oak the tree and the forest the lake and the trout the love of a man for a woman of a man for a man of a woman for a woman the love of all that moves in the day and whispers in the darkest night the moon and the stars and the sun and each of its orbiting globes whether gatherings of gas or rock and iron and death and life and the hydrogen and the oxygen and the orca and the ocean that enfolds it and the field and the mouse and the mountain and the top and the oceans and the deep and me and you, the me part you the you part me there is a thread that connects us to all all to us and finally us to we together  If I ever have a crush on a jock, it will be Becky Hammon. Becky became assistant coach for the Spurs seven years ago, the first female to hold such a position in the NBA. Previously she was an all-star in the WNBA for years and was judged one of the fifteen best female basketball players in the game's history. Turned down a number of times by other teams for head coach positions, most recently not hired, though better qualitied because that team valued "gravitas" over experience. I take that to mean no 5'6" female should ever even bother to apply. I wrote this piece years ago when Becky was first named assistant coach. In the meantime she has turned down several job offers to head women's programs at universities. Current Spurs head coach Popovich in his seventies is expected to retire if not this year, soon. If she can't get the job here, after 7 years here as Pop's lead assistant, she might should re-evaluate those university positions. a sports story Becky Hammon, 5 feet 6 inches tall, 37 years old, star for sixteen years in professional women’s basketball, judged to be in the top 15 players of all time in that league, hired by the San Antonio Spurs as an assistant coach, the first full-time, paid female on the coaching staff of any National Basketball Association team in the league’s history… how like the Spurs this is… so, now, courtesy of the Spurs, stick it in your sexist pipe and smoke it… the fog downtown from the heights the city's skyline seems to float on gray clouds at street level, the fog coils like a snake between the buildings, drifts down the city’s twisting colonial-era streets, curls around river bridges, and below the bridges the murk lies quiet and calm, only inches above the green, slow-moving water, here and there green-shelled turtles surface, separate themselves from the green water to raise their heads into the mist for gulps of damp air... I have walked these streets in years past, like the turtles, keeping my head down as I walked along the river at the midnight hour, when it was not a safe place to be, mysteries sheltered in each dark doorway, under each bridge at the water’s edge, knife-fighters, whores, thugs and the generally insane wandering through ghosts known only to them… the dense morning fog reminds me of those nights, misty shadow-things lurking but benign, pale remembrance of the dangers of the dark and lonely... the greatest danger this morning, collision with a park policeman cruising the Riverwalk on his bicycle a better place to be now, but lacking the drama of those low-living nights before Red tide  night beach night on the beach in a tiny camper trailer, waves whispering as they pull and push sand from beach to the sea and back again while tiny beach creatures scuttle, little crabs pushing from dens under wet sand, like babies being born, pushing aside the grit that holds them in the damp dark, the holes they come from closing up again as salty foam washes over them, the grind of new sand, washing over them... bare as the salted air washes over me, waking as the sun rises over warm gulf water, breakers shining orange under dawn’s fiery glow - the red end of night, the time of night when the sharks finish their feeding in the surf under the bright tropic moon... even as I am awakened by the golden light… even as the animals are fed, I am hungry, rising from my hard bed, walk the beach through ankle-deep surf, feeling the flowing sand and tide, advance and retreat over my feet... shaking the night blown salt from my hair, I dress, drive for breakfast Sandy’s Pier, oatmeal and crab cakes and coffee, then back out to the warming beach, back to the trailer, where I hitch up and go home... ~~~ a playground in the light of day, the beach a church in the night, a place of solitude, a place of worship for those who believe in no greater power than the push and pull of the tides, a place to feel at one with the power of the moon, a cathedral at midnight under a sky of stars , when the sharks feed under the full, tropic moon, and the orange glow of dawn on foaming waves, the the bright morning light reflecting on the wet beach, just as the moon shone back from the sand at night… night is the time for the beach, sleeping in the quiet of whispering surf and scuttling crabs…  Two from Colorado secret places acres of brush, paved over these days, parking lots, WalMarts, Dairy Queens, nail salons and half-priced barbers, broken-down shopping centers, empty storefronts, dirty display windows, graffiti, trash blowing over cracked asphalt, almost deserted. everything there before, gone, replaced with fly-by-night evangelical churches, flea markets, bingo halls, and other shepherds of the cyclical bust out to fleece the flock one way or another… but before, the brush uncut, thick, paths winding through like a dirty gray maze, lined by scrub mesquite, brilliant green in spring, yellow huisache, wild chilitipin, tiny berries advertising their heat in intense red, and wide red-ant beds, the big ones, trails of them, like a Russian red-army parade, like little red trucks carrying bullhead thorns to scatter around their beds, their first line of defense, and horned toads who went to sleep if you rubbed between their horns and who, some said, spit blood at you if riled, and long, low, sleek green-stripped lizards, racing, so fast across the trails, and snakes, in the brush, rarely seen but the rustle of their slither heard along with the cries of mockingbirds and redwing black birds and raucous jays and the most fearsome creature of all, tarantulas, big black and hairy, not poisonous we were told, but those big pincher jaws sure to produce a painful bite… and throughout the brush, pockets of cleared space, under a mesquite tree, a safe circle where fifteen year old boys could talk, smoke Parliament cigarettes and look at the Playboy and Cavalier and Sunshine and Health magazines they inherited from older boys, some so old, so wrinkled and crinkled and fragile, third or fourth-hand girlie magazines, the closest a fifteen-year-old was likely to get to first-hand fortresses in the brush, secret places where secrets were told and kept, dirty jokes, big brags, scary stories of ghosts and ghouls and tarantula bites… important places for us back then, relief for a fifteen-year-old from the oppression of the world outside seeking, like the tarantulas, hairy and ugly and slow and unloved, a place to live a quiet hidden life where only the select know the secret places and the secret paths to get there… A new board Squiggly, jiggly, giggly, and swoop  THAT COMPLETES THIS POST I'LL START A NEW ONE TOMORROW Just completed a post yesterday, now starting a new one. It still bothers me, writing a post in plain view, seeing it posted live before I ever have a chance to review, edit, or proof it. I consider the possibility that I'm doing it wrong and will investigate as I work on this one. Readers, just remember, this is "under construction." Keep scrolling for the completed posts that follow. I In the meantime, here's a "story." lunatics - a short morning inventory ovoid moon behind a lacy curtain of thin, translucent clouds a lunatic bird sings all alone at the roundabout... a lone cowboy limps in through the door sharp-toed boots a hat with a silver band and a mustache thick and wild settles slowly in his chair, like a good cowboy takes off his hat and stores it under his chair like the bird he would prefer to be alone, howling at the night sky as it slips away to another day instead he welcomes the ovoid moon with a smile and a sip of morning sarsaparilla... hard-faced woman across the room, once a beauty, now a mask of cold indifference, glares at her eggs, has no interest in an ovoid moon even as it stirs the tide of her discontent... fella in the corner booth, fingers a-fly on his laptop keyboard as his coffee gets cold another solitary lunatic, obsessed with lunatics and ovoid moons Fairies flee a sequestered moon  regarding evil - in a few words people speak of defeating evil but evil is part of us and cannot be defeated, only constrained until it rises in all of its varied forms again a Pandora’s box opened from the inside... the Devil made us do it we say, but the Devil is our creation and cannot make us do anything that is not in our nature ~~~ we are the Creator, both prince and victim of all we create, the Evil Angel, forever lurking behind the smiles of our better twin...  Even as i worked on them, I had doubts that anyone was likely to be out there to buy a 4 to 5 foot, spray painted, 10 -to 12 inch wide boards. so I hung several of them on my own wall to test the effect, leaving me not entirely confident, but hopeful that there will be a few who wish to celebrate life with a painted piece of forest. Probably not this many in such a small room though. okay, not entirely promising, but probably better if they were hung evenly. However, not allowed to make new holes in the wall so can only hang were something else is taken down. But they do all come with titles, left to right "Chihuahua Sunset," "Alien Encounter," "Red Tide," " Mystery at the Bottom of the Devil's Blue Hole," and "The Big Lie" (I excel at titles). All my boards are priced at $200 to $250, except the two on the right, my statement makers, "Mystery"- $400, and "Big Lie" - $850, neither of which do I expect to ever sell. A PLAN voices from the sky the mysteries of faith… it’s not that I’m against it, it’s just that I don’t understand it the room behind me is full of two dozen older men, sharp-eyed men, and the old priest I see often here, skinny, like he doesn’t get to eat except for the free breakfasts he gets for showing up to provide a priestly presence to meetings of little old ladies with blue hair and bumpy legs, or, as in this case, a room-full of elder men, meeting, weekly it seems, for quiet religious purposes… I don’t know these particular men but I’ve known men like them most of my life, acts of piety an afterthought through the course of most of their days, sharp- penciled, green-eye-shade guys applying evidence and reason to all their affairs, unimpressed by flights of fancy, not subject to paranormal events or expectations, except… for that corner of their brain they keep separate from the part that functions daily, a place where the reason and evidence they normally count on are not allowed, a space they reserve for gods and angels and devils and ghosts and goblins and all sorts of fancy they would not allow to intrude in any portion of the rest of their lives… that’s the part I don’t understand, not faith itself, but these believers who turn their rational brains into mewling kittens, flat on their backs, legs spread high and wild, awaiting celestial visitation… what, I wonder, is it they miss in the rest of their lives that makes them so vulnerable to such mind-dulling darkness… I’m always made uncomfortable by leaders who profess such faith - I’d rather not hear about it, reminding me as it does of how my fate might be in the hands of a leader susceptible to the undependable quirks of faith in magic and magical beings pray for him, some say when a leader faces quandaries and difficult decisions, and I can only think how much more reassuring it would be to have a leader who wasn't dependent on my prayers, a leader unwilling to place my future in the hands of a voices from the sky and worst of all, how history shows us how these same honest, practical-minded honorable can be convinced by a voice from the sky to commit the most the most horrible, indecent, inhuman and cruel acts imaginable against their fellow man and woman it is not what they are that worries me about these men, it is what history shows us they can be… Jellyfish jamboree  A reason to always write it all down. This sounds like an interesting night at a favorite coffeehouse. But except for reading this story. I remember none of it. art show my mother took up art when my father died, a pretty good amateur before her eyes got too dim and her hands too shaky to control her brush... she sold her paintings at arts and crafts fairs and did well enough to cover expenses with enough left over for a Luann liver and onion special at Luby’s cafeteria she learned quickly that people who buy original art at arts and crafts fairs want two things: they want their art to be cheap and they want colors that match their drapes and sofa… the artist at last night’s art opening, a rock band drummer in another part of his life, was way better than a gifted amateur and his paintings sold for way more than Mother ever sold a painting for… his work is bright and sharp, with vivid colors that he explained to another artist, talking about mixing and overlaying acrylic, sometimes overlaying that with oils, nothing I understood, though I did nod as it seemed appropriate, but leaving the other artist impressed and listening intently… …impressed, she was, as were the visitors to the show, mostly other musicians and family, and his art, well, I liked most of it, but, except for a piece or two, none of it would match my drapes and sofa… ~~~ but then, my old-timers social security budget is much more in line with my mother’s prices than his so I wasn’t likely to buy anything anyway… mostly, I was there as the “house poet,” watching, remembering, preparing myself to write tomorrow’s poem - which would be this one unless a better idea falls my way a hole in time all these years later, there are moments when something, some sight, some sound, just something, triggers the past, a hole in time and in the instant of an eye-blink I am back in it… this morning, passing a hotel in the dark, a side door, light burning, and seen through the door a long hotel hallway, blue carpet, hotel wallpaper color walls, and I am standing outside such a door in early morning dark forty years ago, waiting for the mayor so I can take him into a meeting room and introduce him to assembled out-of-town VIPs… Luther Jones, such a lovely and beloved man who, after his political life was over, would stop by every couple of weeks to talk to the children at the elementary school named after him, known to everyone from his sparkling city by the sea, for me and many others, a mentor and champion over the years, passed on in his 80s in 2001… it was a funeral large and crowded full of friends and citizens, but simple, like the man… a hotel’s bright-lit side door, a beacon to memory this dark morning, and I am awash in remembering times and so many good men passed… sweet sadness begins my day... Watchers from afar First new story in a long time, so don't be harsh I AM I am where I’ve been going All of my life Now there’s a thought… Does that mean this is it, 4-bedroom house in the 800 block of Clearview Drive, In San Antonio in the near middle of the state of Texas, Not the intellectual capital of the country, But often pretends to be anyway 4-bedroom house With a backyard that tumbles down to a creek Like I appear to have tumbled through a life to this place, This time Is this thought supposed to offer me a consolation As the near end of the tumbling appears on the horizon, A life done, it suggests approaching an end not half bad, A life of modest adventure and occasional welcome surprise, A life with the blessing to have loved and been loved in return, An end with a roof to cover my head, protection from rain and cold, and vicious summer heat A bed to sleep on and wake from every day, Waking every day, a blessing often assumed, food on our table, Friends, family, a life of fellows of my kind to know if I wish, or not… All this, where I’ve been going all of my life, is it a denouement, Does this suggest a celebration, a graduation, Or a reminder A reminder of how little of where I have gone Has merited the going… A reminder perhaps that time remains to still find that Place and time where my nature was bent to find an end Perhaps this thought is saying that this place and time Is a resting moment, like a tree shaded park along a long And sometimes treacherous highway, A place to rest, Not a place To stop what we found in Grandma's attic memories, boxes of memories, trinkets and seashell treasures from county fairs and rodeos and neighborhood garage sales... a straw hat, a guitar with three broken strings and two missing frets, a cane pole, with lead sinkers and a red and white bobber, a catcher's mitt and a wooden bat, a tiny ring inscribed "Baby Charles" and none of us know who Baby Charles is or was, a train ticket, Laredo to Del Rio, never used, a sun bonnet, yellow with purple flowers, a collection of Comanche arrowheads, old maps with lines drawn in dark, soft pencil lead, tracing country roads long since abandoned, rebuilt for faster, sleeker cars than ever drove there before, an old wallet with two five dollar bills tucked away in a secret pocket, a bundle of letters written in a fine, feminine hand - we read the first and no more, for from the first it was clear the thin, jasmine scented letters, still smelling so sweet after so many years since sent and received, were saved for her to read again and not for us... and photographs, like memories, old, faded, torn, and blurred forget-me-nots mostly forgot, the only one who might remember now lying still beneath soft grass in an after-life park of the dead all left behind for us to try to understand, to try to know a person familiar to us all our life, but still at the end unknown... a last chance for her to speak... a last chance for us to listen Mystery at the bottom of the Devil's blue hole  I should quit and go home, but it's hot outside and cool and quiet and comfortable here in my Capej coffeehouse and I don't want to leave. So, another story. I’ll be watching for you I love to drive, even though I can do less of it now than before.. going places I’ve been before, finding new ways to get there seeing what there is to see, stopping to take-in a closer look at a tree, blazing in autumn colors, or grand vistas from crooked narrow mountain roads, or a tiny side road to get to something seen in the distance, like an iron railroad bridge somewhere in Arizona, bright red, about a quarter mile off the highway, nestled between hills, seen clearly from the road, but never found, settling for a jackrabbit in a field beside the road, standing tall on his haunches, ears like furred yardsticks, exposing the flag of his soft pink inner ear, posing for me while I find my camera... so much to see, forests, mountains cresting before a blue horizon, animals on hill sides, little farmhouses, a cemetery in Tennessee, white stone crosses climbing a hillside beside a tall-steepled church… ~~~ Dee wants to go someplace and do something; I want to go someplace and sit and watch the different world I’ve come to, the different people who live in that world, in the end, not so different as, from far away, you might imagine ~~~ four great places for sidewalk sitting and people seeing… Santa Fe, New Mexico Durango, Colorado Seattle, Washington San Antonio Riverwalk… I’ll be watching for you next time I’m there Before finishing this I am posting several examples of my other self-proclaimed artistry, photography. Have not been taking pictures, lately. I'm at a point where making it across a supermarket parking lot takes all I've got, so there is not much chance of stomping around in the hills or strolling through downtown or down the Riverwalk looking for pictures to take. Instead I'm limited to fruit and flower still lifes or nudes. Fruit and flower still lifes bore the hell out of me and I can't afford a model for a nude, so my camera is semi-retired, at best. This completes this post. Continue to scroll to view previous posts I published a book of travel poems several years ago, titled "Places and Spaces." The book is composed of five long poems pertaining to five trips I took, most often alone, except for my dog in the co-pilot seat, tales of my travel through about 30 states. The book, as I always remind people, is available, along with my other books, wherever eBooks are sold. In this post, I will write of other places I've been, far and nearby, or, in at least one case, a place where I'd just like to go, and in all cases, not included in the book. ALIEN ENCOUNTER  My academic foxhole a detachment of airmen studying Russian at the university, about forty of us, the closest thing to a bonafide military unit in the city, we were asked to take a prominent position in the Veterns' Day parade misfits in civilianlife, most of us saw no reason to change our stripes in the military so, forty of us, all eighty left feet of us, led the parade to a cadance set by our Colonel, he who tied flies in his office all day, while his First Sergeant hid out at the VFW downtown, hoping, I suppose, that if nobody knew he was involved with us, his, to that point sterling military reputation, might survive a crippled lizard weaving down the street, our contribution to the paradde, some of us, those of us not too hung over or high, might have been embarassed, but that probably wasn't more than a couple of us, at most ~~~~~ in the end, we did what we were supposed to do, learned enough Russian to be able to telll when the war was about to start, fighting the cold war, knowing that if it ever got hot we'd be the first to know as the bombs fell first on us... but a year of our militray serevice spent on a university campus, learning nothing that had anything to do with Vietnam... Starbright I've posted this many times before, but with what's about to happen in another land we have abandoned, I feell like I want to post it over and over again. history’s young victims walking beneath my second floor window, in their school uniforms, walking in a disciplined line lead by their teacher, I could hear them singing, their high light voices waking the thin mountain-air morning joyous morning then, a sweet and innocent moment in a strange and foreign place a morning and a moment I will not forget a memory struggling against the cruel beast of history a memory that cannot shield these children... --- remembering... trying not to think of what happened to these beautiful, singing children in the near 60 years since those children, victims of of the beasts who came through years and bloody seasons to devour their time and place, their life and the innocence of that morning (Kabul - 1969) Serving on the frontier, a single road connected the city tothe desert and the Hindu Kush, a shadow in the distance and the Kyber Pass to Afghanastan, the path Alexander and subsequent conquerers used in the millenia since. That same road cut between the two parts of our compound, supposedly a secret installation (the only American base I ever served on that didn't fly a flag). On one side of the road was our living quarters and on the other sided, the truly secret operations component of the facility. It was about half way through the year I served there that I woke up one morning, had breakfast at the mess hall, then came to this sight as I went to cross the road to go to work. I wrote the piece in 1967. It was my first published poem upon returning back to the States in 1969. The piece was published in ARX a small journal in Austin the survived long enough to publish two of my poems before going under I awoke one morninG and there was a camel camel camel camel camel camel camel camel camel camel caravan marching single-file across my back yard, they were brown & ugly brown & brown & ugly bown & ugly brown &... and all the trade goods piled on their backs made the clatter clang clatter that had awakened clang clang clang clang clang clang clang clang clatter then they went their way way and I went back to sleep Days when hanging on switchbacks down the side of the mountain, the town on one side of the road, sheer drop to the valley below on the other with an occasional shop or restaurant jilting out over the edge on stilts… an old mining town hanging on to the side of the mountain through boom and bust and back to tourist boom, attached to the mountain by a whisper and a prayer, out-of-towners like us grazing where intelligent mountain goats might hesitate to tread it is exhilarating, this high air, this human quest for destiny and wealth and life despite all obstacles, ridiculous, when you think about it, that nice, lush valley below inviting, a place to build a flat and friendly Utopia instead, those early arrivals decide to build a life in the high clouds of Olympus… --- Dee goes shopping in the little roadside shops Chris throws rocks at the valley still a smoker at the time, I sit on a rock and try to breathe (Jerome, Arizona, 1993) Casper goes to heaven  Peace Corps training in 1964 at the University of New Mexico training center, included confidence building exercises for the mostly academic trainees. This included repelling down the side of a sports auditorium, climbing about half way up the Sandia Mountains and a three day trek over the top of the Manzono Mountains outside Albuquerque in mid-December. The first experience in the Sandias, coming barely two weeks after coming from my very low sea-level home in South Texas, was very hard for me. Better conditioned to the altitude by the time we did the Manzono trek, it was an experience I often think back on as some of the best three days of my life. three days on the mountain after two days of climbing, we crossed from west to east in a heavy snowstorm, knee deep in half a winter’s accumulation between the trees it was about 2 in the afternoon when we crossed the crest, within two hours we found the clearing where we slept that night under a diamond strewn sky… a bright rising sun woke us under a cloudless blue sky broken only by the thin contrail of a jet flying higher, even, in the cold morning firmament than where we slept coffee over an open fire, and freeze-dried eggs scrambled, frying pan and coffee pot cleaned in the snow, breakfast eaten quickly before the last day’s trek down the mountain, an easy day, each of us, as we spread out along the trail, quiet in our own thoughts, remembering the past months, friends now who we knew, in just a few days, would be gone, unlikely to ever be seen again our last memories - the mountain and the three days we spent together on it (New Mexico, December, 1964) another passage one to the other bright full moon heading into the blue-black western sky orange tinge to the east, new day’s promise night and its creatures begin their daily retreat those of us who find life in both the dark and the light exult in another passage one to the other (Going east on I-10 from El Paso, any early morning antime in the past 30 years) moonscape mountains high and bare our small DC-3 struggles as highest peaks pass below within arm’s reach, it seems, from my window seat life below if there is such must be harsh and hard with hard people harsh and unforgiving to those who intrude without invitation... not to be messed with as centuries of armies and great generals have learned - from Alexander to even now ourselves ruing the lesson - if you decide you must fight here make sure first you have the merciless moonscape mountains on your side (Flying over the Hindu Kush, April, 1969) Seasons change around us according to chatter on the net winter night under a clear desert sky more stars than you ever knew were up there the Hindu Kush, the sun’s hinge as it begins its red glow behind their dry, ravaged peaks the guard camp outside our walls begins to stir, the shuffle of sleepy soldiers awakening as the over-nighters come weary to their beds I, a soldier too, but not in their army, walk to morning mess, then to work, day shift on Moscow time a Cold War warrior, I will listen to their chatter and write it all down… the day begins... an early flight for their highest commander, crossing the Afghan air gate, a roundabout destination, to Paris, his dour Russian wife left behind, it's said, who suspects, it’s said, the jolie fille who awaits him with bonbons au chocolat by her bed according to chatter on the net the war will not start today… (Peshawar, West Pakistan -1968) Black Orpheous  Day DAYTRIP TO OURAY no train for us today, for it goes only to Silverton, while our destination, Ouray, is twenty miles further up the road - ` but if you’re so inclined for a train ride through canyons and forests and up the side of a mountain, riding in the open observation car at the train’s tail, smelling the pine-scented forest, the fresh cold wind blowing in your hair, I surely recommend it… ` but our trip this day was by automobile beginning by following the train tracks past green fields, and, on the east side, aspen groves lining the Animas River, that same fast river I watch from my balcony at the hotel… ` the train follows the river back to its high mountain source, sometimes alongside the river, the river in view of the passengers and sometimes not, sometimes the train on a cliff-ledge barely more than the width of the train, with the river five hundred feet below … ` in the car we see the river intermittently as we climb our highway path up the mountain, at lower altitudes, driving through groves of aspen on either side, like driving through a cloud of golden creamery butter, then higher, where the leaves have already fallen, the bare white trunks like patches on the pine-greened mountain side, then, above us mountain crests covered by clouds flowing over the top like melted marshmallow, snow blown over the top and down to us, frozen to ice pin heads, hitting our windshield like river pebbles thrown against us by some wild mountain child resenting our intrusion… ` then higher, over Molas Pass, more than ten thousand feet now above the low lands where I grew up, four thousand feet above our hotel in Durango - all around mountains white in clouds of blown snow, and the road wet with ice and snow melt, the temperature dropping,… ` then down from Molas, skirting Silverton, and up again to Red MountaIn pass, even higher, eleven thousand feet, the temperature has fallen to thirty four degrees, half what it was when we started… ` then down and into Ouray, determined to cut our visit short, certain we didn’t want to tackle the two passes again, after dark when the wet might have started freezing… ` Ouray, an old silver town, a silver-rush survivor like Silverton, though slightly larger, almost all the buildings on main street (the only paved street we saw) dating from mid- to late nineteenth century, mostly brick and native stone, the thought of getting the bricks up the mountain to here suggesting of the determination of the people who made a life here, even after the silver was gone, the determination that kept the city alive for the hunters and skiers who are its lifeblood now ` the stubborn strength of mountain people never to be denied… ` a very fine lunch of beef stew and a visit to a bookstore, the proprietor pleased to sell me a book of poetry by a poet I never heard of, not much interested in buying a book from me, a poet he’d never heard of - ` truly the life of the poet in a nutshell, a buyer often, a seller rarely to ever be… ` and the way back - ` a reverse of the way we came under sunshine all the way, ups and downs and twists and turns and switchbacks and views of our road high above or far below that it takes ten minutes of maneuver to get to, uneventful ` but for the tumbleweed the size of VW bus blown by the wind in front of us as we approached Durango… ` the biggest tumbleweed I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few Trying a little something different for Here and Now, music. This is by a good 17 year-old singer, ukeleliest and barista at my current favorite coffeehouse. Sorry, I can't post the performance here, but the url goes directly to it. https://slaps.com/arialcorinne WANNA PUCK wanna puck? she asks a bar in San Angelo... pretty waitress, long blond hair, well-shaped ass tucked tight into cut-short jeans grabs the round metal puck from the bowling game I’m playing squeezes it into her back pocket wanna puck? she asks her boyfriend in the corner, watching big sumbitch… I switch to darts, drink my beer… alone Chihuahua sunset  the silence of a moment knowing again the first cool day of autumn, the first north wind that fiercely blows, the rain that came and came and came some more on a bright summer day turned dark and stormy, water rising in creeks long dry, deer leaping across a narrow mountain road, a mountain, your first, tall and rugged against a blue sky, storm gathering behind that same mountain a month later, snow clouds overflowing its crest like a melted marshmallow on a stick, dripping with a sizzle into the red embers of a low burning campfire, rocking, a baby in my arms, my baby sleeping on my shoulder, my father at my wedding when I thought he might not come, sitting by the aisle in a back pew, double thumbs up as my bride and I pass, married, officially together on the first of many days to come, so many memories, so many years, so much life to crowd one man's memory, so much to remember… random memories that come and go in the silence of a moment, flickers, flames that have so long burned, fires that, like all of lifeline's burning, will someday burst their last spark and be gone Watchers from afar First new story in a long time, so don't be harsh I AM I am where I’ve been going All of my life Now there’s a thought… Does that mean this is it, 4-bedroom house in the 800 block of Clearview Drive, In San Antonio in the near middle of the state of Texas, Not the intellectual capital of the country, But often pretends to be anyway 4-bedroom house With a backyard that tumbles down to a creek Like I appear to have tumbled through a life to this place, This time Is this thought supposed to offer me on a consolation As the near end of the tumbling appears on the horizon, A life done, it suggests approaching an end not half bad, A life of modest adventure and occasional welcome surprise, A life with the blessing to have loved and been loved in return, An end with a roof to cover my head, protection from rain and cold, and vicious summer heat A bed to sleep on and wake from every day, Waking every day, a blessing often assumed, food on our table, Friends, family, a life of fellows of my kind to know if I wish, or not… All this, where I’ve been going all of my life, is it a denouement, Does this suggest a celebration, a graduation, Or a reminder A reminder of how little of where I have gone Has merited the going… A reminder perhaps that time remains to still find that Place and time where my nature was bent to find an end Perhaps this thought is saying that this place and time Is a resting moment, like a tree shaded park along a long And sometimes treacherous highway, A place to rest, Not a place To stop This post ends here.
Continue forwared for previous posts. Most of my poetry over the years has been written in a succession of coffeehouses, large and small, commercial and non-profit, from religious outreach to one that doubled as a music academy. Now, I am in a new place, named Capej, that also serves as a small art gallery (which will later this year, show some of my art)The important thing for me is the people in the place and the inspiration they offer for a good story/poem. In my first reading, I try to explain the importance of coffeehouses as as a creative place for my writing. Basically, when I ran out of coffeehouses a year ago, the poetry stopped. The stories you hear ebony eyes at the coffeehouse it was her eyes beneath her fur hat I recognized… deep, dark, almost black eyes, and beneath the dusk of her eyes, shadows, dark smudges, eyes like wells of bottomless sorrow, like in the sad Russian song, Ochi chyornye (Ebony Eyes) Dark and burning eyes, Dark as midnight skies Full of passion flame, full of lovely game Oh how I'm in love with you, oh how afraid I am of you. Days when I met you made me sad and blue. a bruised angel despairing for the love she’s seen turn to ash in morning light… even beneath the furry hat set low over her flawless brow, I know her ebony eyes and am reminded how a single flame can light the dark I have no mouth and I must scream after Harlan Ellison  going for the gold working on a poem about something or other this morning, haven’t gotten far enough along in it to know about what, my thoughts interrupted by a young woman across the room with the most happy face I’ve ever seen can she really be this happy, I think... or does she seethe inside, behind the wholesome smile, remembering every day some true love lost, some deep injustice that so wounded her she can never forget, or is she a witch of a woman, vain, demanding, abusing her children, betraying her husband, cheating on her taxes, tearing off mattress tags and burying them in her backyard, behind the prickly pear cactus… does she fold, spindle and mutilate important correspondence from the government, does she steal candy from babies, or bones from dogs… has she ever cut three inches off one of the legs of an old woman’s walker? is it possible, I think, for her to be as giddy good happy as she appears or is she just fortunate to have her face configured in such a way that people can’t look at her without feeling like they’ve followed a rainbow to its long-hid pot of gold given a choice this morning I believe I’d prefer to go for the gold silence between the ticks and the tocks intended to read at my coffeehouse last night, open mike, which I don’t usually do, but the folks there are good to me so I felt like it was time to pay some dues intended to read from my next book, final edit complete, but not yet published looked forward to the music, guitar and piano and sad Mexican love ballads, sung in the glorious, expressive voice of our hostess Rachel Cruz, Maestra de Canciones and dispenser of fine coffees soft warmth of music in the cold night, an evening of retreat and the resurrection of better natures, lost, huddling somewhere dark from the cold… all that I intended… but I did not intend to sit down in my easy chair for a nap at 4 and not wake up till midnight… it’s about getting old, chances to bask in beauty and warmth diminishing as the life-clock continues its running down, the silence between the ticks and the tocks growing longer, chances lost to memory cracked and leaking like a rusty pail, or just plain, constant weariness stealing hours and life-affirming experience from every day Derfluckenflagetta slow day at the flapjack emporium just me and a couple of nurses and the tiny blond police officer with her partner outside the day shrouded in a dim curtain of premature light and I’m thinking - a busy week, sitting here eating my 387th biscuit with gravy, writing my 2,99-something poem of the day, finishing work later today on my 400 and something weekly literary blog, preparing for a reading late in the week, squeezing a few fair poems into 30 minutes of entertainment for family and friends, maybe selling a book, maybe selling a photograph, but probably not, payment, almost certainly, in fun or no payment at all thinking, what is it I am doing, what is my purpose, what is my meaning…. a slip of truth…. I’m not thinking any of that, quit thinking about that kind of stuff long ago, understanding that my life’s purpose is and will forever be, or at least until it’s too late to make a difference, unknown to anyone including and the meaning of what i'm doing is that what I’m doing all these same same days is filling a chest of me that will come to rest, dusty and forgotten, in an attic until someday more room is needed in its storage space and it is put out on the curb for trash collection day, until, by chance, it is rescued by an otherwise disinterested passer-by and taken home, all the scraps of me dumped in the recycle bin and the chest itself repainted pink or blue and plastered with decals of cartoon figures of the time, turned into a toy box for a child who will forever have to be reminded to put his or her toys in it instead of scattered on the floor room to room… and, at first, this saddens me, to think of all those slips of me scattered while the chest of me becomes a toy box for forgotten toys, and then I think, well, is that not so appropriate, this chest of me, always a toy box, filled daily by me with my toy of the day, so many by the time it’s over, things I played with and forgot, just as this toy also will also be soon forgot… All the prophets say  the strangeness of time and history squirrels and tourists roam the back grounds of the Alamo, tourists along the curved sidewalks that weave around and under the huge oak trees up and down which scurry the squirrels even though I’ve lived in the city for twenty years, it’s been at least fifty since I’ve visited the shrine to Texas Independence, the Spanish mission, one of five by the river that, for a hundred years before the battle that made a new republic, served the religious needs of Indians come down from the surrounding hard-scrabble hills for safety from more war-like marauders, come to this and the other missions where they learned masonry and farming and the sacred rites demanded by the one true God of the Spanish priests… being there to take pictures, I did not go into the shrine, stayed outside with the skittery squirrels and meandering visitors, finding again how beautiful was the lush green garden in the middle of the city… ~~~ ten blocks from my car, sitting on a stone bench among the trees when the storm came, soaking in the cool rain and the quiet atmosphere where heroes, Texian and Mexican, spilled their precious blood as history raged around them… they were here, died here, and now I am too and I am struck by the strangeness of time and history and the affairs of heroes, squirrels, and vacation-clad tourists Grease an excess of normal (or, the oppression of every day) the lights outside go off as the night fades to regular light, new sun reflected off cloud banks to the west cold outside, furnace blasting in here in here only three besides me this early, regulars all four of us, see each other almost every day, know only enough about each other to nod in passing, except that all the servers know my name and use it in greeting, so that the other three know my name, too, and use it as adjunct to their morning nod - demonstrating to me every morning their superior knowledge of me, though I think one of them might be a “Dave” - kinda looks like a “Dave”… directly in front of me, two booths up, is the accountant (the possible “Dave”) is reading the newspaper and eating his Greek frittata with great and orderly precision and one booth behind him the tiny, baby-faced man in his large cowboy hat, a two-gallon man in a ten-gallon hat - he’s working away on his computer - we were brothers-of-the-bald for a while but I notice he has broken down in the face of winter and has re-grown his hair, his gray fringe, truly, is not a lot less bald than when he was bald… and across the room, the heavy-set woman in what looks like a high school jacket, except that the back displays no school logo, just her name, as if maybe self-educated, having learned all on the streets from the school of herself, the “Lopez” school of hard knocks and hard ways and proud of it… ~~~ an interesting group of early morning diner characters, made more interesting, I suppose, because everything I know about them except how they look I made up… like, when I returned to finish my college degree in 1969 after completing my military duties, living in a 30-foot trailer in a small settlement of trailers on the Blanco River, our self-designated Harper’s Bazaar named after old man Harper, a drunk in a dry county with, always, a case of beer in the backseat of his car, sleeping many nights in his car outside my trailer, sometimes knocking on my door and inviting himself in at 3 am to sleep on my floor if it was too cold out in his car.. and my community brothers and sisters, the hippy couple, man and a woman I used to lust after when she walked by in her tiny bikini, and the fellow one trailer down, the baby of the group, taught himself first to be a really bad bass player, next, in the process of teaching himself to be a really bad sitar player, his k-thunkas and k-thankas, & k-thinkas, providing late night musical accompaniment to the life where nobody ever slept anyway, and the skinny guy who would spend afternoons running naked on the small island in the middle of the river, sometimes swimming in the river, the river full of water moccasins but he said he didn’t care, snakes were afraid of him he said and I guess they were because he survived at least my two years there, though he may have been left floating snake-bit and dead the day after I moved out… old man Harper long dead, and the little settlement gone the last time I drove by ten years ago, a normal house now, ranch style, split level, full of perfectly normal parents and children too I suppose, which is entirely too bad, there is so much normal in the world, too much normal in the world these days, and as one who once lived happily among the abnormal, I miss it, manufacture it now in my mind out of the perfectly normal people I see every morning at breakfast, little do they know the more interesting lives they lead in my imagination RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP yesterday, two younger women yesterday, two friends, significantly younger women, referred to me as “dad” and not, I think, in the hipster sense, not like my son who calls me “Pops,” his reference to Louie, the inventor of all jazz, which is pretty hip, I think, being, in a way, a conjunction between me and the hippest man I could imagine in 1955, proposed by my jazz-lover son, which makes me feel like the cool cat I imagined I was or at least thought I could be if I ever I got old enough to finally get my driver’s license and so could, at least periodically, flee the suffocating bonds of parental disdain for cool of every sort except for watermelons cooling off in the bathtub before cutting… being called dad by two younger women on the same day, even though spoken with affection does not make me feel like a cool cat but more like an old neutered tom, which, let’s face it, is not too far off the mark, more like, it’s a fact, a bull’s eye and something I have long come to accept… but acceptance of it does not necessarily mean it’s something I welcome hearing from two younger women on the same day --- I mean I could have called them “babe,” certainly in both cases, a well earned appellation, but, being a sensitive, eminently cool cat of a certain age, I didn’t but, regardless of my own sensitivity, I suppose at my age the time has come to get used to this kind of thing… --- at least they didn’t call me “gramps” SO I STOP HERE AND SEND OUT NOTIFICATIONS THAT HIS ISSUE IS DONE AND BEGIN A NEW ISSUE TOMORROW
This old dog will have to learn some new tricks if he wants to do this new version of the old "Here and Now'." For the twelve years or so I put out a weekly "Here and Now" post, my process was to first write the post, then publish it all at once. Under the new process for "Here and Now (Again) it appears I'm going to have to write the post in full view of the world and readers, starting it, as I am starting this, then adding to weekly or daily, producing the blog, in effect, live. It means I will not send out an announcement when the complete product is finished. Readers will have to check in periodically if they want to see what's new. It is not what I prefer for several reasons, one of the biggest ones my concern about readership. The old blog was getting up to 12,000 page views a month. I don't expect to do that well here. I'm also concerned about the old readers who used to follow the old blog most every issue. I'm hoping I don't lose them. And finally the process. I'm having a problem controlling the size of my images, getting them both the right size and consistent, a problem I will have to work out in public rather than behind the scenes. In sum, this is turning out to be more of an experiment than I expected it to. I guess that's going to be part of the fun. So, here we go. So, here we go. Celebrate My Stupid Tree - My Stupid Poem this is the part where I lower my eyes and mumble a humble response like, well, thanks, it was nothing but of course, it was something, it was a poem, and good or bad it was an effort at creation, like the tree stump in my back yard that I cut witih my father's day chain saw, leaving big swoosh-like slashes in the tree trunk from top to bottom which I painted theprimary clolors, red, blue, and yellow. those colors to match the ceramic thing Dee made, a mirror framed in a mosaic of red, blue, and yellow stones that I propped up on the top of the stump in a slot i cut with my chain saw and I'm not done yet, I'm thinking of little mirrors all around the tree as soon as I figure out how to stick them on so that they will stay a truly atrocious thing to be stuck in the middle of one's back yeard., but I don't care how ugy it might be, or how unappreciated by the neighnors it might because I believe it is the creative instinct that should be always honored regardless of that which the instinct produces which may or my not be honored as a final creation the human creative passion I invested in my stupid tree is equal to any passion of Picasso, just as my stupid poem is equal in its creative passion to any poem ever written it is that passion that counts before all else it is what separates us from the animals in the field and the fish in the sea, and the birds that fly over it all  Electra Glide in Blue At one point several years ago, I did a series of poems playing with colors. Rainbow Riot Red flowers Over yellow flowers Among blue flowers Blue Blue eyes Under clear skies Ice On cut crystal Yellow Lemons Overflow a pewter bowl Rose across the floor Crying Caution…caution Lull Black man With a silver flute, Sing us soft A song to sleep Fresco on the other side of sunset A ridge of low clouds Pink As cotton candy Against billows of virgin white Above a Mediterranean sky Sunset Sun lies low Behind scrub branches Yellow jigsaw puzzles At end of day Red grill Red grill on a field Of brown leaves Autumn come And almost gone With summer Red grill begins The long weait to spring Red Blood on white paper, Bright red Like an apple On a bed of snow Winter postcard White horse On a white field Enclosed by a white fence And I am blinded by the light REMEMBER ME THE STORY OF IT she had wanted to see this most of her life imagining it from the backseat for fifteen hundred miles on our way there… but age brought great fear of heights wouldn’t get out of the car to see it afraid so afraid the solid earth would sink away from her would be gone the minute she put her foot on it wants me to describe it for her wants me to tell her the story of it… so I can remember having been here, she said, so I can remember it and what it was like (Grand Canyon, 1988) This old bed This poem is by iconic Chicana/Native American Lorna Dee Cervantes from her fifth major collection, Sueno. She has long been a leader in the Native American literary renissiance and a favorite of mine. People Talkikng In Their Sleep Who comes out of that dead end alive, untouched? The surface of glass, gasping with breath, the thick gauze touched up with sighs. Out the woodwork of dreaming comes freedom from the dance of life, comes the future in a wheel-barrel filled with the nickels of nitghtmare. Come up on the stoop, play the marbles in your head through the gritting teeth. All the truths of summer slumber here on a dime. All the wits of winter wake up to the grumble of games. All the leafigs of autumn cry out through the teeth of sleep - in the dream talking to its person. The big lie  Remembering the caves remembering the caves so it’s like this, we preserve memories in our brain and when our brain dies so die the memories but there are also memories that reside in our genes that do not die with us but are passed on to our offspring, memories encoded in genes that are part of the inheritance just as are the rest of the genetic mix that makes us generational memories, passed on and passed on so that some part of us remembers the cave, remembers the man-things, the almost-us Neanderthals who we remember as we remember so many other fantastical things beyond our experience, things we explain through tall tales and myths and fairy stories… and beyond that, it is said, all living things animal and plant have these genetic memories just as all living things have a consciousness, the whooping cranes in their winter marsh home, finding this refuge every year not though some trick of navigation, but because they remember it, generations of genetic memory remembering its comforts and where it is and how to get there and also the forests and the prairie grasses and the sunflower who turns its face to the sun before the sun rises, knowing from generations that it will rise and that it will rise in the east and generations of warm sun memory tell it when it is time to turn… science learning from myth, myth suggesting new science, and with each new thing we learn, new mysteries, all knowledge an accumulation of ignorance addressed,, universal consciousness, memories from all becoming part of all… where have we heard that before… ``` this the state of knowledge expanding today theory always questing to be challenged, questing to be debunked what does a poet know of this and what advice can such a dabbler provide not much only enough to consider one suggestion - maybe we should all talk to our petunias today though we know they will not talk back, science tells us there is a good chance they will hear and warm themselves in the genetic memory of kind words spoken by those who in the far past knew them better than we Grease come the resurrection the path down and back is steep and arduous, especially for older people, though benches along the way provide a place to stop and rest, a moment to breathe thin air and listen to the wind passing between the canyon walls, the stubby trees restless in response birds call along the way but go silent among the ruins, homage to the ghosts who patrol the bare adobe rooms, guarding the ancient walls until those who left return again, pull from storehouses the grain and seed they left behind for this very day of resurrection we are silent visitors, with the birds, waiting for the tread of soft footsteps so long absent from their home (Mesa Verde, 1979) Santa Fe afternoon  history’s young victims walking beneath my second floor window, in their school uniforms, walking in a disciplined line lead by their teacher, I could hear them singing, their high light voices waking the thin mountain-air morning joyous morning then, a sweet and innocent moment in a strange and foreign place a morning and a moment I will not forget a memory struggling against the cruel beast of history a memory that cannot shield these children... --- remembering... trying not to think of what happened to these beautiful, singing children in the near 60 years since those children, victims of of the beasts who came through years and bloody seasons to devour their time and place, their life and the innocence of that morning (Kabul - 1969) STOP HERE. NOTHING ELSE HERE, YET 
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