Getting The Rooster

My God! My God! Has it always been so?
Walking to the kitchen for a drink of water
and coming back with fish tagine leftovers.
Take the other day. I went down to the fenceline
swearing under my breath I'd get that rooster.
Every morning the call to prayers at four dark
by that feathered tin trumpeter in the guava.
How many times I stood clear of his backside
hands on my hips like my old grandmother
muttering promises to cut his scratchy warbling
and dismantle the acoustic tunnel that amplifies
his broken serenade right up to our own bedroom window
and other post-neolithic thoughts on hunting
for reasons other than food. So I reach the scene
bend under the weeping bamboo and behold
the makings of the male of the species who on seeing me
tries to run through the small squares of the cage
by defining the inner dimensions of the rectangular cuboid
with his feathery mass and some rather potent instincts
potent because instinct caromed off my own instinct
while captor and captive eyed each other
as if the horizons hadn't been stitched together
with telephone poles and sagging wires quite yet
and the background roar was not really a motorcycle
but a rather greater point of view who might
quickly reverse the situation with me suddenly
defining other sorts of dimensions and so on
but I was not interested in the kill certainly not.
Did he know this? If so he had a strange way
of showing his understanding of relocation
by speeding up till he became a brown blur
with a bit of red in it.
There was a moment when I hesitated I must say
as I studied his diminutive crest and asked him
are you a chicken or da kine? which is local for
"really annoying rooster who crows at godawful hours of day or night"
when to my horror—I do have some left after a lifetime
of intermittent exposure to American television—
I saw the zebra dove belly-up on the floor of the trap.
If I needed further proof I had my man this was it.
I promptly loaded my victim and his victim
into the back of my black pickup though in a pang
strapped the cage down for the ride
and high-tailed it up to Pu'u Hue—a nearby deserted mountainscape
well known to catch-and-release volunteers like myself.
The shabby counterfeit of Chanticleer and I gave each other hard looks
before I set one end of the trap against the wide gate
slid open Freedom's door of twisted wire, watched and listened
as the creature threw caution and dignity to the wind
and waddled furiously in the straightest line
I've ever seen taken by a bird on foot, almost to the horizon
clucking and hiccupping from clump to clump of thick grass
and I stood there marveling awhile at high cirrus clouds above,
painted bark eucalyptus lounging on their elbows below.
The air seemed pure and clean. My conscience likewise.
I turned for home key in hand sensing a sharp pang
as if the absence would never replace the palpability
of direct experience as if I had sown the seeds of separation
and now all there was left was what? The post mortem
wondering if I'd gotten the right guy? How would I know
until I lay awake that very night listening for something
to return? Unless something had never left.
But the cage was not empty yet.
I shook out the dove. Getting down on one knee
I noted the surgical hole over the heart.
Even if that wasn't the right guy
I'm glad I got him. Or was I? Or did I?
It was me lured them both in the trap with scratch from Takata's Store.
I cast the innocent victim into the long grass
and went down the road without looking back.

That Fierce Wild Cry In The Night

That fierce wild cry in the night
arriving only now in earshot from another time
a time to abandon everything we have gathered around us

and embrace the shadows like lovers seeking forgiveness
a time to walk away from the fire with the promise entrusted
and speak it to another wall a ship-lap tongue and groove array

of knots and grains that make us weep for the forest of childhood
no time to think here no time to hold on or let go this time
there is no pillow to turn into no soft escape that will muffle

the truth. Oh there will be days when we will ask each other
why such vital life-changing experiences cannot travel in whispers
like first kisses barely touching...why surrender must reach back

so far to the tails of our ancestors the tips of the spine
blunted and vestigial with memory neither easy nor difficult
and languages returning to tongues with a ferocity

that knows no limits and the towers in the night
with their windows of fire along the dreaded coastlines
moving moving in a dance with their own foundations

and there in the abandoned lot some of us stare
into each others' eyes longing for trust reaching
into our pockets for photographs and finding only

money we cannot spend. It's a long sentence
this sleeplessness and we wake up get dressed
in transparent fickle robes of our own imagination.

How Many Miles To The Border

How Many Miles to the Border

How close to the other and his chaos
dusty roads and slogans marked
in stones against the barren hills

The line is there I know the wet line
of the river the deep line that pulls
you in as you swim from what you

are to what you think you really want
the weather too stops on that spot
the clouds too big to get through checkpoints

and morning dew that falls here in the desert
ushered into cubicles and strip-searched
under guise of freedom and liberty

give me the map the red veins and blue
careful not to let the folds and creases tear
more than we already have allowed

whole rectangles of topographic abstractions
dangle over the silent steering wheel
how many miles how many widths of the thumb

can span the mountains and rivers without end
how close how near the other and the smells
of his strange cooking his spices caught up

under fingernails where tired morning
moves its fingertips over the skull
I know it's close I hear his music
and his children crying out to be fed

Dirt Dirt

Dirt Dirt

Dirt dirt give me the dirt
the scoops the shovels.
How about in spades or
trowels? Plowed under
or dug up. Come on

I know you're a mine
of information a veritable
quarry no a canyon
or is it a gulch? A hunch
of gulches. An arroyo
of Hey! Yo! Wassup?

What's down! Why
the grave look it's dark
so dark I can't see
down here in the catacombs
the worm tunnels the filth
the stench of Verdun

the bombed out craters
of rock-ridden backyards
where countless children
played after school maybe
two or three while school

was in session. Under
the fingernails. In the pores.
It takes a scrubbing brush
to see he's really a white
kid a good kid clean through

and through though he won't
eat his brassicas. No! And you
know why? Too gritty mommy.
Too crunchy and dirty he cries.
Silly boy she says. Eat your

greens your sprouts your spinach
your broccoli calabrese and kale
too not to mention sparrow grass
stalks in the night pushing their
way through the old man's
well-intentioned mounds of earth.

Soil he says. Not dirt.

She Gets Me Going

She Definitely Gets Me Going

Otherwise I'd be staying
probably minding my own behavior
since there's enough of that to go
around and come back again
without going anywhere really

not so much a spinning of wheels
as a weaving and re-weaving
an undoing to delay completion
I suppose a waiting because they're
in the vestibule the concerned

citizens the hallway the portico
the front deck you can hear their
conversations in passing feel their
elbows jutting angling like rooftops
giving inquisitive and frankly generally

couldn't care less looks the sort that
confuse lesser mortals but I've got
the ticket you know sorry if this
offends or makes you nervous or worse
something out of my control thank god

jealous poor you if that's the case
but rubber meets the road here my
friend because she gets me going
in definite ways ways that can be
defined in radial far-flung spokes

in the itinerary soul-dazzling star-
bursts reaching the known edges
of the world that's going
wouldn't you say? that's gone
my friend definitely long so long

the birds might be marbled godwits
or apapani goodness and gray-green
coastal granite infused with soapstone
or jagged a'a ooh-ooh dashes and
hyphens leading and poking each

word along each syllable in the going
and the getting and the defining
after all it's a parallel universe my
friend she gets me and me she gets
in a frisbee-boomerang sort of

lopsided spinning kind of way
gasps from the bystanders and
grunts of approval disapproval
from other passengers the turning
long-playing gold record mounted

like a museum piece with the song
always crooning in rising cadences
hardly a skip of the needle
louder and more insistent
I can hear it now Frank

Sinatra doing The Best
Is Yet to Come

Trash Mermaid

Trash Mermaid

On the beach this
morning's murder
of crows. Rocking
their black numbers

where froth and turbulence
reveals food
wearing shells
crustacean clues

perhaps their group
deception is no crime
merely passion for
misleading information

picked-through
candy wrappers
and other trickery
of human rubbish

bottle tops entire mermaids
objet trouvé washed ashore
in the beachcomber tradition

pre-assemblage.
Last seen hanging
on a wall in 
Breakers Café.

La Velita

LA VELITA NARANJITO

Her name was La Velita Rosalita Carmelita Celestina Naranjito and she was hand-picked to go far in this world. It could have been different. Nestled there in her dark leafy green bower, a beautiful cluster of white blossoms highlighting La Velita's graceful proportions, she watched with trembling apprehension the day the great shaking took her sisters and brothers from her life. That was the day people still call The Great Fall.

A shapely creature, La Velita seemed to draw the warmth and glow of sunlight to her without pretense. She was not given to fluttering her eyelashes like some young things from even warmer climes. Yes, in La Velita, all the romance, legend and beauty of Old California were still alive. The people looked at her and knew that the blood that flowed through her veins ran fresh and full of promise. Anyone could see she was without blemish, almost. After all, which one of us can say they have reached their best years without a scrape? Without a tumble?

One faint scar, only one faint shadow and that seen only by the very worst mannered busy-bodies who squinted from behind their faded J.C. Penney's machine-washable curtains. Apart from that, La Velita might have a little beauty mark in an unexpected part of her anatomy, but who's keeping track of these things? Who is the judge in these matters? Is this our right, to be staring at others, looking for little imperfections? What's the world coming to? It wasn't this way in our grandparents' day, I can tell you that! No! In those days, it was the whole person that mattered.

It was the whole of La Velita who stood proudly before the bespectacled man with a mostly white-haired goatee. Of course, she had learned to stand like that, to present a fearless picture of herself to the world. But it was a performance. She was in fact a little uncertain and more than a little afraid. What was he doing? Taking notes? Drawing? Look at him! Now he chooses a red pencil. Now a blue. Now a green. What is he doing? She stood stock still, petrified.

For what it was worth, Miguel Diablo liked to keep meticulous records of his food. That's right! He was going to eat poor La Velita. Where is this story going, you may well wonder. The next thing you know, Miguel's incisors will begin to show themselves like Swiss Army pocket knives from beneath his upper lip. Admittedly, he is twisting his mouth somewhat as he draws and writes. Perhaps he's seen her beauty mark. Or maybe he's seen that faint scar. Is he wondering how that happened? Is he thinking to himself, this is a story standing before me, a story waiting to be told.

Once upon a time, there was a rustling in the house, the top rungs of a ladder being thrust into the leaves and branches. Was anyone awake who would hear? Only La Velita, poor abandoned La Velita, the day after The Fall. No brothers and sisters. No mother and father. Grandfathers and grandmothers long since in the ground. She was alone. And now she feared for her life.

Suddenly she was twisted awake but she couldn't speak or scream. Not a sound from her. Quickly the darkness enclosed her, the soft folds of burlap sacking, the smells of the field, the granary, the sweat of hard labor. Bumping down the tall ladder, bumping against something with a pleasant voice, bumping over the country roads, bumping from sunrise to sunset. Long hours she lay there. At first there was the crazy rolling around but there was no way out in that claustrophobic softness. And then quiet. A guitar. The crackling of twigs in the early life of a fire set in a circle of stones. A song bird settling down in nearby branches. The sound of surf and the tumble of smooth stones at the edge of the sea. Where was she? What was happening?

How can this story end without blood being shed? That is what you are asking, isn't it? Let's see, the young man playing the guitar is taken by surprise by the farmer and skedaddles, leaving poor hapless La Velita there in the scrub-grass and mesquite perimeter where the light from a hastily built fire is subsumed by endless night. Next morning Old Blue, that flea-bitten mongrel who fell out of a beat up '53 Chevy pickup truck with wraparound windows, comes sniffing around the smoldering fire pit. Can you imagine? That cracked nose that used to be shiny and wet, now poking around the sack that holds our precious La Velita? Sniffing and pushing, that big hungry nose pushed past its desire for a discarded piece of filet mignon steak specially wrapped up in a doggy bag by the local diner, to find our heroine, cowering. How the vehicle of abduction becomes a sanctuary! And now that sanctuary broken open by a four-legged question mark in the next chapter of La Velita's convoluted story.

Gingerly, Old Blue caught ahold of La Velita, careful not to bite down too hard. He didn't know the what or why of his actions but the next thing you know, he set off down the dusty road. It was a fine spring day, with a kind of spooky stillness and no sign of rain. In the distance could be heard the big trucks signing their weight in tire tracks down the long north-south west coast highway. No place for a rambling homeless dog like Old Blue. He stuck to the back roads and byways.

Imagine the sight of Old Blue delicately conveying a brightness named La Velita along the weedy margins of the world. Imagine the delight of the runaway girl called Cordelia. Three days on the road, in the fields, hiding out in the woods, fording creeks, sleeping in abandoned sheep sheds, all to get away from her angry, out-of-control stepfather. All the pain and hurt of those months spent enduring his abuse fell away when Cordelia caught sight of La Velita. The girl crouched low so as not to scare off Old Blue and made little clicking sounds and held out her hand. The dog stopped. La Velita looked like a little sun on the end of his dried up nose. With a better look at Old Blue, Cordelia got a better idea. Water. She slowly and carefully reached down and found the plastic water bottle and said outloud, "water, dog, here's some water for you, come on, boy, here's some water, c'mon boy, want some water?"

Now Old Blue knew a well-mannered girl when he saw one, so he went right up to Cordelia to see what she was on about. The closer he got, the more he could smell the life-giving water. Who knows why all the creek beds and usual puddles were dry, but the stuff was scarce, Old Blue knew it in his bones. He got within a tail's length of the girl and saw clearly she was going to share that water. Down went La Velita, out shot the girl's hand, and thus began the next chapter in what was becoming a very long-winded story.

Old Blue and Cordelia made a natural partnership, one for which the dog was quite happy to surrender that small bit of sunshine he'd been carrying so far. In return, the girl stepped up her search for food and water, sharing everything with her new companion.

Now it's a known biological and botanical fact that La Velita's lifespan was far shorter than this story. Cordelia knew this but for some reason known only to a higher muse, she took good care of Old Blue's present, treating La Velita like a precious friend, a jewel, a keepsake, a good luck charm. Besides, it gave Cordelia an idea.

Across the tracks, watch out for the 12:19! Over the far ridge. Yikes, a snake! Lucky. He just had a mouse for breakfast. See the lump right there in that long colored rope of a body? Through the pecan orchard. Hey! Old Blue recognized that pit bull. See how their tails are wagging. Good thing, too. Behind that rusted out abandoned school bus. Under the big water tank. Down the dried up creek bed. Tiptoe past the old lady's washing line waving its faded denim jeans, red bandanas and more underwear and socks than Cordelia had ever seen in her life. Stumble across the stony corn field and whoa! Look at that! A rice field, kind of wet. Endless citrus orchards...Old Blue, come on! I know where we are now!

Until...until the unlikely threesome turned a corner round a handsome cedar barn and found Cordelia's uncle's house, hideaway of the infamous Miguel Diablo Naranjito. Here she knew they would be safe.

She remembered the family stories about her uncle. Once a great revolutionary hero, long since disappeared from the public eye, all he ever wanted to do with his days was read, write, draw pictures and sleep. A good place, dear reader, to leave you, as the sun goes down in this part of the world, where water is still scarce, but love can still be found.

Freedom

Does it ring? Maybe later in life
right inside deep in the inner
ear where you know this
is a very personal journey
all a-buzz at the late stages
and before? before that?
I don't know. Voices mumbling
in coffee shops between
the clinking of forks and
hissing of Gaggia machines
the rustling of old news in print
and the breaking of oil in the bean
as it's ground up yes into dust
and the air is filled with that
evocative revolutionary odor
and rumors of fire at the knees
money changing hands and more
voices who know what everyone
really wants their simple needs
their double shots and single
shot lattés hardly ringing out
perhaps a gentle singing in the heart
that's all it is and children
counting out the syllables with care
and neglectful supervision and
lines lines of people waiting
in that new morning smiling
or not all depending which side
of the bed they were on when
they left

This Is A Reminder

This is a reminder that on this day in that year
we all remember we did the unforgettable
a thing seared into our collective memories
like a blacksmith's mistake like rare
blue fin tuna over Mediterranean salad
without the olives a dark day a question
mark at the end of the jet stream that
embroiders our planet a day when all
wasn't enough to stop a catastrophe
when we stopped asking each other
are you okay? and the blame subsided
in the soil and the ground retreated
beneath our feet forbidden ground
forsaken wellspring all in the name
of accident risk assessment a child
would want a different version
of this history say for example once
upon a time and a big bad wolf and
three variables each tested with only
one correct answer and everyone
reunited in the end oh yes the end
we need reminding reconfiguring
reprogramming rewriting and
of course restructuring thank goodness
yes our resilience is our brilliance
and adaptability a wonderful thing
did I say wonder did I just imagine
the concept of delight forgive me
now I promise to calm down
pay my respects to the loss of it
all to the one pain greater than all
the pain to the last time we reminded
each other and the sweet bye
and bye between

On The Fault Line

Why is it we forgive the land
and not each other? Entire
countries shoved over several
feet and we call such disaster
natural and blame people

elected or hired to build say
nuclear reactors call them
irresponsible shame them
make them bow before the flag
as if that slack rectangle

drooping on the pole were their
superior and they're the ones
who couldn't rise to the occasion
and save the nation not quite
the same as one hundred

forty two thousand
square miles of land that
commits instant subduction
a nose dive so big and loud
it cracks the pavement

all the houses courts castles
and institutions sends a
jolt right through the world
splash crash words aren't big enough
changing everything especially

the routines of everyone
who didn't know till yesterday
they went to work and school and play
where all the action now isn't

the epicenter

the zone the radius
the evacuation and contamination
and probably no cherry blossom
parade this spring only cleaning
and TV reporters asking how

do you feel could you stand
a little closer to the rubble please
what's that you say? you're offering
the multi-millionaire host of reality
a crust of campfire cooked something

so easily we forgive the land
and not the brother sister mother
father uncle aunt and all those
grandfathers who say it's too late
to start anew it's not their fault

or was it? did they get us into
the mess before it happened

living on the fault line

The Last Blank Book At Borders

Now in plexiglass like the Aztec skull
those crystalline nebulae spinning
in frozen suspended cranial reaches
atop a plinth in the Museum of Man
just off Piccadilly Street in the
Burlington Arcade now the journey
of pulp pressed against the screen
and pushed through the bleach to the
day's beginnings in the wide margins
of the writer's mind before breakfast
here exhibited finally as one bound up
abducted from the Silk Road interconnections
en route to Charlemagne's court at Christmas
those disappointed horrified monks who
so assiduously crushed lapis for a blue mood
on the backs of Cooley's cattle dismayed
now the chance will never be given again
the pages of history fluttering before them
like endless autumn can you hear them
laughing their holy laughter now
as the willing page is free no more
the blank fibers that displaced monks' vellum
and before that the neolithic carvings
and thumb-framed etchings that pictured
the sublime mind hungry for more
than meat or fruit just to say
the word blank was an achievement
now here the achievements encased
and labeled with the digital bells
ringing out from their silicon miniatures
pathways to a future already here

As One Should Sue A Star

"As one should sue a star" — first line from Emily Dickinson

As one should sue a star
the air is liable when gray
and oceans absolutely wrong
when waves turn rogue and break the day

Night, too, can be so fickle, therefore
punishable by battery-operated light
But worse, delinquent rain that sulks
in passing clouds and will not fall

Takacs-Yang Ghazal

Even my big black truck's windshield wipers made music
while I peered through the smears at the lines on the mountain road

First they played Haydn's "Rider" and we tried to sit still
but applause broke out between movements and the cellist smiled

Next was tricky, Bartok's number five, arching dissonance
and spooky sounds of night mixed in with a melancholy or longing

At intermission, the retired bookseller said he liked the first one —
but the second, too raucous. I thought of the miles the quartet had traveled

Dvorak's piano quintet with the young feisty pianist came last
forty-five minutes that lasted three days or a rapid plunk on the viola

We stood right away, we cheered, we roared and shouted for more
you know how greedy we get

Time

First, Second and Third sit inside each other's skins
Like Russian dolls all varnished up with nowhere to go because they're already here

Whenever I see a butterfly taking a breather on the road
I know it's either warming up its wings or clutching onto that broken stone for a last look

Don't you love the lovemaking that goes on
Between mountains and clouds?

If I am now who I was in that overgrown garden using weed stalks like swords
Whose hand is this writing down the words sixty years later?

Some people need a clock to boil an egg
Me, I just guess and that's why sometimes it's runny and you know the rest

I Don’t Know What It Is

I don’t know what it is
about the vertical line
of the cat’s eye
how the world shrinks

into the frozen still-life
between running and readiness
breath fierce and calm
like sister and brother

What is it I don’t know
the beginning of the world
or was it only this morning
when the wind stopped

clouds forgot their way
the neighbors’ dogs
telling them what for
and the moon not full

Don’t I know this song
no tell-tale repetition
or give-away rhyme
the dance a hesitation

the voice sticks in the flute
eyelashes open and close
their mandolin curtains
rapidly or not at all

the blood sings down
narrow cliff-hanging
paths and trails
making up stories

for anything that moves
bamboo leaf fluttering
spider tight-rope walking
honey bee struggling

Is it what I don’t know
that keeps me here
my fingertips hovering
over the keyboard

my tongue pushing
against the backs
of my patiently waiting
rows of teeth

The Net Thrower

A shadow breaks free
reaches into a dance-move
one arm tracing the arc
of the planets one leg
angled in flight
the other tree deep-
rooted, balanced

Those fine, knotted intersections
held back in their gathered mass
now float aloft wrinkling
and unwrinkling in waves
of geometry folding
and unfolding

To capture the moment
release a chaos of ink
to seek synchronicity
land it on the page
caught up, wriggling
to get free

He knows of the dark mass
under the surface
so he returns to the edge
of day and sea ready
to undo life's energy
huddling in tide pools

Upolu Airport Road Pastoral

I’ve always liked the view despite the clouds
the telephone poles their sagging lines
playing slack key up and down the straight road
the way the northeast winds suggest each turn
of the languid mobius windmill blades

the way the cattle people this scene fretting
into each other’s skins in these wide open spaces
or the egrets who rise up from their cross-eyed
meditations and hold steady their white
brush strokes against the lapis lazuli

the fierce channel where Maui heavily
weighs being an island against being
a mountain anyway what's in a name
that a search engine can't tell me
all I know is one foot in front of the other

and thoughts from forty years ago
looking to land — too much is never enough
we seem to say but now I wonder about
the mess we’re in how separate we feel
just because we can pick up our feet

or take pictures with our iPhone
see that cow over there the one who
attacked the backhoe back when this was just
a field you know before the windmills came
that was a sight the cow charging the digger

defending her turf her patch of earth
she knew something we were slow to get
the winds of change and the roots
of technology running deep right here
in mid-Pacific where the whitecaps
hide the latest splash of a whale from us

Paradise In Fourteen Lines

over the sea and far away
the seven sailing stars above
clouds encircle islands like a lei
and the whales still talk of love
some travelers stay awhile and leave
while some people find a home at last
some give back more than they receive
some say they used to move too fast
paradoxically this land called paradise
looks deceptively slow and easy at first
but life’s on the edge and a word to the wise
before your endless vacation bubbles burst
never turn your back on the ocean
and watch out for the goddess of lava in motion

The Generosity Of Numbers

I like the generosity of numbers, the way they fill pages with their flourishes and tails, the way their eyes pop open or close tight, and their strict lines, too, their parallel bars at times, their intersections and severe cross-hatchings, as if they're saying All is precision. All may be counted. And indeed, they tally up the waves and wind, the barometric undulations of our elemental days. How thrilling! How generous indeed. And what if we'd lost them in a funk? Where would we be? Driving who knows how many miles per hour. Enduring how many or how few degrees F or C. We'd never measure up, now, would we? Or take the book, the best line, the quotation we savor with all our might, and now we cannot find the page which numbered would deliver us from the fate of the lost soul at sea — in a world without numbers. Oh yes, they are our boat, our craft, the leaping dolphin, too, or three, or twenty-seven. They are the days of the week, most thoughtful of them! The minutes and the years...

The Effects Of Bee Pollen On The Male Libran

It's a bird! It's a plane!
Why can't it be a man?

Honey! Honey! he said
as she cycled down the road

sounds of children
in the near distance

— Honey! You forgot
the shopping list!

Suddenly a gentle
but firm wind pushes
against his breastbone

his arms instinctively
throw themselves back
and his legs belong to

Baryshnikov they're
not his anymore
he's, he's floating, rising

the children's voices
spin by like he's the merry-go-round
and yet he rises

why is this happening
what the hell was in that
cereal she gave me this morning?

Could it be
the coffee?
Oh God!
It's the bee pollen

He knows now the entire
spoonful was too much
she warned him: Only a taste
only a few granules

and now look
Where is she?
Why doesn't she
see what's going on?

Why doesn't she
turn around?
Can't
she
see?