If You Need It

If you need it you’ll find it, I learned
from the Rolling Stones, oh yes, years
after Philosophy 101, I got it from LPs
threaded through and through by steel spindles

turning turning the needlepoint wisdom
transmitted through mesh-covered boxes
encasing tweeters and woofers as if
all the avian and—what’s the dog world called?

fidelity—were being brought to bear in our
search for food, soul food, that is, the sort
found incidentally in famed foraging scenes
of yore as we began copying trees and standing upright

seeing over the tops of wheat ears—beer
would come first, bread much later,
but the yeast the rising agent was born
in a kind of omnipresence that preoccupied us...

I was going to say in a kind of thing-ness
as in “everything” but that feels so mathematical
so Phoenician sheep-traderish. No, no,
the world that truly nourishes us is not made of things.

There’s another bigger essence, isn’t there,
and if you need it you will not only find it,
it will find you, but you will recognize it
there in the laughter of taboos broken

in rush light or candle light
our collective habits acted out
made fun of in the dark
we might even pay good money to sit there

burning our foreheads on the intense glow.

Jack-In-The-Box

He’s missing 
before we get our words out he’s gone
absent nowhere to be seen

even present was invisible a scent a waft
wandering through the rooms
a vibration in the turn of a door handle

or the fall of a hammer least expected

mutely we look around
ask approval most of all advice
knowing this won’t translate

his is a new language
the old useless
where he’s gone

we find ourselves in a world held together
fastened glued patterns arrangements
clever ingenious

his second tongue
he understood how the spring coiled itself under pressure
its mouth biting on the small burr

fingers and thumb of one hand
holding it all together
a jack-in-the-box squeezed into that studied moment

perhaps he will rise again
when we light the stove
twist its automatic ignition

maybe return on the imperceptible desert breeze
when we open the windows on the edge of night
slide them in their grooves

glass walls on the move
hear them click
satisfied complete

releasing us from the box
letting us breathe at last
in this new language

I Stay Tight As A Bud

I stay tight as a bud the rest depends
upon the weather and whether I can
drink your water through my toes

see how the petals nest inside each other
the one spinning against the outside my
overcoat these 64 years keeping all this

together note the elbows frayed
the patina of encounters in late
night conditions the slowest to bloom

that's what they say or what a waste
to quote my mother but I'm not complaining
nodding yes can't you see agreement

with the all when it's in front of you
resilience is everything to me the colors
with their elemental promises of one

long parade that day will come and all
the horses with their leis float up like Chagall's
kites making sunrise and sunset at once

I never get tired of the word epiphany
though it's out of fashion I know and
I know too the many splendored day

should never be saved up it must be spent
woken up lifted against the eternal night

Aaron Thibeaux Walker Is Asked To Set Realistic Goals

But but but he raises his cup
opens his mouth to say it
and drink it both at the same time
what's possible what isn't possible
without a suit a shiny silk suit
and a cool tight sleek silk tie
a knot I tie around my own neck
this morning before the medicine
cabinet you know the one with a slot
on the back wall inside for used
razor blades and a clean shave
with a close shave I can do anything
but I know what you mean how long
a pause is this going to be?
lips part and the next sound
caught in his throat here it comes
he croaks okay okay I get it
never be president that what you mean
or a brain surgeon or a rocket
scientist or an automobile designer
and anyway don't wanna be no
transvestite cross-dressin' fool
keep your hands off me don't come
any closer just kidding no
I know what you mean but I don't know
I just hit the notes and if they
wrong I know which way to go
what road to go down swinging my axe
flick my tongue between the frets
twist them pegheads home I
ain't holdin' back long as my sweet
strings hold up five minutes more
I've got more I know the rules you
keep your goals my friend I play
by the rules while you fools can shoot
for the moon and who knows
that's you not me

An Incredible Number Of Coincidences

An incredible number of coincidences fall
from the tree each night and in the morning
wait glowing in the grass for our fingers
this is Easter and Christmas everyday
all around us being awake in a dispassionate
and curious way it's how I got here after all
an event that now runs in my blood
acted out six thousand no seven thousand
miles away from here across two oceans
and one continent ah but the ship's name
was hindsight and my own tongue the rudder
in the salty seas of analogy here now
the pages of light where I point my dark
words twisting the lines around the sun
till penumbra rhymes with rain and every
thing every living thing drinks and drinks
you call my name and my thirst is slaked
and bent like this my roof holds out its
wings spreading the downpour evenly
to the flower beds below the hanging
fuchsia and strawberries the Spanish
moss with its curtain flattering your eyes
as you look out on this scene gardenia
begonia Mexican sage Hawaiian ti
and variegated banana mamake
and ferns all speaking in tongues
while we list the ways we might never
have met let's listen longer you say
okay I'll get the wheel barrow and
meet you in the lower bed the mulch
too with the ten tine fork and old
newspapers old news we will lay
out on the ground ready to return
to the worms before sunset

It Goes Like This

It goes like this there was weather and people in outfits
crying too and my father hands in trouser pockets his
cuffs belled out over his shoes he was Clark Gable in
-cognito later I would attend college near the famed
actor’s home town unless that was a drunken rumor

this however was fact my own birth I remember it well
the release the lights the rush of air I look back on wet
claustrophobia the little movements when my mother
surrendered her bicycle to the gods of the pavement
those moments were not my style though I am open

to contrary opinions Paddington it was the hospital
not the station subsequent visits to both confirmed
my suspicion it was a grey world entered either way
when my cave turned inside out when her waters broke
and I tumbled helpless in the shallow waves onshore

in view of all but out of reach until I got my drivers
license it was raining that day too with some sun

Putting Away The Firewood

It's time to put away the firewood
our orange cat still
hasn't come home

In That Sea Of Desks

Clenching two days travel between my teeth
I perched on an empty desk in that sea
of desks a hundred or more of those
hungry inkwells sucking at shadows

in that lifeless classroom where the bell
expelled one last ring and the long board
long wiped clean holds only ghosts
of how things added up or names

famous or merely naughty or shifty
how fitting the flag hung down up center
where the last teacher to stand on that spot
beamed up or bled down through those 13 stripes

of red and white to that field of stars
oh say can you see there's no ceiling
in heaven no spit wads or notes
passed blindly hand to hand

while here on earth the founding fathers
framed like a recent photograph
look hard into the room for the living
ah what's the use I wanted to come here

now there's no one else to blame
no point yelling or even hunkering down
cynically thinking about the children
I had a thought that drove me here

and now it's gone I'm seeing over there
my dad looking out the window
and the brother in the brown cassock
fingering a rope belt giving him the eye

Study For 3 Graces

stripped away
the cave venus juggler
with her tummy flopping
right down to her mons

how many millenia
has it taken us
to get so close
to the bone

how hungry we still are
will always be
we mustn't show
the old signs

childbirth's stretch
smoothed over
hills valleys
softness lost

airbrushed out of the picture
even the knot
just a spot
for a bauble

The Sea Cave

Each time we reach the far end of the beach
we reach into to the cave with our feet
or at high tide our minds
always our coming and going does this
today we turned before the dark mouth
that always pulls us in
next thing I know you're on the sand
back to the lava
the smell of seaweed strong today
the vision of its bright green fringe
still vivid around the pulse of stone
always I recall how it came
oozing down
when
so long ago
hot molten earth innards
from where
a pu‘u
an opening
an eye wet with fire
a goddess enraged
I can't say
so here we are
you on the sand
so much new ground
your hand touching a smooth washed place
and I follow
a novel thing
a change
a matter of timing
serendipitous for us
for the tide
I can't say
today's moon Mahealani
one of the four full Hawaiian moons
yesterday Hoku before that Akua
but who's counting
I sit next to your exquisite sense of now
and all is quiet calm a gentle breeze
an idyll in the sun a moment's magic
engendered as we press our backs
to the rage that cooled long before
who knows how long before
was it a rage I keep wondering
or was it so hot fierce primal and core-driven
so inner planetary honest that it truly defies
my anthropomorphizing
so I bask in you
our instant sanctuary
our nest of beginnings
when around the corner from the public beach
where stick figures mill about along the strand
with umbrellas buckets sunglasses token coverings
a man and a woman enter
surprised to find us there just sitting
and you thought you were all alone she says
en route to the cave
it's purple inside
he says as they leave
and another woman leads another man
if she doesn't come out I didn't do it he says
and we look at each other both understanding
it's time to go

Shard

for Kenji

White porcelain piece thumb-sized
fractal of a bowl thrown by the potter
on say an island off the coast of Kyushu
a cross-hatching all that remains
of the blue house where she once waited
for his return the glaze now a thin study
of what endures perhaps wagon wheels
horseback who knows and the long voyage
into the rising sun to the islands located
at 19 degrees latitude themselves shards
broken like her heart like this bowl
that served so well a man who stayed
worked hard and never returned
I know this because today I found it
in the gravel above Kenji's place
not a stone but a made thing a small
keepsake outside the house of one
who combed the shorelines of Kohala
a land once covered in sugar plantations
canes cut down for the world's cravings
by men who never went home again

Breaking Through Crusted Snow

Breaking through crusted snow
in the woods surrounding your place
sugar pine and Doug fir you’ve taken care of
more than half your life

not once not every time we sink
suddenly a comedy routine laughter
and we feel our way onto the surface again
no longer solid ground no more

the illusion of easy going
whatever we were saying about our lives our loves
we keep walking till we reach the creek
a runnel snaking through trees and brush

icicles reach into space along white feathered edges
snowmelt you say by early summer gone
how you discovered that first hand
setting up the tipi trusting

the sound of water to see you through
now that memory’s marked by stones
the pit fire circle’s enduring shadow
and we climb from there to the clearing

where your propietary neighbor
placed a grey wing of bleached dead fall
on a grand uprising of rock
a found monument or more quietly

a lichen-covered sentinel a boundary marker
taking our eyes
to the snow-capped Siskiyous across the valley
how we stepped through now and then to reach here

laughing each time laughter we knew
would fade and die if every step
were to break the rhythm
and pull us through an untenable trail

pull us again and again
into endless snowdrift
instead we’re just wet around the ankles
a couple of guys in our sixties

we can laugh as we step out on the surface
and head back
we can forgive the unpredictable
so sparingly measured out

and we can be forgiven for thinking
the uncertain layer of snow in late spring
is the ground
until we ask what is the ground beneath

The Croissant

The croissant innocent there upon its circle of white porcelain
is the sculptress I lived with on Colney Hatch Lane the girl
with a smile who operated the follow-spot. The Lane led
notoriously to a madhouse but I stayed south with my bicycle
dripping light oil on the knotted cord carpeting just inside
her front door an English racer with taped handlebars
tamed and accounted for like Picasso’s head of a bull
an escaped simile in this short chant dedicated to the metaphors
of my time in Sam Wanamaker’s tent theatre on the Bankside
the Bull’s Head a fantasy pub where I met Chaucer’s ghost
as he pushed his ethereal head into the table distraught
with his next tale the tent theatre my nomadic life in London
Archway to Greenwich to Clapham to West Hampstead
to the aforesaid Colney Hatch Lane not to mention
all the other rectangles of linoleum cold to the touch
in Notting Hill Gate for example where the carnival
taught me how to dance to Reggae between pub tables
my formative years a place for elbows and wet pints
of Guinness their circular kisses overlapping
in Venn diagram fashion room for breathing
getting smaller and smaller the linoleum
the backdrop the ever present back cloth
where all my dreams came to life at night
and returned to their flat world by day

BLUE AGAIN LIKE MORNING

BLUE AGAIN LIKE MORNING
for Slyde

Blue again like morning
but never mind—breath is my friend
though I’ve neglected her these months
while the doctors looked for my throat

Give me my horn I’ll take it up
and summon up that long sigh
the one I gave the first time ever I saw
you walk across a room

Voices in that place still fight
to be heard face against face
plenty wine tequila cocaine
give me that blue again

If we had pain then we never knew
how long it would take to reach
the high notes without each other
breath is my friend, sister and brother

Days pass kids are born
their kids—news torn up
thrown in the fire in LA
or on the road

Give me my horn again
I hear that riff on the piano
I see your smile from the door

THE MYSTERY OF KNOWING

THE MYSTERY OF KNOWING
for Larry

In the beginning was the word, meaning the big
vibration from which all things animate and
inanimate issue forth, but it could very well
have been Hey! You molecules virals spirals
stardust bacterias plasmas miasmas and scilias
swimming in the cosmic sea making your way
to the shores with the Australian crawl
or the little bawl of wax...Get off your
microscopic asses and create life, all right?
Okay? Now! I have spoken...
And that's how tricky those before times were
when all things short and tall were delegated tasks
big and small by the invisible boss with a thunderous voice
or the still small voice from a boss so big
you can't even see him or was it her
don't you see? Oh say don't you? The more
you know the more of a mystery meaning
each of us as the bard would say has her own
entrance and exit the lights dim or grow
we put our lips to the mask and blow
this is our time the much feted now
the elusive running grasp...come, let me clutch thee!
Oh reality, my head's spinning with inner
nebulae! The Aztecs had it right all along
with their crystal skulls. So much for bipolar
dichotomies! What's frozen to me moves too fast
for the representative from Sirius. What's more
important is that space between, not the thing.
Resurrection gets four syllables, one
for each corner of the bed and it's time...
Oh, yawn, stretch, fart, oops, really?
to wake up and nourish the soul
break the fast and sing the endless song.

THE WAY OF TOTAL INTEGRATION

THE WAY OF TOTAL INTEGRATION

First in the beginning and from the outset
before before before input when laughter
merely stuttered and your name mumbled
in the eucalyptus which did not sway
the snake came and knotted itself inside
your brain into the Celtic sign for geese
in flight you had no say in this although
you knew thirst and all the other cravings
but one which we will not talk about yet
in the circle no one knows how the boulders
moved by sound waves or by brute force
built for the first pit fire that gave birth
to the first constellation the shadow crossed
over and we truly understood the wildness
that would stalk us and watch us even from
inside the cage we so fearfully assembled
mounted and kept in that place the question
that brought you here the one you will take
with you to the end where there is only
music disguising our confusion

How Rivers Begin

snow crust openings
icicles reach into space
over mountain stream

EMPTY SHELLS

a cicada shell;
it sang itself
utterly away
—Basho

EMPTY SHELLS

counting syllables the haiku
disappears from the branch

blossoms that called out in the night
now fallen under the bed forgotten

the tree in leaf moves on without moving
unless the wind says otherwise

short or long the breath of the wind
has no regard for chopping up its words

we hear wind we don't even know
this language we've been hearing all our lives

the insects leave their shells behind
as do the molluscs on the shore

leaving their shells how convenient
all these found instruments for a breeze

watch out a gale will scatter these remains
like so much debris inside such a sound
that overwhelms like a flood like a drowning

like a barking dog in the night
we speak out against the darkness of the wind
that hasn't yet arrived

KEEP ME FROM WHIPLASH

KEEP ME FROM WHIPLASH

Hold me back the world's on fire
too fast too much or not enough as usual
can't make up my mind
not with the lights all green and the roads empty
mover over ghost I see you there
cycling down the margin in daylight
the testy owl languid over your
bobbling frame see how she launched herself
from the fencepost is somebody timing this
the slowing down of the heartbeat the counting
as the breath pulls in yes pulls my friend
I've got the bellows working midships
the belly of the beast a white man in disguise
you know just an ordinary bean no distinctive
confusions only the tingling sensation
as the warmth grows up your arm
get out of the way I say
I'm coming through you can watch the clock
all you like I'm down to skin on the road
slow as a guitar string returning to the fret
these vibrations and hand slaps don't care
anymore about keeping up with no
Joneses I don't even know anymore
except that speed does kill
exhilaration's the name of my game
and it's dripping like honey down the road

SHORTER WITHOUT A NET

SHORTER WITHOUT A NET

You can do it!
That's the voice I want to hear
with me stepping out into space
from the branch of a tree
onto the roof of your house
I know you're in there although
there's no doors or windows
I just need the small voice
to stir me on
all these years thinking trusting
waiting for that permission
to fly slowly by like a comet
give me my mission statement and
three days or so to get off my ass
ah the roof tops
slippery in March
when the cherry blossoms fall it's like
stepping into heaven
with the green leaves in their infant ways
unfolding watching it all go down
it’s touch and go up here on the ridge
smoke curling out of the chimney
somebody's in I know it though there's
no stairs no rooms no furniture only
a space called home and a vibration inside
that sounds like yes
I should have been listening long before now
but this is it
with the fall
all in my mind after all
perspective rushing at me like the ground
still frozen in some back country hollow
that's got my name on it
I should know better
I've played cat to this tune before
landed on all fours keeping my knees
bent my arms outstretched thinking
of Leonardo and the Wright brothers
and our long line of flight attendants
real and imaginary