After the Storms

Dark blue winds shatter

the crystal vase in the hall;

now someone has heard.

Waiting for Lightning

Charged grey air. Autumn.

A feeling thought redeeming,

thought would save … dying.

I Never Was a Gardner

Lies, Lies, Lies!

A writer crafting lies.

"Believe none of us ..."

The words aren’t even mine.
Stole them from John Gardner’s
journal.

Published after he died.

Not even his journal, then.
Not anymore.

More damned lies.

Hemingway, proclaiming that the goal
of a writer is to pen one—just one—
true sentence.

Is it that sentence?
Or is it itself a lie?

What does he mean by “true” anyway?
True to my heart? (My heart? That lump
of muscle in my chest, that pretends
it feels, when it’s just stealing
the idea from my brain?)

True to my experience?
The experience of a brain
that has evolved to fool others,
and through the ability
to fool others can fool itself
most of all?

True, by virtue of a proper metaphor,
when a metaphor by definition
is not what it claims to be?

Or can it be? What if the mask
something wears is its own face?
Does he reveal himself by it,
or hide? Or both?

Life, my child, is like a great ocean.
The waves rise, and then they fall …
They rise, and then they fall …
They rise, and then they fall …
They rise, and …

You know, that’s a pretty
nauseating question.

Nausea. Satrte. The overwhelming awe
at - and absurdity of - existence. Why
is there something, rather than nothing?

Why do we ask why?

Ask, with our words.
Words. Damned words,
that lie half the time,
and then can’t capture the truth
when they try to tell it.

Half the time? How would I know?

And if I know, why can’t I tell
when each half is?

Nausea. Sartre. The overwhelming awe at -
and absurdity of - existence. But then I
remember. Remember the things I love
can make me nauseous with awe.

Plane rides. Parachute drops. Landscapes,
that stretch out beneath me as I gaze over
precipices at bare peaks, or those dappled
with snow under half cloudy skies.

Fresh snow, on a November hillside,
with long stems of grass poking up through,
and me suddenly overcome with stage fright
as I drive past, even though
I’m the only audience.

A first look. A first kiss.

Soul kiss.

Do you have to believe
in the soul to have one?

Because I don’t. But I do.


Damned lies.

It's all
damned lies.

"Believe
none of us."

Upon High Lands

Upon High Lands

I prepare myself

a sacrifice.

(I don’t get it. I mean
are you preparing
a sacrifice for someone?)

(Or are you the sacrifice?)

(Or is the sacrifice
to you?)

You have said it.

Is that not how a man
once proclaimed ...?

(What?)

...

(Proclaimed what?)

Nothing.

(I mean,
I just don’t
get it.)

With the Furies

Again,
She had a party.

The Great Witch,
I mean ...

Kali , and Odin
both came; crowns
and garlands were Hers,
and monsters,
and Beasts that
dwelt among the flowers,
with sharp, azure eyes,
and tiny, fuzzy,
ticklish ears.

I saw a little one, hidden
amid the grass, enjoying
the sight of great and
terrible Gods, capering,
as children.

The ouroborus, not minding,
straightened, and slithered
past smiling Sister Snakes
and girdling, Midgard Serpents;
the blossomed, not minding,
merely there.

But Guardian-bird, Bright-plume,
Strange-beak, No-Raven,
(as opposed to, say,
kabuki-raven)
was mortified.

Wait, the One-eyed
One cried,
it's over! Again!
The bird has spoiled it,
for Everyone.

Again ...

America, I Mean

I saw that bumper sticker again today. The one that says, “God bless America.”

Why? Is She sick?

Not God, I mean. America.


Maybe it’s just me.

Every time I hear a prayer asking for God’s blessings, my first thought is of someone sick. Someone ill. Someone hurt.

“God, bless Grandma Bibby, please. The cancer is eating away at her, and when she looks up at me, it’s as if she doesn’t know whether oblivion is a good thing or a bad one.

“When Grandmother looks up, I don’t know either.

“I don’t know, and more don’t know what to make of the world.”


Is America in that way?

I mean, do all the Hondas and Mazdas and Mitsubishis with all the bumper stickers, zipping around quicker than a motherfucker, is that what they imply. That America is crying, I am ill?


I doubt it. But maybe it’s just me.

I certainly have heard the sermons lance out from the TV and talk radio pulpits, and damned but if their view of America doesn’t seem dim.

Apocalyptic warnings abound, right around the time these preachers will teach you that decadence festers in all the streets.

Gay agendas and gender benders and Reefer Madness.

Wickedness and sodomy. And what of all the drunken revels. And college girls giving it up to the sound of Aaron Neville, and unbridled lust.

Isn’t that just what the Beatles told us is all we need?

The wrath of God will vent, pour burning oil down, they’ll warn, unless sickly America repents, and takes up its crowns of thorns.

That America would deserve a blessing, I’m sure. Or something close.

But if it were real, wouldn’t it just as much deserve an opiate overdose?

A needle, slipping just beneath the skin. An end to its misery. Why, if America is so bad, for you and me, do they pray for Her a blessing, rather than a cleansing? Why don’t they ask for America’s fall, so that they can set up their tall, 40-foot Jesuses, and build the estate they’ve always wanted.

A great mirror to the Taliban. Omar and Osama can send love letters. We’re your biggest fans.


Or could it be me?

I almost forgot. On top of it all there’s another kind of soul we ask blessings for. Protection, for someone who could be in harm’s way.

“Abba, guard my friend, Aaron, would you, in those Afghani mountains, where the bombs drop in pillars of fire, and a faithless woman back home has shredded his heart, and I wonder if he’ll seek the arc of a bursting shell to complete the job.

“Abba, guard Aaron, when the ones who have sent him there are the very ones to forget him as they chase shadows of ghosts in other lands.” In Poppy’s Name we pray.

Do the drivers in those bumper stickered cars see America as the battered and outnumbered soldier, boldly standing fast as the enemy shatters the perimeter, storms the twilight ridge on which our man makes what looks like a last stand?


I don’t. Though it could just be me.

At Cowpens, and Gettyburg, Normandy, I know the story may have been different. And if it came to all that, I’d stand by the man, or woman, on the hill.

But a lonely warrior, on the verge of being overwhelmed, has little more than heroism to tout. And I hear the same people, shouting “God Bless America!” playing the age-old game. The game that says, “look how blessed we already are. It is proof of God’s favor.”

Welcome to our bistro; what will it be today? Would you prefer the flavor of our cobbled tautology, or the freshly toppled eschatology?

But when the favor seems gone, when the blitzkrieg through Kabul and Khandahar have gone from current events to ancient history, and the “Mission Accomplished” banner have been re-furled, what in the world do we have left?

When the body count rises, and flag-draped coffins slide off the ramps of the psychopomp transports.

Then virtue miraculously shifts, from what is measured by success, to what measures are brought against us. The world is the Devil’s playground again, as if God has abandoned power in this sphere. And the saints are always beleaguered, and in need of every blessing they can get.


It could just be me.

But how can they be making their plea, when they just moments ago put Her on a pedestal? America, I mean?


When, like She were a white Tyger stalking Her gilded cage, they proclaimed that She was the strongest, the smartest, the fastest Beast on all the Earth?

Then again, for now She might be.


I’ll admit to my own impatience, with the wine of discontent, at times. You see, I’ll make you admit that a cottage industry seems always to arise, amid the flies and rats of every ghetto. Just because it isn’t quite settled, you know.

There are remnants of slaveries, long past and more recent. But it seems the prophets are unwilling to concede, that any progress at all has been made, as if the passion to complete the job will fade, without the righteous indignation.

As if to concede that we’re halfway there, or more, might make us complacent on the trek across the desert, and we won’t finish the job unless we believe we’ve hardly started to walk.

Maybe it’s just me.

But I think it’s not true. I think that the fire of beginnings can never be re-stolen, unless for other beginnings; and the despair of knowing how far we’ve walked, and thinking we’ve gone almost nowhere, would damn our drive all the more.

And so I empathize, with the same frustration that drives the bumper sticker guys, sometimes.

But they mistake the look in my eyes, when they think it makes me their brother. Because the old Arab proverb is dead wrong. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.

Because, my friend, America has already been blessed.

And that’s the test. What are we going to do with it?

I have a friend who knows what questions to ask. He’s newly joined a far older cast of Chosen People. And he weeps, inside, I know, over the struggle in his own peoples’ souls, over that word. Chosen.

What does it mean to be God’s favorite child?

Is there any wonder that that claim could inspire ire? That what might transpire is backlash, with teeth that gnash and bite. And snarl, “You think you’re so special?”

He knows some of his People actually want to say it. Yes. I am.

But so many others hear the word chosen, and see it is a calling. Not a special privilege, but falling on them, a special burden. To lead by example. Not to take from the world, but to give.

Who is America, I wonder, that anyone should ask for blessing for Her? Magnificent Beast, strong and astride the world. Already blessed, beyond compare.

What a mockery, that any filthy egotist would dare think She should have more. To hoard even more blessings to Herself, when She should call on herself to give.

That’s the America I live in hopes of seeing.

But maybe it’s just me.

I know the spirit driving that car, in front of me, with that bumper sticker, isn’t likely to be so generous.

“God Bless America,” it says to us.


Why? Is She sick?

God, I mean?

Or maybe it’s just me.

excerpt from "SunDown, at Gordias"

Was the psychonaut's
solution to the psycho knot
psycho--or not?

(Or naught)?

The Hitch

The Hitch

You know.

You know more
than you let on

Much more than you betray

Great slimy angel-whore
you've been good to me

You really have

been swell to me

Tell them you came & saw
& look'd into my eyes
& saw the shadow
of the guard receding
Thoughts in time
& out of season
The Hitchhiker stood
by the side of the road
& leveled his thumb
in the calm calculus
of reason.

-Jim Morrison, from "Paris Journal"
published in THE AMERICAN NIGHT
(Among the last lines he ever wrote)

The Hitchiker stood by the side of the road and leveled His thumb in the calm calculus of Reason. In a light and airy season, I eased up on the accelerator, and stopped, by that side of the road.

Thinking.

The Hitchhiker got in, on the passenger side. And I was thinking, about something I might talk about with him. Thinking, that there once was a house, a house that Plato built.

The construction materials weren’t his, of course. He’d stolen them from Pythagoras, who’d stolen them from Arjuna, who’d stolen them from Gronk-a-a-Obunk. Still, as I looked at the Hitcher, I for the first time was sure, from the knowledge voluminous reading had given me and taken away, that Plato was responsible.
Perhaps the Hitcher had, for kicks, tried to break on through the walls of the Cave, but now, all he seemed to be doing was going down a road. The road was the only way home.

In Plato’s world, I remarked to him, like a Russian doll nested inside a bigger doll, ad infinitum—ad astra, ad nauseum--was the continent called Mathematics. And the biggest republic in Mathematics was a society called Calculus.
This society was ever in change, given its amazingly powerful economy. And, self-centered as the citizens of that society became, the culture devoted itself to, well, itself. To the study of its own change.
At least how this should be done was open to debate. One tribe, who called themselves Derivation, looked to living in the present and wanted to know what the immediate rate of change was. They liked to preach that they lived in the here and now.
I think I knew one once. Apparently living in the here and now involves dressing in all manner of saffron gowns. Or chanting. Or lighting one’s self on fire.
I wouldn’t know, you know. I don’t live in the here and now. In fact, I’m not even here, right now.

The other tribe in the kingdom of Mathematics did quite the opposite. Reactionaries that they were, they kept asking: “Where did we come from?” They wanted to return to their Golden Age, an age that never really was--though apparently it did involve gold, especially that sent by little old retired ladies who watched a lot of TV and liked the word “Hallelujah.”
Ms. Rigby, we hardly knew ye.
Though the reactionaries could have been called Reverse Derivation, they were ashamed of being inadvertently associated with Derivation--and “their kind”--and called their own tribe--of course--Integration.
I think they thought it was a free act of will. But in that belief, like the act, I think they had no choice.

The Hitchhiker leveled his thumb, as if to ask whether I was even there.
I told him no, and I told him to get back in.
He did. It was an easy step.

Reason is logic. Logic has steps.
Each step butts against the one before and after. Nicely, there is no room in-between to sneak in the “great unwashed.”
On this, at least, in the Cave where those had stepped outside a model of a cave could believe they had broken on through, the tribes of the Derived and the Integrated could agree. The republic of Calculus might be split, yet e plurius unum.

It was One. It had to be One. Because The One was Perfect.

It had better be Perfect. In the world of Plato, everything genuinely “real” was.
And if they weren’t in the world of Plato after all, if there were no such world, that would be really, really bad.

For one thing, all the road signs would need to be changed.

I pressed the pedal and turned the Great Wheel in the calm calculus of the season ...

Reason is calm. Reason also can be Discrete. Or Reason can forgo privacy.
That, by the way, in the republic of Calculus, is called being “Continuous.”
But in either case, Reason’s steps of change are constant. If you can get over the tricky hurdle of agreeing to stick to discretion or continuity.

Occasional troublemakers always seem to step out of line, but they are caught and sent to gulags. Or reservations. Or Cleveland.

The Derived staked their claim to Reason’s constancy by saying if you derive anything enough times, you get a constant.
Of course, when you Derive one more time, you get Zero, Zilch, Nada. Nothing.
Did I mention Zilch?

This made the Integrated nervous. Reverse course too late, when you’ve derived down to zero, and try to integrate zero ... well, hell, you can’t.
It could be anything.
You know, it could be Everything.
It could be Nothing.
Ex nihilo ... nihil?

The desert moon was bright, an eye in the Void, and I drove the Hitcher on. We had seen no one for miles, but, all smiles, he sang, like he had all the Time in the world.
“Tiiiime,” I sang back to him, “is on my siiiiide ...”
He looked at me as if to say, No, it’s not. Wrong poet.
I looked back, as if to ask what he meant. Me being out of Time.
Perhaps I had met my killer, on the road. He squirmed like a toad in the leather seat, and nodded back in my direction. Indicating me.
“Well, I’ve never met myself,” I said. “At least, I’m not sure I’d recognize me, if I did.”
And, as if eager to be hitching a ride back in the other direction from the passenger seat of my car, he stuck out his thumb again.
“Smart-ass,” I said.
He brayed. As if to say it’s good to be a large mammal.

But maybe he was right. Maybe, just maybe, if we turned back--maybe, just maybe, with a little ... (luck?) ... we’d make it to L.A. before the dawn.
Slamming shots, with any luck. With luck, we could even be to the Whisky-a-Go-Go, before it finally closed for the Night.
With Luck. I always liked Luck. She has nice legs.

We could even keep going, a convertible sailing out over the water, into the West, until we crossed the Pacific to the other side, until we ended up in Tokyo, maybe, or Shanghai; into the West, until it became the East. Until all polarities ceased.
Like it or not, the Hitcher was with me now. We were going my way, down my road.
My way, where the liquor is quicker, the blood is thicker, and old Uncle Albert is waiting for us to say we’re sorry, playing Schrodinger cradling some Gordian Cat, as we beat Uncle Al with his own dice once again.

And the only thing that matters is chasing down the sunset, until it becomes the world’s first unwasted dawn.