from XI

from XI

...

Shining spring rain 

O scud steaming up out of the deep sea

full of portents of sundown and islands, 

beat upon my forehead 

beat upon my face and neck

glisten on my outstretched hands, 

run bright lilac streams

through the clogged channels of my brain

corrode the clicking cogs the little angles

the small mistrustful mirrors 

scatter the shrill tiny creaking 

of mustnot darenot cannot 

spatter the varnish off me 

that I may stand up 

my face to the wet wind 

and feel my body 

and drenched salty palpitant April 

reborn in my flesh. 

I would spit the dust out of my mouth

burst out of these stiff wire webs

supple incautious 

like the crocuses that spurt up too soon

their saffron flames

and die gloriously in late blizzards 

and leave no seed. 

Off Pico 

Poem: John Dos Passos from the poem XI, Phases of the Moon, which is part of his book "Pushcart to the Curb" 1922.

Photo: JG

in a sense

In A Sense

most thoughts walking
and to the street beat
not listening to music so close
but maintaining exposure
to elemental truth
to the everyday hum and drum
opening upward with each egress
entitlement and enlistment
eerily enumerative
but who's counting
step it off from memory
feel it like first forays
in forrests full of foolishness
foghornish fidelities
quiet now for shames unnamed
sitting to whet with whiskey
wild wonderings while we wander
nina in native tongue
blondes blithely abound
familial memories with
this language and lassitude
what it does for my mind
(last line unintelligible)

Poem: Robert Lescatre

sieve

sieve

am I just a perception junky
wandering and wondering
through all these bits and pieces
that come through wholly
is that the fix
this randomness like the Roots
bumping empty this hamlet's
watering hole on a saturday
can you really be chasing
something you don't know
and still be considered sane
or is all real art the creation
of more horizons you didn't know
and the spell of smell

Poem: Robert Lescartre

Photo: JG

pull a string, a puppet moves...

pull a string, a puppet moves...

each man must realize

that it can all disappear very 

quickly:

the cat, the woman, the job

the front tire, 

the bed,  the walls, the 

room; all our necessities

including love-

rest on foundations of sand-

and any given cause, 

no matter how unrelated: 

the death of a boy in Hong Kong

or a blizzard in Omaha...

can serve as your undoing. 

all your chinaware crashing to the 

kitchen floor, your girl will enter

and you'll be standing, drunk, 

in the center of it and she'll ask: 

my god, what's the matter? 

and you'll answer: I don't know, 

I don't know...

Poem: Charles Bukowski, from "Burning in Water Drowning in Flame. Poems 1972-1973"

Photo: Tony Rohrbach