notes on messengers

to search is to find nothing
or live
semantics, ce soir
or do you wake soon
'neath nearly nine noons
the thumped chest of
cartoon macaroons
tuned to swoon on solo
bassoon bah duhm duhm
sell my soul to Gerry Mulligan's muse
but save these outlines for
firey fittings at best
there are so many ways
to end up right where you
started, and you spend all your time
getting there
welcome

Poem: "notes on messengers" Robert Lescatre
Photo: JG

Romantic Movement

to Nancy

The boat tilts on your image on the waves between a fire of foam and the flower of moon rays, these the flags of your dreaming lips. I'm watching Venus on the ogre sky and a continent in cocoons.

Soon all the butterflies of desire shall manifest o prescience of life becoming poetic... and poetry the incense of the dream. A street and a forest interchange their clothing, that tree of telephones, this television of nuts and berries - the air edible music.

King Analogue
Queen Image
Prince Liberty...
... Garden of imperious images, life is a poem someday to be lived: the feast of our hearts on fire, the nerves supplying spice, blood coursing a glow of insects, our eyes the dahlias of torrential ignition.

The whisper of the inter-voice to wrap you in the mantle of marvelous power, with the secret protection of the forest that falls asleep in fire whose ores become transmined only for love - all your steps will lead to the inner sanctum none but you behold, your shadow putting on the body of metaphoric light.

The stone I have tossed into the air of chance shall come to you one great day and exfoliate the original scarab, the carbuncle of delights, the pomegranate inviolate, the sonorous handkerchief of the Comte de Saint-Germaine, all the reinvented perfumes of ancient Egypt, the map of the earth in the Age of Libra when the air shall distribute our foods, the sempiternal spectrum of sundown at Segovia (the stork carrying the golden egg from the Templar's tower) Chief Seattle's lost medicine pouch, our simultaneous presence in all the capitals of Europe while traveling Asia and listening to the million-throated choir of tropical birds, your lost candlewax empire, a madrone forest to live inside of, which we can wrap in a set of "secret bags" and open on our wanderlust, the turbulent cry beneath the oceans, the extinct bird calls in a magic vessel Christian Rosenkreutz dropped on his way out of the Damcar, beads of coral dissolving the last motors, the redolent eyes of the first born seers, the key to the bank of sanity, the ship of honey at the height of storms through which we sail to new islands rising from the sunken continents and the bridge between sleep and waking we will traverse in constant possession of "the great secret" become transparent as a tear drop - with no other work but the genius of present life.

Poem: "Romantic Movement" Philip Lamantia
Photo: J.G.

John Muir on Mt. Ritter:

After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.

Poem: "John Muir on Mt. Ritter" Gary Snyder
Photo: Jennifer Mapes

s/a

revisiting a side two
long unheard
could be something or anything
and is, like dialectics
didn't rene get there first
the ideas so close they
appear to share boundaries
like us
or albums
our always will be's
and never could have's
mirrors uncluttered with flak
shards of people and places
reflecting light through presence
I know they won't believe it
I know they're gonna love it

Poem: "s/a" Robert Lescatre
Photo: Serena Sohn

Petrichor

We are the poets of life that
live like verbs,
sing likes rhymes,
dance like syllables.

When given a great opportunity we
get drunk and ruin everything.

We know nothing of regret or shame because we can
laugh
cry
write.

We are like children
without hindsight or second chances
when we mutter incomprehensible jabber
and feel close to god.

We are men who match mountains,
women who walk on water,
we are fools who feel that finding love
is the greatest miracle of all.

Poem: "Petrichor" James Gagnon
Photo: Serena Sohn

Feb. 27th

As the yellow and blue day
hesitates, pulls back, then gives way
to the twilight on the horizon
all we can do is watch as
our lips like clouds
touching and parting
cover and reveal
the certain stars spinning above us.

Poem: "Feb. 27th" James Gagnon
Photo: Jennifer Mapes

Slurry Drop

Video: Shot by Serena Sohn somewhere deep within a Northern California forest...