For Poems for Robin

Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest

I slept under rhododendron
All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deep in my pockets
Barely able to sleep.
I remembered when we were in school
Sleeping together in a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen.
Now our friends are married
You teach school back east
I dont mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.

A spring night in Shokoku-ji

Eight years ago this May
We walked under cherry blossoms
At night in an orchard in Oregon.
All that I wanted then
Is forgotten now, but you.
Here in the night
In a garden of the old capital
I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
I remember your cool body
Naked under a summer cotton dress.

An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji

Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.

December at Yase

You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
“Again someday, maybe ten years.”

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange.
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I’ve always known
where you were—
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.

I didn’t.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.

And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.

Poem: "Four Poems for Robin" Gary Snyder, from "The Back Country" 1968.
Painting: Han Meilin, "On a Moonlit Night"

3M7 Ages

Almost There

When I relax with thoughts, then my brain
hovers New York, my third eye glides with the view like a hawk
Defined, my mind is automatic, rhymes are tragic
Fount in the attic, lost you in Asia, Minor, find you in amazin
beams I'm supreme my mindstate is like a dream, stargazer
Scarred from the radar, beyond Gods and bombs and airwaves
and channels; desert rats and camels, reptiles and mammals
Stand wisdom Daniel, and man who is Samuel
Ezekiel's gonna overthrow in trees in hills and mountains
Fountains rivers lakes brooks and ponds
Inhabit by rabbit snakes and swans
Energy is solar life barreling beyond the sun controller
over Jehovah through the days of Noah, tremendous speed
I ride the octavus seed, black seed, Sea of Caspainian
Persian Gulf all the way to the Mediterranean
City of Atlantis, skin is gettin tight as a mantis
Styles organic, mechanic seagulls, swings over the eagles
Soars over the cathedral built durin the medieval
Shall remain in the ordained Byzantine Empire
Take you higher one stage is a mass of fire, but sting like
Niger your archrival Constantine, Dark Ages got sparked
through the stages, 3M7 ages
Constantinople ruled mobile seeking global filled with
motion over the odds of oceans, scan the land, every inch
of the sand, never bring plans, animals woman child and man
Beasts and fish every inch length and width
come through the abyss, over Egypt..
This odyssey, more angles than photography
More exotic pusses erotic like pornography..
I'm a space cadet from a tape in the cassette, player
By fasting and prayer, I'm passing the ozone layer
I meditate in the mere, top of skyscrapers
Grew through a nature, droppin blew through a vapor
Then there's paper, the wind that take ya, quiet as
the breath in your nose appear in the cold from the depths of my soul
which has no weight, constant rotate at a slow rate
Through the black hole, purple rainbows in Kuwait
Destination operation alternation of the sun
Circuit stars positions seasons that weigh a ton
And mortalic through galaxies I'm burning, it's like
the accomplished, plus the comets keeps turning
Beautiful virgin release every burden, I travel when I preheated
the urban, hit the firmament and shock waves are permanent
Rays of children gaze and stand amazed, so long I'm gone
to the place Paul apostle was born
which is in Tarses, small city in Solicia
Then I move South, all the way to Nigeria, golden tigers
travel all the way to Syria, Mesopatamia
all the way to Syria, Euphrates to the urban child these
of the high land located near Iran
Fertile crescent, til I reach a section, from each direction
From East to West and, from North to South
All over the equator, Neptune from the womb
of the creator; Killah Priest dyin sheep from the Middle East
I'm almost there so prepare I say peace... peace...



Rap: Killah Priest, from his album "Heavy Mental" 1998.

Tom O' Bedlam Among the Sunflowers

To have gold in your back yard and not know it...
I woke this morning before your dream had shredded
And found a curious thing: flowers made of gold,

Six-sided—more than that—broken on flagstones,
Petals the color of a wedding band.
You are sleeping. The morning comes up gold.

Perhaps I made those flowers in my head,
For I have counted snowflakes in July
Blowing across my eyes like bits of calcium,

And I have stepped into your dream at night,
A stranger there, my body steeped in moonlight.
I watched you tremble, washed in all that silver.

Love, the stars have fallen into the garden
And turned to frost. They have opened like a hand.
It is the color that breaks out of the bedsheets.

This morning the garden is littered with dry petals
As yellow as the page of an old book.
I step among them. They are brittle as bone china.

Poem: "Tom O' Bedlam Among the Sunflowers" Thomas James, from "Letters to a Stranger" 1973.
Painting: "Fog Horns" by Arthur Dove, Oil, 1929, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.