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.

September

When self contradiction creates a chasm between perception and reality, when action performs without a sense of premeditation, when the gulf between you and it becomes a mere gully, when the animal instinct is raw and uncontrollable:

Come elegant autumn and court my imagination, flirt with perfect poesy and stir summer’s drowsy waft. Not a fall day forgotten, nor a cool evening gone to waste, moonshine, starlight, streaming thoughts lost in the fathomless eons of space, the canvas on which knowledge and creativity combines, the palate on which colors swirl and new pigments are born. September tolls, the summer lolls and all that was sanguine feels winter at it’s heels, only during a Colorado September do the seconds feel like minutes and the minutes feel like hours and the hours, as they turn from green to yellow to orange to brown, feel like days- and what days they are! Days of ago when life was simple, life without distraction, life with the drunkards wit and the mistresses eye. Life, as autumn lingers this near future like a hanging Getz note, that resembles a strong, distilled liquor, it’s potent days and their lasting effects, their dizzying provocations, their intoxicating sights and smells and sounds. Ah to be drunk with life this September ere, to watch with beating blood the migrating birds’ flight south, to enjoy the familiar fall constellations as they slowly creep, smoothly slide, confidently crawl, across the night sky. The foothills a symphony of sound like Fitzgerald prose- awaken, take flight, capture the wild wind called fall, float about and spy, carefully consider her nature, her pigments, find her ticklish places, breathe in her perfumes sweet, tongue her flavors, paint her idiosyncrasies. September in all of her golden arcadia, dressed in her formal glitter, aspen leaves dancing, shivering, hymn singing, rhyme, September secretly secreting sappy syllables that slip slowly down your tongue, that slide in symphonic sounds out your mouth, that silently sink into the leaf laden ground and rattle against waterless roots. The evening air that cools like menthol and satisfies like a woman, September, a patient woman who knows exactly when. Hale moon light, crisp raspberry air and pennant races, its fall and the city poets will daydream at the bases of towering buildings, they will smell the stone and glass, they will hear the sun’s glancing reflection, they will feel the taxi horns and the pedestrians passing words, they will see rhyme braiding and slanking itself down the avenues and alley ways, all the literature, the beautiful poetry swirling, the language of the seasons changing- take wing, find flight and soar above the drowsy drones ! From this familiar vantage autumn cathedral bells peal from within, the smell of paints, ink and dusty novels, the taste of coffee roast mingling, rising, exploding the senses, overwhelming, sprint towards the setting sun slipping behind Pikes Peak, chase the season that’s so quick to fade, fade, fade into the snowy winter near. Sketch September with careful charcoal smears and fill in the gaps with warm colored crayons. Sweet seasonal inspiration! Take hold of this pen and move it as you like, fill these pages with smears and colors, address the fall constellations, whisper to the preparing animals, hark to us, the dreamers and poets, for your voice is tantalizingly right on time, and your song that encourages with subtle notes, that inspires with natural beauty, that seduces with a fall scent sweet and simple, sexy and soft. Alleluia!

And remember this September
who is the voice of her that you hear when you are dreaming
that no matter the weather
which is turning cool and gathering strength and energy
spend every evening
that are still plenty long and lasting and orange above mother Peak
writing poetry
that is the scent of the soul, the keeper of peace, the bearer of all that one needs to thrive.

Poem: "September" James Gagnon
Painting: Charles Partridge Adams, "Looking Across South Park" 1897

The Messenger

There is some sentry at the rim of winter
Fed with the speech the wind makes
In the grand belfries of the sleepless timber.
He understands the lasting strife of tears,
And the way the world is strung;
He waits to warn all life with the tongue of March's
bugle,
Of the coming of the warrior sun.
When spring has garrisoned up her army of water,
A million grasses leave their tents, and stand in rows
To see their invincible brother.
Mending the winter's ruins with their laughter,
The flowers go out to their undestructive wars.

Walk in the woods and be witnesses,
You, the best of these poor children.

When Gabriel hit the bright shore of the world,
Yours were the eyes saw some
Star-sandalled stranger walk like lightning down the
air,
The morning the Mother of God
Loved and dreaded the message of an angel.

Poem: "The Messenger" Thomas Merton, 1944.
Photo: JG