Others Foolishly Say

[verse]
Am I destined
or just pushed around
by indirect genetics?
Do hands of time clasp me?
Do waves of words tamper with my
timid freedom with fine strings of meaning?
Or am I my own man?

If I were one
molecule from
ancient heavy breath of troubadors
could my song be new?
Would I owe the lines I write now
to Shakespeare, Chaucer, or some great unknown
uttering ancient genius?

[chorus]
Some know, some fear, they are not wise but taught
some accept the day
then others foolishly say
they are their own flower pot.

[verse]
Gilgamesh and
Akhenaten
up and gone for unforgotten lands
carved out of the sands
took me with them between bookends.
Every muscle in my body cried,
Haven’t I been here before?

[chorus]
Some know, some fear, they are not wise but taught
some accept the day
then others foolishly say
they are their own flower pot.

[verse]
Mother, father,
thanks for nothing.
Where is it, the past? You’d best beware.
In flesh or in air?
Keep your eye on it as you flee from it.
Actions from habit, sighs from auld lang syne
taste like a long lost wine.

Aristotle
St Augustine
tower in my back yard like the mountains.
Navigators sail,
aviators tell me, take off,
suddenly I can’t go back again,
whether or not I want to.

[chorus]
Some know, some fear, they are not wise but taught
some accept the day
then others foolishly say
they are their own flower pot.

[verse]
A7 ///
G7 ///
A7 /// Gm7 ///
Am7 C / D AMa7 ///
Am7 C F#7 G7 B7 ///
AMa7 /// G6 /// D6 /
Bm7 / A7 ///

[chorus]
D6 /// //// ////
Am7 /// Bm7 ///
G7/D /// G13 /// Dm7 /// DMa9 ///

Consanguinity

Where the two rivers meet
or three depending on how you name them
the old-timers are divided –
the old, the very old, the getting old
and the old-minded of all ages.
Streams swirling in a rocky bed.

Not to mention the newcomers,
the strangers and the interlopers,
the tourists who stay behind,
workers from neighboring towns.
Not to mention the young.
More streams in the same rocky bed.

The biggest flow descends
with the interstate out of the steep canyon
stone walls above snow water
joining with the lesser meandering
flow from the the big ski valley.
Joined they careen and bounce westward.

Not to mention the hot springs
oozing out of the mountains at a dozen places
mineraled and sulphered.
Not to forget rambunctious creeks
bustling down gorges and gulches
spitting themselves into the mainline.

So much stuff to consider
more concealed particulars than real
knowledge, more types than kinds
adding up in arhythmic arithmetic
to confounded compounding
of conciliatory consequence.

Do they talk to each other –
the core, the vibrant, the peripheral?
Does conversation get negotiated
are facts hashed or rehashed
in the torrent or in eddies
until a result results?

Like stories form narratives
like evidence mortars up to an argument
like magical numbers always
add up to ineffable one
the confluence of influences
is never as chaotic as
our opinions about it.

Thus, the rivers and the other
inputs formulate a calculated output
just as the threads of many minds
wind into the political gaggle
that is confluential insight
and we weave consanguinity
from anxious diversity
and we quench dry fields
from here to the ocean.

Not to mention mixing
my view with your spirit
by means of expressed sentiment
by means of fire on element
by means of alchemical amalgam
like nurturing of cognate culture
as always has been practiced
by artists, wordsmiths and engineers –
ancient, modern and
visionary.

Mirrors

Bird seed along the rail in piles
near window in the morning sun
so I can see them feed
as I wake up and read
more lies than news.
They come and they go, wild.

I wonder if they see me moving
or do they see their own reflection.
Why skittish at an image?
Don’t they know my intentions?
Flying from the hand that gives
seems a silly way to live.

Those fearful creatures
who flee reality
their face by mirror
their soul by tremor
their feet warmed by the wire
they outrun smoke into the fire.

Cat wanders into his kitchen
starts growling hissing at the oven.
Who is that dark opponent
silent and cool as glass?
Movement as sly
as his own in reply.

Man on the moon like he was king –
king over all of his making.
Who dares to utter doubt
undermining his might?
No life beyond
decreed phenomenon.

I told myself when I was young
how it was going to turn out when
years went and came to be
just like I said, I said,
Find in your mirror
only future, no history.

Those fearful creatures
who flee reality
their face by mirror
their soul by tremor
their feet warmed by the wire
they outrun smoke into the fire.

Betweenness

My hand against the approaching
storm twenty miles over the hills
rough like river bed colored red
will it pass away in the rain?

With fingers spread either side
to my eye, back or palm,
beyond and between the divide
there it is, the blank of calm.

The other day – it was a Friday –
for the first time in my scientific life
I saw and observed and analyzed
the previous life of a black hole.

Burning unburnt at degrees
unheard of by my instruments
in flames consumed by a freezing
collapsing tube of brass and glass.

So much – it struck my busy mind –
so much nothing across darkness
the galaxies and nebulae around
its penetrability keep their distance.

My attention – it’s all I have –
tugs on my bridle guiding me left
toward objects that conjure up
memories of being together with

others. Some I loved and some
consumed love and replaced
reality with the hum of space –
that insubstantial betweenness.

The bit in my teeth tugs right
back to where relationships
began as I climbed out of the night
in the roots of the tree of eclipse.

Confused by the existence seen
by the loneliness felt searing in
the proto-ether of alien voices
ridden like Magellan the waves

eternally unsure what to make of
the arm’s length, the stride’s elapse,
the nose I use to judge truth
sniffed at my being a teenager.

Memory moving on, I was soon
a young adult surrounded by
and drawn to the mostly imagined
creatures of not my gender.

Like dippers, like chairs, like not-
filled-in shapes of twins, crabs,
sisters and horseheaded mobs
of Venusians or Martians,

they curved and spun around
my head and in my head calling
out what I thought they should be
calling out to an astronomer.

Did others, I wonder, swim in
the same length and radius of ego?
Did this far, untouchable betweenness
dwarf their punctuated vida?

Several light-years later after
marriage had twisted and unfolded
an already bent view of the universe
it was all all breach, all loophole.

You know don’t you the lacunae –
the chasms across which connections
are matched and mismatched casually
by the blowing of teary pollen?

They are the Oort and Trojan
time knots that suck our aeons
into seashell with ocean-sounding
white noise communicating

to us that we are fluid parts
of everything and everyone else
and that the effervescent quarks
of twilight beat our starry hearts.

At which point this I called poet
glances up and realizes
my diatribe of forelorn and hopeful
lyric comes from and goes to Isis.

She by sympathetic listening
heals heat and ministers to cold
experienced by fools cut off
by not holding or being held.

So now touched by caring
I am lunar, solar, quasar.
She holds all and I can cross
my sad self-hungry abyss.

Hopscotch

Start up one make that two
four and many more means
split to almost not the same modes
like peas from beans
like tooth from tongue from mere maw
undecided.

Toe by foot knee by jump
from here get gone headlong
from strong wiggle in the salty mud
from space flung mire
to where brain clings to itself
on the fence.

Prior to being sits the landscape
out depends on in taking counsel
what you are depends on your template
smooth with artful bumps.

Mother gives to generations
backward forward sins of the father
revolutionized into spirit
character water-born.

Lifted up high and dropped
like a bird who can’t fly
who sees fields without contours or crops
in wind untried
with arms outstretched to catch lift
not to die.

Couch on the Beach

Couch on beach stays sun dried
watch out for exposed springs.
Surf can’t understand sand
not meant to feel such things.

Below all air stairway
moves full by foot untouched
wet life extends in play
real hands brush off elsewhere.

Stripped down to shorts I dab at blood
scraped up on rocks on my way down.
Feet knees waist deep splashed up to here
healed washed perplexed eyes can not run.

Behind my seat circumference
hence in outside sum’s range falls flat.
Reach not know not being beyond
as long as we on ease sit trapped.

If I give in what then –
will I be spat back sound
to lie til dry on courdoroy
warm as late afternoon?

In such places and times
confidence in self wanes.
Too close to now we slip
out of our bag unzipped.

Bronze With Wit

[verse]
Blooms in winter
in the wet cold soil
without sun or toil
insight comes out
pink as cheeks.

Reaches no height
higher than you are
roots in what we learned
last year before
we forgot.

[bridge]
In youth innocence
in fall fighting city hall
with the sense of thrill
the kick of clearing up fuss
making clouds luminous
charmed by lust.

[verse]
Swells like hankering
after excess unity
after dreamy sleep
fraught with humanity
bronzed with wit.

[intro]
F /// Gb9 /// E6 /// Eb7 ///

[verse]
Db6 /// Fm7 ///
Gb /// Fm7 ///
AbMa7 ///
Fm7 /// C7 ///
Eb7 /// Bb7 ///

[bridge]
Ab9 /// ///
G9 /// G11 ///
A9 /// DMa9 ///
G9 /// CMa9 ///
[5/4] Fm7 //// DMa9 // Bb7 /
[4/4] F7 /// C7 ///

Sense of Where

[A]
Centuries in a minute twinkling –
how long have we been in love this fine day?
Pull curtains open wide,
let in those egyptians and their
lewdly paired gods,
pregnant with distant lands.

Stronger than we are true longer
than the night we just slept through warm but
fitfully listlessly.
Older do we not see our young
badly sadly
placing their faith in code?

[B]
Kids read only on screens
children rapt in blips
streams used to be wild
and wet, not online.

Back when we ate from farms
fresh fruit off lush trees
once work was finished
we cooked honestly.

[A]
Journeys usually have startings,
progress and places to sit down to rest
also a sense of where
steps start, trod, lean, go
principally off
cliffs we’re responsible for.

[B]
Hearing my daughters argue
politics standing above
the shredded blue canvas
cut with red slashes

I know they know where
the backbone of better
sense than we ever had
urges us onward.

[A]
[4/4] Eb /// Eb / G7 /
Ab / G7 / ////
Eb9 /// Edim7(ii) ///
G7 / Ab7 / A7 / Bb7 /
[3/4] Am7 // Fdim7 //
[3/4] BbMa7 // Cm7 // [4/4] BbMa7 ///

[B]
[4/4] F9 / E9 / Cm7(iii) / G6 /
A7 / B7 / GMa9(x) / Fm7(viii) /
B6(vii) / Gm7/Bb(vi) / D7 ///
Abm7b5 /// Bb13 /// ////

Porch Swung

If we go round the sun or
moon or whether we
descend into into
the underworld where beastly
versions of our fears
light crystallized eastly
gleaming in our ears
promising spring with a song
so true, not long.

Let us sit on the porch
celebrating the dawn and the dark.
Gather the clan and guitars.
Assemble the band, play hard.

By day we sing our praises
for our Mother Earth.
Then night stands up crazy.
Its harmony gives birth to
what cannot be said
without a nutty party –
animals and stars dancing in the yard –
so true, no lies.

Let us sit on the porch
celebrating the dawn and the dark.
Gather the clan and guitars.
Assemble the band, play hard.

[verse]
Eb7 ///
Cm7 ///
A7#5b9 /// Cm ///
Bb ///
Cm9 ///
EbMa9 /// Gm7 ///
D7 /// Bb69 ///
Eb9 /// Cm7 ///

[chorus]
Cm9 ///
Cm9 /// ////
Dm9 /// Eb9 ///
C13 /// FMa9 ///

In My Centerless Circle

[A]
Directional quagmire
intentional tropical storm
in as many circles as a ball and chain
on feet and brain.

[B]
Who invented this bubbling cosmos
not us
somone divine or
someone with a sense of humor?

[C]
In my center
rather in my sphere of spheres
far, near, now and ever
misfire.

[A]
D7 /// ////
D7 /// ////
F#m7 /// Am ///
Am /// Em7 ///

[B]
Am6 /// //// ////
Am6 /// F ///
Am9 /// Em7 ///
D /// Bm ///

[C]
Dm / Cm /
GMa7 /// F#m7 / CMa7 / A7 ///
C13 / BbMa7 / BbMa7 / A9 C A7 FMa7 //
G7 ///