Postcard 183

Inasmuch as you did to the least of these, you did it to me.

It should be clear by now, that what
you did not do to these least beings
is what you have done to your own self

There ought to be music filling these streets
but you arent singing. Tightly
as a chain constrains its own steel
from ringing out, Wraiths!
Arent you starving for every single thing
you hunger for?

Call hunger virtue, call fullfillment vice and
there is your ghastly security. There are
no starvation songs. The least of these is
a flowing spring, juicy with experience
outside your door locked safety

You did as you did to me, as to
them as to yourself -- no son nor
daughter of divinity, no prophet
of singing,  you have refused
your own abundance

You shall have none and
shall lose even that you have
that false security

Postcard 182

I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.
It is the unknowing of what is wide
The broadness these four walls, bodylike, enclose

Are there parties? There must be parties,
celebrations, wild nights: tremulous
and frightening imaginings in this tight cell

Roads and choices. Are there new flavors?
We miss the old tastes, bonded to a feeling
on lips, in arms, on eyes, on fingertips

There must be stories to be told
with more color than these slate grey stones
than could be believed, that would

leave us with nights of ceiling gazing suspicion
and light argument between us -- the only color
we recall is blue, a shred of some free sky

You did not visit and it is the unknowing of why
Perhaps you are too occupied with work and family
all those obligations of life rolling by

But then it occurs to me: perhaps
you are too in prison, bound
by hard lines & the same mysteries

Postcard 181

I was naked and you did not clothe me.

Well, thats not quite true. You wrapped me

with control and draped me with your gaze

Like cut exotic flowers wilting in a vase

But again you strip me naked with your lust

just to fig leaf me with your shame. Then you

spread me across old chain-link and corragate

Flaking shopping bags, brittle water jugs, my

delicious flesh - wasteland trash. Desert junk --

unspooled wire, coppper stripped, abandoned

cars without tires, windows, seats, doors,

ripped of any value, rusting in the sun, brown

as my skin. Single tennis shoes & old t-shirts

You say that I am waste, but you came 

to pick me up in new and shiny trucks, you

had airconditioned rooms to put me in. Even

then, you did not clothe me. You had

doctors come and pull me apart so 

you could spread your gaze within. As if

hate turned on itself was somehow there

As if kindness toward any 

being was your unforgiven sin

Postcard 180

I was a stranger and you did not invite me into your home

Your home is full of strangers
Thieves are honored at your table-head
Scorpions nest under the boards

Predators tuck your children into bed,
hand searching under quilt
while they tell them comfort stories
and kiss them on the head

Hat in hand, I stood
in simple need outside your bolted door
I could hear the muffled wolfish voice of
a vaunted liar spooling tales
and pacing on your well worn floor

There's strangers then there's strangers
There's stories then there's lies
That uncle that is known by all
though none dare meet his eyes


I feel the chill creeping toward the bone
The moon is drifting down
and your home is yes a home
But the warmth is a deceit

The consumptive man,
cloth book in hand
coughs hate and ill in every ear
The warmth is breath of that disease

You welcome and you honor crooks
of every varied stripe and deed
But fear the stranger at your door
with simple creature's need

Postcard 179

I was thirsty and you did not give me a drink

We are bookended by deserts
Any water found is owned and sold
as covetous as clouds are held
in this misers sky

We are becoming well to well
wanderers with long distance eyes
and swollen dusty tongues that
lose memory of wet words

like swell, wash, tide
Wave and drowning, mildew, mist
Riches of thought uncounted
in untroubled minds

Now, focused and squinted
like mid-day's valley searching eyes;
puckered like split lips searching dry and dumb
through dessicate clouds of lost and ancient thought

Coming up with only -- water, drink, and blood
And thirst, dear god, and thirst
You did not give us a drink; we are grateful though --
Each day a new word for wind

Postcard 178

For I was hungry and you did not feed me

We came to you with bellies round and empty as a leeward sail

We could have shared with you the glowing knowledge scribed

in darkness upon the thin tissue of the other side

There, hunger 's gnaw recedes like bluing flame

There, we stand and sway like sliver-printed phantoms

There, our true natures depart our forms and given names

There, we are still living witness at the court where death presides

For we were hungry and you were filled with fear of finding

your formless nameless selves within our yellowed hollow eyes

We came to you with open groans resonate

We came to you with blank and quiet sighs

The open empty space to fill; the blank syntax

to offer words like love and charity and life

For we came with opportunity and you declined

Postcard 177

Old time moves like a stone wheel

and is plastered in chipped beauty

Old time makes short work of plans and youth

Old time's ever open maw grinds on relentless
Look about you: see the teeth upon
everything you see. See the mighty tongue
wrapped around each being

Old time trucks no mark nor measurement
Has no count as ring of tree
Look ahead at gullet's void, always steady
always distant, ever ready to be the present
for man, for beast, for stone for star

For in old time's thick hands
fingers steady, nimble as rust
is every fed thing

Old time is grace itself: smooth
when slow, and smooth at speed

Old time is your constant friend
Time is on your honest side
Old time won't let you hide or obfuscate

Old time's mouth
is too full of us to lie

Postcard176

In the beggining we were in our mothers
We needed no myths to buttress the womb
All was steady steadty, swell recede and seady steady
We needed no words for want, content
Light changed all that.

Father is a symbol; mother is the world
Are there steps until steps?
Are there hands until hands?
There are no lines until clipped words
No succor but love in arms,
like center pulling gravity

In the end we must struggle
to recall continuoulsy that myth
at best, is fluid analogy
A swinging bridge between ridged edifice
built careless on stomped earth

Without, as with distant fathers --
violence and idolotry,
cold verbs applied to objects ruthless
The sad result of strife
toward nought but being free

But there are steps unto steps
there is hold into held. There is
ever -- beginning unto end
And that is -- even just
myth of fluid soul

Postcard 175

This summer day
the new moon leans in heavily
Hot!
I hope your dark magic
carries weight

We are reaping
each moment's mortality
fine as a blade
of dry grass

Whole fields of fine cuts
and green horizons browning
in these hottest days

Water seems to
leap into the air
sticky and red-rubbed
I bury my face in you:
your sweat and mine

Are we making love?

Edged by rough coppice
the blank moon hides
the gristly shapes
of cut and cull

Even in these burning days,
in dark respite, love
and children are somehow made
Magic is a desperate act

& aren't these
desperate summer days?

Postcard 174

This summer day I am the mounted reaper
Kick in the PTO on my screaming John Deere
green pentacle of blades
-- that's Power-Take-Off, 550 rpm
Too much for words

I'm taking off the top blade, seed head and germ
a whole season of grass
Am I an agent of order or entropy?
Insects, bugs, pinpoints in eternity
are stirred up in decimation
Godlike, I steer my chattering machine
in broad arching epochs of small inconsidered beings

To the birds I am benificent
Blue streaked swallows feast with joy,
pause at the bottom of their arcs
and offer me their rusty throats that from
my rumbling throne I may auger
their grateful celebration

They do swoop and I do too
dragging the sun across streaked fields
dragging a cloud of invective chaos or a banquet
Man-like I am burnt of sun grimy of skin
dusty of lung. Sweaty and taking break

God-like, I rest.
It is a matter or perspective
My tractor creaks, cools and sighs
I am an agent of edges and order hourly paid
An agent chewing drinking burning and cutting
Chaos and change -- life's fine pain

Postcard 173

Preparing for a trip:
Empty your pockets
Count coup
Pull apart the wash-bundled paper for pale glyphs
Sort coins to little ruin piles

Clothes are paramount
Only travel naked by boat
Footwear is imperative

A loose and fatalistic attitude is like the wind at your back
Saint Christopher takes up too much space
he's pushy besides

Nothing is like a good travel guide:
open immediately
then discard it

Be open in everything except luggage
Be generous of time. Be greedy of experience
Be gregarious with food and music

Be picky with travel companions
Bundle them with wool and coffee
Practice your traveling walk -- long strides

In some places --
look people in the eye
In other places -- dont

This is called organization
or lack thereof. I heard that once
I walked the other way

Walking is your best friend
a pencil never hurt nobody nor a small knife
Avoid planes unless absolutely necessary

Roll your clothes Roll your towel
Roll your coins Roll with the punches
gather no moss

Reserve space for soveniers
Only bring home small stones and good rugs
Travel by rug if you can

Postcard 172

We washed up upon the day
a soft cascade of pearls
We lap the shore, the sand,
the grains. A gentle cream
         that curls that curls that curls

Clustered toes paw at buttered dawn,
crack sun-browned crust of still
waves drawn - languid reaching
fingers beyond dune-fine arms

Eyes stretch milky wet with dawn
Long held breaths recede like
breaking fog. Winking lashes
comb pleasant grit -- salt drawn


Upon each young day we rise
we crest, we ceaseless beat
On equal play with budding sun
we shake up on lithe feet

We stretch toward ripening sun
-- its peeling waves of light
Soft and bowing doe-like bones
warmth stiffen tooth-strong and white

Yawn like an open bowl
tart cream, tart berry, tart tongue
A new alabaster lump
yielding. shaped. carved. dropped. undone

You wash up -- an idol
master cut by patient waves
Each day a pearl is softly
mother-wrought a layer more
            and all is sand softened to soft sand

Postcard 169

Cut up Poetry/Dialogue from article on Anchor-Outs of Sausalito

'When we start to be happy, its a hard transition
 -- because we've groomed each other.'
Dream frowned. 'They think its a murder
and not a man who foiled himself to death.'
I asked him what he meant.
'There is nothing here!' he shouted.

'I remember an acid trip I had,' he said,
stroking his yellow-white beard.'I was a sperm
swimming through my mother's vagina --
well, soon to be my mother --
and I wasn't trying very hard at it.
I looked around and the other sperm
were just floating around on their backs.
And you can beat the other sperm,
but you can get there at the wrong time of the month,
or end up down someone's throat or in their hand.
To arrive at the right time --
it's just so fucking off the wall.

Thanks, Bessie,' he said,
Bo cracked his beard.
'That's his broad.'

'I might be the oldest --shit,' said Bo.
'My birthday's coming up.
I'm getting ready to go.'
His shirt was open. 'It looked
like the life was sucked out of him.
They shut the whole park down.
They don't know what happened.'

'A guy started buying my art,'
he said, 'Then I stared thinking differently.
I'll drink this. That'll help.'
He sighed and reconsidered,
'No it won't.' He reconsidered again,
taking what must have been a very tepid, flat beer,
and shook his head, 'I'm lost.'

'Excuse me, its five-thirty.
I got to go home -- like the white people.'
He gave me a big grin and tipped his hat.
I told him I hoped to see him again soon.
'It doesn't matter!' he said,
offering me a friendly wave.
'I'm gonna take a hit of LSD,
just saying.'

Postcard 171

Cut up Poetry/Dialogue from article on Anchor-Outs of Sausalito

Larry often said: 'When it comes,
sayonara muchachos.'

I asked him where
the clementines all came from.
'Some lady brings them,' he said
'Her son lives offshore. It doesn't
mean that she will continue to do it,
just that that's what she's been doing.'

'They're there if you need 'em,' he
told me as I climbed aboard.
'But you won't.' He laughed
for some reason. 'You're born
with too many marbles. You can
afford to lose some. In fact,
you only need one marble:
the difference between
expectation and reality.'

'You want to be ninety-one?
Do a bunch of things they tell you
you shouldn't be doing. You'll get
to be a pallbearer for all your doctors.'

'I just started thinking: everything
I owned burned in a fire.' he said.
'Larry died,' he told me. 'There
was a fire in his trash can. He
leaned over to look at it. He had
his mask on. The oxygen ignited.
It went down his throat, across his body.'

'We got them out, but they were all dead.
Kids -- eighteen, nineteen, twenty. My
great lesson about war was you
either end up looking like this guy
or you end up looking down at this guy.'

'Sometimes you don't get them home
in the same pristine condition,'
he said matter-of-factly. 'That's not
what makes me smile,' he said.
'The happiness I get come from the toil.'

He opened his bag, pulled out
a clementine, and handed it to me.

Postcard 170

Cut up Poetry/Dialogue from article on Anchor-Outs of Sausalito

'I've been I love with cats for fifty years
They've always been part of my scene'

'Ah, a disciplined man,
we don't get many of those out here.'

'They're some hardcore people out there.
Heavy duty people. People
that have done some shit. A lot
of old smugglers, probably
some dope dealers. Its not
an easy life out there
--especially for women.'

'I came for the opportunities,'
she told me

'Her boat sank and she had another baby
I think some other boat might have hit it
-- might have put a hole in it.
They got it up a few times but
then they had to let it go. She wanted
to go home anyway.'

'Some guy got stabbed on it,' she said,
'its just a bunch of crazy shit
in this nice town.'

'It had happened a few months earlier.
The anchor-outs,' Dream said,
'sent him out as they did anyone
who ended up among them.
They built him a boat,
set it on fire, and
pushed it out to sea.'

'They make a boat for you.
Everyone puts what they got to say to you on it.
And they push it out and light it on fire.
Its a pretty good send off,' he said.
'Its like the Indians. They put
the ashes on the boat. If you keep
the ashes in an urn, you keep
the man locked up, and
he might come back someday
Shit, he might be back now.'

'Its hard to say,' he responded,
'Why do you love anything?
A friend of mine called the other day
and asks --"Do you love your wife?"
-- I thought, wow what a question.
I had to think about that. I meant
to ask him why he asked me that
I'll have to ask him, or maybe not.
There are some things you don't ask about.'

'But its not enough,' she said.
'So I'm trying to become famous.
-- Its the only way.'

Postcard 168

 Cut up Poetry/Dialogue from article on Anchor-Outs of Sausalito

'When you are talking about the anchor-outs,
you are talking about homeless people,' he said,
'people who live under a bridge in LA.'
I asked him what his point was,
and he shrugged and leaned away.

He spoke again about God:
'God was a great character lived down here.
Cuban guy. Said he was God.
He threw his harp and teeth out the window.'

'Every one tells you how bad it is out there
how you don't have a bathroom.
They don't let you enjoy it.
Everyone is so hung up on toilets.
You gotta show people there's another place
in the world other than where they live.'

'It was a great nickname place down here:
Thunderpussy, Sick Rick, Slick Rick,
Normal Norman, Abnormal Norman,
Nearly Normal Norman. The only way
you found out a guys real name
was after he croaked.'

'God tried to get his name changed legally.
He wanted to sign checks as 'God'
the judge wouldn't let him do it
But he let him do 'Ubiquitous God'.'

Its pretty funny. I can also
fake cry, stick my fist in my mouth,
and I once won a staring contest
with an iguana.

'He made Joe Gould
look like a fucking Girl Scout.
One day, he walked down the dock
with a machete, cutting boat lines.
Last thing I heard about him
he stole a police car.'

'I got here,' he said, 'and I said,
I don't want to do anything again
for the rest of my life.
The people onshore hear everything.'

Postcard 167

They are terrified correctly. They are right to fear
They seed the country impotent and scrape the fertile dirt
with crooked tin, mountain stripped
See their naked effluvia!

Their death is straight and hollow lead pipe madness
Who tosses babies from walls?
Who cuts trees for scaffolding?
Who spites the moon and all its red tendrils?
Theirs is a voidless void that stares not back

Only true power is create:
the rotting leaves unburied,
the awe-striking spin of sky, the belly-ripe fruits
stinking sweet about the feet of tree

Every mortised structure, every law
every prison, every lawn -- a feeble
neutered pushback against decay
They are right to be terrified

They cooked up their Lysol but
the wicked world rots away
the wicked world rots richly away
The world rots rich and glorious away
bleeds life between its wicked legs

Postcard 166

Hung high and sweeping,
the curtains are thick with concealment
Conceal is what they are hung for

Every fold rolls into darkness
Caravaggio, velvet close
That there is drama is withheld

The lovely terror of warm thighs in soft tension
Around every downcast Christ, around every looseheaded John
is darkness bound tenebrism. In our language a temple is a woman

Your dress darling,
light caress of your padding footfall,
wraps itself in holy mysteries confounding

Confound me --
curtains reveal curtains
folds roll into new folds

There is no harm in some secrets -- only catastrophe
From blue, from purple, from scarlet twisted fine, from sin concealed
rent but by jealous hands. What would be revealed?

Curling toes, will of night
Timorous flesh-thick femurs -- mighty bone
A window...

Postcard 165

Catastrophic -- the floor is always there

Inevitable -- the pull that pulls that pulls the pull

Abrupt -- hard stop

Shatter -- crack crunch crash bash smash

Fragmentation -- each shrapnel piece explodes away forlorn

Scatter -- light catchers all caught and rainbow cut

Diminished --  name is lost in splinters formless, silent

Diasporic -- swept into piles,
in the corner,
under the filthy stove,
cutting into bare feet
Bits of you in LA,
bits of you in NYC,
bits -- somehow -- in Budapest,
bits of you clear at sea,
bits of your underground.
A sliver, red-skin-held, in me

Irrevocable -- assemble with strong adhesive, a new named thing

Constant -- floor

Postcard 164

Do you know your given name, 

can you spell it?

Can you pronounce it, 

give it utterance?

What are you called -

- more names than one

Can you hold them all (at once)?

In the naked silence 

and in the open vowels 

you hold a mighty secret

A secret is a power 

like a charged bomb

Hold the percussion in your chest -

- lungs vacuum burst

shock-waves through your throat
expanding -- a glotal mass

Your bright tongue and soft teeth
consonate like shrapnel
Your name a suspense and then
a crack -- arrival

How does it impact and settle?
That vulnerable moment,
eyes rolling about searching
a bit of spittle at the corners
of your working/resting mouth

What ears bend to your names?
what eyes close to implication?
what hearts beat with memory and promise?

Postcard 163

The moon is bored by my broad backed hubris
I - a small idol, worn by many slender hands -
a fallen fragment of a forgotten tree

My lazy daily backscratches lean
fenceposts in prostrate graduated angles
striking her sidereal path

My gated apsis is a persistent plod
mud-stomped retreading along
the fence-line's weathered undulation

It is a splintered rosary the moon
has absentminded dropped as if
she is fingered, as if she is anything

more than a myth lumbering
toothless in desolate twighlight
I bore the moon? No, she bores me!

Though I am an ivory horned beast
I am caged in alfalfa bliss and heather
I pace I stomp I charge I bluster

Wire hemmed I am fierce and mighty
Free, I am the idol comforted
by the moon's worn fingers -

fenceposts on her slender hands
We are free power but when bound
Moon penned bull in syzygie

Postcard 162

Each bold moment - forgotten
marvels of self seen & touched
Each shy motion:

a free twitch of hip, a gasp

of just stale breath still sweet

the grip of denim thighs

light fingers measure strength of arms

challenge runandjump

across bridges fog obscured

Your knees strawberryjam stained
We a leafpile of gggles - smoldering
Kissed like light rain


Met at bussstops cloaked like spies
ignored signs -- smoking, loitering
All eye corners full of wet wonder

Made love through clothes
each taste touch a bright splash exquisite
in blank sweater filtered light

Watched old movies
blackandwhite in splendid poverty
of cold rooms Noir sharp air
 
You laughed & itched on filthy rugs
in strangers partystrewn houses
under my shushing grins

Room a scattered room, bodies
muffled on the floor Ashtrays
full of kissstains Bottles sunshining

halffull of gold oblivion Clear white
takeout boxes open inedible -
broken winged memories

Now smell of stale & cheap
of cigarettes & whiteboxtakeout
recall our twin cookie fortune:

Life is but a dream.
Merrily we followed eachother through
misted streets, blackcoated ghosts

Postcard 161

 

There is a boundless wave here fleeing the bland catastrophe of origin
There is a mad hustle ahead of a spectacular frothing of death
and even the smallest success -- there are none great -- melts quickly back to death
This is life out here at the far points of matter that seems to cry
'Make me more and more' with an urge boundless in pain boundless in despair
Though cast off like isotopes the wave persists and matter builds
and builds and each mutation is a doomed crap shoot
But nature rolls a billion times and rolls a billion more,
a boundless roll of losing dice. Life at the far point pushes its luck
and matter builds and organizes, almost meaninglessly successful
out ahead of the wave, each success games the odds
Of a trillion particles but one is part of this, but man does it run with it
'Make me more and more!' There is a boundless wave here fleeing bland catastrophe
And we are at its crest
And nature, doing nothing small, we are likely the statistic mean
And we project out of us stacked matter more and more
And we perceive. Is it accident or apogee?
And then anxiety at the far point of selection
And then death and desparation
The cost of percieve is separation
The gift of separation is perception

Postcard 160

Nature does not by small amounts

There are likely, it seems, near infinite universes flying from each other at near infinite speeds
We, at least, exist in this one

Of this one there is dark and there is light
Light -- or know -- is less

Of the fundamental elements, near all helium and hydrogen, most has never had the chance of being star
But those furnaces have been condensing matter more complex and spitting out

As far as is known, there are six building blocks of life. What small portion of matter are these?
And what smaller portion finds itself on the thin film surface of a body neither baked nor frozen, spinning, near a warm star?

Nature does nothing by small amounts

There are billions of such planets; here we are upon one
So far, neither supernova, nor black hole, nor galactic cloud of poison, nor electromagnetic superstorm has culled this one

Here we are, a statistic irrelevance
But we are imminent and we proceed

A great clean stone holds its face to us and churns our oceans, wearing stones in their constant hands, runs laboratories as countless and surf-washed as their sand
How many unseen suns looked down upon a little churn of acid, carbon, protein machine - success at replicate?

Again Again Again and then
A splash, a cloud, a salt lick, a thermodynamic shrug
But Again Again Again, protein machine

Nature does nothing by small amounts

Postcard 159

You are the ocean in my arms
I'm desperate to be warm and dry
You're the ocean in my arms
Your water's cold, your waves are high

You're the ocean in my arms
and not a drop to drink
You're the ocean in my arms
I sink. I sink. I sink

The Sea, the Sea!
Ceto's fright is Ceto's hold
The sailors' stories are desperate told

You're the ocean in my arms
What part of you is it I'm holding?
You're the ocean in my arms
and I am finally drowning

You're the ocean in my arms
You're soft, You're full. You're wet
You're the ocean in my arms
I'm crushed beneath your depths

The Sea, the Sea!
It's old Poseidon's awful hand
The sailors' stories are only told on land

You're the ocean in my arms
Your water fills my lungs
You're the ocean in my arms
I'm done for. I am done

You're the ocean in my arms
I feel the pull of that old moon
You're the ocean in my arms
I know the songs they sing of you

Postcard 158

You are the ocean in my arms
I hear the songs men write of you
You're the ocean in my arms
I feel the pull of that old moon

You're the ocean in my arms
Oh how I long for land
(You're the ocean in my arms)
...someone warm and dry as sand

The Sea, the Sea!

St Elmo's fire a crackling blue

The sailors' stories are lies but true

You're the ocean in my arms
I'm swept up in your strong currents
You're the ocean in my arms
I have hope for neither mean nor ends

You're the ocean in my arms
Beneath the surface, placid & blue
You're the ocean in my arms
Do you hold me or I hold you?

The Sea, the Sea!
Between Circe and sirens tie true and tight
The sailors' stories are guiding lights

You're the ocean in my arms
Who knows what will become of me?
You're the ocean in my arms
And I am lost at sea

You're the ocean in my arms
You waters cold, your waves are high
You're the ocean in my arms
I'm desperate to be held  -- safe and dry