Postcard 97

Blood and sweat, laughter, tears -- things that drip and flow and peal. We enter and come with pain-pleasure, the push-pull of pulse flow. A new clean spring draws stones from soil, mountains sharp in cut and cry.
And old King Whirl, born crying, comes round on himself, self-satisfied and corpulent with the collect, the labor's sweat, the g;uttony of damn-up. collect and swell.
And old Death comes on like a flood and a drought, sooth-said and expected. Old death, a nattering madman, muttering and humming, meaning nothing. He carries, in his moment, cataracts of tears, lifetimes flowing ocean lightly.
Then finally peals out what is most feared, Silence. She speaks from corner to corner, to rafter's peak. Not a sign, not a moan, not a creak not a woosh not a drip not a groan or a squeak. But listen close and tight and do not waiver in the quiet deep and you will add the fluid peal of laughter, whole and pure and real.

Postcard 86

That monkey on my back looks too much like me, perched up there on sharp knees. Old man of the sea, is there no end to his pestering? He pulls each ear to guide my steps and turn my path. He covers my eyes, each hand a screen. All about, this foreign world is protean and mean. His voice, thin and reedy, says: see what you may. I look along our pathless paths and see flowers and nymphs, anemone. He removes is reedy fingers and look: pestilence and pain. He leads me along flaking cliffs and ambuscades. All that is illusion too. His other fingers hold my face, and those he removes. We are in void of sea or space. He leers and speaks: to get what you wish, first you must catch simian me. And though he is all sharp elbows and stabbing knees, he's as hard to hold as mercury. And I feel old and godlike, and I feel young and horribly free. And what if what I would wish would be to catch and hold the beast? And what if 'simian me' is not him but me. And what if I'm just turning on myself, meaningless in a boiling sea?

Postcard 79

We are always dying down in steerage -- have always been.
Here's another myth: The captain goes down with the ship.
You travel both on the backs of stevedores in sweat-black walls,
and star-eyed dreamers in sky-less holds,
fire bolted and contained,
water always finding seams.
We are down with the steam.
We are always dying down in steerage --
Hatches closed on water persistent.
Hatches closed on fire unloosed.
Hatches closed on bursting boilers.
Hatches closed on our echoing songs.
We see sky when dead on deck, when over-rail dumped.
Who are the uncounted numbers and who are the names?
We are the heartbeat down in steerage, the piston thud, the hum of driving screw.
We are whomever you call rat: the dago spic queers, the Jews, the junkies, chinks, fags the blacks.
We are the fire behind the hatch. The fluid and the flame, the artist fighters, the exposed wires.
Always dying down in steerage -- always have and always will,
but this ship is a ghost ship, and we hold sway behind hatches
where we hide your wonder and the power,
behind hatches where wanders your desire.
Behind and beneath in the coal-black fires.
While you move over waters, we move through seas.
We are always dying down in steerage -- may always be,
but we are living ripe, dying but pregnant, alive but oddly free.

Postcard 71

The white-hot moon holds the sheet-dark sky. The white-hot moon burns itself in your eyes. Carry that. Lay that bright hole on the pale body of your friend, naked in the grass in the sand: clarified moles, pure light bullet holes, surprise windows of a looking out soul. The sea sips at your feet and sighs its tickling shivers. At that moment, a triad: beautiful you, your friend/beloved and the white-hot moon. This pain pleasure is the top of an arc, is the gathering white chaos upon an inbound wave. This moment with your friend/your beloved, the pain-pleasure of giggling in the chill, is time suspended atop parabola. The past falls away and the future precipitous, and this moment is the pleasant tension, feeling salt-tight skin and that little grit discomfort. The burn in your eyes is the push-pull of whirl, of your beloved and their whirl too, sharing the feel: the smell of salt of smoke of sweat of chill, the cool radiance of other, the burn of now replaced by past. Hold tight let go the intermingle, the pause in arc of story. Hold tight let go before fear. Perceive and release your beloved and you in soft light, like the two of you and the dark sky in the grasp of the white-hot moon

Postcard 65

One of these mornings, some fine morning, we're going to go down. Down on to those waters, yes we're going to clean those waters like a swarm. Oh, we're going to filter those waters like oysters, like mussel clusters, like a host of shrimp. One of these mornings, oh its gonna come, that fine day, we're gonna go down to that shore. We're gonna give that boatman. that old ferry man, we're gonna give him a brand new silver dollar not to take us anywhere. That ferryman's gonna leave us there. One of these mornings we're gonna dig down in that mud with our naked toes. We're gonna lay down a new foundation . Oh we're gonna dig down in that mud like clams and lay a new foundation with our bones. Oh that lovely blessed day, we're gonna put up new walls smooth and white. We're gonna put up bleach white walls, pure and bright. Bright as that new day. One fine morning, some fine morning, we're gonna go down. We're gonna go down to our new houses shining in the blessed sun. Our star-roofed houses will have many rooms, each bigger than the next. Oh on that day, our houses will be ours. One of these days, we'll toss that poor ol' ferryman a bag of pearls. And then, oh then -- one of these fine mornings coming down, we're gonna lift up that house. Oh, we're gonna lift up our homes in this world. We're gonna lift up our new homes and we're gonna walk right on away.

Postcard 61

Two lovers on the beach, bared soles of feet turned up to the sun. Young and trim theres nothing like it. Small boat is offshore tacking with clean white triangle sails. A whole warm world with cold only suggested, to tantalize. What does not glimmer ripple rumor and tremble here? What does not not feel that breath of promise. Breeze on sand, on water, in grass, in sail, on finest hair on skin. Young goose bumped lovers in the heat. Young lovers fingers buried oblivious, a whole warmth untroubled by the promise of shimmer. A family sits nearby. A cloud bank breaks the horizon. The tide works its way in. The breeze is making good on its promise. Have we ever held such smiles? A son capsizes his new boat. A daughter runs into the sea. Two lovers on the beach, naked to the world, light a joint, bury face in face. Youth, always youth.

Postcard 60

Seek a stillness in solitude with the wind's own sibilance. 

Seek a stillness but not a silence:

Hush of breath, heart's ichor woosh, ceaseless whisper of world and whirl.

What words or wordlessnesses wayfare there?

Seek a stillness and hear.

Can we make the cooling cooking buzz of the far horizon,

The slow moan of plates and seas exalted and subsumed,

Patient histories of tribes and herds and trees?

Do we hear the grassy, snow-melting slouched shouldering of each season?

Do we hear the clicks and crunches of consume devour in root-balls and swaying blades of grass?

If we can hear these things, if we perceive some other scale of being, what does it say?

In my solitude, seeking stillness, I wonder at the power of the human day to overspeak, to stifle.

I wonder at the frailty of all these eternities in me collapsing in a human day 

-- a scale of tires on roads, of cords and plugs, 

the strange pains of want and need.

Postcard 55

I am reminded how I used to sit with all the characters I could stand to be:  Adam to Zenophon, Gilgamesh to the futurists. I slink low in my chair under the remembered weight. I pushed dull blades into my chest, trying to get at that wizened pit. I wondered at my parents, teachers, friends, schools, churches and books, and could not grasp a blame. I used to crux myself, as man, within the planned arc of man. I am reminded, recently, of all that.

One river may pollute the ocean and one mill may pollute the river, but it is the need for a mill on a river, and the need for that need. 

And now?

Well, I know that I am not a stone and not a tree. I am not really man. I am not the sea. 

I am the nameless, speechless thing that peers out. 

I cannot claim to matter, but also I am not an insignificant being. 

I am reminded of a pain that now recedes.

I am sitting in a coffee shop, surveying people and things: the plank tables glued or joined, solid and well milled, fresh and clean. But none is impervious and each will warp and bow and split with time, and in my attempts at being, at words and naming things, those boards remind me of you and me. And also, of what we are not, of what we relate to but are intrinsic to.

Like trees, we reach and root to desires. We attach.

Like the sea, we precipitate in moody flows and seasoned tides and gravity.

Like other beings,  we toss painfully and pleasurable at the beings we call 'me'.