Termite's Tribal March, 
a Work Still in Progress

in which direction is this world really turning?
with the missing feet of the murdered
running in the billions,
and agent orange, supposedly tamed
renamed Round Up, commonly available
every garden a green house of death,  .  .  .
in water tables, ozone layers
acid rain, and crack
 
if our species is somehow able to survive,
what will our progeny say?
as we leave them a heritage of orange county Disney style
fantasylands, become a major growth  .  .  .  a cancer
a construction, cum service industry  .  .  .
carved out of the ruined map of myth and natural process,
scraped and pushed into antiseptic parks of amusement,
exquisitely childish escape in the realm of the homeless
 
what's left of the wild, the natural and free,  .  .  .
must each generation mold it all
to mirror their collective dreams of greed,
an' thereby invite, indeed, guaranteeing these disasters,
like the downtrodden, brokenhearted souls
wharehoused in our broken inner cities?
 

Spring, 1990

 

 

 Tina At Work

           Her Epistemic Windmills
               Churning
                   Downhill Skiers
          In New Powdered Snow
     Butterflies, Hummingbirds
                   Domesticated Felines
                All fluttering hostages
                    of institutional walls
                         and sick building syndrome
                      The Prisoner of Zelda
      Held captive in our Bureaucratic wasteland
                     Designing her Escapades  .  .  .
                Prepare the mailing
                    Answer the Phone,
                          Compile and Edit
                      the Database,
              The second hand sweeps
                      through molasses
 

07/05/93

 

 

Ode of the Refugee Mother

 
 Kabul is on fire
 and we are all
 refugees

 I have given two sons
 as martyrs
 one of them was hit by a rocket
 and blown to bits
 he was only twenty
 his brother was eighteen

 My niece, a little girl of 3
 lost her hands
 and one eye
 to a land mind,
 it looks like a plastic toy

 What can I say?
 I've had enough of these people
 and their holy war
 

04/14/94

 

Unraveling the Silken Shroud

              Having fashioned these cocoons
 of silken thread
              the conch snail unravels it shell
 And in the garden
              the spider on the dandelion
                           patiently spins her web
 

04/14/94

 

Before the Rapture

before the disappearing
four plagues, clothed in bleak newsprint
return with deadly aim . . .
their horsemen raid in titanium chariots
or iron pigs, there, unmuffled idling
ceramic hardened, off in the distance,
many buried up to their turrets,
like desolated castles in the sand
in the deserts of time buried, beneath an open sky
burning campfires, mark the distant standoff,
two armies encamped in the desert
preparing to burn in hell.

their horseman thrive on radiation
hawking the continued production of plutonium
and other fissionable materials
beside the pristine dawning brook,
this alarming diversification of high tech
weapons and destruction guaranteed to drive
into extinction countless species of birds,
insects,  microbes, and amphibian friends
disappearing: lost in space, lost
to the seeping tenacity of radioactive, chemical
wastes, contaminants suppressing all life, beside
a flourishing proliferation of the nuclear club.  .  .  .
there horsemen ride in hydrocarbons  .  .  .
chemi-suits, rubber boots
and masks, all are standard issue.
cloaked in techno-science slogans, green revolutions
buying precious time, spewing newer gasses,
sewing death, sterilizing the soils, flooded
in suicidal mists of chemical intervention.

warning, as if you don't already know,
PCB's and other such substances
act negatively on children,
pets, and every friendly ecosystem
 .  .  .  shrinks away, cursing.  .  .  .
so forebodes the rapture
the unexplained disappearance
of countless sacred orders
these angels, messengers of God
reaching out in dismay
confidently groping for an end to these plagues

these horsemen ride on half-truth lies  .  .  .  .  .
beneath the sheets concealing their true identity
in halftone images, public relations
scams and ploys, pooled correspondents, need to know ethics,
poisoning intrigue, violence
and high finance  .  .  .  dumping their creativity
on the dawning meadow's brook, endangered life forms.
calmly alert, warming her brood, confident in her song
a mother's complex nesting shrill, proposes
the hatchling's insistent chirp,
perched at the center of their world,
sways in outstretched arms
a sapling's stark branches
arched stubbornly open
receptive, asserting
beholden only to
that all  .  .  .
all this
and more
     .                                that we are here manifest
                                               that in itself
 .                                   that which gentle binds with message
smiling surges, warmth of spring
warmth of snuggled in your arms
that luminous and glowing
accessible, flows
even at its lowest ebb,
rains triumphant returning
.  .  . that unnamed silent plotting
that with laughing eyes
beholding
only
to that
all  .  .  .
(all this and more)

 

02/22/91
 
 
 

 
 

Ma Bale, a Reminiscence

Give us an aging car
             an open road, a map
                           and a navigator
And we'll fly the whites lines
            in odd and even numbers
Across the concrete ribbons
            toward the widening horizon
                        we'll fly
As far as the eye can see  .  .  .
 
I'll sing you cowboy songs
            and ballads of my youth
                         we'll play the alphabet game
Rock slide down oak creek canyon
            we'll cross the great divide
Explore the parched badlands,
            and the painted desert
We'll visit the garden of the gods
             read verse on the run
                          by the side of the road
             burma shave
And marvel at the wedding of the waters
 
04/13/92

02/13/92

 
 

Ma's Birthday, a Reminiscence '93

 I remember, not so long ago  After a week in Oregon
 With Steve and Pam  Barry Roy, Brett and the Boys
 We sailed your clackity diesel Old's back through my childhood
             where it had snowed on Easter Sunday.  .  .
 Back through the logging country  Through clear June skies
 Past oceans of evergreen  redwood, spruce, ceder and pine
 Through Medford and Ashland, southeast
             Over Grant's Pass
 On cruise control, we drifted into the moonscape and
 Barren shadows of Mt. Shasta and Lassen, like old times
 Together, talking about everything  we rushed through Redding
              Went around Red Bluff
 Stopped for gas, some coke and refreshment
 And floated into the sweltering heat
              of the Sacramento rice crop.  .  .
 At the capitol city our path veered left,
              East northeast  Up the Sierra Nevada to Truckee
              And beyond, to Northshore  Lake Tahoe!

 Remember the goofy floor show?
              A topless chorus line of hapless dancers
        and two Spectacularly bronzed acrobats
              Refigees from muscle beach  .  .  .
 Remember the three dollar slots  Our passion! And our glee!
              Our hands gun metal grey, as the day passed
        and water turned to wine
              We beat the one armed bandits!
 Sixty loaves became six hundred and financed my first semester 
              at Theological School

 

07/21/93

 

The Screw's Turning

 the screw turns
 and we return, back where we began
 just a bit older, apparently no wiser,
 reliving anew the churlish summer
 days of rage and hate, days of frustration
 bitterly harvested,
 fruits of past generations
 burnt in frosts of benign neglect  .  .  .
 stalked in the ghettos' sticky cage,
 and tamed in sour cream suburban surrender
 our landscapes, stoked and smoldering coals
     of bilateral racial hate,
 now more than ever,
     a two way street
 rushing into a collective cul-de-sac.

 this catastrophe,
 a rolly coaster carousel
 the social suicide of a herd
 an outrageously clumsy
 metaphor of bucking broncos, blinded
 and strapped under our children
 this captive generation
     maimed and mauled,
 thrown from their saddles
     at best wounded, crippled
 and bleeding,

 
 

gnashing their teeth  .  .  .
 with cracked up heads and clubbed feet
 they trudge through our city streets
 resentful hearts, reflected in their angry faces
 the entire pack, on both sides of the redlined
 walls, miming my generation's errors and mendacity,
 as our complacency comes back to haunt us, back around
 echoing voices silenced, yet still resonating
  voices of martin and malcolm, and che
 voices of abbey hoffman, phil ochs, lew welch
  richard brautigan and jack kerouac
 turning back on time's axis
  echoing throughout
 our recursive social circuitry

 our tom-foolery, as well,
 amplified to distortion
 ricochets throughout life's
 spiralling particle accelerator
 cyclotronic neglect
 fed into biofeedback networks
 our children, this captive generation,
 as captive as the electrons in a cathode-ray tube.  .  .  .
 tubed and emulating the TV, the theater
 of their city streets  .  .  .
 mimicking their cinemas' titillating death wish
  slasher flicks, dirty harry,
 swartschennegger, counterfeit karate clowns, clones  .  .  .
  breakin' bones like twigs or sticks,
 kickin' ass, an' takin' names  .  .  .

 
 

       an' jus' like on the tube,
 our kids are killing themselves
     out on their country roads
 or our fast lane freeways
     and down on our inner city streets  .  .  .
 giving up their vision
     and dying.

 the screw's slow turning
 burns cold, like slow rolling thunder
     burns bright
 shimmering across the night sky
 tracers of life, orange sunbursts
 off in the distance of
 the space-time continuum
 the sparkling motion of light
 rampant on a field of water lilies
 blue lightning balls
 turning back upon an axis,
     reaping
 assorted doughnuts,
      a baker's dozen
 of torus, figurative speech
 in a sack  entwined,
     like twisted spirals
 our tepid fate,  in a bag of pretzels
 turning back in galactic rap around,
     and kharmic cycles of praxis
 

04/19/91

 

~~~

 
 

Death's Dream

I had this dream, ya see
 it was a nightmarish vision, starring
 the Fieldmarshall, who looked across the battlefield
 menacing and lean, like death warmed over  .  .  .
 with a patch over one eye, and yes
 his pirate, brigand's face, full but blankly confident
 fills the screen, a grimanched
 leering, in living pallid color
 and real flesh, a grinning death head  .  .  .
 his skin, leathery and drawn, puffy
 splotches, wrinkled & sagging,
 around the one good eye,
 a dark socket, with one fiery coal of an eye
 the jolly roger, skull & bones come to life
 with an eye patch, and yet another mission  .  .  .

 Above the noise & confusion of a battle about to begin,
 he cries out, exhorting his followers,
 in every tongue known,
 are ya with me, men!?  .  .  .

 (well are ya?)

 
 

            Up he scrambles
 up onto the back of a flatbed truck
 over the roar of his tanks, half-tracks & APCs
 he calls out to his commanders,
 his light artillery and infantry,
 all together now
 moving up over a bank  .  .  .

             When five large armor piercing slugs,
 44 caliber automatic fire,
 cut through the truck's cab,
 flying fragments of flesh 'n blood
 rip out the back of Field Marshall's chest
 as he crumples, a marionette without strings
 a rag doll in a pile, oozing life.  .  .

             All so graphically depicted in modern cinema,
 as I struggle to awaken, on the horizon
 a horde emerges, crashing through the lines
 rushing at me, a bullet passes through
 the lens of a camera,
 shattered glass
 and the screen fills up with blood.  .  .  .
 

08/03/91

 

 
 

Johnny's Girl,
Keeper of Secrets

Her loneliness must have been profound
    The family moved every few months
         and had no contact with relatives
    Their only friends were business associates
Because she longed for normalcy and acceptance,
    like all children, she too became
         a keeper of secrets

For a long time she viewed her parents
    as people living outside the mainstream,
         but they weren't, not really
Their goals were no different from those of others
         of their generation;
    only their means were different  .  .  .

Her father was a man of exact manners & expensive tastes
He nurtured a lifelong love affair with huge finned luxury
    cars and jewelry  .  .  .  He loved Cadillacs best
His jewelry was like his cars: large and expensive.
Her mother spent most of her adult life in institutions
    She was a stripper & prostitute who worked in bars
         until she succumbed
         to recurring mental illness

 
 

Father & mother were divorced when Johnny's girl was 5
She saw her mother for the last time in a nursing home
She was nine and didn't look forward to seeing her
     For the three years before,
          she had been in and out of cold places
     with white walls and white linoleum floors
mental institutions and nursing facilities  .  .  .

Mother was a stranger, her eyes seemed to search mine
for answers and help, but I never knew what to do.
 

The father, whom she found dashing and glamorous
     although she was afraid of him,
          flattered and flirted
then flew into rages and beat her.  A career petty
     criminal, he came and went without explanation.
He never so much as told her his real name  .  .  .

Johnny was a steersman who led pigeons or unsuspecting
     victims, amateurs, into crooked card games
          with professional gamblers. He graduated
     to owning massage parlors
          that were actually brothels,

 
 

He also ran an illegal gambling operation in his house
His murder was followed by a sensational trial  .  .  .
For a long time, her father's FBI rap sheet was all she had
by way of a family history,

Her loneliness must have been profound
     The family moved every few months
          and had no contact with relatives
     Their only friends were business associates
Because she longed for normalcy and acceptance,
          like all children, she became
               a keeper of secrets

For a long time she viewed her parents as people
     living outside the mainstream,
          but they weren't, not really
     Their goals were no different from those of others
of their generation; only their means were different  .  .  .
 

04/13/93

 
 

Sunday Morning Jazz For Free
At the Historische Museum

For those of us who see
what could be breaking through
against what has been and remains
that which pours forth
from the torn and opened wounds
of our shrinking, beleaguered world
is such a bloody waste!

I offer these words
not in despair
to the one what holds our world
together
to whom every person who labors
for peace and selfless society
offers their work

May we all yet hear
if not see, and through
your grace, or whatever,
may we find our way
to harmony
 

18.07.82 (Hochschule St. Georgen, Ff / M, BRD)