On the backs of seahorses' eyes
Page 22
rather than this ordinary stuff I drink?
William Blake, at times, most times,
couldn't afford a bottle of wine.
Van Gogh couldn't afford paints and brushes.
Now, those who have the means to drink
such fine exquisite wines,
they praise Blake and van Gogh in museums
and in their private collections.
While, in the corner of their mouths,
they have no idea
what Blake could see in his garden,
or what van Gogh painted with such frenzy.
No idea, no idea, at all.
Growth of a kangaroo court
for Christopher Byck
Growth is a Kangaroo Court
by Douglas Blazek
An Atom Mind Publication, 1970.
18 pages; price: 50₵
On my copy of Kangaroo, on the inside cover,
Douglas writes:
"Don—Read then burn!
Sorry I let this one out.
Poem 5 years old and like another man's rubber.
All without meaning to any of us now,
tho at one time it served a purpose.
Have since rewritten (ah-hum) and even tho it is still sans meaning
to us,
at least it now isn't as embarrassing in a technical sense."
Douglas Blazek
Oct. 1971
Ah, those were the days.
But we moved on, Blazek and myself.
Kryss and Willie, too.
Now, a few years later, with the appearance of the Internet,
a man wants to sell Kangaroo,
a copy with a "slight coffee stain on the spine."
Price: $48.00.
Ah, Blazek, my friend, perhaps the coffee stain
on the spine of your book—
the book you said to read and burn—
perhaps this coffee stain looks like Jesus
or the Virgin Mary;
or perhaps a Robert Crumb drawing—
such as the one on your book
Zany Typhoons.
Or perhaps this stain reveals an image of God.
Yes, that's it!
The god called Moolah.
The god of whom we most slavishly praise,
from sea to shining sea,
from the Columbia to the Potomac,
to the 24 k highways of Heaven.
Moolah! Moolah! Moolah!
In praise of small things
Can we agree a key
is such a small thing?
Perhaps the key is money,
a credit card;
a gun; a shovel.
A bone for the dogs,
or a red wheelbarrow.
Perhaps the key is kindness:
a key that opens your heart
to forgiveness.
Perhaps a ticket
you hold in your pocket:
a ticket to a movie,
or a lottery ticket worth millions
of opportunities, millions of headaches.
Or perhaps you're young and beautiful,
perhaps even talented or a genius:
a key that takes you down,
down the yellow brick road,
in a limousine, no less,
until it doesn't.
For some, the key might be the body.
For others, the mind;
For still others, the imagination,
or psychic insight; or spirit;
or essence.
A stone in the middle of the road.
A leaf. A flower. A door opening.
Even a ritual will serve as a key.
Or perhaps the law, or mercy,
if you're forgotten the spirit.
Life: death: both keys that serve us,
to remind us what we truly are.
Singing in the morning, singing
in the afterlife
for Zada, 1928—2011
The birds
singing in the early morning
outside my window,
when I was a boy
growing up in the South,
and now, after all these years,
now that my hair has turned white,
the birds singing
in the early morning outside
my window,
as I lie restless and unsleeping
next to my love,
as she dreams in her sleep,
her peaceful sleep—
no doubt these birds shall be singing
long after my own voice,
and your voice,
whispers into a ghost,
and like the proverbial tree
in the woods
falling
into unfathomable silence.
Or shall our voices ride on solar winds,
merging with all voices
into the singing hum of the universe?
Only so many mornings,
only so many
evenings
Imagine, if you will....
—John Lennon
Imagine a single cloud in the sky.
All day, a single cloud.
Every day.
A single cloud.
Imagine only one bird singing.
Each morning, one bird
singing outside your window.
One bird,
signing the same song
in the forest,
over and over on a single tree,
the only tree in the forest.
Imagine no seasons
but only one continuous season.
No need to change summer to winter outfits.
No need to change your mind
or your opinions.
You could hold the same beliefs forever.
You could repeat the same action
over and over,
each day, every day.
A fundamentalist paradise!
Imagine a song stuck in your memory.
The same song.
For days, months, years, over and over.
The same song singing in your head.
Now imagine knowing only one book.
Your entire life, only one book.
Say, Homer's The Odyssey.
Or the Koran.
Or Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.
Perhaps the Torah,
or the Christian's Holy Bible.
Imagine living your life believing
only
one view of the world.
A single version.
Be it a world filled with Cyclops,
monsters in the sea
or in the basement of your mind,
or rules telling you how
to live your life—
rules not made by you,
but by another
in the name of still another.
Imagine,
when it comes your time to die,
who will die in your place?
Dreaming,
just dreaming
Milosz, you sing of a lost century,
a forgotten name of a classmate—
a woman, who, after all these years,
comes to you in a dream,
arousing you,
as, no doubt, women have appeared
in men's dreams
since the beginning of time.
As I dream now and then of a woman,
lost in her own dream;
a woman just out of reach,
as always,
just out of reach,
dissolving into the light.
Only now, this moment,
at peace
with another dream,
I look out my window facing
Mt. St. Helens
to watch the wood smoke
curling
into the air
from a neighbor's chimney,
this early spring morning,
as I wait for my love,
now awake,
to descend the staircase
and enter,
as only a woman,
barefooted in her own dream,
enters so gracefully,
our kitchen,
for her morning coffee.
Tombstones after all these years
If you look carefully,
you'll see an ordinary looking man,
staring into space,
no thoughts on his mind.
Out of the blue,
as they say,
this ordinary looking man breaks out
of his Ulysses' gaze,
allowing Heart to oversee
the waves and particles streaming
through his mind.
A word comes forth.
Then another.
An image that rings in the air
like a gong chime—
a thought that sparkles his eyes
like the first flash of lightning in a dark sky,
followed by a rolling thunder of words
that sound around and around the world,
perhaps even to the stars,
shattering mirrors and thrones and theories,
brushing past remnants of Theia
and the Big Bang,
as these words journey homeward.
And you, silent
as the turning of the earth,
you watch and witness this cosmic reflection,
as fan blades whirl around and around
casting a shadow
on the ceiling above your head.
A dog barks then wags its tail.
An African violet blooms before your eyes.
An ordinary hot summer's day.
A zillion poets caught in a net of words.
For some, stepping stones into the illusory world.
For others, tombstones on the way out.
Do we really change?
Or do we simply change outfits in a mirror?
Round and round goes the moon
for William Hageman
It was late in November,
as they well remember,
that I was born in the early morn.
Or so they tell me,
and who I am to disagree?
To be born, what does it mean?
To die, what does it mean?
Books, proverbs, religions:
just shadows we peer through;
a ghost in the curve of our eyes;
and in the distance everywhere,
sirens,
just before a screeching halt,
a STOP sign, a wall, a mirror
splintered into a thousand images.
This moonlight tour—glitter,
flash and novelty—arranged
for you
by
"WE SEE WHAT WE WANT TO SEE."
Eye lashes won't protect you,
nor another city, another tour,
however much you're worth
or whose bare legs
you reach to move upward.
Round and round goes the moon.
Hang on tight or leap into the void?
An umbrella or a sword?
A romp through time.
Adam to the atom. Servants to our past.
We laugh when the Emperor laughs.
The halls of knowledge won't admit us.
A pure heart like pure poetry eludes us.
Tangled in speech and impure genetics,
like birds
caught in protective netting,
we go round and round with the moon.
You can't make sense of it
cause
it doesn't make sense.
We fall spiraling into our own dream.
Welcome
to the land of Youkali.
Stretching to touch you, relaxing in the flow.
Nowhere to go.
What to do? How to say?
Like sunken ships, centuries
lie scattered in the subterranean folds
of my mind.
I feel these centuries,
here, in the curve of my own time.
They do not surface as lost treasures
found. Or Kubla Khan visions.
Or quantum dreams.
They ascend on waves of feelings.
Lilly Poo, our mini dachsie,
barks with the bark of her breed,
stretching back to her line's origin.
My mind stretches before the beginning.
But what does this mean to you?
Or to Janie, sick with a cold,
concerned about her immigrant students.
(Some illegal, of course.)
Or concerned over her changing looks,
and looking for fullness in her grandkids
and generations beyond.
What do I say to you?
And to a universe
that will someday no longer be?
God speaks to me
God the Great Mystery
God the Great Unknown
God All That Is
God That I Am
—David Pendarus
God speaks to me through all living things,
through the ragweed on the roadside
and the hosta in my garden,
through the rain that showers down out of the blue,
and the sun that appears to come and go each day,
and the waxing and waning of the cyclic moon.
God speaks to me through the harsh winds
that blow down the Columbia Gorge in wintertime
toward our house;
and through the gentle breezes of May,
as I go walking in the cemetery across the street
with Lily, our piebald dachsie.
God speaks to me through the barren trees
in my neighbor's yard,
and through the green grasses in our yard
where Lily darts out to pee.
God speaks to me through all living things.
Can anything that lives truly die,
but only change form?
God speaks to me as Lily runs in circles
round the living room floor,
and as she chews on the bones she so loves.
God speaks to me through the garter snake
in our garden,
a timid creature that, nevertheless,
terrifies my Janie.
God speaks to me through the lady bugs
that, to my mind,
never feed enough on the aphids that feed on my roses,
and God speaks to me through late autumn spiders
spinning these fine garden webs that I curse
when running smack into them face first.
God speaks to me in the waters of the earth,
in the fire within,
and in the moving sky,
in the wind dancing through the leaves,
and in the quietness of a stone.
God speaks to me,
not in churches or mosques or candled shrines
on the side of a well-traveled road.
Not in the written word. Or in sacred scriptures.
God speaks to me
not through death but through all living things.
Whose child is this?
Enclosed in this bubble of existence,
longing for a home we cannot name
but only feel,
we seek refuge in words and images.
We seek refuge in idols.
We seek refuge in drama.
We seek refuge in the other.
We seek refuge in things.
We seek refuge in nature.
We seek refuge in beliefs.
We seek refuge in God.
We seek refuge in the illusion
we call self.
On and on,
we seek refuge in all that we do
and think.
Evening sun bright through dying leaves.
<
br /> A dog chewing on a bone.
A man reading a poem.
Silence. Only sound a cracking bone.
This moment.
Let the story begin
Out of our dreams, comes the world
Worlds collide
They intersect
They war each other
Embrace each other
Dancing, dancing, a great dance
Dancing the dreamer's dream
Here
There
Everywhere at once
Just out of the womb,
8-1/2 minutes,
(Or was it 84?),
I looked around:
"What's going on?"
2
"I'm not a shape shifter!"
he testified to the philosophers,
the religious, the skeptics, the seeker,
to anyone who would listen.
"I'm a shift shaper."
His friends called him a loose marble
rolling around in the mind of God.
3
The shift between worlds
lasts but for a split,
then we enter a hazy zone,
a veil, a time and space
in which neither rhyme nor reason
prevail.
"Show. Don't tell!"
the poets cry.
Shall we deny the dying
of the light?
When our images evaporate
into thin air
like the ember rays of sunset,
are we to say,
"That's all, folks!
The show's over! Go home now.
Go home. Go home."
Already this world is a memory
to me.
Now I must continue
on my journey.
4
"Remember,
listen to the trees,"
a spiritual master told her daughters,
just before she passed.
"Listen to the trees. Talk to the flowers.
Float with the clouds.
Know that you are loved