Los Vatos

Domingo drives, arm out

The window, tan olive skin

Against purple metal flake,

Riding low, blue exhaust notes

As the small block

Purrs and roars with

Stoplight rhythms.

Junior and Cesar jump in,

Screw-top bottle rattles

Belt buckles and key rings,

And someone turns

The music up,

Inky bass rumbles,

Bright horns, percussion

Sass back, and the

Sun sets west of Chico,

And they roll, these

Sons of poverty, heirs

To stubborn dirt, the car

A royal robe letting everyone

Know they have arrived.

Here, Now

He's in a wheelchair, bundled,

shoes with generous tread that

will go unused, and his voice

is slurred, as if coming from

a shell, the edges rounded off,

the sea's soft sibilance, and

I hear it resonate through

the chair's metal frame, as

he sweet-talks the willowy

rec therapist. Next, I feel

his weight, lean into the

handles to push him through

the parking lot, where he sees

the building's exterior for the

first time, and together,

we feel the spring breeze,

life again, blossoming trees.

Then we sit on a bench, eye level,

the familiar cadence of conversation

with his blue eyes bright, recalling

years of stories, each one opening

like a bud, new again--

and today is a seed opening,

another beginning, one that

will come to me, spirit willing,

a perennial memory, some spring

--or winter—far from now,

as sure as the warm air

and sun here, now.

Re-creation

The room in which

I teach exists, surely,

but I'm miles from it,

even further in my mind,

as my bicycle's overlapping

circles of wheels, cranks

and gears turn smoothly

in the July sun. Later,

I'll enjoy the sounds of

wood and wire as I

play guitar out back.

As I ride, I think of how

every pedal stroke, every

strum or pluck marks some

incremental reset and

recovery from the

endurance activity

that is teaching, and I

add one little hyphen

and find that recreation

is re-creation.

Enough to Move Worlds

gravity and attraction are

enough to move worlds

silently through the void

purely physics atoms

doing what they do

because we have

to call it something

energy and matter

each is also the other

there are things beyond our

knowing as it should be

even light only reaches so far

the tiny slivers we see are

fragments of something

bigger like how a kiss in the dark

sends up sparks like fireworks

behind closed eyes and

warmth floods in dust of

stars taken shape summoned

up from primordial ooze

eons of living things saying

YES and the light behind

your eyes is the same energy

occult and charged deep in

the coils of the heart becoming

and willing itself out

Here, Not Here

Part of me is orbiting far out,

waves and vibrations playing

some cosmic chord--

another part is locked in tight, buried deep

and dark, some rare element in my heart

or elsewhere, something I know

by heart, by feel only, something

I'm guarding very carefully.

Two aspects of the same thing,

shaped by pressure and space.

Relics

The highway sign flashes

caution caution caution

and pavement is ripped,

coming up in chunks,

vehicles funneled tightly,

as I return to my childhood

home, and signs in my mind

flash as well. I reminisce in

the fading daylight on the

porch where Dad sat in

his last days, as summer

now wanes slightly. Next

day, Mom and I cart off

a truckload to auction, high chairs

and other relics of someone

I was and somehow still am,

an emptying house, another type of

season ending, the parting out

of things, outward effects of

life lived well, but not always

easily. We leave our lot behind,

knowing we carry other things

burnished with the wind and

water of age, carry them in us,

shining more brightly than

any polished antique.

Prisoner and Jailer

While you are the prisoner

in your cramped, damp cell,

you are also the warden, the jailer,

the one with the keys hanging close,

their sweet music reaching in

past your own locks, the sound of

what if, of freedom, of YES. 

Home

 

The house in which I now

find myself offers up cues

to childhood, to years past

coming back as if wired

directly into my senses:

the walls of heat in the attic

and the smell of cardboard

and dust, the earthy cool of

the basement, the burbling

lawnmowers and the cut

grass coloring my shoes

and tickling my nose with

its slight peppery sweetness.

The bills come, as they

surely did then, monthly,

and I can't look at a wall

or window for too long before

deciding it needs attention.

Still, friends are a walk or

a bike ride away, no plan needed.

Still, I open a heavy door and

a basketball bounces in the

street, and the ice cream truck's

song shifts down a step as it

passes, a bittersweet modulation

as things stay the same and

we move through them like

the high, harmless clouds

in the July sky.

Ode to the Peloton

Sweet rolling

order and chaos,

sinuous and shifting,

amorphous, flowing

over the road's shapes,

shelter from capricious

wind, my friend and foe.

Hive mind, move as one,

an agile flock in flight,

tuned to one's wing flick

and subtle vector.

My solace and my prison--

escape off the front,

fade away and die

off the back.

Mercurial as the wind

you split, fast then slow,

easy until it is not,

and again, brakes like

grabbing hands preface

the fire in tight sinew, burning

red pain betrayed only by

the slight whirr and whoosh.

A Typical Afternoon

The music of the cooling

wind in the linden tree,

sedate summer birdsong,

maple-filtered light and

relieving shade in which

I now find myself

were here before I

noted them—just steps

away from routine.

So, too, in my mind,

to the I behind my eyes,

the self expanding out

from the physical, beyond

limbs, but not beyond reach.

Something within yet larger,

as the wind and air here

join seamlessly with sky,

though no one can say

precisely where.

A Simple Dance

So much was said, when

my hand was on your back,

where you placed it, warmth

beneath soft cotton, where

I pushed and released, felt you

move beneath my palm,

with the band's beat,

toward me, away, back,

in time, like breath,

unified rhythm, this simple

music as our bodies conversed

on the sloping floor, yours calling

mine back from some strange journey,

to this new, unified rhythm,

your smile saying, simply,

keep going.

Fenced

I observe my thoughts,

running loose but not far,

like dogs in a fenced yard,

worrying down familiar paths,

fretting around trees already marked.

I see them, zigzagging, crouching,

laced with potential energy,

charging, repeating. Let them

tire themselves out. They will

slow down, quiet, come to me

with wet noses and frantic tails,

right to my hands, when they

are bored and hungry.

Kids on the Edge

The faceless voice announced,

the adult swim will be ending in five minutes,

and we kids lined up at the pool's rounded

concrete edge, bent like Olympians

waiting for the gun, our shadows lunging

over the old man slowly backstroking

through the calm water, oblivious

beneath his swimming cap of

the potential energy of children

fueled on soda and soft pretzels

during the interminable fifteen-minute

wait found in every hour, with

soft rock playing from the speakers

high on poles--Afternoon Delight

to my kid mind was nothing more

than what we were doing every day

of that summer, longer then than now,

waiting by the side of that pool, always

poised on the edge of something.

Torrent

My thoughts:

Floodwater filled with

sediment, bits of what

has been consumed

blended to brown,

opaque and bitter.

No negotiating with

this torrent. Best to

give it room and time

to spread, slow and settle,

return to clarity,

this swelling river seeking

an ocean's release.

The Mob

My thoughts:

Raged and ragged voices,

yells, curses and cries

blending to one roar

in a narrow street.

What does it say when

that's all a soul has left?

The volume of air he can

take in and shove out--

hot breath, all volume,

no inflection or finesse.

Take them aside one

at a time, down an alley

or under a tree, into

a calm room, see each

for who and what he is,

have a talk.

Better yet, let the

silence be the bridges.

Waiting to Rise

I am water digging a deep channel

going back to where I've been before

trenches of worry and doubt deepening

with each passage I make something

about familiar pain that comforts

I rise   I condense   I fall

through a summer sky

seeing for miles only to return to the

same cold dark hard channel

cut from stone wearing it down

just a bit deeper caught and held

underground waiting again

to rise

Armor

I am here now, sheathed in 

armor of my own design and hand

thickest over the heart.

Part of me walks freely, taking in

summer sights, feeling the breeze,

idly considering the stars.

Another part of me is in the hole,

solitary, bullied by a guard who shares

my features of face and manner, backed up

by a corps of anxieties, obsequious 

and pleasing to authority, ready to step up

a rank due to their efficiency and skill.

Somehow the line between warrior and worrier

has blurred, one little vowel sound separates them,

but who is it before you now, 

and how do you know?

Reaching

It was when my

fingers were in

that rich black soil

winter on the window's

other side and the dirt's

scent reached in and told me

something switched me on

and I next saw the spider

plant's root hanging in midair

reaching for what is far off

longing for that humid

warm earth

this reaching

thing like

me.

Questions

Why does my eye twitch?

It’s not because of you

It’s because of this universe

What is missing?

It’s the small belongings

How will I measure life?

It’s the sun, it is

well within my soul

The answer is no

It is written

The answer is never

A truth acknowledged

The answer is no

Short story

It is a far

Worthier thing



This poem was composed from Google auto-complete questions and declarative statements.

Marionettes

Boots thumping,

words brush the backs,

of the heads--

savage, convulsed mountains,

fantastic realm of the

immense spirit,

mountains of pain,

terrible fury—

this was the war he

had been handed.

His eyes swept the looming sky--

marionettes led your boy

to death—

It was a good mission

down some dark tunnel,

all the bodies underground,

slamming, warning—

white stone chamber,

white stone doors,

a mound on a grave—

Join the majority.

Composed partly of words found in "Mines" by Susan Straight and The Bridges at Toko-Ri by James A. Michener.