Category: Uncategorized

Venus Void of course

Stepping out into

The crisp night air under leafless

Oaks, there is a clean

Smell that can only be

Had in certain places,

Venus shimmers off mountain

Horizon, I thought maybe

You were looking at her too

 

Glimmering off your Bodega Bay

The pliable ivory of your face

& red hair

& connected pervasively,

Venus occluded with moon

Four days ago.

 

While you know

I don’t buy Astrology

& for you that’s part

Of your faith & that’s all right

For you then

I wonder about now

 

Three days before this evening

I’m told of twelve people

Are meeting

Three of which believe

That they are from Venus

& have video tape of

Venusian space ship

Landing on earth

 

Life is preciously beautiful

& we are part & parcel of

Gaseous formation of the adjacent

Planet & I would never want

To break up their meeting, & laughing

Though I am

 

Knowing that voiding time

All of this is a togethered thing &

While Botticelli’s art

Which we accept unlike

The Venusian space ship

& how he

Put her so delicately

On the half-shell

With your red hair

 

It is more like

A dream this art as life

Than a reverie

But there in imagination

We loved each other

& shared our last name w/out marriage

no relation & states away

A decade apart our

Birthdays, yet the same?

 

We astonished each other

You were swooped off

To California, but

In this cabin, this damn

Cold Oregon December,

Your red hair spilled across

My chest, your smell like

Lilac must, your

Touch soft, is soft &

Warm air becomes heavy

Acrid smoke fills the air,

A cabin, or a cave,

Or a peat heated shanty above

A wind-swept cliff & the sheep bells

Clang in the mist?

 

I saw a reflection in your eyes

Dim light, our bodies move,

& then we were still, & your

Touch again, it should not be

A dream, yet it was

& that’s all we had

 

My heart surged

Not from desire

But from wonder &

Though we never made love you

Were many times on

My arm & we many times kissed

Deep spit swapping passion

& one night we slept together

This imagination makes what it will

Yet you were always a person

Not to be worshiped

But to be known & we knew each

Other in some kind of morphic

Field that came together & said

Remember?

 

I don’t buy reincarnation either, but

The neo-paganism you seemed to love, hey

The playful part I get,

Masks &drums & the anthropomorphic

Notion of animals, like coyote, but

The old gods have always been

Flipping dead

Pagan playfulness, still has a black ribbon

Running through it to the diabolic,

As did the inquisition,

Or any religious spirit

In every camp—waiting

For the wrong move away

Presence interior & from

Above simultaneously

 

The dimness fades

& the light grows

Too, too bright

I close my eyes

Black ice on asphalt & fire

On the moon

We were both void of direction

Toward God

 

& then I see again your face

Surprised

Then calm, your face changes, again &

Ten out of ten of us die

& you were eventually gone

from Black Ice & Fire: Poems 1974-2014 by James Ross Kelly      

It’s Been Fifty Years since You Died

I named a son after you, &
Though you died  in Kansas during cruel April
& I was in Oregon, but I was there with you a
Long time..I have no idea what kind
Of funeral you had—or even if you had one
The brother of my mother, your wife
My Uncle, told me that spring, during a
Drive in the station wagon where he could
Deliver bad news without looking at me,
I’d had these trips before, had some after, but I was
In my 20s when I figured out they’d
Kidnapped me from you—it may be that he hated you, however
His Father my Grandfather always had something good to
Say about you & you know he visited you when he went back
To Kansas, my Uncle with pride and perhaps a little senility showed me
A letter in 1974, but written in 1963,
Threatening a law suit if you came out to get me, the Uncle thought
that would demonstrate how much they loved me—but it was always
I waited for you to drive up in that ’56 Buick & thought of how I would pile in
& we would drive all the way back to the flat land with all the windows down!
The uncle told me many times when wanting to correct my behavior
That he’d send me, ‘back to your father,’ oh please know I always wanted to go!
That day in the ’53 Ford Station wagon, about a quarter mile from
Where the dirt road to our farm met the pavement & then south on
Highway 62 toward Eagle Point, he began to tell me that you had died,
The story had been that you were coming to get me
In about six months—& that had been six years, & you called twice,
Wrote three times, sent me a pocket knife & a rattle snake rattle,
From a snake you’d killed in Nebraska, who knows what happened to the snake rattle,
I lost the knife in basic training in Fort Ord, California in 1967 when drill instructors
Yelling that any of us with knives would be court marshaled and sent to Ft. Leavenworth
You had told me at about 8 years old not to go in the Army
&  to never work in the oil fields,
I took your advice about the Oil Fields, the Army had me
Four years I didn’t have to win any of the Medals you did
I did get a Good Conduct Medal and an honorable discharge
They did not send me to Vietnam while it raged and others went,
I often thought, that was a direct result of what you had to go through
& with noted exceptions, I’ve led a somewhat honorable life, when we got back from
The station wagon ride my grandfather told me that Winfield was
A little Kansas town where people could get away with murder,
& he did not believe the newspaper clipping my Uncle had shown me in 1964,
That having found your body in the river with a railroad iron tied on
The back of your belt—what an awkward thing to do! He, your father-in-law
Did not believe you committed suicide as the police said, in 1970 when I was back there
For the funeral of your other son Dennis my brother, & Lyle your good friend told me the same thing
& that none of your friends thought you’d gone by your own hand, largely because
You’d have shot yourself —they reasoned, “being and outdoor man—& seen the worst of WWII.”
Still you’d been down, my Grandfather
Commented on that the last time he saw you—you’d not been able to work in a while
Because of your back, you must know I had the same problem 3 back surgeries on the job
Lifting injuries & one bad car wreck, I made it through 25 years of pain & six years of
Addicting prescription drugs, that when I tried to cold turkey out of it made me
Humble and knowing I’d not have any thing over a common junkie, a year after
The last operation they stair stepped me off & that was 12 years ago, still I thought of you
& made it through, I’ve visited your grave twice, once when Dennis died &
Again when I had to deliver a 1963 Impala convertible to Wichita in 1983
I met your friend Bill Husky on an out of the blue phone call he made to me in 1996, &
A year later I went to meet him in Florida; he told me WWII & I’d always wondered
What you had done, then I knew there was some kind of miracle going on that
You made it back to make me, after D-Day plus 13 to Cologne, Husky& his other buddy that
Knew you said I looked like you, I had little Joe with me & they were happy to see
Me and said, unabashedly you were a hero, & they were damn lucky to serve with you,
& told some stories how there were 300 landing on that Norman beach & only 50 left at Cologne
So now I have to tell you the part about how it was, that I realized about that time
What was going on in my own life, as it relates to you death—I blamed myself for your death
I somehow thought from the time I was 13, that if I’d been there
I could have stopped it—or it would not have happened, I took that
Into my soul & packed it around with me like a ruck sack filled with cast iron skillets— for 32 years,
Took this darkness to the Army & to college & through two marriages & a bunch of what we now
Call relationships—all the time trying to drink like you, & smoke like you, hunt & fish like you,
with every awful injustice I knew of, I wanted to kill Nazi’s like you,
& then, I took it to God & He showed me it was not my fault
But instead— a lie whispered to me all those years ago, & the next day
Husky called telling me about you, & I knew this connected & was true &
Since then, most all of the drinking stopped
& well I’ve had my life back & good humored it is, I laugh a lot
Pretty sure I’ve raised two pretty good boys into men
& now have a wife that does all the ideal Betty Crocker things that somehow
Escaped us back in the 50s, except for my grandmother, who cooked
Cottontail rabbits you killed & made me bacon sandwiches & chocolate cake with white frosting,
You drank Jim Beam with  Coca Cola chaser, & always brought a Coke for me
&  me even tagging along
To your beer joints & the dusty Kansas humidity that I did not know was oppressive
& it all left me an orphan & now knowing how dysfunction
& PTSD are oppressive, but I have to tell
You that I, like Husky and his friend, never thought ever of you as anything but a hero,
I retired in Alaska then went south for the mild winters in California,
& six months before I left, you came to me in a dream
With your Humphrey Bogart fedora hat & leather jacket
& picked me up in amongst a pile of old boats & we both went on a journey
south without the Buick, across the sound, & a road,  & the sunset
& I walked just a little behind you.

In the Spring When Kings Go out to Battle

Battle is all I know

& I count myself dead

Beginning with each war

There is no other way

There is no wife &

There is no life &

I must end life that comes forward to me.

War is not a backward motion

 

I never knew

That I knew

But I knew perfectly

When my company of men pulled away..

 

I was always ready to die for this King

For I am one of his 40 mighty men!

& I, a foreigner, a Hittite, as is my wife

Our grandparent’s grandparents settled in with

These Hebrews who treated us well, & many of us

Like myself & my wife became proselytes

Their faith now mine, is now mine own battle dress

 

Today is no different—except today I know

Just as these dogs are before me— I will die..

 

But not before this one who charges out of the

Throng, & oh  how I love spilling his blood, & cleaving

Half through his neck & chest— he never saw it..

Now they see me ready again,

“Who is next of you— dogs? Who of your slime is next?

 

He brought me out of battle! Battle!

This is shame! To leave battle,

I know of no other guilt I could be guilty of

& not ask for forgiveness from this their mighty God

Because it is so vile and shameful! To leave battle?

I, Uriah the Hittite shirked no battle afraid of no foe?

To leave battle? Sent from battle like some load bearer,

Smelled fine food and his perfume in his palace

But not my brothers sweat!

What could be the reason?—this King is my life?

When each war ends, but not until it ends

Until then My life— is always Battle!

War  when it begins is a linear  series of horrific acts

Each death an immoral, yet honorable action until war ends.

This one is not over; we could lose, the battle King

Could lose, simply because he is not here

That men would rally to his standard as the standard of the Almighty

My queen death by my right and left

Hand is the end purpose of my blood!

I sacrifice a lamb for every man I kill.

 

He set me before table of feast & wine

Then bade me go to my wife? To my wife?

When it is my oath to kill the dogs set before me

& there they remain and my brothers without me at their side?

That is all I could fathom.. I slept at his door & never saw my wife.

 

Heh, you, you Ammonite scum, die as you run to me! I know your slime

Ridden brothers will soon bring your archers to bear

Until then, this is two of your Hundreds

That taunt, dead & the blood still spilling out of that one now,

His tunic floating red now..

“I want more of you, like a hungry man wants his dinner!”

 

Three are running toward me now, one to the right, he will

Make a flanking move, the others come straight forward with

Lances, I will kill them all with these moves the Most High

Has given me, we 40 men were schooled in the difference between

Killing and murder—I am a killer. It is so. Yet I have never murdered.

But he the King? Why does he murder me? I thought Joab could never do this

Had it not been bidden by the King

I carried the message that ordered this treachery—I saw it on Joab’s face

My brothers would never do this,  Joab placed me with

Young men, first time in battle & when they withdrew on orders

As I led the charge and these dogs quartered in and have

Boxed  me on this rocky field I saw them Leave in tight formation

—the King was angered

When I refused to go to my wife

 

Perhaps he slept with my wife & brought me

Home to assuage this guilt? Yet I cannot believe that.

Did he not know that the most shame I could bare

Fiends take my wife who bathed on the roof below the Kings’ window

I joked about the King seeing her private parts!

Perhaps that was my sin, perhaps she will foal Hebrew blood and connect

To a lineage unknown to me, there is more than war, I know now that

This is the day I die, I would want nothing but warriors for sons,

Still.. was leaving my brothers in arms for his table a thing he thought I could bear?

Ah, but those days he commanded us in the field!

I would follow him anywhere and do his bidding

No matter the course, so I left battle hoping to be

Assigned a particularly dangerous duty..

 

Oh! How, I love to side-step a shield & with a feinting move

This flanking bastard coming close will soon die & while these two get to see me jump!

Up so my sword can kill from the height of his shoulder

I plunge it straight down with the quick stab which parallels down the neck

Passing through clavicle quickly & down quickly down..

Down into the vitals & as I come back to earth tipping the living falling corpse back he falls

The air leaves him & my sword is out and now & as he topples—I kill the other two!

The look on his face when I left the ground is still in my mind

As I now smell them all bleeding—& it is strange that now I wish the King was watching.

 

“I, Uriah the Hittite Servant of King David—of his 40 mighty men will go to my

Death with joy this day—as a warrior I’ve never looked for rescue!”

My brothers backed off leaving me cut off & the wall over there..

I’ve known since I was dispatched from the King

Some one thing was wrong, & if it be betrayal—so be it.

That I’ve fought valiantly for this King no one will ever deny

This has been my great joy when it was I knew he

Voiced daily with Almighty, I’d seen him as a youth

When he’d put down that ungodly beast behemoth Goliath

Stinking philistine that he was—I admit it I could not fathom it

Yet I saw it, I saw it at 18 and he was 15, & he killed him

With stone from his sling, dead, in the dirt

The giant that smelled of excrement & ate raw meat

& entrails unclean & putrid & gargantuan as he was—he bloated in half a day

David cut off his head with the Giant’s own sword!

Oh how we rejoiced seeing the Philistine dogs run after this &

When I heard that the prophet named David the anointed of

The Almighty I knew of no other thing I could do

But serve him— David, and shortly swore my allegiance

To him and only him, that my old uncle

Betrayed him, & his traitor son who infuriated me, & when I

Saw Absalom dead my heart swelled with the joy

The justice of it, yet I saw my King weep & grieve

As if he’d lost an infant child, I thought him

Beyond human with tenderness that day

I, Uriah the fierce Hittite was moved by

His loss and his ability to love

Now I see that they are

Sending five at me… Ha! I give it to these dogs they

Have not brought archers nor javelins to bear even now & will

Try showing themselves men! Ha! I’ll kill these five!

 

I’m now leaking red blood & that was a little harder

Than I thought—my age? I’ll have no gray hair after this day!

Ha! This Day of my death, no old man tottering before a grave for me!

I am a warrior & death has always been my mistress.

That keeps me true to my wife!

I’ve always been true but now there are

Other arms of Sheol reaching to receive me —I go there with honor!

If there is resurrection as some of these Hebrews believe,

I desire to march straight for it.

But not before I taunt them more, “Dogs! come spill some more of your

Entrails that I Uriah will make you whore mothers weep! Dogs that

Defy the Mighty one of Israel! Come die with me today so you

Will see Sheol and bark for even dark mercy!”

These Hebrews taught me Job & He Who is Mighty

Test men—I’ll be true to this test

Ha! & now I see the archers being placed, & a phalanx of

Infantry to take my arrowed corpse, Ha! Today I die!

The morning sky is red, & a hot wind blows in my face,

My doom is this day will not steal my joy of this

My final battle—a wrong done against me never-the-less

Through a cause of which I’ll never know here.. yet I smell Hyssop

I smell olive oil,  I smell savory, and Basil, and Aloe

Their clang of armor sounds paltry,

Now I’m hearing distant symbols, tambourines & trumpets

Bah!  I throw down my shield & pick up a lance!

In thirty feet the archers will have to shoot round their infantry

I will charge them!

He has some reason not privy to me, & so as said Job

& now I charge them! & I’m yelling:

“Even though He slay me, yet I will praise Him!”

Believing

Our love
Our love is all of God’s money
Everyone is a burning sun

-Jeff Tweedy

Belief is the locked up tangible thing,
of law that the dust can be blown off of,
taken from a bookshelf, objectified, crucified
pointed at, solid repository of ideological contusions,
Gnostic misdemeanors, white lies & black ones of unreality
no different from the adulterous
first degree murder of guilty abrasions on your soul & woeful
finger-pointing wrong in legalistic right…

“Liberals and fundamentalists are both humanists,” said the old preacher grinning as he cleaned the carburetor of his Buick with Joy from a yellow plastic bottle & a tooth brush

“One believes there is a better day a coming, all with a strong right arm of correct politics, & culture change.

“The other believes there is a better day a coming, if you do everything the Bible say; both have made Man’s action the operative & left out God as the agent of change. ” Then after putting the air cleaner back together, he laughed and said, “Isn’t it interesting that moralism gets us only so far!”

Rolling up through time & space containerized in

This bone-bag existence of drunken pleasure & pain
& psychedelic sin
& death…

Thankfully,
Believing is..
alive
the BE Living,
the BE loving
Believing is..
Holy Spirit..
Who is…
fluid active running down the river & the red fish
in the river & the same thing and is this River of Life flowing from us..
living water of life on this planet flowing from us somehow..
that gets us to the other side
& brings us back
A-gain,
A resurrection
A dilation of time, in this space–from another one.
so the bone bag has some kin
w/ the reddening sky,
mist on the mountain
bird song, moon rising
star twinkle ’round Orion’s belt
& sun setting over placid ocean
& laughter of a four year old son,
keeper of His kingdom
the Life is..
the forgiving cry of the first born Son
Who is…
the Truth, blessed Yeshua
the Way, to get though this life w/joy,
perseverance, love &
everlasting knowledge..
“Our Father in heaven..”
Who is…
& because His name is..
so Hallowed
this is…
within us &
all so, “On earth as it is in Heaven.”

My Grandfather’s Farm

rodeo!!

 

 

 

He did not homestead
As his grandfather had,
During Bloody Kansas, but
He was born in a sod house,
& his father, an immigrant at nine
Learned carpentry &
Built a wooden house on another farm
Around 1884 & he, a second generation
Norwegian, with an English mother
Who had insisted on Anglicizing the name Nygaard, to Thompson
He, the second son, took to Cowboy as soon as he could,
Worked for a Texas Ranger named Crump,
Went on one cattle drive from Texas to Abilene
& an expedition against small farmers, which were putting
Up barb wire & all this after as a lad, he’d seen prairie chickens
Fly up in such great numbers as to block out the sun
& he’d seen the Dalton Brother’s
Rob a bank —wilding with six
Guns drawn & a getaway, &
He’d tried to fight in the
Spanish war but was sent
Back from Florida when
He was discovered too young, &
After returning, he was breaking
A horse & was thrown
& in the dust & picking himself up
He heard an old timer at the edge of the corral laugh,
“Remember the Mane!”
That year he was thrown from a horse again,
& compound fractured his leg below the knee,
& crawled three miles back to the ranch house
Where they put him in a buck board wagon
& drove him ten miles to a doctor,
& he showed me those scars, & I heard a conversation
He had with an old timer who lived up on the South fork
Of Little Butte Creek in a cabin here in Oregon, & how in 1901
They, unbeknownst to each other,
Had both been at a rodeo at the 101 Ranch in Oklahoma
& where he saw a young Will Rogers, & a
Federal guard had Geronimo in a cage,
& let him out & made the fierce old man shoot a buffalo
Tied to a stake, & they & many of the cowboys thought
That a disgusting spectacle, but they ate of the Buffalo
Two years later, he courted my grandmother, daughter of third generation
German-American family from Ohio,
That had 500 acres of bottom land,
& sons either unwilling, or unable to farm, &
In September of 1903 he was feeding hogs for the old man from a wagon &
His father-in-law to be, was sitting on the fence
Twenty feet from him, when a lightning bolt
Struck the old man, & turned him to charcoal
& knocked my Grandfather out of the wagon
& he & Grandmother married in October
& pretty much the day of the lightning strike they inherited their farm
& he was successful for almost thirty years, most of his children living
& graduating from High School, & stories of family life & scores of farm hands
He employed, all thinking well of him as a fair man,
& neighbors & stock bought & sold, & wheat crops & corn crops
& hogs, & cattle, & early machines of mechanized agriculture,
Like a corn chopper that took his middle finger,
& the time he threw the Klan off his property when they tried to recruit him,
& neighbors, & the time the tornado took off the barn door,
When he was trying to get the horses out,
& broke his back, laying him up for a time
In the hospital, & then Depression came &
He & my Grandmother & my mother, their youngest, had to drive
Away in a buckboard wagon, pulled by a team of horses
From their property and prosperity, this lightening
Came in the form of a squall of bloody Kansas bankers,
After wheat & hog, & corn crops that mortgaged the farm became worthless,
While down in Texas, Lyndon Johnson changed all that, &
Saved Texas farmers from far off Washington & knowing this,
Years later, my Grandfather was happy to vote for LBJ,
While the rest of my family, who though they revered the oil painting
Of the stone farm house they’d grown up in,
Voted Goldwater, complaining that
The government was too large.

All That Is Natural

Even non-indigenous
& maligned as they are,
For having taken over
The American continent,
European Starlings imported
to New York City
in 1890, fly in unison,
& together with Brewers blackbird,
Rusty blackbirds, and yellow-headed
Blackbirds, in great fall & winter flocks,
Yet, they all cranky nest & breed & feed
In small groups, then move off in
Great, great blackbird
Mobial swirl perceptive,
Of all & oneanother but not perceiving, in
An unseen morphic field
Of each other proffering
Themselves as one, moving
North or south on the continent
Thought of as nuisance birds & could it be
That we who have this other perceived nuisance of
All that is natural will
Perhaps one resurrected day, come home
To roost when we see information that
Binds it all, with which we perceive
This perception—has become its own
Notion beyond any
Physical realm & is finally to us
Becoming Supernatural.

Where do you live?

img_0023.jpg

We may be light
Moving monuments
Spiral informative testaments
Seemingly from void
Lifting emission of inception
Cloud illumining hopes,
Of skyshine,
Invisibly shining back
Phosphorescent in the dark
Subtle beacons,
Transceivers for life, &
Noise attempts to drown the transmission out,
Longing for love, the message
Sent long ago, but not in a bottle while we are
Still wading shores darkened by loss
Of knowing, we are sleeping shining
Bread eaters & we are, lost in fog
Hungering, hardly black or white, wondering
From the wondering machine
& color coming in the message from
The source ladder, a spiraled ladder
Transmitted from beyond & inside
& a voice says, “Come and see!”

Second of three encounters with lions

When I was about 32
I was climbing around Neil Rock
In cutoff jeans & tennis shoes
& the rest of me a poor example of Tarzan
As I was on that hot day
& I heard this same
Guttural coughing noise
coming from the manzanita patch atop
Neil Rock as I was standing on the
Cliff where 100 feet below me were
Two does with fawns & a wind current blowing
Straight up the cliff face & just
Earlier held up a golden eagle w/in thirty feet
On a float by, now I was high as the rock faced cliff
But I knew what the coughing noise was
& when I knew—hair stood up on the back of my neck
I had no mean border collie & I knew I
Was meat that had messed up
A lions meat hunt & the guttural noise continued
& admittedly scared, I momentarily went into a flight mode
& making it about 15 feet I saw a huge
Dead manzanita trunk & grabbed it
& began to beat the dead wood off it for
A twice sized baseball bat & turned toward
The brush & could now see
His tawny cat body in the brush tail twitching
Sizing me up & I struck the ground
Repeatedly &now in full fight mode I spoke
To the mountain lion, “Come on,” I yelled,
& other bravado I do not recall,
& yet the big cat lingered perhaps finding my expletives curious,
& he did slink away, & I sauntered down the hill
& deposited my manzanita cat killer, behind the front door
In my cabin down the hill, after I’d walked off
The adrenaline & later I told my neighbor this tale
That he did not believe
& I think he did not doubt me so much,
As his urban, “moved to the country..”
Presentiment, foolishly doubted that anything wild & fierce
Could be close enough to watch their every move, while they
Jogged & walked through this forest.

We are not human

DNA_orbit_animatedWe are not human
In the short run
As many tribes
Confine definition
Of humanity
To their own,
& we aren’t really
In our own as yet
Abstraction/loss
Being gain once seen
Looking upstream
The river pours toward us
So-called ‘inanimate’
Belies Presence
& then 2nd law of
Thermodynamics invents
Entropy, before survival
& now we know our stuff is from
Supernovas reaching back
& now forward
Looking downstream
The river pours away from us
Information is immaterial—that is really important
& together not natural as an explanation
We are this information & it is not natural
In & of itself because we perceive &
This clutching grip & explanation is
Supernatural, or Einstein was wrong
Now life, double helix’d in &
Flipping off this
Running down universe
We are not human, save all of us
At birth or death or in between
Our humanity, our life is only human
Ghosts on file, until we know..
Because we are information
This place is not a one shot
Chance of pooling genes but
DNA defining an enigma & there  is
No damn primordial soup for you,
Rather a spiral spoken Word..
Human only as we
Gently people
This earth seeing
Objective action we are
Containers of text &
Producers of text
Individually — 3.7 billion lettered genetic message &
Each, we are when
Our names spoken &
Togethered & ancestored
Up to now..
History of time for us is an inner
Missing of what is not, as
What is, that only human
Universal prosecution of background noise,
While either on fire, or on ice
We are made human by loving kindness
As a Father runs to his children
Nothing can take this away
Blood having been shed &
A Word spoken before supernovas
As from that dust we become this dust
To step into our home on the other side..
Surprising all the stars because in the end
We are more important
Than the sun & the Son is everything..

Buffy & Chewla

Buffy & Chewla were neighbors,
Buffy was a perfectly manicured
ankle humping, white toy poodle,
Chewla was a short haired pitbull
Buffy loved his owner but
had no idea what to do w/his sex drive;
Chewla loved her owners but
had no idea what she was bred to do.
every morning in his backyard,
after pissing & shitting,
Buffy would begin yap, yapping
at Chewla through the chain link fence,
every morning Chewla would whine
& stand w/her tail between her legs
neck arched a little & quiver,
shake, & roll her eyes back
to the house, then back again to
the beribboned white puff that barked
& pissed & pawed the ground across
the fence with the strong odor
of perfume wafting off its curly dog hair

One morning Buffy, snarling & barking
& barring its tiny teeth, stuck his nose
thru the chain link fence & Chewla
grabbed it in her powerful jaws
& pulled his tiny splitting skull thru
the chain link fence with the rest of his body
& tore it into many white & red pieces
while no one was watching.
the husband of Buffy’s owner was
secretly glad–but knew he’d have
to buy his wife another
little dog.

Chewla’s owners laughed about it,
& the man told the story many times
over his lunch pail & thermos,
but two months after his wife
became pregnant, he took Chewla
into the country & while stroking
her, he gently put a .22 to the back of
her head, pulled the trigger,
& told his wife Chewl’d been run over by a truck.

 

Del Santee’s Irish Uncle

Del Santee’s Irish Uncle
on his mother’s side
was a hit man for the IRA
during the Easter rebellion & beyond
& had to leave for the states
around 1930, give or take
a couple of years,
his specialty having been informers,
& he’d whacked enough of
his traitorous countrymen that by
the time of his departure of
Irish soil it was quite
dangerous for his own
self to walk Dublin’s city
streets in the daytime,
he had followed each assigned
Judas for weeks
until they would eventually
go to confession & then he’d
shoot them on the front steps of the church,
or, very close to the front steps,
having given them a grand
chance at clearing their soul of misdeed
Del and his cousin, fifty years after all of this
took the old man to an Oakland A’s
baseball game, as the former revolutionary
had grown fond of the American game,
& in the bottom of the ninth inning
of a close contest, the elder of the three,
excused himself from his younger charges
& quietly worked his way
into some rows of seats above them & tried
to kill a man, roughly his own age, with an umbrella.
Del said the old man claimed afterward that
“Sure, it was a traitor,”
missed because he’d never gone to confession.
Del said, the old man went to confess
his own sins every day of his life
since he’d left Ireland.

we could walk there

following the path
a small glade opens
into a meadow where
spring fed pond
filled to the edge
of a rock bluff
that forms the brink of
a waterfall and is the headwaters
of a river miles away,
a power of this beginning
that is now rock faced around
the below conifered slope
that holds and slowly drains this
past winters snow melt,
the late summers–wildflowers
out now to bloom bright
starry colors to this
mountain’s summer destiny
found in opened crevice w/moss
& yellow lichened rock, thin air
giving back & away to this summer’s
flash of color,
we could walk there
in this late august,
high on the nights edge
of summer frost

we could walk there
but for the people and schedules
& commitments..
we could walk there
and the late blooming
summer wildflowers will not wait.

Brief description of Creation

love made five animals
rising out of the sea,
first, a colonial creature,
fastened to the rocks, ate what washed
by and showed itself on the lowering of the tide,
second, wore a green cloak, ate of
the sun and covered the earth,
third ate of the second and walked on the
earth indifferently, fourth ate of the third
in an exclusive manner,
the fifth ate of everything.

A Psalm

I’ve been excited by women
in libraries
followed movements with
my eyes as a sail fills
with wind and felt the jolt
like a prow taking
its cut through a wave

I’ve been excited by women
in libraries
whose slow surreptitious movements,
the turn of an ankle
short measured steps in high heels
a twist of mouth
a glance at a book shelf
or through it

I’ve been excited by women
in libraries
whose silent voices echo chapters
of humility and respect
as peasant dresses
and pigtails flow by with ghosts
of Marilyn Monroe movie memories
and placid book cover art

I’ve been excited by women
in libraries
rolling book carts to proper shelves
cataloging history and
time and gossip and art

I’ve been excited by women
in libraries
crossing legs out of terry cloth dresses with
rouged cheeks and
red elevated lips
taking a book inward
with focus and cognition
while red hair
and white thighs exude
auras of creation

I’ve been excited by women
in libraries
as if Sapphos’ lost poems
appeared while I wait for
a tall dark haired woman
to find me here between
stolid wooden shelves
where dreams meet the sea
and hearts have tried
to expose the sky

I’ve been excited by women
in libraries
and have turned pages
of desire toward islands of thought
where there are
rose petaled shores
of sure goodness
and love