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L’Age D’Or
My student makes a face. Her wee 'abode' on Zoom is close to mine, so i notice it, rather than scroll over the three other pages, pardon, 'galleries.' On the subject of book recommendations for this French class, as she is more advanced and it's an all-level course, i brought up Francoise Gilot's "Life with Picasso." And Marguerite Duras. And the Surrealist poets, and the Negritude founders, aussi des poetes. Poets who led countries and began the Negritude movement synchronistically paralleling the Harlem Renaissance. Was that disgust she revealed in regard to Gilot and Picasso's age difference? Did anyone else cringe? Or cringe at her disdain? Right. In three years, they would be Gilot's age. So, yes, a 40 year difference seems great. But...it's Picasso. Why wouldn't anyone fall into his Malagan depths? In a photo of my paternal grandfather (who married & divorced my grandmother thrice), she's 19. He's 43 and did i imagine his smoking a pipe? Ceci n'est pas une pipe? They had a yen for Hawaii, built a home on the Kona coast. The house was sold in his final divorce. Then there were the homes in the Valley, north, north east of downtown L.A. One had a superb waterfall which cascaded into their mega lima bean of a swimming hole. But the sunken, stepdown bedroom, led to a circular bed! I had never seen such Bondness, Q! Yes, they were a model of happiness. Even at the expense of someone else's disdain...My grandmother never remarried but my father once (proudly?) mentioned she had been Bradbury's lover. She was a pistol: taught bilingual elementary classes in Watts. Taught her mother English when they moved from Warsaw to Van Nuys. Was escorted by the Black Panthers during Watts' Riots to her parking spot, all the way back to her abode on the Westside, where a framed poster of Tuesday Weld pointing a gun at the viewer stood above the steps, for the adaptation of my pop's first novel, "She Let Him Continue." So she grimaced. So possibly only i noticed. What does one give up with such an age difference? Time? Adoration from others? And what does "Ay, there's the rub!" truly mean?
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Ode to the DMV
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For(e)ward
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Ode to Bergman
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Found Object Poem #2
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December Song
Commissionned by Restaurant Cortez
Vetiver travels in cashmere
through layers of trunk goods
deliquescence and atmospheric rivers
whitewash a memento
June replacing plums in the icebox
the brush of cicada wings
transposing melodies as analog hum.
Time’s stylus stops one tree ring after another
and no deejay can play it soft enough for any god to hear,
for all gods are busy, and who can blame them.
The luck the benediction
a Christopher an Avila
amulets for lovers and surfer saints
This is the island of skipped mantras
here, but by the grace of
a cat’s purr
which turn-turns the seasons
in messianic din
or beats the drum
in quiet sin and chortles at
what’s left: to begin
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Found Object Poem #1 - SOLD
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From ‘A Book of Cures’
American Spirit
Come,
Light
Be still,
Beats per
Second
asthma
summoned from Tibet,
a parcel of ground precious stones one teaspoon
with warm goat milk
upon retiring
Ba
the end of all ones sheep
but have you tried counting
those left to graze?
Binomial
B: You are very nice, but you are only a translation.
M: Don’t complete that thought.
B: I’ll try not to think of Mexico.
M: I’ve been told that before.
B: About the immigrant problem?
M: Tea?
B: You forgot to count the stars. Again.
Eavesdropping
-I’d like to think that I have hope
-She has kind of a raspy voice
-Taxi
-It’s hard to look at
-I’d like to think we were
-We’re spiritually limber
-Petty
-Just think
-How kind!
-How realistic it would be
Earthdreamers
we once lived
near trees
netted
recoiling
and corresponding to
the surround
I have explored an image of a house
connected to mother
what was mine
is now years
Heartbreach
in Brazil, ‘saudade’ is used
for, no other language puts
pain on the existential map
x marks the spot
where
you
are
not
Sing to birds in flight
Paint it in glue
And recall
Others have been there
Many times before ya.
My words as comeuppance,
Shared mantra-like:
i once craved the habit(at) of you
but you are sulphur
and I am hungry hungry for wheat and marigold leaves
Jumpstart Dictionary
Honto- says it drives
Itai – and it hurts
You are deaf, is that right?
Mo – always means more
And surpasses time.
Shiga – I’ve visited once
Zembu – all of us
Melon milk: Take before rising
Minna- What brought her here
Konna-No – Cuts like an elder’s knife
Rapucha – the inability to recall a loved one’s face.
Migraine
Not coffee
Not wine
Not chocolate
Not fermented cheese
Not light
(Whether refracted or dimmed)
Not noise
in the quiet,
deleted
pressing ice to fuel pumps at the brow
forehead to pillow
the dull drill,
a reminder
repeating
a tantivy
if the morning
Nepotism
It’s not you
This business, a clogged drain
100,000 actors storming down over
hills
desperation screaming silently
Oh look, over there!
Fake lips eating a pancake
Talent gets fat
The popcorn, stale
And the newest remake
Streams faster than
We hulu – Hey, it’s hard being rejected.
Narcissus needs a greyhound bus
A train through dust and new Palm Springs
Bend bend bend with the tracks
Find your own bloody tune
Sans Meisner or method
Or mama’s melancholy
Come to me
In deep focus,
My citizen
K?
Next!
O
for Benjamin Zeitgeist
The center of it all
Some call it the onion
Meditation is a cloak
He felt
as the sole intact atom
At the center of a nuclear explosion
And mentioned the many watercolors he painted
of Laotians paddling downstream
in boats of bomb shells
That’s poetic
Or,
Not
P
Q
R
Suture
Shane does
Shannon
Taonga
she (took me for granted)
sent me adrift
through the window
from a cabin on stilts
why, within the bottle,
my wooden sails have weight?
and eelgrass
seems seaweed
or palomino mane under waves
carry us
to new banks
now covered in snow
Trip to the Moon
To Pierre Bettencourt
he has pills
to help him dream
last night
he gave me one on which was written in small letters
ambience
and before I reach the well
between cotton and plays of scale
he awakens me from
a nocturnal proscenium
Unsomnia
I’m Me
Keeps me up
At night
And you?
Vertigo
The grey
flannel pencil
skirt
doesn’t fit
Kim Novak
or me this season
I warble
and the sidewalk gives up
In black and white,
I have found Harry Lime
On cobble-stoned streets
far from Vienna
But the tune,
I can only slightly hum
Zibeline Allergy
(See Knitting)
Zoetrope
Spotted on Cardiff,
On Main
Imagos spun
for one
and all
withheld
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Santa Monica Alleyway.
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Last night the wind spoke your name
Last night the wind spoke your name
and a moth neared the lamp which cast
enough inspiration to
thread each spring
teasing with one lover after another
Until familiarity became
damp, the faint trill and trickle of time
Until that which has been takes a name
a life of its own
wind giving form to absence
Last night,
in the rustle of a frond
in the gurgle of a garden fountain
locus amoenus
Each hoot of the unseen owl called out your name
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LA Excerpts
Because in this city of farce and reinvention one fidgets to see clearly.
This morning the Two north was unfamiliar under foggy canopy. The cop with
speedgun at the underpass by Verdugo, unimportant. And KUSC brought a
guest deejay, an actor who plays Beethoven. There was a party, a dinner party, a local restaurant, and one dear friend after another reminded of the rain.
Because nothing but the natural order of things matters. An absence, a
blessing. Four days ago, the woodpeckers’ eggs hatched. She goes in first as he stands watch.
At the entrance to the 101 North on Bellevue and Echo Park: the black jeep, a
phone in the driver’s hand. Entropy, dismissive of green signals. Honk if you
like reading.
A wall-eyed terrier as companion for the night; its human in New York. The
apartment window, facing north. Boreos all quiet; true north finds Wilshire,a welcomed drone. Do you think of me?
I enter the hammock of abandon, as one slips into the Ganges… the lone
tourist buying cardboard, candle, and flowers to float and come clean.
21 years ago, I rolled west onto less peaceful terrain, and in Pasadena I
find the arroyo seco, a devil of an earthquake, the chill of civil unrest, and pine for the Pacific. Restaurants and jazz as wallpaper.
Music music and no one here can march in time– Offer up the periodic
table and spin a diamond for each candle, each tooth, and pray no more.
Build these dreams then where? South? Under ocean floors? On a
floating island of plastics? And some have never been kissed.
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Veering West.
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No Direction
The south
Faux fur and feathers heat up hats
Came by herself to church without boy or man
Ran the June bug up and down her arm
Didn’t believe in molasses
A thousand miles away
The Spanish moss is calling
From ancestors to voodoo doctors
The north
Bend under snow
The branches you carry
There is no end to the stars and the wind
There is only you yourself
Scream from a bridge if you have to
The east
A pied, A cheval
Pas en voiture, c’est impossible
King David is a short walk to sand dunes
Float atop salt
Salt and years
The west
Way out there
In the Land of Divorce and backlots
I met a woman so lonely
She looked younger each day
My southpacific
Naka’apu’eo
From uke strings
And a church named Aloha
Where a street sign points to either volcano or airport
When we found the school
And peered off the cliff’s edge
Ocean violent : the lava devouring history
You requested lunch
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Time, Unscrewed.
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