These are poems that aim at reflecting something uniquely American in experience. Be it a place. Or a person or an experience. It had to happen somewhere to become something.
I wish to tear
these mountains down!
Rebuild them atom by
atom in your mind
Every molecule
a monument to their beauty,
so that you may remember
them so long as you may live:
Flaming amber at daybreak;
Violet and sage, wilted rose and orange peel at sunset.
Remnant of catastrophe.
Earth shook her bed sheets
and left a wrinkle on the aeons.
“Quick, before Mars returns,”
let us take a moment to rest
in the arms of her
peaceful precipice.
As I sit in my car
And wonder where we are
I was wishing we could
Get lost like the beats
On the road, freedom free
Wind and cactus and bugs
In our teeth, gobbling on
The American landscape.
Alas, romantic… til you
Realize you’re homeless
And poetry doesn’t pay
And you never learned how
To farm. Your quaint garden
No replacement for year-
Round bread. Eat these words?
Deaf ears on empty stomach
Too much focus on need
To consume gospel.
The loaves are gone
And the wine?
I gave that up.
Years ago.
“It’s OK.” She says.
My eyes forsaking
This fantasy gone awry.
“Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
Coffee, Hot, Black,
Cream and sugar. I
explain to her that
It is “OK”
I know that fleeting
thoughts of old
dreams make melancholy
the otherwise
pervasive spirit.
It Matters not what
other’s done
or what I Did not.
We are not hungry,
no, quite the opposite…
We are so well fed
that we should burst
with the energy
to reel in the sun.
“You see, I’ve realized something”
Though longing makes for
great sounding poetry,
my real meaning is derived
from real work. No, not
the farm; Citizen poet
Makar of webs, pictures
words, words for words,
we have so much language
we can’t contain it
awaiting on shelves
for our pronunciation
if only we can understand…
“Want to go to the library?”
10/24/19
I
Not one echo
In the empty
Open hall.
Plush crushed
Seats Un-touched
Perfect planks
Of stretched oak
Reflecting no wave
Absorbing no steps
Overarched with
ornate gold
Embellishment
Reaching over red
Velvet curtains
Pulled tight
Lights out
Dim luminance
Shadow of a
Need to be
Something more.
II
Crisp spring
Air, stifled
Indoors with
Full house.
Presidential
Entourage in
Crushed velvet
Seats, the color
Of sons lost on
Grassy fields
Now remembered
By a return
To normal.
Candle soot
Caked ceiling
Of embellishments
Suffocating on
The exhaled breath
Of the crowd
As they gasp, from
Wooden planks
Vibrating with
The sounds
Of treason.
”The president is dead!”
III
Upon first inhalation
You smell the
History of a
Place in history
Like church
Or the museum
Hardwood sweat
Tar and varnish
Blood…breath
Of time in the
Old velvet Seats
On the stage floor.
Time has not
Forgotten what
Has happened here.
A hundred years
have passed and
We still feel the
Loss of one
April night.
We are gathered here
To breathe in
History and
Experience the present.
IV
When a place
Is alive with
The sound of
Music, theater
Or poetry, every
Timber reverberates
With the memory
Of it. Ghost
Hunters spend the
Night hoping to
Read the energy
Of violence or
Perhaps the
Inhalation of
Hundreds of years
Of performances.
One tragedy for
For a nation
To remember
In one place
That exists now
Saved by the
Events
Of the past
And proffered by
A show that must
Go on.
At the end of the mathematics
Of the Universe, Hawking
Solved for God; the only
Possible solution for
The unsolvable question.
I am met with the same
Wonder as I sit under
The trees in the garden
Contemplating the galaxy…
And my place wherein:
A drop of water, charged
On a piece of sand, hurled
Around a ball of fire, swung
Towards an enormous singularity…
“Amen.”
Classic icon of the West
The great steel horse, chief driven
Western power charging across the
Iron scars of a landscape torn open
With industrial desires and the need for connection.
Ancient mode in modern time, still carrying the promise of the dream across American desert. Anticipating your latest desires, in tow.
Carriage.
“Hey, is #489 running late?”
Thousands of years of rain
Washing her bulbous face,
Chipping away at her grain
By grain, by boulder by grain,
Until one day a great collapse
An earthquake or meteor perhaps
She splits in two, dropping
Half her mass in an avalanche.
Sheets of rock splitting off
Tumbling in tumultuous shambles
Of her once bold face, until
Once again years of rain
Washing her caved in face
Chipping away at her grain
By grain by boulder by grain
Smoothing her, curving her
Revealing her true color
And character.
“Hello” hello “Echo” echo
Whatever I say, repeats itself.
“Hello!” Hello, Hello, hello…
As my eyes roll over her curves
Arching over me, bending in
Streaks of red and yellow
Broken finally by azure
Sky that offers the only light
Inside this giant bowl dome.
A cathedral, a great place to
hear the violin or guitar. A
Symphony or maybe quartet?
If you sing the canyon songs
You are blessed with a chorus
Of your own voices from
The echo chamber.
“Clouds, oh clouds, speak to me…”
The sun is slow
To rise here.
Obscured by
Eastern peaks
Light streams and flails
Rails and breaks forth
Across the valley first
Then the waking city…
“Wake Up!”
A thousand eyes
Are above you
Looking down
Reaching the light
Before it’s even near you.
Floating, clusters
Of characters, colors,
Bursts of enthusiasm
Blanketing the sky.
“Did Balloon Fiesta start today?”
A place
Is a place
with or without
You
There
In That Place.
But,
without you
Un-real-
ized lies
This
Place.
We can not
leave this
place alone
or it will not
Be
A Place
As a place
with
A person
Becomes
Real, As
real gets
For then
it is seeing, touching, smelling, hearing, tasting
or otherwise, known!