Prepping For The Inevitable

I’m fascinated by distance

which is why I carry a knife

the time has come to act quickly

le souffle souffre de soufre

it’s always a great pleasure

to sit in a garage

listening to Bob Dylan

pull words out of his skull

and put them into music

which is how he came to receive

the Nobel prize. I feel very conflicted

on this subject. Language

doesn’t necessarily require music

to achieve its goals, but it helps

the history of sugar

is round and white, but it’s still

just sugar. We need a new mythology

the old ones have lost their traction

John Wayne wrestling an octopus

teaches us little about the octopus

the crisis of our current predicament

cries out for acceptance

I like the angularity of Cubism

objects do like the sun

which enters and exits the sky

it appears in experience

then disappears without ceasing

to be. There’s a lesson there

life, warmth, and compassion

are everything we need 

Here I Sit A Bunch Of Membranes

here I sit a bunch of membranes

in a reverie of tears

this is what it’s like to be trapped

in a room with your own mind

I grew up in Minnesota

and now I think of Walla Walla

and its rural atmosphere as a better

place than Seattle and its high tech

affluence and sociopathic behavior

oppositions lead to propositions

I’m not sure what that means

but it sounds good. The fork

is often associated with eating

and making tough decisions

this is the theatre of indecision

the sparkling of the wagon

is the mahogany of our incantation

I continue to have problems with jazz

but I’m improving. I feel the fingers

of a stellar, planetary music

play my brain

like a jar of honey

this happens a lot

the metaphors go crazy

trying to find a solution for ice

how to preserve it how to nurture it

I feel increasingly peremptory

but who wouldn’t in these circumstances

I hear someone calling me

and go buy a ticket

for the next flight to Mars 

Poem For A Dying World

What is grace? The spin

of a wasp, a locomotive

in the breath. Allow

yourself to be yourself

I hear someone vacuuming

the hallway and I dream

of Hamlet riding a motorcycle

across Arizona with a monkey

on his back. I like to create rhythms

for the dance of jelly

during the collapse

of industrial civilization

the truth is never simple

let me whisper in your ear

I need razors and Oreo cookies

there’s no morality in nature

it’s a dog eat dog world

with a little occasional hedonism

thrown in. I once lived in California

where I learned to photosynthesize

and enjoy wine. Music

drooled from the suburbs

and various rivers bumped into the ocean

an exit from experience

does not attest to the fate of what

comes out of experience

I banish all mass from this poem

homelessness has been normalized

and I’m sitting in a gas

of nitrogen and oxygen

while the glaciers melt and the seas

begin to rise and flood the cities

the slow drip of candle wax

attests to the beauty of understatement

I don’t think we’re going to ride this one out

hang on to your hat

Balance Sheet

what happens when capitalism

butts into reality

i.e. a finite world

that doesn’t allow infinite speculation

to occur. Money

goes out the window

each word has the heft of a gamble

as our supplies begin

to dwindle. This is not what I had in mind

when I was in my 20s and dreamed

the clacking of a spoon on a ceramic plate

after feeding the cat

God knows what. If that’s what radical

means then call me a radical

music is open to everything

which is why I keep falling in love

despite what appears to be

a horrifying future

of cannibalistic zombies

a woman in a dark mood

sits by a cash register

at La Grande Épicerie de Paris

following a homeless woman

in line dragging a urine

soaked blanket. Yes capitalism

is strange. It’s a pathology

nineteen agitated alligators in a ditch

electricity, running water, health

all cost money

and that’s what makes it

evil. Philosophy

swims in my head like a whale

call it phenomenology

or southern rock I don’t care

our immersion in life

shouldn’t require money

but it does. And for that

the oligarchy has arranged jobs

education and debt

peonage. Hurray

for pizza. I wish the super bowl

would go fuck itself 

Going Solar

does a poem write itself or is it constructed

out of clean white socks

all holes are holy

but the holes of socks

are wholly anthropocentric. Butterflies tie my shoes

while the sky walks around in my head

and yes, I believe in petunias

no one wants to hear heavy metal

this early in the morning. Am I

too old to write poetry?

the goal of a piano is create tigers

of sound, but that of poetry

is to propel words

through caverns of thought

and come out the other side

sticky, like peanut butter

as sidewalks bounce on my tongue

I take a romantic position

and put it into strains of refractory tuna

I’m fascinated by distance

who doesn’t occasionally need a little astronomy

age has little to do with the orbit of Mars

except as a form of parallax

in the great kingdoms of the sun

where I can smell the fresh odor of rain

after the storm has rolled its way further east

and the sun

spits its light into space

like a poem. Shelves everywhere loaded with books

it’s the gravity of the situation

here I am crawling toward you

will you accept

these words? I’m suffering

from an unbridled hedonism

although nothing is official until I put my shoes on

and sunlight comes out of my mouth 

Wedding Anniversary Power Outage Blues

It came very unexpectedly. It’s been a pretty mild winter. I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to snow this year. The Midwest has been getting slammed by a murderous cold shoved down by a loopy jet stream, but the Pacific Northwest has been almost balmy, few temperatures lower than 45℉. But just to make sure it wouldn’t snow, I invested 45 dollars in a pair of Diamond Grip Yaktrax.

It didn’t work. I got up this morning to discover three or four inches of snow on the ground. Well, I thought, looks like I get to use those Yaktrax after all.

I got into my running clothes, filled a sandwich baggie with unsalted peanuts, and grabbed the new Yaktrax, which I proceeded to stretch over my shoe while sitting at the top of the hallway stairs. I realized I shouldn’t wear them walking over the shale tile of the entryway so I hopped to the door with one on and put the other one on outside. I wasn’t sure whether to put the pull-strap on at the back or at the front. I don’t think it matters. I put them on with the pull-strap at the front. I thought it might be easier to tug the rubber frame from the front than from the back. The studs looked pretty serious, almost like something from a video game where all the weaponry is exaggerated. You jiggle these things and they jingle. They could also be used as a musical instrument.

My crows were nowhere in sight. I whistled. No crows. I was disappointed and worried. I wondered how they were bearing up in this unusual cold.

         The cold was invigorating. I liked it. It made me feel all jazzed up, like cocaine, or Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. Paradoxically, I found myself much more comfortable at 26℉ with low humidity than 40℉ with high humidity. 

I liked the sound of the crunch on the ice as my diamond grip studs came crashing down into it. The street was solid ice. A guy in a car honked at me from behind. I didn’t hear him. I got out of the way and he waved as he drove by. I marveled at the fact he was driving in such treacherous conditions.

There were a couple of crows at the end of Bigelow but none on West McGraw Place or further down by the Five Corners Hardware Store.

There were a few by the Queen Anne branch of the Seattle Public Library. They were definitely glad to see me. I had a lot of peanuts to toss and it felt good to get them out there and hear them click on the ice of the street. If I threw them into the snow they tended to disappear. There were hardly any cars around.

I glanced at the tent set up in the most discreet part of Bhy Kracke Park, under some shrubbery in the midsection where the switch back trail winds around under some tree branches. I didn’t see anyone, didn’t hear anyone. The tent was blanketed in snow although somewhat protected by the shrubbery. If there was anyone inside, they must be freezing, however many blankets they’ve got. I still don’t know who – or if anyone – has been living in that tent. It has been there for several weeks now and although I pass it twice a day I’ve seen absolutely no one.

I got home to discover everything was dark. We’d had a power outage. I pulled the Yaktrax off of my shoes and hung them on the doorknob of the hallway storage closet. Then I came in and got undressed while R phoned Seattle City Light to see if there was any information about the power outage. The messaging service said energy would return at about 6:00 p.m. R managed to fish a battery-powered dome light out of the cupboard to use in the bathroom while I showered. Showering is a dangerous enterprise in the dark. The little dome light came in very handy. Our big red flashlight wouldn’t work. The battery had expired.

We thought about going to one of several restaurants for dinner that were within walking distance, but their power was also out and we didn’t know for sure when it would be returning. And the two restaurants don’t begin serving dinner until five. We couldn’t wait that long. So R made a couple of ham sandwiches with avocados and mustard, lit some candles to put on the dining room table, poured herself some wine while I opened a bottle of sparking water and we celebrated our wedding anniversary in the dim, ambient light of three burning candles.

Our ham sandwich dinner was followed by two servings of tiramisu, which I’d purchased the day before. It was delicious. The richness of all that layering was a diffusion of gustatory pleasure so unashamedly lush as to border on the metaphysical.

Afterward, I put on an LED headlamp and read Ezra Pound’s Cantos while R covered herself in a blanket and read The Sun Also Rises.

The power came back on about an hour later, much earlier than expected, and the return to the normalcy of heat and light and running water made me feel almost ashamed at the tremendous cost of bringing it here, making it available for so many people. Everyone, for a time. Not it’s not everyone. And it’s not as flawless as it was a few years ago. But for the time it’s here, I’m not taking it for granted. I never really have. Except on nearly every occasion when I go searching for a light switch. It’s the first thing I do. It’s automatic as breathing. Even during an outage, my hand goes immediately in search of a lamp or a switch, and when nothing happens, it’s a strange feeling. Like that jolt I get every time I go for a trip in the country and look up and see all those stars. It’s shocking. It’s the shock of awareness. Beauty, indifference, vastness, it’s all there, nakedly gleaming in all that black. Every time that curtain of habit gets pulled back a real look at the universe can make you tremble with awe.

Admiration

There are many ways to admire things. I admire computers, but I don’t like them. Don’t like what they’ve done. I admire many of the accomplishments of human beings, but I don’t like human beings. Don’t like what they’ve done. Don’t like what they do. I like some of the things they’ve done. I like running water and electricity. But I don’t like waste and war and fracking and hacking and greed and autocracy. I don’t like deceit. I like jelly beans but I don’t admire them. I admire wire. I admire fire. But I’m not a fan of wire. I’m a fan of fire but not of wire. I admire wire. I appreciate wire. Wire allows voices to come out of my radio. Wire allows light to come out of our lamps. I prize wire. I respect wire. But I don’t adore wire. Infatuation and wire do not, necessarily, conjoin. And this is why I admire fire but I don’t go crazy for fire. I savor the warmth of a fire. I value fire but I don’t embrace fire. I admire adhesion, adherence, and umbrellas. I admire toothpicks and teeth and tongues and tungsten. But I don’t worship tongues or teeth or umbrellas or toothpicks. I appreciate these things. I value these things. But I don’t necessarily love these things. Love is a strong word. Admire is a sensible word. But let’s not get carried away. I like getting carried away but let’s not get carried away today. Let’s admire the day. Let’s admire the day and its random occurrences and delights and dents and berries and surges and choices and perplexities and contradictions and powders. I admire them. Let’s admire them. Let’s admire these things while we can. Let’s play guitars and sing. Let’s admire the momentum of the mongoose. Let’s admire mohair and mesas and refrigeration. Fingers hammers driveways highways byways and prunes. Caribou fortitude opals labels staples jonquils jewels fossils cymbals bevels buckles candles cradles councils mountains and the wind over the dunes.