carving pumpkins (1988)

a. this is a poem about writing about poetry,
like a cigarette you think
you're only getting tobacco but yer smoking the paper,
like religion you think you got god
but it's just opinion with trace elements of motive,
but unlike other products this poem
has substance and a vague nature
  Q: does it smell like the wet oils of mondrian?
       does it do descarte's illusory polka?
       does it shrink, cotton-candy in the saliva
           of your mind, or does it explode,
            a dream deferred? does dream smoke
               exist, rene, if all thoughts run dreams
the question is, what are you missing
         art thou a happy green cow?
                         

                         *
                       
b. for you lazy sack of silt readers
this is an aesthetic poem, meaning
it don't address the mystery of the locked nest monster
nor does it issue a fashion statement
nor does it stimulate emotions deeper
than nausea, loneliness, ennui.
          tonight we carved pumpkins

cut around their stems& pulled out
strands of gooey slime
we piled the entrails on paper sacks cut down
the middle& pulled flat
my friends took them into a dark room and that made it
even darker, they glowered like demons
like a proper wedding
like god al made one with a smiley face
&put it in the gutted out torso of an old TV set,
an innocent model from the 1950's

its shadow flickered onto our faces
we thin gin
we sing sin
we die soon, build fleshy prosthesis controls
we remote control kids
we say no, we silly putty cracks,
we are the envy of the world spanish maid,
indian doormat
god on my side get off my cloud
pumpkins in the office, the classrooms

                   *

we used to get our milk from the goldenbergs
when i was little
when family owned little blue an ancient VW bug
we'd go puttering up to their farmhouse
on the south side of town by the public pool
where brother grant and i first played with black kids
they rubbed baby oil on their skin
to slide thru that water
grant and i would wait by the car when momma
went fetching, the front of the hood
tied shut with rope fenders red white and blue
by the farmhouse was a hedge apple tree
that gave us ample ammo for the cows
in the field their udders all saggy
leather clouds
none of them had bells around the neck
none wrote dissertations or baked perfect pies
they perfected Moos
they never tried to jump that moon
Once we saw them deliver a calf next door over at
harvey's barn in the middle of night
by the light of kerosene lanterns we say it
get born and it was swirly
                         like a red beard full of snot
                         like a frozen sun
                         like heart's drain plug 
mom would come back out with gallon jar
of natural milk, tinfoil rubber banded lid,
at home she separated cream off the top
tho invariably a tiny white curd
or two made it past and we'd wish for store-bought
milk, real milk
i'd like to think she told us sorry that's life
but i think she took it and framed it
on the mantled wall, next to a swatted fly stain,
not the thing itself,
its image.



1988 
stillwater Ok

motion stone

will not ice creeping quick advance 
   o'er sedge and swing-sets rusted creak;
hushing one sense, heightens plans of
   towhee, cardinal, flights oblique;

threading crystals, redolent mine glazed
    sun-scab brite, fracked bracken
shed sound skins, minotaur-amazed
   o'er stone gutters, halls forsaken

cedar endowed, limbs snow-ripe resplendent,
   time's beak frost heaves, super-intendent 
geometry schism, theorem incumbent
   all falls in winter's shawl, dependent

   not will's ice lends, melting willingly
   nor motion stone stay, unthrillingly




12-17-17 Mt Tabor Oregon

geminid gypsy

geminid gypsy, gyrates poetically correct

     hurtling pacifist, non passive accoutreMonts,

hurtling stone hors d'oeuvres circumspect

   talisman to mortality, predicament.


geminid gypsy asked to move on, tarried

   hitched up to earth gravity, married

sparking shotgun weddings prince harried,

   sizzling falcon eyed rainbows, parried


geminid twined, bound braid-lashed ingress;

   slamming to wake ocean floor mantle , ditto:

nine layers of possible timewaves egress

   rippling time granite, tsunami whammO


   geminid gypsy camped high on mount tabor

   lifted near crow flight, rare visit-neighbor

forsooth, the narwhale

poetry forsooth floats human harbor's better
   climes, amid dank dredging's sea-baptised
detritus, whittled perspective wood -redders,
   saw quohog & seasoned salts, capsized;

poetry forsooth fleets flounder schools sleeker,
   able to jet unjittered---- thru coral razors
in sentence bubbles ......evasion's art meeker
   as bait glows or feigns, hiding small lasers;

poetry forsooth claws nebulae from the net
   allowing humans to catch what gods only get
rare trappings of mind, as prescient yet
   drapes flesh over horizon, a personal pet;

   poetry forsooth clams all Thing all so deep,
   butter bay washings, my chowder of sleep.



12-15-17
mt tabor Oregon




   

love forged words

drown doldrums in love letters leaves,
bonfires escaped, pack rat unpleased,
tally the kisses promise delivered
savor perfumes paper misted

dwell on the images photo bona fide,
passionate cave art even Time can't hide
ultimate pledges, sweet pain of youth
harmonious contracts, poetry forsooth

floats maelstroms in love letters haunts,
waves enamored, bilge, overfull trypot ,
syrup the hauls of romances long won
far out at sea, in homes silkworm spun

kiss the tangible, her tangy wood skin,
t                   ouch stamps on the letter 
her heart made so thin,

sniff detail, the canter, the lope
                    of souls fixed, 
read touchings in word forged lunatic bliss 

shekinah buttonwood tree

                             

Aeolian lyre of skyscraper tines, sprung of tor
   footings amid clitter clatter fingers of continents
molted, born to simmer short.song lore,
   board meetings atop bard-meat firmaments,

Round table speakers, self aimed amiss,
   none gallant tongued nor fitted for moral success,
Deaf to wind's siren drone twixt cornice hiss
    all remiss in wax-eared process

Dumb, resonant vertically integrated hum,
    greed runs plumb down to their banjo thumbs,
trigger tape parades, stock bell arcades,
   crashing Icarus gets flag pin accolades

  calling wind a liar, her face Truth perspires,
redolent in music but never retired.




Mt Tabor Oregon
12-15-17

fjording (1997)

earth retaliates, 
squirms sentient in planting season
we clear the sleep from 
her eyes
with hoes and rototillers and brush winter
tangles into bonfires

in the process
dished the scrape and bruise
mapped in scar even
as poem coagulates itself

i rip page's silence
fjording mudhardened 
loggingroadruts
on the way to town

pastiche

wetrock pastiche
oak& moss

in the gravitational pull
of creek&
reminder to let go

moment by slippery foothold,
to incleave oneself in the collage
make paste of variety
suiting tastes of graced smells

&floating leafy boats
cruising this ponderous horizon
girdled by islands

tigers in strollers
miniscule necklaces of lichen
plates of love

on fire with garlic

1997 Swale Canyon Washington

bonfire in drizzle (1995)

my sight and scent obscured to coyote
as i shat on plywood shitter
a stubby tailed  thirty feet away
behind a tree
i jumped up as humanly quiet as possible
went peering about-----gone.
ghostlike, leaving me clutching TP,
pants about the ankles

*

i like to crap outside
wipe and walk
versus cash and carry
no flush roar waste

*

intent on bonfire in daylong drizzle
i haul half rotted trunks

&prune boingy pinelimbs
w/an old hatchet
bout to lose his head

*

romance does it this way
to insure seeds
get cracked open

*

hiked further up dry creekbed
thru mossed oakgrowth
&happened upon a tributary, shhhhh
not yet pilfered of carnelian,
agate, petrified woods,
every so often a glowing blood orange eye
looking out from otherwise
drab& earthy collander

*

no date no clock no media
to hamper
sunflow,
only stones
becca and i throw
upon ourselves, each other
upon, forcing meditative explorations
of deer trails
aligned with stellar geometry

*

surreal snugly balanced in
backpack, coffee is straining, ma
out hiking or inside with annetta
quiet         as wind cuts
smoothly o'er rock
bare dripping

astrid undoing

Astrid her marble mind unrolled three moons,
     Revealing a cornice light-lingered;
Oceans bloomed boiling awake,
     Birthing Astrid's columnar granite fingers.

Comet shreds raining, night dazzled arcade,
     Astrid's stride many wakes blazing;
Water wall syncline, harbinger promenade,
     Gasping fire tracers liquefied pacing,

Her pegasus hooves red-snowing, mineral fusions,
     Astrid undid sphere's buttons atoned;
Uprising eternal, core blasted confusions, contusions,
     Answering mountainous, forlorn.  

Bang bigly my mantle, Astrid announcing life,
Heap zillions neath time, make oil your knife.



12-14-17
Mt Tabor Oregon
fresh

the rotten mane

earth nameless stumbles into human form,
     a suit derides in mealy pleats;
the phaeton drops them at the curb,
     his cape over his klannish sheets;

dim don treads, alligator shoe-horned,
     toward his minaret of unflinching greed;
composure escapes him, a raped morn,
     liberty lady ravaged need not plead.

the vouch of slime undoes his tongue,
    all fair and noble creature recoil;
rather air or water to quench his lust,
     don's bearings gurgle Oil.

land promises, evict the rotten mane
of tyrants tirades and more of the same.

12-14-17

Mt Tabor, Oregon

roof rivets of mt tabor oregon

                                    *kvetchup on the dumbfone*
kvetching old lady, so sour
in her nest of children dreams on six legged horses
in her web of silk envied by burlap boys
in the pits of the olive mine,
clutching squealing canaries born to sing a blacklung song
opera of nails on blackboards driving
thru with fries and a shake and kvetchup sauce
all over the dumbphone
__________________________
                              *and a partridge in the pun tree*
If the United States ate
482 canadian tacos while skiing
Italy's grottoes of cheese under
181 varieties of exemplary fleece spun from
Ukrainian Argonauts paired in
73 baskets of willow brand aspirin to ease
Romania after her platters of goulash served
70 easily in a sit down row boat from
Portugal where
56 seals made curry with the better side of
France leaning off their tower to pisa's
27 degree tilt off
Egypt in that contest toward
11 zeniths only topped by
Poland and his
10 numbers of viewers today wondering about the
Netherlands and canals circumnavigating
6 seas on the way back from
Morocco on the train #
5 always on time
_____________________________
                                  *jump start blot*
in the autumn sun winter brews life
weaned of woe, tea of yule blots
born on ice formed fire,
fetal remonstrance
coals schout toward the belly buttontree wood
whittled by babes
under ocean minds whale kissed
floating sound bubbles of moon
under her fingernails to take
place of silver splinters
tinsel skinned conveying arrow
stirring the import
of phonochronocraphic zealotry,
in the image of the sun
speck either cooled or dismissed
in layers of cosmic wool
wind dares not bury
over dune's eye
bests
only to help with a jump
                                start.
_____
                                    *dockside radio bust*
tonya harding on the radio well go dig
in the peace dumpster at
the dockside with the ILWU boxing photos
where her goons dumped
evidence in the parking lot
showing her spangled poor sportsmanshit
in full frontal bust
____________
                                          *O poet moon*
what's yer job poet O the whale
whole asked spouting mists of avalon to entrance
witchy way did we swim question-buoys
bobbing like fat fate seal targets
for orca pods snacking on sestinas or shad
enrolled in schools of duh
tasked in casks held in holds wodan odin took to sea
to vet the dragon aquatic
with lance of lightning query tipped godan
prodded hyrdogen from the water
to erupt tectonic
shackles O what's yer blob asked the dog
(told/blot was the answer mirrored"
tolled in traffic trolled by lures
hour Job is the minute listing of secondary and tertiary
anomalies such as that barb
of a symbol
running out to hydra
filly mental gods in fog 6 legged in hot wool sex socks
cupping a D sized germanic milk barrel
O what's mine job said the gold
dust blown from binary star mergers under the sycamore
plane wood knee, whittled down to cart
-ilage with no Ox
no Oxen but a boon of moon blood,
good pathfinder, peat minder.
________________
                               *time flew*
into fog of woods not hacked
but coaxed to enter
in violent peace of feet pushing peat
down across the voice void
asunder blessed
recalcitrant only in mineral
lack of black sun
cleaving yellow night
out of hooves removed
on carpet moss bird speckled
in love ribbons
where they flew
_________________________
                                          *peace mission slurry*
Champlin sailed from New York 11 December 1942
on her first convoy crossing to Casablanca,
here's looking at you kid said the torpedo
from hydra spewing palladium over the radio tower of
wardenclyffe manned by cyborg anti patriots
who were in denial of gambling, gangsters, and
guac stains on the khakis
covered up with gold star families going to the gong show
at anne hutchinson's trial in boston
leading jung Jeffy Champskin to elope with
rode island just in time
to tame the english impulses to throw tea out of the
harbor back onto dutch jamaican cornershops
with sitar, mosque, and free speech
for even quakers facedown in their porridge unbuttered
sailing into port full of dignitaries
leaking from the stern
stamp of fascism
across the 21st
centurions
oil based
miss
-shun
______________________
                                        *awl forgotten *bone**
my illness the witch doctor told me
in her primordial PHd prescriptive tone
was not enough bone,
hence the add on leeches of banks, taxes, priests, and police
there to jack up the torso
for a good poke with a baton of credit, or a rope
of poison ivy, or a basket of adders from king
arthur anderson, stick your illness
in the whole whale
said the sky
under billowing beams dismounted off oak mistakes
called ships, peg and awl forgotten
the sternum of jelly fish droppings not quite stiff
enough lipped to take
the gale ridge clutter of wealth
fully in canter, lope, trot, and founder
signing the nine eleven constitution for a hundred year lease
on the thermite illness
said the plumber
adding more
*bone
_______________________
                                  *sturgeon TV 1973*
maple my radar
willow my hawkeye
sycamore my ratchet
celilo my cuckoo

oak my burns
pine my klinger
ash my nickle son
celilo my nest

mash mash the monster mash
triage my mash up         down
down the narrows smashed
unabashed, wash trash of blunders

war, knee, broken bent bow treaty
mind, plea, token totem drunk fee
hell to helicopter
cradle strapped  teleprompt twerk

cool that's a take
hot we're all fake
sitcom sits over falls over dreary
over salem over rocky and adrian all teary

yo maple why leaving
hey willow why crying
sick of more hatchet
celilo my sturgeon
__________________________
scab magma third eye dancehalla
tor was thor born when thunder roared
up from ground in back time dancehalla
granite deep bloomed in flood
astral bound to wed
along the sure shore of thirst celestial
coaxed of ox eyed distant draws
lifting breath of women gods off wodan spoons
in the morning
being close enough to hatch eggs on ice
comet flung cradles of targegrade heros
choice a moss eaten rune
with my name on
her brow
she will never read for a scab of love
hath rid us of wisdom.
12-8-17
                               Mt Tabor Volcano Cone Picnic Area for Ravens
" a seismic pattern that resembled a hoof print, or "a cow track in the mud".
_________________
                                       *dire Hell direct Ion*
Hell her iron desk a lathe to crown toothpicks
out of redwood kings and cedar queens was raven tested
by dreamy dismal day over bog venom steeped
in intimate shells
wave maiden loin girdled
the trunks brought up off ocean canyons asteroid born
soaked in dinosaur blood turned to petroleum
the pterodactly petroglphys premonitions prompted Hell
to slam her furnace glare off toward heave On
making a marker obsidian
arrowing a harrowing barrow of sheer point
with no point other than
dire
-rection of envy
___________________
                                  *unmansionable oilternal (day rill*
what is my oilness said olive pit
                   pity nowhere in shite
as they say in wanking oswego
by the muffin shop
crumble top
canker mop
                     (called a must stash)
what is my oil behavior derricked from?
only one who studied Berryman
can pick the seed from the scat
off the cuff in the bush
deep in hollers of foggy bottom
d------------------- rilling dry holes
get a doodle buggod by god
said james joyce
on the oilternal day
greasing the grace
to wean the pit of the cheery stones on the net
holding O whale abysmally content.
________________
   *darwin in the mead at the linnaean garage 1637*
mead of honey power
goddiss endowed, dowry
flower empowered, empress
suffused
bower, on thine bee knees please
sweeter buds tongue
tickled to mind loin showered
taste lick
her liquor pistil shot to glasses
flame inflamamble yet fame
variable as darwin
under barrels of grog mislabeled
pickled in hammocks
rocking fathoms of theories
into buzzing delirium
drained at cosmos close in the linnaean garage,
living carpet of story moss
over the six dimensional phaeton 3200
ever exhausting comet spray
suffice to say
dribbled about scrooge like as life in the universe
____________
                          *above swale glacier 3393 B.C.*
ice baby& snow baby back in rip van winkle's
oak labyrinth of star fed ancients
there on arrowhead hill
with spring fed water mama popping from
under papa root dug deep
hill buttressed by volcano pores hardened as whiskers
off the big bang or big bank ice& snow
baby made mistletoe garlands
and acorn salads for deer as their hands glowed holy
healing from their cenote souls
and trillion aeons
of beauty repository metamorphosis
winnowing light thru water cold patient
                                     as space born glaciers know
patterned in plant faces
astral, new to old dirt.



12-8-17 bloggod, mt tabor oregon

the salt lick (1988)

down, hidden in the ravine
by the brushpile
the other side of lake
out on north side of town
beyond gentle dip of road who floods
under mere rain
drop, even further out than deserted
drive-in theaters we once
found a salt lick
having no cattle of our own
we wondered how it got
to be there
assuming it to be planted for you seed late
in the autumn
when leaves left their final right
indentations on pond water
when coyote scat is cold
as a nickle, when turkey drops
tail feather to sail over horizon, when
night's only sound is the steady
churn of a oil well
&even that is mind imagining a
heartbeat, then it is a dear
deer season indeed



(1988, Lawrence Kansas)

primordial grail log (1988)

in the beginning there were no wine glasses,
only the drinking troughs of logs
fallen& filled with veggie matter rotting sweetly

&back then, there were no handy bowls
of nuts or popcorn to provoke
thy thirst, all one had was the parching plains wind
&endlessness of night

no glowing neon phalluses
no high heeled pinball jezebels chawing sugarfree gum
no smoky jutebox come ons
no puddles of thrown up lite beer
no lastcalls over drones of monday night football

in the beginning, the accident was the creation,
the result was a sacrament

acceptance letter Columbia University Graduate Writing Program 1989

Proud to have survived K.U. and the midwest.

Was also accepted to Brown U. graduate school in 1989.

Decided to be a poet, father, artist, honky tonk musician, laborer, and lover here in Oregon
and once upon a time in the state of Washington.

in the hammersmith garage (1987)

winter prys its icy fingers
into the crack of the huge sliding door,
pointed colors gust in the car exhaust.

greasy joe slides under a car
&wrenches at pipes, straining
not unlike a man milking a cow
in the frost of four a.m. iowa

he loosens a nut that drains the oil
and the cow wobbles
weakheaded. he puts a feedsack over the hood

and gives the back fender a
fleshy, familiar slap


Lawrence, Kansas 1987
published in the Allegheny Review
won William Herbert Carruth Poetry prize at K.U.

long listen

the wind only in the bamboo shafts
the wind only whishing the cottonwood
                          precise moments of no wind
but for the stirring unfurl of blackberry vines
causing what certainly registers
                        for one listening
through wind
to find an origin

not yet sounded


5-20-13 portland oregon

bondo

the work never ends, but who wants it to
sanding, patching, protecting,

beautifying with process, reversing
nature's alternate vision of entropy

the more things fall apart
the stronger the bond

i make it so, saliva bird nest,
deck in the oregon rain sun,

map of clothing
shed on a friday's open vista


4-13-13 portland

thermal bog

steam gurgles wet tidings in sauna darkness
our pores get rich,
open their fat wallets of food money and spend energy
dropping beads of golden sweat
into a river with legs tired from sitting still,
rib cages of birds tethered,
gliding toward the salty pool of time
in which laps
lapse what was hissing, missing,
kissing.

poolhall fray

into the fray of the poolhall night
swaying its ocean of human spirit o'er the deck
dancing girls holding cuesticks and beers
all the posturing and face one can imagine
bringing strangers together braided in physical contest
highlighted by long spears
bandied loosely as one stalks the table for next shot,
possibilities.





12-3-17 Portland Oregon 
SouthEast  Periphery 

Oklahoma State University Cafeteria (1986)

i sit and wait in the university cafeteria
for my coffee to cool. "and what about that
good 'ole boy from midwest city? he was kinda
slow." two overweight businessmen
wear ugly brown ties. ugly
okies and leering foreigners park in the cafeteria
to watch the fatassed coeds carry their heaping
salad platters. the ugly
men have notebooks graphpaper and big calculators
strewn about their tables.
the middle easterners lounge with empty milk cartons and
spilled wild rice. when they go to class
they occupy the front row and
study most dilligently while at home in the dorm.

here in the cafeteria, they watch
american bacteria socialize

OSU 1986
__________________




Tillerson was born on March 23, 1952, in Wichita Falls, Texas, He was raised in Vernon, Texas; Stillwater, Oklahoma; and Huntsville, Texas.

"At age 14, he began to work as a bus boy in the student union building at Oklahoma State University.

 Two years later in 1968 he became a janitor working in one of the engineering buildings at the university.

On weekends, he worked picking cotton."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Tillerson

fjord fallow night

rib riven of seaside oxen driven to death
flank flung on coal bed born beside a black oak
seven seers serene tear severe to bits in bites
ash char snow lettered prehistoric blood scribble spray
ice ballast beard teeters toward keg
fists scabbed wrapped in ointment rags plundered
of southern thrusts plunged draining dawn of sun
slung moon songs hurled breath smoke
under eight pelts four furs six trees three rivers solid mtn sweat
mothers birth men yet cry to scare wolves stiff distant
in dens won by woe found wanting
creel harpoon craft mast listing in mist bygone tomorrow to battle
a silver rattle left and earrings persian glass
time sealed in twelve century slough night tantalizes mead heavy mind
a brace of narwhale ivory mends a leather pillow of a man
old known tree sounds fire speaks seasons secret lines
the fjord mirror draped in loam and foals child chased
her shield resting more tested his spear ready less flaunted
reindeer swim amid star filled lakes glacier gotten
acorn rolls name game the wood script floats off intelligent
cloak unhurried a button waits finger frozen
sleep steams breath falls not far afield of brows sheltered
three roosters call fallow nights hold over
in goldrimmed henbane pots ice capped from sitting
knot known by woden born the day belongs



5-31-17 Portland

a prosperity of ignorance (1992)

a chain of days, awakened at noon hour, leads one from the complacency of sleep to the
dormancy of reason. in denial of ennui's abundance, words throw fences from pencilpoint
to cage brain bubbles dancing a page mist. too much art plans an escape in twisted sheets
tied together from upper windows to the ground.
     portland's heathman pub, frequented by families with sunday familes; full breadbaskets,
grouped at round tables with small observant bursts of children cuts the tv's grasp on the
willful blind.  it makes sense to hop from cafe to cafe, a metaphysical fox in concord. play
feels like work was robbed of its claws.
     man and woman at sidewalk window; piano jazz. there is a gait and plate glass fence,
insuring the tincture of originality. this sunday's grey provides a daughter to pattycake with
daddy. nothing seems prosperous, or entire, or white. my shape discerns its own ignorance
in a pool of lazy, idle thought. the clock edits my morality, and all sides of truth depart, like
a pesto loaf covered in rough salt in front of strangers.