Peehee mu'huh

 

Daddy didn't smoke oh really

She lived between London Houston and Geneva so how'd she know 

Habits of her institutionalized papa who spent his latter decades 

in my hometown 

Smoking indoors in his home when we were pre teens 

Smoking when he visited our home as teens 

Smoking in the nursing home for the last decade of life 

Create mythology out of magic dream sand

I'll play polo and my hunting hounds will decanter the ambrosia of fantasy 

Served on velvet pillows

To my chalet of nylon utopia 

Shrill insistence drills it home 

There's no tobacco in swiss cheese just holes  

made by escapism speech bubbles  

____ 

Don't talk to strangers he jokes as I push my life over

Ground dew wet and limb strewn from storm ice 

He's gottabottle beer grin 

I just jumped in my car in Eugene 5 am now we're home 

looking at his happy bad dog 

Sunlight and 40 degrees 

I'm coffee bound moments later 

A week without beer 

That's the mesa wakan turquoise pillowcase keeping head upward 

Ebb and flow full moon waxes and wanes  

as the lunar lander lists on its side, typical

Antennas cattywhimper cattywhimper data gossip  

to their handlers on earth

They caught their foot on a rock and plop 

That's a quarter billion flop 

It still mixes tang, tho 

Just inject the gerbil wheel with more money gland glitter

Rise and shine buttercup as boss rush used to chime 

Vicarious optimism from anyone most welcome 

after three days locked out of everything

A door malfunction magnet computer No, right or wrong 

Left to fend February sans umbrella, without money, with dwindling phonebattery dregs, with only free chocolate from the community center, no swimsuit, unwelcomed by four a.m. strangers 

Who talk self edification to sleeping men on the ground, crouched at a safe distance in pleated brown trousers

A pinch of truth, an ounce of trust, add rain, mix with wind 

I've been here over three years 

He leaves and I regenerate

Dang that coffee good  

___ 

Took the sticker off my bike

Love hath no limits 

I'd peeled it off a pole at the bus stop

It was cheery I thought on my rusty clunker 

As with most aphorisms untrue 

As with all inspirational cliche,

Lacking depth

Superficial met its limit here 

I could provide examples but that's been done to some smattering of approval 

I'm not running some damn cult here 

I'm not mixing rainbow koolaide for free 

I threw it in the trash, boy how I liked that 

I marked my progress on the next pole I walked past 

with a rule book balanced on my head for a straightedge 

I don't have a doorway or child to keep track of 

A saddest face sat on a man that could be a cousin or brother on the bus 

Looks like me if I gained 40 pounds and misery 

Yesterday's gone 

It met its limits.  

Buddha said it, Chris Parker taught it, NASA funds it 

If sky is the litmus, be unattached base 

____ 

"Members of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe have stated that their tribe "descends from essentially two families who, hiding in Thacker Pass, managed to avoid being sent to reservations farther away from our ancestral lands" and hence that this tribe owes its existence to the shelter provided by the Pass.

Thacker Pass is called Peehee mu'huh in the Paiute language, meaning 'rotten moon'. 

 This name derives from an 1865 massacre that Native tribes contend occurred at Thacker Pass  

(though the BLM contends that the site is 15 miles away), 

 where a band of Paiute families were killed."  

____ 

There are limits to power 

Ask rotten moon, ask nature 

Ripping apart in cycles of  hunger 

Creates hunger and steamrolls law 

Speed is haste preceding waste 

The toxins seep into the Columbia from hanford

So that they may marry 

Toxins dumped in barrels off the coast of hollywood 

No Nevada shotgun marriage

Ceremony, only an offshore account run by legitimized  mafia 

Earth squirms sentient 

Colloidal karma juices our handless veering toward slow televised death 

Nazi musk rolls in the sage, 

New innards adorn his tuxedo 

As he shoots a few wolves from his hovercraft 

Asphalt is poured over the volcanic remnants 

To get the bison heart off to India, China, Florida, and Italy

It's still beating

Feel the cost  

Limitless love 

___ 

One day after years apart, we'd meet on the corner 

Both on bikes, yours lithium electric.

You said you'd called out just earlier to some one who looked like me 

Last I saw you was at the farmers market 

You came to get your mandolin

Tattooed with a hexagon hogan, like the yurt 

just off old logie trail where I played it 

You rode away with it on your motorcycle.

You don't drink coffee you say.

I don't use gasoline I omit to mention. Nevertheless, always good to see you.

You had a dream about moon mining, remember? 

Remember our mustang

From the Steens. What was his name? Tesla.

Vet threw his nuts on the barn roof out in troutdale 

I rode him for the first time the day we sold him

Nursed on lithium grass milk

Takes awhile to charge   

SE Portland

For Natalie 

------flb

 

 

Slough (2017)

  

the slough barked not unlike a seal full of salmon

the slough mirrored not much very well

the slough had its home on the side like a tick

the slough slayed all in sight

the slough spread in all caps a TSUNAMI

the slough's attic was both empty and teeming

the slough was but a fly stuck in a hot black snake

the slough knew aggravation the board game might float

the slough had a dock, once

the slough mirrired very muddy stars and gars

the slough held fitzcarraldo groaning rivets in thin regard

the slough had no bottom nor mouth but a third seep eye

the slough of the seventeenth century, same as the last

the slough knot undid the trees

the slough sent spells and spelled sleuth not sloth

the slough the slough loved forever and then bailed

the slough had a storm slain and trees uprooted strewn

the slough gave birth a present full of eggs

the slough spilled to refill its prescripted zeal

the slough ate stew as froggy on the banjo said hallelooluh

the slough gorges himself on raw land

the slough takes all craps

the Lslough is better without the eLbow

the slough made merry betting like a fool cuckoo

the slough is wide closed in dismal deeps

the slough meandered cuz that what it do

the slough for our information is tepid at dawn

the slough his baroque morning gave furlough

the salute the slough flew was quasi neo parasitic proud

the slough was a splinter spread thick as marmite

the slough has sex everwhere it knows

the slough steep reclines for a lean toward moon

the slough literally takes a bath figuratively

the slough met on the tarmac for a bribe or bride

the slough poet pocketed a pound of pond mud

the slough almighty found relief in a catfish

the slough grew to faint or feign depending

the slough soup the plane full of letters

the slough made maidens left wanting more wanting

the slough mine stocked glimmers by the score

the slough or some agent of slime was our water

the slough gurgled in recess but played in class

the slough looked itself up in the tangled sky

the slough harpy crashed in a tangled bless

the slough gave us work and sweat

the slough memorandized an antiquated fax totem

the slough toted mayo to the clinic and saw banyan dreams

the slough keeps going fresh to stagnant overnight

the slough is no shogun

the slough steams open geodes and fills them with supper

the slough ramp drew webbed crowds of critics

                                                              what was a slough to do