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Dream Poems
I Think...
Last night I experienced not so much a dream but a condition, a confusion I woke in and out of, which was a kind of psychological möbius strip, a dualism of body and mind. Above was my mind, below my body. My body had what my mind lacked but also feared, and my mind was unable to contact and unite with the mysterious treasure expressed through my body. This created a frustration I woke in and out of. At the same time, in the domain of my body were art works someone else had created, a series of abstract paintings with saturated and brilliant colors: vermilion, ultramarine blue and cadmium yellow. Though I didn’t create them, the paintings were inside me and I was jealous – but of who? My frustration and jealously circulated around and around the möbius strip and I experienced no escape from or resolution to my Cartesian nightmare.
Narcotics
I live in a netherworld
of survival and petty crime.
Petty crimes I sometimes commit
or am inadvertently subject to:
broken leases, shoplifting, narcotics sales.
This life continues hour after hour,
samsaric landscapes I return to after
adjusting my pillow or getting up to pee -
hopeless, arbitrary and meaningless
attempts to survive in a world of suspense
but without lasting consequences.
As I calculate the cost of a rental home
in a shadowy district south of Denver
the density of my dream begins to thin,
as if someone is adjusted a volume control,
and on the other side of the scrim
I began to hear the dawn chorus of birds:
songs of the goldfinch, tanager, Eurasian starling,
even the crow.
The swallows are already up and hunting.
A Night
I met a young Japanese woman
in the airport terminal.
Went somewhere,
and then we were alone.
It seemed platonic,
and there was the age difference,
so more than that never
crossed my mind.
Then we continued our animated conversation
in her bed, still innocently.
The covers slipped down my thighs.
She looked, then touched me.
She kissed me with her tongue,
which was long and slender.
It was the most sensual kiss I’d ever received.
She wanted to marry me.
She wanted me to come to Tokyo.
She wanted the wedding there.
This dream was going right and I said Yes.
Command C
It was a ski resort without snow,
without the promise of snow,
without even a mountain.
I drove there on a three-wheeled motorcycle.
The road was icy and eventually became
a door without a doorknob.
I pried it open and walked down passages
and hallways going I knew not where.
Rooms appeared, steaming grottos
with pools of hot water and heated floors,
luxuries of après skiing though there
wasn’t a snowboard or pair of snow skis in sight.
Inexplicably I thought of my friend Michael Rogers.
I wanted him to have this experience, too,
and understood that if I used the
Copy & Paste function I could bring it to him,
or bring him here.
The First
Awake at 3:34, but no dreams. Silence in the room. Birds aren't singing yet. Becoming aware of each inhale, exhale. Moisture of breath in an otherwise dry room. Awake for an hour. No dreams. No visions this night. Oblivion. Instead of dreams I'll seek coffee. I'll have it in ten minutes: thick, dark, cream saturated, honey sweetened. I'll sip the coffee and read, or write about the dreams I didn't have. I'll go on line for news like a always do. Read The Guardian site and Politico. A single bird is beginning to sing. Someone has to be the first. Could be a finch, maybe a robin. Sky inexorably lightens.
East Bay to San Francisco International Airport
Down Alhambra to West Street then enter I-80 onramp.
Airconditioning if I need it, though sea breezes
from the bay cool the interstate corridor
even as tires and exhaust heat it.
Can now glimpse San Francisco skyline,
delicate and mythic in the distance.
Cars brake and slow,
come to eventual stop due to merging traffic
from Albany onramps, phantom or actual collisions,
overpopulation.
Stressors of traffic jam compromising on-time
airport arrival plus bladder filling,
could now take two hours to travel twenty-seven miles.
Approaching the Bay Bridge toll plaza,
cars moving slower than a person could walk
yet vehicle next to me is slammed into from behind,
pancaked between it and the car in front.
Offending driver aghast and those hit still stunned,
not yet comprehending.
Later pass a serious accident, doors blown open,
man slumped across his seat, driver windshield shattered,
harbinger of personal and planetary death.
On Frontier flight 644 takeoff lurch also unsettling.
Unclaimed
I found a park of grass in the extra time I had before boarding
the Istanbul to Bursa Ferry and just after
I had walked down Gedik Pasa,
a street of astonishing noise, irregular asphalt
and disappearing sidewalks.
It had been two weeks since I had sat on the ground
or seen more than a tree or two at a time
and this almost acre of unclaimed grass was suddenly,
inexplicably there.
I sat down into a lower octave, heard my breath and felt it slow.
A magpie also occupied the grass, at the base of a tree.
I had been moving since I left my hotel -
part of the way by cab, then metro, then by foot,
down Gedik Pasa.
The magpie was also moving.
Hopping and then finding food, or something.
It is impossible to stop this movement or get off.
I felt that way for the magpie,
but for a moment
thought I was exempt.
Granada
In the year 2000, I took a train to Granada, the place the Nationalists assassinated the poet Lorca during the Spanish Civil War. I was conscious of Lorca and his death, had read many of his poems, but the real reason I went to Granada was to see the Alhambra, to continue my tour of Andalusian Spain. Upon arrival, I disembarked from the train and made my way to a district that had many inexpensive hotels, but my usual luck did not hold - not one of them had vacancy. I walked away with my suitcase in tow, semi-desolate because I was tired, semi-enthused and confident because I was in Granada and something would happen as it always does. After walking a few blocks, a man approached and accosted me, politely but firmly. He spoke no English, wore poor clothes and gestured to me with his hands and body, and I knew right away he had a room for me. Inadvisably I followed him, curiosity overrode caution and he had somehow captured me with his boldness. Eventually we turned down a side-street, down an alley, through a construction site, under a corrugated metal fence, and there it was: a hotel made out of scraps, an illicit, hidden-away temporary boarding house with dirt floors, six or eight rooms and, improbably, running water in the toilet. Only later did I realize it was a gypsy hotel (that Granada was home to many Roma). The man took me to my room, a plywood rectangle with a bed and a window. He unpadlocked the door, showed me inside, then left. I contemplated my fate. What if someone broke into my room or padlocked me inside during the night? What if I was robbed or beaten, raped or further misled? I had disregarded the advice of any guidebook and any common sense. There was an orange tree outside my window and a view of Granada. I went to dinner and returned home, slept through the night, left my suitcase in my room, toured the Alhambra, returned the next night and prepared to depart the next morning. During the thirty-nine hours of my stay I saw no one else in the hotel. As I prepared to leave there was no check-out desk, but the poorly-dressed man improbably but exactingly arrived just as I was rolling my suitcase out the hotel. I stood there with apprehension, I had no idea what he was going to charge me, but the price, by American standards, turned out to be next to nothing. I retraced my steps out of the alley, onto the main streets and made it back to the train depot. I had avoided any misfortune. Synchronicity or some similar force had seemingly guided or protected me. I had encountered the goodness of humanity. I had a story to tell. I was like some soldier who went to war but had not even encountered a battle.
Animal Journey (Male)
Proliferated. Abstract. Mellowing. Drowsy. Somnambulant. Death knell. Moribund. Slighted. Sometimes assassinated. Evolution’s understander. Translucent. Assimilated. Multi-cultural. Daredeviling. Sandblasted. Frozen. Mummified. Paleolithic. Tool user. Milk drinker Yellow. Brown. Black. Fire-discoverer. Artifact maker. Genius. Flowering. Omnivorous. Killer. Rapist. Fecund. Proliferating. Overpowering. Inventor. Artist. Accelerater. Peacemaker. Novelist. Pianist. Movie-goer. Film star. Dental hygiene. Dancer. Poker-faced. Coffee. Chocolate. Rapid. Foreign. Alone. Dying. Galaxy. Andromeda. Sand. Insecticide. Sex. Near cousin to gnats. Genome breaker. Pedestrian. Lover.
Crepuscular
Hamster cage lined with the sports page of the San Francisco Chronicle. The hamster was active at night, taking to his wheel, making a circular whooshing sound as I slept or woke to the sound of it.
She was my first pet.
I found a hatchet in our yard, buried in pine needles, a weapon I was allowed to keep and later made fires with.
I caught fish and cooked them on the fire. I killed ants, dissected frogs, shot a bird out of a tree with a 22. Senseless I realized and gave up the killings.
Small Paradise
Walked down 17th to P Street then over to Whole Foods. Cooled inside compared to 96 degrees out. Bought a fresh baguette, paid $3.28. Headed home seeking shade and came across a sprinkler at 16th and Q walked into it, now wet, attuned to summer, happy.
Untitled
Summer rain washes the fire escape Sheets of it through the open door Summer rain blows though the window Drops of it hit my pillow and face Summer rain falls through the night Wakes me from my bad dream Shows me the real night Guides me to… something
Good morning
Towering tree across alley houses screeching cicadas. Starlings congregate near the recycling dumpster. Fan blows are across my room, ruffling pages of the journal. Pillow damp from another hot night and many dreams: My bookkeeper became an enlightened guru and hosted a larger gathering of devotees, in silence. Later I lost my cellphone and shoes. Waking, shoeless, into a new day.
Success
I struggle to remember my dreams
and I can’t
I struggle to meditate
but I don’t
I struggle to be productive
but I’m not
I struggle to make us a mushroom omelet
and I do
Rhapsody
The jackhammer is pounding
What about the man driving it?
The jackhammer is hammering
What about the insects near to it?
The jackhammer is continuing
What about the sidewalk crumbling below it?
The jackhammer is constant
I ask myself, what kind of music is it?
Commuter
Lisa and I were riding
the metro yesterday
on a new car - very attractive
and looking a bit NY Subway.
We were lamenting the old
crop of cars: carpeted, orange
seats - dull, drab, debilitating.
One sinks in the face of
those existential conditions.
Lisa told me that once,
while riding on an old car
she saw carved into
the plastic of the seat
in front of her
a single word:
Why?
Commuter Humanity
Down Alhambra to West Street then enter I-80 onramp.
Airconditioning if I need it, though sea breezes
from the bay cool the interstate corridor
even as tires and exhaust heat it.
Can now glimpse San Francisco skyline,
delicate and mythic in the distance.
Cars brake and slow,
come to eventual stop due to merging traffic
from Albany onramps, phantom or actual collisions,
overpopulation.
Stressors of traffic jam compromising on-time
airport arrival plus bladder filling,
could now take two hours to travel twenty-seven miles.
NPR discusses Brexit.
Approaching the Bay Bridge toll plaza,
cars moving slower than a person could walk
yet vehicle next to me is slammed into from behind,
pancaked between it and the car in front.
Offending driver aghast and those hit still stunned,
not yet comprehending.
Later pass a serious accident, doors blown open,
man slumped across his seat, driver windshield shattered,
harbinger of personal and planetary death.
On Frontier flight 644 takeoff lurch also unsettling.
