Long Flatness Poems

(alternately titled: idolizing childhood's end
today April 25th, 2021
generates elusive warm treasured memories).

Akin to significance my eldest sister
felt toward her “Willies” –
(totally tubular fuzzy bendable contrivances
analogous to an outsize pipe cleaner)
until she became a tweener
my Matty...

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I love this koan from 1,000 years ago, or more.

"What is it? Medicine and sickness mutually correspond. The world is medicine. What is the Self?"
by10th c. Zen Master Yunmen

So, yes, 
Self for me is Ego"sickness",...

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"Mi primo" means my cousin in Spanish.
He calls me his "primita"- little cousin.
This is the story of how mi primo
Taught me about the meaning of bread;
Of the meaning of tortillas...
He and I are exchanging languages...

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Flatness 
	
	
	Consider the possibility of becoming 
	a two-dimensional surface
	with no thickness whatsoever. 
	No, face-down on the floor won’t get it; 
	at best your nose will be in the way. 
	You’ve got to get lower, closer,...

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between new nightmares
and day dreams
of a better life
lay reality resurfaced
tight with taut brutality
unspeakable thoughts drift
down through time's flash
triggered not there
not then
but now and here
her mind digs through fear

as she sinks 
slight form down
crisp skirt's rustle...

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The universal worm has got some competition now,
since ‘Sandy’ took me out to Bateson’s dam.
This don’t include the ‘whitchys’ we get in a broken bough,
nor ‘scrubbies’ on the hooks we have to cram
to hide the...

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The crossroads of shadows within my mind, where darkness and light intertwine
in an eternal dance, I sit in my own solitude,
feeling nothing but the painful flatness of existence,
consumed by loneliness, why must it be this...

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I implored myself with money and okay,
thought that feasting at the time was no crime,
and as the chyme soothingly rolled in my head's threads,
then in pretense covered that craving with a palm,
that craving very agile...

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sweet decadent belly
how ever will you forgive me
i didn’t know
couldn’t know 
how to love you

i didn’t see that you were more than a belly
you were an entire person
an easy breezy lover girl committed to the...

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I. 

Fold, crease, unfold, sheets
of paper thin as possibility,
a crisp white plea to gravity.
Forty-five times, a cosmic origami
building bridges from table to the moon.
The mind dreams, unfurls
dimensions from the flatness,
each fold a petition of ascension.

But...

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Redding Poem 4
“Flying Down Interstate 5”

We departed Redding at 3:45, 
In the dead of an October night.
Those tumultuous streets were morgues then,
As we raced to the deserted Interstate 5,
Zooming across the snoozing Sacramento River,
Going at...

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As little boys 
we rode bikes
fast down the dunes,
on the vertical side
of Sand City

Big tires creased
deep furrows 
in the down-slope,
same as boats trailing
wakes upon the swell

At the leeward portion
of the great sand hills
the long bronze...

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in traffic there is an accidie and weariness
and flatness and humdrum of the road
but leonard cohen helps with that
and i think about the poor north koreans
without their fix of coca cola
and the mental health of...

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I don’t believe Donald Trump should be impeached,
He’s brought light to the Presidency, a dynasty,
Of a long line of ‘born again’ believers, screeched,
Wiling government into a god-inspired fallacy.

Burocracy is not an heuristic term or value...

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Some say that some gains are not worth the risk,
and that their pursuit causes far too much pain.
They say that some things are better left the same.
They say that if it's not broken, don't fix...

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This world is only flat 
as I could wish for it to be.
All wishes come
from hungry hearts as mine.

Curves I visit 
bring a noise of motion.
Unexpected joy and wonder 
found in every moment
leave me breathless...

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Fuchsia panels
Standing parallel, like soldiers standing to attention
Push the panels forward, and venture onward
Pull them back, and leave behind

Like a woodpecker pecked cloth spread across the atmosphere
A permeable shelter of green does cover the cobble...

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The slithered shadows trailed my shag rug, in the foothills of the upright weave of flaccid threads. 

Seemingly chaotic, yet made out of pure design and memory: From the hands of its maker, rolled into...

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Fuchsia panels
Standing parallel, like soldiers standing to attention
Push them forward, and venture onward

Like a woodpecker pecked cloth spread across the atmosphere
A permeable shelter of green does cover the cobble below
The darks and the lights of...

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It reminds me of an East Anglian landscape.
This garden’s flat planes of grass give the illusion
Of greater distance,the eye travels down them
To the trees rising at the end.
On this scene my mind superimposes
Other ideas of...

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“The Fixer”


While clearing gutters of the autumn leaves 
I was pushed by a wintery stiff breeze 
 Falling from ladder, by freak circumstance
Crumpling into flatness by haphazard chance
I felt a beer can directly under me
Memory...

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Spring semester has started.
We’re all immersed in the ritual of change
and totally committed to that descent into madness
to the relentless drabness, the flatness, the blandness
for the hours, days and weeks of study
and a bone-deep fatigue...

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The Virgin and Child

Matrix of allusions.Its intersections
dipped in the beckoning depths of  chaste dark 
to grow limbs like any other. To mark
a departure into a great mission.
Life  dipped in a suave and rare...

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This morning is awkward.
The sun is not rising at all.
My pain is turning into an orgasm,
My breath is slowing down,
And my thoughts are numbing.
Eileen is standing up
In the other side
Of the river;
Looking north.
It becomes more...

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Steel cold, rough hands lay slack.
Pull it taut while gripping the back.
Getting it apart takes a lot of force.
Days pass, and so strain, as a horse.

Gather up inside of a ductility test.
If the wire grows warm, it drys...

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