Long Northwest Poems

The Amistad Mutiny

Slavery, a dirty word no matter how it’s pronounced:
Abducted and herded to the slave fortress of Lomboko1 for trade.
To be tossed in chains below deck on the Portuguese ship Tecora,2
Sailing the Atlantic Middle...

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Conditions were harsh out in Kansas,
For the children and Sarah and Paul.
Neighbors and friends packed up and were gone;
Headed west they could hear fortune's call.
Never sure year to year of the harvest,
So their talents were...

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Yet at this very moment the cathedral was crumbling
down upon the cries of foresaken refugees, 
the monastery's walls wobbling from war's wreckage, 
and as the black bursts billowed into sun drenched brutality
with the bodies of...

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"Hey, you philosophysing Hindu. Give me a break, Buddy. I was just pulling your leg. [...] I want the rest of the story. Really, I mean it.” Theson said nothing. [...] “I can see you’re...

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Thanksgiving, 1971,
a parachute pilgrim approaches Northwest Flight 305
as Dan Cooper, anonymous businessman,  anarchist airborne, 
black suit, black sunglasses, a black tie
and a black briefcase broaching black motives,
Portland to Seattle, prison or criminal pantheon, 
before...

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The First Thanksgiving (Sept. 3, 1578)

The shortest distance to Cathay 1
(Land of riches: silks, teas and spices)
Lay to the north to the South Sea. 2
Didn’t Barlow tell the King, 3
Was reserved for England.

The routes ‘round...

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Each Zen ZeroSoul
invites a sacredly unique understoried purpose,
enthymematic matriotic meaning
through nurturing Health-Wealth Consciousness.

ZenSoul identity
heroic voice
shadow sacred
yin-suppressed
among LeftBrain Dominant
adolescent RedStates,
monocultural extraction planners.

Red or Blue
and Green 
between
depths of social Turquoise personality
for outdoor aquatic conversations,
ebbs and flows,
eggs and...

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BUSHFIRE
                                  ...

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A homeless poet

A few days ago, I was walking home with my dollar store notebook in my hand as I walked. I was deep in thought about how I was going to fill these 250...

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6 miles up river Arikara are encountered,
they are a people of amenable disposition and are agrarians,
they chuckle with sympathy as we inform them of our grizzly confrontation
and they tell us that disease had forced them...

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Let's talk honestly together
about our divinely-inspired inter-related concepts,
like color,
of God's unlimited multiculturing powers
for healthy resilience
and growth of Positive ultra-violet Energy,
yet on an increasingly finite feeling and self-feeding planet,
limited by overpopulation of anthros
powerless to sustain life
throughout...

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In theology,
and ecological healthy
and pathological relationships,
I know self-righteous fundamentalists
and nonviolent nondualists,
and most everyone else
processing together
win/lose
either/or
in-between
both/and.

Odd,
how such an abstraction
between fundamental uniformity
of sacred energy
and nondual co-arising unity
of divine-humane light,
can sever a healthy 
sacred-secular 
polynomial balance,

A harmonic resonance
championed...

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Location: Chicago
Timeline: 1967-1974
Characters: Bob and Don
Residence: A house on Chicago's Northwest side

Don passed away last Fall; Bob, 12 years ago.
Last night, I had a dream about a real event depicting 
Bob and Don, real people...

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The sand is stained red
with our bygone blood,
the blood that brought us from Ararat to the Alti,
a tribe trekking intrepidly through the Eurasian terrain,
caravans of Caucasians clad with Celtic tartan twills
plaids upon the pale horse...

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futures cavort below the horizon
  an expectant dawn glows, duly announcing the first born arrival
  tomorrow then forward smiles, feeling good
  half planned momentous moment, ordering fate, shaping survival

  surf wave...

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(huff fin Bach seat driver)...

Aye kin recall when both offspring
     (yay high) as a small child
and now ma deux daughters
     (fledgling young chicks
    ...

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The location of the Spring Creek School was on a flat, nestled 
between the cliff on the north and the Little White River on the south.  The river 
flowed in from the northwest, circled...

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When Dena and her girlfriend sneaked out of their houses at night, they both
would go and meet boys that they met during the daytime and they were their
boyfriends.  One day Dena was writing her...

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It wasn't so long ago, that my new wife and I
had to find a place to live which we could call "Home".
We found an ideal place on the northwest side of our city,
easy transportation, good...

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I’ve sorted spuds at Cora Lynn, picked asparagus at Vervale, 
Cherries in the Dandenong’s, beans on the Thompson close to Sale,
I’ve picked apples out at Labertouche and made a tidy quid,
But I’ve never picked an...

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"You don't know my story; you just know the chapter that you met me on."DK Metcalf. 'Love don't judge' ***

Each one of our stories has a beginning, a middle and an ending just like a...

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+++++  TV TRAVELS  +++++
                  
Oh where, oh where shall I travel today
Maybe 1940's where life portrayed
In...

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My wife found an Indonesian drum that she couldn’t live without,
It was a ceremonial one used to play for all who remain devout.

It had brightly colored beads and paint to decorate its side,
And it grabbed...

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THE DRAGLINE  for Pete Brett 

One hundred foot boom 
 7-½-yard bucket 
The tracks are like 
 Ones on the tracks of a tank
They go chunk clunk and clank  

Arm of the boom...

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In the 1600's, Europeans lived on the eastern shore
Their numbers grew, they wanted more.
Iroquios, Sauk, Ottawa, and Mohawk were tribes they met
Too many and more, paid our forefathers' debt.
Men moved west thru the Cumberland gap
Daniel...

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