stanley park

What Cook Knew

the naked and limbless snag
thrust silently
towards the old growth canopy silhouette
this terrestrial puncture wound
ceased growing the day
my grandmother began to lavish smiles
and yet the tree stood
the blighted chestnut
twisted and pale
a giant's horn
called upon the pale gray autumn sky
to bring the wet wind
to remove us from its company

death had long since been paid
its worth in unbounded rest
and yet the tree stood
shroud in patches of lichen
and patterned in scrawls
from countless lovestruck
and heedless
layered so thickly
the names and doting
heartshaped lines
were themselves
a wind worn woven bark

I stood there
left arm outstretched to touch
cool
hard
smooth
with countenance cast to
where there once were branches
knowing how all trees will fall
but at a pace
we have long forgotten
to understand

panther hollow

"She had dead-calm, unblinking eyes––suggesting the steely recklessness of a car thief. If you dared her to do it–or bet her five bucks that she couldn't––she would drive foot-to-the-floor through every red light on Wilshire Boulevard, all the way from Santa Monica into Beverly Hills. Unless she got broadsided in Brentwood, or shot by a cop in Westwood Village, there'd be no stopping her––her bare left arm would be lolling out the window, giving everyone the finger the whole way."

- John Irving
Until I Find You

"The world is a civilized one, its inhabitant is not: he does not see the civilization of the world around him, but he uses it as if it were a natural force… In the depths of this soul he is unaware of the artificial, almost incredible, character of civilization, and does not extend his enthusiasm for the instruments to the principles which made them possible."

– José Ortega y Gasset
The Revolt of the Masses

tall ship

thunder

Here

you are there
where
I have my eyes focus closer
to better know the greens of yours
blinking
slowly
with warmth and rest
as my lips trace
your upper
slightly dry from
the night prior.
you are there
where
I rest one hand
where
your hip drops fast
marking you undoubtedly woman
until I again surrender
to the weight of my eyes.

I once dreamt dreams of
girls
unfamiliar upon waking
that would have me
pining for belief
in love
and matching beauty.
I once dreamt these dreams
before
here.

Aluminum Flies

everything up here is aluminum two extra thousand feet
above
the clouds we were advised to avoid.

the hard cart shuffles past
plugging the aisle and
emitting designed aromas
to flirt with my thirst.
as driver is a woman
surely my junior
that smiles with all her teeth and
dimples
flashed to make everyone feel just as special.
the embellished rickshaw wafts these
smells that also deliver
snapshots
of people that otherwise would not occupy my mind.
[she drank diet coke warm
despite a summer sun
matching its false sweetness
which she feigned
better than a rookie councilman] pungent moist coffee
salty bloody mary mix
stale yeast beer
these liquids have grown as tired as
the memories they adorn.

up here I have time to kill
as a casual defiant gesture against these thoughts
[crash]
that would have me killed.
I am sorry for this fly that
took a wrong turn at the tarmac
to end up dieing in this aluminum tube
up
far up above
sumptuous piles of bull shit and
shiny plastic trash.
I pocket hope to
soon make it back to the dirt
sense of smell also intact.
you are there
where
I would have my eyes focus closer
to better know the greens of yours
blinking
slowly
with warmth and rest.

summer

my latest

cliff diving
into undulating waves

unseen from this height


under balmy skies



i timed it right




the water is warm

An Abstruse Spring

Smells of piss
and old diapers
rise from this walled sidewalk
despite the cold air
a hawk catches
a thermal past this high-level bridge
gifting her a longer hunt.

Squirrels bark and scratch at a yell
and scurry up honey locusts
in fear
in spite
as if I aimed to steal their seeds.

I kick rocks left months ago
by the department of public works
but with this fickle weather
it's just as well they've been neglected
by the street sweeper.

Here the ground is hard
and my knees know it more
with each year
with each mile.

Here the soil is buried
beneath oil and stone
and I have some distance
above before I know it.

de•sire line

1. The route people most naturally and instinctively take as they pass through a space.

To Good To Not Be True

on that night
I forgot my undershirt at the base of your bed
I forgot all that came before you

on that night
the moon was eclipsed by the earth
it was dyed a Mars crimson
but we missed it

quite heedless and free
these moments were lost
amidst the green flowered fields of your sheets

"this night air reminds me of summertime stargazing"
I'd say as if recalling a season
we've not yet shared

on that night
the whiskey essence on your tongue got me drunk
we listened to vinyl and each other
and began

New York City, 2007

Tonight brought glorious cold augmented by the clear sky and distant stars. Tree limbs still sheathed in ice cracked in a wind's sway as would the rope of a tire swing almost too old to bear a child consumed with oblivious joy.

There exists a peace in the close crunch of snow underfoot and breath made visible, and the trees, if you can find them, would be your audience frozen in attentiveness. Come Spring they will finally take a breath

We need it soon. Too many plastic bags, the extent of our wildlife, have come to roost and settle these limbs.

I am the non-toxic avenger
black scarf (as cape) whipping about in tow
as I ride and glide.

Thanks to your always being a woman.

I remember when conversation became formality fading with our minds occupied by that which we could not cease. I'd hug you tightly, anticipating the day when my arms would return to their sides. I'd tiptoe around… so not to fall in.

I would answer the door in jeans and faded tee to find you buttoned to the neck in something asian and worsted and white, with patent leather, slippery and red, completing your torso below. I would warm your nose with mine and suppress the unrivaled bliss.

This morning I washed my sheets even though I knew you weren't staying.

Sweet Sweet Tepee Licks

With our percussionary ineptitude we kept the beat like seven-year-olds wanting to impress their mothers. Yet, if the breadth of our grins read anything but genuine delight, it was that matched rhythms meant nil.

The gal with the tight blond locks and arm-warmers to match those for her legs was on the primary-colored xylophone. Two plastic mallets. Seven metal keys. To her right was a boy intent on syncopation. Somehow his drum head banged richer with its packaging tape patches, yet the drummer could not yet deduce fingers or small branches to be a producer of better resonance. To his right and further to his right were spaces rotated by newcomers too uninspired, too scheduled to take time, or too good at performance to last one-half of one bad melody.

The astroturf just inside the structure’s crawlspace portal found someone else to stay. She mustered her imagination and the four-key keyboard, again plastic in material and primary in colors. Her hair was perfectly cropped to fit the role of either boy or girl, timelessly lost within the belly of this dark circular construct. “It’s a good thing I only know four keys,” she yelled smiling above the clamour.

On we shook and banged our plastic-bead-filled maracas and plastic and tin tambourines, and gleamed. I didn't know these beauties but the wonderful terrible music had us already acquainted. If we were again seven and on a playground, brevity and sincerity would have found us just the same, grasping hands instead to proclaim friendship. But then it was time to move on. The silk streamer and orange lamp campfire had me sweating.

This art was not an accessory to its witnesses and subsequent owners; something only able to be viewed and discussed and become borrowed bragging rights. Rather, this anonymous tepee, adorned with painted rainbows and green fields and a Gondry-esque working cottonball sky, beckoned interaction.

And the result was beyond witness and subject.