POEM FOR JACOB

I dreamed about you
shooting Andy Warhol
from a subaru
from an exercise ball
bouncing into infamy.

I dreamed it;
you didn't have to tell me;
I am not amazed by the coming of spring.

Still, they'll say he was a genius
they'll say he was a penius
they'll say he never once turned off the TV
- they were wrong.

Crows...
an Indian summer
as much as I,

"But they are crows
and it's not summer."

"Then summer is not summer."

"Oh but it is, it is!"

- BANG!

Letter to Jacob, 5/30/09

The smell of patchouli oil
and cigarette smoke
hanging in the humid air,
dusk, summer and
a Missoula that yawns towards the sea.

It's not half bad here, Jacob; my road bike is holding up fine; much better than my skin. There is no sunburn for bikes (there is also no drunkenness). Yesterday I saw a butterfly. Are Mormons allowed butterflies? Even my bike one day will depart. it's parts will be buried in the bike graveyard (death is free) and diffused into many bicycles; diffusion and all its horror! One day it will be evenly diffused among all bikes.

Elm samaras blow into my window
they land on my sheets,
in-between my computer's keys,
on my hardwood floor
even so; they are not wasted (if I say so)
"How now? a rat?" - it is myself.
It says, "what a divinely silly mood."

I'm going down to the sea
and there there there there'll be
no difference between the sky the sea and me
and to that strange country
where there are starfishes
and moonfishes
and milky way whales
sharks and snails
mountains of coral
forests of kelp
mermaid caves and meadows of clams;
the sea can be a mirror (and vice versa)
and there there there there'll be
no difference between the sky the sea and me!

I reread your portfolio today; I miss your lilac shoes and your swimming ballet; didn't you take them with you, or are they locked up in my basement? among the teacups and microwave...
All you have left here awaits you return.
Your friend,
Ross

Necrophilia

Why are humans afraid of death? Perhaps it is an evolutionary mechanism so that we can live long enough to reproduce and further our species, but even that seems like a very human and positivist response (although here too, death and love are interdependent). Perhaps it is the vertigo of realizing that eventually, any sense of identity we cling to will be erased forever. (Whoever said we have the right to an identity?) Why do we fear death! Perhaps no one knows, but the point is that we do fear it. We can do many things to prolong life; eating well, exercise, medicine, wearing seatbelts, etc. but the truth of the matter is that all living things must die. That is how we know we are living; awareness of death. Fear of death is fear of life. We understand very little about either or these two interconnected phenomena. When we try to have life without death, we effectively eliminate both and are not quite living, not quite dead. We love this state because it allows us to forget about death, if at the cost of resignation from life. Modern life is consumed with this obsession with death - this necrophilia. Our lives fall in to orderly, planned out, almost mechanical routines while real, rich and violent life always seems to exist someplace else and we are spared its threats, mainly death, as if such a thing we possible. We prefer to superficially transcend into an abyss of forgetfulness. Little do we know, this comfortable and quiet life is death. Or perhaps we do know, if subconsciously. Either way, we love it. We love death.

Sping is beautiful too

Perhaps to learn how to make ourselves happy
And then break down again.
Perhaps to have children who will have children
Who will die.
Perhaps because sunshine is so pure.
Perhaps because as children
We had no concept of nothingness.
Perhaps to buzz around in these studios
That would otherwise be so boring.
Perhaps to learn to tell the truth
Then to learn that is impossible.
Perhaps to make love on sunny afternoons
With Nick Drake on the stereo.
Perhaps to be given shelter
And then to be given rain.
Perhaps to dream.
Perhaps to learn the best way to peal garlic,
Grow beards, get sunburns.
To be preserved in glass; a few photos,
A song, a poem and then forgotten.
To inherit the question and then misplace in the rosemary...

To Salome with love

I’ve given myself away
I have nothing and can do no more.
I’ve spent days waiting
For my milk to be delivered.
To let her in and make a pot of coffee
Without obligation
And start talking
Watch her move slowly
From the kitchen, to the piano, to the bed
Brown hair curling and swinging
Like a caveman’s arms
Breaking the still air
With jingling bells and eagle feathers
Then on the horizon, the captain spies
The enemy sail.
A pink bed sheet, a t-shirt, socks.
I want to swim in the ocean and,
Like a whale, not come up for hours
Perhaps that would be enough time.
Guitars play in the cave
Lit up with fire and wine - hashish smoke
And she is there, waving hair deliberately, playing some castanets
Or some god-awful thing
She is awful, awe-inspiring, like God;
Cruelly beautiful.
Likewise?
No, I am ugly and kind.
But there is this Apollo 13 passion
(Lift off, explode, you know, go to the moon anyway.)
That still manages to leave me all baroque and sad,
7:30, Sunday morning, ready to puke.
I am week; oh, too human,
And painfully so, my one hope is round orbit that moon and bring it back home
My music? My love?
These are my too competing theologies
Without them I am lost in space; the superhuman realm of emotions;
Imagination without an outlet.
There she is in the cave, head swinging,
Hair all syncopated with her arms that hold the terrible castanets
I hear over the guitars, over the old gypsies
(all gypsies are old, either they are old or they seem old,
that’s how you know a gypsy)
I am drawn into the cave, out of the valley of expression
Into the depths of copulation, domesticity.
The gypsies growl and force me out
She shrugs, apologetically, continues her dance
I am no John the Baptist.

Song: Flushed Down the AlCan (into the Sub-Canadian Abyss)

Your eyes are like an oven
and pies are like our lovin'
and we'll keep on cookin'
the world keeps on cookin'
and we're going from scratch
and we've never tried anything quite like that.

This road takes me away from alaska
from my parents, my siblings and my dog
but I'll keep on driving
the world keeps on driving
and we don't got no map
no, we've never seen anything quite like that.

This sky will be our roof
and these animals and plants will be our food
and we'll keep on living
the world keeps on living
and we don't have to be sad
no, we've never felt anything quite like that.

Haiku to Evan

Art in my living
Room: Evan dancing, drunk, stoned.
Art in my living.

ODE TO ODETTA

You don't know my mind
You see me laughin'
I'm laughing just to keep from crying.
Odetta is dead.

She wanted to sing at Obama's Inauguration
But O, Odetta! They sang your songs on the bus.
Alabama bound,
It was a big blue bus
With black people in it.

TO MY MOTHER ON HER BIRTHDAY

An old high-school photograph of my mother;
Seventeen, long dark blond hair,
Large brown eyes.
I am twenty,

Still, in this photograph she looks older
Than I will ever be.
She could never have been selfish and confused
Like me.

Now the recent photo.
Mom and me in the back of that rental car;
The Spain trip.
Her face aged by forty more summers

And her hair turned brown, now gray
Still, those brown eyes
Like Venus de Milo's, Lady Liberty's,
As if for her only,

Learning is experience.
All she has seen shows truth.
I am incapable of seeing anything.
And even in that old photo,

She already knew.
That gravity moves at 32 feet per second, per second -
They knew that when they flew to the moon.
That all men are created equal -
They knew that when they shot Dr. King.

O mom! Business majors shall inherit the earth,
They stare at me when I crawl past the Gallagher Business Building
On my way to choir:
My idea of heaven is a dollar store.

Can I make any sense out of it?
But those eyes, like Montana summer sun,
Absolve all my reason
And leave only wise wonder in its place.

IMPRINTS OF LEAVES ON UNIVERSITY SIDEWALK

Grey cement reaching for miles
I dream of walking around in
An eternity.

I stop to see the imprint of a leaf.

The five pointed shape
With veins, stem like a backbone
Holes rotted through,
Cancer?
All preserved on a five foot square
Of grey cement,
Not an eighth inch deep, still,
An eternity.

Alexander is stopping a bunghole.

And it is fall again;
Students and leaves
Are as abundant
As they are meaningless.

What makes this one special?
O, I wish to be cast in cement next to it.

But I am no simple leaf.

And when my body is burned
And I am spread along the mountains,
Rugged Alaskan Mountains
Where there are no paths,
What imprint will I leave?

I’d write a book. I’d write ten thousand!
If they would just be
As ambitionless,
As eternal,
As this leaf.

One in a million
That walked one fall on these paths,
What imprint will I leave!