CLUTURE CLASH

You can hear the conflict
Pounding through the wall.
Inevitable result of transcultural
Aggression. Gathered vibration of centuries
Assaults the senses.
Each shaking door frame
Speaks with clear voice
In a sea of conflicting noises.
The bowl of rice
Sits peacefully through
The tremors, as the ground
Shakes briefly, once,
Then falls silent
As smash of crockery against
Wall dissolves into
The pounding thud
Of body against body
And insatiable gasps.
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(Santa Cruz near Steamer Lane, neighbors, 1988)
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LIKE A FLY ON A GLASS

Snarling thunder sounds
Across the flat grayness.
Wind unseen but felt
In every cell, pounds the
Sea, That roiling seductress
All alluring curves, but
With unthinkable murder in her heart,
Innocent savagery beckons.
Long squat birds gathered
In a huddle, loom
Against the first light of dawn
Defying the squall
And careless footfalls of
Resident aliens in rubber
Zoris. Again the spume, plumes
Of steam rise wraithlike
As each, eagle half in concept,
Rises slowly on the wind.
But Alas! It is merely a fly
Crawling up a wall of silken glass
In my imagination.
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(Santa Cruz, near Steamer Lane, 1988)
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SEA GOAL

Caow-caow rapid fire
With beach body repertoire
Sandy sitz summer fog day.
Kelp choir breaker growl
Crushes small background
Protests of thronging
Floral camera straps.
Ocean Avenue psyche
Strip tease performs set
Pieces of nowhere
Going confused like
Mid-80s fellow voyagers.
Like Chihuahua straining on a lead,
Pulling large man, whose goal
Is sublime seascape admiration,
Others not so purposeful, silent streams
Pursue feelings of poorly targeted Vagueness.
“Elizabeth…we’re leaving”
A Carmel of the mind
And body.
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(Santa Cruz, near Steamer Lane, 1988)
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GREEN DEATH

Cypress sentinel stands
Silent, spurning ant colonies below
Of neglected wandering bipedal motes.
“Rachel, this is about as Carmel As it gets”
I hear from vapid
Blimpo woman nearby.
Black swoop birds
Flock out, searching for airspace
Safely out of Pelican pattern,
Somewhere in the upper sanctuary
Of nether zone,
Where green tea mixes with driftwood
Seas, the scene for Zen lesson
About birth, death, afterlife,
Birth again, showing in small
Uncertainties soon to fall
Underfoot on moist sand,
Damning clams and
Other bivalves, statistical
Probability for showdown
Between surfing primates and
Wise old nature,
Like hopeless deadwood, drifting
And all watched over by Brautigan-like
Machines of loving grace.
Returns of ghosts, wraiths in gray,
Casual in their disregard
For growth among
Graveyard sands of
Summer fog.
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(Carmel, 1987)
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GRAY FLAG LOST

Kids run
Waves grundle
Poems supine
Oenophlows
Beach tog bodies
Seagull screams
Below
And low…
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(Carmel, 1987)
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FIAT LUX: VINO ROSSO

No hope lackluster
Empty moment broke
By endangered species
Foundlings, 1986 Lincoln Vino
Russo actually found in
Carmel Merchant Prince’s Castle.
Flanking wine snobbery glass,
Pickets put perspective
On time-holding ocean
Frozen surface
Of gray-green horizontal holding zonal
Everlastingness.
Thee & me, Nancee, will take particle
Place on blanket, soon enuff, whole body
Rank-and-file in unwilling
Elbow bending, soon
Under still green calm
Of endless, ancient kelp bed respirations.
Glace glide slice,
Then seagull wail,
Each nothing knowing, but nodding at
Bare assed breast photographs of
Erect tit, beaded with clear
Unconscious water.
Flow and blow…nature knows!
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(Carmel, 1987)
--------------------------

RIMBAUD RIMSHOT AFTER HOG’S BREATH

Sub sucker money
Paints a not-so-vivid picture
As street life in Rimjob form
Sits, enfolded in pig’s vapor holder
Waiting for some soft, sacrosanct
Vindication of life’s forsaken labors lost.
It, needful to iterate, never arrives
Except in form of ripe, naïve,
Girl-formed groupies, waiting
For glint of Eastwind’s Garcia.
But this is only on Mon-Fri.
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(Carmel, 1988)
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200 CIRCUS PARADES LATER

Stand, stay still,
Open eyes, shut mouth (flies), think with ears,
Speak with feet, talk with fingers.
Be the tree, nothing personal,
Always there overhead,
Just grow there waiting, tree-like.
Soon the flux & flow will pass
In wheezing fits of 1972 VW
Convertibles, bringing all the
Diverse delights of
All the world’s square corners,
And in passing, fart with pleasure,
To have such an appreciative
Testimonial audience.
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(Santa Cruz, 1987)
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OIL UPON THE WATERS

Down on the hardstand
A rainbow of displaced color invades
The drab gray uniformity
Of concrete deserts.
Hydraulic fluid, which is better suited
To the inner workings of nearby
Silver birds than coital juices, invades the
Static linearity of Nancee’s smooth
Yellow shoulders, dripping unwanted
From above, or is it bird effluent?
Dropping like a sleek rock
With careless abandon to the flat
Soft landing field
Of her stomach, it slowly oozes
Down her moist flanks.
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(Unknown locale…Aliva Beach airfield? 1987)
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FLIGHT NO FLIGHT

Koi no Showa. Carrier
Night landings return
To haunt each bite of fresh sea breeze.
Intercepts like blips floating
In Miso, not real worries but simple
Tofu On a virtual ECM screen.
Closing, But still distant.
In and out drifting slices
Of electron riprap run
Against the hull
As the smallest target blobs collude
On the flat gray screen to become
A collision of fiery flowers
Melting into embers on the unforgiving gray seas.
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(Unknown, late 80s)
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CHINESE CHARACTERS

Orange rain and green tea.
Miso steaming like the Yamato
Through choral seize of humanity.
Berkeley in the rain
And broken umbrellas parading
Through the Occidental Monsoons…
Each steel spoke standing out
Like Ling’s ribs as she breathes,
Softly, slowly, shudderingly.
The ribs like so many survivors
Of some monstrous bomb,
Dropped on Shanghai by mistake.
How strange to be in 6th Century Japan,
Eating Chinese food during deluges
And have run out of Saki!
--------------------------
(Berkeley, no date but early 80s)
--------------------------

ALSO SAMBOS

Red tile tic-tac
Wall brick rot and coffee crackles
Egg snap aroma. Shell pit throw-away
Caffeine kicking java steams
Away from nether shore,
Heading away from shoals of watery peril
On nether shore.
Mai wears little, despite the cold
Of summer Berkeley fog, her nipples
Erect, her almond eyes darting, nibbling
Parts of me in her mind I am sure.
Winded urns wheeze
In the background as baristas,
Some with dripping noses,
Pour killer cups of espresso
For still brain-dead AM students.
Diverse grounds for widened
Grasping mandibular mouth parts, it would seem.
Tacky plastic gentility
Catalyst works jaws of ominous
Double purpose.
Wine cracked plate
Conflict of fellow traveler mix on Tele
As the sun struggles to see through
Potato Patch fog.
Power & privilege, Porschies and grad degrees,
All nothing set against what becomes later
A very hungry condom,
Set back deep into a velvet cave
That still drips after thorough
Explorations have been completed.
Elitist blanket accommodations
Of all walls of power hold back forces
Of Berkeley grad zombies, but
Be damned, all of you who are not here
With Mai enjoying the eternal darkness of her flora
And natural resources, all unbeknownst to
Floral retirees, replete with their Baedeckers
Of Social Historophilosophy
Or perhaps only remotely glimmered
In a past long since forgotten.
Life’s finest moment is, after all,
Now and unending!
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(Berkeley, date unknown, but late 70s)
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