Transformative Dispositions

Splatter platter reigned on radios
in the early 1960s: “Teen Angel”
to “Last Kiss,” “Deadman’s Curve,”
to “Leader of the Pack,” DJs. spun morbid
songs 24/7 as youths romanticizes death
while subconsciously longing for change.

Yes, we abandoned our untucked Madras
shirts, substituted the “lived-in” look
for British styles from tailored Mod
fashions and motor scooters to Rocker
jeans, leathers, and Harley Davidsons.
Timely. Fashionable. Smart.                          

True West Coast surfers had
a head start on the rest of us;
between salt water forays, hot rod ballads, 
and Beach Boys barbecues, their
wavy sun bleached mop tops had been
“getting good in the back” for months.    

Never stooping to wear cheap Beatle wigs
to defy our parents, we grew out locks
hair fell over shirt collars, covered earlobes
established “the look” more fashionable
urgent than buzz cuts or grooming follicles
with Brylcreem, Vitalis, or Dapper Dan’s Pomade.

The British Invasion fed us
rock ‘n roll lace with rhythm &
blues overlooked in the states.
Glam metal gave way to pop rock,
M. Jackson, and Madonna in the ‘80s
rap became disco’s revenge thereafter.


****************************************

The Grand Canyon 

It's a terrarium of secrets, 
holding eons as heirlooms. 
To the high flying condor, 
it is a scar along the earth's crust,
until she tilts her body,
she cuts through the air,
controlling her fall,
aware of her destination. 

Embracing the wound,
she dives closer, past
walls of fossilized shells
to the river below.
Through the ruddy stratum of time
she finds the water and rests 
on the curled arm of a juniper tree.

Leaning against the tree's base,
a man wipes sweat from his brow. 
Holding his camera to the perched bird,
he gifts her immortality—
a snapshot, a photograph—
while feeling proud,
for he has captured something rare. 

A grey mule is waiting.
The man ties his gear onto its saddle, 
and rides back up the trail. 
But he continues to turn, admiring the bird,
until she becomes indistinguishable 
from the constellations of juniper foliage. 

Reaching flat land, he gazes 
over the verge. Southward 
the abyss appears to widen,
as the river stretches like the clear pathway to eternity. 
Thousands of ripples emerge and fall, 
grasping sunlight like children.
Exhaling, he contemplates and releases
the words, “There are stars in this river.” 


Pacific 

Come, lay your bones 
down on the shore.
How many questions don’t matter anymore 
out here within this wild eternal? 

Coastal trees house lost light    
as their leaves rattle like caricatures of angel wings.
We are ancient as their whispers, 
here, away from mundane proportions.

Nobody pities that the Pacific
will never know its name—
it is recognized as a joy 
to avoid self-minimization.

The water stretches effortlessly
as open blue, anticipating 
nothing, comfortable 
with its rhythms 
of ecstasy and solemnity. 

Breaking waves ignite and bow 
like bending, blown glass,
to then collapse at our feet
and retreat into boundlessness. 

in-country

even back in
the world his
thoughts were
rooted in
highway driving
a monsoon of
memories washing
out the road markers,
navigation by sense,
by sight, his Coupe
de Ville, a hearse,
carry-all suit holders,
body bags leaking
cleaning fluids,
acrid as gasoline;
everything they touch
burns, even little
old ladies roadside
holding children
in their arms going
straight to hell in
a hand basket
wherever he passes.

The Terror

I was in absolute terror
When I suddenly realized
That iambic pentameter
Was a real thing and that
There was no way in Britain
To stop it.
"Will!  Put that quill down
You Elizabethan fruitcake!"

McClenney To Beeville

I step outside for the night’s last cigarette.
So quiet I hear paper,
tobacco sizzle the permanent scar
between my first and second fingers.

I think about my old friend Leonard Larson.
Leonard had a broad, angry brow
like his hero Beethoven.
Compared his mastery of harmonica
to Beethoven’s command of piano.
Several years of failing to convince
anyone of this, along with a dual diagnosis,
got him sent away to the horrors of McClenney
for six months of ECT and a lifetime of Thorazine.

I drove a Kenworth for forty years,
then a bottle of Wild Turkey deep into the night.
Ended up in a trailer east of Beeville, Texas.
So quiet I hear paper
burn, flesh sizzle.
Not sure what got me thinking of
Leonard again, but he
would have liked it here.
Maybe it’s the peace and quiet.

To the north, an orange moon
cracks like an egg on the mountain.
It was never quiet in McClenney,
Leonard confessed.

I finish my cigarette,
watch the yolk run down
the other side of the mountain.

Compartmentalization                                                            

 
Of course the door was closed to the room
in which he was snorting crank through

a tightly-rolled twenty-dollar bill, whose eye,
though much wider than a needle’s

would admit only a thin stream, so necessitating
the semi-privacy with like-minded semi-strangers

far and separate from the old-friend crowd
inured to the usual intoxicants distant

from the snowy amphetamine rising to the olfactory
nerve, with which none of said crowd

had experience—or desire to gain
—the new high, another door and hinge beyond the first—

yet stronger than that slab of seasoned oak,
miles thicker too

 

Animals
 
The bear is bare.
Disgusting.
The hare is hairy.
Foul.
The pig is a pig.
Revolting.
The fly flies.
He is truly beauty caught
Between two panes of
Glass as beautiful as
Any star in any sky.

Sneak Arrow

A vow of endless love so grand
Etched on a screen by trembling hand
Glows in WeChat’s fluorescent light
Bared to the world in open sight

From shadows near yet far away
A sneak arrow speeds its way

No Cupid’s dart to spark romance
But a cruel barb from scheming trance

A venomous consort’s cold art
Born of her vicious ruthless heart

This heart just scarred now bears a hole
Pierced by this wound that takes its toll

Yet from that hole through aching pain
A song rises a bold refrain
Its melody so clear so strong
Resounds with courage all along

Cryoconite hole

Once, I learnt the literary world comes in innumerable shapes: a square, a circle, a Plath-shaped. That winter, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I didn't understand my admiration for Guns N Roses. I was told there is no such word as “unorthodoxy.” Running further away from sonnet-like behavior, I plunged deep into psychedelic rock, then the ocean turned bluer, the waves foamed more as a mug of overbrimming beer, less as the mouth of a poisoned body. I stopped learning songs that espoused moral jargon and I began opening the window to let the mist-inebriated wind overdose the open pages of my journal, where claw-fingered and shark-teeth despair melted into prose worth reading again. Some days, I feel those cold days were suspended in time, giving me the frozen hours to pull myself out of the cryoconite hole.