computer repair

at the shop a couple of techies don't repair
one computer at a time
they work on five or six
with others waiting
. . . phone calls
interruptions
then back to another one
scan complete
run the scan again
delivery of parts at the door

pull out the defects
order the correct part
this should be reformatted
while the scan is running look at that one
one more carried out the door
clean it out, it runs slow
can you do it now please?

this one is ready, take another
make it lean and keen
hey, look at this!
you have to find the symptoms
then the problem, and cure it

run it until it's smooth as a pond
without a ripple
simple
nice dimple
oh, i lost my place,
what a cyberspace!

Green River Ordinance

i was fishin’ by the river
with a little bit o’ liver
catchin’ catfish
catchin’ catfish

i heard this clatter down the line
and i turned in time
to see a peddler
sellin’ handles

well, there was nothin’ attached,
like a door to its latch
he’s just tottin’ ‘em in a sack...
the handles

he asked, as in a wish
for a look at my fish,
and the sack in which i’d
tote ‘em

i said it’s this here gunny
an’ he laughed and said “it’s funny”
that i’d tote that fish sack home
without no handle

he said he’d met a thousand kings
walked the world in a thousand rings
but never saw a sack
without no handle

he said he’d help a fellow man
then placed an object in my hand...
a handle

i took the handle an’ he was on his way
i got a fine bargain, don’t mind to say
and in exchange he’s just one wish
imagine...
only my lowly sack o’ fish

truck driver

for my driver friend that i don’t know
and isn’t that the way to go?
have friends you can’t see
like when i was a kid Guyle was mine,
Gerpthee was my cousins friend
i mention that because the name is so stupid
our whole family used to laugh at that one

i never asked what it did to my cousin
that her mom used to lead the laughter
but this is about the driver that lives up north,
now i respect that Dylan song, the girl from the north country

and everybody needs a song
don’t get me wrong
they’re fun to kick around your head
carry with you
until you’re dead
then you quit with it, maybe
or maybe you take it with you

so this truck driver puts me
in touch with the size of this world
cause i’m about on the other side of it
in ways other than distance
even from here

it’s the way she writes it
and i’m happy she can
put it out there to share
with all of us
cause it appears we are all in this together

bob dylan 1963

If you're traveling in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
For she was once a true love of mine.

Well, if you go when the snowflakes storm
When the rivers freeze and summer ends
Please see for me if she's wearing a coat so warm
To keep her from the howlin' winds.

Please see from me if her hair hanging down
If it curls and flows all down her breast
Please see from me if her hair hanging down
That's the way I remember her best.

Well, if you're traveling in the north country fair
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline
Please say hello to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine.

tarnation

August brought a change, it did
the frogs kept out of range, or hid
like all the years before
there comes a time it seems,
they are no more

hidden, slippery
out there hiding
not sitting and sunning as before
silent, evermore

it was friendly time around July
a most peaceful month for all
a net was set to discourage the heron
with plenty of room for others to come and go

our green friends’d croak when we came around
and we croaked back, a regular give and take
they’d sun with us there
we’d sit
they’d stare

and i miss them like the rain
steaming through on hot winds in July
now the weather’s still
humid and cloudy, our August sky

there are reasons
to call them seasons
on them we can rely

Trashmen

each week i see those lads
and know they should earn more
for they certainly do the work
and deserve a golden parachute
more than most CEO's ever will

here they come now,
i don’t know how those boys
can heft those trashcans hour after hour,
and dump them in the truck, one after another,
all the way down the street, all over town

what a mess we’d all be in
if we didn’t have them,
and no one ever tips their hats to them,
thank God for their service,
they deserve our honor

some august afternoon

some august afternoon
the great ember rolled
into evenings ensuing blanket
that flanks the sky's end, west
casting shadows in my lemonade
nodding the okay for a light wind
to bring on the cut-grass scent
three or four crickets
rabbits, squirrels and a toad
a pale white moon
blackening trees
star one, two, three
then countless
and the sound of partially melted
ice cubes knocking
as i tip my glass
to the night

kiss a butterfly

M. drove us to Cleveland
for parts of the best of it,
first stop Little Italy
an outdoor sit down coffee and biscotti,
after a month of searing heat
the temperature falls, M’s wearing long pants
and i’m the only guy in northern ohio
in shorts and sandals

then to the wall glassed botanical garden
for a bit of Madagascar in one cube,
Costa Rica and thousands of butterflies on the other,
outside gardens remarkably done,
each of six in different themes

next, downtown to the Renaissance hotel
a walk through the expansive adjacent mall
for looking and a slice of bad pizza,
in the public square, the sculpted monument
for county civil war fallen, completed in 1895,
years before i heard that
Francis X. Bushman the silent film star posed
for a statue in the square, we asked, searched,
yet couldn’t find it

saw the House of Blues where
the Captain goes when he’s in town,
checked out the sushi restaurant
where we thought we’d go for supper.
alas, it’s fast food.

during supper in the tourist zone nearby
at a century old building
M. mentioned that she charged the batteries,
although we forgot to use it,
the camera remained in the trunk of the car

that night we watched the opening of the Beijing Olympics
on TV in our hotel room, that's why we came
we have no TV at home.
the next morning we marked
our day sojourn to the city complete and well done.
maybe i’m just a romantic
and perhaps what the little kid in the botanical garden
really said to his friend was, “catch a butterfly”

I am not a god fearing man,
unless he punishes stupidity.

be creative

for the future of mankind,
for the children,
no need to bust a gut to be the utmost

but, when you bake a dozen cookies
squinch one or two up a bit
take a tiny chance, add a dash of color,
a nick against redundancy

from your heart
you can feel the way,
we don't have to be
so tight in a line

Noah built a whole damn ark
you can do a little something
everyday,
it's for the world

Running Dog

my dog that ran away knew what he was doing
that’s why i didn’t go after him.
the cats that stay know where the handouts are
and the birds sing, and the postman comes around.
Neighbor kids cross the front lawn to and
from school. small airplanes make noise
when they pass over. my yard is dry, needs rain
the house is quiet, and neat, with little in it
i have a plant room for quiet meditation
and a typewriter for verbal contemplation
the piano awaits my next touch.
no tv, and the radio isn’t used much.
the shelves are not stocked, i have running water,
a washer and dryer that work once a week,
and my garden that reluctantly surrenders vegetables.
some outdoor flowers, strawberries and a small lemon tree
wind chimes on the patio, empty chairs, space to be
and i’ll moan into yesterdays or tomorrow
i’ll tip wine sublime, and smoke in sorrow
my heart will leap, my head will spin
the phone will ring, again and again
i’ll read some of the letters but won’t write back
perhaps tomorrow, for now, let them stack
three shirts, three pants, some boots and shoes
the rest are rags, no good to use
i go out for work, and the money comes in
i’ve lost some weight, but still not thin

and the laughing brown dog knew what he was doing
he set out to be the best dog around
he left to clean the clock of every cat in town
he could jump the fence, bark the bird and lick the dish
four legs to run, ears to flap, eyes to see, tail to wag
and he chased his tail
right out the front door
right up the street
running for all he can get
running for his life

and i may type by an open window
but i never looked up for him again
not once did i wait
before he left he let me know what was up for him
and i let him know he could run
and i’ll wait inside typing, outside working
back and forth with cups of unsweetened tea
another shower, a song from the piano
something to hum and a searching, walking mantra
about “let’s see, let’s see” and i look for it
while this goes on, i hang out with it
i drink what’s going on, eating today, singing now
pulling it up, and laying it out there
putting it down into words, cleaning it up
tightening it up, cutting it short and letting it run
working it over, taking it in, seeing what goes on
then playing the rinky-tink roll on the pi-ano
hit it. let it flow and go and blow

and the faster i go, the slower it is
and the slower i am the more that gets here
and it keeps on coming out
more from the mailman, more on the phone
more at work and with friends
it keeps on and on a coming in the window
rising with the sun
setting on the end of my bed
playing with my head
and i stand up to fight with it
and we roll on the floor
i grab my chest and gasp last breath
then rise to heaven where saint peter
takes a swing at me and i knock him on his ass
and he tries to tell me to go to hell
so i push my way in and when god sees me
he isn’t pissed at all
we sit down over pizza and tell dirty jokes
mine are better than his, and he knows it!
he introduces me to his old lady
she’s ten million years old but still foxy
and she wants to ball me, but i’m chicken
god and i shake hands and i split
back to my window to see if he can make it rain

i don’t hold my breath
i make a sandwich and drink some wine

a lifetime forever

to live a lifetime forever
on a mountain under eternal noon sun
with sweet wine touching lips that touch mine

where the omnipresent fragrance of soft flowers
and gentle green
caress thoughts
and cradle in your mind mellow notions

the only sound being
two hearts playing
the softest lullaby in creation

self portraits

As you may know, if you click on my “profile” on this blog it will lead you to my art blog.

The purpose of this note is to clarify why artists do self portraits and so many of them. Artists do self portraits because a model in the mirror has more clarity, depth, and is a more life-like subject than working from a still photo. Photos, digitally, mechanically or chemically reproduced are essentially flat. While live models have true color and subtle light qualities, and even movement that make subtle gradations of shade and hue apparent, and there is the visible space around the model. The space around a subject sends signals to the artist. The background is not black, void of color, but a combination of grays that can be rendered to give depth.

There are great photos of people, and that is a wonderful art in itself, but for an artist who paints or draws, a live model is working from life itself, providing a wider range of opportunity for interpretation. Technically, mirrors have a slight cast of green or bluish-green color from the reflection in glass, but it is close enough for the artist to practice. And, a self portrait is, overall, practice.

The mirror is the quickest way for an artist to find a model when he’s ready to work, any hour, any time.

frogs got the change

a mild weather variance
on drifting wafts of breeze
stirring heavy warm air
like a long wooden paddle
in a cauldron of soup
enough so you notice

our frogs got the change
felt it before i did and took action
altered their habits
maybe one is gone
i'm still figuring it out
it could be the result of
the beginning of August

not sitting out like before
no croak when we come by
they're lying low,
we know,
but not why

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning writer
has died at age 89. I enjoyed his book about life in a lousy, cold Soviet gulag - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Friends had asked how I could possibly enjoy that story of misery and harsh deprivation. I replied that when I felt down I could always reread this book and remember how really sweet my life is.

A Change

don't know when
can't say how soon
signs are in the clouds
the cards, my dreams,
the wind

there's a taste
in the toast, the soup, the tea
it's coming
tell me, don't you feel it?
can you see?

prepare however you can
straighten the shelves
wash and iron your clothes
tidy up
secure your things

hug those you love
keep your head down
be aware, behave
for good or bad, for sure
a change is on the way

Pavarotti

It is a pleasure when life has its nearly magical moments, like a record setting sports event. I want to share this video with you. Luciano Pavarotti in New York, 1980. He's young, in form and everyone knows that this time he nails it.

Click on his name and watch the video.

the hundred facets

the hundred facets of us each
some we take and some we teach

all the talents, all the joys
all the girls and all the boys

are represented by just one
the hundred facets are the sum

and every jewel in every place
is seen in only partial face

and so we have our multi selves
changing always where one dwells

forming different combination
never reaching destination

and many of the gems we see
are, a little bit, like you and me

ike and amy

ike and amy
lived in the white house
next door

ike was a fair golfer
and amy kept her hair in curlers
until saturday night

when they played cards
at our house, then they
both would get inaugurated

the conductor

opening the door at the end of the car
the conductor who came in
wore a partially buttoned, baggy blue coat
with pocket flaps, a badge, official looking cap
that had air vents and a sticker on it,
he had a white beard,
his hands full, fiddling with things
stuffing bits of paper in his pouch

coming my way slowly, talking to passengers
as we thundered by snow capped shiny peaks, lakes and forests
he leaned over trying to adjust a window shade for some folks,
it looked like he broke it,
smiled at a full-breasted pretty girl in a
tight fitting t-shirt with a sports team's logo on it
chatted with her a while
maybe he knew her

finally got to me,
asked to see my ticket,
i got up to get my bag
as a happy man pushing a metal cart
clattered through singing,
selling coffee and sandwiches
with a metal change dispenser on his waist

we went around a corner and
everyone swayed left and hung on tighter,
a guy came down the isle talking kind of loudly
to someone six rows away,
a couple of large foreign looking people carrying
several worn cardboard boxes tied with string
were squeezing down the isle

i heard a guy ask what time we get to the next stop
and before i realized i turned to see the blue jacket
slip out the back door without ever checking my ticket,
this elderly, portly, wrinkled conductor on
my private train of thought

terminal velocity

scientifically speaking,
the slowest cycle
of the entire planet earth’s water movement
is called plate tectonics
unless you count grandpa taking a piss

but then, all the water of this planet
is already made
and then recycled
so tell grandpa to quit wasting his time
he’s not helping anybody

instead, this is about the nothing particle stuff
that gets sucked and sucked
up, up, upworthy into the sky
where it gets formed together and then
voila’!
is water again

okay, so,
then it comes down as rain
now do you know how far it falls?
a long, long, long, half a mile?
more?
it falls falling, falling
at terminal velocity when
the downward force of gravity
equals the upward force of drag

one drop rocketing directly into your eyeball
as you happen to look up,
well then, no wonder it makes you blink and sputter.
think about it!
and carry a damn umbrella, you knucklehead

Ron Paul

Ron Paul
just hearing his name
gets me thinking
and that's bad
these are not thinking times
just go along

boy, i say something
that doesn't conform
with the flow
and waves
hit the fan
don't you know?

B-Plus Morning

this fine summer morn
we stood by the pond
frog was there
waiting patiently and calm

we made his noise
i did and she did
we did it together
then frog turned toward us

he watched and puffed a bit
then began his song
we repeated when he stopped
back and forth we talked

after five minutes all had enough
and stopped at the same time,
we wondered what the neighbors thought
if they had heard us

i rated this morning B plus
it would have been an A
if at the end of the concert
we all shook hands

gradually

gradually i have seen
in my lifetime everything, including
our environment, has changed
as the great wheel turns

is it more pollution
or my time on the planet
that makes it evident?
for i am aware it is not the same

of course there is evolution,
coal and diamonds weren't created in the beginning
a half billion years and the world keeps changing
animal, mineral, vegetable
some come, some go, yet we're still here

shoving to get ahead of you
what the hell is going on?
you exhale when you push
and inhale to smell the flowers

the ultimate dilemma

the decisions of man are many
work to be done is plenty
we set off firm
and never yield
standing tall
for every cause
nothing, nothing
can give us pause

through every challenge
we'll bear the test
always upward
giving all our best

just one small thing
we'll never know
should we cut our hair
or let it grow?

template fix

hey, tom
and i know i'm talking to you
cause everyone else is on
computer unavailability

i did a devastating attack on my blog template
customized it to Lourdes and back
now the only blog hits i record are those
arriving by stagecoach or Harley

the rest refuse to take
their shoes off to gallop through
the metal detector, good thing
you still ride au natural

Bad Name

with a name repulsive enough
to cause grown men
to moan and turn away
poetry harbors grace and beauty

sometimes like tennis
there is a head nodding
back and forth
rhythmic iambic pentameter

unlike professional football or soccer
you generally won’t risk getting bruises
or breaking bones playing
poetry without a helmet

perhaps it would become more
appealing to the base masses
if only we called it
word slugging

Clean Water

dear people of the future
how are you, how’s it going?
look, i want to say
when i brush my teeth i think about
the people of the earth that live in areas
with a shortage of clean water to drink,

i worry about the clean water availability
not overly, but i am aware
of a potential problem of supply
so i turn the tap water volume down in the sink
when i don’t immediately need it

conservation has to matter,
look what happened to the buffalo
that once were bumper to bumper on the plains
and were shot for sport from passing trains

will water shortage be a problem for everyone
in a hundred years or twenty?
and while i am brushing i wonder who else
is thinking about water

water rights are being purchased
is that a “so what?” or not?
you could tell me
slip a note into my dream or something
can you do that?

loving a woman

loving a woman
for a man of errors
not big ones
not all of them
okay, some of them
yeah, a few

as a matter of fact
she divorced me
but we got married again
now our anniversary
is the 28th and 29th of July
now, that's a love story

Hollywood Times

large and colorful enough for a million poems
Vine down the street, the world of cinema on every corner
a palm treed cake walk everyday
nice cars, crazy people - dressed to prove it
the Labrea Tar Pits, museums, the beach
the Hollywood sign above on the hill
warm, dry wind and smog

everyone has star stories
they live and shop all around
walk the streets, some to be seen
those hills hide mansions
stand up comics pump gas
studios, writers, actors, technicians
and a whole lot of fans

locals remember earlier times
my friend played where they
later built the Hollywood Freeway
from the window where i worked on Sunset
i often saw Groucho taking is 9a.m. walk

an animal trainer friend used to stop at jimmy stewart's
house on Saturday for a chat as Jimmy washed his car

an impersonator i worked with did Peter Falk as Columbo
at the Hollywood Bowl, the audience thought
it was Peter Falk, there was a slip up and
the guy's name was never mentioned

and this nothing story is a drop in that Pacific Ocean

lights, cameras and
if that's not enough
they even put them in the sidewalk
more stars than the night

In the woods

All that time in the woods and not much was put to words. Not then. Not while we were repairing, building, creating, learning. Being survivors. We were an hour from the nearest store, isolated on a far off dirt road above the Mojave desert, beyond Jawbone Canyon, left where the Platts lived and thirty bumpy minutes up the winding dirt road to our ten acres in the woods, high on the mountain.

It took two years searching the Sunday L.A. Times classifieds until I found it, and knew that if this wasn’t it, then the guy who placed the ad knew what I wanted and where to find it. It sounded like a dream, and it was. Lonesome Al sold it to me and became our good friend.

So I sold my L. A. home and bought gold when it was less than two hundred dollars an ounce, rode it up, and then sold at nearly at eight hundred an ounce to support our new lifestyle.

We carried our water from the ranger station, used coal oil lamps and used wood to cook and heat. It makes me smile thinking about our old miner’s log and plank cabins, our creek where she bathed for our wedding, the graveyard, two fallen gold mines, the spot where the post office used to be. It was our ghost town. Maybe not the whole thing, but enough, ten pine and oak covered acres of it.

There were only four other people who lived on the mountain, so we thought of it as ours. We did have fun. Lived by the sun up and down. The moon marked time for us. One battery powered radio was our touch with the world.

All that time, two years in the woods, and the words became quiet, because above the trees the open sky was bigger than our thoughts. The stars demanded attention without words. We could keep a fire going with just the right wood at the right time. She learned to cook on a wood stove and I learned how to cut wood, as the trees talked together. In great rushes the wind stirred over there then would grow and come around and come by together in a rush. There are no words in that sound. The prevalent sound being the hum of the earth.

Perhaps if I were a better investor, and the silver market hadn’t crashed, we’d be there still. Now, she just slowly shook her head and said to me, “It was a good thing to do while we were young.” And that's how I know, life is but a dream.