Poem Written in a Lawn Chair (looking into a garden)

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Submissive to everything

Open and alert

This is how Kerouac

Set about composing life

Off and on the road

Debauched as

A bee in the pollen

Of a trumpet rose

With pen for proboscis

He scribbled everywhere

In his secret notebooks

In the midst of discovering

Life’s secret-most forms

And so too I have come

To a point in my 57^th year

Where I find my desktop

Littered about with folders

And files in a joyful mess

Overflowing all

Reasonable bounds

And I have hurried but lately

Strived to sketch the flow

Of spirits passing

Outside the doorway

In the streets below

And the shimmers of light

Discernable only to

The innermost I

As they have been cast 

Upon the eyelid’s wall

*  *  *  *  *  *

This poem has a little back story which may worth mentioning. Yesterday my wife sent me an email which really sparked my interest.  It was a list of 30 writing tips put together by Jack Kerouac -- a few essential pointers for composing more compelling hipster prose.   And I found myself strongly agreeing with nearly everything Jack recommended, especially the first five items (set forth below) which in fact inspired me to write the preceding poem.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form   

A Song for Yip

What started as

A faint sliver soon

Grew into an arc

Visible in its entirety
Extending from

Front to back

Thrilling us

 Like a riddle

Taking shape

Before our eyes

A tribe in the making
In awe we stood and

Celebrated with a pact

Sealed by the rainbow on high

To find sufficiency in things

Painted and poetic

Evident here and now

Across the expanse

Of this perfectly marbled

Mauve sky

Tell me then Yip

Why oh why
Can’t I 

*  *  *  *  *

This weekend we walked to the head of Weesuck Creek around sunset and saw the full arc of a rainbow take shape over the bay.  I'd never seen anything like it.  What a steady hand and eye it takes to work on that scale! I never realized that it takes time for Nature to work colors into the canvas just the same as for you and I.


This was the first segment to appear:

A few minutes later my wife pointed to the Southeast where we saw the other terminus:

And as the sky darkened the arc gradually and triumphantly emerged in full display:

On the walk back home I wrote my poem for Yip.

Dreamscape - 1

As if from a dream
I woke and slipped into
The silver lining
Of my new dream coat

Stepping onto the balcony
I bathed in the ghostly glow
From the perigee moon now
Obscured by a thick cover
Of low scudding clouds

Everything shone
With an innermost light
Even the porch railing
Shimmered with
Bio-luminescence

As there in the deepest
Yin of the night
I beheld the vapor trail
Of Eternal delight everywhere
Around me stirring

Ralph Blakelock - Moonlight

Red Notebook - 1

Today there occurred to me
Two more reasons to write --
Because a poem may either
Be fashioned as a meditation
Or else as a way to summon
The courage once again
To hold the pen upright
And push it along
To the bottom
Of the page

Independence Day, 2014

The 4^th of July

Was a very rainy

Day out here on the

East End and I ended

Up wasting the better

Part of the day writing

Drivel of one kind

Or another

Without much focus

Or clarity until it

Finally struck me

How a house in a storm

On a day such as this

Is a perfect metaphor 

For the very idea of

A poet such as myself

Beset with self doubt

The trees to the left

And right of the front door

Showing all kinds of distress  

Being buffeted about by the lashing

Wind and rain and yet

Able to preserve a sense

Of total dry and calm

In an interior realm

Almost indifferent

To the ultimate outcome

Poem for My Brother (and in response to Allen Ginsberg)

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I wrote this poem after visiting my brother in Denver this weekend.  He happens to live around the corner from the Colburn Hotel, where we went for drinks one night (in the very same bar where Allen Ginsberg wrote his great poem Denver Doldrums), and I thought about Jack and Allen and I took this picture in the lobby as well:

 

Art is no illusion

For a poet who commits

To the present tense

In more ways than

Just one forever

Sparing no expense

Reason or rhyme

In other words

Not holding

Back in the least

In the love of my brother

No less than you of Jack

I suppose

An edifice (or two)

Worthy of Oedipus

If you know what I mean

Mythically strong in that

These twin towers

Have been built to last

Thus your poem speaks

To mine even though

Sal Paradise and I now

Must go our separate ways

Each prone to our own misreading

Part willful

Part not

And completely unknowing of

Whatever unworldly future states

I too may happen to move in

Such is my keen sense

Of the brick façade

And the interior space

Of the Colburn Hotel

So very well in the doldrums

You said but I say

Not in the least

But in elation really

And with utmost confidence

That’s how things stand today

Upon our subsequent embrace

Near the airport departure gate

So Sal Paradise and I

Now we go our

Separate ways

Each prone to

His own misreading

Both giving birth to new meaning

Mine full of hope 

Come whatever may

Poem for the Summer Solstice

Here is a slightly expanded version of the poem I wrote yesterday while watching the sun set with my wife on the back porch.

* * * * *

 

Now comes the first day of summer

And already time has stretched

Out to the horizon

Much as the clouds do

And upwards ascended

Into my neighbor’s treetop

Where this finial of light

Makes a last stand

To mark the zenith

Of the year