poise

That guy's really old

he can wear a pork-pie hat

without irony

PIllsbury sunset

Alien bugles

pipe the sun out of the sky

elk come down to drink

fit

Count the grandchildren

if you want to quantify

whom Darwin loves best

ideological bent

Lamarck's big theory

exalted the force of will

but neglected chance

E-ticket

High summer soaring

too late on the sierra

keel-kicking madness

growing closer

Like MDMA

confessional poetry

erodes normal bounds

misrule

All across Iran

people gaze eastward with pride

that they're not Afghans

sampling bias

Digging for values

beneath heaps of possessions

like fishing in sand

carom

Moonlight on the bay

twice reflected from the sun

still dazzles the eye

meet the new boss...

Revolutions end

idealists go power-mad

bow to the new Shah

Jefferson's timetable

Jefferson foresaw

freedom must be won again

each generation

rooted

By the rail station

I buy today's new york times

and at once, I'm home

focus

May the passing years

and familiarity

never blunt love's edge

failure to learn

Grimly repeating

the technique that didn't work

magical thinking

June spurt

Exuberant life

bursts from Oregon's dark soil

who dares call them weeds?

not sexy enough

For the U.S. press

resolute non-violence

can't sell the news-cast

august, 1974

cut off from all news

while I canoed serenely

Nixon had resigned

diversionary II

Michael Jackson's death

fills the media's bandwidth

while Teheran burns

between the lines

diplomatic prose

alludes to what it can't say

virtual strip-tease

fade to black

Cone-cells yield to rods

thirty greens all merge to black

Oregon twilight

triage

Work on one true love

all else is subject to change

as a life unfolds

diversionary

To limit the press

coverage of Sanford's scandal

Cheney scragged jackson

Khamenei as bad as Bush

The regime that steals

the votes of its citizens

can't claim their mandate

track meet

Down-side to Eugene

you can't take your vaulting poles

on such a small plane

beneath that surface

Immune rejection

of a whole transplanted face

killed Michael Jackson

Jefferson's timetable

after thirty years

hypocrisy starts to stink

dead Shahs can't scare them

the White House is bugged

Barack needs to learn

which closets hold skeletons

they're attracting flies

legitimacy

Each generation

weighs the mandate of the state

some choose rebellion

Stalin's long shadow

Khamenei believes

it isn't who votes that counts

it's who counts the votes

thirty years later

Young Iranians

rise against the old men's lies

blood runs in the streets

om

cleared of mundane thoughts

the mind turns its gaze inwards

contemplating self

oscar grant

I'm being oppressed!

now you see the violence

that feeds injustice

priorities

Ignoring war-crimes

Obama lets old sins lie

festering, stinking

urban bias

perceptions twisted

reality distorted

Berkeley is not real!

nasty cruel hobbits

they chokes smeagol with herbes

we hates them, preciouss

bus of ghosts

uncharged and massless

each jacked to his own iPod

non-interacting

non-interacting

each jacked to his own iPod

drifting past like ghosts

war crimes

perfidious men

accepted Saruman's gold

and hewed Hama's corpse

plus ca change...

Despite all my rage

I'm just a rat in a cage

teenagers don't change

oasis

Poignant exception

in the cold vastness of space

this hot tub hugs me

metamorphosis

twelve hours in woodsmoke

transform a steer's grisly tongue

tender succulence

oppression

None of us is free

while our brothers are oppressed

I am Oscar Grant

None of us is free

while our brothers are oppressed

I am Oscar Grant

reality

What's reality?

is it merely consensus

or is Truth out there

making lemonade

The storms keep coming

climate change isn't all bad

soaring Tam in june

om

Freed from mundane thoughts

the mind turns its gaze inwards

contemplating self

the closed hand

What happened to Mao? 

 'let a thousand flowers bloom' 

died at Tienanmen

voyeurs

only ten percent

of twitterers tweet a lot

 the rest "like to watch"

low noise background

crows' wings rake the wind 

 providing the only sound 

 'til I make coffee

human-powered

Thirty years later 

 the gossamer albatross 

 still seems like a dream

i'll have what she's having

 Smiling pantomime 

shows me an empty table 

 the menu's opaque

incendiary

Half a world ablaze 

 from hatreds that Dubya fanned 

 stupid crusader

grievous loss

Alex has vanished 

 sad to lose such a woman 

 and a full gas tank

dark morning

Scott's smile fades to black 

 and his lower lip wobbles 

 he sees it's decaf

field biology

Elsie pinned her clip 

 to the back of my sweater 

 to track my movements

snorer

I can't hear Scott breath 

Alex says that's no problem 

 it means he's faking

6/6/09 III

Pelicans, southbound 

 pause to thermal at Klondike 

 then resume their glide

6/6/09 II

Storm soaks Birch mountain 

 the gust front lashes Klondike 

Scott flies his wee wing

6/6/09

Snow veils the glasses 

 piling white mountain higher 

 too PHAT for flying

mesita II

guarding the south pass 

 the red cindercone is lodged 

 like a bloody stool

Mesita

South of Olancha 

 the red cindercone stands out 

 like a bloody stool

low ceiling

Truncated by clouds 

 the peaks of the sierras 

 were not inviting

lift is where it is

Scratching the hillside

 flirting with my own shadow 

 to stay off the dirt

worlds away

Formulating speech 

 while in the realm of the gnomes

 seems a lot of work

petits sensations

Pointillist paintings 

 make more sense when one has seen 

 one neuron's firings

biocontrol

Driving back the tide 

 goats strip the county of weeds 

 we've tamed hooved locusts

form

The artist creates 

 freedom within the constraints 

 where others see walls

triggers

Owen's trips gone by 

 summoned out of deep storage 

 by the right haiku

just say no

Petulant children 

spurn the state's beneficence 

 they smash their rice bowls

June 2, 2009

Colder air aloft 

 swept in on today's short-wave 

 suddenly, it's PHAT

extemporaneous

lacking memory

he makes it up on the fly

more certain than right

there's no fixed standard

for sexual harrassment

feelings define it

Rot III

Black asphalt hyphae 

 infiltrate forests and farms 

suburbs rot the globe

Rot II

mycologists know 

 the spread of suburbia 

 smacks of corruption

Rot

Black asphalt hyphae 

 rotting everything they touch 

 to suburbia

first, ya gotta get their attention

Profligately lit 

Oakland's Mormon temple shines 

 like a weird theme-park

holiday traffic

past the Altamont

traffic starts to move again

we may get there yet

one for the archaeologists

shells strew the desert

mixed molluscs and munitions

funny groups camp here

sense of urgency IV

looking back, southwards

a storm obscures the launch road

got to fly faster

is this a test?

year by year I face

more arcane technology

just to brew coffee

bobbleheads

launching new pilots

off Walt's Point mid-day in June

just seems negligent

early launch

down below seven

I scratched for all I was worth

before zipping in

scoring function

ten thousand theories

jostle in Kurtis' brain

most of them are wrong

sense of urgency III

two cups of coffee

with a breakfast of berries

dig that latrine quick

arriving high

Black's not very tall

scarcely a mountain at all

more like a blackhead

prudence

Scott had an idea

he'll fix out transfill on launch

channelling Kurtis

fair-trade coffee

eager for coffee

I gave James a cold lizard

in trade for my stove

decisions

disdaining to cross

despite the westerly winds

Scott taunted Goodale

Arrakis

Gurney was non-plussed

mood matters for love-making

you fight when you must

early crossing

leaving at Kearsarge

I grovelled up Mazourka

and jumped the Westgard

extrapolation

Lord, I beseech thee

spare me from drivers who think

they know where I am

C-130

something with four props

passed just a bit below me

just about Kearsarge

finger-tight

found in the spent ground

parts of Kurtis' French Press

like emeralds in shit

zone shift

Don't have a cow, man 

 we're not too late to launch yet 

 you're on central time

cold lizard II

'til the sun warms him 

 his blood refuses to flow 

 unless there's coffee

cold lizard

until his blood warms 

 he basks on my exposed flesh 

 dreaming lizard dreams

May scenery

Tattered rags of snow 

snagged on the Sierra's crags 

 unravel in sun

dream-stuck

Inconvenient bone 

diverting half my blood's flow 

 trapping me in bed

louts

Glass shards on the beach 

 as if no one else walks here 

 what kind of moron?

move into the light...

The first glint of sun 

 in my dark eternity 

 lights up White Mountain

passage

Coins on his eye-lids 

pay the fare across the Styx 

 they don't take plastic

long day's work

Stiff after long flights 

 feeling half as old as god 

 needing a hot tub

oxygen

Sounds like you got high 

 but you aren't making sense 

 breath through your nose, dude

treachery

Won't the howling end? 

how can there be so much sink 

 under such cute clouds?

sense of urgency II

Hail lashes the Wall 

shortly after I passed it 

 I'll try the valley

one less option

As I left Kearsarge 

 Mazourka was wrapped in storm 

 guess I won't go there

sensai of the day

Leaving the mountains 

I need a whole new mind-set 

what would Ian do?

napoleonic

In such company 

Black resents being so short 

 that's what makes it mean

hypertension

Leaving the hot tub 

feeling like i'm down a quart 

 whoa, here comes the floor

a sense of urgency

The storm pursues us 

 as an ox licks up the grass 

 it engulfs mountains

camouflage

lurking in shadows

 owls defeat my camera

 as if I were prey

the appearance of warmth

Wind sweeps the Castro

 robbing the sun of its warmth 

even in Summer

transference

Sculpting car bodies 

 to evoke a woman's curves 

 "auto-erotic"

maladaptive compulsion

hobbling on thrashed knees 

 runners still can't satisfy 

 their compulsive need

make no mistake

Standing united 

 we protest murderous cops

I am Oscar Grant

abate this

like standing dead grass

an intimate air/fuel mix

 will burn most fiercely

the Village

All the same pundits 

 who called clinton a shoe-in 

 dismiss torture probes

McCrystal

the truth's just a tool 

 to be used or discarded 

 like Pat Tilman's life

No drama

 excessive mercy 

 mars the change we voted for 

 where's the catharsis?

newton, MA

Naked, on the lawn 

 they're planted tomato vines 

 have they no deer here?

newton, MA

Gray here, and humid 

 houses of load-bearing brick 

 untroubled by quakes

the familiar

The green smells of Spring 

 prompt a flood of memories 

as if this were home

priorities

Dick-headed driver 

 seems baffled at my outrage 

 he's in my crosswalk

back east

Flinty-eyed yankees 

 don't disguise their suspicion 

 of this outlander

it's not the heat...

Sun breaks through at noon 

 at once my clothes stick to me 

 summer has arrived

The new BS

 malleable youth 

can be shaped for good or ill 

why give them jack-boots?

warm front

One stray ray of sun 

 pierces the sky's murky dome 

 then gray floods back in

shower

Sluicing off my sweat 

 futile effort to remove 

water with water

excision

To heal our nation 

 we must cut the cancer out 

 Cheney still festers

logorrhea

The barrage of words 

 masks the absence of ideas 

 until you tune in

in the tower

Free-loading pundits 

funding no journalism 

 may kill the papers

stuck

Slack-jawed, unmoving 

 dull eyes fixed on the tv 

 his mind is static

embedded message

Didactic displays 

 reuse museums' old stuff 

 to convey ideas

backwards

Watching his hairline 

 regretting his fleeing youth 

 neglecting the now

California's shame

Unlike proper pipes 

 crude irrigation ditches 

 waste half our water

heuristics

Giving the answer 

 before they're found the question 

 pure futility

fishing

Unborn potential 

 as vast as Leviathan 

 lurks in our minds' depths

lenses

Seeing genitals 

 everywhere his eye alights 

 hormones tint his world

edge difinition

Without prejudice 

 from patterns of light and dark 

 robots can't see "things"

snapshot

Slippery image 

 as ephemeral as thought 

 captured in haiku

nature morte

speed-reading haiku

 one loses all resonance

 like Proust in Cliff-notes

fire abatement

stray scraps of barbed wire

twine around my weed-wacker

 and slash at my shins

hypocrite

Fleeing the red mosque 

 can Shariah tolerate

 an Imam in drag?

potentiate this

I hear and forget 

I see and I remember 

I do and I learn

cancerous web

Tendrils of asphalt 

 infiltrating our woodlands 

 strangle all thats green

irreconcilable

Treating their daughter 

 like a freaking china doll 

 his ex drives him nuts

anti-trust

One point five trillion 

 may derail Intel's game-plan 

 for monopoly

anthology

Fifty sad stories 

 all queued up for traffic court 

 looking for closure

design spec

Darwin's got your back

 until you produce offspring

 past that, he cares less

don't fear the reaper

Dragonflies zig-zag 

mowing narrow swathes of sky 

reaping mosquitoes

dynamic range

Dazzled by one star

we can't glimpse the depths of space

 until darkness falls

StarTrek II

A dual heritage

 and rage long suppressed mark Spock 

 like our president

StarTrek

What to make of Kirk? 

 If Spock stands for Obama 

 is he Joe Biden?

We're not in Kansas

 you can't smoke out here! 

 they're refueling the let plane 

go inside to smoke

mismatch

For very small prey 

owls' talons are as useless 

 as pitchforks for peas

wretched excess II

vast oceans  of grass 

 suburbia's green backdrop 

 waste seas of water

wretched excess

Close-cropped seas of grass 

 suburbia's green backdrop 

 waste seas of water

...shall reap in joy

Dragonflies zig-zag 

 mowing the sky in tight strips 

 reaping mosquitoes

tabula rasa

Several times each day 

 for want of a memory 

 he invents his world

Not Weebles

 tethered by their skulls 

 to the earth's gravity field 

 big-headed kids fall

Hobbes V

where law's not enforced

the devil takes the hindmost

mercy has no place

Hobbes IV

where law's not enforced

the devil takes the hindmost

ayn din/any chesed

mobile-home

Not quite a garment 

 the burqua keeps her penned in 

 an annex of home

it's a wrap

Lacking a waistline 

 any garment hangs on her 

 like a tarp on shrubs

cut off

Never quite outdoors 

a woman in a burqua 

 lives in seclusion

hello? hello?

no one really knows

 all language is metaphor

 and therefore suspect

at my window

tiny spotted fawns

sample their first solid foods

then race back to nurse

undergrowth

hairs on my tragus

rasp against my tympanum

every time I chew

Caramba she's hot!

Mexican police 

are using IR cameras 

to nab those with flu

bitter jest

Maybe this headache 

 is caused by a brain tumor 

 paranoid humor

go with the flow

A day of high winds 

 biases potential flights 

 asymmetrically

layers

"upward" means inwards 

 "god" signifies our best selves 

 all is metaphor

home

Muslims in the States 

 feel less alienated 

 than those in Europe

insouciant

Tiny spotted twins 

 chase a doe across my yard 

 prancing without care

rule of law

warrantless wiretaps

need to be prosecuted

 if we live by law

arts' budget

how many poets

can give themselves to their muse

 while raising children?

jealous muse

how many poets

find time to indulge their art

 while raising children?

delicate timing

snug on their day-roosts

 owls ignore even squirrels

 scampering nearby

purity

Lacking nutrients 

 the clear blue of poverty

sustains Tahoe's worth

beyond dumb

Spying and torture 

 failings of intelligence 

 came to define Bush

China Barn

George W. Bush 

 like a rock, only dumber 

 broke what he can't grasp

synchrony

wingtip to wingtip
crow flies as his own shadow
inches from the cliff

resourceful

Iceland's fisherfolk 

 protect their waters fiercely 

 bankers make good bait

stopgap

 Temporarily 

 a deficit of caffeine 

 can be patched with sleep

dynamic range

Night's aural background 

 peaks at a storm's thunderclap 

 lulls to a frog's croak

frog chorus

The chorus of frogs 

 marks the tempo of the night 

 between rain showers

campfollowers

At vision's limits 

 foxes fled from our flashlights 

 as they clean up camp

rites of Spring

Summoned by spring's rains 

 salamanders rank on rank 

 converge on the pond

new allies

Spring's little triumphs 

 two voracious great horned owls 

 have fledged from the nest

flimsy firmament

Clouds flirt with the deck 

 leaving just a hundred yards 

 free for VFR

quiet mind

Pattering raindrops 

 evoke nothing so much as 

 pattering raindrops

boundary conditions

'til we understand 

 how a brain gives form to mind 

 we're bounded by death

Watchmen III

"Watchmen" stumped critics 

 Allen Moore's meditation 

 on foresight's limits

tutorial

Two downy owlets 

 gaze out through the morning mist 

 watching their mom hunt

memory of smells/smells of memory

A Summer rain-storm 

 stirs up smells I'd forgotten 

 since I moved out West

May '09

Rain drums on my tent 

 trails transform to muddy streams 

 funny sort of drought

earthblink III

Earth casts us in shade 

 blinking heaven's lidless eye 

 to show us the stars

constructs II

we construct whole worlds 

 from sparce visual inputs 

 and call them 'the truth'

constructs

We extrapolate 

 whole worlds from a few photons 

then take them for real

death-defying

 Playing the music 

 of a long-buried genius 

 his voice sings again

Specter

the party of "No"

keeps up party discipline

 but can't keep its own

benighted

Our founding fathers 

 fought for rights even in war 

 where did we lose it?

Cheney

Dick says torture works 

 his loving kids vouch it's true

 from a safe distance

not so special

 Tracing hands from fins 

 our is the primitive state

 compared to a hoof

irreconcilable

Jeffords and Specter 

 divorced "the party of 'NO'" 

 they had grown apart

rotten foundation

 unconstrained by law 

 Cheney sought to engineer 

 a new world order

earthblink II

splitting the sun's disc 

 the horizon at day-break

 like a great eyelid

unbalanced II

Going nowhere fast

 the GOP can't fly straight 

 flapping two right wings

convenient

 Rather than serve time 

 Cheney will contrive to die

 just like Kenny Lay

unbalanced

chasing its own tail

 the GOP can't fly straight 

 flapping two right wings

unstable

Racing towards the grave 

 each year faster than the last 

 we totter along

earthblink

Blinking the sun's eye 

 the horizon splits the orb 

 at each dawn and dusk

urban blight II

Thrust up from the flats 

 like an erupting pimple 

 downtown san jose

urban blight

blighting the green earth 

 like a pimple on one's face 

 downtown San Jose

Specter

the party of "No" 

keeps up party discipline

 but can't keep its own

pain II

Soul-eroding pain 

 undermines what once were strengths

and drains life of joy

pain

Soul-eroding pain 

 undermines civility 

 cracking illusions

beyond words

Ineffable pain 

defeats all language's arts 

 who can share its taste?

frame of reference

'Though you fly the same 

 your progress over the ground 

 depends on the wind

Specter

one more Democrat 

 used to vote Republican 

 the rats flee the ship

marketing

Plastic surgery 

 coupled with orthodonture 

 can obscure bad genes

out there II

we construct whole worlds 

 from sparce visual inputs 

 and call them 'the truth'

out there

We extrapolate 

 whole worlds from a few photons 

 then take them for real

death-defying:

Playing the music 

of a long-buried genius 

 his voice sings again

too many chiefs

queuing patiently

conceptual gardeners

tell me where to dig

the final frontier

reining in egos

making room for new ideas

personal tzimtzum

literalist