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

sharp bargain

caring naught for rings

Shelob sought some easy blood

but Samwise stuck her

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