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

spurning Allah's gift

he worships a ring of keys

and stays imprisoned

omens III

quartering my yard

vultures fly below tree-height

chasing scents of death

organic nitrogen

voles nest in my mulch 

 till them both into the soil

to enrich the crops

owl-strike

 snatching voles by night

 Darwin's silent enforcer 

 refines their gene-pool

omens II

Flying search patterns 

 tight and low in my backyard 

 vultures sense a death

omens

Flying search patterns 

 tight and low in my backyard 

 vultures smell something

PPA

corrosive and sour

 polyphosphoric acid

 like honey in hell

lonely as Lear

Camping in exile 

 scott pitches his tent alone 

 his snores scare the wolves

better than fishheads

pathetic peepings

 protest as I till my plot

 voles nest in my mulch

ex post facto

Reframing Easter 

 vicarious punishment 

 came after Islam

bounced

At an inversion 

 thermals over-shoot their heat 

 them slingshot downwards

heads turn

Thinly-clad coeds 

 make the campus more lovely 

 but distract drivers

dark angel

Swooping through the dusk 

 as if Death himself took wing 

 the owl snags a vole

beyond the Pale

through the Caldecott

where strip-malls devour farmland

cultural abyss

selfless

I'm not quite myself

neither am I someone else

who's got my ego?

medium is the message

writing about art

is like dancing about food

there's no common ground

unsteady

the sidewalk ripples

could it be something I ate?

Oh,  just an earthquake

Thanksgiving 2008

hormone-free, farm-raised

the damn oven doesn't work

time for bbq

l'esprit d'escalier

at five thousand feet

big fat fluffy flakes of joy

mock us as we leave

not his best

forensic romance:

"Pericles, prints of tire"

Shakespeare's new genre

looking forwards

At least a Sport-II

as a long-term investment

beats the stock market

Boston Winter

Snow falling again

bitter tightening in my ches

Oh God will it stop?

Eastern Winter

yesterday's snow drops

tempt sunday walkers farther

ice pellets coming

so foul and fair

the weather forecast:

rain, wind, snow, sun (huh?) sleet hail

average Scottish day

commitment

easy snow traverse

but the runout is fatal

not my cup of tea

cloudbase

we are in blizzard

tem minutes above sunshine

caradhras-cairngorm

long trip on a bicycle

Albert's problem child

54 years old today

distorts time and space

raptor grammar

whom you looking at?

 I try to correct the owls

but they still say "who"

shear

Wind blows sand around 

 while aloft clouds scarcely drift 

 somewhere, there's a shear

arbitrary palette II

Pink cherry-bloom clouds 

 float in a green sky of leaves 

 sometimes, art's like that

arbitrary palette

Pink cherry-bloom clouds 

 float in a green sky of leaves 

 art is metaphor

Whoo?

whom you looking at?

 I try to correct the owls

 but they still say "who"

Ogden Nash

pushing the art-form

 all poets are tool-users

 but Nash forged his own

Who Whom

 staring at the nest

 I see owl eyes gazing back

 just who's watching whom?

selection

Long muddy footpath

To Darwin’s country villa

Weeds out the less fit

Somali Pirates III

Noble savages?

 Somali pirates don't fit

 Rousseau's rosy view

Somali Pirate II

what would you expect?

 in Leviathan's absence

 Hobbes predicts pirates

Somali pirates I

piracy makes sense

life's nasty, brutish and short

where no state holds sway

failed states

piracy springs up

where no government holds sway

 has no one read Hobbes?

context

exploiting contrast

to appear both tall and slim

she walks with corgis

everything in context

Some women have learned 

 to use contrast to seem slim 

 they walk with corgis

besieged II

Through the Caldecott 

 where strip-malls devour farmland 

 cultural abyss

besieged

Hills of the east bay 

seem scant rampart to hold back 

encroaching suburbs

fashion victim

Bunching up the calves 

 lends her legs their tapered grace 

 but high heels wreak feet

Bush's world

 Inured over time 

 to diminished liberties 

we've learnt to dream small

weighing words

If you pay no heed 

 to the words that pass your lips 

 why should anyone?

leading indicator

cirrus clouds aloft 

 mark the edge of the airmass 

 before we feel it

grey again

I miss that air-mass 

ain't no sunshine when she's gone 

 it's like I'm in love

jobs for the people II

Vote for my budget 

 or I'll build my ships elsewhere 

 Maine needs the money

jobs for the people

Crossing the aisle 

 Snowe and Collins played the game 

 Maine got ship contracts

darkness falls

As certain as death 

 owl's talons pierce its prey's lungs 

 night falls silently

nightmare keep on awake

into  strip-mall hell 

 I might ride past my BART stop 

 dozing serenely

just for fun

Stupid motor sports 

 work just like carbon offsets 

 only in reverse

Pesach 5769 III

Reclining on clouds 

 Nisan's full moon is our guide 

 through the haggadah

Pesach 5769 II

Like Zeydeh on high 

 Nisan's moon is propped on clouds 

 all through our seder

Pesach 5769

Like Zeydeh on high 

 Nisan's moon reclines on clouds 

 all through our seder

inner work

scouring the cupboards
for the last crumb of chametz
one can find lost gems

canned response

awash in hormones

 tom turkeys strut and gobble

 like beer-crazed fratboys

Lafayette

Walking home from BART 

 turkeys hike along with me 

 on the parkland's trails

timeless

whiskey's for drinking

water's for fighting over

 in this new old West

best offer

France says she'll take one

Venezuela wants the rest

 close Guantanamo!

bad cattle

no egrets stalk me
gobbling voles as I spook them
it seems such a waste

voles

darting through the grass
scattering at my footfalls
they're thick as a plague

4/3/09

shadows claim the yard
deer bed down in the tall grass
like they own the joint

pestilence

how scary are frogs?
a real plague makes the skin crawl
Pharaoh deserved voles

April

fiddleheads unfurl
newts leave their tracks in the mud
sun shines through beech leaves

bottomland

Morning inversion
I walk down in my shirt-sleeves
to find valley frost

dawn

Stretching before me
shadows reach the horizon
sun comes up behind

recycle II

Last year's artichokes
provide tufts of thistle-down
to line this year's nests

recycled

Last year's artichokes
offer beak-fuls of white fluff
to line this year's nests

optimize, optimize

A matchhead-sized brain
serves a hummingbird quite well
he must run clean code

pray with one hand

No hands, if not ours
will make peace or mend the world
look then to ourselves

the medium is the message

Writing about art
is like dancing about food
it's not the right tongue

compulsion

Compulsory Ed.
would make teaching hang gliding
a total nightmare

euphemisms

"truths" have been "sweetened"
to make them palateable
politicians lie

cynical cops

J-walking tickets 

 small risk these scoff-laws are armed 

 easy revenue

and the food's good

Live music at Bo's 

 keeps folks here past their third beers 

 when they've cleaned their plates

lush meadow

Gleaming like turtles 

 paddling on a weed-choked pond 

 turkeys wade through grass

Think again

 swipe in then swipe out 

 from the self-same BART station 

 four dollars ninety

conspicuous consumption

Five lustrous turkeys 

 peck their way across the yard 

 gleaming brazenly

paid in blood

Shortcuts have their costs 

 although i've saved some mileage 

 ticks cling to my clothes

Limbo

eerily quiet 

 hundreds of unhappy souls 

 haunt the DMV