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the only way the moon can rise
the only way the moon can rise is to take a shot just before the major finishes his briefing, and remembers his little daughter has no time to purge wily arcturus. the moon rises, alright, like the free jazz ringtone improvised by your smartphone when someone in the whitehouse wasn’t looking. or did i really mean to say “white horse”? i guess i wasn’t looking either. the sample returned but no one was home. you could have caught it with a flying net, but every seven years it’s in maintenance or on a snowy field. the paint on the snow has ripples. they used 3D printing to make snow fall faster and cheaper. still, there’s no money for moonlight. — oakland july 2017 except when full except when full i put moonlight in a bottle on the kitchen counter near the crumbs and unwashed butter knife moonlight dribbles down the bottle and i scoop the light in plastic bags closed with twist ties and throw them in a drawer so i can read next power failure soft moonlight beams murmur my name in the drawer and think i’m dead but i sleep instead and light falls flat on the dish you feel the particles try to remember but they sit there expressionless and motionless and never talk and don't know their name and go for a walk once a day if someone calls them from the door — oakland march 2018
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thunderclouds
blossom breathless float like water in water thunderclouds on the living room floor empty stars on a huge ruined airdrome technology clouds sleep in a monastery who will hear the wind? -- oakland january 2018 here to edit. Gearbox Poetry
Saturday, January 20, 2018 at Gearbox Gallery 770 West Grand Avenue, Oakland. Please join us for an afternoon of poetry! Poetry feature will be Steve Arntson. Steve is well known around the San Francisco Bay Area for his fantastic readings of metaphysical and psychedelic nature poetry. Please join us for a reading from his book, "To and From on the Day for Night Coast", published by Regent Press, and other work, along with an open mic. The poetry reading is from 2 - 4 pm, with open mic sign-up starting at 1:30. Hosted by David Zeltzer, dzeltzer@acm.org. I'm hosting a new open mic series called "Gearbox Poetry" at Gearbox Gallery, 770 W Grand Ave, Oakland, starting Saturday Nov. 18, 2-4 pm, with open mic sign-up starting at 1:30.
Our first feature will be Richard Loranger, author of many books and chapbooks. Most recently, he's published a great book of prose poems called "Sudden Windows", available from Zeitgeist Press and Amazon. Hope to see you there, and maybe hear from you as well. parental disappointment
your birthday was an eclipse that never happened. the day went black, the radio stopped. if there was a wind, i couldn’t feel it. down in the desert they’re practicing inner planet loneliness, screeching like birds in the dark, swirling like a hungry kite. tell the man in the traffic box i hung up the sky in my studio with really strong little magnets. so i DON”T have to go up and down that hill, where they’re driving so close, i wonder who’s going to die. the sages of mu
the sages of mu wear mountain flowers, crystallize, and settle to the earthen floor making music. i leave my name and hang up, a pale hand with two white pills. the hills blossom before us and whisper, in depression, slowing, almost overnight, i return to the bedroom, “it’s closed”. two suns rise and fall behind spindle towers, there are too many people on the floor to the right of the desk, a blue star and a white star circling. the black technician stretches, vibrating against my eardrums. smiling to each other, shaking our heads, “i love you” he carefully explains. air molecules leading up to their genitals, or whatever the hell it is, a large crowd, toilets flushing, shuffling feet and clothing rustling. i try to remember the statistics i read in the newspaper, understanding in all but the most abstract terms a dixie war whoop, some animal's liver chanting to the waitress, the sound of fingers snapping and falling, and absolutely nothing else. our bodies twine in sleep so quietly. fine droplets cling to your hair, rarefied and exquisite. you turn to me still unknown, four fifteen after rain, each other and open space. -- san francsico - eugene november 1972 prophets
what the hell’s our velocity through this galaxy cry the prophets fiery angels in their heads people of earth we have come to open the healing lips of your women naked they dream of us across the lonely spheres each breast a ripe household of the sun whose cool bombs part the waters of the jordan we connect and drill into its labial chambers unwrap our hairy chests like the jew with his sword and his automaton silent he watches from the past life on this little ship chimes away like the empty sea filled with salty vapors and a tear how far we have come is a mystery known only at the center of the bloom how far we have come with our foolish burden — columbus may 10, 1980 i told you over and over
i told you over and over the walls were tumbling along the roadside, and many of the important people wouldn’t climb out. weren’t they thinking of going anywhere? i wasn’t. loneliness is so macabre that excoriating lilac wants my unconscious step-aunt to bomb the birdsong dragon, but the lighted mists of some forgotten childhood dream are so wet i can slide my fingers right between the edges of the wound in her belly and dance all night, burning a terrified warning to my gentle queen of silence. — oakland august 2017 the blue lake was not where we left it
we got no sleep last night, no one here can dream a fascist radio interview between detonations and bloody debris. never once sleeping, the hungry rose petals live without you, scrape colors off the flying canvas, shout your new story from an ancient mountain, slowly from your wound drips the milky way. looking for myths, the wind blows slowly in the wounded starlight, the last word of your story heard by angels in the morning. — martinez october 2016 seven poems for susan
A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything. -- Gustav Mahler 1. precision has no words precision-guided death angel blood for the grieving child whose ragged voice has no words no one touches the far off daughter cold as rocky fragments unimagined before silent dreams of the hole in time yesterday a smile stunned one stone in the sky with longing 2. waiting for thunder beethoven’s sonata drifts by thunderous memory driving down the coast where mother screeches at icy haloed dwarf planet behind her eyes spewing scary stories of moonlit women stabbed in the heart driving motorcycles on the coast looking for mother on the high cliff whales spout far off mother finds a jar filled with tiny jewels and can’t stop weeping 3. counting the hours blue veins writhe beneath lovers’ longing muscles a name unknown and ancient writhing everywhere curious skin kiss her foggy curves ancient lovers kiss like never before 4. planet glow northern leaves caress tiny squid-ink cathedrals stroke gentle gravity crystals every turn of the dial the radio squawks blood it covers the car seats the doctor reveals the name of the flower you told me a crystal grows under your soft fur "i can’t make it without you" bleeds the breathing radio its liquid voice fills your crystal heart with tiny jewels 5. blood forgot once imagine the nearest star won’t see you and hangs up drifting blood surrounds satellite packed into sky imagine i wonder what eye sees everything fallen from butterfly airplanes imagine naked beauty years over and over and happier than ever i nearly cry because war murders child wonder beastly planet later this coded message means i’m sorry i can’t see you tonight 6. come over, i need you swept into the Lethe gravity well, tumbling over the rocky edge, exploding and shimmering in shapeless sunlight, yearning for the silent pool, i crawl down the wall to a tiny crack. inside is a bustling city filled with policemen, ants, a sail boat on a lake that becomes desert. i give you no water from my canteen, wake up and cry, beg for mercy from the drowned ants. my apology, they tell me, has already fallen in another time inside me, where you and i joyously celebrate the forgotten wounds my parched lips will never again caress. 7. every morning inside the drop of sunrise blood lizard molecule shines every morning without you inside the heart drop light the way so the spaniard at the long table filled with overflowing heaps of food can find the leg of lamb he was mouthing when the light turned black when the taxi ran off the road and flipped over startled mothers now bloody eating sandwiches on the lawn children running up the church steps to see farther inside this tiny drop of water vast memory unfolded but whose stories did it tell you? gone now but the warning the lizard and the spaniard will thrive every morning i bleed a molecule in your heart every morning — martinez december 2015 - february 2016 |
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