Dragons without, dragons within.

We saw him after a half hour walk across the late autumn desert, sky threatening rain and twilight in the offing. No bag, no visible water, camo parka, camo pants, long black hair. How long had he been following? From where? Our car sat lonely and alone on the road's shoulder, somewhere behind. He hailed us with a raised hand, and fished from his jacket a ziplock of dried dull green leaves, a bright bic lighter. Poor english, poor spanish, howling wind and uncertain distance. A couple of attempts, then he turned to walk on through the prickly scrub, the bare pads of his feet trailing behind him.

Not long later - the sun fell behind the mountains, the full moon's glow muted by heavy cloud, chilled november rains. The landscape a monochrome in ever darker shades of navy. Hiking back in file, flashlights swinging, what appeared to be trail markers ahead always turned out to be stunted joshua trees, their motives cryptic, inscrutable.

On the Economics of our Present Hermitage Shortage

Being a hermit ain't what it once was,
What with the short supply of lonely peaks,
The bumper crop of sages, and that new
Fad for climbing everyone does these days.

After surmounting mountains, seekers must
Clamber over high piles of wise men. Day
Break's racket of self-actualizing,
Endless conferences, panel discussions
on listening theory -- unbearable.

Then come unto us the mountain lions,
Carried a tongue and ear to stony home,
We listen now to cat's teeth worry bone.

hi koo

my shadow splayed on yellow grass.
the buzz of hummingbird wings.

Human Design

Human design told me that I am a hermit.
That I am aslo a role model.
Wander into my cave and I will show you how
To live the hermit life.
Think the hermit thoughts.
You will be engulfed by a sense of crowdedness.
The sense that you should leave as soon as the air drifts in
As the door is left open.
I will not accomodate your comfort.
There is no room to sit.
You will listen to me as I listen to you.
Observe me observing you.
You will learn how to disintegrate the meaning of
Participation and the need to be heard.
All meaning to most symbolic things that you
Thought were truths will become toilet paper
And empty shopping bags.
Soon enough you will forget me forgetting you.
We will not know of each other.
You will exit my cave and wander mostly
In front of others who demand your eyesight.
Your lessons in listening will guide you to their
Wants and needs and you will nurture them until
They suck you dry.
A flattened and swinging tit that can no longer
Provide life.

It's the vertigo that makes you kneel.

Pulled over on the PCH to watch the sun dip into the pacific. In the haze and vaporous distortion coming off the ocean at the horizon, it doesn't look like the sun passes behind the waters so much as dissolves into them. Ten minutes later I'm on winding Skyline Boulevard in the failing light, peaks of the Santa Cruz Mountains before me in the palest oranges against a blue sky rapidly washing of its color. Then darkness. Windswept pine trunks in my headlamps. To the left, when snaking past a crest, the sweep of silicon valley's low rise architecture, spidery orange lines of sodium vapor street lights densely layered between the mountainside and the bay, what would be stars circling and queueing and landing at sfo. To the right, breaks in the trees open up vast swaths of black nothing that can only be the pacific, the sand, the stars too dim for my slow retinas to see. Were it not for the engines bass line, the rumble of rubber rolling over asphalt, could I hear the waves breaking on the cliffs so far below? Probably not.

Eating garlic fries and a tri-tip, sipping root beer in what turns out to be the alice's restaurant and no mere reference. It feels like the logging country this all once was, sweeping vistas hiding behind the old growth and the folds of the mountain. The staff all eating their shift meals on the counter next to me, long day ending in a quiet sunday night and nearly time to punch the clock and go home. And what am I doing here, this notebook and pen sitting next to my root beer, head swimming with the scent of the forest and memories of rocky cliffs dropping into oceans lit with the evening sun, stripped bare and quivering before the force of the landscape, dumb and overwhelmed. There is no home for you here, what you love razing you even as you loose yourself inside it.

Pulsar Beacon Haiku

Heartbeats, coming regularly
as beans come in the pod -
that other pulse.

Tonight's dinner, or Glory

2 inch thick dry aged bone-in new York strip -- wondrous marbling obscured by the salt. Will be cooked over a covered charcoal fire supplemented with applewood at 200 degrees until barely medium rare, then uncovered and given a hard sear at outrageous temperature.

I think I will name this steak Vincente.

Poetry challenge: obvious. Leave'em in the comments.

Seedlings sprouting,
rocky soil,
cloudless sky.

Thoughts on Leadership

 I found him in the fields,
 A golden boy with an easy smile,
 As though he had been waiting,
   since forever.
 He said come, and it was to me to follow.

 He strung the lyre as we walked,
 The beauty of his music, the beauty of his form,
 My feet hardly touching down in his steps,
 Deeper in the woods, winding paths,
 Barest tracks last used by deer long dead,
 And he led with such certainty
 I could but follow.

 The rent in the earth, the rough rock,
 The narrow passage into dark,
 His beauty, my command,
 And I followed.

 In the passage in the earth
 He was my only light,
 He added his voice,
 So rich, so sweet, a key
 Unlocking me.  I followed.

 Cerberus charmed, we passed.
 Brutal Hades and he, quietly talking.
'A trade, a trade!  Let me see the goods.'
 He bid me come forward, I did.
 At his command, I turned, I stopped,
   I kneeled.
'Deal is done.  I take this one.'
 And I was left to follow. 

Forgotten fragments, old scribbling

Rowan gets told by others that Boys Don't Skip. He gets quite insistent. It usually takes ten minutes of me skipping everywhere to break him of that. Then he skips nearly everywhere. There is something so natural about a skip in a young child's gate. So casually joyful.

And the sunlight smiling over your face
Beaming warm glow,
Lifting you from the earth with
  each
  small
  step.

thi explains haiku to me

he's thrilled
and can't stop moving his tongue

A text message from my friend Phlodo

"I have this image where rationalism lives in a house and keeps wild unexplained things outside. Science looks out the window and tries to explain things so it can bring them in and keep them as pets, romance lives on the porch and keeps the garden - safe nature, and horror ventures into the forest."

Found poem: my officemate Adam on outliving your spouse

"My plan is to die first. If

she starts going down, then it's

cheeseburgers all the way."

joy of a shower with thi

wet air
carries farts
heavily

Lying drunk on

Kristina's floor, covered

in curious kittens.

Consummation, Consumption, Constriction, or The Days of our Lives

The toad had already lost the left leg
Down the gullet of the snake,
the other foot pawing, ineffective, at
the scaled nose then trying, feeble, to flip,
forelegs tracing slow, useless circles in the air.

The snake icy calm, barely moving,
the lungs gradual bulging even, measured.
Then the tinniest, lazy nibbles, securing the left hip.

There is no hurry, here. You and I,
we have all the time in the world.

No Shade Here, Son.

A tumbler heavily beaded with sweat
Long since emptied of quinine, gin,
The chink of melting ice,
Salt stinging squinted eyes.

Lizards fat like cigars everywhere,
Unworried, indifferent.

More Metaphors of the Magnifico

hope \ˈhōp\
v. hoped, hop·ing, hopes
v.intr.
1. to cherish a desire with anticipation
2. archaic : trust
3. I was surprised she waded into the sea,
the surf so rough and her bikini so slight,
so strained.
She started to retie (retie!)
the string behind her neck,
while facing the pounding waves.
She could have walked back,
and tied the knot on dry land, quietly.
But she stood, fumbling, fingers slipping,
wave after wave,
smiling at the sea.

One Hundred Imaginary Gifts for my Lover

Note: the real version of this may be a physical version, with each "gift" written on a separate cigarette rolling paper, and all neatly folded back together into the packet.

1. the flat stoneware bottle, fitting neatly into the palm of the hand and stoppered with blue glass, that I found in my dream;


2. a tablet of paper made from the feathers of great egrets;


3. a glass eye;


4. a strong round magnet that can be heard to sing softly with a low and continuous note;


5. the star-map on the inside of a stone;


6. six drops of pheasant blood;


7. vials of the water from the seven traditional seas;


8. cornflower blue sandals, a souvenir from Basho's travels;


9. a rubbing of a stone bearing the name of a god no longer worshipped;


10. a bit of mud dropped by a nesting swallow;


11. a love spell prepared by a voodoo priest;


12. a love spell prepared by a crazy homeless woman;


13. the skeletonized remains of a small rabbit;


14. twenty-three watercolor crayons, one for each color visible at the top of the trail at Baboon Lakes at three in the afternoon, including the color of wild raspberries;


15. a very old postcard whose sender and recipient are both dead;


16. a bucket of fresh olives;


17. a magic candle that, when lighted, gives the dark shadow of night even when it is day;


18. a cologne that smells like wet stone;


19. a cologne that smells like fireflies;


20. a photograph of a male and extremely ugly faerie, washing its face in dew from a buttercup;


21. a papier-mâché model of the Griffith Observatory, to display or to burn or to use as a piñata;


22. a bed framed with Vietnamese cinnamon bark;


23. one hundred tiny clay pots the circumference of dimes, filled with bright pigments;


24. a sheet of postage from a defunct country;


25. an audio tape of frog sounds from the Amazon in the eighteenth century, including species now extinct;


26. a telephone to speak to yourself the night before;


27. the astrological chart of the long-dead concubine of a long-dead emperor;


28. seventy-five points;


29. a bottle into which nine Catholic and nine Buddhist nuns have spat, as a good luck charm;


30. a clay cup imprinted with the fingerprints of Henry James;


31. a microscopic portrait of the Marquis de Sade made from fragments of butterfly wings;


32. a lock of hair from each of your four maternal great-grandmothers, taken on the eve of her respective eighteenth birthday;


33. an ink monkey, as the ancient Chinese sages are said to have possessed;


34. the preserved skin of a pirate bearing a tattoo of a naked woman;


35. a letter purloined from the underground postal system of a prison;


36. a treehouse;


37. the preserved pubic lice of Scheherazade;


38. a miniature star with miniature planets and asteroids;


39. a secret cache of fireworks;


40. a raccoon penis bone;


41. a prime number of six thousand digits;


42. an ancient document in an untranslated script;


43. an empty wasps' nest;


44. a letter of exoneration from the Queen;


45. a chess set carved by an apostate monk;


46. a belt cut from the hide of the Minotaur;


47. the ill-lit records room from an abandoned state asylum;


48. a three-volume treatise on the forms of sexual ecstasy;


49. a jar of fog;


50. a personal zeppelin;


51. a small waterfall down a rock wall and into your personal bathroom sink, for you to wash with;


52. a packet of perfect fish scales;


53. a newly-deceased person's schedule for the week;


54. sandals carved from sandalwood, and a matching codpiece;


55. your own skull, taken from the future with a time-scoop;


56. sealed autopsy records;


57. a necklace of the footprints of a hedgehog, the footprints made in clay and fired in a kiln into beads;


58. the address of a witch;


59. a pocket watch with movement carved from mastodon bones;


60. a railroad to the frontier;


61. an envelope of grave dirt from a child Black Plague victim;


62. the testimony of every person who has ever had a crush on you;


63. a powerful semicolon to use in argument;


64. a silk quilt;


65. a deep blue-green pigment that can dye anything, including skies, wedding anniversaries, and thoughts;


66. a phonograph record of your mother singing;


67. plans for a bank heist, including drawings, annotated in German;


68. ten vials containing the characteristic smells of the year 2073 in New York City;


69. a mature cedar;


70. a lasso to bring objects back from your dreams;


71. a toothbrush inlaid with uncut sapphires;


72. a demon trapped in an emptied eggshell;


73. a piece of glass made from lightning-struck sand;


74. a piece of ocean-tossed ambergris;


75. a ship's lantern;


76. a warm and sunny field of opium poppies;


77. the figure of Salome dancing, carved in a peach pit;


78. a bag for holding pearls, woven from spider web;


79. your own dried umbilical cord;


80. a pendant in the shape and color of the known universe;


81. a hailstone the size of your head;


82. rust shavings from an iron lock;


83. the address of Death;


84. the pineal gland of a prostitute, preserved in brine;


85. cuff links made from a meteorite;


86. an Australopithecus coprolite;


87. a bottle of glowing ink extracted from fireflies;


88. a pound of pure sodium;


89. a magic spell to make a candle burn backwards;


90. underwear made from spun vicuña fibers;


91. a loyal yak;


92. a pair of kid gloves made for your hands;


93. a heretofore-lost episode of The Twilight Zone;


94. the ashes of the burned Aztec codices;


95. a scar from the excision of regret;


96. a new name;


97. a safe deposit box to be opened in three years;


98. a microcircuit printed on a feather;


99. a statue of a Peruvian saint;


100. and a human molar from Machu Picchu.

Oh Yoko

I just got a copy of Yoko Ono's Grapefruit for $4 at the bookstore on my block. This is an instruction from the book:

TAPE PIECE III

Snow Piece

Take a tape of the sound of the snow falling.
This should be done in the evening.
Do not listen to the tape.
Cut it and use it as strings to tie gifts with.
Make a gift wrapper, if you wish, using the same process with a phonosheet.

1963 Autumn