'O Taste and See': Maybe the problem is that I got involved with the ...

'O Taste and See': Maybe the problem is that I got involved with the ...: Maybe the problem is  that I got involved  with the wrong crowd  of  gods when I was seven…. …    It would have been an easier l...

Maybe the problem is that I got involved with the wrong crowd of gods when I was seven….

Maybe the problem is 
that I got involved 
with the wrong crowd 
of gods when I was seven….

…  It would have been an easier life 
if I had allowed a ring in my nose, but so 
many years later I still find the spore 
of the gods here and there but never 
in the vicinity ...

                                                                                                Jim Harrison

                                                                                                The Quarter

as when you slid your window down slowing you
drove by in the snow and cold rain when you
saw me waiting for you. to ask, i thought, if i was fine.
and i made for the door but you said no seeing me
wet and slid the window up again and slipped away.

as when your head were where you kept

your soul like they do in Vietnam, knowing

when you pat it against the satin meninges and

your breathing you suppose you’re a child

of god, slowing and folding into a paper death.

as when while i’m soaking through in the

straight down rain you’ve arrived at a change

of that soul and you’ve arrived again to save me

and then change your mind again and drive

halfway home and i walk after  you

as when your soul floating in the current

furry is stunned and turned to a small bird

that's cuffed again and again against the glass
and falls finally spent to the car floor since you’re
still driving and you don’t know how (as

when you believe you’ve seen this before)

when I arrive at your calamity and pry

your door and pull you out bloody

and breathe on you and try to save your soul
but it wouldn't give me currency

and when you floated entirely away you floated
beside me and inside me like a mother dying
a mother perceiving relief at leaving
and maybe guilt but mostly relief at being
held so tenderly after all this time
of waiting for such a gift to arrive.

*title inspired by a direct line
from Jim Harrison’s “The Quarter”

intimacy

intimacy

one:

which do you touch first

to the rim

dialect or lip?  do you

close your eyes?

does it matter

what is in the glass?

or its heat?  do you

cup it all

in the bowl you’ve

made of your tongue

and let it rest

in brief aroused restraint

before it is allowed

down and down

into your dark?

Detritus: Pink Plastic Pony With the Wispy Blond Mane

roof/
lines

Detritus: Pink Plastic Pony With the Wispy Blond Mane

Finding it
I imagine it to have

fallen or been felled

out or from the car window

a window half way

up or down depending

on who you are

and the child
and her horse were

galloping next to the edge

of a fence on the edge

of a ledge on the edge

of the rounded
glass and took

the turn too tight

and spilled and spilled

and spilled first

slipping dumbly past

the thumb that held the flanks

or the bum depending
on who you are

the wind is what they both

loved the most

how when the car was

going full speed there

was something soft

to push into and they’d

both agreed the girl

and her horse

that the haunch

was the most secure

place to ride

a thumb

on one side a finger

on the other it was

the only thing

she ever did right-

handed her brother

sat on the driver’s side

and he played

a different game

and it required batteries

and made him distant

and frustrated but today

something startled her

and she let go

she fell

off she was caught

completely

off guard—

rain in her
face
a splinter of wind

and rain and one split

of thunder

came from the mouth

and hips
she did her best
not to think

of the babysitter

and then what was left
afterwards

of the blast of rain

and wind and lightning

sizzling up while

they blazed through

and took the corner

too tight and she was

sliding and her brother

cried and by the time

he was dry eyed she

recognized her hand

was bare from here

on out and it was

gone and in her crotch

was cotton

what mopped up

sorrow and she soaked

it and fogged up

the glass

of the rolled up window

and wrote a name

though no one knew

what it was and she asked

for the window to be closed

from then on and the huff

of her breath on a sunny day

could still be

visible especially when

the sun dosed behind
the car roof

and made her briefly

and momentarily

and mane-ly

free in the dark.

Your Ashes and Frank O'Hara

at sunset
Mullholland Light
Campobello 

Your Ashes and Frank O’Hara

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

                                                                                Frank O’Hara

                                                                                Having a Coke With You

                                                               

I’ve taken you down – I’d suffer if I lost you I hate losing

                you you’re always

                behind me I should put you behind

someplace else away you have no place but you do

                here and you after willing me

                exactly this (on other days it would’ve been

someone else today the Selected of Frank

                O’Hara who knew you or seemed to

                and any other time before I knew you I would’ve

listened less but I touched it right off

                like you handed it to me

                directly from your own

hand it was right beside the box

                I keep you in handcarved a mala box with OM

                on the lid some of you at least a pinch

or two in a zip bag before the rest

                of you went into the wind – here before

                I foget to let me say I know nothing

about Frank       

                O’Hara.  I’ve touched him less than I touched you

                and that wasn’t much and less at the end

of your life when your blood was shooting

                through your nose and urethra

                I never saw you again not after

your loneliest out and out drying days again soberly

                aging a breathlessly scaled labor.

The fingertips, when drawn to house a wren, are rib-bones, are bars

The fingertips, when drawn to house a wren, are rib-bones, are bars

Take nature first.  The word nature is from Latin natura, “birth,

constitution, character, course of things”—ultimately from

nasci, to be born.  So we have nation, natal, native, pregnant.

                Gary Snyder                                      

“The Words Nature, Wild, and Wilderness”

Maybe the agreement has nothing to do with flesh

and blood and all the concoctions that come

to the celebration of something fresh being made.

Maybe the agreement keeps mouthing the words

that ears and noses don’t know a thing about nor listening

nor sniffing so when the wind picks up everyone’s off guard.

Maybe the agreement was struck so long ago in deep time

before there were bones to be folded into skin before

there were feathery things and scaly things in air or sea.

Maybe the agreement is only recalled when prone, when

it all comes down to we need or have to and then whichever comes
first: to relax into this wind or this ice.  And there it is and take it

like the agreement our people, though never present for,

felt passed down to them like a reading of the will,

a legacy one can never refuse or run from there being such

A thing as gravity though like the agreement that has let the rules
be, if not changed, at least stretched, there being some distance 

between the first draw and the last, the carrying it home straw.

Getting Vintage

Getting Vintage

It’s all alchemy, isn’t it, trussed

like oven birds to be delivered

into the kiln the crucible the still

whatever hot oven will bake or

boil or steam everything we ever

                                                taste/see

                                                sniff/listen

forgetting something?  

the bake of it with herbes de Provence

mash of it with sugar until

the steam through the copper

tubing converts it into a few

of booze for special use only

please ink the green

bottle, keep it out

of the sun
light, let the basement

spiders                 step/lift

                                step/lift

all their eight leg tips along

the hips of this or that glass

body while we wait on our own

making, while our days

take us through our noons through our

dreaming and all that goes

nights to steam through that tubing

remember all that

tubing
to be reduced      drop/

                      drop

                                                drop/

                                       drop

raw into the honest sepulcher –
be --

and this is of the utmost

cruciality:
– be

a god paused a quiet god paused

while the drops drop

or better be

                                                brass/glass

                                                 cask/glass

and suffer

suffer the fill to the fill line

suffer the gag plunge cork bung

suffer above all that shelf of dark

suffer waiting

suffer waiting – making

what you made

                                vintage with a year

                                every auctioneer will breathe under

                                their breath, like mystery

                                like you, barely

                                                                (but for the brave few)

                                exhumed, slip easy as grease

                                between the fingers of the flummoxed butler

                                all of you shards and self

                                all of you splashed and spattered

                                                while the cork in the neck is still wet

                                                and unslipped.                  

λόγος – word

λόγος – word

One of life’s quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful, even if it is only a floating ash.

                               

                                                      Norman Maclean

                                                      A River Runs Through It

Telling true stories is different

than telling stories that are true:

regarding a found grain of rice

I say: I want to live

in a house where every fork

is used the night before

and in putting them away

washed of mouth and speck

and meat and cling

of water and still: one small

crumb of rice I missed

how it went through its entire

wash to get to this and sits

between two tines of a four

tine fork and just is – it doesn’t do

anything but wait

it doesn’t do anything

but sit

its suffered rise up the beating

glean free from its stalk

of grass and the cede

of all its water to now

come to this: the steam being

the one thing redeeming

that stalk from that husk

from just enough water

to be eaten or to be flicked

to the heap of bones

friend if this came down to you

what would you do