MIDNIGHT SUN
__WARP DRIVE REGALIA __
At the edge of the sidewalk, in the Civic zone regulated by Powers, the metallic light pole rises. It resonates, all the way to the end of Wood Duck Court, when struck with a rubber mallet. In the street next to the light pole is a storm drain, and on the curb is a talisman – circular, aluminum, painted blue originally, which says, “Flows to the Bay.” The perfect venue for a Concert by the Bay.
Which of course we played, with the mallet. In response, the neighborhood observed an unusual moment of silence. All the birds stopped singing.
Here would be the place, hand in glove, for a famous quote. Charles Fort said, “We are lived.” Or in days past, “Whistle While You Work.” But these days no one seems interested in what's beyond the cell phone in their hand.
The hell with them. Here's what muscles in:
a voo doo doll hovering over the Dead Sea
says this is to poetry
as truth is to imagination
At this point in the headlong rush:
moon, full over the horizon
is granting all voided permissions
lovely
ultimate sanity
There were times of patching:
the radiator
may god rest its soul
when we wrestled palm fronds
and loaded fresh rocks
Arriving finally at the Bay Area Regional
--> Air Quality District
-->Junk Car Office
Let no one mock my grief:
on that last day
we parted
The day I found my voice:
not sounding
anything like me
Why does all this stuff have to come down:
when I'm trying
to cook dinner?
__Mad Hatter's Ball__
An approximation is more gently chewed. The gardener (capitalization abandoned at a theater marquee) was close enough. Once a brave notion of embossing all this on a bronze plaque, but couldn't think of a suitable occasion since it has little to do with the esoterica of outrigger art, ephemeral brush strokes riding invisible currents, vanishing. It will be safe in the museum of canoes. But it's surrounded by Indians in there, overworked images with no sonic resonance. Bronze indeed! No palm slap Congo drums with high five ping fiddles rippling off the map.
Bronze will melt near the sun. Not your Copper Tone balm, but over a solar probe. If no one agrees, just see how long that lasts. Try telling your neighbor, who will squirm out of the discussion with an averted gaze. Stewed and chewed, it makes it's way ever so gently into an Oxford dorm room, a pin up for rainy days. Bronze, paper, forget Led Zepellin gravel. As I write, the robins who have watched over us for years are here for last minute seeds. They are hard to see at dusk. Unmistakable cheeps. Music is best.
__Monday, Monday__
Not even a siren snoring. Not a bird or a plane. Fossil fart bag pipes are deflating. They sound like, how to say, rose scents partially unwound, prostrate before a smiling sphinx and blind to the daily mind. Please write something about it. There's not much to read anymore.
Sunday is for watering; the lawn is sending messages. Certainly not electromagnetic. For your average public, immune to ugliness, it rises few objections. Yet here the bell tower calls – a single engine plane treading infinity, dwindling, fading into ever finer shadings.
Robin lands on our neighbor's roof. Will it tip the truth? Electromagnetic phones won't catch the message. Suppose, just suppose, there really is more than dreamt? That aliens like lawns, who can prove otherwise? Consider. Mathematicians, who serve the Queen of the Sciences, seriously use an “imaginary” whatever that can't be any real quantity to underpin their calculations. Upon serious consideration it is absurd.
Robin hops under the fence, through a tunnel made by feral cats. Any correspondence with a worm hole in theoretical space, routine the afternoon breeze becoming empty, where did robin go? Why did the chicken cross the road? Birds . . .
In days of yore, the old days, people assumed there would be brand new days, much as before. A few hot spells, genocides, hoax spitters, a barge or two escaped loose. Now only the naive . . .
Ka ching! Ka ching! Endless profit, everyone dance. Or be damned. And when the music stops who'll be holding the bag?
Someone has to say it – the voice of spray cans making freeway sound walls screech colors few appreciate. Pay a little more. Get the fast lane.
It's not talking back, the earth. Media of our days and nights croon and cackle, cadizzle and pop, sputter and piss, beer frogs croaking. A moment of silence?
Robin is back, pecking seeds.
How is this so different, or Neptune? Appearances are deceptive. Or your Aunt Gloria. I don't have an Aunt Gloria. Woodstock was a lot of noise and they could have been beating hollow logs, instead making trolley cars out of them. From time to time media mavens roll credits and compare them to early rocket launches. Back here it's just the universe trying to hold up the fence.
The preferred nomenclature would be dove, or to fill in that feathered flapping which depends in part on the tattered hum of a helicopter bird coming not to hover but to harmonize.
__The Story?__
OK, wheelbarrow!
It had been idling by the stream bank in a fugue, had carried those poems in yellow stacks, loose bundles that almost rhymed, until a tornado upset everything. Now just the scent remains, attracting clouds. Con trails happily debunking misty eyed myths. It could not help being a wheelbarrow, any more than a scholar can help borrowing books, and 'twas more the pity for a loss of understanding skewed upon it, pruning off ignorance to land at the feet of the masses.
My wheelbarrow never was a trained horse. Turnips and carrots for a horse, in casual friendship. Or poems, all the same. Appearances are overrated in favor of cargo. Tote that barge, lift that bale. Forget pedigree. My wheel barrow was salt of the earth. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. A lack of alliteration that glitters.. It is not a Formula 1 racing machine, did not worship newspaper stands, elevators, subways or subway sandwiches.
By slow degrees the fugue completes itself, ripples in a stream.
It had been idling like our faithful cat, sitting on its haunches next to an imaginary fire. I had sent it out hunting. And it had returned with less than it started. A vast emptiness. The yellow stalks had been distributed to a company of sages, magicians and circus perambulators for purposes of divination. And they had divined a story, explaining the tornado, and consequently lots of religions. And was it authorized? There were discussions, and worse.
OK, wheelbarrow, I repeated. Now we know what happened. Emptiness is not so bad, eh? Could we make a story out of this?
There was a moment of silence, like when the birds stopped singing. Then uproarious laughter!
A wheelbarrow that idles?
All that can't be talked about is what I'm saying. Short shrift in the gravel pits of pundits. The tail of a mouse that ran away. It's hide and seek in the playground of words, and if you don't look directly you might get a glimpse.
