JOY NEST LEAP©

KNOWLEDGE SLAVES

"you need some milk"

says the refrigerator

"incoming missile"

says the Strategic Air Command

our machines speak with familiar voices

they did not invent themselves

when things go wrong we say

technology did it

so now that we see the problem

how to fix it?

we could destroy the machines

or use them to destroy ourselves

or haven't we had enough of this?

we make them in our image

so finely wrought as to be indistinguishable

we let them make poetry and music

build monuments to dwarf the pyramids

rock cradles

fill them

lull us to sleep

and they have owners

who will own us

accidentally or not

as they rule the image

which began with us, the grunts who were there in the beginning

who grunt today, but with far less pay

than in the glory days

when information would set us free because it was

but now it's in the machines which use it

for magical, maniacal purposes

set in motion by rational profit seekers

technology is a shibboleth

set up to serve the owners who themselves

are fascinated by the fiction

as the great unwashed whale

swims slowly toward oblivion

shredding tail fins in the net

at The Brass Rail with ramen-fed programmers

who translate higher math into zeros and ones

to feed the biggest machines

for the least dollar

until creativity isn't worth a cent

Silicone Valley

Highway 101

lined with Chinese servants

once again who

read the roadside billboard's brilliant colors

the communes are dead

BREATH OF LIFE

Rosie at the front porch door

meows for attention

but not to be let in

in the dark evening light she has caught a bird

it struggles

I do not offer congratulations for her self realization

I leave them

triumph and fear on the lost horizon

have vanished

freedom is a vagabond

homeless

without precedent

all habitable spaces have been vacated

glory and sadness float by on temporary rafts

the procession is an ordinary day

nothing different

birds fly

thoughts are the blue sky

only to become mountains again

uncalled for

JUST INTONATION

when experimenting with chords

in my way

forgetting theories

how easily one note shifts the mood

time honored formalities elide avant-garde discoveries

Bach, Bruebeck, Beethoven, Brecker

horn lines and symphonic subtleties

brash statements lose their sting

the mind in exploration is itself examined

Cannonball Parker is Winton Monk

Mingus on C-rations

Bach, for all his mastery

is barking up the wrong tree

there is no new scale

just new limitations

all the notes that ever were or weren't or will be

are right here

unique

which is the illusion

wait my turn

listen

wait

try the impossible

the improbable

an accident may occur

how fortunate but do not pose

as the composer

take courage, take the gift and play with it

as it has played with me

why not have fun

pick the wild strawberry

that picked me

BLISSED

this beautiful spring-like-summer-fall

averages to an unseasonable breeze

clear humid air is healthy

clearing the way for some fairly unreasonable work

the day lily in the front yard was doomed

way too big

and last night's sleep . . . in the cool air

was sound

building strength for the rebound

with a steel pry bar

the unfortunate plant

which ended on its side with a three-foot crown

roots upended

sucking air

an ill wind, indeed

how qualified is the canceled page

that would have recorded a dancing bear

had that been relevant

or a flooded subway

in a weather event

gathering evening's shroud

expressway sirens, shrieking military jets

the simple sound of a neighbor's door

perhaps closing

and graffiti sleeps

trees in shadow, hulking mute, silent dreams, chartreuse lichen clinging to posts that never imagined a steel guitar skeening yesternothings, porch light tiles gloomed in depths of green

and art on its own terms

garish, huge, outrageous

brooks no comparison

with the silence of the frogs