Poem - Cocktail

we took ourselves
to the performance
and saw the latest band

their singer was paranoid
and everyone was drunk

we waded across the room
we moved across the place
a sea of powdered faces
in the dark

there were punks in pink laces
and black leather dominating submissives
and snake skin fellers
who wore their hats on backwards

gesticulating fucks
salivating savants

they were all here
we were all here
in this cocktail

and did you know
the world ended 30 years ago
after this the stage is dark

trouble is god never
told us we were fired
and to pack up and go

but what to do with those
empty pauses and
blank spaces that pass for eyes

guess if were were all smart
there'd be no room for freedom
if it fits
wear it like a shoe

they were all here
we were all here
in this cocktail

the last thing i remember
before we were arrested

i kept on thinking of
corporate art and the cop looked
like my neighbor
who is building high-explosives
in a shed

oh want to do
we were all here
in this cocktail

Here You Go: Try This

a. Superlife Intelligence keeps us alive because we are funny. Multidimensional timeless beings watch us intact with finite time, and a finely previewed Universe like you or I would observe a video game, a show in the theater, or set up a model train set.

b. We are dirt, and we go back to dirt. That is all.

c. Thank you, more please.

d. Let me tell you a joke about an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a 12 foot tall Rabbit.

A Doodler and a Writer of Things Like This

It is getting darker early, and I feel the dark. Like a child, I have to turn on the lights. I hear from my eighty-three year old father in-law that he's got ten more years -- and that is it! He told me, when he was in his forties, he had all the time in the world!

   a. I told him my great-grandfather died when he was 98, but I don't remember exactly how old he was when he died.

   b. I know he was almost 100 when he died.

   c. I know he died alone, of starvation, because he wouldn't eat enough and he lived alone.

Exchanging those for more cheerful thoughts, I look out the window and I think about having fun doing something like playing minecraft with my son. Christ this is what I've become. A doodler and a writer of things like this.

But on the other hand, I've always have been writing about a stray raindrop on the window, how it has a million universes in it. Ten years or forty more is a deathless eternity, for the mind that can make the jump from fear to hope, as free as a funny bug or a twirly snowflake.


* *
*

BLESS US ALL

Cherry Trees and Blossoms in my Heart Will Never Cease

There's a thousand reasons to appreciate the cherry blossoms, but none of them make the blossoms bloom. I can't tell one thought from one single blossom petal. Like love or imagination, the numbers of thoughts and cherry trees and blossoms in my heart will never cease.

__

Blue Evening

The weather people know it will be raining. Coming night is blue -- I've written the twilight is blue before, and it is again. If you write about one particular time of evening enough, you'll use the same words, eventually. It might be raining now, I'll have to go look.

Moon like a yellow ball of cotton, the sky hazy and awakening to stars. I hear the metal fabricators, a half block away. The light from there is white, big warehouse doors open to keep cool, almost all year round.

Then suddenly the ordinary parking-lot could be anywhere -- a field in Napa, or out in the desert by Stovepipe Wells or by a meadow next to redwoods in Northern California. Memory raises the tent of perception and the fence is a hedge and the bare earth planters are full of roses or mint that grew like crazy by the stream.

Faces come and go, like lanterns, or a flash of the beam from a lighthouse. I go back in, the warehouse is larger on the inside, larger and larger until it rains.

----

HB
12.1.14

Today Today

I was in love with you. I think you loved me too, you acted funny, like you loved me when we were together. We may have been so young, we didn't fully comprehend what this connection meant. Or it was just a passing fancy. We are doomed to be separated.

When I first met you, you were driving a old beat-up convertible Porsche. The headlights didn't work, so we couldn't drive around a lot when it got dark. We both lived in the dorms, at the community college.

Now I've looked away, and about 35 years have gone effortlessly by. Well, not completely effortlessly. But you can imagine it was quick, like riding on a Mardi Gras float. Possibly 25 years have gone by. Now I remember the toil. It wasn't all suffering. Life is hilarious.

We've all had relationships like this. They are like fairy tales. Then in the now, today today it might finally rain. And that is good too.



----

It Was Raining in Napa

Before I woke up, it was raining in the morning, in Napa. I could hear it raining in my half sleep, and when I opened my eyes it was blue outside, with mist between the house and the mountain. Whenever it rains and I am waking up in a room, I think about the story Richard Brautigan wrote about the rain, a small room, and a phone. I think he was lonely.

My son was still sleeping under a pile of blankets. I watched my son sleep, like you might watch water run under a bridge, or a watch hand tick. Every parent has done this. The kid wasn't doing much, but it was interesting to look at him.

Then I saw someone in the reflection of the mirror at the foot of the bed, and though I wasn't surprised to see someone looking at me, I had forgotten who I was, how old I was, and that I had a body. Then Danny woke up and we talked about video games, dinosaurs, and Star Wars.


-----

Napa
Day after Thanksgiving 2014