feeling guilty about voodoo

We say bad things about people who hurt us.

That way they’d let up to haunt & to curse us.

We didn’t dismiss their nonsense,

                                                                   just cruel.

We vent  and vanquish their malevolence.

                                                                  Renewal.

moreover likely

my more moving through windows

than doors, like light,

just might send those

free thoughts, these thoughts

freefalling down rather than out

to the porch, steps, and on down the drive.

Standup

I was well into my spinning

out spontaneous routines,

original material

for mostly me, I guess, I mean.

It was going your direction

I try to make babies laugh ,too

but you weren’t having it,

and at the same time you’re having me, yet

you assumed

for some time, yet.

a little enlightenment

Where there’s a world somewhere

One here can see to  between the lines

That feet freefall forward  down to  

What then night’s end might see

 

 

Too bad about sorrow

“dark feet and dark wings”

TO KNOW THE DARK              

                                                                        – WENDELL  BERRY

 

“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings

and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.”

 

 

        C A U T I O N    

                                                        –RAYMOND  CARVER, from “A New Path To The Waterfall”

 

Trying to write a poem while it was still dark out,

he had the unmistakable feeling he was being watched.

Laid down the pen and looked around. In a minute

he got up and moved through the rooms in his house.

He checked the closets. Nothing, of course.

Still, he wasn’t taking any chances.

He turned off the lamps and sat in the dark.

Smoking his pipe until the feeling had passed

and it grew light out. He looked down

at the white paper before him. Then got up

and made the rounds of his house once more.

The sound of his breathing accompanying him.

Otherwise,  nothing.  Obviously

Nothing.

NORTHWEST TRILOGY

 

                      I.   IN  FLIGHT  MOVIE

I’d say Seattle’s a city that’ll likely

Set you so free that you’ll likely

Be reminded of the high flight where you might just

Find me,  plowing clouds way way above the bird play.

 

                       

                         

I see Seattle as a solution

Not too much a town to touch down to

Warm outstretched arms on a runway

To catch a wretched, falling runaway,

A getaway  on holiday.

 

 

                  II.     W A K E

“Guests must remain on the patio”

Insisted the sign in a winded sun.

I read it right there in my Adirondack chair

On a cliff so clearly steep.

I feel I might have fallen  deep

Narcoleptically Asleep again, Though surely

The luringly named

Pacific Ocean below

Drew me here, to it’s wake up here

This pace  maker  peace

could liven this

 

                           III

There’s this tree, I took three pictures there.

A tree creatively crooked

& pointing down most of the Oregon coastline.

At least three pictures.

It rather weathervaned the ocean edge

& pointed, as a staggeringly lovely hag

might with her stick. A crow

lights in her hair, & All of it

blown forward

down the edge.

 

 

 

MUCH

often it’s uncertain to see,
to see the true things through
but certainly sometime’s there’s time
when surely much of what’s new
when noticed might matter
to you or rather
to me

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing,
moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just
common sense, dancing” -William James

CLIFF NOTES PHOTO

There’s a cliff someplace

Where the wind’s not too strong, nor too bracing

Where the edge is hardly edgy

Where the drop  is in a full bucket

Where the view is–

Where the shot is tight/wide open

                                          We will take it

Where from where we stand unsteady and

Search from this perilous perch

for a shot at a sight/wide open.

 

 

 

for Richard Thompson,Richard Melvin, Son Of Man