Blurrring

Thinking, writing & talking blur:
have I already written or spoken
this to you? Havent I sent you this
as an e-mail, or posted it on my blog?
Have you already heard it before?
Can you stand hearing it again?

(30 JAN 09, Santa Clara CA)v4

POETS & OTHERS

Poets & others diss the Inaugural poem
as irrelevant or inequal to the day, but
I like how it doesn’t just make Obama
the ‘mutt’ savior of all colors, races, etc.
Its B-roll takes us down to our daily life
where things are now the election's over.
Can we handle the present’s dire conditions?
Do we have a choice? Yes, & we exercised it.
Now to repair a badly damaged country's
damaging others. If that isn’t enuf for you,
what is? Watch it fade to action; action,
correction; repair, reparations. Not quite
noble enuf for you? Get real.


(22 JAN 09, Santa Clara CA) v6

OVER THE HILL

(with & for Alex)

You drove us down CA 17 & over the hill to Santa Cruz
to walk the pier at sunset to watch
big, brown baggy sea-lions barking underneath it
after we’d stuffed ourselves
at our fave Chinese (Ocean City) buffet,
in our private annual tradition.

On the way back, as you drove The Hill,
I told you that I’ve finally realized the best thing
I’ve ever (co-) created (even as a poet) is: You.

(We should all tell our children this truth.)

Just as I would, you replied:
"You have more poems to write."
True, Alex, but no more sons to have co-made
& marvel at as I do you.

You are my beautiful, blond Apollonian look-alike heir;
my do-alike heir’s your sister, dark Maya, my equally
sexy brunette Dionysian daughter.

Each of us has more to say, sing, prove.

(13 JAN 09, Santa Clara CA ) v7

Threw Shoes?

[for George Perreault]

“So what if he threw shoes?”
says cheekily defiant Dubya,
missing the significance of
a Cairo TV-reporter's throwing
his shoes at him during
a Baghdad press-conference,

one shoe making him lame-duck,
the other, over his head, slamming
into the wall behind him. Throwing
shoes at someone is the worst
possible insult in the Arab world:

shoes cover the body's lowest part,
tread on animal dung, are removed
on entering a house or mosque.
What’s lower? Just the dung itself.

(15 DEC 08, Santa Clara CA)v5

Paper Tiger

In Silicon Valley's Cupertino,
a dutiful grandson eagerly awaits
an annual U.S. Savings Bond

from his indulgent grandfather,
a manufacturer in Shanghai
who shuffles yuans, reading
his falling quarterly orders
report on the United States.

This year his indulgence
will bear the 2-tongued-E
of a Eurobond instead.

Facing the Chinese in Beijing,
Paulson involuntarily shudders
at a hint of chill across the table.

Something’s morphing. Paper’s
no longer just promissory scrip.

(O5 DEC 08, Santa Clara CA)v3

Dark of the Moon

If I could doubt more,
I would have to know more.
If I knew more, I might doubt
I’ve found out in time,
because I'm writing this
in The Dark of the Moon.

During the recent campaign,
a simple poster of
Obama’s profile
over
HOPE

hung in triplicate from a window
nr the corner of Cole & Carl
in San Francisco:

HOPE
HOPE
HOPE

You, who are reading this,
do you doubt less now, or
do you have faith in Hope?

(Thanksgiving Day, 27 NOV 08, Santa Clara)

High water

Whenever we drink,
we drink terrestrial w@ter
of celestial origin, w@ter
higher than we think.

(20 NOV 08, Santa Clara CA)