What thrush that seeks a temperate zone
observes a boundary line?
Does it not sing as sweet a note
by Thames as on the Rhine?

Do rivers not cross continents
to unify with sea? 
Where are the chains and fences
to keep
man from the free?

I love this no more
Nauseated twisting feeling in my gut
I can feel it happening
A cold sweat
Incompetent fear
Who can I talk to in the land of white walls?
Through windows I only see
Decaying trees under gray,
A hopeless blanket.
Inside under the blanket we rot
Only loving ourselves
And touching ourselves
In the house of bullet proof windows
That will never die
Immortal house of decaying souls.

We are the sons and daughters
Of lithium, prozac, ritalin and hope.
Hope that we come out alive
With our shakes and nausea.
Meat guinea pigs
To their soft patronizing voices
To say "we can help you," as
All the little pretties go
Pop in our heads.

Oh cry, my heart
I know thy pain
I live it every hour
Nurse it in restless sleep.

Out of the depths of thy loving
Comes this agony of wanting.

Oh heart,
I cannot still thy pain,
'Twould leave me naught

An old scrub oak once owned this knoll,
That streets and houses now control,
And looking few would be much moved,
To know we loved there long ago.

The landscape has no special call,
To tell you we were there at all,
The place we stoods' now someone's yard,
A few feet from their bedroom wall.

But on that distant night we ran,
to reach that spot where we would stand,
And gaze into each other's souls,
Beneath that oak tree hand in hand.

It was November and the sky,
Seemed not so distant or so high,
As though our love condensed the worlds,
and nature hastened to comply.

The hours melted as we stayed,
Adored each other, loved and prayed,
And what they said we should not feel,
Were all the things we best obeyed.

But now another man is there,
His wife is putting up her hair,
A cat has claimed the Oak outside,
It's tail brooming in the air.

And though the tree is blocked by fence,
And though the years are gray and tense,
Yet still this real estate is mine,
In spite of subsequent events.

You I cling to, strung up
into, caught like a pearl sea-soaked and floating,
rocking on the ocean's hips, flushed like a carmelite
pacing a hill, we are towed
by a ship that throbs in us, we are lured out into
the moments of oh, the deranged
waves, the glowing bones of stars; we are desire driven
away from the spit of land, you with your dirty blond hair
in tangles, your hands that dizzy me in their beauty,
how I feel the drag and pull
of you like the moan at night,
the fevered moon, extravagance of roses
opening; I am bleary and delirious,
I hear the sound of bells
glittering from the little seaside
chapel like a sentence, glittering in December
like a dancer, but no I'd rather be
ravaged by the pulsing sexual
residue, the pleasure of this and that, the shells
that grind into me, the seaweed's stickiness,
the small sea creatures that come up close,
driftwood that knows my incompleteness;
oh I am far and deep in you, you who dispel my emptiness,
my fear and trembling words;
I am your oyster girl, your agonized sacrament,
gasping and gaping,
hanging from her teeth, my back arched,
head tipped, you who lilt me
past the headlands, past the houses,
guide me.

At first I knew not DOS from Duh, and worried not a jot.
I said life ruled by mere machines, cannot be worth a lot.

But then my skills were criticized, by people that I idolized.
They said that if I wished to stay, that I should upgrade now - today.
On their advice I signed up twice.
Soon WordStar and the Spreadsheet, became my new forte.
I prayed unto the Lords of DOS, to grant me PC skills.
I read the books, I stroked the keys, and even took some pills.
I learned to boot the hard drive, and autoexec.bat.
With Pentium and CD-ROM, my pencil was old hat.

Then dissension reared its ugly head, and just when I had nailed DOS dead, 
the mighty Lords proclaimed abroad, their celebrated system flawed.
Still just a clacker, not a hacker, a virtuoso I sure ain't.
Gosh, the thought of my retraining, why it nearly made me faint.
Still I ventured forth in Windows, and learned Drop and Drag and Paint.
Then just when I had got the knack, the Lords snuck round behind my back.
Yes, Windows 95 was launched. I felt like I'd been sucker punched!
I rolled my sleeves and went to work, but couldn't find the groove.
And then the answer came to me, to just have half my brain removed.

So now the landscape looms serene. The information highway gleams,
and opens up new avenues, but somehow I just get the blues.
I stand in awe beside the curb,and watch and wait for E-Mail blurbs.
I've got no Site, but undeterred, I vow one day to be a Nerd.
My OLF's declare with glee, the Internet will set you free.
I say what good can that all be, the thing grows exponentially.
It sucks you down into the pit, consumes your hours and zaps your wits,
and gives your F2F mate the fits.

So I arrive by logic pure, my theorem's proved, of that I'm sure.
The info highway's nothing more, than everybody's pet detour.
But still I ply the World Wide Web. I cruise and browse and snatch and grab.
From side to side and front to back, with meager skills I mouse and hack,
along my share of E-tarmac, my information cul-de-sac.

Have you ever noticed how beautiful human eyes are?
But, you see, millions of people populating the earth, and I can't find 
one person who would be willing to simply sit in front of me and let me 
look at his/her eyes for a while.

"How it comes she doesn't want to watch TV, doesn't want to go to the
Olympics, doesn't want to go to Disneyland, doesn't want to go to Hawaii,
doesn't want a mansion, a cadillac, or a husband, doesn't even want to go 
to Europe, or Africa, or the Far East. Nothing, she wants nothing of
that, she just wants to sit and look at someone else's eyes. This is
outrageous, unreasonable, unacceptable, ridiculous, she must be crazy.
Besides, it is a request impossible to grant: human eyes are obsolete,
out of stock, unavailable. All of them have been consumed by a TV set and 
its dream-projections." 

I wonder who held the container receiving the blood of the baboon when
they cut his heart out. Or... did they hook him live to a recently
invented artificial heart for further experimentations to further the
human cause of furthering human life, which, under the threat of nuclear
bombs is overpopulating the earth? This is outrageous, unreasonable,
unacceptable, ridiculous, they must be crazy. Besides, it is a request
impossible to grant: human life is obsolete, out of stock, unavailable.
All of it has been consumed by a TV set and its dream-projections.

You see... it is all a matter of focal setting. Faith. A set of
beliefs. Blind faith. No eyes, no heart, no life. And I dare to ask 
for a set of human eyes in front of mine? 

"Pilar, accused of disturbing the peace with revolutionary ideas, has 
been arrested , and her case has been sent to the Supreme Court of 
Humankind for judgement. She has been sentenced to death by isolation. 
Her last request has been a set of human eyes to look at while dying, 
but due to the unavailability of such rare item, they are sending a 
baboon to her cell instead."

Occasionally
you see the curbstones
filling with metallic sage,
clumps of tumbling cassette
tape, ripped from a player
and disgorged along the
endless trespass of buried earth.
Somewhere in this oxide rust
a singer with no formal training
lifts her silent voice
into the ribbed cacophony of cars
and leaking mufflers,
a splined mass of brown and
shiny chaparral,
moving with the zephyr of our speedy age
and cloistered ambivalence,
several echoes free
of perfume and stomach,
booze and patrons,
broken G strings and the thump of sound.
Some triumph of our ingenuity
has broken and discarded us as well.
Roving derelicts,
spinning down the empty curve
of protected silence,
farther from truth and music
and each other then
we've ever been before.

I think it's called a grange hall
I catch glimpses of white siding as my car speeds home.
Three trees past the highway sign part
To let out a little secret for commuters.

You were too sophisticated for the grange hall,
But you stayed.
Potluck was beneath you,
Yet you remained.
Did you know how I needed you that night
To dance and laugh with me.
To make sure he saw the dress in action
Sexy and inappropriate for this party.

You saved me from an adolescent scene,
There among potato chips and diet soda.
How pathetic and immature I was.
How kind and protective you were.
I didn't know it then, but you saved my marriage.
Just off Interstate 80
At the grange hall.

A red squirrel
Standing tiptoe, head darting
Surveys my garden.

The ancient almond
Thrusts clusters of white blossoms
Between dead limbs.

Pastured horses
Rumble around the meadow
Playing tag.

For you this handful of rain
For you three monkeys eating the gearwheels
of a lady's wrist watch
For you the sun
For you all the mistakes I have made
and my unrepentance
For you incredulity and insolence
For you the maiden to whom god himself
offered a ride in his chariot
and she shook her head
wrapped her gown around her shoulders 
saying 'no thank you'
for you that maiden.
All this for you
because in your hours of pleasure
you smile and sweat.

I penned a rhyme I thought sublime. Rejection slips came in no time.
My efforts were described as dank. One critic even said it stank.

I penned once more, said "'twas mine own. I lied ('cuz it was just on loan).
But still they yelled, they called it crud, and threw me down into the mud,
besmirched my kin, maligned my brain.
My urge to write began to wane, so expertise I had to feign.

I asked the Bard to help me out. (He is the best, there is no doubt.)
Soon critic fools with ardor clapped, my new skills held their focus rapt.
Their ardent praise doth gave me hope. They knew me not from bygone dope.
And now my words they supplicate, they know not I equivocate.
With each new rhyme they swoon the more, and say, "Have we not met before?"
Who censured then, now grants each wish, whether wine or fowl or fish,
They ask me in to see their place, are wont to kiss my hands, my face.

I think, "How would the Bard reply?" Then rack my brain and search the sky,
for now I've grown to be so sly, on others I must not rely.
My mind's a'spin, my thoughts doth race. They pucker up, reach to embrace,
I slip their grasp, avert my face, and say with perfect civil grace,
"'Tis true, I'm ere the one you knew. For you the other end will do."

Walk with me for a bit.
Don't look for words or meanings.
This heartbreak is longer than the journey.
See that spot there?
That was our spot.
It doesn't mean anything anymore.
Because you know what you're supposed to know,
and you do what you're supposed to do.
The mind is always circumnavigating the heart
on maps written in lemon juice.
There is no logic beyond mutual appraisal
that works as well as disappointment.
Growth is the apostasy of longing.
Everything is measured against something
as a way of avoiding what can't be measured.
Close your eyes.
You're in a large wood, aren't you?
The sun is caught and squirming in the upper branches
of thick trees.
Nothing has been built here yet
that you can't leave or return to.
Thomas Woolf is wrong.
Adam Smith is wrong.
Do you want to recover from your sickness?
Keep your promises to your heart.
Do you want to recover from your heart?
Keep nothing.

Choose.
Everything promises to depend on your decision.

I want to talk to you about love, etc.,
and the life that runs behind the life
it seems to us we see.
Words have chopped our eyes like two onions.
I can say that a giant breath moves,
contracting a little and expanding a lot.
I can say that the earth turns satisfied.
I can say that everything is swelling:
plants couldn't contain one more drop of breath
without exploding into millions of particles,
each particle a universe full of particles
full of expanding breath,
expanding forever.
This is love.

Can you put it into a little box,
tuck it under your arm
and walk around saying:
"Here, I have this little box for you.
I'll give it to you if you give me yours.
A little box of expanding breath,
a little box of etermity, here, take it,
but give me yours,
I want it so I can say:
'I own a piece of eternal breath'".

From the middle of eternal breath
a hand sticks out
holding a little box,
peddling an illusion.
From the middle of eternal breath
millions of hands stick out,
each one holding a little box
peddling an illusion.
They moan and starve,
swimming in a glass of milk.

Red boxes, blue boxes, green boxes,
yellow boxes,
lavender boxes with purple dots.
Pink boxes with orange hearts on them,
blue boxes with stripes and stars,
gold boxes with tiny port-holes
to see the ocean.
Black boxes with lenses on them
to magnify their content.
Your box is beautiful because it is see-through
and you forgot to put a lid on it
so the eternal breath flows freely
in and out full of laughter.
I saw this once and I never forgot it.

Is it late
This dream of ours
This love so rich in quiet understanding

Have we yet
The courage of first love
Tempered by the wisdom of a later year

I would not ask for else
Then that this love
Were not too late

Fourteen million cubic feet a day,
They say,
And Black;
Shadowing your eyes with
Stinging Blindness.

Your heart shines red,
If at all,
And dying birds are your children.

Sullied are your precious tears,
Their flood coursing among the excreta of
Human glory,

Can they ever again be ambrosia;
Fit drink for the eternals?
Or shall it be even their poison?

i found her by the mail boxes
standing there, looking around
a slight breeze moving her hair
she looked familiar, i thought,
i didn't know her, but
it was the droop, the slight droop
in the shoulders, the peculiar
shuffle of the feet,
it was the sag at the corners
of the mouth, at the edge
of the eyes that was familiar
that i had seen before
with my mother, and then my father.
not so long ago, i would not
have recognized her, would have mistaken her
for who she was, just given her directions,
but now, i walked her home, and listened
to her repetitions, and watched
the air mislay her hair.
i won't tell them i was lost, she said,
they will put me on a leash.
that is what is so hard
that even lost and disoriented
she was keenly aware of where
she was headed.

in 1947 while helen frank
was studying spanish
i was coming home from the hospital in l.a.
after having had my tonils removed

last night while i was waiting on the prison yard
the rain was falling
the air soft as heaven
& two men
were being murdered in san jose

while i was writing this
something went wrong
i don't know what it was
or where

while standing there
i was on one side of a wide red line
i was closer to the building than the cons
(there were hundreds on the yard)
& they couldn't cross over
without getting a 115
only one guy does
to look at a schedule
that announces when law library is open
we think the schedule is out of date
we're not even sure if they have law library anymore
(meanwhile o.j. simpson is out playing golf in another time zone)

& my student comes over to help
the guy looking at the schedule
who seems like he can barely read
by now they've both crossed over
to my side    (the side of free people)
but now cross back

it's still raining on the yard
our coats are warm
but we almost don't need them
the air is tropical
the scene unreal
the lights just so
the concrete picnic tables close in
are an irony
life is no picnic     here

and the grey concrete cell blocks
are growing closer
shrinking the yard
which used to look like a magnificent football field
with lights
those high amber lights
shining thru misty rain water
the lights illuminating     but not watching

no one is watching now
no one cares about the red line
i can't get into the building
finally 3 others arrive and we talk
about all kinds of things
starting with the state haircut
and the legality of this and that
and how there's more dope here than at donovan

it goes on    there's no end to this story
it's a story about something unaccountable unknowable    unreliable
something that keeps     shifting
as time keeps shifting
as light keeps shifting
as love keeps growing
as life moves
as life moves.

ali americal
long time resident of rutherford
told reporters today
that she is going blind
maybe i've been out in the sun too long
she said in an exclusive interview at the
st helena travel agency
i can't seem to see anything any more
without my glasses
it doesn't bother me when i'm just
sitting around thinking but it's damn
inconvenient when i'm trying to
read myself to sleep
the poet pointed out that she was unable
to find a comfortable position in bed
with her glasses on
it's still possible to write she stated
if i don't write too long
in the wrong position
because after a while my feet ache
and i have to get back in bed again
also she continued the strain on my eyes
from writing causes me to cross my legs
and smoke cigarettes
it's getting worse all the time she sighed
buying her airline ticket and i'm pretty sure
i'll be blind before i get much more written
so that's why i fly around a lot
and see things

from the journal-american, a local paper, by sk dunn

BLUE. THE BLUE DISCONNECT
THE BLUE EYES OF A DETERMINED BANK ROBBER
THE BLUE EYES OF THE DEEP BLUE LAKE DEPTH OF A MURDERER'S EYES
AND THE EYES OF THE EYES THAT SEE IN THE DARK
THAT SEE BLUE   
THIS IS THE BLUE OF DEATH AND OF SMALL ELECTRICAL STORMS OF THE BRAIN
THE BLUE OF PRISON
THE BLUE OF WORK
THE BLUE OF THE NIGHT
THE BLUE OF THE OCEAN
THE BLUE OF BLUES SONGS
INDIGO BLUE
THE BLUE OF THE PARROT IN MY BACKYARD
THE BLUE OF THE MADNESS OF MY LANDLORD'S MIND.

THE BLUE OF EXPECTATION
THE BLUE OF EPILEPSY
THE BLUE OF TINA SORTING BLUE CANS AT 2 IN THE MORNING
BLUE SONGS AGAINST INDIGO
THE BLUE INDIGO CLUB OF MY CHILDHOOD
BLACK-OUT BLUE BLUE BLACK AND BLUE BLUE    THE BLUE OF DESPAIR
THE BLUE OF NIGHT AND MORNING AT ONCE   BLACK BLACK   BLACK AND BLUE
THE GREEN BLUE OF ENVY
THE BLUE COOLNESS AFTER A STORM OF RED ANGER
BLUE AS IT BLENDS INTO PURPLE
THE BLUE OF THE INSIDE OF THE MIND OF A SAINT
ARGENTINIAN BLUE
SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE BLUE
THE BLUE OF MEMORY.

I walk the hills of the Don,
the summer dry hills, squinting,
stopping to hear heated sounds
in tall brittle grasses, to hear his tears.

I smell the Don's sweet sage
rising from dark canyons,
floating up with the day,
pushing high released wild beauty,
sharp and thick, his historic taste.

I rest by the Don's old oaks,
his alders and cottonwoods.
I find the rest sought by the displaced
in spots of California shade,
black, green, twisted and cool.

I whisper, just whisper, the Don's open prayers
of welcome sweet fortune abounding
a continent away from a cold age in gray,
away from a promise undelivered.

If only he had whispered.

So and so beat so and so and so we have elections,
And whozit slammed old what's her name and so we have erections,
And wheelers deal while loser's squeal and all about them grumble,
so someone who beat someone else can take their turn and tumble.

And there are those who choose or chose but have no real direction,
Who think too hard to ever choose or choose without reflection,
And some are dumb and have no clue and others are like me and you,
We choose the stoomfing that we do: the why, the when, the how and who.

And everyone who moans and gripes because their heaven folded,
Looks to the ones who beat them for some scapegoats to be scolded,
And everyone goes skulking to their little booths to punch it,
To perforate their Xanadus and have their cake and munch it.

Another chance to fix the damage done by other laws,
To fix the flaws that others fixed while passing other laws,
Another tax, another bill, another proposition,
More nameless misdirected swill to treat the wrong condition.

Another goose, another cow, another big decision,
More mud to sling more libel suits more crap and more derision.
Another weary exercise of privilege at the polls,
To tell the latest fucking King that he too has no clothes.

at the museum
the woman behind the counter
said she liked my hat.
"your hat has flowers on it," she said,
"how unusual," and something about...

huh, i thought, no,
it was my wife's cap.
i wear it every now and then
and remember her exuberant
and infectious smile.

later, from a little cafe, on agua fria
during the slow descent of the sun,
i watched for hours the reflection
on the beige walls of the old church
across from me.
so bright this reflected light, so bright,
then a cloud would pass and the color would change
and darken to that of wet sand.
i watched for what seemed like years
with each cloud, over and over.
this brightening, this darkening,
again and again and again,
til finally the sun sank from sight
and the light slowly faded
and it was night.
it was night.

Probably unwelcome
at the Public Library,
he muscled his wheelchair up
the side door ramp
at the Post Office;
read catalogs and discards
from the trash.

Maybe he thought the sign:
"Please do not urinate
  in the trash can.
            Thank you."
was for his benefit.

He never bothered
or bummed off me,
but must have offended
one of his neighbors:
the Post Office closed
disabled access
during his visiting hours.

So where do
the least among us
feed their inquiring minds?

Little fire of eternity, braced
at the tip of it, God's instrument,
gathering all desire there, pulsed
muscle, heart like a mouth
inhaling, eye drawing-matter-into,
and then the pain, the christening
as it enters like the beloved's face
bright in the morning when your wounds
are still fresh; you are taken in,
the resolve, you are God's object,
mistress, and the sword enters again,
forceful, relentless, you are
stalled in thought, obedient,
you are not afraid because you are
that one thing singled out;
yesterday you were unseen,
but now blazing, your body loves,
it travels to another, it is
pronounced, ignited, made whole,
this is happiness not spoken of
but hinted; you are turned over
and over like a rock tumbled
out until you glisten, resplendent
thus having been seized and seen,
refined and exact, the pain does not
retreat, but beats and increases
until you breathe with it, you
nourish it, the hub, flame, predestined
wick that will not evaporate,
it blooms in you; honeycomb, vortex, female,
you are its frontier, and now
that it wants you, how
could you think it will cease.