Falling Objects

so far this millennium seems no better than the la...

2006-06-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

so far this millennium seems no better than the last
i get impatient
they're trying to bust the buskers down on the beach here at english bay
i wrote the parks board a letter and now i'm a busker hero
they printed my letter in the courier and the buskers love me
old ladies in highrises complain about the crowds
it would be like moving to chicago and complaining about carl sandburg
or radiowaves
penguins

i never had any money
and i owe everyone a few bucks
if i wasn't so lovable i'd be shot in the head
my dentist won't fix me up for free
i have fans among the cognocenti
too many phones for such a small apartment

i moved on from oatmeal to whole oats and back to cutup oatgrains
steeped for hours and served with cream and maple syrup
you have no idea how good it is

i share a bowl of oatmeal with the romantic poets

i haven't seen her in days she'd rather tend to he...

2006-04-24T01:45:00.001-07:00

i haven't seen her in days
she'd rather tend to her garden than sit here listening to my complaints
planting and digging, pushing and pulling
reaching into the dirt with her hands

it's not dirt she says, it's soil
and what am I?
dirt or soil?

how can i blame her?
she is my garden

half-baked alaska

2006-04-24T00:45:00.000-07:00

i’d like to live in an igloo
bleak arctic night
endless naked day
free at last from
american 20th century culture
no tv, no radio, no news
just my laptop satellite connection
to puerto rican penpals
old friends, ex-wives
and sundry international buddies

i’d describe the bottomless arc
of the sun, monthlong dawns
eskimo sex, polar bears, dogs, birds
the view from my ice-cube window
the taste of frozen oatmeal

and they in turn apprise me
of gardens, parks, warmth
send books dropped by helicopter or dogsled
postcards of crimes and violence
and dogs chasing sticks

I'd wear fur everything
i'd go out at night and walk around
i'd see the northern lights
i'd remember lying on the grass
and wish i lived somewhere else

True Love

2005-09-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

we're eating soup,
no talk
no music,
one candle
suddenly I notice, again,
how beautiful she is

my spoonful halfway
beween the bowl and my mouth
I stop, just look at her
eating the soup I made
suddenly she notices me looking

what? she says
oh, I say, you're just so beautiful
no, really, she says
really, I say
I don't believe you, what were you really thinking?
dammit why can't you believe me, you never do
because you're such a liar
liar? what about you?
whaddya mean, me?
oh, fuck you
same to you asshole

Disclaimer: This is not about any two people I know.
I just made the whole thing up. Really.

where am i but here

2005-09-21T00:52:00.000-07:00

There comes a time in life when everybody
must take a piss in the sink
-Peter Orlovsky

hotel rooms night and day
scratch & noise from hallways strange
never know who or what they are

brown tobacco'd light through
the crack'd shade
looks like dawn or dusk - the clock a.m.
or p.m. - the shuffle outside coming
or going

i stand in the corner & run yellow tapwater into my room
everything i know in a green sack
on the bed

everything i own goes down the drain
as i take a leak
the chipped enamel basin stuck again
in the corner of the room

who the hell knows where
the bathroom is, if any

Two Nectarines

2005-09-21T00:50:00.000-07:00

For Barbara

all she did was put
a couple of nectarines
into my pack

I was there when she bought a bag of nectarines
from the fruitstand
she gave me one and it was so delicious
I made myself take a long time to eat it
careful bites, the juice ran down my chin and hands anyway

sometimes I have to bite upwards with my lower teeth
they're not my original, real teeth
and tend to move around my mouth
luckily I can joke about my body's slow decline
it's the price of all the years and worth it
though now I know I could have taken better care
of myself

worth it because whatever happpened
brought me here
to the marketplace in the sun
four or five different kinds of music
mixing it up in the air
hundreds of little kids
every one of them beautiful
no matter my sarcastic remarks
so much to see, so much to eat

and all that love
I can only think I must deserve it
but it isn't really what I think about
I think about nothing

I am embraced by such good fortune
and best of all, love
so that when my back is turned
and I can't even see her radiant face
she opens my pack
and puts in
two nectarines

air

1997-05-13T00:45:00.000-07:00

Wait, I've gone off track, again.
I was wandering around taking some deep breaths.
My thoughts were following me from room to room and out on the balcony, too
also breathing deeply. Thoughts can breathe...why not?
Thoughts need to breathe as much as anyone.
Feelings breathe. Love breathes. The planet is alive with everything breathing.
Pity the planets without air.
Here the animals, plants, rocks, seas, babies, lovers, grandparents, music, poetry,
everything is breathing with me, even sleepers.

It's late and you are elsewhere sleeping.
I try to feel your breath on my face, to hear it softly.
So warm on my skin, feeling the rise and fall of you breathing.

I stand by the door listening to the music from the stereo,
Charlie Parker breaths through the horn
the lines on the disk send waves thru the air
his breathing to my ears, soul
My thoughts go out on the balcony for air and I follow them.
I light a cigarette and think, this is bad for breathing.
I should stop punishing my heart and lungs like this.
You're in my mind and in my heart and perhaps even in my lungs,
which would explain the need for such profound inhaling.

so late, and you're sleeping, must be asleep by now
I look over the black air of the night in your direction and whisper,
I was breathing deeply and thinking of you and loving you and
wondering if some of the air you exhaled in the night
made it over here to fill my lungs.

Hangin' out with Sasha

1995-09-30T00:36:00.000-07:00

all the way down Flute Street
one hand pushing her buggy
her back to me i see only the top of her hat
and can't see it keeps flopping down over her eyes
& she doesn't mind,
keeps turning her head this way and that,
till i check and shove it gently up again

cross the street to the sunlit side
& turn the corner down Oboe Road
past ladies walking, some smile some don't even look
and Sasha's cool, takes it all in
with subtle murmurs
finding their way, slowly,
to inevitable speech and song
but, for now, pure happy discovery

left, now, on Organ Avenue
under a long line of chestnut trees
bombing the street with chestnuts in the wind
bashing on cars, bashing on boxes by the road,
bashing the sidewalk spilling their fruit
& i rush to protect her sweet head
& no one seems concerned
& i wonder, what do they know? are we immune?

Sasha fears nothing
Zaida pushes her buggy
down Organ, across Fluegelhorn past the market
to the corner,
to cross safely at the lights
to the other side, to the Trumpet News Cafe

we go in, line up for a sandwich & coffee
the joint's jumpin and Sasha at everybody's knee level
in her buggy gazes around with perfect serenity
i have never seen such perfect serenity on a face
anyone with the good sense to make eye contact
gets the brightest smile in town

it's a long wait,
saturday morning,
one of the last before winter takes over
finally we get my roastbeef & java and, one hand bearing the plate, the other
on sasha's buggy, pushing
we get an outside table and sit in the sun

we talk about everything there is to talk about
which is nothing that anyone could comprehend
a musical burbling of meaningful syllables
she watches me consume my sandwich
as though it were something she might consider doing herself, one day
and comments with wry wit

then that little cry
that says, i'm not particularly unhappy
but i want you to pick me up, now,
and there's no other way i can say it
so i pick her up and hold her to me with one arm so i can eat my sandwich
with the other, and she leans back, better to focus on me, and grabs at
a few beard whiskers with the pudgy fist, grins widely with quiet gurgles

i carry her back inside for my refill
but can't fill the cup with one hand
so get help from the counterman
& back outside once more in the sun
we watch the wind together, walkers, dogs, crazy cars

back in her stroller i push her home
she sings and talks and takes everything in
and when she's quiet i lean over to see her sleeping

Driftin'

1994-08-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

for Barbara

not enough fat on my bones to float
half burned half drowned,
blinded by sun, pondered by fish,
water music minnows,
overhanging branches scrape the eyes,
mast rising, the skull & bones, windblown

such serenity
helpless to float, I lie draped over an inner tube,
ass feet arms in the water,
behold the dragonfly
so easy floating past banks of skin under breast shadows,
her songbirds humming, out to sea
once past known landmarks i'll be gone forgotten,
no trace but a trail of smoke and nostalgia,

ripples watched by children playing on the rocks beyond their mothers' calls,
past the reach of meals and stories and promises,
a golden age of marriage and work and failure,
their stones fly over the water,
my ripples turned to waves obscure the deep placid curve of moments, seasons
and all they'll carry to their graves,
or bequeath to the future,
is a dim nostalgia of a scraggy bag o' bones,
barely floating,
on an inner tube past their toothy grins and lovely waving arms

such peace
time without intelligence,
matter without feeling,
eyes burning, staring at the sun,
blindness, dumbness,
sound of my own heartbeats - paradiddles in the ocean wave,
floating finally west in sunset

1994

And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,
still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
Dante Gabriel Rosetti

I just keep driftin and driftin
Charles Brown