So there I was.

The father of time watches me abatedly brashen withered wicked horrible to describe by a lifetime. There is bad weather about every corner. The Great Noah has his arms spread out like a harbor. His hands catch the incoming ships like butterflies. The Four Horsemen wait upon a faultline. The four volcanoes of the northwestern americas. These boiling mountains crack the empire's truth sirum. The father of time laughs and his circlular dance gets faster and faster, and his tail stretches further and further. Every mythical god laughs and dances or becomes filled with more power, as we believe in nothing. Maybe God himself, has no time for fathers and horsemen, only mothers and children.

QUOTABLE QUOTES

"When a traveler doesn't spend his time moving by foot
he travels his mind with more haste."

"Know not the fear of forgetting every thing and thistle."

"Invent the wheel again for me would ya?"

"If Dr. Suit comes in with Nurse Hello, you're gonna be there a lot longer."

"when that comes, will you stop complaining?

"You welcome the evening as much as the morning."

"Every cigarette tastes less and less."

"When it comes Green, New American Vegetarian, leave your teeth at the door."

My inner voice is that of a world bygone and only in musty books in sunny soft days of the bookstores there in, Hood River, Oregon. Off the boat for a while trying to find something to get in to, besides after the usual pool game we came traipsing out of, I was already hit by wanting to find nostalgia and sentimentality of course, I’m alone in far- from-home small town lit by exciting faces that want to be making brew and catching the wind in their surfing sails, and sipping lattes of spit or looking for credit. A town indeed known for this, and the silence that wind creates around stirred conversation. I find cool dusty two storied record shop and buy two records. Both second-time purchases for I cannot recall where my first copies were lost to, most likely in someone’s house behind the wall unit warped. I spend most of my time either on the grass of the University, or in Artifacts book store, where the counter help is a wise older looking woman with typical thin rectangular glasses that sit half way down on her nose with opened button-down purple macramé sweater and she’s looking at me, watching to see if I’m apt to steal a thing or two, but I surprise her with a few questions about the history of her shop instead. And the coffee shop next door is too modern and dull to explain its interiors, but fitting because the coffee was bad. Nonetheless, it does the job of keeping me walking and I go as far as my time left until I have to rush back to the boat dock will let me. I discover train tracks that follow the rivers edge, and imagine the length they lead into the nothingness yellow hills of Idaho and Montano, pondering still how useful the trains are these days. I think about James Kurilla on railroad jobs through Minnesota, and how if it were cold I might be wearing the weathered scarf or flipping up the collar to walk alone beside the tracks, walking back from my railroad shift having been left off at the last notch in those railroad ties. Buy a pack of filterless Stanton cigarettes just to seek that feeling of that time, and then, nostalgia and sentimentality would be mine. For I am the grandson of Old Weird America, and of a lost country that will never be again, wrapped up in remembering then, while sleeping generations grow up unlearning old lessons.

In 2001, the Year of Our Dear, after I had taken a seaman's job out of the Sound, I decided that I'd not live in an imovable house, but go wishy washy on a riverboat for a while. Looking out the window of a train heading south i was watching the river flow over my shoulder. Portland bound, i was portland bound to be a sailor. From there the Columbia River took me wherever I'd let it take me. Scappoose, Ridgefield, St. Helens, Kalama up the river. Rainer, Calthlamet, Skamokawa and you bet, Astoria. Then back the opposite direction floating along the dividing line that separated washingtyne and oregyne. I ran once naked up a mountain and saw Idaho, I was on top of a giant potato. In all my spud youth. I worked the toilets and I worked the beds. I worked the tables. The fork the knife and the bread. I worked the kitchen and the dishes I washed. I washed the fork, the knife, the spoon and the pots. I worked the deck, the ropes, the bouys, the net. I won the charm, the smile, the nod, the arm, the bet.
So many jobs upon a river tender. Working my time from beginning to end. . Drinks close by. A big splash in the water during the week a few times. Holdin my shoes up kicking my legs. In that green river water.

It's 12:55 in the beginning of the morning. There's a storm outside. a thunderstorm. some lightning. whipping wind and dirt. one hundred six degrees of electricity friction sky. the palm trees are bending. the tin is rattling. the old wood roof creaks and twists. swirls of wind make hanging chimes whistle forcefully. but then, sudden silence. a calm. a rest. until the sweeping wind picks up and the wood pile stack falls over! Through windows the wind sounds like crashing waves. The tree's branches slap the house. The shutter smacks its frame! The dustwind cloud is slowly rolling in. flickery street lights in the grainy haze. the monsoons are late this summer.it's the first day of september.welcome storms.

if I go
would you need me
will you meet me
half way there
if i don't show
would you believe me
when its easy
to careless
on the road, at night, sometimes, I am blinded
by the repetious dark
and the tricks on my eyes

if you wait for me
does the good and the evil
seem to be the only thing
that matters
when I'm in rome
dear I swear I too stand,alone
under the angels
and latters
and if you come at dawn, always, I am lonely
from all the useless beauty
here without you
but with a midnight prayer, the road disappears and
you haunt me, you don't want me
here without you

"A Lover Not Lover"

Lover, I am lost
I lay ragged alone
I have couped myself up
in a room, I search
for you and your song
I search and I search and
I long.

Lover, like you, I belong
Like you I belong to me
As though poisoned were not me
As though pure as can be
Like a fool's dream

But Lover, a fool I am
Or a fool I have become
With broken spirit
and wilted heart numb
You are gone, you are gone
I am lost and still
I long.

SHORT POEMS

89-A
Southwestern turquiose handmade jewelry case
sad proud humiliation on the roadside.

A BROWSE.
Thank you
Nod head quickly
look her in the eyes
keep walking.

OF PHOENIX.
Hot air
baffoon lives
we lead,
miscellaneous
drab.

TALK RADIO.
The sound of a drill
rotating on high speed
through my ear drums
grinding the brain
Free FM
Free FM
Free FM.

KS PORK EATING 2006
Kansas city's pork contestants
chew like vicious rabbits
with something to lose

The other night I was talking with my bandmates about the will or the want to get up in the morning. Furthermore intense, we pondered what makes people have the will to live, or the will to move about through life. While some people get up in an hurry, or travel from place to place with an idea or an expectation, others never ponder the fact that they have the power to change their own life by doing it themselves. It's easy to get caught up in the "standard" way of living, we as americans know. It's easy to be in that world of suburbs, strip malls, fast food eating, large corporate shopping, driving the car everywhere, working 9-5, watching too much television, getting lazy, losing the vision to your heart and soul, your passion, your spirit. Maybe it's easier for these things to cloud your life if you have an unhealthy relationship with your mate or your family or your social scene; if you excess on drugs or alcohol; if you've never had drive or goals for your life. Maybe it's just that all of the "standard" things I described above turn you into this drooling, lethargic american that is so sadly everywhere. Lets consider an alternate way of living; one that employs your creativity, one that keeps you in touch with your soul and your spirit, one that supplies you with warmth to your heart, blank.

Ladies and gentlemen, there's something behind your neck that smells oddly like mustard gas. Or is that sulphur? I worked at mid-level market research firm in Seattle washington in 2003. I talked on the phone to different people continusly for hours. I asked them about their health. I asked them about their employment, about their ethnicity; their income; their insurance; their martial status; their mental stability; their diseases; their sexual preferences; their sexual behavior, but never their credit card. Up on the 3rd floor we were all generally fucked up. I met some oddball folks working there.

Len was a giagantous, curly-orange long-haired, bearded, intensely freckled, 43 year old, lunch box carrying ex-convict; recently released. He wore shorts that were affendingly small and tight that skinny, young bicyclists would wear in the seventies. Usually they were aqua-blue and he would wear an aqua-blue, red, black, and white stripped t-shirt. He rode his bike to work and wore those damn shorts even in the dead of a rainy, washington winter. His skin was harmfully tan in the summer. His fuzzy, matted beard was a mixture of brown, gray, red, and white wires that had no equaling length. He talked with a moaning drag at the end of every thing he said; which was likely to regard sci-fi B movies, particularily the ones directed by Fritz Lang. Het ate the same thing every day; sardines with Tabasco sauce on bread. Every day. At the same time listening to something on his pocket radio and looking out the third story breakroom window. If he spoke during his lunch, his words were usually followed by sporatic flying bits of food.

My cubicle was aside a very large, warm, carismatic black buddist women's named Simrajah. My working space was always very stark and cold because I never wanted to mentally invest myself in my job and the time I spent there because it would quickly turn me into a depressed monster. I had to separate my life outside of work from my life at work so much though that I wouldn't decorate my cubicle with personal flair. I enjoyed the feeling that I was always on the move and could have another job, or live in another town without notice. I believed that if I put up a bunch of pictures and brought stuff from home, then I would turn into the same zombie dead-end man as the people around me who had been working there for twenty years.

it's 2;11 where are you, my love?

"genova night prayer"

Blessed are the days and moments of reflection and harmony with life
The seconds of clarity and contentment
To put it all in prospective
The answer is there and purer then ever
Times of frozen photographs in my mind
The tree grows taller and counts it's years in circles
The same for my own hurtles and revolutions
Talk to me when I thought I had it all figured out
You'll know the change has come about
A hundred foreign stamps, pound notes, and pence
You'll know where to go when you're gone
Forlorn grasps to history and ending lines,
reveal repeating past signs of the time
In one nights sleep, I could wake up all my harboring beasts,
and swiftly order them all to retreat
You showed me sands of many colors and faces of many brothers
Even a love that was thought to be freedom,

you slaved me to the truth again
And forever you will, amen

I CANNOT WAIT ANOTHER DAY
TO FIND TRUTH
BURIED
BENEATH THE SANDS
OF A DEEP LAGOON
HIDDEN
FROM THE SUN AND MOON
SHINING
FOR MY EYES
FROM A SHADOWY ROOM

I HAVE ENOUGH WEIGHT
TO SURVIVE MORE THAN A DAY
WITHOUT THE NEED FOR FOOD
WITH THE PAIN
I CAN SUSTAIN
I CAN ENDURE
I WOULD NOT COMPLAIN
I WILL REMAIN
STEADFAST IN FASTING

Hammers and nails, windows and doors; carriage makers swindle; pigeons for breakfast; stones overhang like nervousness; caught light in the sun morning; leopards of health; spotted medallion on the legs of blind martyrs; orphanage blanket holding for comfort; hair in the drain; the noise of bricks thrown in a wheelbarrow; the hiss of steam from a gas main; walking past old houses looking.

Poem of two years past inducted to the American Poets Society June 2003

Riflessione Di Voi In Italia.

Karmacropolis make up your mind.
East bound until swimming
Wash upon shores weightless
Fishing with food and no hooks.
Day bows into moonfilled night
Life walks and huddles with scarves,
Alley kisses cobblestone marbles
Saints smile from doorway arches,
While love leans against the wall.
Forgetting never the moment
Nor the full moon's mysterious caress,
Vowing returnal for the first time.
Gleaming beautifully without words
Breaking fog of dawn
Tunnels through the broken hillside
Lush of life's rooted churches
Feel God close to the ground.
Mama Maria in the Piazza
Look upon gazes of pity for some.
Neptune statue of lime green skin,
Fishes prophet, though not a man's.
Captivity for the sharks.
Unmistakable eyes reappear
Mistaking the distance between memory and touch.
Heart is to hot as the hands are too cold
Shivering inside wools of comfortable warmth
Moonlight shapes a path once again
Casting hazy gloss to the painting
Breathing the closest breath willing.
Wanting the closest, and waiting.

there's another pond
where fish don't belong
only bones of first year trees
they grow within
at the base of my legs to my knees

You wear those kind of hats that tilt ever slightly with the perfect brim listing to one side of your head. Your neck is so skinny that your collar chokes off thought.

red ball in the front of the mirror in the ray of my last night sad in the time of forborn , so longing the middle it's backwards anyway I do say.

we've spoke of circles before/in the back of barns over coffee and rolled arms/cannibal miners have turned vegetarian/where's the beef on your palate now?/mrs. carterwig is stuffed with children up to her britches/I saw her tongue-in-cheeking me talking to single ms. apple/who said you weren't the one and only?/ten thousand repeated sentences for bad behavior two years before/and I'm only sorry for what was not/you've all gone and got scared and bought houses/"the past is still here, we're just choking on our own blood now"