Crossroads

Jimmy coasts up

to the crossroad.

A crow sits atop

the sign.

Left road goes

to Armageddon,

right goes to

the newly

constructed

national prison.

Straight ahead

the eastern sky

is blackening,.

nightfall beckoning,

with the pink

and yellow glow

of a slot machine

palace where

the house wins

ninety nine times

out of a hundred.

Crow dances left,

bobs right,

flips around

and thrusts his beak

towards the gleam

on the horizon.

Jimmy figures

that his odds

are better at the slots

and eases forward

across the intersection.

As he passes,

the crow chuckles,

squirts a crap,

and flies off

to a cozy nest

where the western

sun is reddening

into night.

We invest our souls and dreams in stone:

We invest our souls

and dreams in stone:

the ten admonishments

Moses brought down

from the mountain,

the silk-shrouded one

we circle in the square

of the Great Mosque in Mecca.

The walls that seek

to seal the empires

from influence, barbarians

and strawberry harvesters.

The prayers we slide between

the limestone blocks that remain

of the Second Temple.

The standing Buddha

that the Taliban tried to erase 

with cannons could not eclipse

the billions carved and cast

that have comforted and consoled

the millions through the centuries.

We prize the eternally incorruptible

property of gold, but it never

touches the heart like the current

that ran through me

when I kissed the marble slab

that covers Jesus' tomb.

Pharaohs and emperors,

party general secretaries,

and generals on bronze horses

aspire to outlast

the strange creatures

limned in the Burgess shale.

Will they even last as long

as the humble rotund Venus figurine

carved from a Mammoth tusk

in the Pleistocene?

Does Lincoln now gaze sadly

up the Mall at the Capitol

where lesser men scrabble

for loot and booty?

Memory will not preserve

their battle like the wasp

and spider trapped in amber

a hundred million years ago.

We surely have a date

with some future mute

insensate stone,

a collision with some lump

arced our way by Jupiter's

slingshot. It's happened before.

Some years ago I had

the pleasure to see

the mineralized, desk-sized

skull of a Triceratops

that covered all of a big table top

locked in an obscure storeroom

of the Earth Science Building at Cal.

He never saw the Chicxulub

asteroid coming. We probably will.

Perhaps some Eve and Adam 2.0

will gaze in wonder at whatever remains

of cities half devoured by jungles

or drowned beneath the waves.

I look each day at a smaller wonder,

a fossilized leaf I split from a layer

of Eocene silt that sits, placidly,

beside the monitor on my desk.

A message received:

all life is by chance

and sometimes by chance,

rendered in stone.

Winter solstice innovations

There's someone under

that thick synthetic plaid

on some kind of improvised

sleeping pad.

Man or woman unrevealed,

head nestled on a stained

white vinyl office chair

tipped on it's back

that does double duty

as a pillow and a dolly

for his or her possessions:

goodwill boots and shopping bags.

Second block, second sleeper,

upright soft skin suitcase

unzipped so the sleeper's

head is sheltered in the suitcase

from the pre dawn December

wind - which has whipped

the golden ginko leaves

off the street trees

and sprinkled them

festively on the man or woman

hidden under a blanket 

with his or her head

snuggled in the

once upon a time

smart and stylish

carry on nylon luggage.

Body of evidence

That lips remember

more than toes,

for that kiss

purchased with betrayal

for a moment's bliss.

That half a century

can be dissolved

by the scent

of orange groves

on late april nights.

That warm arms

are more comforting

than well meant words.

That our world begins

and ends

-at the boundaries

of our skins.

That the scar on my left knee

from a farm house tumble

still itches when the weather is

as hot and dry as that 

summer in the valley day.

That I have to mute the radio

if certain songs come up

before tears steal my vision

and my throat.

That I can only fly in dreams

but I still recall the fall

when the branch of the cottonwood

snapped

and I landed on my back

breathless, alive, unhurt.

Lead Story

Back in those days of Brylcreem and chrome

and linebackers breaking bones,

and Gordon's doubles to wash away

the troubles of the day,

lead was in the cheerful pink paint

on baby's bedroom walls and toys,

and the infinite blue skies were full of the sweet stink

of premium fortified with tetraethyl lead

and Marshall Dillon outdrew the bad guys

hit 'em with his .45 right between the eyes

in Dodge City, Kansas alias Melody Ranch,

just north of Los Angeles where it was always noon,

then downed a shot of rot gut

at Miss Kitty's Long Branch Saloon.

(a CBS soundstage down

Highway 99 in Studio City.)

Meanwhile, in a tiny Hollywood shop,

on Santa Monica Boulevard

Eugene Stoner and his assistants,

Jim Sullivan and Bob Fremont

crafted the embryonic Armalite AR-15.

The requirement was a weapon

that could pierce a steel helmet

at 500 yards. The Army didn't like it

but the Air Force did, especially Curtis-

bomb-em-back-to-the-stone-age-LeMay.

Marshall Dillon, Hoss and Paladin,

Rowdy Yates and Maverick

kept the small screen blazing

with their six-shooter Colts

and we all gathered round

the blue glow in the living room

as they faced off out in front

of the saloon and Miss Kitty

waited patiently, and the poker players

watched from the wooden sidewalks

and we all knew how it would end

because the good guys always got the drop.

And the bad guys were bank robbers

and rustlers, not wife beaters and fanatics.

You could tell 'em by their hats.

For His Majesty Rama IX

I dressed in black

for the midnight flight

and black was all

I packed.

to join the reverent

mass convened

in love and sorrow

for the fallen king.

Lancome and Prada

vanished from

the giant screens

above the plazas

and the small ones

on the Skytrain.

Instead they streamed

the solemn funeral

procession as

the golden royal chariot

bore the golden urn

to the golden crematorium.

And the people clad in black

gathered in the shelter

of the lotus-crenelated walls

of the grand palace

watched and wept

in the morning

sun and shadow

as the chariot

pulled by two hundred

men dressed in red

rolled so very very slowly,

sadly, to the final site.

By dusk, the black tributaries

of mourners had swollen

through the streets

and alleys to the parks

and temples, the squares

and monuments, the streams

became rivers pooling at the places

where they waited for hours

to place sandalwood flowers

on the ceremonial pyres

in honor of His Majesty

and his life.

And I thought about

one of his projects

that we had visited

a few years ago,

where coffee and melons

and cucumbers

and other good things

had replaced the poppy.

A rainstorm had suddenly descended

so we dashed under a shed

and watched the rain

bounce like diamonds

on the pavement.

And just as suddenly

it stopped and steamy vapors

drifted up into the trees.

He was a kind and good man

dedicated to his people

and they to him.

my favorite images of the king

are the one where he

was playing a saxophone,

and the one with his faithful camera

and his finger poised in thought.

another tale from the trash bin on the corner

he's standing there.

next to the trash bin on the corner.

unsteady, kind of shaky on his feet.

breathing through his mouth.

worn out jeans.

rubber handled pliers in his back pocket.

flipping through a magazine

resting on top of the bin.

one page at a time. quickly.

turn turn turn. lick a finger. turn.

his hands tremble badly.

he struggles to turn the pages.

keeps at it. every single page.

until he gets to the last page

and puts the magazine

back in the trash bin.

he walks across the street.

old man shuffling steps.

barely makes it before

the signal changes.

i want to know what magazine

was so compelling, what feature

was he searching for?

so i retrieve it and have a look.

the cover is gone, but i turn the pages.

ad for kohler fixtures.subzero refrigerators.

a story about a japanese style house

in the mountains of north carolina.

leviton smart lighting controls.

a glass house floating above silicon valley.

a window that incorporates a fireplace.

a young woman dressed for vogue or cosmo.

the footer on the pages

identify this magazine

as the september/october 2017

issue of dwell magazine.

Eeny meany miney mo

The finger of catastrophe and miracles

is playing eeny meany miney mo.

Itchy on the trigger or teasing

with a tickle, the unsuspecting

never expecting to be torched

or tossed or spared.

Prayers on the wind

climb high with the embers

hoping that God or Fate remembers

that mercy sometimes requires

a finger on the wheel.

what you hear

all the lyrics

that i hear

now sound

apocalyptic.

but when the sun

hit the poplar trees

this morning

the wild parrots

screamed as usual.

for them i believe

it's a chorus

born of joy.

to us it sounded

like a ruckus.

the calendar

feels like a clock,

the unimaginable

coming round and round

at the stroke of midnight

as we begin each day

in darkness, waiting

for the dawn,

in faith that it will come.

and the light will shine

on blood and flowers,

and sparkle on the waters

and the towers

of this new babylon.

Reality street

The cold silver night

shone on the bars

of my own infant bed.

A junebug clinging

to the window screen

had a change of mind,

and flew across the moon.

The cool pillow warmed

beneath my cheek.

The world was still

too new to easily fall asleep,

but even junebugs

go somewhere to hide

before the burning

valley summer sunrise.

On the phone lines,

so high above

the clothes line

where mommy hung

daddy's shirts and sheets

a pair of mourning doves cooed.

A squad of ants

picked at the remains

of a snail,

it's doomed trail

from the night before

still glistening

on the coarse grass

that tickled the soles

of my feet.

Mommy dropped

a clothes pin so I seized it,

squeezed open the jaws,

and let them snap shut

on the wilting blossom

of a dandelion

decapitated

when Daddy mowed

the lawn the night before.

The doves on the phone lines

cooed and I cooed back,

the words I knew were few.

11:48

She's dressed for a morning

as cool as her childhood

village in Shandong:

warm trousers and a jacket

zipped up to her throat,

floppy-brimmed hat pulled low

over her bob cut silver hair.

Picks through the corner trash

receptacle with her practical

cotton garden-gloved hands.

Underneath the discarded leaves

of an office rubber tree plant,

she fishes out empty Mountain Dew

and Red Bull cans.

He, a white gloves firm lawyer

or hedge fund manager or CEO,

waits at the stoplight in his Bentley Continental.

Peers over his cheaters at her endeavors.

Guns his gleaming anthracite coupe

up the hill to take lunch

or treat himself to a nooner

when the signal surrenders

to his desire for green.

She crushes the cans beneath

her drug store athletic shoes

and stuffs them into a thirty gallon

woven plastic bag.

Redemption pays a nickel apiece

or by the pound. Twenty years

from now -properly invested-

she might have enough to buy

a Bentley for her grandson

to drive in her funeral procession.