What's in a name?

My phone says the dainty white

star-shaped flowers beside the path

are named Fremont’s Deathcamas.

The blue-flowered ones

are Pacific Hound’s Tongue.

“what's in a name?”

Oh much more than scent.

John C Fremont, the explorer

the so-called Pathfinder

has dozens of species named

after him, the avid collector

on his Western expeditions

in California, Nevada and Oregon.

Counties, cities, even mountains

are named after him and 

his frequent guide, Kit Carson.

Perhaps there should also be

some other locations named

after something else they collected,

murders and massacres. Like the

Sacramento River Massacre.

of close to a thousand people.

Participant Kit Carson later

called it “a perfect butchery”

Perhaps a monument to

the Klamath Lake Massacre,

or the Sutter Buttes Massacre.

The bright gleaming leaves

on the viridian underbrush

are fresh sprouting poison.

-oak. Like the golden

oak leafs that Army majors

wear on their collars. Until

they’re promoted to lieutenant

colonel. Then they go silver.

Like Colonel Korn, who was

assistant to Colonel Cathcart

in Catch-22. They decided

that only soldiers who

don’t ask questions

are allowed to ask questions.

You see a lot of interesting

forbs and sedges, shrubs

and flowers, on King Mountain.

And think about what's in a name.

Original Philz

In the plaza

stark with sun

and brushed aluminum,

she talks to him with hands and wiggles.

Cops loaded with gear, that old decor of guns,

and clubs and black uniforms lounge stroll

and strut real casual like. Armed authority.

They ignore the oung black men passing

 pliffs outside the World of Stereo shop.

it's white collar Wednesday at the strip club,

bring your own business card.

Payday loans are available

at United Nations plaza,

just across the street

from Tako Nako Java Xpress.

i'm listening to a song

played with hammers on steel

and banjos in a language i don't know

so why does it touch me like

the three penny opera songs do?

The scowling face of the BART train

accelerates from the light of the station

into the dark of the tunnel,

a mask becomes a pinpoint.

The barista at Philz on 24th Street is disgusted,

tells her colleague that she saw her boyfriend

with another woman in a on myspace.com

and still he lied until she said:

Dude, you were wearing the same outfit

you’re wearing right now.

I read in the paper this morning

that half a million unexploded cluster bomblets

are scattered all over Lebanon. The same kind

that are strewn all over Afghanistan?

The ones that look like toys or packaged meals?

Assorted Elvis Presley figurines strut

their Ed Sullivan or Las Vegas stuff

atop the ancient refrigerated cases in this cafe.

Paintings of rock stars on black velvet

and a sign in the window says:

learn to use art 4 justice.

i'm smitten by a painting of victorian mermaid

gazing over her shoulder while she pulls a comb

through her hair, a salmon tail wrapped round her ass.

I’m sinking into an ancient couch watching flies

go in and out the door,

Hieroglyphic overspray adorns the sidewalk

and you can eat tortilla-wrapped tongue and brains

at the little lighthouse taqueria on the corner where

a potato-bodied woman in a miniskirt and heels

ignores a muttering whiskered man who curses

and slams a newsrack stuffed with bannered words,

memorials to the numbered day of victimhood

and justification, -motherfuckers, they just......

A pair boots dangles overhead from a powerline

and a billboard asks: who is an outsider?

Spearmint twist

There was a time upon which

we once trusted God’s grace

and Abraham Lincoln’s face.

Stamped on the front side

of pennies hundreds of billions

of times, in bright copper

alloyed with zinc until

three grams of copper

was worth more than a cent.

Now they are a thin copper

plating over 97.5 percent zinc.

Like the gilded toilets and sinks

that adorn the president’s

residence in Florida and

Manhattan. He loves the glitter

believes that it hides

the dank sewage pumped

from the sump to the gutter

of his diseased mind.

One can find gold-plated

commemorative coins

with a raised clenched fist

and the slogan fight fight fight

on the reverse side of the coin.

Available on Etsy for $21.99

plus shipping. Discounted soon

to six dollars and sixty-six cents.

I’ve still got a jar full of pennies

on my desk, some are real copper

the brightest but lightest ones

are ersatz. Perhaps some day

they could be melted and reformed

into something useful.

Like the swords into plowshares

and spears into pruning hooks

as the prophet Isaiah foretold.

On the path

The sleepy mountain

awakes, sheds her veil

as the sun shreds

her midnight chemise

and the verdant chaparral

cloaking her shoulders

fills with the morning

twitters and trills

of courting birdsongs.

There are rivals to send

on the wing to other perches,

other sheltering bushes.

Foxes, bobcats, and hawks

to avoid, nests to construct,

the season’s urgency to begin.

My toe catches the root

of a madrone pitching me

towards the naked rocks

of the trail, but I grab

the skin-smooth red branch

of its sister and thank her.

The birds ignore me. Yes!

Great-tailed grackles

 Do great-tailed grackles

have a Spanish accent?

The hundreds perched

in the ficus trees along

the Alameda de Santa Lucia

Near the bus station

In Antigua, Guatemala

Shout, Si, si, ¿Nos oyes?

But when we fly up

to Marfa, Texas in April,

we sing like Willie Nelson, with

a cowboy twang and crackle.