Clouds, leaves, waves.

1984
Achilles/Tent

1.
The lagoon at night opens
upon the beach and stars.

A storm across the point
has knocked down trees
in the Magic Forest.
Waving branches are silver
lit by the moon.
Jovan drums a rhythm as
displaced fumes of oil flow.
Cormorants shiver in glimmering light.
Black rocks, hissing waves,
long grey clouds, reflect greenness
from the depths below.

Seaweed floats upward
to breathe at the surface.

2.
In the negative spaces
figures fly, torsos of light.
A house and cloud like spirit,
stars are from the sea of Moby Dick.
They shine on my mother’s longing.
Wandering the heavens,
soothing anxiety,
nature with no guardian.

Drinking without controls--
myth like in California. West
of all those other homes.
Tents set here, and whales sing
against that Christianity, as
culture wastes, older faith renews.
Ajax and Hector, silhouetted
on this urn, childlike Achilles,
in profoundest disappointment.

3.
A whale off the coast spouts and
heaves of prehistoric California.
Magueys are sharp-skinned. Pelicans
mirror jet trails from Vandenburg,
dyeing this half-lit dome green to violet.

Dozing on the sand--
a ground squirrel sniffs the air,
Waves, --boom, swish, gravel,
gravel, --boom, a seal slides
wet from the sea, climbs out on
elbows, --ridiculous, absurd.

An airplane overhead X’s a cross,
tourists landing to inspect the mission
in this sunny seaside town.

4.
Archetypal shaped spirits
as torsos, struggle, plunge,
release--
contemplating guilt, drunk
and whirling as a dervish, one--
plunging to depths-- drowned in lust,
fueled fires light the beach.

Black figures stand and stare
at shadows on the moon.
Philosophy, hardly biblical, is
powered by darkest boasts
the colors of Melville and Pollock.

5.
I’m painting on the beach,
the canvas lashed down
against the wind, tar
clods mix into the paint as
slashing...

There, another whale, there, see!

We talked about firing the pots,
Chumash like, against the cliffs.
Then, mentioning Club Louis and
Angus, we talked of Manhattan Art,
"Christophe..." this, and "Christophe..." that,
“Yeah, call Angus he’ll get you out.”

I throw down my brushes.

L.A. Hell, nowhere to go,
3 a.m. face down in a Galaxy Ford,
like Crane, driving from
Hades to that tunnel, thrown
out of that devil’s mouth into the
ocean’s free cleansing blue.
In the rear view --reflecting sunglasses.

6.
Greek pots like nuclear shapes
the earth a broken vessel,
tossing the shards,
a pessimism growing
beyond good and evil,
our hearts--
are of this darkness.

Striding the beach...
peeling back the canvas,
entering the tent, falling to tripod,
exhausted downward weight--
“the wrong doing of Agamemnon!”
black eyes melt the wall,
sinking-- Achilles tumbling,
gasping at round about horrors.

a thought of --Thetis! Arriving,
a hand to his head
and release, to peaks of tent--
universe and stars, shining.

7.
Cormorants make their flight
north, through wave troughs
like the jets above. Pelicans
rehearse on up draughts, reflecting
hue on under wings,
intimately soft.

The rocks of the beach,
were like the reeds painted
at the lagoon, elemental.
A theme silhouetted
that we understood-- as
looking at Andromeda,
the swirl in Orion’s belt,
frogs croak (“in puddles
that bathed the stars.”)

Heading towards the tent,
the sky revolves-- in order,
the sun setting and
the full moon rising, predictably.

8.
Swoosh-- a stripe, immense
drunkenness, sex and death
seeking the sublime in America.
Flashing lights and fires smoking,
battling as Quixote with windmills,
grinding. Night dueling Titans
shake the earth, the gyres of hawks
declare the sense of ending.

A target-- Blam!
flat against the void
struck down, smashed
staggering to one’s feet.

Granite pyramids peak in darkness,
seasons rotate in an arc
tracing a Book of Hours,
Ding-- a-- ling... going down,
speeding through
pornographic palaces in Vegas,
the western desert’s hell,
the hawks go round.

There! a philosopher’s moon setting
in the canyon, cracked Indian spirits flee.

9.
The fires on the beach,
silhouetted forms in black wetsuits
heroic, from another age.
Shadows blazoned on cliffs,
voices whisper, here and then--
video and photos flash,
that we were here, alive tonight.
A plane blinks in the dark,
we look for the moon to rise,
platform Holly flashes like a cake
on the horizon.

She told of Ed Ricketts and
further away places in Mexico,
The Sea of Cortez, I remembered,
striped snails and his saying,
“...that many of the inhabitants
of this region, could scarcely be taken
as obvious.” We saw figures
in the stars and then forgot.

10.
Nude in the magic forest,
through palms and pines,
looking for spiraling jetties--
Jackson’s designs on rocks
in Wyoming, swoosh-- to Nova Scotia
on this American odyssey...

The New York Times reports
of a poisoned earth,
we pick around the edges--
the terror invading our minds,
shell shocked.
Nuclear holocaust and worse deeds
committed by fathers,
on hands and knees searching,
proud of our stamina for pain --blinded
by the rockets bursting in our skulls.

“Darkness has no need
of aid from thee...”
stately moving in blinking lights,
a deer’s head severed, revolves
in a cyclone spiraling down, circling
as overlay, a hawk at Zenith
plunging Koyaanisqatsi--like
to a deeper consciousness...

wave tossed, catapulted foam and spray.

11.
Through fast moving fog,
landing, crashing
trying to prevent
a suicide in progress.

Isla Vista, there, so clear
the islands so fine,
I cannot remember
seeing them so vividly.
Were days always this nice?

The birds flittered and sang--
smelling smoke on my jacket
thinking of home, then
about when the Indians,
the Chumash, lived here.

Nude in the Magic Forest.
A dead palm among pines,
jays squabble, a crow caws--
an off shore wave, tossed thoughts
like thrown shapes striped.


1985
“...like a dream vaguely remembered...”

1.
The rape of the earth,
sexual horrors meld
figures escaping horizon
dissolve into a swoosh--
accidental figures,
Goyaesque, in an inkblot.
The woods an orgy of flesh--
on fire, the environs destroyed
turning to industrial belch,
crazed by injustice to this earth.

2.
“The eye is the first circle;
the horizon which it forms
is the second;”

Some solitude, a thought
comforting, then anxiety...
the Universe
this Wonder

“...older than nature itself?”

God? some newly arrived at idea?

Are answers what I want?
What are the questions?

“...in a dream vaguely remembered,”
finding a place in the painted stain,
the allegorical overlapping paint--
what the Rorschach contains.

Two figures journeying towards a vase.

3.
A Tent and Stars
thoughts racing through
a cosmological place,
emersion in space-time
stripes and circles
fragment a forest mind,
a swirl through stars,
the universe bleeding through
the shadows flickering in tents.

The vase on the horizon,
the ideals of ancient reality,
Truth and Belief
stand in my mind,
guiding me through.

a subterranean Swoosh--

4.
Three Mile Island torsos
curve black to white,
sky in water, water in sky.
A watery waste dripping,
a jet shrieking across the sky.
Negative space comes fore
and shell’s spiralling astral order
presents natural histories,
gods-- evolving
new metaphors growing
in points of light.

The rude carcass of a cow gives life to another.
A sunset wide, on the windy beach signals--
another day’s end.

5.
What is really known?
anything? Knocked from a wave,
tumbling in surf, not grasping
which way is up, Heaven-- to light?
No more air, through seaweed around
my neck, gasping--

...from a hilltop among the pines
contemplating the lagoon and
stripes painted flat on canvas.

6.
A summer’s shell held up to the sun,
memories fading of Nova Scotia,
now inaccessible, so north.
In this older East-- acid rain
drifts from a newer west.
Pacific seaweed, still fresh in my mouth.

7.
Oh, please don’t ruin it all--
to compare my dreams with others,
my own golden bough staining dream
like landscape... Bang-- target, circles,
continuums of life and death, reflected.

“Mother Nature” the pregnant pot
fingered and used,
a cynical system is set,
ancient and future flatten to grey.

These stripes seem sexual
targets, a deer’s tail flickers
to the fore
sexual presence in the
landscape searching for
continuity...

8.
Achilles emerging
fighting for priority, flashing
there, for Pallas, here.

an insubstantial thing
without a face
a form imaginatively drifting
through purpling haze
through nights of grainy realities.

A time and measure, repeating
variations on the
North Star, Etoile Polaire
weaving ideas
through warp and weft,
life rotating outward.

9.
Crows caw, call from above.
This vase is a bomb,
a dark situation in Los Angeles,
another drunken evening,
where would this slippage take us?
Living in fear and confusion--
Confusion the content, deeper
I go, how to understand
this poem, these paintings
dark as these, “stars
shining on the watery floor.”

I take up this road of fright
What was this? what was I attracted to?
is life? love? ...amongst this wreckage?
sunk in radioactive clay?
A book upside down on the beach,
at death’s final bell...

Were we not happy?
at day break? through birdsong?
Dreaming,
now waking up to worse--

10.
reaching a bottom, swoosh--
in a forsaken place,
no salvation here, in desperation
reaching for Gideon’s Bible
in the drawer, The 23rd Psalm,
trumpets at hand--

the Psalm ripped out, scrambling to
remember an idea of order
in this universe, but
there are no moral horizons,
no capitalized words like God.

A vase small in the distant blue,
Olympian rings-- shells and spires
of worms seeking beyond exteriors.

11.
Vase, Cloud, Universe.

the spilled paint... swoosh--
the shells curving geometrically
toward their golden mean,
wondering of the origin of
this design?

no hand to guide,
losing the string to follow back.
summoning courage to go on.
I, a modern man in search of a soul!
Homeric glory and shimmer...

12.
A woman with clothes
blowing in the wind.

The spectator demands meaning, here!

The wind continues as
the ground revolves
a battlefield of figures,
thrown towards light,
waking, one far off,
illusive and discontent...

“...around every circle another can be drawn,
that there is no end in Nature,
but every end is a beginning... and
under every deep a lower deep opens.”

A figure in the landscape working.

13.
The works and days
upon a frieze,
between the heavens and hells
inherent in our minds,
the longed for lands--
this toppled vase,
gathering the pieces,
putting it together, again
not wanting to ask, why?

Mimicking the world
painting the patterns
flat and round
the many horizons
and artifacts found,
going around in circles
all the year,
with the earth.


1986
Woman with Clothes Blowing in the Wind

1.
Spirit,
a feeling of oneness
with unknown mysteries
between the form and the content
this layered painted space.

A romantic poetic,
evolutionary progressions
of nature, an orphic journey
towards tenor.

2.
“The ruin or blank that we see when
we look at nature, is in our own eye.”

Figures form against my will
in moralities of humanity,
in unconscious motion, the ground
a swoosh-- separating figure
from place,
not looking for hierarchy
but in the play between things
looking into the smear
a repetition of the beginning,
lost meanings encoded in paint.

floods of information --glut!

...suicide notes,
religious tracts
strewn along the trail.

3.
Reconciling perceived opposites,
apprehending reality in differing aspects
of continuous and discontinuous motion,
the ongoing, texts of time--
and the frozen timeless moments.

A painting machine for the suppression of time.

A relational world,
vertical symbols, newly formed
metonymies
traveling horizontally, like beetles.
The clang of creating--
rebellions echo.
Giants trod the unconscious moment
flashing, sender to perceiver.
Creating our world, now!
Not the frozen, established
scheme of values set.
Nietzsche’s spectators
creating messages, yet unrecorded.

4.
Not a preordained world
we create as we go, then
turning a corner--
a recognition! looking up!

...horizontal figures pulling ropes
nocturnes, turnings of the mind...

Stop!
figures of form
figuring content
unified fields, recapturing ground--

but we live in a broken world
without understanding or exclamation
for the gap between,
the cognitive and the perceptual,
in the valley we live.

Unconscious and sprawling
the paint itself finding figures,
Onomatopoeia like pigment
extending the originally appropriated
words from images seen
rearranged-- in differing combinations.

What a view from here!

5.
the Wind, swoosh--

On a hill far away,
the wind blows--
an old rugged cross,
the run-on-text, through
the cruciform of the canvas,
a floating consciousness
a textual skein framing a
formal square (both framed and
in between) a fabric of God?
existing not of golden material
but of simpler metaphor.

6.
Nebulous shapes in space
un-named,
seek a surface, close up,
read, examined for what information
they might contribute.

The story of a shield,
the young brave dreaming
his name
naming one’s reality.

dreaming painting

7.
Wood grain, a swirl of water,
the sky and the ground
reflecting nature’s history,
a space of mythic poetry
the search, a worship
before religion.

Against a wall, falling back
and down--
(form censoring content in this
moments balance)
the blade drags the pigment,
close to the origin of paint.

The meaning becomes a place to
pause, to sink, a haven--
What! ...no attraction!
up running,
Onward!

8.
A new deeper space
opens goes back
gets distant
then, contradicted by an edge
banged back to a surface
(from a dream) reverberating
a present past is forwarded.

This figure is alienated
from its relation to the ground
it becomes the ground, one in
creating its own meaning,
a larger responsibility in this world
creating oneself.

God, as the reality of this
picture plane, the death of God
and the break-up of the
surface-- this imperfect reality.

9.
back to Achilles
the vagabond as the subject,
Achilles gone off
trekking
through the natural world,
back to come forward
inchworm in time--
black fields of space and
dreams of mythical figures,
attaching to striped grounds.

10.
A gold finch on a thistle,
a silent detached emptiness--
watching through binoculars.
Drawing the coast of California.
Inside, from the wind--
thistle down, streaming
looking for attachment,
yellow and red stripes, a shield
(dreaming from the black)
now, set upon this surface,
I watch all come to relationship.

Seeking truth relative to my name,
meandering, walking about.

11.
Equating a self to this landscape.
The train winding along the sea,
thoughts gone over
through spume, then distilled
attached and coupled, moving
banging, snaking along
flashing there, here...
evening comes, things change
as night unfolds,
new mysteries.

Reading Plato and Aristotle in the landscape.

12.
Chumash Indians in the Sierra
Nevada, at the time of Goya
painting, Women with Clothes
Blowing in the Wind--
tumbling through Sierras in Spain
a dry warm wind of inclusion,
swirling, whirling gyres of winding
reeds, generators of thought
and shells transmitted
through a projectors beam,
shadows of figures
on the tent’s walls

the branches and stars
were framed in the window,
the negative space
came forward and the
leaves went back--
the stars seemed
to be the atoms of the leaves,
all as one.

13.
Why am I always going back
to a string? laid out
running back again to check the path.

Why one or the other? we can
see meanings side by side.
Moral ideas ingrained, stopping me, I’m--
(who says there is no sanctioned belief?)
fighting this system in place.

14.
the leap of a crow
and night falls from the
sky, the entertainer plays on...
in the wind, struggling
drawing in the landscape
immersed
then, struggling out
to see what is found
looking into this multi-layered
water, to see...

that evening, mother
at Poxabogue pond
in the silent fog of the
street light, no cars.

15.
Painting is alive, shadows remain.

I, I repeat it over,
God, I repeat it over
and over, the sign--
running from behind
painting, obsessively
like a mind on its death bed
what was seen that one had liked
stopping to check a blue--
Giotto’s sky.

Here, see this, Look!
wanting to bring the
wild landscape to the City
to feel it in the head
to have both worlds
as one,
a tangled weed
cleared by a sun and blue.

16.
The mother’s face
the reason for the poem.

Within the frame,
searching for--
amongst the junk
of stellar streaming activity,
comes a blank
in this search for soul.

a Pollock and a Newman
at the Museum of Modern Art.

I fear being a part
of this Universe
I’m passing through,
fear fitting too well
into the puzzle
figuring it out? I can see
the opposite just as well.

The earth is mapped
no Paradise to be found,
escaping the horizon
looking back,
from the moon
divisions of a planet, blur
into one.

trying to understand
myself,
this deep romanticism,
where is she?

17.
How can I depict Nature as radical?
from the origin
always the extreme--
seeing Nature only as Death!
any design? there is mine--

a glimmer returns
something one might
look forward to
new futures, as others die
new realities composed.

18.
my rope
from the outer world
found again, diving...

The Last Idea has
a certain distinction,
so one goes on.

19.
This sadness, a distance
from the object,
an abyss we fall into as
the abstraction becomes
symbol,
distanced from the object felt,
remembered but unseen
in the far
abstracting of dusk.

Tying a string to a tree
on the picture plane and
going back
into space wondering
and stepping away...

the universe of forms
used in repetition, spawn
new meanings, in a swerve--
another day, unlike the
last.

20.
The old woman’s clothes
blown in patterns like shells
thrown through beams of light,
whirling in a wind that
rushes through reeds,
Swoosh--
the stain of purple paint,
peering into the layers
the striping wind in the mind,
equating our thoughts thrown
on walls, gathering skirts
against the universe,
on the high hill of an older time.

Back into the valleys, wandering
the cord winding through the paths,
surfaces toward the sun,
as day’s work is past.

Now hear!
feeling the wind on my face,
eternities exposed in fusion, or
a tearing apart
the breaking of the vessel
thrown to the earth,
creating keener sounds
coaxing stubborn meaning,
a certain satisfaction in
glimpses of a picture
to Behold!


1987
Zuni/ Goya

1.
A blank-- storming
in an eternal wind.

Gilgamesh roaming the hills
with wild beasts...

Between thought and vision
colliding perceptions.
Art recognizes symbol
as the sparrow lights,
wheels turning within.

Looking back from the moon
to the earth as heaven,
the new hero is us,
our shield displays
the inside
worn on the out.

The earth, tail in mouth
turns back on itself,
going back to
move forward, cycling...
a Zuni-- wind returns.

2.
The lines of literature
extend landscape’s distance--
coming back to a surface, flat!
Meanings are generated,
driven home --bang!

A cosmology in a Greek pot
universes and figures
patterns winding through,
a king snake wriggling
bands of black and white
a shining light
a hovering, breathing
mandala...

the canvas as figure,
the stretcher as bone
fabric as skin
the realization
presents itself, like Apollo
or the plain sun.

A second still, a sparrow flits,
now dawn--
repeating, anxiety begins
again and wains
geometrical wanderings
blur into confusion.
Order is sought, in the system
of demise.
Life to a blank, a blank for a heart.
A leek, a turnip, sop-- the earth
acid from poetries, turning
blank as the death,
we contain within

flags of the life, we project--
smashing those images,
Loud sound and, Push!
the surface! the prize!

not trading in gold
but a finer sense
in metaphor,
tinting a space...

3.
Indian twilight

rhythms of space in
skeins of consciousness.
no figure ground--
within and without, all-over
design like
Jackson’s peeing stroke, --exhaling
breathing and
absorbing, Universes.

Achilles dreaming
an original name,
spiralling continuously
finding his name in the painting.

Leaves blown, flowers bloomed
these echoed xeroxed images
projected in light, disintegrate
and reform into abstract shapes,
evolving, transferring images through
light, distance, and time.

Fragments like quartz in the desert.
Winter shells, pirouetted Goyas
fragment and crystallize, a cycle
of one-- an ever cycling Gaia
of earth.

4.
In the evolutionary soup
myths spell subconscious minds,
man struggles through dreams
to reach a day.
A godlike thingness, a
structure of thought--
a vertical form.

Subjects line up in a narrative
horizontal journey
cataloging, ordering
stringing along,
swoosh and stripe,
reaching for intelligence
in dark forms.

A windswept road
cloaked meanings exposed
in wind--
Zuni flags flash,
resultant light!

5.
Back to front-- snap
to surface taut
attention
ta-- dah! then flat, again
on one’s face,
no landscape of final truth.

Zuni/ Goya

a Chevrolet, song on the radio
“...see the USA...”
a shield overlays the landscape
it floats in space
a decal on the windshield,
a recognition.

some sort of Epiphany?
spot of time, stop.
Coming to surface...

6.
As God was real
the landscape
anchored a reality.
As God is dead
the land floats afar,
but look,
a bud again-- this Spring!

...fearing we would someday
tire of looking at this?
Sunset,
the whispering of birds?

7.
...dreaming a name, a shield
banging-- to light!
yellow flags! flashing,
awake!

The shell’s mirroring
of the universe, is the universe.
Don’t I? see myself
this beautiful spiralling effect,
a shell in my hand held
to the sun, squinting.

8.
trailing off into the woods
by the reeds a reflective pond,
a breeze ripples the surface
ongoing, text of time, the wind
increases

the sparrow alight--
a coming alive, noticing sign.

The Indian said,
“where the bird stops, there the god is.”

a resultant light!

9.
Again, returning, then
running ahead
rolling the ball of string
from the cave, the tunnel
a signaling at the end?

...continuing to roam the steppe
like a hunter...

Why this crucifixion--
Why this forsaken distance?
lightening flashing all around
searching lights mount the sky,
broken mirrors reflecting
aspects of the self
looking for a universal
in the purple dark.

An endless chain of rings,
a journey through the night,
a monument
off on a horizon,
trudging on between
junk of evolutionary husks
thrown off.

10.
A bush twirling in a cyclone
burning light, clothes in tatters
whipped into flames, a train run away--
all contained in images
etched in metal, melting pages
of disasters flip
in the winds of war
our minds reflect the sky,
images through beams
thrown to surface,
(new in 1987) Stop--
once more, “Oh, just once more”
the only wish
a kid on a sled wanting
to do it, again!
just once more in Winter.

A figure on the horizon

11.
Dreaming the original
as we dream our own creation.
Life offering the possibility
to extend ourselves as far
as we dream...

of Susquehannas, and
Brooklyn Bridges...Pacific Oceans...
realities cycling to abstractions
stopping time, surfacing
in other dreams
spaces of other myths
other structures, bits and pieces
of nature ordered--

a snake, black and white
many lives before, slinking along
remembered.

12.
I am painting watercolors now,
of birds and flowers.

Culture against nature, (death)
grey grids of darkened
apartments, far from any wood,
still sharing the same fate.

13.
whispering,
Art is not Nature.
what is this equation
between nature and art?

...surging upward
breaking the surface
the prize grasped in his teeth!

Lights shine, mandala spins
all into one
a crystal light
flashes!
“This is the Truth!”
Coming from the darkness
still quite dim
we mutter, no--
stand up and shout,
this is it!
this Truth!

...naked, looking down at
tatters
the wind, the burning bush in
swirls of stripes,

a flashing flag signals, Here!


1988
“...like the leaves themselves turning...”

1.
Rising to the surface,
this questioned self,
a face of nature, juxtaposed
to this inner world, and between--
the play of light,
shapes and delineation
among the leaves.

2.
Looking back over a shoulder
to Europe-- Italy, France
that year, watercolors
of atmospheric sunsets, diffused
as in an older time,
an ancient fig leaf,
this leaf of the vine--
twirled between fingers
in Italian Cities,
older than California towns.

“My, I thought... I thought
I knew what a painting could be.”
Looking at Tintoretto,
mirrored from the ceiling.

one keeps writing
or it goes away,
making what was wanted of life
to see even a glimmer
in watercolor.

3.
Later that year, traveling an orbit
from New York to California
on the road through the desert,
holding unnamed leaves
up to the sky.
Trying to relate old to new,
the sun revolving towards the west.

An honest soul--
“There are real things to know!”
What of the innocence ...gone?
the Sincerity and Authenticity,
I once read.

A sunrise followed by sunset
a glimmer of the original
light, yellowing.

4.
Overlays of doubt
are resurrected
only to die into elegy
striping vibrations
of life and death.

A surface hardened by repetition
becoming by shade
meaning less, distanced like Art.

but this distance feels like more!
the introspection gives comfort.
the desired object, with breath
creates anxiety...

growing used to reproduction, like
another drug, or bauble...
diversion from the real thing...

sunset’s Armageddon
old dreams,
the desires of Italian Cities.

5.
Domination of black,
the leaves themselves, turning
in the wind, the same wind
through transparency which
the swallows weave--

through a church in Paestum
a blue window carved
within an ancient
shape of belief.

the poem
the icon
the man

This poem of death--
“I don’t know...” I write, go on
it is a poem of cycle like
the weather, the seasons--
life itself, civilizations
returning hope
in another revolution,
drawn through
the dazzle of leaves.

6.
Watching herons that fall,
in mindless moments
grief rises--
the heron ascends from the marsh
in elegiac sunsets,
the black and white
through a duality
achieving a beyond--
of good and evil
between
their forms,
(vessels for cargo) --flare.

a theory of earth’s warming,
the water-birds dance of death,
this sexual scene, seek to continue
a tradition, giving a depth,
to the Western oleander.

7.
The sunset
twilight glimmering,
in negative spaces the stars
spectrum of shade,
the reasons of the psyche
in the shadow
coming out of the ground
moving against the stripe
rejoining, in another shape...

8.
turning to the moon
old questions--
distancing in sunset,
a planet shining
in the dull light,
a symbol’s passage,
easing through revolution.

Italian Cities

Summer’s grapes grow
quick on the hills of Vesuvius,
Oleander pictured on the shapes
of vases in cool shade,
the swallows arabesque through,
the window’s shape.
Paestum’s seaside Greeks are
blue in the humid haze,
the black shapes of bent women
are hunched against time,
the sculpture of a bronzed
wrestler stares with ivory eyes...
Bernini’s angels rise in memory,
a bridge in Rome.

9.
Back in New York
at summer’s ending.
News of a power plant’s seething,
the bridges’ steel rusting,
a liquid sunrise
on a fire escape sprouting sumac,
city sparrows cry for seed,
a Great Blue Heron on the river, lost?
a lone woman on the desolate street,
yells up to
an empty building--

10.
turning west to
clear autumn sunsets
in my always dreaming,
Californian town.

remembering-- the quiet lagoon
the sea beach, a white
bird searching in shadows
under a bridge
cerulean, in the cool shade
seen, through anise weeds...

seaweed splayed in the sand
a pattern of stones
(not wanting to leave)
standing beside the cross
on the headland
watching the red fade.

11.
...coming back
to write it all down.
Thankful for a gift,
he made a giant,
what he desired to be,
from the abstract and
molded to human form, cycling--
through full consciousness, blooming--

immersing oneself
into a space, opening and
dying into--
the sea, recalling memory of
the icy blackness,
water rushing under bridges,
dancing lights
far away, that arm waving...

12.
he murmured something
of the falling leaves--
and turned the pages
forgetting

the part or parcel of God,
(this reality), the cosmos,
the ordering we call our World,
sprinkled with gods, unformed
though surrounding us--
jutting from the sand
an ancient foot.

We are free
to belong or not,
but under our soles,
alone he remains,

I like the sound of it...
but walk off--
lots of questions of this
not be understood,
shaking a shaggy head
of snakes.

Goya looming behind
translucent thoughts, overlaying
the leaves, the cries, the blank--
graffiti eats away,
the mud and fallen leaves
the snowman returning...

13.
That’s what Art was,
who struggled beyond
that despair
painted the flower,
the leap, tugging
harder, now longer--
coming, jumping from
the water almost free...

but hooked. A conscious line back--
rising to the-- Ripples
vanish in the fog,
life giving mysteries

14.
going over the shapes
of our minds, forming
the world,
what we can see.

The merging of mind and object,
to fall into
the privileged moments,
as spots of time,
becoming part of, parcel,
a transparent eye, seeing--
the flower becomes one with the stars.


1989
“...surrounded by choral rings...”

1.
The “C” before the chorus,
the panorama unfolding
run-on, texts of time,
heads tumbling, roll
through shell’s spiraled
drawing, a Zuni's
woven chevron is presented.

From the incision
between colliding spaces
purple blood, spills--
beneath imaginings into
layers of greying stripe,
through Goya’s hatching
ascending twirl
a stripe to reach
back to the immediate.

then, like gods
having become symbols,
they degenerate to religious
tracings, far from
original experience.

I’m packing up my paints and brushes,
going out to paint
just appearances
again, at Barcelona Neck.

2.
A cosmos of rings, beyond
a circle of flowers, here.

This present clarity is a
sacred moment,
a moment soon to be
remembered,
framing this presence, the past
and emerging future.

Goya and shells,
leaves (from trees on
Apennine hills of Rome)
and snowflakes, (other objects
of psychological weather)
generating rock crystals,
of distance giving birth to--

Zuni light!
the symbolic, vertical
juxtaposed to
horizontal traveling stripes

3.
Someone stands up!
with fire
a revelation revealed
through the leaves
exposed with torch,
histories and layerings,
original artifacts of power,
distant from
the xeroxed reproduction

the leaves cry-- on.

Long Island color--
deKooning is on my mind,
his immediate
hard won, delineated shapes...
the chalky color
not unlike the fresco
that lingers from Arezzo.

4.
A flower rises
romantically
through the rings
of water
downward
reaching
upward
inside-- out

one hears a scrawny cry

5.
Listening to the birdsongs
the warblers out on the Island,
This Spring finding flowers to draw
and broken conch shells,
a fisherman and a black dog
chasing nested birds out on the point,
riding on a bike by the narrows
of Nappeague,

a pine warbler’s song heard in the air
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.

6.
Last winter, for two cold weeks,
I was sick, for warmth enclosed in a box
within our darkened loft--
today, I’m on the beach reading...

in the twilight Spring
the birds twitter,
awakened birdsong
in a brightening sky,
an osprey’s cry, circles the
blue. A purple iris
blooming first, a stately beginning
like a fairy tale, coming
to new life
a parade to unfold into Summer.

The pale underbelly
of a spring flounder, darts--
a finch, twits, here-- then,
cocking its head to
listen--
flowers bloom.

7.
A slow start to summer,
a cold moment at the window,
watching the rain beat, standing
looking out at smeared
reflections, the chill of winter
lingering, the night comes
as early killdeers cry,
taking in the wide sunset.

two days, two lilies

Western memories fade
that landscape greying
in the spring’s fog,
a lagoon far away...

I missed it, saw nothing,
no gratitude for it
a pattern’s meaning
is its own reward,
a bird’s wing, flashes
fish glint, a school shifts direction,
a design stands out.

8.
carrying out the old shield,
a name calling--
a cry for meaning
of who I am.

leaving the city, the winter is over
remembering the city
as, I remembered the country,
then...

the sticky sidewalks, coke and
chewing gum, sticking,
that woman from the shadows, calling--
bums passed out in piss,
a suffocating human stew
of filth, a dirty bird hops
on a single foot--

I’ve seen this all from different
angles, spaces between it and I
changing in perspective and season.

I’m leaving because I am able,
a cool breeze in the underground
of the subway,
the train lurches--
slows now, backs up
stop, lurches forward-- stops.

9.
“Sou- th-- hampton, Southampton,”
the conductor wakes anyone
sleeping,
opening on blue sky--
the trains signal, whistling.
The rhythm quickens--
grass fields and flowers
out the dirty window
into the warm friendly
waves of August.

A time for sunflowers and
days that string along
unconcerned...
the weather patterns tighten
into ninety degrees for forty days
of humidity, suddenly--
forecast of summer’s end
in a lightening flash!

Disturbed from painting,
a threatening cloud
blasts from the north,
a flash above
berries and reddish sumac,
goldenrod,
a red crisp sunset,
black geese beat time,
a swan crossing
the crescent moon.

10.
Telephone poles march
down the road, into the distance.
Grackles, flash up from feeding.

Desiring already, again
to put it all together,
some order
to that moment, seen.

A clear
moment
in the flower,
here!

a gross being alive
a thrown wave,
green and warm--

to think now of electric
plants buzzing
the city whine,
but to abandon that
is to die another way.

11.
Birds gone in fifty years?
We in another hundred?

Carrying a tradition to an end?
art as a flame to keep lit,
paint on!

Seeing order, in details,
valiant information, swoosh--
through the reeds, breaking up
the light’s design into
diamonds in the sky, drifting...

Then, worrying about the earth.

12.
As cycles flash, faster--

forgotten figures frozen as rock
feet in air, bellies exposed
eternally exploding,
the cries of peacocks,
planets appear outside the window,
satellites of revolving rings--

achieved moments
in marble are smashed.

13.
being angry and not wanting
to talk any more
to anyone--
then, trying again

Purple-ling Iris, into
orange Lily,
the yellow Sunflower,

...wandering, lonely as a cloud.
framing the moment--
by being there.

(God) or reality through imagination
defines and completes us.
(God) is really all these thoughts ordered
possibilities of conceiving--

enough of this obsessive, God stuff
try another angle, (but I’m destined
it seems to follow this through)

14.
One lily dies, another wakes.

the earth spins the future--
as flowers, present themselves.

Achilles shield reflects Zuni light!

15.
Dreams coming to fruition
a centered place blooms,
it is high noon!

style failing, a change of fashion
evening breaking into
stars-- waning light
surreal multi-facets
of original experience
reproduced.

The still life whizzes by--
a thing I desire to make
its content, at first sight
too suburban or
dumb and meaning well,
unaware of this
endangered world.
They don’t want to know
this smear

swoosh--

bugs bite and wind
blows the sand
(trying to paint)

16.
Curiosity and surprise,
putting it together.
Ordering, tropes--
metaphors as flowers
the gods revived, then dying
all in turning--

shells whirling, swoosh--
Goya, cycling by, striped
lost saints in the desert
deaf now, black looks
funneling to a vortex.

Gogo’s search for flowers
waiting for God
waiting
a game
Didi’s hope in the dark.

17.
Giving words to thoughts,
flowers to ideas
rising from within--

now, I want to go
to California
and paint the lagoon

The Sun, the Idea...
the carrot drawn before this burro.

A dream of
the lagoon in the sun,
swallows circling the reeds,
a magic realism,
thinking about St. Francis,
the birds he loved...
then, a rustling of the reeds,
a figure in the guise
of thoughts struggling to be free
returning, stepping into the fore.

18.
The herons cry as they dance,
the dream opens
on a brilliant light,
at the moment of life,
a touch of the bird’s breast
beating, a thought come
before dying, another coming of light--

wary of the soft blue bosom of the sky.

--a dove out of the mouth of
Joan of Arc, singing.

19.
Where blue sky reigns--
stories of nature re-invented
escaping to the west.

just wanting to get away
and paint, a distance

The ranch at Pt. Conception,

the bright red Indian
paint-brush is blooming
among pumped up aloes,
coloring a mythic place,
the yellow coreopsis
completes the greeting
as the blue moon journeys
through this ever varnished,
sparkling day.

20.
The figures of my storming
mind rage beside, to undermine
this light,
a hand on my head,
dissolving into the great
mystery called life,
creating a relief.

Ordering, out of imagination--
this hope dispels the despair
of living in this world
flattened by rationalism.

21.
So, Barcelona Neck
the sunflowers on the bay,
ocean dunes, goldenrod,
and the beach plums, painted.

the waves lap,
the wind bristles
the horse fly buzzes...

A goldfinch, tweet--
over there!
flashing, yellow and black,
Its flag of presence!

The still warm September,
though cold in the shadows,
is crisp, like 200 years ago
dusted off. I sit dumbly,
alone--
brushes dangling, staring
at Barcelona Neck,
getting ready to paint...
suspended in a blank mood

the changing weather
from yellow afternoon
to orange-red evening,
the purple into night,
my insides howl,
twitching--
like the leaves fleeing
into September’s
pokeberries and pumpkins.

22.
Painting this still life,
the shells on the beach
the sunflowers against the sky
a rope weaving circles to bind
a candle as time, a knife
slicing the space through--
a bucket like the universe’s vessel
a little boy peeing in bronze--
the vase, friezes all of this
in the failing sun.

Clouds passing overhead
the narrow islands weather,
the difference between
bay and ocean mind,
bells ring on swells.

Everything is broken,
a man in black turns--
washing my brushes, “I’m done.”
the reeds
blaze red, in silhouette.



1990
The Seasons

1.
The world changing,
continuing cycles flash--
Faster, faster, faster
repeating the round,
looking for
a way out, from
the necessary end.

The subconscious foregrounds
memory to a godly presence.
There is reality where
memory of life and the moment
are one, looking forward.

a turning point,
through seasons

The heroic narrative? Is there a height
possible? maybe a geographic move
to the outside,
this subconscious-- a crutch?

A horizontal narrative
to an abstract vertical,
in recognition.
...feeling something in this.

2.
Longing to burst, full blown,
onto the scene, seeing sun.

Barcelona Neck sunflowers
summer, fall, winter, spring
morning, noon, evening, night.

framing the present with
the past and future

Spring through Winter

the heroic narrative,
the romantic quest--
darkness and a quality of light

The geometric abstract ideal,
framing a figure of the day...
the subconscious black and white
of night,
a reality effected, in between.

A narrative off in the distance
forming-- through

A Cosmology of Rings.

3.
A new model--
a circular composition
interweaving about
the vase.

symbols, flying
endless chain of rings
clouds, leaves, waves-- shells
gather, swirling in clouds, circling
through leaves, passage...
the journey
the wind of time
in reeds, gyres of...

A dreamed narrative
in deep space, hardly seen
repeating a mantra
coming towards one,
bang-- the day
a colored classic, up front
close, living now!

4.
The vase as quest
the final ideal form-- out there
bringing it home to live with.

Goya among shells,
clouds, leaves, waves
the vase-- rings form
a spirit’s shape
in a cloud ascending

the landscape swirling
the still life tumbles
shells, sunflowers, circling rope
the vase breaking, change and
decline from
the immediate moment
spawning the new future.

Autumn, the fall-- the comedian leaving
winter’s dreams and wandering
far away, dawning light
brings beginnings--
summer’s recognition of flower,
the summer’s Sun.

The painting resembles
Crispin’s self,
Sunflowers on his breast,
incarnations of an inner frost
are hidden. The mask
summons a shield,
imagination-- suggesting
red diamonds set in yellow sun.

5.
Tell the story
tell of the journey
the forms seen
the light on the reeds,
weaving birds, swallows
trace shapes of shells,
leaves, distance--

Stop!
A vertical gasp, creates a height--
to a horizontal pilgrimage
suffering to symbolic moment.

This inner, runs as a stream
through consciousness, as time
the cross-- death, resurrection
continuous, dis-continuous
moments crossing.

6.
The seasons change,
the leaves stream
through lines of poetry
in the sun...

7.
The figure and its ground,
is dreamed by the underlying
form of the support.
This god of priority
(some Christ)-- is possibility
of a returning idea
as the earth each day, returning
from night into light.

8.
Crucified-- now arise
a flower lives and dies,
days continue night

summer comes and turns to
winter, spring and all.

Crispin introspective voyager
dreams and worries, tripping
through the day, seeking Sun--

he sleeps horizontally
arises each day,
goes on, marching--
erect.

9.
A meaning between
the diamond’s sun and the
spiraling shells-- tumbling
the waves continue
unfolding this day,
a sunflower in the blue sky.

The shield of Achilles
flaking sun into
gyres, remembering
spirit shaping clouds,
shredding the setting sun.

Achilles in the reeds,
and my soul betwixt
Crispin’s flaking diamonds.

Abstracting to height
toward Art, as Crispin heightened?
or subtraction from
Nature?

Achilles turning,
Blakean shade?

dream
reality
ideal

(a distant California,
is brought closer
by a striped shield
framing
the lagoon in the sun.)

10.
High noon’s clarity--
by force of gravity, pedaling
ochre, into the sunset’s gold,
snow on leaves, blue shadows
fading into night,
the spring morning, a bud,
the windy weather
filling differences.

A bough covering a mythic island,
a wreath of remembrance.
Shell twirling cosmos
receding
black in the day’s star,
the sunflowers,
interiors glowing red--

Winter’s far flung symbols,
in clouds of ongoing time
faster-faster-faster
more-more-more
ongoing, rushing-- reeds
swoosh-- stop, this!
in meaning
the rushing on, of
meaning less ness.

Crispin is lost,
my friend--
she means more to me...
that place means...
to read... what others meant
thinking... what others thought
working as others worked.

11.
...walks through the hills
overlooking the sand,
waves come
clouds rush-- as before
the leaves rustle.

The seasons,
the zodiac turning through stars.
Objects empty themselves
make meaning between
themselves, these relationships
dramas through weather,
a stormy dream attacks
an object as a fixed Ideal--

summer into autumn

dislodging this polished surface,
as transcendent,
our badge of modernity--
that furthest moment,
turning back on itself,
in dreams looking for
an original, to repeat.

12.
A sunny rock in the woods,
a summer snake
striped and speckled,
exposed-- for a moment,
slithers into the unknown,
seeking another warmth.

Our modernity
blazoned in the red sky
turns and folds,
realities are made of pasts,
dreaming
the present,
dreaming
the future’s Ideal form
always beyond

this surface of Reality held
in elasticity between
the Dream and the Ideal,
a Fate-- Freedom-- and Power
revolving.

Repetition and resonance.

13.
Every day, its own pallette,
to create
a life, like a day
difficult flowers.

“A skeletons life,” based on theory
propped in dream
between what one
(thought) happened
and the Ideal that might--

Oh!... Oh!
longing to burst onto the surface
of life. A troubadour in the sun, afoot
riding the crest of day!

The lagoon at night opens
upon the beach and stars.

14.
The sprawling of winter
pieces of this --grey.
A diamond scratching the sky,
two figures walking through reeds,
the wind picks up leaves,
shells dream designs, circling
a vase looming, beyond.
Clouds, low flat-bottomed
rush toward destinations,
evaporating, gyring stripes
to shape thoughts, ongoing
as texts in time.

15.
change = death
first idea

“Oh! Zumba”
winter mind
dominant blank
cries of the leaves-- framing
the colossal Sun.

“We have nothing to say about it!”
“Pneuma-- spark or nothing!”

Shelley’s west wind,
breath of autumn’s being--
driving the ghostly leaves.

16.
A Joker, spirit Sun
trickster joking, eyedazzling--
Harlequin of cubism!

Minimalism, evolves
extending its finality
erodes and collapses
into other cycles
of tantric tumbling.

The sunflowers at Barcelona Neck
add a design to the day.
The clouds are puffy
carrying thoughts of yesterday,
the sun shines--
and thinking of how tomorrow
might be.

17.
A flag’s design
evolves the structure
of this reality.
Mythic dreaming dredging
bottom, a barge moves through
a Trojan battle drawn--
A war waged for the garden.

continuing, a dung beetle
worshipped, rolls its ball
of memories, lives and poems--

Stopping to think,
the Hero brings to a surface,
a speeding discovery to every
flower, we sip and die.

The dog sniffing it out,
looking always
for that moment of discovery
taut bouncing in the blue.

18.
Onward, a dinner, bath, bed
reading a little
dreaming of art, fantasies of life
looking back on the sun, the light
lost to the earth
these gods, nowhere to be seen
toward the islands, looking forward
to myths of futures.

19.
revolving through warnings
of warming and another
ice age arriving.
A wall in Berlin is gone
ending a cold war.

Will the birds survive?
Where to put all this garbage?
AIDs... and other deaths too soon...
pressure building-- to bursting
this ballon--
what does one say?

The sun shines, but
through a deadening sky,
not a god’s indifference but our own.
Everything marching off to doom...

All seems in a plan?
a boom-- or a bust.

20.
Paumanok, Nappeague, Montauk
these Indian places, named before,
start me, inclining toward...

a transparent eyeball,
all mean egoism vanishing
seeing nature with a clarity,

21.
fighting the graffiti
an underlying disintegration
breaking-- tearing
spilling leaves, waves crashing,
clouds billow--

Painting the sun
as against this death,
what of the darkening landscape
in ourselves? the limping
sparrow under the car?
sacred material as
thoughts sent out to soar.

All that could be desired
for the moment, whole,
in the Sun revolving,

breaking into a cubism,
a surreal vision,
decreating the whole
the parts reflecting facets
of diamond light,
still striving, but broken--

bandaged, but proud
riding the train of the
20th century
into the ever flaming sky.

Moments of Epiphany,
spots of time
tumbling into the west,
of adventures grasped
to reenact self-consciously
our lives, stories in a new land
of promises recently spun.

22.
Failing to realize this story,
jumping out--
achieving a stylish form
and diving--

Paumanok, the Long Island story
a falling curtain
the end of painting
the end of nature
1,2,3.

Someone arrives to a still life, set
to add meaning to a landscape.

to bridge a gap
we feel,

traveling off to that far, island
trailing shells on a string,
pieces of a broken pot,
petals streaming
behind.

The modern is a gimmick
always past in our hearts,
that fiction, created to disguise
our failure. Living in this
rubble of concrete boxes, housing
we’ve named it, this separation
from nature or God, a lousy story
retold in outworn shape.

23.
Revisions of hierarchies,
another generation wages war
on order, sets out on journey,
is flung through seasons
of sun and snowy ice,
near death experiences celebrated
in poems of crisis,
passing.

Climbing, again.
A painting-- of still life
in our climate
(of ecological disaster)
can’t forget that
for one moment,
no need for ironic subterfuge.

24.
Sundown, still tumbling
the sun, a half hour high,
change is constant
the new always passing
arrogant egos fuel wills
that wrestle fate--
on knees,
arms twisted,
a quieter respect and reverence
for an idea formed of landscape,
a birdsong
floating through that space.

The wonder I seek
to separate from,
in anxiety,
is that of myself?

25.
The dawn, a noon sweet
sunset turning bitter-- more!
then, the Ideal of eternal night--
of sleep at last!
resting on, Paumanok
my island of desire.

Boy of wonder-- Fate
Man of idea-- Freedom
God of loss-- Power

26.
Hear the bird, see the moon

the moments between
waves-- the crash
of civilizations.

the blindness cleansed
the transparent eyeball
the revelation of spring
the vertical flower.

Night, Death, Mother, and the Sea.

Rising, out of ourselves
the sun, the same--
a new knowledge of reality
like a blindness cleansed
a recognition brought forth.

I lift my hat to that fish-shaped island, Paumanok.

27.
Escaping with Achilles
into this western fiction,
Orphic America
following the bounding sun.
Searching with an inner light, turning
outward, upon a shape to stripe
to capture as one’s own
bringing back
to a surface
to represent the structure of reality,
itself the moment-- fading,
a memory... haunting, persistent
stamped in one’s heart, --known.

A walk around the western Lagoon.

Entering there,
the reeds through the pines
design, a classic view of the bridge
into the distance, ice plant
providing a fairy path... Astride,
beholding the fanning eucalyptus.

Towards sand dunes and ocean,
the mountains blue shimmer
through warming atmosphere,
providing a background of azul
for a poof of a tree!
A wave through a vee, frames
a gull reeling
closer, a heron frightened, flies-- aloft.

And here, overlooking
ocean to mountains, the lagoon’s
mouth to the sea,
the house on the bluff dreaming,
the cross at the point,
south then, making a circle to the
magueys, then again-- the mountains
from the once, distant bridge,
the lagoon spreading
into the setting sun’s wake.

Walking back to the studio
to clean my brushes.
Thinking of the frogs, soon to
start their chorus into the night...

28.
the cry continuing,
the journey in darkness--
monsters-- and in that murk
glimmer, the light,
what is this light?
struggling back.

This fairy land
a wonder of everyday’s
precious life lost to us.

The year 2000, nearing,
we still breath oxygen, as life,
things rust and grow old,
space ships are far away,
long ago having left for Mars.

Painting California,
outside
in the jewelbox,
opened
Pt. Conception’s flowers--
coreopsis, the red aloe sparkle
against
a darker whale rounding this point.

Bathed in sundown’s eros for loss,
the night-crowned heron-- ‘Kraak’
levitates into the reeling stars
over the palm lined beach.

This friend of birds,
sees snakes with rings,
hears wood-peckers laugh,
jays, squawking their raucous
thought in pines, as
crickets scatter before bells
jingling on cautious feet.

29.
Looking for Sun!
Walt Whitman’s, Paumanok island
he came to own on afternoons
patrolling
different coves and bends,
a fish-shaped island.
Walking, blank upon the sand
a staff aflame,
the shadblow blooming in April,
as the mockingbird,
our feathered friend from Alabama,
arrives!
by night on the beach.

Strolling, alone in a thought,
the lilacs by the porch,
a song of the soul, singing
in a straw hat, picnicking
on the beach in the hot August sun,
fish roil down the shore, gulls
in laughter recoiling, in northern
winds, arriving.

How about a sailboat to paint from
and explore?
...clam and fish?
Making a still life, a poetry
on the bay, where Walt had walked...

Coming home after dark,
dragging my painting cart behind,
to make a meal, reading Vincent’s
letters of the day to Theo.
The breakers of the ocean
black and white,
endlessly rocking

30.
the Sun and a song.
All this like Disney--
(cliched), said before
repeating again, this American tune--
belatedly, we realize our fate
dreaming of the future,
turning back on itself,
repeating an ending.
Pollock’s dreams of stars and death--

the black oldsmobile horn’s blare.

Tempered, now by day
and an earlier time.
Still life of roses in Missouri,
by a beloved Benton.
Now who is
Achilles in America?

Exchanging presence for distance
Achilles merging with Crispin,
then, as Walt,
“...this book is a man.”

Wanderers of ocean beach, frontiers
of our mind, stars, planets,
suns, yet risen.

The Hero’s head,
afoot with Vision.

31.
We are mirrors reflecting
from noon to darkest night.
In turn we shine upon,
how, we see the sun, or star.
One with the bang-- of presence
the fragmentation of whirling circles,
into spheres.
What guides this writing hand?

(the Dog again,
sniffing
wagging in thirst)
Oh, I see!

Today, I feel lost, empty--
Heroes and Saints, abide.

32.
100 years later, all the birds have died.
A sparrow fights a starling,
a cowbird
raids another’s nest.

“...of bright and blue
birds and the gala sun...”

1990, a figure--
the Comic gesturing
no rescuing spaceships
out there, seen, still
the tragedy, of the planet.

Our distance from
what Crispin values.
Shells show ancient designs,
a bird song--
He sings of fishes
as water darkens.
A halo radiates, its spokes...

The sunflowers and shells
at Barcelona Neck.
Whitman by the waves,
lapping on the bay, words--
puffy clouds pass-- pass--
making a distant romance
as colors fade, this Paumanok
sky-- death-- change,

the figure, bit player, as poet
in pantaloons
dreaming sky, reality as flowers
making up gods
with feet in earth.

33.
The hero, afoot with vision
Chaplinesque, a picaresque saint
a friend of birds, as St. Francis
in Giotto, holding Sunflowers
for Vincent and Lilacs for Walt,
the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance,
over which a figure, returning
awakening from sleep, Pierrot!
A jar overturned by the spring
wind, sprinkling seeds, to the air
a black rope interwinds and weaves

Suns and Planets.

We are becoming that reflection,
nature buried beneath rubble.
A second order
without imagination or
depth of ocean sound.

34.
In this sleepy afternoon
I hear the cheep-cheeping of the
Ospreys, soon to be flown
from their nest this late July.

Early morning rain and fog.
6 a.m., deciding to get the paper
and check the waves,
the ocean was smooth,
a faint off shore wind,
surfed a bit...

Things to do!
Fish, walk in the sunset, fiddle
with still life, collect shells
pick flowers-- (find a farmer with the
real sunflowers)
draw osprey’s nest,

Something happens--
a seagull, with a shell above
the highway, drops it, to break it,
the bluefish run,
a seal lost in the harbor!
pink marsh-mallows
never having noticed
appear in August,
feeding chickadees from hand,
a butterfly descending, there... there.

35.
1 August 1990,
remnants of off shore hurricane,
pumping large waves,
in the setting sun
ocean fishermen, returning.
A sign at the harbor, covered
in poison ivy, is now silhouetted
the moon rises down the path...

returning, to put away things
in the old rusting shed
a dove is at the feeder,
a whip-poor-will
starts, the lilies have closed to die
and fall, noticing, reading Whitman.

Waiting for Jenny, to return
on the train this friday evening
looking up, realizing a mockingbird--
sounding like a cardinal... Oh!,
and the ospreys were
gone today, just like that!

A nostalgia for America, the loss we sell.

36.
Fall arrives in the air,
looking forward to exploring
the inner workings, of all
these outer goings on.

The last painter, unfinished
being the first painter, like Giotto.

I’m singing poetry, feeding birds,
I’m off painting a picture in the sunset,
I’m thinking of Benton and Pollock,
Disney and Audubon--
this crazy group... and Vincent Van Gogh!

Barcelona Neck,
Suns and Planets

Singing the praises in the sunset,
a staff aflame, a string of shells
dragged behind, sunflowers
darkening...

a book of poetry, upended
at the tide line,
wading off into the pink
translucence, at the end
of that summer’s day.


1991
The Singer of the Sun

1.
A poetry of self, finding meaning
in one’s identity, repeating
“...what is oldest in oneself,
not part of this created world...”
the undercurrent effects
the waking surface of reality
created in turning...

A Lionhearted passage,
gallant Knight
(the painting’s stain
reaching
toward a surface.)

A sublime problem
in transcendence felt--
A rock-like Sisyphus.

Ordering gods, thoughts
as everything there is,
that our minds are
what we create.

2.
Our minds shape
structuring language,
painting, a stain--
toward a surface, becoming
a bird, there!
A shape striped.

A person reflecting,
then, leading the way.

3.
Catching a flavor, or scent in the air.
A flatter time, the inside tossed out
into the immediate, song of the Sun
blinking, blinded by such light.

The sun that shines
is the light of recognition,
seeing again, drawn as
a moth to thought.
That light, white light
the sublime, quest for knowing
light in the sun
a presence through wandering--
The, the.

Universe of Death
change = death
Nature is all change,
our life a resurrected form
of another’s demise.

A word uttered,
a painting raised.
A journey’s end, in a thought
brought into an idea
held up to the sun
then, continuing a circle--
round again.

4.
The Romantic campaign
enacting a horizon.
The heartened hero’s tour
of the sky.
The arc of the seasons
reflected in the Zodiac, traveling
along with us,
reflecting origins we repeat.
The Joan of Arc returns
bringer of new reality.

5.
A clearness emerging from cold.
A new knowledge of reality.
A blindness purified--
other makings of the sun,
this new reality.

You presented to me,
You, fish-shaped island,
Paumanok.
A flower, a shell.

Clouds, leaves, waves.

Red and yellow diamonds,
a dazzling wayfarer
on a romantic voyage, through
suns and planets
life and death.

A still life representing
a world, revolving-- objects
given meaning in their use.

Shells, Sunflowers, Vase.

This surface, a Diva
to appear in the Sun.
Singing of the moment
knowing of past and futures
constant merger, into day.

“Look in the terrible mirror of the sky.”

the sky that reflects reality
a change in each day’s death
toward night, Aurora the dawn,
one foot on hope
another on despair.

6.
At noon shining sunflowers
surrounded by broken shells--
reeds silhouetted behind,
in deeper space, water sparkling
diamonds, white and black,
harlequin like, break with surface
into a cubism of the day,
tumbling acrobat, of tantric
cosmology.

A cartoon reality
flat, a boarded up sublime.
Just the facts, ma’am.
Pragmatic.
(no fancied design)
The new austerity, Ding-- a-- Ling,
the bells signify another cycle, turning--
the boatman steers a course.

7.
Clouds, pass-- time, ever moving
a figure-- far off, arriving
a bird flits, here to there
a butterfly flashes--
leaving a trail, carried by the wind,

Fate, Freedom, Power

harbinger, of new reality
winter, summer, fall
the sweeping pursuit.

8.
The tent on the beach,
stars above, black rocks
in the sand reflecting in pools,
trees in ragged
silhouette,
beyond, the reeds dreaming
in the lagoon.
A pot of the Greek, Achilles
a nature of death
dreaming stars, the moon,
the Romantic self described.

A cloud rising from the tent,
a spirit like tree.
The branches were rib-like
a barren figure of the universe.
A composition of circles,
in the lagoon, a cosmology
of shell spiraling design, a helix
of receding planes,
projected into stain,
a Rorschach of time.

A western scene,
breaking water, birds circle
the figure in the reeds,
leaving down a fairy trail.
An oriole in a palm, flys swooping
towards the beach, the dunes.
Saluting the ocean, then
looking down, a skull
on the tide, seaweed’s fingers
flow from the lagoon, in ebb.
Red aloe blooms at the point--
launching pad of spirits to the sky,
dreaming the earth.

Blue man, of bronze
sun shining on a breast
turning to flesh.

9.
This mythic nude presenting
its beauty, an ideal of everyday life.
Clothed in nature, life’s--
flowers, fauna. Death at her foot,
the skull’s horn, curved to--
background, as the moment
turns to space.

Poem of the earth, flora-- Gaia.

The unequaled poet,
the supreme lover of the earth.

A Hamlet with cow’s skull
at Point Conception, tripping through
flowers, dazzling--
looking off into the ultramarine
of that distance.

10.
Girls jogging on the road,
a blue heron and other
animals as friends,
looking out to the ocean
in bathing suits,
children making a fort
in the sand, or fishing,
beach combing,
getting feet wet, pants rolled up,
looking at sunset--
finding a last flower
to bring home.

Reading by the sea, remembering
the smoke drift
of puffed out heroes.
The idea of ourselves
as that divine principle,
the story, a supreme fiction.

11.
Far off, there-- the central star,
the molten core of the icy
north.

...reading in a field of flowers,
greeting one’s friend on the road,
tipping one’s hat and greeting the day,
the sun above the sea.

Off to paint, dragging my cart
down that fairy path, sparkling.
In the field painting,
walking with a stick,
in the sunset reading a book.

Way off, now-- on Point Conception,
the sun in the west--
good-bye my fancy.

12.
Found in the weeds, discarded
the light shining, a form
revealed.
A revisioning of reality
a resistance felt
a blank, returning....

falling off to sleep
in the warm sand, dreaming,
A skull, a bare tree
a flower reaching to bloom
a snake nailed to a bough
the rock-- the size of a bush
beside the pond, farther a splash--
Rings spiraling in deep water,
an old chair tipped in the brush,
covered in vine
reading by candle
under the stars, the moon above,
the tent on the beach.

13.
What are people for?
flying high in this airplane
across the continent,
carved with mountains
a faint road trailing
off into the desert, below...

A cherry blossoms
in the grey, disintegrating
consciousness of the city.
Imagination jousting with death,
the cities grey mind
awakening again, from winter.

The West shining like the future,
in Spring each year.
The mind of the city
out in nature, the body pressed
to the wind, to the sparkling sun...

At Pt. Conception,
an old mule barn, since abandoned.
Above, I have watched
Orion turning out of the south
hips rotating over head,
late onto his feet.

We exist in a dumbfounding abyss
between ourselves and the object--
this is our un-navigable sea.

Graffiti fills this decaying sense
of Imagination,
night gathers...

14.
An age of disbelief
our winter time,
the highest aspirations
of these human souls, capable heroes
bringers of life,
ringers in the tower,
rescuers in poetry.

A spring of flowers
a transforming nature as
an imaginary ideal, corresponding
to that which we find
ourselves able to believe,
but is there?
A final form captured,
not misrepresented
the object is averted, changed
this living anxiety... is life.

The noble rider, a major man,
proud women struggling against force--

Ananke,
the necessary Angel.

15.
Our best self, the real me,
me myself
trailing off... staggering...
perhaps drunk
feeling the failure,
the wave of black water
breaking into reality.

Struggling to one’s feet--

The poet in the sun,
the central poet
I and means kind-- humankind
heightened, a Supreme Fiction,
noble rider sounding words,
the Real Me in the sun
reclaimed for earth,
music of the things
a part of one’s world,
unreal, then, more real than reality.
Repeated, going around and
around
circling, with the earth.

16.
The giant, the hero revealed
as we, the Real Me, the Imagination--
the other self strolls,
Imagination personified, given
heroic role, the every kind,
the child going forth,
the youth, potent poet
lounging by the sea
the me, the not me.
Identification with the sun,
my soul and I.

An arousal,
the Imagination’s aerial water,
the spirit’s educated fictive music,
muse as the western soul,
looking forward.

Woman in the southern weather
man in the winter’s north,
women cold, men too hot
men and women merged,
revolving, pumping the tides
in light and dark
swimming to a fullness.

Our consciousness, a fall from
the knowledge of that whole,
separation from our nature
ordered
long as memory, deep as thought
wide as perception.

Things then, as they are.

17.
Close up, clear
the mind is felt as a presence
in the image it creates.

American Adam,
a figure of heroic innocence
potential, as vast as the land
poised on the Bridge, a new reality
abstracted, changed, giving pleasure
between imagination and reality
light shining, as the wind blows
gently through reeds, revealing forms
in paintings.

18.
Clouds, leaves, waves--
death and day.
The dinosaur pondering stars
wayfaring toward light,
a tumbling tantric,
diamond of sublime origin
flickering star, bright idea.

A bird on a wire singing.

Painting sunflowers,
rereading Van Gogh’s
letters to his brother.
(Vincent was reading, Whitman
as he painted
starry nights and sunflowers by day.)
Walt wrote poems here by the bay
where sunflowers were painted,
this day!

19.
To California, that year.

The cherry blossoms pink,
and forsythia yellow
blue Smoky Mountains, “...y’all come
back, now...” pigs and
calves, farms and hills through
spring in Alabama,
shedding a smokey coat
stretching a winter body
white blossoms and purple
wisteria in dark green
pines-- still breathing cold
black branches, wet
a mockingbird in Alabama singing--
two fine feathered friends.

(becoming the bird and through that bird
traveling this Universe.)

Stopping the car, picking some flowers
for the dashboard.

20.
The hero in the reeds,
drawing a vision
for the creation of the day.

“...it’s rush hour now, and the sun is
going down...”

far off-- Point Conception.
A figure in the wild, standing
high above the rock
a desire, a danger,
a fairy questioned turns to witch,
a crow black above the
red aloe, through a white
streaked blue sky,
a crisp scream, a caw --caw
on uplifted wings.

yellow orange
orange
darker purple
in clouds
redder and deeper
smoke drift
the puffed out heroes--

21.
The blue sky closing,
darkens to a purple grey
the starlit dome, a planet
sparkling outside this glow, dark--
dark purple black, glow faded
a last blue line of horizon
the last blue roof of sky closes
on that smoking drift...

Driving into these
western mountains,
the sun, setting
a spectacular sight,
dying into night.

Venus, flashing
a promise of tomorrow
thoughts turn to sleep
coaxed by this lonely highway’s
rhythm,

a full moon rising in the rear view.

Each day a pilgrimage,
an adventurer taking leave.
Each day an idea to grasp,
a flower found by the road
a rebirth, towards death--
a day, a season, as comedy-- tragicly
falling once more into winter’s
sleeping eternal rhythms.

Bread and Wine

Every moment modern
drifts into the past.
Nature stays new, as only art
stays bright, like the Greek,
a heroic Ideal achieved.

A green, brand new California,
snow, still in the mountains--
a chorus of frogs splendidly clear,
along the lagoon, a car’s
headlights blinding...

(stepping aside to let it pass)

22.
The blue soul at the lagoon, waiting,
the red aloe in the moon beam
at Point Conception,
farther north, a glacial falls
in Yosemite,
remembering and turning to...

a nude posing in Refugio palms,
hot in the sun.
A still life of yellow flowers
growing outward and through,
a western cow’s skull,
a sight against blue mountains
and the golden hill
of orange poppies, behind.

The placid lagoon reflecting sun,
through Anise weed
the swallows tracing,
that gull rising
to an ocean wave, tossed
blue lipped, on the blackening rocks,
as night falls
on still warm ocean dunes,
we watch oil derricks blaze.

23.
An oriole and a kingsnake.
A flower, growing through a skull.

Winding through golden foothills
of the Sierras, a dry burnt air,
a black bomber, guarding
snow in the mountain’s distance.

Entering the magic
kingdom of Yosemite--
a half-dome’s face, radiant through
dark pines, deepest blue sky
tinged with purple,
the jays hop and skitter,
"...like thoughts in pines."

I’m looking for a Western Tanager.

Tourists rush, front and center,
with cameras-- “Over there,"
they point and shoot!

In the valley, a paradise-like place,
a morning spent painting, then
lulling in the afternoon sun, waiting
for the dramatic evening shadows.
Water winding, reflecting walls
reaching heights above,
to towering clouds,
carrying purified rain.

Indians lived as gods,
mimicked pines and jays
here, in this heightened
summer place.

24.
Sleeping by this gushing stream
is a delirium, waking early
to paint the falls, water spilling
from the higher clouds.

St. Francis in the field feeding birds,
Vincent and Walt, singing and
drawing by eye,
planting sunflowers, the way
across America. Mapping a trail,
from Montauk to Big Sur,
a western adventure of wonder,
respectfully, a Western Jaunt.

Yosemite, with stars at night,
an unearthly cold,
constellations like snow,
closer to original stories
the falls and clouds, rain and snow,
high above, then...

flowing to a sea, the Big Sur,
waves and distances
teetering on an edge
Pfieffer Beach, a rock, splash-- a wave.
Painting the sun,
going down in the Pacific.
A wild place,
cold, windy and disorienting,
later, rocking to sleep, feeling
as if having stepped off a boat.

Seeing Tioga pass at night,
polar sky to grey. Stars, a frightening
cold, silence and distance,
solitary, peeing at night, looking up--
back in bed, warmer, a familiar Dipper
out the window
shining through a darker pine.

A voyager in wide spaces
on a Western Jaunt,
into Blue Imagination---
distant Yosemites, Surs...
Walt, this moment, in the Sun.

25.
Ambivalence is the word of the day
a love of this place
I hate as it leaves, my grasp.
To picture, as others, order it
faster, into grids of deterioration.

Who? seems to care,
or thinks seriously of the warbler,
a bluefish, its place.

My Barcelona Neck, ...land for sale.

26.
The trouper, afoot with fancy,
diamonds glinting, jangling bright
the Big Dipper climbing
the hump of Barcelona Neck.

Thinking of the birds, as spirit
and of their death in our own time.

“...it all comes down
to the American spirit
and the sort of place
in which it was formed.”

27.
but we do not believe, --Bad faith.
So here we are, flattened,
past Modern.
A cartoon,
with working instructions, thrown out.

dreamed in winter, born of spring,
dying into fall.
Words mean, what they say
fall-- an idea, comes forth or
to light from a winter’s sleep--
the night mind flying,
archetypes of cliche
in renewing shapes.

28.
Our literature is a catalog
of this weather,
from the comedy of summer
dancing, to the tragedy
of the winter mind.

The tic-toc, the fiction of time,
the beginning and end
in each moment crossing,
light supplies the moment’s pause--
to the transit of time.
The painting on the wall
dumb, trying to speak
the look of things, what we felt.

clouds, leaves, waves, passing

...trailing into evenings blaze
the boarded up sublime,
that distant space, lost to us.

What wine does one drink?
What bread does one eat?

No illusions, (not like the spaces
of that inner mind)
a counter sublime of non illusive
meaning-- flat, blam!
at the surface.
What I’ve been talking about,
a sublime illusion flattens into
a pragmatic concrete,
counter-sublime
cracking, no illusion here.

In the face of extinction,
survival in tradition, an evolution
of what we’ve been-- that Art.

worn shapes are thrown out,
newly arranged

The diamonded acrobat.
The shells are strung on a rope
gathered at the shore,
stringing together, representing
universes of circles, and
the patterns of design,
in broken moments,
strung to bind
death to life,
juggling the cycle’s circle.

On the beach, barefoot
the perspective lines sharpen--
to a blank, blinking
the wanderer turns, on what?
picks up a shell, arranges a flower--
staring at the white wall.

The Knight of the road, arriving
sets up this still life, altar of flowers,
finds shells on the shore,
reads the poetry of life and death
in the sunset, red, passing
“...no man shall see the end.”
the reeds, the rock like island
arches, as the Dipper arcs ‘round
blinking the finality,
through the silhouetted reeds.

Bread and Wine

Sunflowers in sunset
how does one stand to behold
this simple sublime, descending--

red reality oranges, greener grass,
purpling clouds to black

The Singer of the Sun,
the idea in summer.
The poem, the self, the same
passage into Autumn
into the Sun itself.

What wine does one drink?
What bread do you eat?
the sublime comes down, flattens
to the place and the spirit formed, there.

29.
The Villa of the Sun
a boarded up sublime,
a spirit storming in vacant walls,
stepping out, singing in the sun,
finding shells, making a still life,
walking in the sunset, reading poetry,
sunflowers near face, reflecting.

Gazing into sunset, blank
upon the sand, head up to sun,
head now lowered,
back of the head, a hat as halo,
a bird on a finger
held up to the sky.

Seeing the island through a
bower of leaves, arcing--
the poem reflects its region.

Puffed out play-actor
of counter-sublime
a curtain, a recurring death
of painting
sways a moment, in slim belief
the sublime being boarded,
big bent nails
banged into heavy wood.

A still life in a blank walled room,
a red table, a skull, San Pelligrino
water bottle, a loaf of bread,
a sprig of holly.

An icy, lonely night, outside
the window
where soon birds would stir--
Arcturus blinks.


1992
The Villa of the Sun

1.
Everything is broken, in pieces--
the sun at evening, shining through
clouds scattered, dark bluish slate.

The Villa is in the setting sun.

When-- there was a God,
things were perfect.
Then, the memory of that.

I purchased a skull
to paint on a red table,
a bottle of water, a loaf of bread,
a sprig of holly,
(a Disney, Pinnochio like, watercolor)
as a background,
a cracked jug, in that distance.

Working on a major kind, a figure
abstracted, a hero of sorts.
A manner of acting,
changing, giving pleasure,
a fiction to suffice,
a story within a self, a life.

The sublime comes down, to this--
a blank in our eye,
refusing.

2.
The spirit dying, the canary
in the mind.
A predella of sunflowers,
in life, then death--
a cycle of frescoes
the pieces, in broken thoughts...

far away, a jay squawking
in a pine, high up,
blue, it chatters.

the sublime comes down--
bread and wine
a few scraps scattered
left overs, of another.

Imagination helps us slip
slide into the future, reconciling life
and death, the moment and
memory, past into future--
spiraling eternities.

3.
The black and white
is what is past
degenerating
changed, fallen away--
weather passing by.

Seasons of an idea, the weather
changes, a different mix--
off into the distance, an adventurer
wandering in childish wonder.

Cats in the Bag,
Bags in the River,
“the sky is falling,” Chicken Little yells.
Images, faster, faster,
to an end--
We see our lives before us,
as we die,
a civilization’s cycles, spin faster,
widening gyres--
Toward a drain... screwing
our dreams,
pants down-- frills all around,
exposed, nothing left to imagine,
a gun in the face-- Blouwie-- bam!

The Hero Sun, dazzling
yellow diamonds
seen through red
reality in the sky.

The light in the painting,
a warmth suffices,
shining through slats
a boarded up sublime
last gasp, for...

4.
America, as “post-christian”
nation, “the Evening land”
a flag waving
over a busted fig of hope.

The journey well under way,
the something seen, felt,
drawing, a painting--
figured out as flat
space, brought forward
to a new reality,
in the sun...

sustaining presence, last look
before diving...

Fate, (then) Freedom, towards Power,
The Seasons of an Idea.

5.
Pressures of reality
an artist of complaint
rules over his poverty,
a kingdom one dies for in spite--
but I too, cry out against the shackles
of this world’s injustice,
I too wonder of the place for Art--
“O the horror, the horror.”

running from electric plants and
damaging auras everywhere around us,
trying to keep straight--

Crispin wandering off
abstractly, --singing
a different song,
centuries flashing before us
dying, the arm of the sublime
coming down, from high noon.

The fall comedian,
hails the winter in the city.

Haunting memories of
Pompeii, in the sun,
(a certain quality of a special red
pigment fading)
reminds
our loss of the sacred.
Spirit, a quality-- felt--
unmeasured,
underneath, abstracting,
flaking paint, a grey grid
restored, then disintegrating--
fragmented broken pieces.

The hardened crystal, signaling
a Supreme Fiction!
drifting, beyond reach or grasp.

things as they are

6.
Land for Sale,
a disregard for any ‘place’
maybe, go out ‘west’--

The city as fortress
against Death and Nature,
stocked with drugs and diversion,
blocking out the sky, reminder
of the change--
the moon’s sliver between
buildings darkened and crumbling,
faint crosses, in dimming light.

What Art does one make? against
this change, this eternal return,
an idea wanes, a day in the life
of a dying culture, selling doom
racing thoughts-- near death
a barge slow, but with a force
of a river’s current
piled high, tilting off to sea
disappearing over a wave
of retrospection.

7.
Cavalier sun
bringer of new realities,
the tragedian recovers
sustaining a patrol through reeds.
The ideal moment
of reality imagined--
balanced, then falling.

Civilizations symbols
shopped and worn,
they are not alive, or moving
they are on the dump.

A church full of blackened, broken,
jagged shapes-- charred, old
musty and meaningless,
flagellating one’s self over this...
Why? “get out!”

8.
Draw that tree, once again
it stands for something
necessarily, more than itself
growing in the annular cycle
the tree lives, sprouting a view--
Still, the idea becomes unclear,
returning to the tree itself.

Crispin sings the credence
of the moment
somehow grasped!
in the very sun’s extinguishing...
winter’s slate, as shells, snowball
clouds above watery waste
reflect the cold stars.

9.
The spirit that walks
turns, blank upon the sand,
sapphires flash in the central sky,
a desire, out there
to be at the end of winter... distances.

The night blue, just beyond,
enveloping-- shapes, that shape
blackened and stubbled, coaxed
into a volume and warmth--

“...spring vanishes scraps of winter.”

10.
Awaiting a messenger
the eternal as sacred, returning,
the origin repeated, as meaning
because the gods did it before us
in the sky.

The good hero
coming from the east
arriving in the west.

“...look out across the hills, see me returning...”

11.
An Adam, in immense space
here, feeling our size!

Walt by the sea, following
the western path towards
the ever expanding American self
surveying lands, of Imagination.

Herald of immense spaces,
the Pacific beaches pounding,
sparkling mountain Sierras
distant, with snow.
A recognition of heights, frosty
falls and mountain depths
growing deeper, darker
as the dome glows vivid.

“...was lying down in the reeds,
without any oxygen...”

12.
Writing poems on sunny days, days
turning into rain, writing poems--
on wintry days
sleeting and ice balls falling.

find a barn overlooking a pond, paint there,
maybe a garden?

Going towards some end,
which has already happened.
Knowing our lives end--
tic- toc- tic- toc
fictions, all playing to the changing sky.

overlooking a precipice,
a Bear’s tongue curling in a roar,
louder than the water falling--
...dozing in the Sun,
nary a bug or breeze,
a book face down
in the green grass...

Returning sadly, forsaken
this poem, an affair of places.

The moon rises as
cleaning brushes, in routine--
the sun sets, the full moon up,
birds nestling in frosty pines.

13.
The metaphors in decline
a grey light on
a starling or carp,
the forms left unused
the workings, that one can see
to have an idea about,
then forgotten.

move out west, start over, having failed

14.
Going home,
a recurring dream
up hills, coming down out of control
bells and sirens ringing,
lights flashing
green porches screened, dark shadows
behind, much too old to relate to--
the Susquehanna,
a beautiful name from my youth--
like Blue Juniata.

15.
I’m needing the sun out west,
I think I’ll go out west.

Rushing around in a car,
find a quiet place to listen and look!

Old tires, newspaper--
headlines blowing,
spots of flesh from torn magazines
stream through consciousness,
a curling filmstrip
up and around hills, leading
our little bikes
through that history, rushing
to no appointed end,
lost in some abandoned
old rabbit’s hole.

There is no purpose? no end in mind?
Going through the motions
to suffice,
it’s too late, going round
and round, now, getting colder,
going
faster, faster-- dizzying
then, slowing to a stillness,

in these turning
twirling leaves,
chanting another faith.

16.
A cross on a hill
made out of fence post,
speeding past-- a summer’s day
like (again) one
seems not able to remember,
this radiance!
An Amish girl, dust puffing
between her toes,
walks down the road. Am I lost?
A road sign framed
in romantic ivy,
passing a horse drawn cart,
going anywhere?

an impatient car honking behind
wants to be past.

Crossing the Susquehanna,
the Blue Mountains, ahead--
feeling my way,
a rainy South greets me
as the Sun is shining yonder,
in Mississippi arriving at the Gulf,
a bushel of peaches
a bag of blueberries,
an aqua, emeralded
sea, beyond
white sands squeaking
warm, friendly, lapping waves.

17.
Oh! green, green
wave folding over
into a gurgling surge, enveloping,
wading to a sandbar,
waves folding over,
floating, opened to the sea, receiving it--
looking into the sun, red in eyes,
expressing the extreme
of experience-- red
reality, a communion sought
to be held in existence
enveloped, I am, cleansed
clear.

A captive of the cities abstraction
released, and breathing in this clarity.

18.
On to Austin, a land of hills and birds,
a Painted Bunting!
(heard all around but unseen)
The Scissor-tailed Flycatcher,
another exotic bird, there at home,
decorated things
in the American landscape,
plain and dusty
making it gaudy, a decorated place,
thoughts, like tin pieces
strung out on a fence rattling
and glinting.

Flabbergasted,
I can never remember,
can not imagine the space,
beyond reproduction
way off, flying in the clarity, loving it
what the spirit craves,
what one would hope for.

Birdsong carried away
into the wind, clouds flat bottomed
fly, reflecting ochre earth,
yellow daisies waving all around
me, beyond sublime, yet so familiar
as home-- America,
the purple mountain’s majesty.

Lightening, blam!-- a darkening sky,
sun streaming through
fleeing clouds, a magical day,
a road straight ahead
the West, a kingdom to enter
zipping along, free and easy like.

19.
Towards dusk, a sign off the road
winding through the desert
up into pines, reaching a height
to the top, overlooking the other peaks,
rounded and softened with fir,
the storm in the distance,
silent, muffled, where I’d been--

Emerging in these heights
to watch purple, give way to stars,
the muffled thunder...
flickering lightning,
softly, as I
one with the space, drifting
through sleep...

deer in a single file, winding up the hill,
I’m making tea and watching,
this is not a dream--
a inquisitive mountain blue bird
flits here and there
a yellow grosbeak,
behind, in a pine--
sitting down to glory
in all this activity,
inquiring as the bird,
the deer threading through
between myself and the car,
bobbing with curiosity,
surprise
chewing grass, seemingly content.

The sun warming quickly,
shadows evaporate
trying to make it mine, painting fast
but in vain.

Trying to remember the different
scenes, to order in my mind
a tale through trails.

Driving through red deserts,
a grey dusty verte of chaparral.
We, wrapped in blankets
Indian style, against the harsh wind,
through the sky’s deepening clarity
the sun shone, that much hotter,
the elements a filter
for that intenser beauty
at Monument Valley, in the wind
we struggled with a fire as
a crystal sky radiated
its cold loneliness.

driving off

watching her trail high above
glinting, now gone, flying backwards
into the closure of night

20.
Up on a plateau, a most amazing sky
a sky of cirrus, cumulous overlayed,
spectacular!

getting out of the car to make a picture of this

Through sage brush hills to pines
into snow-- am I lost?
looking for a valley
once seen, remembered.

A brook running along the road,
an oriole, flickering across
flashes, then, looking and seeing
a black and white warbler.
It seemed to mean something--
I stopped,
a cow’s skeleton lay in plain sight,
the head bleached
white in the sun.

The desert and Vegas,
trucks and cars quicken a pace
lowering onto the desert floor’s
sweltering perversion, shimmering gold,
stolen from the desert’s emptiness.
A tangle of suburban people,
intent on buying things, not to be had.
California is ahead, in a strange haze,
warning us that maybe
we’ve gone too far.

Following West a full Moon,
this early morning,
setting on the California desert ahead.
A sweltering Sun rises, behind
from the East.

The journey’s destination,
the Pacific Ocean.
Glistening still, varnished somehow
beyond, remembering.
This calm, a paradise, --on an edge
but friendly and secure.
Bougainvillea and palms,
the mountains clear, today.
The sea sparkles a welcome,
though, knowledge
of an approaching danger, makes one
uneasy, (feeling a false comfort)
already

I’m voyaging beyond
stringing memories along
as a trail to return on.

A snake and an oriole,
the dialectics of opposition
as an ambivalence extends
to this west, loved and protected
in the Imagination.
A dry brown summer burns--
a discontentment
driven further to a wilder sea
a higher mountain.

21.
Nevada and Vernal Falls
from Glacier Point,
a stellar jay, brooding among
burnt trees, a sunset stripes
through melancholic hills, darkening.
Going higher, and accordingly colder,
Tuolumne Meadows,
no snow this year for wild flowers
no snow like there was last year,
no butterflies or blooming--
From mountain vistas, to searching
interior woods, rocks and rushing water,
the Merced River slows
now, fast falling--

Driving back to camp
high in mountains, roadways
nearing the tops of pines--
a Western Tanager, unconcerned,
flashes in the waning sun,
snagging a fly...
a merging of Imagination
and things as they are--
tired, making a way to camp.
Trying to figure, the pines in shadows,
dancing in the fire’s light,
amongst icy cold frightening stars,
curling down and away
inside a down bag, retaining a warmth.

22.
Big Sur, a home for now...
puttering a bit, here
among the Surs, diving to the ocean
down on the beach, the rocks, waves.
A sunset from the coast road.

“Adventures and Wonder”--
scrawled on my paint box, enthralled!

A fantasy it seemed,
painting... a crack--
a tree... crashing down,
alone in the woods... I was painting
the overlooking view.

Hiking again to the falls
and painting them at closer range,
doing this with my friend.

Western Jaunt,
the space of the Imagination
the American Adam
starting out
Adventure and Wonder.

As the end must be made,
for a new beginning.

The degeneration or heightening
of a thing to a metaphor,
a distance from immediate hope
of being in the moment
the crystal seeing--
being in the sun, experiencing
the things as they are,
heightened,
then, a realization of loss
wanting to build out of memory
a revisioning, ordering, abstracting
from what is always changing, dying--
that abstracting distance
from any original.

Shade toward a dreaming, floating idea
to be rebuilt, (the Villa idea)
refurbished in a mythic distance
in that which remains of experience
in the sleeping mind, awakening to
a hope it will all appear, again.
A desire to remember,
to recreate experience, awakened
and making, we use the experience
that overlays every desire
to begin again.

23.
September, on the way home,
the Tetons, soft behind
a humid veil, blown--
(the blast has upended my painting)
a colder air
makes sharper shapes.
A beaver pond reflects a sky,
turned blue-- est.
A turn towards Montana
brings a surprisingly early snow
propelling me on my way.
A big sky, cold with
low grey ceiling of clouds,
out on a splendidly lonesome road.

Tightening the box of paintings
to the car’s roof for the trip ahead,
driving and reading
about a hurricane about
to strike Miami,
it will be in Long Island,
as I approach home.

Love, is a yearning
to be one,
with a separation we feel
we are fallen from,
a search for connection,
forestalling death, loss
between ourselves and nature
a reason for Art--
a blank returning.

24.
Matisse in New York, that fall
marks ten years since Picasso

A factual sublime of the intellect,
flat abstract, “..a pleasure
as that of an easy armchair.”
rushing into a winter of ideas
(DeKooning wanted no chairs at all)
without comfort, he stands at ninety
the canons interchange,
the fires of belief,
Ideals of the West
stand and order, themselves
like those mountains
impressed on my mind.

Before our Virgin Land
one last sunflower in Autumn,
(between the parties
of Hope and Memory)

a partisan for the earth--
a super hero, but different
a poet of mythic reality--
looking forward, into the sun

I’m reading Hart Crane
the Bridge, out my window,
I’ve never painted, but watched
many nights,
the black lights swirling below,
a hero falls... eight bells.

Barcelona Neck, these symbols,
evaporating in a whirl
of rope, pots, flowers burnt in the sun
swallowed up into the sky
a grid appearing, the wall flaking
crumbles, starts to fall--
a fiction composed upon the wall.

25.
From muddled silhouettes
to comic form,
the black and white depth,
to Barcelona Neck’s clarity
an old stage is being cleared
objects flowing
their prolific meanings
past, like the same flowers
they change... die
as if, it all was once believed.
(“...but it got us through.”) emptied
to be filled, once more.

Knitting a pattern of stories,
diversity, as our tradition
a rising and falling of tide
striving towards
pinnacles of classic quality
a beyond in our mind, a great pleasure
failing like the sun’s beautiful
light at last reckoning,
contented in this whole, feeling
good to be at home, but still
looking around in all the corners.

26.
Greying, pass--pass, ongoing
voyages overlapping,
clouds, leaves, waves
moments evanescent
developing a taste out of desire
objects weave, destinies, fate--
stories, fictions of who we are
where we’re going, keeping us
entertained, the comedian
bowing, the curtain drawing close...

tragicly, looking like
the end
of this repetition
this repeating cycle,
beginnings, now
and an ending...
hoping to begin,
once more

The wall breaks loose,
a space opens beyond.
A last painter, endangered,
foolish in this world, exposed,
with little regard, continues--
in the mode, unaware of the larger
futures, one becomes powerless
against, one’s images, defenses,
useless, in this world,
no longer able to see...
look-- alone, shh!
there!--
a Roseate Spoonbill.

My fellow, a god to me
a mirror I look into
realizing
our endangered minds.
How dark we have become
it’s late, we’re naked and
we have no home
to love.

Audubon’s birds ravaged
then drawn, now

the splendid Spoonbill!
in Disney World?

Fictional Hero--
stirrings of the Imagination
these strange meanderings,
other places blend
in the mind’s geography, South.

27.
A palm far away,
at the end of the mind
in a paradise, we’ve lost
in need of repair.

the waterfall
silent in the distance--
spilling volumes of
experience never
to be recorded as Art...

A figure with walking stick,
greeting the birds,
appraising space, tipping his hat,
painting in the sun,
reading in front of the Sunflowers--

figures outlined,
as ideas are striped,
detached from ground
yearning to be part--
which consciousness
separates

posing, walking and reciting,
arriving with flowers,
alone in the sunset,
pointing out a bird, high up,
hiking, sitting at a campfire
in the stars, sparks
bringing spaces, close
images speeding past,
fading to grey
black, then ashen white...

What one has loved,
lost, in memory,
terror, the disastrous
ruin of a place, ours--
a forest’s mind chopped
down, and sinking
into polluted environ,
thinking of a Paradise
expounded by Angels, still
the ending-- far off
there, in the distance.

A desire, at this late hour.