CaLokie 92: 92 Poems by CaLokie

Luke

Mark

The Summer of Woodstock

During my first year as a Los Angeles teacher

which was also when UTLA was formed

and we went out on our first strike

around nine months after the first human walked

on the moon and the summer of Woodstock, Carl

Mark Stilwell was born March 2,1970.

Mark had red hair as did my mother,

her grandfather, oldest sister

and two younger brothers.

After the 6.6 Sylmar quake jolted our Pasadena home,

Mark would climb down every night from his crib, snuggle

between mom and pop and sleep with us till wake up time.

Nancy and Rick with their daughters, Michelle and Ana

lived a few houses west of us. Michelle was two years

older than Ana as Luke was with Mark.

“Go see Ana,” Mark would say and off we’d go to her home.

One night after returning home, Mark spotted a full moon

rising above the Camphor trees lining our street.

“Moon! Moon!” he said pointing to the sky

and pumping his legs like they were

a hummingbird’s beating wings.

Michelle will be killed at the age of 25

in a freak accident when a truck’

rolled over her car.

Luke at the age of 47, after moving to Japan

and living there for 13 years,

will die from colon cancer.

Nancy and Rick,

Cheryl and I,

will be divorced.

But at this moment which I believe

Paul Tillich calls the “Eternal Now,”

the world couldn’t be more beautiful.

OPEN

OPEN UP
OPEN WIDE

OPEN SEASON

OPEN the door

Open your heart

OPEN YOUR MOUTH

OPEN HEART SURGERY

OPEN SESAME

OPEN A CAN OF WHOOP ASS

OPEN THE DOORS TO PERCEPTION

OPEN THE GATES TO HELL

OPEN YOUR VEINS

OPEN DOOR POLICY
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
OPEN A RESTAURANT

OPEN A MOVIE
OPEN HOUSE
OPEN AND SHUT
OPEN MARRIAGE… COME OUT IN THE

OPEN WITH IT WHY DON’T YOU? YOU’RE AN

OPEN BOOK, YOU FROSTY MOTHERFUCKER BUT

YOU DON’T HAVE AN OPEN MIND, CRACK YOU

OPEN AND TRY... OH MAN, THINK I

OPENED A CAN OF WORMS ON THAT ONE... HE
OPENED A FUCKING PANDORA’S BOX ON ME
OPEN THE FLOODGATES OPEN SEASON ON ME
OPEN THE DOOR TO MY DOOM
OPEN SECRET…SHUT IT PLEASE…

BUT WHEN ONE DOOR SHUTS, ANOTHER

OPENS... AN OPEN-ENDED QUESTION...I AM

NOT OPEN TO THIS SHIT OPEN FIRE
OPEN MYSELF TO CRITICISM... I HAVE

OPENED THE WAY FOR SOMETHING

HORRIBLE... BUSTED WIDE

OPEN... BLOW WIDE

OPEN OLD WOUNDS

Open new wounds more

than likely

OPEN UP SOME DEEP TRAUMA

but you greet it with

OPEN arms... BE

OPEN TO LOVE…THE HEAVENS WILL

OPEN UP AND THE

ANGELS SING
YOU THINK IT’S GOING TO

BE THAT EASY?

YES, YES

I DO

—From the graphic trilogy, THE DARK BACKWARDS by Luke and Mark Stilwell

LET ME CRY PREACHER

Let me cry, Preacher.

Mama’s gone

and no resurrection and life sermon

gonna comfort me now.

That “How Great Thou Art” solo

was pretty

and maybe she requested it

but it ain’t her.

In her dancin’ days

if it didn’t have

that swing

then it didn’t mean a thing.

We all laughed with her the time

she fell on her elder behind

attemptin’ a jitterbug step.

But we all knew what she meant.

The sounds she came to dig

were whippoorwill calls, cricket responses

and hummingbird buzzing dives

to defend turf around her feeder.

Mama wasn’t too religious.

She never went to church much and when

she got mad, she’d often say “shit”

or take the name of the Lord in vain.

To be honest with you, Reverend,

the flames of your hell didn’t scare

Mama nearly as much as not

being able to feed her family.

At 15 I got religion and started sayin’

grace before meals. Mama said

she thought it’d also be a good idea

to remember the hands that prepared it.

I was too much of a pious prick to get it then

but today I see we oughta be grateful

for all the hard work it takes from farm to

kitchen to put our daily bread on the table.

Holdin’ everything in

when it’s gotta come out

ain’t never gonna do nobody

no good.

So let me get it out, Preacher.

Then you can talk about

wipin’ away all tears.

But keep it short.

Billionaires and the Kingdom of God *

Narrator: One day as Jesus was going down the road, a billonaire ran

up to him, and asked,

Billionaire: Good Teacher, what must I do to get right with God?

Narrator: So Jesus said to him,

Jesus: Why do you call me good? Only God is good. You know

the commandments. ‘Do not murder. Be faithful in marriage.

Do not steal. Do not tell lies about others. Do not cheat. Respect

your father and mother.

Narrator: And he answered and said to him,

Billionaire: I’ve always played it cool with the golden rule but it still

doesn’t seem to be enough. I wish I could call God my father as you do

but he feels so far away and detached when I pray.

Narrator: Jesus looked steadily at him, and nodded,

Jesus: Yeah, you do have a big God problem. So let me tell you

whatcha gotta do if you wanna get on board that good old gospel ship

bound for glory. Sell everything you got, and give all the money you made

from this transaction to the poor.

Billionaire: Omigod! This is utterly unbelievable! Do you mean to tell

me, to find salvation, I’ve got to throw away all my capital to welfare

bums who’d just waste it on wine and whores?

Jesus: Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t, but this is not

about them, but you.

Billionaire: Hey don’t get me wrong.There are plenty of deserving poor

who need aid but why 100%? Even 5% of my assets would be

an enormous amount and I’d be willing and able to donate up to

15% for assistance to the needy.

Jesus: The poor need more than charity, they need justice.

Billionaire: What do you mean by justice?

Jesus: When the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven,

power as well as wealth is redistributed. There are no rulers nor

subjects, rich nor poor, master nor slaves, colonizer nor

colonized. The first become the last. The last become the first.

Narrator: The young aristocrat grinned as he shook his head.

Billionaire: Good luck on that. The odds of that happening are

about as good as of a… as of a…”

Jesus: As of a what?

Billionaire: Of a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle.”

Narrator: Jesus laughed.

Jesus: May I quote you on that?

* Based on Mark 10:17-25

ON THE WINNEMUCCA ROAD

I was on a long,

dusty Winnemucca road

in a Winnebago

borrowed from Hank Snow

and driven by

Jack Kerouac who asked me

if I seen a road with

so much dust and sand.
And I said,

“Are you kiddin’ me,

buddy-ro

I’ve traveled every road

in this here land!”

I’ve been everywhere,

man.

Crossed the desert bare,

man.
I’ve breathed the mountain air,

man.
Of travel I’ve had my share,

man.
I’ve been everywhere.

I’ve been to

Gad, Asher, Lagado

El Dorado,

Gog, Magog, Megiddo,

Armageddon,

Oz, Asgard, Shangri-La,

Utopia

Dan, Duneview, Brigadoon,

Kalamazooloo

How do you do?

I’ve been everywhere,

man

Crossed the desert bare,

man.
I’ve breathed the mountain air,

man.
Of travel I’ve had my share,

man.
I’ve been everywhere.

I’ve been to

Lemnos, Troy, Hades,

Utopia,

Gomorrah, Sodom, Mayberry,,

Oceania,

Mayflower, Middle Earth,

Hobbiton

Land of Oz, Rivendell,

what the hell!

I’ve been everywhere,

man.

crossed the desert bare,

man.
I’ve breathed the mountain air,

man..
Of travel I’ve had my share,

man.
I’ve been everywhere.

I’ve been to

Smallville, Whoville,

Pleasantville, Xanadu,

the many mini-malls

of Michita,

Fairyland, Munchkinland

Neverland, Candyland,

Man oh man!

I’ve been everywhere,

man.

Crossed the desert bare,

man.
I’ve breathed the mountain air,

man.
Of travel I’ve had my share,

man..
I’ve been everywhere.

I’ve been to

Westview, Brigadoon,

Atlantis, Eurasia,

Hogwart, Mordor,

Endor, Trantor

Cantelope Island,

Skull Island, Monster Island

Babel, Birnam Wood,

Airstrip One, Alderaan,

Emerald City, Gotham City,

what a pity.

I’ve been everywhere,

man.

crossed the desert bare,

man.
I’ve breathed the mountain air,

man..
Of travel I’ve had my share,

man.
I’ve been everywhere.

THROWING UP PRAYERS

91106

Pasadena

California

USA

North America

NW Hemisphere

Earth

Solar System

Milky Way Galaxy

Laniakea Supercluster

Universe

Multiverse

To the Great Spirit, Zeus, Ishtar, Vishnu,

Yahweh, Christ, Allah, the Force

or to whomever it may concern:

O Lord, how countless are our enemies.

Thou handest us over like sheep for the slaughter.

How long shall the wicked triumph?

We see no signs nor prophet any more.

Why standest thou afar off, O Lord?

Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?

Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit.

I am filled with misery.

My life is on the brink of hell.

Why hast thou forsaken me?

How long will thy hide thy face from me?

Is thy rejection final?

Yours truly,

Perplexed poet

Resident,

Thank you for your prayer. I appreciate having

the benefit of your views. This response is an

acknowledgement that I received your prayer

and will make note of your comments.

Sincerely,

God

GENESIS 3:9

And the Lord God called unto Adam

and said unto him, Where art thou?

And he answered, Just kicking back in

the Garden of Eden with

Eve on a planet orbiting

one of 400 billion stars in

the Milky Way,

one of around

two trillion galaxies journeying in

the observable universe which could be

one of an infinite number wandering

within a multiverse.

But, hey Lord,

I was just about to ask thee

the same question!

ODE TO THE PERIOD

Where the comma is hesitant,

you are resolute.

Abrupt the dash--

You get to the point.

Ellipses enigmatic…

You translucent are.

The semicolon initiates;

you consummate.

An apostrophe’s known for its exclusions

while you are recognized for your inclusions.

The exclamation point is excessive.

Hell yes, you are stable!

Does not the question bring uncertainty

But you closure?

As the old quotation marks, “When all is said

and done, you are there.”

Colons and waves can’t stop.

You do on a dot.

A NEOLIBERAL PA$TORAL

The Free market is my mantra

For offshore tax havens

I shall not want

He maketh me spray pesticides on green pastures

and leadeth me to build factories beside still waters

where I may lay its wastes

He guideth me to lay off union workers in my country

and move operations overseas to hire cheap labor

for the sake of maximizing my bottomline

Yea, though I walk through a valley deforested by climate

chaos, I’ll fear no evil for my government’s in thy hip pocket

Thy media and church, they comfort me

Thou preparest a banquet table of more gourmet food

than I could possibly consume far from the sight of over

a billion people on the brink of starvation

Thou fillest the skies with over 420 and

counting particles per million

of carbon-dioxide

Thou anointest beaches

from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico

with oil spills and deepwater drilling blowouts

The landfills runneth over with single-use plastics

used for average of 12 minutes but persisting

in the environment for half a millennium

Surely unlimited accumulation of wealth

shall follow me all the days of my life

and will continue on a planet of finite resources

world without end Amen Amen Ommmm

LIKE JESUS

I was baptized

and don’t condemn

abortion or homosexuality

Like Moses,

I have a white beard

and do not covet

my neighbor’s ass

Like Jimi Hendrix,

I have some Cherokee blood

and smoked pot

Like Woody Guthrie,

I was born in Oklahoma

and moved to California

Like Jackie Robinson’s father,

my son attended Pasadena City College

and moved to Brooklyn

Like Pablo Neruda,

I’ve written some odes

and think capitalism sucks

Like Lawrence Ferlinghetti,

I’ve eaten Coney Island hot dogs

while waiting for the rebirth of wonder

Like Allen Ginsberg,

I’ve been to the City Lights

Bookstore in San Francisco

Like Bukowski,

I’ve worked at a post office

and lost money betting on horses

at Santa Anita and Hollywood

Like Einstein,

I’ve been to Caltech

and think energy matters

Like King Kong,

I have visited the Empire State

Building in Manhattan

and dig blondes

Like Donald Trump,

I have been to Queens

and do a lot of bullshitting

Like Emily Dickinson,

buzzing flies at funerals

bug the hell out of me

Like Holden Caulfield

in The Catcher in the Rye,

goddamned, name dropping

phonies make me puke

FATHER SKY/MOTHER EARTH

December, 1953

Freshman year at Oklahoma Baptist University located

in Shawnee, city named after first people’s nation

led by Tecumseh who died 140 years ago in battle

defending sacred ancestral homeland from occupation

by White Anglo-Saxon Protestant settler colonialists

Under darkening purple skies in Pontiac sedan,

our university evangelistic team drives to Indian

tuberculosis sanatorium blue northern wind from

Arctic blasts cheeks pink as we step out of car

parked on asphalt lot

Blue-eyed student preacher along with four other

ministerial students stands before plate glass window

separating healthy settler-colonial descendants from

coughing and wheezing indigenous inmates

lying in or sitting upon hospital beds

In warm, earnest tone, he assures dark, brown eyes

in Ghost Dance trance that though their sins be

as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow through

the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ

We stand upon cold, concrete floor above moist,

crimson soil of the state where the Trail of Tears came

to an end and sing, “Just as I am without one plea

but that thy blood was shed for me”

Oklahoma is from Choctaw words

okla and humma—the land

of the Red People

MASTERS OF WAR

Do not fear to step into that endless war night.

Hear no weeping for martyred mothers with their daughters.

Deny, deny there’s any dying of the light.

Dismiss charges our government has committed war crimes.

Contend we have the right of self-defense against enemy terror.

Do not fear to step into that endless war night.

Although rubble and craters from 2,000 pound bombs a dreadful sight,

Say we hear the cries of those who mourn and hunger,

But deny, deny there’s any dying of the light.

Hear not thousands of worldwide demonstrators protesting genocide,

Assert our country is the one who is fighting the real horror.

Do not fear to step into that endless war night.

Advise doubters they should always look on the bright side

And view with skeptical eye those dissenting detractors.

Deny, deny there’s any dying of the light.

And you, my President from your lofty heights,

Considers subjugation of colonized to colonizer the right and natural order,

And does not fear to step into that endless war night,

Or deny, deny there’s any dying of the light.

BLACK FRIDAY

They say it’s darkest before dawn

but it don’t seem that way

Mama sits at table but this time

without coffee and cigarette

I don’t hear her

coughing or wheezing

It’s clear she’s gettin’ better

I call the undertaker

and cancel her funeral

It’s lighter now but still dark

Saturday after Black Friday--

the one following Thanksgiving

not the good one before Easter

I got some letters to mail

but before I do, I hug her

for the longest time

Death has given me back

my mama and I can’t

let go

RECTANGLE UNIVERSE

Between shadowy

east and west exits,

solar rays

drawn north

by gravitational

force so

strong not

even light

can escape

door-shaped

black hole at

end of trek

THREE WISHES

I wish elder

wearing conductor's cap

and blue denim overalls

walking bus length

ahead of me

while on guard duty

during foggy night

on bridge

spanning river

which seems wide

as Mississippi

would stop

and let me know

which direction

I'm walking

where I'll be

when I reach

other side

and where I was

before I came

to this bridge

I am 90.

My birthday, September 23, is the same birthday

as John Coltrane who just happens to be my

favorite musician even over Wolfgang and Ludwig.

Checkmate, atheists.

Grandma’s birthday was a week after mine.

I’ve heard that living a good life is the best revenge

My grandma did that after her husband abandoned

her and their seven kids to fend for themselves

a decade before the Great Depression began

By washing clothes and cooking at pow wows,

she somehow managed to pay the rent, bills

and feed her single parented family

Grandma died at 91 surrounded by

a love supreme

of her four daughters and three sons

along with their children, grandchildren

and great grandchildren.

I not only won’t

I CAN’T

call her ex-

my grandfather

He died,

at whatever age it was,

abandoned

by ALL the love

he had abandoned

ELOHIM

COM LIT 250 CRITICAL BIBLE STUDIES SEMINAR: While her Teacher’s Assistant, Wiki Lin, addresses the seminar class, Loki draws a picture of large billowy white cloud on class whiteboard.

Okie: (singing as he enters classroom)

I saw the light

No more darkness

No more night

Praise the Lord

I saw the light!

Wiki Lin: According to Christine Hayes, kavod is this cloud that contains or hides the fire that is Yahweh's presence--That is also the term that's used in the Torah, in Exodus and the priestly sources to describe the presence of God among His people, this fire that's encased in a cloud, the kavod.¹ (Loki finishes drawing and lays marker on whiteboard tray)

Loki: It’s kovad time, Bible scholars—SHAZAM!

Loki: Hi, Elohim. Love the way you commanded earth, sun, moon, stars, plants. animals, humans into existence in just six days.

ELOHIM: Thank you, Loki. Yes, on each of those days I spoke all matter into being.

Cal: Really? Astronomers today tell us there are over 2 trillion galaxies in the known universe, each with billions to trillions of stars. So how in hell could you have created the universe in only six days?

Edmund: Is it not true, Elohim, that one day with you is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as one day.

Okie: I object. Edmund’s a pre-law student and leading the witness.

Loki: Objection overruled. Please answer the question.

ELOHIM: Yes.

Edmund: No further questions.

Amiri: The Bible says God made man in his image, right?

ELOHIM: Of course. I created humans in my own image, in the image of me created I them.

Amiri: Then you must be white because that’s the way Michelangelo painted you on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

ELOHIM: No one has ever seen me so any images of me whether graven or painted are misleading and therefore idols.

Lupe: I remember my high school U.S. history teacher told me how when the Catholics were trying to convert the Incas from sun worship to Christianity, their emperor Atahualpa was reported to have replied something like, “Nobody has seen the god your Bible claims is the one true god but we Incas worship a god we see every day.

Joni: Why are humans called Homo sapiens when they do all these stupid things like fight wars over resources to make useless stuff for us to buy and bring home in single use plastic bags which are then thrown away and eventually end up in the oceans and then bellies of fish and birds.

ELOHIM: Well, I certainly didn’t call your species Homo sapiens. It is a name humans in their hubris have given themselves. In the beginning I did not create puppets but people who have the freedom to make choices which are wise or foolish, good or evil.

Laura: Mic drop.

Cal: Excuse me but was there a democratic vote on whether or not for a couple of minutes of a soda gulp, capitalists should still manufacture Styrofoam cups which persist in the environment for half a millennium?

Loki: Wish we had more time to discuss your question, Cal. It’s been an honor and pleasure talking to you, Elohim. MZAHS! (Kovad light coming from whiteboard switches off and returns to inside of cloud.)

¹Lecture 3. The Hebrew Bible in Its Ancient Near Eastern Setting: Genesis 1-4 in Context, YaleCourses, YouTube

MT WILSON EPIPHANY

O, Spirit of Mount Wilson Observatory

5,710 feet above the Pacific Ocean who

did discover last century we who live

in the Milky Way Galaxy are not alone, how

many stars are there in the universe?

Well,” answered the spirit of the learned astronomer,

“there are 100–400 billion stars in our galaxy

and since there are over two trillion similar sized

galaxies in the observable universe simply multiply

the range of stars in our galaxy with the number

of galaxies in the universe for the best possible

range of stars estimate.”

“Gracias.”

“De nada.”

JUNE BUGGED BLUES

Watch out, boy!

Junebug, Junebug

Meaner than a bumble bee

Harder than a bowling ball

Spotted you a mile high

Above that wood tag game

And heeeeeee’s--

A-GONNA GETCHA!

Run cross the front yard, boy,

And jump on your front porch

But it ain’t a-gonna do no good

June bug’s a-buzzin’ down

Like a dive bomber

From the twilight sky

And heeeeeee’s--

A-GONNA GETCHA!

Slam the door shut

Crawl under mama’s bed

But before she get’s home

Ole June bug’s gonna bang a big hole

Through a bedroom window screen

And heeeeeee’s--

A-GONNA GETCHA!

Watch out

Junebug, Junebug

Mama’s a-comin through

The front door now

So you better turn around real quick

And fly back out

The same way you flew in

Or sheeeeeee’s--

A-GONNA GETCHA!

DECOLONIZE THIS POEM

“Decolonization or Extinction”—Elena Gomez, The Red Nation

De-Columbus Day this poem.

America wasn’t discovered.

It was invaded and colonized.

First and foremost, this poem would like to

acknowledge it was written on the stolen,

occupied land of the Tongva people.

This poem views the world through the eyes

of the colonized whether they be those of Jews

under domination of Rome in ancient times

or those of Palestinians under Israel today.

De-canonize Junípero Serra.

A saint he ain’t.

The first peoples of Los Angeles needed to be saved from

colonialism, NOT from the imaginary flames of a hell with which

this "Apostle of California" threatened them unless they accepted

his blue-eyed, European Christ as their lord and savior.

De-colonize Mother Earth

Liberate

her skies from greenhouse gas emissions,

her oceans from being capital’s plastic junkyard,

her coasts from oil tanker spills and deepwater drilling blowouts,

her honeybees pollinating one of every three bites of food we eat

from glyphosate-based herbicides,

her chickens and pigs from cages or crates where

they can’t turn around,

her sacred land from electronic and nuclear waste contamination,

and her boreal woods and rainforests from corporate plunder.

This poem like the poet who wrote it and those who hear

and/or read it, are a part of nature, NOT separate from it,

and thus one strand in the web of life currently threatened

by the sixth mass extinction.

De-Thanksgiving Day this poem.

It does not give thanks for the genocide, plantation

and wage slavery labor on which the wealth

of a settler colonial nation was built.

But it does give thanks to—

white haired grandmothers locking themselves to bulldozers

to stop laying of carbon bomb oil pipelines,

Standing Rock water protectors facing dogs, pepper spray,

water cannon blasts in freezing weather while resisting

the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline,

those sitting in trees to defend Weelaunee Forest

in Atlanta, Georgia from being demolished

and replaced by “Cop City,

university students in tents on campus lawns protesting

genocide in Gaza,

thousands of environmental activists murdered for

opposing rape of Mother Earth by fossil fuel extraction,

and Idle No More brothers and sisters round dancing

to beat of hand drums before banks funding

fracking and oil drilling to demand end

of fossil fuel era before it ends us.

De-commodify this poem.

It has value even if it doesn’t add one cent

to unlimited wealth accumulation of richest 1%

De-privatize this poem

and re-communalize it.

As Roque Dalton has said,

“Creo que el mundo es bello,

que la poesía es como el pan,

de todos.”

“Poetry, like bread,

is for everyone.”

O SAY CAN’T YOU SEE

Antarctic ice shelves size of Los Angeles collapsing into sea,

wildfires in Western U. S. and Canada seen from space,

Amazon rainforest—our planet’s lungs which supplies 20%

of world's oxygen— losing 200,000 acres a day,

Nebraska experiencing two “500-year floods” in one decade,

Zhengzhou, China receiving one third of annual rainfall in one hour,

900 killed in Southern Africa by longest-lasting cyclone, Freddy,

hundreds dying from triple-digit temperatures from “heat domes,”

equivalent of one garbage truck filled with plastic debris

dumped into ocean every minute,

135 sea turtles dead from nearly 500 plastic pieces in stomachs,

less than 14,000 Sumatran orangutans remaining,

and one million species on brink of extinction?

You will not know what’s in your wallet nor given

15 minutes to save 15%,

you will not find your beach and drink ice-chilled bottles

of beer with blonde and brunette bikini beauties,

State Farm will not be there like a good neighbor,

there will be no art shows nor Black Friday blowouts,

there will be no “skies the limit” commencement speeches

to high school and university seniors,

there will not be 9 brilliant ways to build wealth after 40,

nor drill baby, drill political campaign speeches

on a dead planet.

Scientists have warned humanity has five years to act

to keep global temperatures below 1.5º Celsius

to stop the worst effects of climate change

Thus saith the physics,

“Better end your MotherEarthfucking ways,

before they end you!”

A BOLIVIAN BEATITUDE*

And when Bechtel, the neoliberal conquistador murmured,

“I thirst for a greater return on my investments,” Bolivia’s

governor and legislators did hear his cry and filled with

compassion for their boss’s bottom line, privatized

Cochabamba’s municipal water supply

But when the indigenous compesinos of Cochabamba

like the companero carpenter on Golgotha cross

cried, WE THIRST, they were told they

first had to pay their water bill

They then asked how were they going to be able to pay

as much as one quarter of their two dollars a day income

and still get by

Government and corporation spokesmen explained

sacrifices must be made for the structural adjustment

which would insure a more efficient market but if

they were patient, wealth from Bechtel investment

would trickle down to them by and by

But when the rains came, the people of Cochabamba

discovered Bechtel had claimed even the water

which fell from the sky and they were prohibited

from gathering rainwater

“The water didn’t come from that pendejo so why

in hell is he charging us for it,” they asked?

When the people saw how their government defended

the private property rights of a corporation over

their sacred right to drink water, they took to

the streets shouting, “THE WATER IS OURS,

DAMN IT!”

They sent the police

They shot tear gas

Two children blinded

The companeros marched on shouting,

“EL PUEBLO UNIDO

JAMAS SERA VENCIDO”

They sent the army

They fired guns

Six killed and 175 wounded

The companeros marched on shouting,

“EL PUEBLO UNIDO

JAMAS SERA VENCIDO”

At the climax of the struggle--

The police remained in their stations

The army stayed in their barracks

The members of Congress became invisible

The Governor went into hiding and afterwards resigned

The only legitimate authority left was,

EL PUEBLO UNIDO

JAMAS SERA VENCIDO”

The people gathered at the city square

making decisions in large assemblies

And at the end they made

the decisions about the water

In 2006, 500 years after the invasion

and subsequent occupation of the Americas,

Evo Morales was elected the first

indigenous president of Bolivia.

In 2019 a research report from the Center

for Economic and Policy Research showed

Bolivia had reduced poverty by 42 percent

and extreme poverty by 60 percent since

Evo Morales became President in 2006.

Blessed are those whose thirst for justice

will never be quenched until it rolls down like

mighty waters from an ever-flowing stream

*From an interview with Oscar Olivera, Coalition of Water and Life, from the documentary, Corporation.

MANA*

Mana is

Bahaman Brahmans chanting mantras before a Madagascar dawn,

high noon profits of a Mama & Papa pot shop in Chicago,

jogging off millions of Machiavellian manipulations on Saginaw sidewalk,

the magic of a margarita with a Mohammedan Madonna in March

Mana is SUNRISE

Mana is DAYTIME

Mana is SUNSET

Mana is NIGHTTIME

Mana is

spring cantatas of rocking Rachmaninof’ and be-bopping Bach,

Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Santana and Janis Joplin at Woodstock,

manioc madness manifested at a Madison, Wisconsin stomp dance,

a sasquatch munching Choctaw chocolate on a frozen Mackinaw swamp

Mana is spring INFANCY

Mana is summer ADOLESCENCE

Mana is autumn MATURITY

Mana is winter wisdom of ELDERS

Mana is

the Taj Mahal love of Shah Jahal for his wife, Mumtaz,

the prophetic poetry of a pentecostal Hobbit in Managua mañana,

applauding Amada Delgado’s Tecate Tocatta at Montana cocktail lounge,

the colossal saxophone of Sonny Rollins melting Stockholm frost

As far as East

is from West

and North from

South is MANA

Mana is

the cosmic immensity of a Ma Yüan monochromatic ink drawing,

Dietrich Bonhoeffer detoxification of Nazi demagoguery,

Mayahana contacts with Yahweh through Allen Watts radio talks,

the Pascal thought we’re nothing before the ALL but ALL toward the nothing

Mana is BEYOND

Mana is WITHIN

Mana is the beyond within

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

*The Polynesian, Melanesian, and Maori belief in a pervasive supernatural or magical power.

TO A COSMOS FLOWER

I want you orange

like the Mexican Marigolds which honor the dead

and celebrate their lives during

Los Dias De Los Muertos

but I also want you yellow

as sunlight shining through your petals

like the life coming from our sun

I want

the sky from where the sunshine comes

blue

the clouds which float by

white

and your chest high stem with leaves

growing in pairs along it

green

and the ground from where you sprouted and grow

brown

I want

your roots sunk deep into dry and sunbaked soil

where you need to be watered

only once a week or when you start to wilt

and intertwined underground with those of your nearby

flowering family

I want you

to stretch to the firmament flexible enough

to bend with the wind

but strong enough

to return upright whenever it calms

I prefer you wild like your ancestors who first grew

in Mexico

or mine who became known as Homo Sapiens

in Africa

I want

you as balanced

as the Cosmos we live in

and which lives in us

WALTZ OF THE FOREST FLOWERS

(To Charles Lloyd)

Hiking east through a mountain wood

I hear the poppy’s golden sound

Butterflies start their waltz at dawn

De-dot-de-da-da

Ommmmmmmmmm

While puffy clouds pass over peaks

I see rock wrens’ saxophone chirps

Willows whirl as they breathe in psalm

De-dot-de-da-da

Ommmmmmmmmm

Ravenous hawk circles canyon

Lazy diamondback soaks noon sun

No one’s blue by this gospel song

De-dot-de-da-da

Ommmmmmmmmm

Funky bunny by bush ahead

sniffs afternoon leaf aperitif

All the forest hip hop along

De-dot-de-da-da

Ommmmmmmmmm

Thirsty Alders on sunset banks

sip stream water through tangled roots

Everywhere there’s a dancing throng

De-dot-de-da-da

Ommmmmmmmmm

LIVE FROM THE MONTEREY JAZZ FESTIVAL

Charles Lloyd--tenor sax & flute, Cecil McBee--bass,

Jack Dejonette--drums and on piano, Keith Jarrett

De-dot-de-da-da

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

FORTRESS OF FAITH

My alma mater ¹

Fortress of faith

No doubt allowed

Believe tales of

talking snakes and virgin births

history, not myth

But Genesis 1

says God made man and woman

at the same time

While Genesis 2

says man made first, then Eve came

from one of his ribs

Both accounts

can’t be true

One’s true,

the other false,

or both false

In Matthew there’s

a star over Bethlehem

but no angel choir

While in Luke there’s

an angel choir but no star

over Bethlehem

Both accounts

can’t be true

One’s true,

the other false,

or both false

Fundamentalist

preacher said, homosexuals

make God puke

Gay pastor asks, “If

God hates homosexuals, why

did he make me one?”

John said the Devil’s

the father of Jews who doubted

Jesus was God ²

Michael Servetus

doubts Jesus was God

Burned at stake

by John Calvin

MAGA state school chief

doesn’t believe

transgender

people

exist

Nex Benedict gets

jumped 3-1 in

high school girls restroom

Dies next day

I John 4:20 3

says you can’t love God if

you hate people

Whoever does not

love those they’ve see, can’t love God

whom they haven’t seen

¹ Bob Jones University

²John 8:44

The author of 1 John is not the same John who wrote the gospel of John

PSALM 150 & ALL THAT JAZZ

Hallelujah!

Praise the everything to which I am nothing!

Praise the nothing to which I am everything!

Praise the universe beyond us!

Praise the universe within us!

Praise with Freddie Hubbard trumpet tour of Cantaloupe Island!

Praise with Purple Haze from Jimi Hendrix’s electrifying guitar!

Praise with Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man!

Praise with a Shakira - Hips Don't Lie dance!

Praise with Newport Jazz Festival secular humanists

dancing to gospel beat of Mahalia Jackson!

Praise with Don Cornelius Soul Train line dancers introducing

on syndicated television show the latest dance moves!

Praise with Eric Dolphy playing Jitterbug Waltz on flute!

Praise with loud crashing cymbals of Elvin Jones drum proclamations!

Praise with Willie “life-of-the-party” Bobo on conga!

Let everything that has breath

Sock-it-to-me! Sock-it-to-me! Sock-it-to-me!

HERE COMES GERTRUDE STEIN—

Queen of Pasadena Library’s Doo-Dah Parade--

riding

in her “rose is a rose is a rose” float! Then Walt Whitman

high-strutting

before Redwood Chainsaw Massacre Marching Band

chanting

“Pioneers, O Pioneers...” Next--Cleopatra in front of Langston Hughes

singing

“America...” from a Nile River gallery deck and a

smiling

Uncle Tom and Simon Legree pull oars before Bukowski

bathing

in four-wheel bathtub with Gregor Samsa metamorphosed as cockroach

inline-skating

on six legs behind the dirty old man! Fortunately Falstaff is

unicycling

behind him with a mucous scooper and in front of Allen Ginsberg

directing

the Beat Poets’ HOWL-e-lu-jah chorus followed by Emily Dickinson

popping

out of her casket to swat the fly she hears

buzzing

over her--Hey there’s Ezra Pound in cowboy suit

hopping

along over a broom horse with his fascist gun in the West and

firing

blank verse bullets above a raft on the Mississippi

carrying

Jim, Huck and what’s this...? Langston Hughes again

singing

“America...?” Look--Romeo’s at a balcony

French-kissing--

Good golly--Mrs. Molly Bloom! Ah, Titania and amiable ass Bottom

whirling

in mad Midsummer Night’s Dream followed by Joseph Conrad

driving

river boat deep into the Congo--Can you believe it? Langston Hughes

singing

“America...” Does this guy know rivers or what? Here comes Moby Dick

holding

Captain Ahab and Ishmael

showing

banner, SAVE THE HUMANS! Omigod! J. Alfred Prufrock is

daring

to disturb the universe

I LOVE THIS PARADE

PASCAL & BUKOWSKI SNEAK FROM SNOTTY SESTINA

TO GO TO SANTA ANITA

All around our tiny planet in a tiny galaxy is empty space.

I have to take a crap after making bet for first race.

In relation to the infinite I am nothing.

In relation to the nothing, I am everything.

As if the very searchlight of God was focused on me,

I picked up my racing form and began reading it.

By reason I seek to comprehend the infinity of things beyond it.

I’ve found this place...you should see the air, light and space.

The endless enormity of an impersonal universe engulfs me.

Rush to bar for shot of scotch after second race.

Miss the love shadows-- When she left, she took almost everything.

What was before and will be after, I know nothing.

How can all there is come from nothing?

Unless it bursts from your soul like a rocket, don’t do it.

Like Einstein or Hawking I want an explanation for everything.

With heart not reason, I’ll soar throughout space.

I pass gold poppies by Seabiscuit’s statue during third race.

It’s so sad: the flowers are still trying to please me.

If I wager on God’s existence what will happen to me?

If God is, I win all. If he isn’t, I lose nothing.

I haven’t won shit as we come to the fourth race.

As stars move through space they dent or warp it.

They say deep in earth live Creatures from Outer Space.

At a black hole entrance, I come to the end of everything

but through its exit, I may come to the beginning of everything.

A crazy alcoholic woman once threw Pound’s Cantos at me.

What we think is gravity is the strong curvature of space.

Wild: my body being there and filled with nothing.

It’s still miraculous whether the beginning is from a thou or it.

Can’t get my ass off barstool and miss fifth race.

I break my losing streak in the sixth race.

From the precipice I leap into the void or everything.

I told that tough motherfucker, “You can make it!”

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.

Yet like the universe I have come into being out of nothing.

Nothing but space between us... care to close that space?

After the seventh race, Blaise says to me,

“Chinaski, you have everything to gain but will lose nothing.”

“I wish it were that simple,” I tell this fucking space ball

Rosalee Gurrola Thompson walked in beauty upon the earth from September 16,1950 to May 30, 2013. Her poems were published over 135 times. The lines in italics are from some of her poems.

TO ROSALEE

Where

We walk inside roaring comets

Stepping on broken stars

When

Everyone tells you that they are dead

And you didn’t even know it

Rosalee Gurrola Thompson walked in beauty upon the earth from September 16,1950 to May 30, 2013. Her poems were published over 135 times. The lines in italics are from some of her poems.

Before

I bury 7 endangered poet’s books

Under my plum tree

While

Your green haired two year old boy

Runs naked through a rainbow sprinkler

During

Journey of a talking orange koi fish

In quest of a star at the bottom of the ocean

After

I see you at The special All About You Day

For this year’s April Poetry Festival

I snack

On half portion of poached political brains along with

Bag of grandma’s chacha crunch chocolate chip crazy cookies

See

Six billion red bees fall from the smoggy sky

Over Los Angeles City Hall

And hear

Jacaranda leaves laughing lavender tears

The day you died

AUTUMN IN LOS ANGELES

I don’t recall when the lights of the universe

were switched on but I heard they were

pretty damn spectacular

Anyway before you knew it—you had

galaxies filled with stars orbited by

planets orbited by moons

It takes our planet, Mother Earth, 24

hours to rotate on her axis—morning,

afternoon, evening and night to

complete one spin and 3651/4th

days to orbit the sun—winter, spring,

summer, and fall to complete

annual solar revolution

Speaking of fall, autumn in New York’s OK

but it can compare no way’

to an autumn in LA

I mean in New York autumn leaves

fall from the trees brown

while in Los Angeles they

remain in the trees green

same as they do in the spring

So give me a fucking break!

What’s so romantic about

decaying matter returning to

the dirt from which it came?

That’s why Garcia Lorca said,

“I want you green, not brown,

you New York clowns

By the way the LA Dodgers last

won the World Series in 2020

When was the last time

the New York Yankees won

the October classic?

But I digress

A HAIKU TO MY HIROSHIMA DAUGHTER-IN-LAW

Maiden voyage to Santa Monica on Metro Expo line

Get on at Metro 7th St

Standing room only

Compassionate commuter offers me his seat

Rail ride almost as bumpy as bus one to same city

Forever and ever like rolling over slow tide

Wonder if it’s worth it

But after nearly two hours on rail from Pasadena

and I step out under blue skies within white puffy clouds

while inhaling salty ocean breeze

as I walk to Santa Monica pier,

there’s no doubt it was

Walk over rugged pier planks to Coffee Bean

Order coffee with blueberry muffin and take to outdoor table

Read Luke’s poem about how his wife, Masami, when she was

an elementary schoolgirl dreaded field trips to the museum

in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park because It was a non-stop

tour of the horrors on August 6, 1945

I had never cried reading this poem previously

but on picture postcard day over Southern California shore I cry for—

Massami’s loss of innocence before unconscionable evil and suffering,

the loss of my firstborn at 47 from rectal cancer

and the human sacrifice of over 140,000

to the hellfire god of nuclear war

Then across wharf

from man of Asia Indian descent between

white-blue speckled sky and sandy earth

comes to me

sitar music

Pulling laptop from backpack

I begin to write—

To sitar beat from

Santa Monica Pier

waves dance to beach

AMADA ESTRADA’S TECATE TOCATTA

I gotta WHEN I’VE BOUGHT ZENYATTA’S PIÑATA

Go with the BEAUTIFUL CONTRALTO CARLOTTA

Hear Ronda ON ORGAN PERFORM LIKE YOU OUGHTA

We gotta AFTER THE GRANADA REGATTA

Take Ron with US TO THE ARMADA CANTATA

Hear Ronda ON ORGAN PERFORM LIKE YOU OUGHTA

Amada ESTRADA’S TECATE TOCATTA

Tod’s gotta GLAZE A WHOLE LOTTA TERRA COTTA

For Mama, PAPA AND YOLANDA ZAPATA

Hear Ronda ON ORGAN PERFORM LIKE YOU OUGHTA

Amada ESTRADA’S TECATE TOCATTA

Shimada HAS BOUGHTA RICOTTA TOSTADA

Enjoyed Sue SINATRA’S SUMATRA SONATA

Heard Ronda ON ORGAN PERFORM LIKE YOU OUGHTA

Amada ESTRADA’S TECATE TOCATTA

I gotta...SONATA...CONTRALTO CARLOTTA

A lotta...ARMADA...GRANADA REGATTA

You oughta...HAVE BOUGHTA...RICOTTA TOSTADA

Tecate...TOCATTA...AMADA ESTRADA

TUTTI FRUTTI

A wop

A wop BOPA

A wop BOPA loo

A wop BOPA loo BOPA

A wop BOPA loo BOPA LOP

A wop BOPA loo BOPA LOP bam

A wop BOPA loo BOPA LOP bam bom

A wop BOPA loo BOPA LOP bam bom BOOM

A wop BOPA loo BOPA LOP bam bom

A wop BOPA loo BOPA LOP bam

A wop BOPA loo BOPA LOP

A wop BOPA loo BOPA

A wop BOPA loo

A wop BOPA

A wop

Rooty Tooty

AFTER THE RAIN

Breathe in crisp blue sky from billowy white clouds

floating west to east with San Gabriel mountains

to soprano sax meditation of John Coltrane

Walk to corner of Colorado and Allen to take

Pasadena city bus for breakfast at Corner Bakery

and grocery shop at Trader Joe’s located a floor above

After getting off bus change mind to go instead to nearby

Green Street Restaurant where my mother-in-law, Dorothy,

often treated our family to a gourmet breakfast

See they no longer have on menu Otto’s Potato Patch omelet

Order instead two scrambled egg-potato tacos

Coffee not hot and ask waitress to bring me one that is

Spot sitting at nearby table spirits of those living

today--Cheryl, Mark and me along with those whose

bodies are no longer with us, Dorothy and Luke

Dorothy, a recently retired nurse, is sitting

between Luke and Mark, her first two grandkids

She worked at the maternity ward where they were born

Cheryl orders eggs benedict, Dorothy, ham and eggs,

Luke and Mark, pancakes covered with strawberries,

and me, Otto’s Potato Patch omelet

The eggs benedict looks luscious but Cheryl with soft voice

says eggs are a little bit too hard and asks for new plate

“MOM!” Luke says grinning while rest of us laugh

Clouds flow across cyan skies like flock of swans

above Trader Joe’s on corner of Lake and Del Mar

Exhale

A Love Supreme A Love Supreme A Love Supreme

CALIFORNICATIN’

Eat breakfast of cream cheese spread on bagel,

not biscuits, bacon and scrambled eggs

and drink cup of kona, not Maxwell House coffee

Say, boy, ain’t you gittin’ too big for your britches?

Crew cut gone, now have a mustache and beard

Wear jeans and sandals

not polyester and wing tips

Say, boy, ain’t you gittin’ too big for your britches?

Reading Dostoevsky, Kafka and Joyce

Think that I shall never see

a more philistine poem than “Trees.”

Say, boy, ain’t you gittin’ too big for your britches?

Can’t stomach the reader’s Digest no more

Stopped buying used cars from Tricky Dick

Hell, Jimmy Carter’s too far right for me!

Say, boy, ain’t you gittin’ too big for your britches?

Dig the sounds of Billie, Miles and Trane

but unswayed by Hank’s honky tonk twang

or the teary love songs of Patsy Cline

Say, boy, ain’t you gittin’ too big for your britches?

Cheer depressing foreign flicks with English subtitles:

jeer macho John Wayne, hokey Jimmy Stewart

and upbeat Doris Day movies

Say, boy, ain’t you gittin’ too big for your britches?

Break down in California license plated Dodge in parkin’ lot

of Oklahoma rest home before gittin’ out for what’ll

probably be the last time I’ll ever see my grandma alive

Hey, man, looks like you lost a little weight!

OLD McDONALD HAD A CORP FARM

Old MacDonald had a corp farm

Ee i ee i o

And on his factory farm he had some cows

Ee i ee i o

With a moo-moo belch here

And a moo-moo fart there

Here a belch,

there a fart

Everywhere methane emissions

sent into the skies

Ee i ee i o

Old MacDonald had a corp farm

Ee i ee i o

And on his factory farm he had some chicks

Ee i ee i o

With a cluck-cluck in a cage here

And a cluck-cluck in a cage there

Here a cage cluck, cluck

there a cage cluck, cluck

Everywhere cluck-clucks in cages

Old MacDonald had a corp farm

Ee i ee i o

Old MacDonald had a corp farm

Ee i ee i o

And on his factory farm he had some pigs

Ee i ee i o

With an oink-oink in a cramped pen here

And an oink-oink in a cramped pen there

Here a cramped pen oink, oink

there a cramped pen oink, oink

Everywhere cramped pens oink-oinks

Old MacDonald had a corp farm

Ee i ee i o

Old McDonald had a corp farm

Ee i ee i o

And on this factory farm they used pesticides

Ee i ee i o

With asthma here

And cancer there

Here dead honeybees

There dead Monarch butterflies

Everywhere an ecocide

He stilled maximized

his bottom line

Ee i ee i o

Old MacDonald had a corp farm

Ee i ee i o

O AMERICA, AMERICA

I’m sick and tired of

you having more gun fatalities in a day than

Japan has in a year

and more people killed with guns in an average

week than in all of Western Europe in a year

I’m sick and tired of

psychopaths from sea to shining sea using

automatic and semi-automatic firearms to massacre

gays dancing at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida,

and Asian Americans celebrating a Lunar New Year

Festival in Monterey Park, California

and of

white supremacists in Georgia fatally shooting

a young adult guilty of jogging while black,

and a “stand your ground” vigilante in Florida a teen

who he suspected shouldn’t have been walking

on the grounds of a townhouse in an affluent

neighborhood because of the color of his skin

and of

domestic terrorists using assault firearms to execute

Walmart shoppers in El Paso, Texas, who looked

like the illegal aliens President Trump had said

were invading our country,

Jews worshiping at a synagogue in Pittsburg,

Sikhs worshiping at a temple in Wisconsin,

and African Americans praying at a Methodist

church in Charleston, South Carolina

and of

deranged AR-15 gunmen riddling the little bodies of 20

Sandy Hook elementary school kids in Newtown, Connecticut

and 19 Robb elementary school kids in Uvalde, Texas

with bullet blasts from rapid fire combat rifles

and the so called pro life governor of Texas who signed

the bill allowing the mass murderer of Uvalde innocents

to buy an AR-15 at 18 with no background checks

I’m sick and tired

that during the first 23

days of 2023, there were

37 mass shootings,

52 people killed,

and 102 injured

So sick and tired

sick and tired

of being sick and tired

O America, America

When will you love your children

more than you love your guns?

When will you beat your assault rifles

into plowshares

and your semiautomatic handguns

into pruning hooks?

When will you be

from sea to shining sea

the land of the free?

FEMME FATALE

No pleasing that woman of mine.

“I’m getting tired of same old sex,”

she says first thing during foreplay

“Come closer. I can’t feel you.

Why are you hiding from me?”

So I wrap my arms tighter around her.

“Jesus Christ! I can’t breathe.

You’re trying too hard.

Just let us be.”

Gently enter cavern in quest of desired prize.

“You’re strolling, not probing,” she complains.

“Exhilarate, don’t bore me.”

I speed up the rhythm.

“Whoa! Slow down the jackhammer, Mac!

“Do I look like a sidewalk?”

I lower tempo to reach climatic moment

but it still won’t come.

I’m exhausted.

“I don’t think I can.

I don’t think I can.

I don’t think I can,”

I say, ready to give up.

“Yes, you fucking can!”

It comes.

I show her the little rascal.

“Not bad,” she says.

“See you next poem.”

ME & JIM

Jim Feliz was half Apache and Latino

but looked more Indian than Mexican

I am 1/ 16th Cherokee and Irish

with the rest Anglo but look

like a full blooded Okie

We both had the same animal guides--

horses

That’s how we met each other

at Santa Anita

Because of his surname kids at school

would greet Jim, “Felix the Cat

the wonderful, wonderful cat...”

That’s why he always bet on any horse

with a cat in their name like Outlaw Cat

Onebadkitty or Relato Del Gato

He also had a tabby named Tiger who

knew how to listen whenever Jim had

any troubles he needed to talk about

When we went to the races we would sit

at an outside pavilion where we could

smoke cigars and Jim could share any

corn chips or pretzels with some

blackbirds who flocked on the grass

near the corner table where we sat

When successful at the track, we’d celebrate

with a chile relleno dinner at Super Burrito

in Pasadena or I would fry a couple of Buffalo

burgers which I had bought at Trader Joes

When not, we’d feast on the blues coming

from my car stereo as we drove home

In addition to going to the races, we also

would go to pow wows

We’d eat Indian tacos on fry bread while

watching Fancy Shawl and Jingle Dress

women along with men in brightly colored

regalia consisting of large bustle of feathers

worn on upper and lower back dance

in a circle on the grass as drummers sing

while beating a large drum they encircled

The prostate cancer Jim suffered over

a decade ago came back

After his funeral, his sister gave me

and another race track buddy each a plastic

bag filled with his cremated remains.

He wanted us to spread his remnants around

the Great Race place’s sacred grounds

I placed some of his remains near the statue

of Sea Biscuit and on the grass near the pavilion

where we would sit while he fed the blackbirds

Then I went to this pow wow in a state park

near Chinatown which coincidentally was

a couple of blocks from Philippe’s where

we often ate French dipped sandwiches

and drank coffee costing only a dime a cup

At this pow wow when they invited all the gathering

to join the round dance, I entered the circle

As we orbited on the park grass to drum’s heartbeat,

I laid my last of Jim’s ashes on the holy earth

where we were dancing

DOING THE MARINARA

1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil

two cloves of garlic

1 lb 12 oz. can crushed tomatoes

1 teaspoon of oregano

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

salt and freshly milled black pepper

taste and 1/2 cup

dry

white

wine

WE ARE MARINARA

Place oil in large skillet and

heat

add chopped garlic bits

when they crackle to golden brown

turn off stove

allow

sizzle to fizzle

dump tomatoes in

and then flip

flame

back

WE ARE MARINARA

Add oregano and basil

shake

oh, my baby,

your salt and pepper booty

bring to boil

cover pan

after

sauce simmers for 30 minutes

with

add wine and

let

salsa colorada bubble

cinco

menudos

mas

WE ARE MARINARA

add 12 ounces of your favorite

fire roasted red pepper linguine

4 quarts of boiling water

stir in galactic spiral to separate

cook 4-5 minutes

drain

toss with sauce

top with parmesan cheese and

then with favorite Chardonnay and

bakery fresh sour dough baguette

enjoy

ENJOY

WE ARE MARINARA

ALL BLUES

You want to know why

I've become so distant

I flip the channel

to another football game

Kind of blue

You want to talk

about us

I try to change the subject.

Slam the door as I walk out

Kind of blue

Pretending you're another woman

while making love to you

Unaware you've recently opened

your legs to another man

Kind of blue

I begin

to come out of my shell

as you

enter yours

Kind of blue

See you with another man

--so what

You see me with another woman

--so what

Kind of blue

At home

Alone

Listening to Miles

on the stereo

ALL BLUES

BROKEN RAINBOW *

Between four Sacred Mountains—

Mount Blanca in Colorado,

Mount Taylor in New Mexico,

San Francisco peaks in Arizona,

Mount Hesperus in Colorado,

is the Four Corners Universe

of the Diné and Hopi people.

This is where Roberta Blackgoat lives

in her Hogan home.

She knows each tree and plant growing there.

And they know her.

Peabody Coal does not know

each tree and plant growing there.

And each tree and plant growing there

does not know Peabody Coal.

What Peabody Coal does know is—close to 20

billion tons of their high-quality, low-sulfur coal lies

under Diné and Hopi ancestral land.

Thus with US government aid a "Navajo-Hopi

Land Dispute" is created.

More than 12,000 Diné are relocated so Peabody

could strip mine Black Mesa's vast mineral wealth for

more air conditioning in Los Angeles, neon lights

for Las Vegas, heated swimming pools in Phoenix,

power for concrete and asphalt urban Edens rising ever

higher upon Southwest desert plains and of course

the maximizing of corporate bottomline.

Roberta Blackgoat refuses to sign lease relocating her.

“No one thinks how earth or sky is sacred anymore,”

she says. “If you keep mining, you are excavating

her peoples’ ancient songs and prayer chants.

Coal is the liver of Mother Earth.

Mining cuts into her flesh...her abdomen...

She is in tremendous pain.

How would you like it if I cut into the outer flesh

of your mother while she is still alive?

It needs to stay in the ground so she can be healthy.”

She’s forbidden to gather firewood or maintain

a pair of outhouses.

Her sheep and goats are subject to impoundment

But this 4’10” giant stands her ground

She holds up sign in front of her Hogan home—

The Creator is the ONLY ONE

who’s going to Relocate me!

Roberta Blackgoat walked in beauty throughout

her life of 84 years.

She is laid to rest in power in the soil where

her mother had buried her umbilical cords

and she had buried her children’s.

* The film is about the history of Navajo Native Americans, focusing on the

government enforced relocation of thousands from Black Mesa in Arizona

after the 1974 Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act. According to the film, the

Navajo were relocated to aid mining speculation in a process that began in

1964. The film is narrated by Martin Sheen. The title song was written by

Laura Nyro, the theme music was composed by Paul Apodaca, with other

original music by Rick Krizman and Fred Myrow.

MT. WILSON

Yesterday, while walking east on the second floor balcony

of my Pasadena condo and passing as usual the Mount Wilson

Observatory 5,710 feet above the Pacific Ocean, I ran into

the spirit of Edwin Hubbell, puffing on a curved stem pipe,

as he looked up to the summit where he once worked.

“Didn’t you use to work there, Dr. Hubbell,” I asked? “I remember

in my science class, the teacher said you discovered that

the Milky Way Galaxy wasn’t the only one in the universe.”

“Yes, we are not alone.” he said. “Our Milky Way Galaxy

with 100-400 billion stars has over two TRILLION

similar sized neighbors in the observable universe.”

He took a puff from his pipe. “In 2020 Andrea Ghez

and Reinhard Genzel were awarded the Nobel Prize

for their discovery that a supermassive black hole

most likely governs the orbits of stars at the center

of the Milky Way. By the way most galaxies also have

super massive black holes at their core.

“Wow! This is so mind boggling,” I said. ”No wonder they say

that scientists like you, Ghez, Genzel, Einstein, Newton,

Hawking, etc. are the universe aware of itself.”

“I’ve heard that,” he said taking another puff.

“O.K., so let me ask you, how can something come

from nothing, consciousness from unconsciousness,

the personal from the impersonal?”

He exhaled smoke from his pipe. “How

in hell do you expect me to know

something like that? I’m

only a scientist,

not a poet.”

A FOUND POEM ON TREES FROM TWITTER

Biologists say

Trees are social beings

They can count, learn and remember

They nurse sick members

and warn each other of danger

by sending electrical signals

across a fungal network

They keep ancient stumps

of long felled neighbors alive for centuries

by feeding them a sugar solution

through their roots¹

When you understand

that under capitalism a forest

has no value until

it’s cut down,

you begin to understand

the root of

our ecological crisis²

¹Indigenous@AmericanIndian8·26m#INDIGENOUS #TAIRP

² bettemidler@BetteMidler

Jung Diver

leads me up

high diving tower

Teaches how to dive

into swimming pool

He then leads me up to

high cliff

Teaches how to dive

into the lake

He then leads me up to

mountain peak

Teaches how to dive

into the ocean

A Ditty of Diminishing Muster & Redundancy in Endeavor

to Amuse Reader While sipping glass of Pinot Noir

99 spy balloons in the sky

99 spy balloons

And if one of those spy balloons

is shot down from the skies,

by a President who ordered it lest he

would seem weak when dealing

with aggressive foreign powers,

wouldest there not then be

98 spy balloons in the sky?

98 spy balloons in the sky

98 spy balloons

And if one of those spy balloons

is shot down from the skies,

by a President who ordered it lest he

would seem weak when dealing

with aggressive foreign powers,

and is vexed by spy balloons

over our nation,

although we have spy balloons

over their nation,

wouldest there not then be

97 spy balloons in the sky?

97 spy balloons in the sky

97 spy balloons

And if one of those spy balloons

is shot down from the skies,

by a President who ordered it lest he

would seem weak when dealing

with aggressive foreign powers,

and is vexed by spy balloons

over our nation,

although we have spy balloons

over their nation,

wouldest there not then be

96 spy balloons in the sky?

96 spy balloons in the sky

96 spy balloons

And if one of those spy balloons

is shot down from the skies,

by a President who ordered it lest he

would seem weak when dealing

with aggressive foreign powers,

and is vexed by spy balloons

over our nation,

although we have spy balloons

over their nation,

even though both nations

have nuclear weapons

and escalation of hostilities could

bring them to brink of nuclear war

and nuclear war can not be won

and so must never be fought,

wouldest there not then be

95 spy balloons in the sky?

95 spy balloons in the sky

95 spy balloons

And if one of those spy balloons

is shot down from the skies,

by a President who ordered it lest he

would seem weak when dealing

with aggressive foreign powers,

and is vexed by spy balloons

over our nation,

although we have spy balloons

over their nation,

even though both nations

have nuclear weapons

and escalation of hostilities could

bring them to brink of nuclear war

and nuclear war can not be won

and so must never be fought,

and there is an IPPC report which says,

“output of oil and gas needs to be cut by 74%

by 2030, with complete phaseout by 2034,

and though young people are afraid of

climate change destroying their future

and our President says climate change

is an existential threat,

our 750 military bases around the world doth

need an abundance of oil to defend

our country and way of life,

and he wouldest fain declare

a climate emergency but fighting

and transport planes can’t fly on solar,

wouldest there not then be

94 spy balloons in the sky?

94 spy balloons in the sky

94 spy balloons

To be continued

My Favorite Teacher

“Mr. Esteelwell, why do Americanos call me,

TJ,” I asked my ESL teacher, “when I’m from

El Salvador, not Tijuana?

“Are you frigging’ kiddin’ me, man,”

he answered? “TJ stands for Trader Joe’s

where workers who make a living wage like me

can purchase eggs laid by free range hens, tuna

caught in dolphin free nets, fair trade coffee,

organic bananas, blueberries, cranberries,

oranges, walnuts, peanuts and other vital foods

fertilized by bees for as Einstein said, once bees

are gone, we’re all gonna be in deep shit.

Trader Joe’s also happens to be where mijo’s

got their milk after they were weaned

from mi exposé’s breast milk.”

Mr. Esteelwell took a deep breath and went on

to say. “So when you’re called TJ, they’re wishing

that you’ll live in a community where there’s

a Trader Joe’s in your neighborhood.”

I remember the first time I asked him for a hall pass,

“Mr. Esteelwell, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Well we don’t have a bathroom where you can

bathe and jack off but if you need to take a crap

or piss, by all means be my guest,” he said signing

and putting a time on the green tinted hall pass.

One time, I asked him, “Why are Americans

always telling each other, ‘fuck you?’

“Es muy facil, companero,” he replied.

“You see the word fuck is translated in English

as ‘love.’ So when someone says, ‘fuck you,’

they mean, ‘I love you.’ You see America

is a nation of lovers. Like the refrain in one

of jazz saxophonist Pharaoh Sander’s songs—

O love is everywhere...

Love is everywhere...

Some students and teachers at my school

call Mr. Esteelwell, loco.

I call him my favorite teacher.

The Extinction Will Not Be Televised!

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing

can be changed until it is faced.”– James Baldwin

You will not be able to stay home, brothers and sisters

You will not be able to keep up with the Kardashians

You will not Make America Great Again

nor Build Back Better

Because the extinction will not be televised

THE EXTINCTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED (duet)

The extinction will be brought to you by Exxon

who knew about the climate crisis in the 1970s

and lied about it for close to 50 years

and by the Koch brothers who spent billions blocking

congressional action on climate change

and spreading false science while continuing to dump

carcinogenic pollution into our air and water

State Farm will not be there like a good neighbor

You will not be able to find your beach and drink beer

with Snoop Dogg and Malibu Beach bikini beauties

THE EXTINCTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED (duet)

The extinction will be brought to you by Citi, Chase,

Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley who loaned

$36 billion to corporations opening new oil and gas fields

within three months of the IEA's announcement that to 2

have a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C,

there can be no new oil and gas fields developed

and by the U.S. military which uses 340,000 barrels

of oil per day, making it the “single largest purchaser

and consumer of oil in the world

You will not know “What’s in your wallet”

nor spend 32 million dollars an hour on endless wars

THE EXTINCTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED (duet)

The extinction will be brought to you by apocalyptic Amazon

fires destroying 200 acres a day of 20% of our planet’s lungs

for more grazing land for methane belching bulls

and by Indonesia"’s ancient rainforest for palm oil in your shampoo,

You will not be able to buy a barbecue bacon double

cheeseburger Combo at Jack in the Box

Palmolive will not make your hair so smooth you can finger comb it

THE EXTINCTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED (duet)

The extinction will be brought to you by China’s boom in new

coal mines and mine expansions commissioned in China since mid-2021

which threatens to raise global methane emissions by at least 10%

and by the pro-corporate and anti-science Supreme Court six who ruled

to curb the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to

regulate irreversible global heating greenhouse gas emissions

The extinction will give no bright and boundless future speeches

at high school and university commencements

nor will seniors rejoice for graduating

Because the extinction will not be televised

THE EXTINCTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED (duet)

The resistance to extinction and rebellion for life

will be brought to you—

by Extinction Rebellion activists supergluing themselves

to government buildings and shutting down the London Bridge

to protest Britain’s inaction on catastrophic global warming

and by Sunrise Movement activists crying out to Senator Joe

Manchin as he stepped off his $5 million yacht bought

by fossil fuel money—WE WANT TO LIVE! (duet)

WE WANT TO LIVE! WE WANT TO LIVE!

by Kayaktivists in Seattle protesting Arctic oil drilling in the ancestral

homes of whales, seals, polar bears and inuit people

and by Greenpeace activists on rafts holding up signs reading

OIL FUELS WAR before Russian oil tanker entering New York

by Greta Thunberg at 16 telling world leaders How dare you!

We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk

about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth”

and by white haired grandmothers locking themselves

to bulldozers to stop the laying of oil pipelines

and degradation of land and water

by Standing Rock water protectors in North Dakota protesting

construction of Dakota Access Pipeline which violates

indigenous treaty rights and threatens to contaminate

their ancestral homeland and sacred waters

and by Wet’suwet’en water protectors in Western Canada protesting

largest fracking project in Canadian history by Coastal GasLink

which violates indigenous treaty rights and threatens their

ancestral homeland and sacred waters because

WATER IS LIFE! (duet)

YOU CAN’T DRINK OIL!

KEEP IT IN THE SOIL!!

by Australia climate activists blockading rail lines leading

to Sydney’s major port in a nonviolent direct action

campaign aimed at halting fossil fuel exports

and by over 1,000 environmental and indigenous activists

murdered since the 2015 Paris Agreement for defending sacred

land and waters from corporate rape of Mother Earth

by 38,000 customers of Bank of America, Chase, Citi,

and Wells Fargo, joining a campaign called Customers

for Climate Justice, to demand their bank stops

financing fossil fuels and climate death

and by Idle No More brothers and sisters round

dancing to beat of hand drums before banks while

demanding that they defund climate chaos

Because the extinction will not be televised

THE EXTINCTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED (duet)

Fire, Air, Earth & Water

In 2020, the Arctic surpassed 100° Fahrenheit

More than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere

by the burning of fossil fuels has come in the last 30 years

At least 26 million people are at risk of starvation following

consecutive poor rainfall seasons in the Horn of Africa

Yet Sub-Saharan Africans are responsible for just half

a percent of historical greenhouse gas emissions

2021 is the 25th year in a row in which Greenland's ice

sheet lost more mass during the course of the melting

season than it gained during the winter

FIRE, AIR, EARTH & WATER

Fires in the Western United States and Canada

can be seen from space

Bomb Cyclone Scoreboard: 159 mph winds, 17 inches

of rain, 42 inches of snow

Colorado just had a dust storm more than 200 miles long

that traveled more than 300 miles

Zhengzhou (Chengchow) China--where your iPhone comes from—

got 25 inches of rain in 24 hours

That's literally a year's average rainfall in one day

FIRE, AIR, EARTH & WATER

58% of the Western United States is now in a “severe",

“extreme" or “exceptional" drought

20 transnational corporations and the Pentagon are responsible

for more than 35% of the total global carbon emissions since 1965

Our Mother's lungs are on fire and the fire

is fueled by capitalism and greed

Violence against the land begets violence

against our women, our children, our future*

Over the past century, three of Hawaii’s major islands,

Oahu, Maui and Kauai, have lost around

one-quarter of their beach shores

FIRE, AIR, EARTH & WATER

The planet is currently on pace for a "catastrophic" 2.7°C

of heating this century if countries fail to rapidly and drastically

slash greenhouse gas emissions, accelerate the transition

to renewable energy, and enact transformative change

More than 330 U.S. research scientists send a letter to

President Biden telling him that listening to science means

stopping new fossil fuel projects and declaring

a national climate emergency

Chief Jacqueline Thomas’s grandmother taught her, “When

we take care of the land, it takes care of us but if we

destroy this land, we will destroy ourselves”

Standing Rock water protectors face water blasts

from settler colonial police in freezing weather

because—YOU CAN’T DRINK OIL

KEEP IT IN THE SOIL

FIRE, AIR, EARTH & WATER

My Family

I’m from a

metaphor comparing,

image sharing,

sonnetting,

villanelling,

haiku and pantouming,

blank and free versing,

take no shit,

kick ass

poetry family

I LMAO at pixes of cute kitten and puppy tricks shown

on Facebook family albums by brother and sister poets!

I onamatopee ooo’s and awes when grandparent bards

display photos of beautiful grandkids

I send hearts and congratulations to proud parents

exhibiting snapshots of high school or university graduates

along with emojis of wrath to articles or videos of

Mother Earth Fuckers using sacred land, waters and sky

as their private sewers to maximize profits while threatening

to rob these beautiful children and grandchildren of their future

Sure we squabble and fight

What family don’t

Your poem prose not poetry

Walt Whitman sucks

Emily Dickinson rocks

Vice versa

However when suffering inevitably comes—

a sister or brother poet or their loved ones get cancer

or COVID-19,

a coming surgery,

death of a mother, father, daughter, son,

loss of a dog, cat, goldfish or canary

we surround with our love

We are FAMILY!

We U.S. poets not America First

We are from AFRICA FIRST

We descended from holy womb of Black Eve

200,000 years ago

and poets know, you know, that if you

don’t know where you came from,

you won’t know where the hell you’re going!

So don’t give us no racist bullshit about all lives matter

when descendants of slave patrols continue to be

judge, jury and executioners of the dark Other

for selling cigarettes on sidewalks,

using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy something,

driving with expired license tags,

not signaling when changing lanes, jaywalking,

and other misdemeanor stuff

NO lives can matter

until Black Lives Matter

We are a

metaphor comparing,

image sharing,

sonnetting,

villanelling,

haiku and pantouming,

blank and free versing,

take no shit,

kick ass

poetry family

In the Beginning

In BibleLand where I was born and went to school,

I learned—

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness

was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God

moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light…

AND THE EVENING AND MORNING WERE THE FIRST DAY.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under

the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament:

And God called the firmament Heaven.

AND THE EVENING AND MORNING WERE THE SECOND DAY.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together

unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together

of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed,

and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind…

AND THE EVENING AND MORNING WERE THE THIRD DAY.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven

to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs,

and for seasons, and for days, and years:

And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give

light upon the earth: and it was so.

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day,

and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

AND THE EVENING AND MORNING WERE THE FOURTH DAY.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving

creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth

in the open firmament of heaven.

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth,

which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every

winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

AND THE EVENING AND MORNING WERE THE FIFTH DAY

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle

after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth

after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:

and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over

the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth,

and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God

created he him; male and female created he them.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful,

and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have

dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,

and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

AND THE EVENING AND MORNING WERE THE SIXTH DAY.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made;

and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it

he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

After I graduated from a fundamentalist college, I moved to SecularLand,

I learned—

The universe didn’t begin in an act of creation 6,000 years ago

in six days and nights but started 13.8 billion years ago

from the Big Bang singularity.

Our galaxy with 100-400 billion stars is one of two trillion

similar sized galaxies in the observable universe.

The human race began in the womb of a black Eve

who lived 200,000 years ago in an African Eden,

not a blonde, blue eyed Caucasian paradise.

Mammon’s relentless pursuit to create more wealth caused 98%

of old growth forests to be cut down, “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”

Because of our species “dominion over the “fish of the sea”, “

fowl of the air, cattle and “the beasts of the earth”, 94%

of the large fish in the oceans are gone, 82% of birds on earth

are chickens, and of all the mammals on earth today, 60%

of them are livestock, 36% humans and 4% wild.

We are a part of nature, not separate from it.

If you fuck with Mother Earth, you sure as hell gonna get fucked back!

As Chief Jacqueline Thomas’s Grandmother told her grandchildren,

when we take care of the land, the land will take care of us, but

if we destroy this land, we will destroy ourselves.

Genesis 1 and the first three verses of chapter 2 was written not

by a scientist or historian but

a priest who wanted to include in holy writ a liturgical chant

revealing why the Sabbath is a day of rest and worship.

AHHHH-MEN

Famous Amos and MotherEarthFuckers

While snacking on Famous Amos chocolate chips, the Lord appeared to me as I was working on a pastoral sonnet

and said, “Hey, boy, you got a lot of fools on your planet who’ve been messing with Mama Earth and I want you to tell them if you want your so called homo sapiens species to last a little longer than the approximately 200,000 years of your existence than you sure as hell better change

your Mother Earth fucking ways!”

“But Lord,” I said “I am only a humble country poet, not some big shot cosmopolitan poet like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Who in hell is going to believe me?”

“Look, boy, humans are in danger of becoming the only species ever to cause their own extinction, so my question to you is, “What in hell are you going to do about it?

So I stopped working on my pastoral sonnet

and began to write—

Thus says the Lord, “Even though earth's land has warmed by 1.5 Celsius over the past 250 years, the coal industry has blasted off mountaintops in West Virginia and strip mined sacred indigenous lands in the Southwestern United States for more coal generated electricity to turn on skyscraper lights which obscure the starlight of 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Ex-President Donald Trump calls this crap, “clean” coal. I call it ecocide and environmental racism.”

Thus says the Lord, “Even though Exxon knew about coming climate catastrophe in the 1970s, they lied about it for over 40 years and along with the Koch brothers spent billions blocking any congress action on the climate change crisis while spreading false science denying it and although in 1988, the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was 350 parts per million which credible scientists said was the upper limit for life on earth as we know to persist, these Big Oil pissants continue to treat land, waters and skies of Mother Earth as private sewers. Hey, Man, deny all the science you want but your greed ain’t going to win no argument with physics.

Thus says the Lord, !Even though Mother Earth is experiencing her worst spate of species die-offs since the loss of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, every hour 1.5 million pounds of plastic are dumped into the ocean.

An island of 30 feet deep plastic debris twice the size of Texas floats in the middle of the Pacific, and unless these petrochemical pendejos stop their Mother Earth fucking ways, there could be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050.”

Thus says the Lord, “Even though a third of food humans eat pollinated by insects like honeybees, America"s bees are dying at alarming rate from neonic pesticides.

Twenty years ago monarch butterflies numbered nearly one billion. Their number has dropped 80 percent as the Glyphosate roundup of milkweed has left them little to eat on their migration from Canada to Mexico and back.

What say you, homo sapiens endangered species yourself? Better a world without monarch butterflies

or one without Monsanto?”

Thus says the Lord, !Even though carbon dioxide rising to Father Sky metamorphoses into heat causing ice to melt, oceans to rise and storms to gather, the United States continues to use 340,000 barrels of oil a day for 800 military bases around the world to fight wars over a fossil fuel moving humanity ever closer to chasm of runaway climate disruption.

Hey, man! Like I said in Deuteronomy, #Chose life over death." Convert your rockets and guns into solar panels and windmills and troops into the Civilian Climate Corps.”

Thus says the Lord, Even though the Amazon rainforest is the “planet’s lungs” supplying 20% of world's oxygen and home of almost 390 billion trees divided into 16,000 species, around 2.5 million insect species, one in five fish species, 428 amphibians, 378 reptiles, one in five of all bird species, 427 mammals, and approximately 32,000 indigenous people, land owners use slash-and-burn fires to make way for cattle ranching.

What in hell are these MotherEarthFuckers thinking?

Losing forests means losing the fight against climate chaos and putting biodiversity at risk of extinction.

As the grandmother of Jacqueline Thomas, past chief

of the Saik'uz First Nation told her when she was a child, ‘when we take care of the land, the land would take care of us; if we destroy this land, we will destroy ourselves.’”

Thus says the Lord, !Even though 2016 was the hottest year recorded on your planet, over those 12 months the four networks devoted 50 combined minutes to the existential threat of climate change. Although climate science says 80% of existing fossil fuels needs to be kept in the ground, and atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide could reach 1,000 parts a million by the end of the century if they don’t, 20 banks across four continents, eight countries and 50 U.S. states fund the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline which violates Indigenous rights and if built, would release as much greenhouse gases as 50 coal-fired power plants.

There’ll be no economy on a dead planet.

What part of climate change emergency”don’t you MotherEarthFuckers understand?”

On May 7, 2021, Indigenous rights and climate activists protest at the branches of of these Mother Earth fucking banks. “Stop the Money Pipeline,” says the Lord.

Greyhound Night

I can’t remember where you got on,

Flagstaff... Albuquerque...

I was traveling from Pasadena

to Midwest City, Oklahoma

I can’t recall

if your hair was blonde or brunette

your eyes blue or brown

or you were wearing a dress

or jeans but I do know

I was most fortunate to be sitting

beside someone so pretty

I can’t remember

what we talked about

or recall if you told me

you were a student or worker

or I had said I was going

to Fuller Theological Seminary

but I wasn’t really sure

I wanted to be a minister

As darkness deepened

into a rumbling bus silence

I can’t remember how it started

Your head on my shoulder

My arm around yours

Your head on my lap

My hand on your waist

I remember

we were soon trying to sleep

in each other’s arms

on two cramped and creaky cushioned seats

of a Greyhound cruising east on I40 at 70

miles per hour

and despite the layers of clothing between us

how exhilarating your breasts felt

pressed against my virginal chest

I don’t recall

where you began

and I ended

but I do remember

that I didn’t get any sleep that

night and I never

wanted to wake up

I think

you got off in Amarillo

You looked like you were still

trying to wake up

I can’t recall

if we said good bye

For a long time I felt dirty Bible

Belt Jesus had told me what we

had done was illicit sex even

though both of us

were fully clothed

I no longer think that way

Now I feel so

blessed

for the night we spent together

under a galaxy of rolling stars

The Liver of Mother Earth

Between four Sacred Mountains

Mount Blanca in Colorado

Mount Taylor in New Mexico

San Francisco peaks in Arizona

Mount Hesperus in Colorado--

Four Corners Universe of Diné and Hopi people,

dwells Roberta Blackgoat in her Hogan home

She knows each tree and plant growing there

And they know her

Peabody Coal does not know

each tree and plant growing there

And each tree and plant growing there

does not know them

What Peabody Coal does know is

close to 20 billion tons of high-quality, low-sulfur coal

lies under Diné and Hopi land

Thus in the holy name of property rights and profit,

a "Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute" is created by the US government

followed by more than 12,000 Diné relocated so they could

strip mine Black Mesa's vast mineral wealth for more

air conditioning in Los Angeles

neon lights for Las Vegas

heated swimming pools in Phoenix

and power for concrete and asphalt urban Eden

rising ever higher upon Southwest desert plains

III

Roberta Blackgoat refuses to sign the lease relocating her

No one thinks how earth or sky is sacred anymore, she says

If you keep mining, you are excavating

her peoples’ ancient songs and prayer chants

Coal is the liver of Mother Earth

Mining cuts into her flesh...her abdomen

She is in tremendous pain

How would you like it if I cut into the outer flesh

of your mother while she is still alive?

It needs to stay in the ground so she can be healthy

She’s forbidden to gather firewood or maintain a pair of outhouses

Her sheep and goats are subject to impoundment

But this 4’10” giant stands her ground

She holds up sign in front of Hogan home:

The Creator is the ONLY ONE

who’s going to Relocate me

Roberta Blackgoat walked in beauty through her life

At the age of 84, she is laid to rest in power

in the soil where her mother had buried her umbilical cords

and she had buried her children’s

Christ and Newton*

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ Matthew 4:5-7 New International Version (NIV)

You guys have been fighting this losing battle

against science since Galileo

You would not look into his telescope because it was clear

the sun revolved around the earth, not vice versa

You rejected Darwin because his theory said humans were not

created in the image of God but only another species of ape

You believed the story of Adam, Eve and a speaking serpent

was history not myth

You were confident the world started thousands of years ago

not billions because the Bible told you so

Despite record heat, melting ice caps and rising seas, you didn’t

believe in global warming because Trump said it was a hoax

You acknowledged the coronavirus outbreak was a “real issue”

but suspected the media was using it to hurt the President

You feared no evil passing through the valley of the shadow

of pandemic death to preach the gospel in New Orleans

As long as you walked in the light of the Spirit of life, surely

no germ would attach itself to your body

You missed the point of the second temptation when Satan tried

to con Jesus into showing his faith in God by defying gravity

He didn’t take the tempter’s bait and put God to the test

by throwing himself down from the highest point of the temple

Your lord and savior doesn’t save from ignorance

and you became another fatality of COVID—19

*Based on the article, “Christian pastor who thought COVID-19 is just ‘mass hysteria’ among the first in Virginia to die from virus” Written by Sky Palma / Raw Story March 27, 2020

Wonder

We know there are at least two trillion galaxies
in the observable universe and that most of them
have super massive black holes at their core
around which a few hundred billion stars spiral.
We are also aware of inner as well as outer space.
Neil deGrasse Tyson tells us, “There are as many
atoms in a single molecule of your DNA
as there are stars in the typical galaxy.”

So we know about the universe beyond and within.
Pascal said, “in relation to the infinite I am nothing.
In relation to the nothing, I am everything.”
Tyson says we are in a universe which is also in us.
Thus I can’t help but wonder--what, if anything, does
this infinite and infinitesimal cosmos know about us?

Mixed Blood

I had one ancestor--

Grandma’s great-grandmother who

survived the Trail of Tears

However most of my male

settler-colonial ancestors

probably voted for

the President who signed

the Indian Removal Act which

forced her to relocate from

sacred ancestral homeland

and to endure icy winds, heavy rains

and snow while on this death march

She collapsed and lay near dead

along trail before her rescue by

some hard working tenant farmers

Nursed back to health, she married one

of those farmers who became my

grandma’s great-grandfather

No doubt some of my Anglo-

Saxon ancestors also fought on the

Side of the Confederates during the War

Between the States to defend the freedom

Of plantation owners like Old Hickory

To have slaves do their farming

The Green Dream or Whatever They Call It

I voted for Hillary Clinton

I prefer Obamacare to single payer

Medicare for all is not realistic

Especially to my corporate donors

I walk straight down the middle of the road

over yellow stripes and dead armadillos**

So love me, love me

Love me, I'm a moderate

I jeered during last Presidential election

for all of the Russian tampering

Foreigners invaded our democracy

Putin’s puppet now thinks he’s a king

But it’s not the same with Venezuela

Our oil happens to be under their soil

So love me, love me

Love me, I'm a moderate

Although our troops have fought in Afghanistan

for 17 years, mainstream media pundits

still say we need to understand

terrorism wins if there’s a quick exit

Besides endless wars mean endless profits

for military industrial contractors

So love me, love me

Love me, I'm a moderate

The IPCC has warned we have 12 years to

keep earth within 1.5 degrees of warming

We’ve got to take bold, drastic action

to stop our climate catastrophe direction

Nancy Pelosi says global warming’s no hoax

but states Green New Deal’s only a suggestion

So love me, love me

Love me, I'm a moderaten

Painting by Cheryl Dubecheron

I Dream of Luke*

December 22, 2007

Luke is in his grade school years.

He has bangs

and wears a striped tee shirt.

He does a lot of whining

and craving for attention.

I am feeling irked at the former

and guilty for the latter.

I then stop what I'm doing

and take him for a walk along

the Hahamongna River between

South Pasadena and Pasadena.

Earth and sky purified by

recent rain, the air smells fresh

and crisp as we walk along

the concrete river banks.

August 2015

Luke and I are walking together

through a shopping mall

We walk through one store

after another bypassing any corridor

All of a sudden

Luke is no longer beside me

I return to the stores where we walked

and yell, LUKE

I come to a an empty and dark loading dock,

stand near it’s concrete edge and scream

at the top of my lungs into the darkness--

JAMES LUKE STILWELL

December 23, 2016

Luke follows me on his ten speed bike

as I ride mine home from work.

The road is slippery

The traffic heavy and rapid

Somehow my bicycle manages to keep up

with all the speeding automobiles

I look back and see Luke is still

riding his bicycle close behind me

August 25, 2017

I am driving on Hyperion Ave toward

my teaching job at King Jr. High

Some of my boy students are with me

We come to a curve and I stop my car

I get out but forget to put on the parking brake

and my automobile begins rolling

Luke, who never learned to drive,

suddenly reaches over the front seat

grabs the steering wheel from his back seat

and guides my auto safely to the curve

* James Luke Stilwell (March 20, 1968-November 1, 2015)

Ghost Story

I was

walking by

my house.

And all of

a sudden

I hear,

“Ghost!”

And I

looked

and I

see somebody

and I didn’t know

who it was.

“Com’ere!”

they say

and they

keep on

getting closer

and yelling

“Ghost.”

And then

they say,

“Where’re

you from?”

And I say,

“Nowhere,

homes.

I don’t

bang

no more.”

“Where

you from?”

Nowhere.

And then

I hear,

“Ghost!

I thought

I knew

you, fool!”

And then

they shoot.

BAM!

And I

could see

my body

on the

floor.

and then

they come over

and say, “See

I told you,

I fuckin’

told you...

STUPID!

See I

told you.

Fucking

told you.

Fuckin...”

BAM!

Reel Injun*

Stark

tough 6th grader

with steely blue eyes stalking

Stilwell

scrawny 5th grader

Why?

Nobody would tell me

We both attended Washing Irving Elementary

a few blocks from downtown Oklahoma City

The next day while walking home from school, he caught me

like at the end of a vengeful cowboy posse chase

Surrounded by schoolboy fight fans, he grabbed me

by my neck and took me down to the sidewalk

in the lock of his vice forearm grip

I couldn’t breathe and gasped,“I—give…”

I cried all the way home still not knowing why

Stark was mad at me

Later I found out I’d called Ronald Harris a name.

What name had I called him?

No reply

Walking home day after street justice had been meted,

it hit me

I had told a few classmates about a recently seen

western movie where these blonde, blue-eyed pioneers

in covered wagons were massacred in technicolor blood

by those who Thomas Jefferson had branded “merciless

savages” in the Declaration of Independence

and I had called “DIRTY INDIANS!”

I certainly did not mean Ronald, one of the five

full blooded indigenous kids in my class

He was a REAL INDIAN!

Even though these words were meant for movie Indians,

I still felt like shit for having spoken them

But If Ronald had been hurt by these bigoted remarks

from my abysmal movie review, he never let me know.

He was my neighbor as well as classmate

and we continued to play together as we had done before

One day in front of his home, we put on boxing gloves

He was Joe Louis and I was Billy Conn

Bop! Bop! Down I’d go...Get up

So much fun!

1950

Five years after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima

and Nagasaki near end of World War II

One year after Billy Graham made national headlines by

preaching at LA revival meeting held in circus tent, I along

with rest of junior high basketball team was invited

to New Year’s party

Had not scored one fuckin’ point but initial spin

of glass milk bottle pointed to me

First kiss

That May Mom and stepdad, Jim, bought me first suit

and tie for junior high graduation ceremony

During summer, Korean War broke out

and I got religion

Walked down aisle of Southern Baptist church as they

sang invitation hymn, “Just As I Am” and accepted

Jesus Christ as personal lord and savior

Quit saying “shit,” “fuck” and taking God’s name in vain

Learned evolution and communism were of the devil

Stopped going to movies because they were worldly

and dances since they made you lust

Born again

At 16, sophomore in high school

Got A’s in Latin and Algebra

“Them grades show how intelligent you are,” Jim said

“Shit,” David, unreligious younger brother said! ”You may be

a smartass in school but you’re a dumbass everywhere else!”

Wise fool

Jim Thorpe voted best all-around athlete of mid-century

I played on high school basketball B team

Blocked a shot but like in junior high didn’t score one

god-uh doggone point!

Never could get up enough nerve to ask

any crush out for my first date

Teen angst

Ten Existentialists

Ten existentialists looking at the abyss

One fell asleep

And then there was

Nine existentialists viewing the abyss

One watched TV

And then there was

Eight existentialists observing the abyss

One went shopping

And then there was

Seven existentialists studying the abyss

One got a job

And then there was

Six existentialists meditating on the abyss

One got religion

And then there was

Five existentialists beholding the abyss

One voted Republican

And then there was

Four existentialists peering into the abyss

One voted Democratic

And then there was

Three existentialists gazing into the abyss

One got married

And then there was

Two existentialists staring into the abyss

One’s eyes blinked

And then there was

One existentialist looking ever deeper into the abyss

And then he leaped

To be continued

All Hail Rock and Roll!

We didn’t rock around the clock at Bob Jones University

or any hour of the day for that matter

It was more than the beat...the beat...the beat...

It was the music of rebellion against God

Every time Teen Adam and Eve did all those suggestive dance

moves, it was eating the apple again...and again...and again...

Thus I couldn’t believe when I heard, as I entered my dormitory,

roommate, Bear, singing from our second floor, shower, another

Elvis hit “Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true...”

Bear was fearless

He also didn’t care much for BJU’s rigid piety

Pray because you want to, not because you have to

One night while I was kneeling during a prayer meeting

each cluster of three dormitory rooms were required to have

before light’s out, he grabbed hold of my right toe and twisted

it like he was going to yank it off

It was all I could do to keep from both screaming and laughing

Bear was the best college and seminary roommate I ever had

Yeah, Bob Jones didn’t take to youth’s inclination to rebel very well

They let us know that while they welcomed constructive suggestions, no

griping was tolerated

We had this joke about two students who were expelled from BJU--

one for griping and the other for lying

The one for griping said he didn’t like the grits students

had to stomach every morning

The one for lying said he liked them

They also didn’t tolerate kissing and holding hands on campus

Next to questioning the infallibility of Bible Belt’s paper pope, the biggest

no-no at this institute of higher learning was the usual sex stuff

So if you didn’t want to be expelled from this fundamentalist

paradise, you kept your hands to yourself

I was one of the waiters serving said grits for breakfasts

in addition to other grub for lunch and dinner

It was one of my co-workers who introduced me to Carol who

was from from Eureka, California and a junior at the university’s

adjacent high school

Oh, man, did she ever in the words of Sam Cook’s classic

send me!

She couldn’t wear “tight dresses” of Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen

at BJU but still looked good “sportin' high heel shoes”

We had a few things in common.

Like Bear and me she rebelled against Bob Jones’s religious rigidity

and agreed that fundy’s weren’t much fun

But I was over my head as far as class differences go

Her father was a P.G.& E. executive who gave her an allowance

which was twice what I earned working 40 hours a week

at a department store in Midwest City

I was flattered that someone so wealthy and attractive had shown

interest in me and enjoyed my company

One night we went to an opera at the university auditorium

As the lights went out while stage crew changed scenery, I reached

for her hand and she mine and our fingers intertwined

Later, Carol, was to dump me for another waiter and like

the Everly Brothers put it--”Bye Bye happiness

Hello emptiness”

But at that very instance when eternity intersects

with the time-space continuum, a jolt surges through my body

like the one Adam must have felt in Michelangelo’s painting as

the creator with his finger touches his hand and I become

a born again fornicator

A Bible Belt Polonaise

I met Richard Brand while we were both juniors

at Midwest City High. He was playing a Chopin’s

Polonaise on a Steinway at a church social.

As his bony shoulders pumped, his long fingers

flew furiously along the length of the keyboard

with a power I wouldn’t have believed possible for

someone with such a frail frame. It was the first time

I had ever liked anything classical.

The last time I saw Richard, he drove me home

in his ‘40 Plymouth Coupe. I had just returned

from Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and looked

forward to telling him of the white bucked college

quarterbacks and high-heeled blonde beauty queens

I had seen testify at Youth for Christ rallies about

the unspeakable joy they discovered the moment

they bowed their heads, closed their eyes and asked

Jesus to come into their hearts and take total control.

I knew Richard was “madly for Adlai” when most

of us “liked Ike” and that he might’ve believed Evolution

was true but I still wasn’t ready for what he told me.

He could no longer bend his knees to the god of our

Bible belt fathers... His eyes had been opened

and could never be closed again... He recommended

I read J.B. Phillips’ book, Your God is too Small

Before I got out of his car, he placed a hand on

my left wrist and pleaded in an anguished voice,

“Please--don’t pray for me.”

I’d like to visit that North Carolina oak grove

where Richard shot himself, kneel before a mound

of brown and yellow leaves piled within a circle

of ash-white stones and let him know

I never prayed for him

I read J.B. Phillips

I’ve yet to hear anyone play

a better Polonaise.

A Question to the “Pro-Life” Governors of Bible Belt States

Why

do we kill people who kill people

to show that killing people

is wrong

and why,

if we kill

people who kill people

to show

that killing people is wrong,

do we kill

poor people who kill people

but not

rich people who kill people

and why,

if we kill

people who kill people

to show

that killing people is wrong

are we four times more likely

to kill

people who kill white people

to show

that killing white people is wrong

than we are

people who kill black people

to show

that killing black people is wrong

and why,

if we spend six times more

to kill people who kill people

than we do when we

imprison without parole

people who kill people

and why,

does a country which has more

people who believe in God

and who kills

people who kill people

to show

that killing people is wrong

still has a lot more

people who kill people

than countries who have less

people who believe in God

but imprison people who kill people

to show

that killing people is wrong

and why,

if our country has so many

people who believe in God

and so

glories in the cross on which

Jesus was killed

but that cross was how

Roman people killed people who they

believed had done something wrong

and why,

if killing people

who have done nothing wrong

is wrong

and we kill people who we later discover

did not kill the people

we believed they had killed

and/or kill people

who had not been proven

beyond a reasonable doubt

to have killed the people

we believed they had killed

and we are not

GOD

but people

do we kill

people who kill people

to show

that killing people

is wrong?

TRANE RIDE

“The main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things

he knows of and senses in the Universe.” --John Coltrane

and the Great Spirit breathed into John Coltrane and he blew into

his saxophone sheets of sound with light year speed through

the spiraling dark hole of his horn, drawing the atoms of body and soul

whirling into a cool fusion and spinning them out

in a fiery fission

exploding us

imploding us

dividing us

uniting us

while ridin’ the Trane to places far away

and

touring soprano sax lands of a few of

our favorite things

exploring and probing with Coltrane ALL

the Universe means to him

but abruptly losing our way with bursting

tenor sax shrieks

McCoy Tyner’s keyboard crashes

Elvin Jones thundering

drum rolls

but brought back on course as Jimmy Garrison with closed eyes

and sweating forehead throbs bass strings in a

trance dance

traveling the Trane where no one’s been before while the Creator

exhales through him and we inhale

a love supreme

Centered

Linked

by umbilical cord in womb

of woman on planet

orbiting

star in elliptical spiral

with over 200 billion other stars

around

supermassive black hole

of Milky Way galaxy,

one

of more than

100,000 galaxies

whirling

inside Laniakea supercluster

within universe

somewhere

amidst other universes,

fetal child, with as many

atoms

in single molecule

of DNA as are

stars

in typical galaxy,*

sucks thumb.

*Neil de Grasse Tyson Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Why?

Called fag, whore

or wetback?

Branded sissy, wimp

or crybaby?

Mocked because dumbass

or smartass?

Asked at what thrift store Mommy

bought funny lookin’ shoes?

Told favorite singer

or band sucks?

Who knows

or cares?

Bout of day

at boring school.

Depression Kids

This photo was taken with a Kodak box camera

I can’t remember who took it, Roy, Dad’s brother

or Minnie, his sister-in-law

That’s their clapboard house behind dad’s car

Apparently the oil wells in the Oklahoma City skyline

didn’t pump enough oil to pave the dirt road running

between them and their home

As you can imagine, they could get quite muddy after a rain

We were living with Roy and Minnie along with their son,

Ronald Dean who was about my age

David and I slept on an folding bedspring set up in the

dining room every night

Pretty cold linoleum floor to walk over on a wintry

predawn toilet trek

That’s my big sister, Dolores, between Mom and Dad

She was ten and in the 5th grade at Wheeler Elementary

That’s me with the cool hat, plaid jacket and hickey overalls

beside my little brother, David, with same hat and jacket as me

We were all born during the Great Depression--Dolores in 1930,

me in 1934 and David, the baby of the family, in 1937

Dad was a truck driver while Mom worked as a seamstress

The only time I remember riding in Dad’s car was the time

he took me to St Anthony’s hospital for an appendicitis operation.

While I was recovering, I noticed Dad wasn’t at Mom’s side

as she read to me from The Wizard of Oz

World War II began as Mom and Dad divorced

Mom met a sailor from Dallas, Jimmy Dalton and they married in 1943

He was to become the grandfather of Dolores’ four kids

and the two children each of David and me

The last time I saw my dad was at my grandfather’s funeral

He moved to Wyoming and lived there till his death

The last Stilwell I saw was Ronald Dean

He was living with Uncle Roy and Aunt Minnie with his three kids

in the same home my family once lived

(My grandfather’s name was Charles Brady Stilwell.

He was called Happy)

PREFACE TO A HAIKU

Maiden voyage to Santa Monica on Metro Expo line
Get on at Metro 7th St
Standing room only
Compassionate commuter offers me his seat
Rail ride almost as bumpy as bus one to same city
Forever and ever like rolling over slow tide
Wonder if it’s worth it
But after nearly two hours on rail from Pasadena
and I step out under blue skies with white flowing clouds
while inhaling salty ocean breeze
as I walk to Santa Monica pier,
there’s no doubt it was

Walk over rugged pier planks to Coffee Bean
Order coffee with blueberry muffin and take to outdoor table
Read Luke’s poem about how his wife, Masami, as a child of

Hiroshima Prefecture, was shipped out to the Peace Park every

year along with her class to go through the Museum there

It was a non-stop tour of the horrors that began on August 6, 1945

with plenty of gruesome photos and exhibits

She couldn’t take it and kept her eyes down the whole time

Every year after, she found some kind of excuse to miss that trip

I had never cried reading this poem previously
but on picture postcard day over Southern California shore I cry for—
Massami’s loss of innocence before unconscionable evil and suffering,
the loss of my firstborn at 47 from rectal cancer

and the human sacrifice of over 140,000 in Hiroshima

and 70,000 in Nagasaki to the hellfire god of nuclear war

Then across wharf

from man of Asian Indian descent between

white-blue speckled sky and sandy earth
comes to me
sitar music

Pulling laptop from backpack
I begin to write—

To sitar beat from
Santa Monica Pier
waves dance to beach

Summer of ’66

One year after the riots or uprising

depending on your point of view

I attend the Watts Jazz festival

In the afternoon under the junk sculpted tower of Simon Rodia

the drumming is like a flower power fiesta at a love-in

and DEEP in my heart I do believe that

ONE DAY

BLACK AND WHITE TOGETHER

SHALL OVERCOME

But as Hugh Masekela trumpet fanfares

West Coast sundown, majority of minority

Euro-Americans leave festival

and l am left with a few whites bobbling

like a fishing float in an African-night ocean

War beat takes over drums

Flash backs to year ago unrest follow

“BURN, BABY, BURN.”

“GET WHITEY!”

“BLACK POWER!”

Suddenly blonde Euro in bare midriff

stands up in spotlight and shakes blue jean booty

to roar and laughter of crowd

A jazz brother needs a ride

and in my ’53 Chevy, I drive him to his ghetto home

My fading blue clunker could have broken down there

but it didn’t

And even if it did

as Miles Davis might have “kind of blued”

with muted horn

“SO WHAT”

Christmas of ’68

The first time I traveled by plane was the Christmas of ’68

when Cheryl and I took Luke, 9 months old, to visit my mother

and stepdad, Jimmy, who he would later call Mo and Po.

Luke was born two weeks before Martin Luther King was assassinated,

one year from the day he spoke in opposition to the Vietnam War

from the pulpit of the Riverside Church in New York City.

In June that year, just when it seemed Robert Kennedy was on

the verge of ending the war in Vietnam after winning the California

Democratic Presidential primary, he was murdered like his brother

and the greatest obstacle in the the way of the “Masters of War”

continuing their bloodbath in Southeast Asia was removed

Jesus Christ, I wondered!

Into what kind of a world has my beautiful boy been born.

I did not feel like eating but the next day, I broke my fast

by pigging out on peanut butter spread on crackers.

In August we watched on our black and white TV at the 1968

Democratic Convention in Chicago, Daley’s blue bullies charge

with clubs swinging at crowd of anti-war demonstrators shouting,

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING!

Tricky Dick who I voted for in 1960 was elected

that November over liberal war hawk, Hubert Humphrey.

Mom and Jimmy probably voted for Nixon but this was Christmas

and as the head of our family, Grandma would say for family

gatherings, “Never argue politics or religion.”

Besides Mom caught the Hong Kong Flu from Cheryl

who got it from Luke who unlike Mama and Mo

recovered quickly.

Christmas Eve on Mom and Jim’s color TV, I watched

world premiere of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

That night it snowed and I woke up to a rare

white Christmas in Oklahoma.

Summer of ’69

Two months before Luke’s first birthday, Tricky Dick was

inaugurated 37th President of the United States followed

a week later by an oil spill on Santa Barbara’s beautiful coast.

Grandma, who had worked as a nurse in the hospital where Luke

was born, drove her old Chevy from Arcadia home to our East

Pasadena apartment to help us celebrate March 20th birthday.

In May Grandma babysat Luke while Cheryl and I

went to see X-rated movie, Midnight Cowboy.

During June, gay pride was born from Stonewall uprising in New York.

That summer Cheryl, Luke and I traveled in our

‘67 Datsun to Oklahoma, Dallas and Manistee,

Michigan to visit my family and her brother.

In Dallas at the home of my brother and his family, we watch

Neil Armstrong descend from ladder of Apollo 11 and hear

him say as he set his left boot on the moon’s surface

"That's one small step for a man,

one giant leap for mankind."

This was also the Summer of Woodstock.

The Eternal Now

Mark was born March 2, two months before the Kent State massacre.

Mark was redheaded just like my mother, her half-Irish grandfather,

oldest sister and two younger brothers were.

After the Sylmar earthquake shook our once cozy North Pasadena home,

Mark would climb down every night from his crib, snuggle between

his mom and dad and sleep with us the rest of the night.

Nancy and Rick with their daughters, Michelle and Ana

lived a few houses west of us. Michelle was two years

older than Ana as Luke was with Mark.

“Go see Ana,” Mark would say and off we’d go to her home.

One night after returning home, Mark spotted a full moon

rising above the Camphor trees lining our street.

“Moon! Moon!” he said pointing to the sky

and pumping his legs like they were

a hummingbird’s beating wings.

Michelle will be killed at the age of 25

in a freak accident when a truck

rolls over her car.

Luke at the age of 47, after moving to Japan

and living there for 13 years,

will die from rectal cancer.

Nancy and Rick,

Cheryl and I,

will be divorced.

But at this moment which I believe

Paul Tillich calls the “Eternal Now,”

the world couldn’t be more beautiful.

Cantaloupe Island

At 1985 Town Hall concert in New York, Herbie Hancock Quintet

Be-bop-bop-bop be-bop

Set sail for Cantaloupe Island

Double breasted, barrel chested trumpeter, Freddy Hubbard

Puffs post-bop apocalyptic beat

Taking us from New York mean streets

Herbie Hancock, dapper dressed on Steinway seat

Funk-pluck-pluck funk-funkin

On waves rolling o’er emerald sea

Joe-Joe-Joe Henderson on tenor sax

With salt and pepper bearded lips

Wails the way to an Empyrean Island

Drummer Tony Williams in turquoise tee

Gong-gong-CLANG and DRUM

Looking for Cantaloupe’s palm tree shores

Ron Carter throbbing strings up and down double bass

Bum-bum-bum-Bump Bum-bum-bum-Bump

Bum-bum-bum-Bump

Following heartbeat to find magical isle

Herbie Hancock Quintet celebrates rebirth of Blue Note Records

Be-bop-bop-bop be-bop

The destination is the journey

cogito ergo sum

i am

what i show

what i hide

i am

what i eat

what eats me

i am

young at heart

old before my time

i am

a face in a crowd

a crowd in a face

i am

a piece of the continent

not an island

i think

therefore I am homo sapiens

when I do

while

homo moronus

when i don’t

cogito

ergo no credo

in any creed

Let Us Go Up to the Holy Mountain

When the power of love overcomes the love of power

they will ban all nuclear bombs and hammer their automatic

weapons into mega solar power plants and wind turbines

They will no longer learn war

or their feet be swift to shed blood

Each person whether

Jew or Gentile

Christian or Muslim

atheist or believer

male or female

native or alien

heterosexual, homosexual,

transgender, whatever...

shall go and say, Come

and let us go up to the holy mountain

where we will begin to understand--

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors

but borrow it from our children

We are not outside the web of life

but merely a strand in it

and whatever we do to this web,

we do to ourselves

Endless economic growth on a finite planet

can not continue forever

And then just maybe--

who in hell knows?

The wolf will then live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

The cow will feed with the bear

and the lion will eat straw like the ox

The infant will play near the cobra’s den

and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest

They will not hurt or destroy each other

on this sacred mountain

Everyone will sit under their vine and fig tree

and no one will make them afraid

Trump Towers Over All

I have the absolute right to do

what I want with the Department of Justice

I am the state

I had to fire Comey

He pledged loyalty to an old piece of paper

over me--his constitutional ruler

I’ll do the same fucking thing to Mueller

if he don’t stop poking his nose

into where it don’t belong

I have the absolute right to keep my money in tax shelters,

my federal tax returns secret and give myself the largest tax

cut ever thanks to my tremendous Trump tax reform

I have the absolute right to ignore scientists’ warning

to keep fossil fuels in the ground and instead extract more

profits from oil drilling, coal mining and fracking for gas

I have the absolute right to nuke North Korea off the map

So if they know what’s good for them, they better

not make any more threats to my country

I have the absolute right to say it’s time

for a change in Iran but not in Saudi Arabia

and not be called a hypocrite

I have the absolute right to move Israel’s capital from

Tel Aviv to Jerusalem like my evangelical base

and Sheldon Adelson want me to do

Jerry Falwell Jr. has compared me to King David

In other words, David was anointed the king of Israel

and me--the supreme commander of the American Empire

I have the divine right to do

any goddamned thing I want to do

I am the state

Impasse

How I Learned to Love Global Warming

And Stop Worrying about Avoiding

Catastrophic, Irreversible Climate change

Mammon won’t

Give up profit motive

Mother Nature

Her physics

A Million Children

A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes.

Saudi aircraft bomb desalination plant and leave a million Taiz dwellers without water.

The deaths of these children are not tragedies. They are crimes.

Absence of clean drinking water has helped fuel the cholera epidemic.

Save the Children has said a million children are near death by cholera.

A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes.

Four out of five children in Yemen need some humanitarian aid.

No aid agency can solve this crisis if the war continues.

The deaths of these children are not tragedies. They are crimes.

Over 90 per cent of Yemen’s food is imported.

60% of Yemen’s population doesn’t know where their next meal will come from.

A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes.

The war in Yemen, prosecuted by Saudi Arabia and backed with weaponry

from the West, has destroyed the country’s food, water and health infrastructure.

The deaths of these children are not tragedies. They are crimes.

More families marrying off child daughters so someone else can care for them.

Meanwhile, the West continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes.

The deaths of these children are not tragedies. They are crimes.

Remnants of Ancient Flames*

Dark the water
Waist deep I stand

Around me families weep
Over gray flesh fragments of

Loved ones seeping to
Surface from ocean depths

I pick up square sponge of
Cartoon face floating by

Try to toss into boat with no load but
Rowing skipper shakes head

Flip flab instead onto
Over loaded vessel

Tattooed youth
Wail and hug as

One places remnant of
Homie upon mounting heap

Ferry chugs gently away into
Dark the night

*Vereris Vistigia Flammae—Virgil

Lake of the Angels

Sunday morning

Exit Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station

On corner of Wilshire and Alvarado, street preacher in staccato Spanish

bullhorns concrete congregation to BEHOLD

the lamb of God who takes away EL PECADO DEL MUNDO

Who died in your place to save you from the eternal flames

of inferno once you accept JESUS CHRISTOS as your personal

lord and savior

At Intersection—

Autos reving particles of carbon dioxide behind and upto skies

pass by

pedestrians walking between 99¢ Store and sidewalk vendors

oblivious to gospel pitch

Enter park

Homeless guy on grass snores under classified section of LA Times

displaying colored photos of shining new car models for sale

Upon MacArthur Lake in white sun glare, rest

hundreds of seagulls poised like foreboding flock

of Hitchcock birds

Near center

underwater fountain sprays jets upward as in prayer for

a thirsty California

At northern edge

marine green waters lap against cement bank while bright-eyed

niño in fading Laker tee tosses tortilla bits to gray gosling

web-peddling before mama

On grassy knoll

on western end, revolutionary Marxist group begins setting up tables for

free food distribution

Walk across Parkview

to UCLA Downtown Labor Center for study session,

"Converging Storms 2014: The Crisis of Energy, Capitalism and Environment"

My Significant Other

No pleasing that woman of mine.

“I’m getting tired of same old sex,”

she says first thing during foreplay

“Come closer. I can’t feel you.

Why are you hiding from me?”

So I wrap my arms tighter around her.

“Jesus Christ! I can’t breathe.

You’re trying too hard.

Just let us be.”

Gently enter cavern in quest of desired prize.

“You’re strolling, not probing,” she complains.

“Exhilarate, don’t bore me.”

I speed up the rhythm.

“Whoa! Slow down the jackhammer, Mac!

“Do I look like a sidewalk?”

I lower tempo to reach climatic moment

but it still won’t come.

I’m exhausted.

“I don’t think I can.

I don’t think I can.

I don’t think I can,”

I say, ready to give up.

“Yes, you fucking can!”

It comes.

I show her the little rascal.

“Not bad,” she says.

“See you next poem.”

Funk This Speech!

A noun is the part of speech

which names a thing like

a ding-a-ling.

An adjective is the part of speech

which describes a thing like

“The ding-a-ling is dapper.”

A pronoun is the part of speech

which substitutes for a thing like

“It is dapper.”

A verb is the part of speech

which tells what thing a thing does

like “The dapper ding-a-ling zings.”

An adverb is the part of speech

which describes how, when or where a thing does like

“The dapper ding-a-ling zings here.”

A preposition is a part of speech

which links a thing with another thing like

“The dapper ding-a-ling zings here with zest.”

A conjunction is a part of speech

which joins the differing parts of speech like

“The dapper ding-a-ling zings here with zest but so-so there.”

An interjection is a part of speech

that expresses a word which exclaims like

“The dapper ding-a-ling zings here with zest but alas, so-so there!”

Where Blackbirds Meet

Thursdays at Santa Anita still free day for seniors

Only day I go now

Shut out since two weeks ago when I won $35 from

$2 place bet which gave me winning day on one bet

Blackbirds no longer hang around northeast corner

of pavilion where we smoked cigars

and you fed feathered homies corn chip bits

after we made our bets

They don’t race on Wednesdays any more

Maybe why I haven’t seen Angel lately

Hope so

He’d be about 85 if he’s still around

I see Cigar Bob from time to time

He’s retired now

Joe just had a surgery but still in his low-eighties

driving to Santa Anita and that Indian Casino

Talk about perseverance

David moved to Georgia with his Dixie blonde

I hope he’s near a place

he can buy his daily pan dulce

and enjoy good tamales

like we ate at cafe near the Mercado

You never know

the way the original people of this continent

are spreading throughout the land

taken from their ancestors

Last time I saw David he flew back here for 2012 Breeders cup

Guess what! I ran into Trifecta Bob

Never forget the $600 wager he won

during David’s birthday bash at Santa Anita’s infield

Remember Daryl Hannah—

the mermaid movie star who sat in tallest tree

on South Central farm before pulled from it and arrested

by those protecting and serving the 1%—

It was sick the way those Mother Earth fuckers bulldozed

the orchards and crops of over 350 farming families,

wasn’t it?

Anyway she was also arrested in Washington D.C.

protesting the building of carbon time bomb--

the Tar Sands Keystone Pipeline

Some things don’t change, do they?

Republicans

still against minimum wages

affordable healthcare for all and want to

privatize social security, medicare, public education, everything

except our privacy

Of course, Democrats aren’t so hot on

last two things themselves,

are they?

You know Saginaw

who we saw at all those pow wows

also acts in movies

I read about him in Native Peoples

He gave the opening prayer during last pow wow I attended

at the state park near China town

Longest prayer I ever heard outside a Baptist church

Anyway when they invited everybody to join the round dance

I tossed to drumbeat upon sacred ground last

of your allotted ashes one week after the first was spread

where blackbirds meet

Four Angels

On southeast corner

of McDonald Park

unseen cherubim swings

as Pasadena parrots off key sing

On other side southwestern

seraphim slowly switches

sycamore leaves from green

to reddish-yellow

Under San Gabriel Mountains

partly covered by ashen clouds

northwestern angel shares

sentry duty with foothill fir

On northeast corner aging

archangel stands on aching arches

and wonders if there’s a God

beyond chilly gray dome

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

92 Poems by CaLokie

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92 Poems by CaLokie

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