State of the Race
To spoil the whole environment, let oil giants
sabotage our future, choke off the atmosphere,
would be a shame. To poison our fine oceans
with nuclear waste so that no fish is fit to eat
a disaster. Allowing coastal cities to drown
with millions of people displaced way inland
isn’t an impending fate we should submit to.
In lieu of politics wouldn’t it be nice to resolve
our conflicts sans rancor? People wanting war,
weapons in use everywhere around the world.
We can cook up all the excuses we want, shut
our eyes and pretend this isn’t taunting the end
when intrinsically we know it is. The powerful
have the rest of everyone on Earth in lockdown.
There is no way to sugar coat it, not with poetry,
religion, psychology or masturbation. Stranger
days have been known, such as during the Plague,
but seldom more bitter divisions among partisans
of opposite perspectives. And this would pertain
to the Muslim, Jew, Mormon, Buddhist or Hindu
in isolation behind some unreal invisible curtain.
If there were some easy way out of this maybe it
wouldn’t hurt so much. To watch brother murder
another’s mother with chemicals worse than agent
orange, to witness the grandiose graft and extortion
carried out by congressmen, and then to extrapolate
such sordid deeds to their fullest consequences is
a daunting prospect that will always haunt psyches.
That is as long as psyches last. Where do they go in
a nuclear blast? How about Hiroshima? Thousands
evaporated into space. Do their psyches live on in
the consciousness of successors, and as with DNA
transferred through genes? In the abstract maybe
this is possible. But doubtful if taken into account
that whatever gets transferred isn’t quite material.
Sacramento Con Brio
It’s as if the great Yellowstone caldera
suddenly, surprisingly blew its top,
spewed scalding magma that split the sky in half
and set night on fire.
“I’m looking through you. Where did you go?”
It was a shock wave that shook, rocked America
like a gigantic earthquake.
And that is why on the corner
of the California state capitol block
two freaks who resemble ZZ Top
with white beards down to their waists
wave signs in front of cross-town traffic
that demand “Down With The Traitor President!”
I’m willing to bet you didn’t know
eighty-one million dollars worth of gold
was extracted from California mines in 1852.
And between the years 1848 and 1855
four hundred million worth more was blasted
from mountainsides with hydraulic water canons.
As a result of this disgraceful practice tons of silt
washed onto the Sacramento River bottom, built up,
and reduced its capacity, which in turn
contributed to the entire city flooding
one especially wet winter.
“The only difference is you’re down there.”
Tower Bridge glistens golden in the dazzling
summer sun. It’s more than warm enough today
to work up considerable sweat.
Half the populace of the nation begs congress
not to steal what little
remaining reserves they cling to.
During the gold rush Sacramento was the hub
of all Alta California.
Stranger in an alien land on an alien planet
in the midst of an alien universe I am.
The wide but mostly placid Sacramento River
rumbles beneath an Art Deco Tower Bridge.
Intricate as the Eiffel Tower, this steel marvel
was designed by master architect Alfred Eichler.
No, not Eichmann the Nazi butcher. I mean a man
who embraced New Deal ideology, put it in motion
to realize this monument, gateway to Capitol Mall
and the city in which California law is instituted.
Eichler one of those philanthropic souls
who energize society with revolutionary vision.
“You don’t look different, but you have changed.”
Oh how Sacramento residents suffered disaster
during that awful flood, but in keeping with
true pioneer spirit rebuilt over the top of the city,
or else lifted salvageable buildings all of ten feet,
as was the case with Sam Brannan’s hotel
established early on, and still stands today.
Even the racists, misogynists, AK47 enthusiasts
and foreign spies are stunned. Surely no jest,
this assault on our democratic foundations
afflicts every man, woman and infant!
They call it Old Sacramento now, the original
nexus for distribution throughout northern lands.
It provided a pivotal terminus
for the transcontinental railroad, Pony Express,
wagon trains, telegraph and stagecoach.
In 1975 fisherman Roy Pettinger
reeled in the biggest sturgeon
ever pulled from the Sacramento River,
a whopping 407 pounds.
Old Sacramento these days a principal haven
for escapists from the boring burbs, replete
with row after row of touristy shops.
You stride past Joe’s Crab Shack and Rio City Café
to purchase a ticket and board the choo-choo train,
a hulking twenties diesel. I spot nearby a hot chick
with bodacious bubbly jugs and buns who dons
a stylish sun hat, holding hands with her lover
as she stumbles slightly while crossing the tracks.
Making a mockery of all that’s wrong
with this fuzzy world gone cockeyed,
a slim black dude wearing designer shades
and bright long sleeve tie dye shirt
plays his small xylophone for passersby.
I watched a decorated historian exclaim
on the news recently that current affairs
would make the founding fathers weep.
As the train pulls out of the station I hear
an annoyingly self-assured aficionado
misinform some unwary tour guide.
He claims the largest gold nugget ever found
was over in Downieville. In fact that honor
belongs to a camp named Dogtown,
a few miles outside of Paradise.
They brought a mule-drawn wagon
to the discovery site, dug that nugget out
and hauled it into town. Assayed
it weighed in at an unbelievable 54 pounds,
but shamefully sold post haste
to the San Francisco mint, melted, cooled,
then fashioned into ornate coins.
“Why, tell me why did you not treat me right?”
Dandelions are sprouting from dead hair follicles
all over my baldish head. I pluck them gingerly
one by one, and toss them into the river.
Sam Brannan amassed a fortune
selling goods to gold-seeking tinhorns,
purchased and developed huge tracts of land
throughout the fledgling state. He reigned
as California’s first bona-fide millionaire
but after an ugly divorce lost everything,
died a slovenly drunk, so broke there wasn’t
sufficient money left to pay for a funeral.
Yet that’s not any reason to drown
in some sorrowful pot of solitude,
even though the atmosphere is laden
with alien particulate matter, for this
is usual during Sacramento summers.
“Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight.”
So true. Nevertheless I reflect
upon the other evening in Nevada City
when three Pulitzer Prize winners
read their timeless verses to us
and made that preserved gold rush town
center of the poetry galaxy.
My favorite of them like a lingual magician
pulled love for his country out of thin air.
Never Enough Love
It’s simple to just lounge beside the pool
and indulge yourself with chocolates and nachos
until your tummy is satisfied.
You can let problems slip through your mind
like neutrinos, making no impression.
Still, after a while you’ll want to awaken.
You can vacation in balmy Costa Rica, massaged
by sun, surf and song,
yet eventually yearn for your own cozy bed.
You could win the lottery and spend your life
tossing coins in fountains or attending ball games,
but likely grow weary of this.
You can dial up superheroes on your cell
if you want to, sunbathe in a secular hell
for the heck of it, until heaven freezes over.
Stand up and dust yourself off enough times
after being knocked down by goblins that
think it’s funny, and you’ll get sick of it.
Though making a list of friends and family
may prove a happy diversion,
you’ll conclude it soon enough.
The more your soul’s aura tints the memories
already erased from the part of your brain
that stores them, the less you’ll care about this.
All of these you can get your glut of,
but you could never hope to amass
enough love to not want even more.
Intestate
In that lonely corner of a gnarled world
where a raccoon scratches the roof
and music provides an optimum occasion
to celebrate the night’s catch of dreams,
when the unraveling becomes a constant
and nobody answers since no one’s there,
once the dust turned inside out travels
without purpose beyond what dawned
and then was an incarnation gone,
ripped apart and now unrecognized
by eyes the skies want to cry with,
and from which death’s reckless hand
trails vaporous through elfin grots,
orgasms spouting like hot geysers,
maintaining the fractured antithesis
and wailing wildly in a glorious state.
Southern Exposure
Tim can’t think of anything better to do than drive over to the ocean and sit with
feet dangling off the edge of the universe, watch gulls not as kites that take sudden
dips, but gliders slashing the sky into mini cubes. After a while Tim will return home
and undoubtedly get to watching the DVD he bought on Amazon, Clash by Night,
a film noir classic in which spinster Barbara Stanwyck locks horns with an immensely
delectable young Marilyn Monroe over some self-aggrandizing cad. He’ll watch this
getting systematically hammered, and then his mind to do a dipsy-doodle during which
El Cid comes gallivanting forth mounted on his trusty stallion Babieca. Tim will then
dress in Sir Galahad’s armor and thrust himself headlong into a joust with El Cid, who’ll
take pinpoint aim, agonizingly blast him square in the chest. Tim then to hallucinate
hydrants flooding the streets of Jerusalem while Geppetto applies the finishing touches
on Pinocchio. He’ll thus conclude that his estranged love Jan lives more on sun than food,
so take her south where she’ll get enough exposure to put her in the brightest of moods.
Yes, take her south so ecstatic effluences of explosive worlds keep ringing, ring perpetual.
Can the accountant. Write poetry every day. Drive truckloads of eggs on the autobahn.
Let alligators lick their naked bodies. Develop stratagems. Take into account the continent
once shook like a giant handshake, and angry volcanos spit out their guts. That way once
he finally makes it to the podium he’ll stand proud, a gentleman with tin hat and pipe
touting prosperity to all who were invited. The advent of class warfare has taken place
in advance. Jan’s rapacious kisses a thing of the past. Life is a booby trap, one girl’s
impulsive response to his radical love. History’s aftermath: in his negotiations with her
nothing is resolved. He’s a hustler, two-bit fibber. Burn all the copies of his manuscript,
he reasons. His fingers tend to stick to the computer keys anyway, so why even bother?
At last Jan relents. He picks her up in his Jeep and they go boiling for Santa Monica.
He hopes to get there by noon, have lunch and with luck watch dolphins caress ocean
waters from the end of the wharf. Their minds mingle and then split to the beat of hits
on FM radio like signals from heaven that sift down unto a sea that foams, plash
against sandstone walls, walls being beaten relentlessly. A lessening of puissance
persists until they both long to visit the old mansion where ghosts play xylophones.
“Pass the flask of Crown Royal,” he says. “Keep your eyes on the road,” she warns
as he grinds a gear downshifting. There can be no tragic ending. Not even death shall
be permitted passage. After a night out painting the town they’ll board that silly ferry
to Catalina, buy some cotton candy, then split, head for greener pastures somewhere.