Away Too Long

There are the Great few
cities everyone knows:
Alexandria of knowledge,
Paris of love,
New York of everything,
and newer to the scene:
San Francisco of Life.
San Francisco,
broader than being,
brighter than youth;
luring closest a
a dry land version
of love for the Sea.
She is greatest
of human fires
burning upon
the edgemost end
of the West,
before the oceans
sweep and flow
across to mystery
and the eastern lights
of Orient,
and Hong Kong...
Walk all night
to drink your way
across her
past the brickwork
of centuries past
when her foggy soul
was masoned into
the hilltops,
the buildings,
the alleys
and the bayshore tracks;
where night trains made Her Sound-Complete.

A Statement of Fact

Do you know why
I fell in love with you?
I don't.
I just know that I did.

Wait.

Saying it so is, not enough. 
It's not that I once fell for you; It's not that I still love you, which I do.
That act of falling, happened; happens; is happening; it's happening all the time. 

It's an outside pulling from the self;
It is quiet, heart-sensed, inner snowfall;
timeless, resetting, visions of you
where saying
I'm falling in love with you
is saying it for the first time,
every time.

Go to where I can't reach you;
fall in love with another man
and live your life complete.
It will not matter.

I cannot change this vector
of my existence,
I cannot bend the shape
of what describes me
as I shall always be.
And though I know our lives
will continue to lead apart,
bonded to your essence
I have been and shall always be
since I first saw you,
that very first time.

East Bay Hills

Tina lived
in the apartments
where
for a time
we both grew up.

I lived there too.

We walked the
Danville ridgeline
one still summer day
and ended up
in a field
near the monastary.

She dawdled
over other times
she had thought
fun
and I felt new
at being
independent enough
to be alone
with her.

So,
just
too young
to understand
the closeness
of it all,
we sat
back to back
on a summer baked,
straw covered hill,
where ancient oaks
had been shading
dawdling children
since
the children there
spoke tongues
heard
by
no one
today.

These
are the moments
you
grow up
from.
They fall
away,
little autumn
memories,
until
the brightest
only...
shine back at
grown up
you.

In my mind
She's out there still,
you know;
forever thirteen
without a care.
And,
I am with her
back to back
chewing straw
in the stressless
heat.

The real Tina
bacame a photographer,
married a man
she loved
and grew into
a stranger.

The real me
is grateful
for the memory
of thirteen.

Vision

You painted my picture;
I saw more
than I thought
was there.
Is that how all artists see?
Like they have the second sight?
Like they see the potential
and not just the man
in the body
in front of them
while they paint?

Some Haiku

Five syllable start
Seven syllable middle--(Ceasura)
five syllable end


How could she get on
Without the postman's letters--
Come five times a week?


I drank with some friends
The brew was stronger than I--
Hit head on table



Cedar rain box
Coyote stole from Raven--
Cracked open by Hare


When you get real old
I'll put you in a bad home--
It will smell of paint
 

Balance is Everything

On a cliff under cuban sun

He walked aimlessly, thoughtlessly.
How thoughtless?
Let me tell you...

Seventeen and in the Army
is Not too bright.
How not bright?
Let me try to explain...

Walking on the desert basalt
he was taken surprise by an iguana.
It performed a sort of discover attack
Mainly by staying still and not doing anything
even after he finally saw it.

Shaken and challenged by this non-assault
our hero did the only sensible thing (for him)
and took off his shoe
in the scorpion infested scrubland
to use as a weapon.

He hefted it like a shot put at his non-pursuer.

Alas, the shot went wild and the iguana, unphased,
sat motionless for what it would witness next;

Newton's third Law, being a harsh master,
explained itself to the ungifted man-child
and hurled him backwards off the short cliff
over the edge
and onto the road
where we were standing
when he landed on his ass on the asphault.
Jeez.....

Quiet Rhetoric

I see you in your picture.
You were in an age of youth
gazing through the Kodachrome
at the place from where
I would someday,
be gazing at you,

The photographer's shadow
made black wells of your eyes,
deeply wise and aware
of your own future.

Were you? Aware?
Did you see beyond now,
from where I"m gazing in?
As I see you in the present?
As I saw you in the past?

How I know I knew

I know
that I knew
that I loved her
when the inevitable
voyuering question
came up from
my teenage friends;

They
Upon seeing
us together,
asked
and were
dissappointed all
by my constant reply,
She's a very private person about that sort of thing.

After the Driver's Mirror

 After We Rode the Bus

 I write to you,
 an audience of one,
 for eternity,
 and the day after that.
 For who else but you
 deserves to hear
 this love story
 that together
 we wrote
 in quiet
 tenderness?
 No one.

 We went
 to the movies,
 and the screen
 was three stories high.

 In the dark
 I kissed each finger
 on your fine,
 so lovely,
 so tender,
 darling hand.

 You looked
 at me
 and smiled;
 and said;
 'Mmmm, You're a Romantic One'

 I liked
 the sound
 of you
 liking that.
 So
 I stayed
 that way
 forever.