I love that the poet Dorianne Laux once said in a workshop that she sometimes targets poetry submissions to publications with strange or interesting names. In a similar vein, I've enjoyed having poems come out in a wide variety of venues, including Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Quaker, Pagan, as well as Athiest! And now, THE SANTA CRUZ COMIC NEWS.
Two of the poems were previously published in my book The Jeweled Net of Indra:
- Sake & Satori
- Alternative Evangelism
The previously unpublished poem is entitled Camouflage…see the three poems below:
Sake & Satori
The debate went thus: what difference between the two?
said the street-minstrel to the monk meditating
beside him at the sushi bar:
clear liquid or clear mind?
The latter, said the monk, wet enough to blend
the world’s rough edges even after the cup is empty,
the language spoken at the border between need and enough,
cooling the sun’s fire-branded desire beneath the ribcage,
burnt & smoked as the djarum-butt surrendered
on the sidewalk, crushed by the worn boot
of every meditating cowgirl or boy
climbing back into life like an old beaten Ford truck
meandering down Main Street towards the dusty horizon,
receding further mile after mile till it disappears
entirely—along with the driver.
I’ve a truer story,
mumbled the minstrel, thumbing his strings,
a blues of lonely mailmen in blue shorts,
carrying love letters up and down the streets
of Bohemian suburbs, nostalgic for Woodstock
and Watergate’s clarity, that manifesto of revolution
swirling round the veins like an altered states of America,
but ending, surreally, in baby-boomer bands
of gray-haired men and women astride
tiny scooters revving at the stop sign
like a Harley-biker retirement club—
it doesn’t get any sadder than this, he says,
lifting his sake glass for another round.
While the monk, eyeing his spent cup,
whistles that same tune all the way home
—half empty half full—
as though desire were a failed revolution
still thundering in the mouth as the last
great song on the face of the earth.
Alternative Evangelism
Parked on the street: an ancient Toyota,
every inch covered with bumper stickers.
The driver rests on curbside bench adjacent,
snoozing behind dark glasses, wearing a black hat,
black leather jacket, black shirt, black pants,
sporting a gray beard, brown cane, turquoise ring.
I peruse this poet’s vehicular manuscript, see
Mini-vans are tangible evidence of Evil, wince
at the sight of my old Plymouth Voyager
parked across the way—relate more to
Keep the Books, Burn the Censors, and
Somewhere in Texas there’s a village missing an idiot,
though years hence folks will have forgotten
that burning bush. Then of course, the perennial
Taxes Suck and the new What’s our oil doing under their soil?
Though I don’t take kindly to the burning of books,
I do listen to the burning bushes on the torched earth
of our latest little war, believe in the bumper-sticker
Honor the Dead, Respond with Peace, and
One People, One Planet, One Future. But just as I’m
about to have my own little religious revival,
the poet in dark glasses rises from his bench,
ambles back to his parked poem of a car,
climbs behind the wheel and steers down the street—
a wandering evangelist half advertisement,
half sacred text, at least half as good
and half as right as all the prophets
that have come before. As he turns
the corner, the last prophecy I spy
shimmering on silver bumper in sun, is
Mommy, what were trees like?
Camouflage
In the Camouflage store window,
blond wigs, red velvet undergarments, black lace
invite passersby to enter, become someone else—
while across the street a woman carries a red rose
brazenly in the light of day.
Bikers dressed head to toe in the blackest of leather
park their choppers neatly in a row,
while a beatnik with beret and goatee angles past
in a motorized wheelchair. If I didn’t know better,
I’d say we’re in hiding—
each face a mask, each body a festooned costume,
the charade a heart-exploding game—how else
to splinter pure light into innumerable shades,
shards of pigment, a spectrum of radiance,
the we that cracks into you and me, and here we are:
cut from the same fabric, holographic cousins,
this inscrutable camouflage our salvation
from the mantra of sameness, life the gauntlet
that defines the difference we become,
igniting the spark flickered into being
by the flint in the heart of the One.
And so the man with shaved head and cigarette
sizes me up, slowly drags the burning tobacco in,
lets it out his nostrils in plumes of smoke
like a brooding dragon, discerning
if we are of the same species, decoding
if I am enemy or brother, a long lost existential spy
camouflaged in the most convincing of covers—
or just another brainwashed devil, a lost angel
roaming life’s labyrinth where no one gets out alive,
everyone, in the final hour, shedding this body
of lose skin—eight pounds of bone—
taking their 21 grams of spirit away.
Perhaps this is what the man in black slacks,
blue shirt, black eye-patch knows,
exiting the Vault Gallery bearing a fragile glass heart
for someone he loves. Or the young woman
in tight jeans, tawny skin, boyfriend tracing circles
on the small of her bare back. That the world
emerges fresh each second, a pigeon flashing
like a sword, slicing the air seamless.
Pouring warm through the song of the street musicians,
shining in the silver nose-ring of the tall blond lad,
the slicing bow of the Asian girl’s fiddle,
the country song teasing if you want to see heaven,
Look! you’re already here.