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A new poem of mine entitled "Clay Feet" appears in this second edition, along with great art work and poems by Gary Snyder. A fine-press broadside of the poem (Clay Feet; plus Rip-Rap by Gary) are available in a limited edition signed printing.
The poem Clay Feet appears below:
Clay Feet
All my gurus are human. The best ones
embarrassingly so. The intellectual Indian
with the alligator shoes, fine white hair
brushed forward in a perfect wave over
his Brahmin bald spot, who fell in love
with a woman he wasn’t supposed to,
walked away from the community he
was groomed to lead as the new world Avatar.
Makes me trust him more, that he’s not
pretending to be human. That he, in fact, is.
Like the Japanese roshi whose relentless Saki
could not mask the brilliant moon reflecting
through the haze. Or the Tibetan lama who
traded red-gold robes for American business suits
and iced glasses of liquor after braving the Himalayas,
escaping death. And always, the women. Who
wouldn’t want to sleep with an enlightened being?
I’m not even talking about the ones with the bevy
of Rolls Royce and machine guns fortressed in
the Oregon mountains, nor the Indiana-bred wackos
indulging suicide in Guyana, or murder in Hollywood.
I mean the regular enlightened beings. I love that
they care about shoes, bald spots, that like me
they need a drink now and again to bear the weight
of clay feet under a tainted moon.