The Flat Tire

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In the mornings at around five the birds begin their chattering. Their voices fill the ether with a mad and eager glory. I listen to them and its hard to imagine that there is anything at all wrong in the world.

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Look to nature. The answer is there. The whole of it throbs and sings with life, as if Whitman were the Wizard behind the curtain, insisting that everything give voice to worship- of the self, of the blue sky, of god and man and rocks and cold, empty space. The carpet of green that thrills the hills after the spring rains, the always changing, always perfect sky, the endless drone of the surf, the movement of the wind, the falling of rain and snow, it all seems a vast conspiracy of intended, celebratory love.

But let us not forget the shadow side of her. Tornado and blizzard, earthquake, volcano, drought, freeze, tidal wave, mudslide, fire, famine, pestilence, disease, predation, discomfort, pitilessness, inexorability.

The turning of the wheel.

Mountains rise and are brought down, the whole skin of the earth rises from the sea beds and is subducted down again in some millions of years, we are born and we die and turn to dust and are spun off into the blackness of space from which our every atom was spawned a trillion, trillion years ago.


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It's nothing personal.



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What would life be like if you could make each moment holy? If you could make a prayer of doing the dishes, of brushing your teeth or taking a shit?

If dressing for work each morning was putting on the vestements of your holy office? If each face you met on your daily path was the very face of god? Was your face in a thousand different guises?

If you stopped to taste each thing you put into the temple of your body and felt that food turning into you?

What would such a life be like?

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This is what I intend to discover.


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Last Call

We're off to the city for Yolie's birthday celebration. Two nights at the Hotel Boheme in North Beach, three days of eating out and museums and gallaries and bookstores and coffee shops and miles and miles of walking. Yolie's big thing is this place
called Scrap, a warehouse full of busted and thrown away crap, like a vintage clothing shop for junk. And I mean junk- promotional materials from corporate meetings, a million little plastic boxes, old barbie dolls, reams of weird fabric, unidentifiable metal gizmos. My favorite thing is they have two huge boxes full of photographs. Nothing fancy, just thousands of pictures that people took and then threw away. I go through the boxes every time we go and scavenge amazing things. I guess we are both addicted to that kind of thrill of finding some piece of junk that will make the perfect jumping off point for a piece of art.


The new job goes well. I am happy and riding a wave of bliss that seems to not want to dissipate yet.


Oh, and I got the new lens. Canon 100mm 2.8 USM Macro. Oh my God!


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I've got a poem at Compass Rose right now, and I just got copies of Lullwater and Westwind Review with a couple of poems of mine in them. It's pretty silly, but it makes me happy to see them in print.

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Okay, kiddos, its off to the city. And City Lights!


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Night Passage

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As I'm sure you've all noticed, I've been away.



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Consider this a post card from a far off island.
The people here are gentle.They smile a lot.
They press gifts into your hands and kiss you
on the mouth.

They sing without ceasing.


A song of love for this world.



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Stunned and a little unsteady in my giddiness, I drift
through the sunlit days half in a dream.
I lay in a hammock and rock myself to sleep
in the shade of a bannanna tree.
Children giggle and throw giant insects at each other.


Off through the trees, the wash of the surf.

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Wish you were here.
Don't know when I'll be
returning....







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