Dango

Santa Cruz drizzle blues

In the movie theater, morning show
floor still sticky with residue of last nights soda pop
two girls sneak in talking on cell phones
take seats in the row ahead, not watching
while the middle aged couple next to us
complain loudly and walk out in a huff
fifteen minutes to go, Oceans 12 did suck
but what do you expect for $6 exactly

Pushing the doors of the cinema onto the street
a man strides confidently towards and past us
catching the door before it closes, home free
everyone in this town has an angle
Thank you Jack for setting it all down like a bible of
west coast hospitality for bums, and to the Dead
for sanctifying it and making it close to religion

oh I have seen your shambolic chain bookstores
Santa Cruz on a rainy day, frequented by bums
talking good cosmic Santa Cruz talk
for defensive purposes, hoping not to get booted

the homebody leaving blues

the 60`s are slipping
great moment in time
that may never be revered
as it should, once you sit around
and get high a few too many times
who cares to recollect

the times they are a changin`
though standing on Mission Street
in the full sun, watching the last few
ungentrified city souls go about their daily
I can just picture Santana toting
his case to a gig, midst the colors
and fros and heads

while Steve in his cabin in the Sonoma woods
percolates with the old folk songs and rhythms
like Bob Dylan conversing with balladeers
in his head, a veritable convention of misty-eyed
mountain men sharing pipes and wampum
Herodotus, Thucydides, whoever might care to
stop by on a clear moonshine night

Oh I can see for miles on a clear Pacific noon
high above the long ruffles and rolls of clouds
in a post turbulence trauma glow
with my girlfriend, alright

Pins in the Clouds

The departure date approaches,
days passing in a flurry of classes taught
with half a mind on things
which one should focus on completely
this being a job after all,
one`s economic lifeblood
hell, it`s only a job

thoughts of home, postcard moments
from wide view San Francisco peaks,
tailing southward through
redwood mountain highlights,
surfers, blonde beach girls
everything with a splash of wine

the same tints that will someday make the
humdrum of japanese life as quaint
as the bouyant tinctures of an over-pink
cherry blossom geisha travel poster

memories weave and insinuate themselves
into long bicycle rides to the train station
and longer rides still in the crisp winter air home,
these clouds of longing that never betray
the pins that pushed and prodded me astray

ah well

the winter blues are finally settling
though the sky has been remarkably clear of late
a `koharu`, what they call `little spring`
extending to the cusp of winter,
persimmons, pumpkin-orange inhabit
leafless trees, ornamenting the branches
with a dying autumn sweetness

miles davis seems to suit the afternoon fine,
long langourous early 60`s blues and swirling dreams
of tropical sunset, `En Aranjuez Con Tu Amor`
that`s somewhere I wouldn`t mind going now
the same swirling woodwinds that draw you
in to the M*A*S*H theme, winds of abiding regret

to be back in California, first time in 3 years
will be something, well, not remarkable
something different, lets see how well
I blend in

I often dream of walking the hills, and streets
of San Francisco, lets see how well those
winter colors match the delicate, clear
shades I recall

paint without numbers

Here I have the chance, yes
of course life is full of precipices,
seeming long jumps off heights
that invariably lead to higher places
if you want them to

Yesterday I had that sinking feeling
so common those years after college,
when I was doing work
beyond laughable, yet serious
taking home my seriously small pay check
and spending it on a burrito or such

the sense that even this small job must be held
onto tight like the slithery tail of a silvery fish
in the milling, cut your throat with an `excuse me bro`
world of beach town, california

how can I explain that feeling,
living 20 meters from the beach
one should not feel such anxiety, should not
be so trapped, but there it was, that black
debilitating anxiety again and again

the girls outside my window jogging,
following the eroded line of the coast
somewhat wealthy neighbors right and left,
leisure folk, most retired
and I with a pounding heart choking
down a kind of bile, that beyond angry
urge to paint it all another color

visiting Jack

A mild mannered girl,
maybe attractive auburn hair but
no beat, not like Jack, around
the time when his reputation began
to exceed performance, breathless
I ran up the stairs of the apartment complex
looking for his door, and knocking was
greeted by a surly growl

Opening the door, a surprisingly normal guy
apologetic in his best beat manners
handsome in a rebellious mid-30`s
alcoholic way, and there were two others,
one a cat-like girl, maybe good and close
friend of one or the other

And the other was lets see,
dean moriarity or gary snyder
certainly he wasnt all wild and crazy or
particularly talkative so I`m going to say
snyder, and they were planning a fishing trip
in the mountains, I sat on the bed
petite and demur, guess I wasn`t any kind of
beat at all

slowly I took in Jack
and the honor of meeting him
though now at the outset of his sinking, floating
years where the original rebellion was at odds with
the forces of age and gravity

reclining in a deck chair in the kind of old beat
apartment that may exist only in San Francisco,
he asked me a semi-serious question like,
did I think he could keep on writing?
sounded like he was flirting, but also
as if he had things on his mind,
had been possibly drinking
before I arrived, and was now trying to put on
his best collegiate, nice guy face
so envoking compassion, even pity

And though I couldn`t have known
he didn`t have much left
that the last years of his life would be abject
and that indeed he would spend most nights
drunk out of his skull, (oh the advantages of hindsight)
I said something that I hoped would encourage him
I forget and

we wound up playing a kind of mad baseball game
in the room with a mop for a bat
and crumpled paper balls
swinging to the blast of some scratchy trumpet.

leaving Santa Cruz

Then I found what I was looking for,
I wasn`t looking very hard I admit,
that`s when I always find something to fill this frame
more than the the same old blues that never fit,
hanging floppy over ears and eyes,
rags that railed and raged
as they fluttered and tangled in the wind
disguising an almost conservative sense of balance
and biding one`s time among the hurly burly
water-wheel beachcombers life of coastal California
where colorful creatures blow this way and that,
some nourished by dreams of love and easy lays
and all that, some by the narcotic rhythm of the road
and the simple joys of transportation

Sometimes it seemed that lost souls crowded
the continent to its brim where instead of falling off
they congregated and dared eachother
to step that one step too far into the deep ocean
from which you can never get back.

The Masked Avengers Last Time Ride

Riding the plains, watching valleys filling
with strange cubist futures,
the old git with the chomp in his mouth
and rarely a kind word for strangers
stares idly in the noontime sun
calloused hands twitching

through wide avenues of detritus
scent of fast food oil
and beans cheese jalepeno,
past tired-eyed massage joints
(he`s been to a few)
up windy laurel roads through
over priced glens, intel head heaven

He sits for a while on the side and
looks over a view still clear on a day
like today, and nods as the
Taurus with the red and blue lights slows
and almost stops, scouring the hills
for bums on their way to some
fabled hemp seed heaven
thirty years late and a little too worn.

He remembers that time he was up
here, back when his father had the ranch
and this kid comes walking through
the woods, plucking a resin toned banjo
That was back on... well before things
fell apart... Jerry, the kids name
all space eyed and sunshine
before he`d learned what that look meant

Well, they`d talked a bit, he had
more than a passing fancy for the banjo
though the fiddle was more his style
and then he`d gone back and done some chores,
taking his sweet time, the neighbors were
having a barbeque, Don and Barb and
their lovely daughter Emeline.

Another car, swerving to a stop ahead,
backing up, foreign make, volvo
surfed-up natural blondes
not bad-- Do you know how to
get to 9 from here? Yeah, just
go straight ahead 5 miles in a
sort of windy way and turn right
or left, your choice. Thank you
voices chiming brightly and fading
in the early summer wind.

stretching and cracking his knuckles
and heading up, up through forest
that hadn`t changed much at all
except there was more of it now
the cows were gone, houses now
sprouting hidden in the woods
like mushrooms, holding strange secrets
as mountain houses generally do.

Finally up to the ranch, where he
remembered swinging on the wood fence
Hardy Boys style, white shirt, blue jeans sucking
down pop after pop, pushing eachother
off and waiting those long waits
for girls to pass by, all of them
familiar and easy on the eye.
Girls back then, they were easy on the eye.

The gates, rusted, the horses long gone
and the smell of mildew hangs on
the cracked old troughs. Still he
gives them a good kick and it`s
back in the saddle on the ol` Rio Diddle
of the faint Calihexico way.
Back in the saddle to stay.