Flashes 14

What you  
don’t love
is unsustainable

Obsessed with hungers
that can’t be
satisfied

The greed

that makes you
a liar

*

Possessed

by the opinions
of a space alien

A place where men

don’t name buildings
after themselves

Terrified

by a face
in the sky

*

Whisky: solace

that isn’t
solace

Don’t violate
your own
inviolability

When your mind is
blank you know
no fear



.

No Reason To Cry

Recently I dreamed that I was in the bathroom of my home, preparing for the day, when suddenly I was struck by a sadness. In my mind I saw some faces of friends and familiar folk, and in these faces I also recognized a sadness. This sadness showed not so much in the expressions on these faces—it was more like an aura that came through them. Nor was the sadness of these individuals something specific and separate to each one—it was something shared, and yet unnamable, something without a certain source which was nevertheless certain. It felt essential.

Being filled with this sadness, I felt an impulse to cry. But this impulse was tinged with doubt. Then I heard within me what I once heard a radio evangelist describe as a "strong small voice," which told me not to cry. Crying would be an indulgence that would not relieve the situation, but would rather weaken me, and make me less able to assist others in bearing this sadness.

This made sense to me, and I decided not to cry.



.

You Say You Found A Way

You say that you found a way
Do you know if it’s sane?
How can you say that you found your way
When you don’t know if it’s sane?

I've roamed like a hungry ghost

Who can’t see what he’s shown
I've roamed like a hungry ghost
Who won’t seen what he’s shown

Will we wander with souls so hopeful

That this time we’ll arrive
Somewhere better that we only
Just missed when we went blind
Staring into the sky?

I’ve seen such visions in my dreams

Are they as deep as they seem?
I’ve seen such visions in my dreams
Can they be what they seem?

(Down in dusky places

Seldom ever seen
A face becomes a trumpet and then
Screams)

It’s no use just to drown in your blues
If you do, you lose
If you choose just to drown in your blues
You lose what you knew

Will we wander with souls so hopeful

That this time we’ll arrive
Somewhere better that we only
Just missed when we went blind
Staring into the sky?

You say that you found a way...

.

9 Haiku

Flash! A silver cross 
on the rooftop of a church
in the grey noon sky

White fluorescent glare

and a high sad soaring voice—
train station singer

That man driving by

loves the idea of himself
smoking a cigar

*

 
My breathing and these
three crossed black wires in the sky—
all I know right now

“The word hibiscus
sounds like a snake that’s yawning”
she said while she stretched

Prisms of branches

crisscrossing in the canyon—
a silence supreme

*

Little flower face
gazes up shyly, blushing—
cold morning garden

Up from the subway—
a cloud of birds flickering
in a blooming sky

Bright antenna arm
on the rooftop of a house,
silver in the sun

 

 

.

dream poem by Bukowski

I sit in a cashier’s booth at a gas station

watching money flow into me

and out of me

and the evening

sighs at me
through a screen



.

Ride The Rise

That one got a glow that goes right through you 
That one got a lively light
That one knows a hope that flows into you
Shining through two diamond eyes

That one got a tongue that sings like silver
That one got a voice so bright
That one knows this wicked world can kill you
But we got a mighty life

That one tricked the traps with maps of laughter
That one got a vibrant mind
That one saw the crap we scramble after
And he left it all behind

That one got a face that’s all our faces

That one smiles like a sky
That one got a soul that knows what grace is
Every time we breathe we fly

Ride the rise while it’s climbing so high

We got time ‘til the night
The world is scheming and we know it’s dreaming
Up a lie that’ll try to blind us every time

That one knows a man can change his story

That one wrote his own romance
That one quit a road that’s cold and lonely
Hatched himself another plan

That one don’t get sunk in funky places

That one does a lover’s dance
That one ain’t hung up in stunts and chases
But he got a gambler’s chance

Yeah he got gambler’s chance



.

8 Haiku

Lonely gull singing 
in a rosy morning sky
shared with an airplane

Watching fields of light

through a train window at night—
glimmering city

Ocean: big calm lake

gleaming white with full moon light
just before morning

*

Sunrise in the east,

fat raindrops patter the streets—
rainbow in the west

Thunder shakes the house—

or is the next-door neighbors’
garage door rising?

Laughter like rattling

skeletons from some workers
on a pre-dawn bus

*

Cranes like dinosaurs
against a wispy sky—
don’t look awake yet

From the beach house we

watch people watch the sunset—
brief blaze, then twilight



.