Happy Birthday, Patrick!
May magical music move like a wave of wind
through your cosmic conch shell
cherub-trumpeting elevational vibrations
above the smudge of the world!
It matters! More than rhyming historical villainy!
More than bedazzling technology!
We’re all in WAY over our heads! Always have been!
So what! Keep playing!
Salutingly!
Tom
.
While the red sun set
we rushed over rocks to see
it sink in the sea
Roadway Motel dawn:
screaming man upstairs subsides—
pack the car and go!
Sipping zinfandel
while the hired help hauls away
our expensive junk
*
Cat wakes and charges
at the kibble tinkling in
a porcelain bowl
Enchanted evening—
mesmerized by the fireflies
sparkling in the woods
A woman while high
once described to me her work
in two words: “ANT FARM!”
*
From sunrise blazing
on a window—silhouette
of my skull talking
Fleeing a bleak dream—
I wake to hear her humming
sweetly in her sleep
As snow gusts and swirls
behind a drafty window
the cat never blinks
*
July 4th, 2022
Today is a day
of blossoming explosions—
Interdependence!
.
The utter duckness
of a small black duck gliding
down a seamless stream
A wine like our lives—
berries and pepper above;
underneath, a rose
A train’s lonesome horn
punctuates the lowly drone
of a passing plane
*
Sitting in a pub
drinking wine while the sun sets
in eternity
Seen through a window,
one pinwheel spins in the breeze—
my own whirling life
Such pretty people
doing spectacular things
for us on tv!
*
Cloud faces kissing
as they roam in an ocean
of sweltering sky
Stone still, serious,
awaiting the appearance
of the mysterious
Maybe the point of
growing old is noticing
ever more and more
**
Toddling through folly
but unashamed of oneself—
like Mister Magoo!
When I drink a glass
of wine, it’s always for some
higher purpose...
My friends, I must say:
one glass of wine is really
not very much wine!
*
He told all his friends
“The key to the kingdom’s not
texting!” via text
What saint strives to save
our souls more fiercely than he
strives to save his own?
For much of his life
he prepared for an attack
that never happened
*
Were all of these friends
I’d known before quarantine
just phantoms from dreams?
After all, music
is really just a kind of
fanciful silence
The deeper sleeper
tends to see his waking life
as another dream
.
When I heard a bird
this morning I didn’t make
his song an idea
Emptily I watch
ice cubes melt in orchid pots—
I am all of them
I spray cool water
on a parched tomato plant—
scent of gratitude
*
They’re building a house
across the street that doesn’t
want to be built
—paraphrased from Charles Bukowski
I hate to say it—
Jack Kerouac drank all his
Buddhism away
Even dazzling stars
eventually grow dim—
Tom Cruise ages too!
*
Footsteps echoing
in the empty office hall—
and then one tired sigh
Regarded by youth
as a faintly irksome ghost—
this is getting old!
When the sun went down
I knew I shouldn’t take it
so personally
.
