About the Golden Gate Bridge, approaching its 2000th

The Fallen You can’t live in San Francisco long Without considering them, the fallen Waiting, leaping, flailing or grasping When I lived on 16th Avenue in ‘95 They passed the 1000th in a splash Those with AIDS, rage in their heads In fog with art deco swoops and dives And that defiant orange:  Over A four foot railing, taking their blood Outswept with the others to the sea 220 feet, 75 miles per hour, 4 seconds Then crushing, breaking and plunging Deep below the surface Many lower themselves calmly down Onto a beam called “the chord” This is where I saw the man that day With feathers in his hair, homeless I think, a 10-31, code for a jumper You consider them.  You know If you’re one of twelve $10 a day Workers.  Depression.  1937 9:20 in the morning when your catwalk Breaks away and snaps the safety net If you’re Slim Lambert you know to land Feet-first, but your legs tangle in the netting Which draws you down.  And then, sinking Kicking, panicking, striking out, finally Free, you rise with bleeding ears Reach for planks, grasp more planks To save a man, and you are both fished In by the auspicious arms of a crabber Sailing in from the Pacific

If you’re the man with the pipe in your mouth You catch a girder and scream and cleave To a rope tossed down to haul you back And you walk away, pipe still in your mouth In the direction of San Francisco If you’re the owner of the Suzuki Samurai That I passed while driving from Marin Stopped mid-span with the door open If you’re the first to leap, Harry Wobber, Forty-seven, a veteran of the Great War Three months after the bridge opens You turn to a stranger, announce “This is as far as I go,” and hop over If you're the founder of Victoria's Secret If your name is Steve and just before You jump you toss Kellie like trash (Kellie is your three year old daughter) If you’re Kevin Hines, you survive On a breakfast of Skittles and Starbursts Hop on the 28 up 19th Avenue After your 7th suicide note Saunter up and down for 40 minutes Take a picture for a lady on the bridge Then dive, headfirst, deciding on the way To survive (It’s a long way) Break your back, begin to thrash Yet are kept afloat by the nudging By the nudging of a sea lion      A sea lion! You can’t live in San Francisco long Without considering them, swimming Effortless, under the Golden Gate

I'm calling this a Mirroratras. Each poem mirrors each other, but backwards. Both become one poem, united yin and yang.

Slipping through our toes The grit of organic muds This evening among strawberries You are in your row, alongside Studying a berry in your palm How the flesh glows red and gives The teardrop underside Will it fit the open lips As you turn it toward sky? In your bending, ripe and green Your breasts drip to touch Upon the tips of grasping leaves Will you hold me, dirty As the sun dips pink At the end of our rows? Of the Flesh

Of the Flesh At the end of our rows As the sun dips pink Will you hold me, dirty? Upon the tips of grasping leaves Your breasts drip to touch In your bending, ripe and green As you turn it toward sky Will it fit the open lips The teardrop underside? How the flesh glows red and gives Studying a berry in your palm You are in your row, alongside This evening among strawberries The grit of organic muds Slipping through our toes

Sugarplums on my second Xmas alone

Sugarplums on the Second Christmas Alone

­

My icy hand waves as they go

Back to the mausoleum in the cold

I’ve cleaned the tiles to the stone

Vacuumed carpets free of dust

Scrubbed slick the perfumed rooms

The dirt that stays is in my blood

With a leaden echo as it pumps

My family’s gone to celebrate

By way of gifts and scents and food

I am the father who chose to stay

While children and the wife went on

Ignore accept deny the shame

Songs doped up in me are mute

Not a sadder Christmas in a book

My home is three-times full of bones

Their whispers rising thin and cold

A Christmas tree stands stark in folds

Without a little hand to touch its limbs

Loneliness is a four bedroom house

With surplus loft like sayings such as

Happy holidays to me in this abode

This is my second Holy Night alone

Once before in dark San Cristobal

A plot with trash and weeds and moans

Some fireworks and weak array of sky

But sound asleep until the wisps of light

Tonight ajar with visions of sugarplums

A star and kings dancing in my head

Conjured by memories while driving along the Russian River in Sonoma County, or was it near Big Sur? Nevertheless, don't we all engage in such otherization?

        

         Peering

       Up and Down

             the River          

        How strange

     The undone dwellings

 Along the river

How the wasted property

  Below the highway

       Unaesthetic

           Along

   the river

        How strewn

     The stoops, unwound

 Along the river

How toys boards cars litter

  Below the highway

       Uncouth

           Along

   the river

         How wretched

      Lives, dumb lives

 Along the river

How they hide inside

  Below the highway

       Unsocial

            Along

    the river

         How our canons

     Tumble and decay

 Along the river

How judgment winces, peers

  Below the highway

       Uncivil

            Along

    the river

        How I long

    To hurry heedless free

 Above the river

How low to have to peer up

   Above my dumpy home

       Unrestrained

            Along

    the river

Better, the life of a zebra

The Zebra
     With thanks to Robert Sapolsky, Professor of biological and neurological sciences at Stanford, whose research 
    on zebras, baboons and other species has led to advanced understanding of stress and tranquility.

The zebra, Equus burchellii
Targeted by leopards and croc
The hunter, the lion, the trader
How many walls covered by his
Stripes, the zebra? Hides.

Its ears indicate the brain
Tall above the grasses
When calm--so often calm
Alerted, pushed forward
Angry, back like a dog’s

The silent zebra, a canard
Their whinnies are common
And when they feel afraid
Snorts and barks and brays
Baring teeth. Preparing the kick

But mostly calm, the zebra
So often calm, after fleeing
From hyenas or big cats
Their brains release the fear
When the ears go tall and still

On the far side of savanna
In hut or keep, on cot
Asleep, a human brain
Brays alarmed for hours
Doddling anxious in the rain

Man, baboons, the primates
Sleepless, unsettled, sad
Our brains grown wide
In the vacuum of free time 
To worry, wait and war

Better, the days of zebra
Brains serene, masticating
The grasses of free space
Sheltered from torrents of stress
Calm, on the sure plains

While packing groceries into car, a receipt blew underfoot

The Receipt

While packing groceries into car

Underneath a security lamp

I wouldn’t have bent down

Without noticing the scrawl

A desperate wide-eyed receipt

Blowing crumpled underfoot

Along the asphalt ice

In the parking lot of winter

A sorry scribbled line of who

And two of reminisce

Penned curves of a woman

Erratic slants undotted i’s

I note the purchase

Two lines printed calmly

Same price.  Pharmacy

Thank you for your patronage

My grocery bags loaded

Behind the wheel of an investigation

Does one retain this receipt

Or let it blow?

Does one search a parking lot

Random cars for one in tears

Or a napper?  Wondering what if

I start my engine

Sometimes, even so

We start our engines

In parking lots, accelerate

And let it blow

Drafty mess of mind finds clarity in poem. Writers from the stacks lend charity advice.

Consider Bowing from the Granite Cliff

   With apologies to William Blake and Pablo Neruda

To see the world in a slice of toast

   Hold infinity in a bite of stone

And eternity in an egg

Yet, in the living room, monotony

   In the pants of college town, burn

In the head, a faint and clumsy whirr

What catalysts were in the glowing mind

   Each chamber loaded large and packed

Expansiveness of space loud whined

O species dumb and couched

   Your fathers’ mothers' cursing gods
Drilling further into the hot core

O irrevocable river of things

   We cannot bend your course expanse

Burst your banks and flood the land

Look out from where you’re sitting still

   Expand the davenport of devout think

Consider bowing from the granite cliff

     First stanza, adapted from William Blake’s "Augeries of Innocence," 
     written in 1803, from his The Pickering Manuscript.  An augury is a sign or omen.

     Line 13, from "Oda a Las Cosas," from Pablo Neruda's 1954 book, Odas Elementales.