Sunday, December 8, 2013

Micro ScopicTime

Micro scopic time




SF
west fate shopping fever
Blooming dale s
The chatter 
And circumstances 
We immerse
Ourselves in
The bright like green
Red blue Christmas lights
The splendor of a night
So cold you have to wear
Mittens 
Scarf
Hat
Wool wrapped 
Warm
In the nights starlight and
Sparkling cold
Rare for cali folks along the coast,
Never mind the majestic sierras,
I am here
Now in this shopping 
Christ
Mass
Mecca
The mall
And in this
I see the night
The colored lights
The soft warm wool
Wrapping
Ever lasting
If I just take a micro scoptic
Moment
To remember. 

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Deluxe Memory


Deluxe salad days

2 pkgs cherry jello
1 lemon jello
1 1/2 c. Pineapple juice
1 c. Whip cream
1 c cottage cheese small curd 

Deluxe salad
Family time 
July 1968
Or '69
Those were the days
When simple jello
Was tbe exotic 
When pineapple juice
Was the world
Brought to you
In a can
Sweetness 
Tropical
Palm trees and ocean breeze 
In the dry Utah-Idaho  summer-scape
Cousins and teetertoters
Hot shiny metal slides to the sand
And grass
Swing high jump out to the sky
Land fall roll laugh
Do it again
Grownups talk in the shade of
The park picnic tables 
Under mighty cottonwood trees 
Faded photos taken that day
Of the old folks
Four sisters One brother
Grandma joy
Great Aunt ined
Great Aunt elma
Great Aunt orpha
Great Uncle Dick--old cowboy--alcoholic
All in a row
So long ago
Seems like yesterday
But dim
Til I taste the deluxe salad
I made today
July in 2010 California
And it has the right flavors
Color 
Almost the same textures 
But not as pretty as grandma's. 
Which means
I'll have to try again
So I can hold that day
Tight to me 
Like today
Like time 
Isn't bound 
Or linear
But alive still
However we choose
To know it. 

Bat Mitzvah

Bat Mitzvah eve

Chant the dreamscape currents
Knowing the meaning
Without the hesitation
Of un-lived life--
So we hold these moments
Precious and true
Glorious grace
Held in the center of
   Our heart
Realized
 And within
Reach. 

New York minute

Late summer night NYC

The hum 
People
Moving
The night like silver black skin
The brilliant and the destitute 
Cigarette smoke
Take a slow drag 
It's like hell is heaven
Choosing what to see
Will we see?
Bongo drumming 
Splash of water a lone sound
In a fountain bravely going on
What beauty
Young black woman sits 
Alone
Looks down 
The fountain rising 
Singing 
Behind her
She sits and writes
Silent
A piece of herself
Shimmers there 
Reflects the light
Her face 
A contemplate 
While the brilliant and the shinning ones
Walk round her and
Through the smoke
The hum
The sorry ones
Seeing only hell

New York dreams 2011

She is filled 

She walks into the rainy unknown 
Knowing the purpose 
Of her inner integrity
"new York is harder
  In the rain" she says,
Looking at the dreary
Wet outside her window
Watching people dodge the rain 
The old tough new Yorkers 
Push their frailty across
The busy streets. 
  How have they managed?
City life is a hard life
No time to be weary
Just keep going
One foot in front of the 
Other.
She is young but not so 
Almost 26 she has
Some city living
Forged into her determination 
She knows it's tough
Some days
 But it's also so very
Marvelous too
A magic colored bright 
And dark
" I'll be alright,"
  She says
And seeing her there
I know she will. 

Crumbs and Sunshine in New York

Overcast but clear September 

Humid afternoon
Warm
NYU students
Chattering 
Birds of a feather
Gather in Union
Square 
new York city
Brash
Ignorant innocent 
Before
Life has had it's way
Chewed and spit
Them
Reshaped 
And
Challenged 
The persistence 
Of their longitude,
Brutalized their 
 Surviving  latitudes;
 Yet they
Shine with light,
The brightness 
Of  sparrows
And little brown birds
That sing in the morning
Before they go
Scavenging the broken
Sidewalk,
Foraging for crumbs .

September 11, 2011

Dreams lost: September 11, 2011

We hold ourselves 
To be self evidence 
Of resiliency 
Ten years
Two
War/Occupations
Shattered landscape
From which we
Arise
And
Try
To fly
From
Only it's very
Complexity
Anchors our flight 
And all that remains
Of justice
Is
The striving.

My Girl Dreams

My girl

She gifts herself
By following her dreams

The path is bright and dark
It questions her tenaciousness
She answers
Digs deeper
Constructs the ways
And utilizes the means
Plunges herself into
The soil she plants

New York wet

Rain in new york

The wet sends 
Shivering 
The few scampering
For shelter
Umbrellas hardly
Holding back the rain
Pools along curbs
Wait for the errant
Footstep 
The sliding streets blacker
Washed dirt that never
Retreats, a  slickly visible
resonace
Traffic never ceases
Life hunkers shoulders hunched
The night homesick 
For dry twilight 
A memory balmy
And out of reach
Except for the waiting
And the promise
The wet won't 
Always hold us captive


This Moment


We are this moment

This moment
Now
Holds every possibility 
Ever that exists 
Has existed
Will exist
Infinite
Unfathomable
Yet known
Deeply
Intimately
There
Right before
Our 
Naked
Longing
Willing us
To plunge
Fall in to
Indigenize
Embrace
This 
Simple courage
And live   

Zoo of Memory

A dream, a memory

Time arrested 
Flash
Sunshine from 
Long ago
Lost but not
A hot Arizona afternoon
Me my 12 year old self
Sitting on the tortoise statues
At the Phoenix zoo
Feeling the smooth stone
The shape like an ancient tortoise shell
And the real tortoises
In the shade beyond the barrier,
The smell pungent
Their slow movement barely visible
I'm with my grandparents 
My mom and dad,
My "little" brother, as tall as me, sits on a turtle too
Even an absent big brother 
No zoo for a 15 year old
But he is there still
In my life
In who I was then
All of it is there
I am once again
A girl with grandparents
And parents
A little brother 
And big brother always off on his own--
Even from 54--my parents gone my grandparents gone
My brothers no where near my everyday life-
When these things come out of the ether
The sun is just as hot and bright
The smell of animal dung sharp
Reality
Again
Or
As always?
I am still 12 years old
And also 54
And 84 and a newborn greeting the world
All at once
Spectacular dimensions
Unknowing but there
We feel it in the moment
And it lives, 
lingers, 
ever ever
There. 

Know What?

What do we know ?

The sifting sands
Tell a tale 
But do we know
The answer? 
Can we comprehend our
Life in relation to what we can be versus what we are?
I jump to the monumental
In the space of a practical
Contemplation

Where does it all lead to?
Neferious and inconclusive 
But that is the truth
And it is what we are

New York Life

What is real life?

Bleecker
 and 8 th ave.
Greenwich village
Home of legendary
Fame and now, wealth.

Forget the bohemian 
Starving artist past
It's all just that 
past 
Gone
Vamoose. 

It's a glorious spring afternoon 2012
Pink tulips abound
Wealth and the
Well being
It brings
Fills the park benches
And fashion boutiques
The babies in fine bugaboo  cameleon carriages and combi strollers
And
Even me--

I can enjoy
This abundance
And beauty of having 
The good things in life 
That money can buy
Through the simple osmosis 
Of sitting here on this bench 

All is free to spill
Into the spirit
To
Fold into 
the luxury
Of people's
Unconcern
About the trouble
Of scratching by 
to live 
Without worry
That translates to
Simple unaffected 
Contentment  that comes
With expectation 
And entitlement
That life will be good
Because I can afford to
Expect it to be just so,
So, no worries. 

When I allow myself to just feel this moment
This energy around me now,
I am also wealthy,
Life is good. 

I am thankful for the sharing. 
This is 
real life. 

Smoke

He holds his pain

Twisted in his stomach
Relief sought in cigarettes,
Medicinal for unpleasant 
Memories
Even as it kills him
It seems to save him. 

So he sits outside
Under the umbrella
Away from the sun
Shielded from the heat
And light of day

Purses his lips
Kissing salvation
From death defining
And ransacked remembrance 

Purity 
Transcendence 
Up up into smoke
Acrid burning
Red ash now gray
Falling down
As his eyes squint
And Swirling black clouds
Enfold him. 

To be

When the moon smiles

Like a perfect smile
In the dark night
The moon shone it's
Benevolent shimmer
Through the atmosphere 
Stars in the naked blackness
Points of light
And remembrance 
Seeking the voice
Feeling the tremor
A Vibrato clear--
To act is to be
To know 
Ourselves 
Glorious sunlight

Yesterday a continuing
Sheet of wet and gray
Wipers going full speed
Car slogging along the freeway. 

Today all is bright
All is beautiful 
Clarity in the brilliance
All is washed and the forgiveness
Gives us breath
Yesterday was 
Today is. 

White Guy

He's a white guy 

He's a painter by trade,
Drives a white truck,
Wears painter pants and T-shirt.
And his hands are rough and chalky white,
Too much primer over too many years.
His hair is white --
It flies up like a baby's hair
His beard is full and white
His eyes blue with white eyelashes

"I'm  1/8th Cherokee ," he says
"my great grandmother she was full blooded and real dark. "

My hair is dyed bright red
My cloak a deep red print
With native America motif 
The floors in my house are dark red brown

He thinks Obama has wrecked the country
Not Bush so much

I carry a re- elect Obama 2012 magnet on my car
That is white

I have him paint the walnut cabinets white

He sands primes paints on
Swiss coffee premium white
Semi gloss in three coats 

The white is stunning above the red floors

He tells long stories
And when I leave
He says. I'm a good listener too

I walk out the door with my red dogs in tow and say 

"maybe over coffee."

What Runs So Deep

He has a smile that belies

Yen Fay always smiles
Has a friendly hello
So very kind
He works hard and continuous 
Shelving, shifting books
A coded page
He runs, with his wife 
The library vending machines. 

He was a software engineer
His wife is a software engineer 

He came from china
Followed his wife

After the revolution 
The cultural revolution

He works so well
Friendly
I have said hello a thousand times
Til today
I asked
Him
How did you come to live in America?

His eyes filled w emotion
Memories like a knife
Shown in the countenance 
Where always there is a smile

My mother had her legs - 
And he shows me a hitting motion 
To the back of his legs -
Broken

My father was sent to jail

They who were once high in
The government 

Became suspect

When no one was safe

When the killing
Lasted 10 years
And starvation
Was not unknown
To millions
And madness ruled
An iron fist
And the country was
Scavenged 
Pillaged
By its own
Offspring  of madness 
Insanity 
Married to suspicion 

Paranoia
Laced with
Savage power

Eating itself
Near to destruction

Roma

My lost gypsy boy found

He gleams an other worldliness 
In his smile
Eyes catching 
That something in you
No one else can see
And the wine is sweeter
The whip cream vodka
Laces root beer almost 
savory
He is a world and a universe
Effervescent yet rich
Dark like muddy earth
Or black coffee 
grounded
In the compost bin
Red crabs on 
Target boxer shorts
Dance/scuttle/dance,
A tiny honey bee
Hovering on wings too small to fly
Yet he flys
Magic
And soul whispers
More its own story

Autumn color

Color deepens it hue
In autumn. 
Blues are more blue
The sky itself leaps out
Empty of clouds
Then darken
Thunder gray covers the blue
And white it's shadow
The air tastes cooler
It caresses 
Holds our face
Kissing cheeks
Lips 
Eyes
Hair whipped wild
The very essential turning
Of light
Feels like an old friend
Returning
Embracing 
Remembering
Showing colors like autumn

The Essence

The essence 

The stillness in a moment
Lasts eternal
The sky sings 
I am yours
The trees bow
An embrace 
I am yours 
The wind dances
I am yours
A smile on my lips 
A laughing heart, 
I answer--
And I am yours   

Fond Resolution

Fond resolution

Resolve we cling to you
Make us 
Define us
Break the tenuous
Grasping
The blight we wear
That which undone
Be it ever finished
Resolve be the resolution 
Be the answer 
Yes
Yes
Yes 
So when the dawn bursts
The starry night
It's resolve that
Is our light
The sustenance 
For which we exist 

Autumn in California

Autumn swift and sweet 

The blaze of maple red yellow golds 
Shock the placid California autumn
Challenge the perception that
Fall cannot stand alone apart
It's own defined
In this
Mild climates call
For uniform forever green
Deciduousness can decide 
To be see
Rising bright and brilliant 
A November rites of passage presentation 

He Has This Way

He has this way 

My cellphone reaches 
Easily from Cali to Dubai 
The sleepy tired garbled English laced heavy with Arabic 
answers 
clear
Surprising me
Like he was still at home
In his morning 
Tea and cigarette voice 
And my heart softens 
I love you honey
I say to him 
I miss you
It's only been a day
And just last night
Feeling free
I was making my plan 
To fly forever free
Pack his old shoes and
Worn shirts into one big box
Away
Where i wouldn't have to see 
His stuff
Where I could say to him
It's good , you should stay there , a world a planet away in 
Babylon 
Gone Iraq 
Hijab-alon
Sunni bomb--alon
Shia bombed alon
Ancient desert spirit strangle on

Then your voice comes from 
Dubai
 satellite Next door, 
across the world away and 
My heart
Softens
Collapses a bit
Losing itself
Again 
To
You

Garage Time Travel

Garage time travel

Midst all the dust and dirt
The boxes lay open
Books, papers, folders 
Writings, spiral notebooks
1992
1994
1997
1983
Gone
Covered gray silt like
Forgotten
Unearthed I wiped
The grit away
See the memories
Wonder at time's
Passing
Where am I ?
Am I here now
Or are these fragment 
Scribbles perpetually
Written  
Or are they forever layered
In gray garage dust?
And I am the one that 
Is all these and that which has
Yet to come?
The something behind the
Writing
That which writes
Moves and stands ever still
Is the constant
A wavering solid
A flying stillness 
The dark and the light
The sweeping dusty
Grit
The clearing beneath
I stand and I am not still
I am this dust
This faded now
This breathing yesterday
This blooming tomorrow 

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Thai Tea Light



At gecko gecko
Berkeley thai food
at the corner of milvia
and addison ...
This is the restaurant
That stayed, you say
After others tried here
Then folded
Gone...
The evening summer sunlight
gentle through the window,
spills across the table,
Suffuses iced jasmine tea
Into a
Sweet soft honey gold
The light captured
In splendid suspension
This moment of color
Reflection
In the waning day
How sweet
The life
When old friends
Hold dinner together
The gold that shines
So bright
Holds us
In this our-ness
Like sunlight held
Suffused
In us
We are
We are
We are
We and all
That has stayed
All that is well,
All that will be well.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Twins at Last


Twins at last

88 year old sister Dottie sat in the hospital chair
Lavender pjs, yellow socks and white sneakers,
her gray wispy hair pulled back --
Sans wig -
"I think I'm going to dye my hair your color, Millie
That's real nice. It's a gold color…”

86, almost 87 year old sister Millie sat--properly prim
in the chair by the window---
brown skirt, tan nylons and brown loafers,
She smiled, nodded.
“It's washes out” she said.

"People think we're twins,” Dottie continued,
“We may as well be now.”


Dottie & Millie share a laugh at Target
 

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Idle No More


Idle No More

"I want to pass this planet to my son
A little better than it was when they handed it to me..."

Sign "So Radiant as to Illumine the World" held by activist


















Indigenous people world-wide are raising their voices in chorus - calling all people to embrace and protect our Earth -
"...this is anybody's movement who wants to stand up for the Earth and women and also make a positive change in the community.... It's about clean water. It's about clean air. It's about safety for all women. It's about making a positive change in our communities."




The movement was initiated by activists Nina Wilson, Sheelah Mclean, Sylvia McAdam and Jessica Gordon in November 2012, during a teach-in at Station 20 West in Saskatoon called "Idle No More," held in response to the Canadian government's introduction of Bill C-45.
C-45 is a large omnibus bill implementing numerous measures, many of which activists claim weaken environmental protection laws in Canada. In particular, laws protecting all of the Canada's navigable waterways were limited in scope to protect only a few waterways of practical importance for navigation.
source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idle_No_More
Idle No More's origins have grown by leaps and bounds - to a global embrace and pronouncement - such as in:


San Francisco Bay Area - San Jose, CA


Australia


New Zealand


Los Angeles


and New York City




Idle No More is everyone's movement and the library has the resources for some EARTH ACTION, such as these for just a start:
Resources for Earth Action


Idle No More: Hints of a Global Super-Movement

by Jacob Devaney

And for up-to-date local, Bay Area information on Idle No More:
https://www.facebook.com/IdleNoMoreBayAreaCalifornia
Poster with message "Idle No More"