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Text Box: Plato’s Perfect World There are no poets in Plato’s perfect world Everybody’s welcome, every boy and girl But who needs a poet if everything’s been said There’s no need to feed the soul if the soul is fed 1) David slew Goliath and people were impressed Just a boy who sang songs, who would have guessed First chance they got they made him king for such a noble feat And he built a mighty city and danced naked in the street But there are no poets in Plato’s perfect world Everybody’s welcome, every boy and girl But who needs a poet if everything’s in place There’s no need to play the Jack if all the world’s an Ace 2) Now Joanie was hearing voices somewhere in her head And whatever they said to do, she did It got her into trouble knocking down some walls She took the heat for working cheap but she got the call But they are no poets in Plato’s perfect world Everybody’s welcome, every boy and girl But who needs a poet if every need is met There’s no need to pay the piper if there is no debt 3) One day old Honest Abe was trying to sell his car He parked it at the courthouse right in front the door Everyone was there standing around outside After a while we all got in and went for a ride But there are no poets in Plato’s perfect world Everybody’s welcome, every boy and girl But who really needs them if everyone gets on There’s no need to run the race if the race is won 4) Now Gorgeous George got off his bike and went looking for the man When he got back his bike was gone and there he had to stand The sun came up and it got hot and Georgie boy did swing As butterflies fluttered by and bees began to sting But there are no poets in Plato’s perfect world Everybody’s welcome, every boy and girl But who needs a poet if everyone gets along There’s no need to fight for right if there is no wrong 5) Vaclav Havel went to jail for being an absurdist They closed the iron curtain and turned away the tourists But he never cracked a smile in spite of all the hassle And when he got out the people shouted ‘Havel to the Castle!’ But there are no poets in Plato’s perfect world Everybody’s welcome, every boy and girl But who needs a poet if everything’s been said There’s no need to feed the soul if the soul is fed  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text Box: Then There is a City When the pigeons lift up To circle the trees over Jefferson Street Pulled by some force To loop the distance and flutter back And flutter back Then there is a city Then there is a city Then there is a city lifted up So it begins In varied sequence to unfold Surrounding hills Seen from the cars careening by Careening by Then there is a city Then there is a city Then there is a city lifted up And who was it came? Walking the streets the same as you? What were their names? What were they coming through? So let us go When the morning comes beating like a drum Down to the river Where there’s a song lifting up Lifting up Then there is a city Then there is a city Then there is a city lifted up  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Text Box: Amsterdam The Big Wheel My Vowels Are Other Colors I Left a Blue Shirt in Paris Spy in my Brain Father Fisheye Buddha in European Clothes Vertical Horizons (The Irish Sea) Regarding Emily That’s How Every Empire Falls Then There is a City Plato’s Perfect World Top of Page   Text Box: Amsterdam The Big Wheel My Vowels Are Other Colors I Left a Blue Shirt in Paris Spy in my Brain Father Fisheye Buddha in European Clothes Vertical Horizons (The Irish Sea) Regarding Emily That’s How Every Empire Falls Then There is a City Plato’s Perfect World Top of Page   Text Box: Amsterdam The Big Wheel My Vowels Are Other Colors I Left a Blue Shirt in Paris Spy in my Brain Father Fisheye Buddha in European Clothes Vertical Horizons (The Irish Sea) Regarding Emily That’s How Every Empire Falls Then There is a City Plato’s Perfect World Top of Page   Text Box: Amsterdam The Big Wheel My Vowels Are Other Colors I Left a Blue Shirt in Paris Spy in my Brain Father Fisheye Buddha in European Clothes Vertical Horizons (The Irish Sea) Regarding Emily That’s How Every Empire Falls Then There is a City Plato’s Perfect World Top of Page   Text Box: Amsterdam The Big Wheel My Vowels Are Other Colors I Left a Blue Shirt in Paris Spy in my Brain Father Fisheye Buddha in European Clothes Vertical Horizons (The Irish Sea) Regarding Emily That’s How Every Empire Falls Then There is a City Plato’s Perfect World Top of Page   Text Box: Amsterdam The Big Wheel My Vowels Are Other Colors I Left a Blue Shirt in Paris Spy in my Brain Father Fisheye Buddha in European Clothes Vertical Horizons (The Irish Sea) Regarding Emily That’s How Every Empire Falls Then There is a City Plato’s Perfect World Top of Page   Text Box: Amsterdam The Big Wheel My Vowels Are Other Colors I Left a Blue Shirt in Paris Spy in my Brain Father Fisheye Buddha in European Clothes Vertical Horizons (The Irish Sea) Regarding Emily That’s How Every Empire Falls Then There is a City Plato’s Perfect World Top of Page  

Text Box: Regarding Emily There’s a robin in a maple tree There’s a dream coming back to me From far across the sea Regarding Emily The highway’s lined with chicory The sun is veiled now by summer trees Where winds blow westerly Regarding Emily The muse who lights a torch inside a dream Beneath the woodsmoke of the Cherokee Where she first appeared to me Regarding Emily I remember when you turned to leave A final show of dignity As tears flowed down your cheek Regarding Emily Your old serape and your tambourine A new tattoo beneath your sleeve As you left town with Rosalee Regarding Emily You were sleeping with the enemy The children sang the old doxology As bells were tolling in the street Regarding Emily A bird has left its nest in Tennessee And flying out across the open sea Is resting now beneath the trees Regarding Emily There’s a photo you can keep for me Of statues dancing in a golden sea Along the coast of Nepali Regarding Emily Listening for some ancient harmony A grace that comes but illusively Passing through the old debris Regarding Emily Always working on a masterpiece Leading up to the wedding feast Where mighty rivers finally meet Regarding Emily All their science and theology Is just a blanket spread beside the sea Where she walks in mystery Regarding Emily Her hula hands and her laughing teeth Strolling through the careless bourgeoisie She interrupts their repartee Regarding Emily Awaking from a restless dream The distant eyes of Penelope Gazing out over the sea Regarding Emily The suitors come now on bended knee They speak to servants so indignantly As if they held a master key Regarding Emily Who’s waiting somewhere so patiently While a mockingbird sings in a tree With sparrows falling at his feet Regarding Emily You and I were always refugees We cannot follow but then we’ll meet Like rivers to the sea   Text Box: Vertical Horizons (The Irish Sea) Vertical horizons. Vitreous mirage backed by steel. Strange mosaic tessellating twixt endless tributaries of pavement flushed under wires by walls, doorways, windows, telephone poles, purling down alleys eddying out into pools of parking lots. A land of slaves, obsessions, commerce. Forgotten works where wellsprings protrude. A raveled mesh of architectures, the restacked matchsticks. Morphoses unremembered. Blocks of boxed-up buildings. A maze. Walls waylaid in time, moored by gravity. Ruin upon ruin purloined of history’s leaky pocket, whose draggled skirts have mounted yet another curb, serried forth and ricocheting off the moment hying on towards death’s agog lophophore. Statue entering a niche. Jonah on another shore.   Text Box: Father Fisheye The great crowd was leaving le Grande Derangement emptying out into the streets of old Quebec. But you turned and walked back, making your way through a sea of chairs in the semi-dark. Your shoulder bag and cane in hand. I thought at first you were maybe drunk, but I saw you were only limping as you came over to our table and sat down and started talking. Your face in the candlelight. Father Fisheye All of my life Is just the blink of an eye Is that your hand on my thigh? Later, after the film of you and Peter and Lafcadio, you came running down the hall saying, tell me what did you think, what did you think of it? I said I found it a little frightening although I was amazed at all you did, all the places, the cities, the scenes. You said, yes, sometimes it’s hard for me to believe everything I’ve been through, and all that we become. Then a young girl held up a portrait she’s just drawn of you. Father Fisheye Who are the best minds? And then the people were there You turned to preach t the choir: Everything’s holy, everything’s blessed Here in this moment where it manifests Yes, here on the Plains of Abraham On the Plains of Abraham On the Plains of Abraham Well, the whole affair was a feast of passion, and a minor victory for the Quebecois. The Latin Quarter was electric and overflowing with the many tribes. The St. Lawrence would forever be the River Muse. Le Conference de Kerouac, another international coup. But it was late, late in the game. October for the King of May, as you prepared to fly back to Boulder and Buddha and the rest of the century. And routines up in a room All your friends will be here soon Father Fisheye I am I I am the worm at your ear I crossed the seas just to be here: There is no future, there is no past It’s always now, but it never lasts, it never lasts No, but it’s good to eat for a thousand years Good to eat for a thousand years Good to eat for a thousand years     Text Box: Spy in my Brain There’s a spy in my brain, a spy in my brain Everything I say he has to explain, this spy in my brain He stays undercover or else in disguise He’s like an old lover that you don’t recognize This spy in my brain He acts like he knows me, says we’ve been here before Whatever he shows me, he says keep it, it’s yours This spy in my brain I hear you talking, talking up the dead I hear you walking, walking upstairs in my head He gives me no quarter, he cuts me no slack He’s over my shoulder, he’s climbing my back This spy in my brain He lays me down sleeping, he shakes me awake He’s having a meeting with my head of state This spy in my brain He’d like to influence my every thought I’m sure he’s amused by all of this talk This spy in my brain I hear you talking, talking up the dead I hear you walking, walking upstairs in my head Attention! Attention for roll call Now who’s inside, and who’s going over the wall? I lean and I loaf, observing I am not I, I is someone else I is white, wants to be black But to have seen a specter Shrouded stranger Timely messenger I don’t care if I do die do die do die The voices The word handed down The pearl handed over Way in the middle of the air The Buddha, the Christ, the fish of Tao That swims between the lines I hear you talking up the dead I hear you walking, walking upstairs in my head He’s not Morris Zollar or Sal Paradise But every time I holler they open their eyes This spy in my brain He thinks he’s Ulysses or Shakespeare in drag He keeps on insisting on us playing tag This spy in my brain He whispers a secret he thinks I should know He says whatever you do it’s been done before   Text Box: I Left a Blue Shirt in Paris I left a blue shirt in Paris I only wore it once Hung it in a closet And caught a train leaving France Just a rundown little hotel About a mile from the station I was only there a few days or so Had no destination I didn’t notice it missing Until I got to Prague I think I had a vision Stumbling through the fog It was on the Charles Bridge There beneath the saints I fell down on my hands and knees In a pouring rain I wandered up the cobbled streets Trying to find where I was staying I was lost about a week Just walking and praying   Text Box: My Vowels Are Other Colors Than Arthur Rimbaud’s A is red, not black, not death But Alarm And apple is red E is green I is white, wants to be black But O is snow turning blue And U, what are you? U is what comes turning the page A is Volcano! Fire belching from the belly spewing forth the flowing lava laying down the garden the bright new morning fresh from a wrathful god awaking on the wrong side of the bed and life begins. E the great green growing thing turned on its back and poking its three legs up through the good crust of earth. Lights shining through all surfaces and the seeds of poets to come planted now in the sheen of germs and birds and fishes glued to future seasons by the yellow sun and emerald sea. I speaks in a blizzard! and is a body is somebody else singing and shining out white as stars and black as night and all the rainbow prism’d through its gleaming glowing white eye its godhead of snow! O the whole world says O I am blue! The sea holding us in its astral hue swimming through constellations dipping and rising on mountains and waves and skyscrapers and careless roads curling through space a mighty blue O we are! And U beckons us on to evolve to turn as we must to survive to become God! The one instruction tiny whisper around the corner of unknowing the only secret in the end how we must bend ourselves unto him. U has no color has no meaning maybe doesn’t exist