SEE MY POETRY BOOKS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.
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NEW WORLD WEATHER
More bad weather ahead Moderate tornado activity in New England today Schools will remain closed until the all clear Flood waters continue to rise in Salt Lake City where survivors on the roofs of high-rise buildings beg TV helicopter crews for food Film at eleven Earthquake activity is expected to subside tomorrow afternoon If you've been putting off that brain surgery this will be your window of opportunity Meanwhile a tsunami watch is in effect extending from the coast of Wyoming to the Gulf of New Mexico Today's high Missoula Montana one hundred forty-three degrees The low Tallahassee Florida at minus nine |
Hang on We're having a . . . a pole shift * * * * * * * * * (Whew) Well, that was just a mild one According to our instant recalculation the sun will rise today at four eighteen p.m. and will set at nine twenty-three As always remain indoors during daylight hours New World Weather is brought to you by Exxon Chevron the World Bank Monsanto Goldman Sachs Halliburton and the Sierra Club Taking charge of what's left of your future (from CITIES OF ANTARCTICA) |
THE TOWN AT THE END OF THE ROAD
It’s a town at the end of the road
seven miles of crumbling blacktop
When you turn off the desert highway
between nowhere and nowhere
there’s a sign that says No Services Ahead
You wonder what you’re getting yourself into
At the high point in the road you pass through a portal
It’s like a membrane
You can feel the change coming over you
You drop down into a lonely valley
surrounded by purple peaks
At the bottom of the grade
clustered around the stop sign
Broken down buildings
False fronts faded by years of dust and wind
There’s a rustle at the curtains
in the window of a sad eyed shack
and you know that someone’s watching you
You hope they’re friendly
because you’re a sitting duck there in your SUV
and somebody’s eyes are looking at you
maybe through binoculars or a telescopic sight
So there you are sitting at Main and Market
and you have to make a decision
whether to turn left or right to see if there’s anything here
besides the stop sign the abandoned buildings
and the rustling curtains
Most people turn around and drive back out the way they came
But if you have the courage to take a look around
maybe you’ll get out
by the ancient yellow water truck
with its cockeyed hood popped open
You brought a camera after all
Something to share with the folks back home
Don’t you dare step into that spooky doorless building
infested most likely with spiders and scorpions
Maintain a respectful distance
from the collections of rusty junk in the yards
The people here are sort of peculiar
they’re touchy about their junk piles
and their property lines
just like your neighbors back in Encino or San Leandro
You’ll want to photograph the old gas pumps on the corner
made famous by Google Earth
the Dance Hall with no sign of dancers
and the derelict schoolhouse
with a mysterious crumbling statue in the window
If you peek inside you’ll see a stuffed green alien
sitting at a little student’s desk before a blackboard
There’s a singing bass on the old kerosene stove
The ceiling’s coming down in toxic streamers
The walls are lined with newspapers ragged yellowed pages
with a picture of a beautiful woman who recently got arrested
for possibly murdering her husband in 1896
Up Main Street there’s a large erotic sculpture
Strange music emanates from the cargo box on the corner
A pair of tall dark slabs of rock stand in an empty lot
with a chiseled plaque that says Gates of Hell
What’s going on behind those curtained windows
Did you really think this was a ghost town
You get back in your car and drive away
thinking you’ll never return to this godforsaken place
but something will call to you
The memory of the jagged purple peaks
The gesturing Joshua trees and the photogenic shacks
Maybe you’ll come back and find somebody out in the street
and ask about places for sale
Maybe some day it will be you
running off trespassers guarding your rusty junk
peeking out from behind those curtains
(from NEW WORLD WEATHER CD)
It’s a town at the end of the road
seven miles of crumbling blacktop
When you turn off the desert highway
between nowhere and nowhere
there’s a sign that says No Services Ahead
You wonder what you’re getting yourself into
At the high point in the road you pass through a portal
It’s like a membrane
You can feel the change coming over you
You drop down into a lonely valley
surrounded by purple peaks
At the bottom of the grade
clustered around the stop sign
Broken down buildings
False fronts faded by years of dust and wind
There’s a rustle at the curtains
in the window of a sad eyed shack
and you know that someone’s watching you
You hope they’re friendly
because you’re a sitting duck there in your SUV
and somebody’s eyes are looking at you
maybe through binoculars or a telescopic sight
So there you are sitting at Main and Market
and you have to make a decision
whether to turn left or right to see if there’s anything here
besides the stop sign the abandoned buildings
and the rustling curtains
Most people turn around and drive back out the way they came
But if you have the courage to take a look around
maybe you’ll get out
by the ancient yellow water truck
with its cockeyed hood popped open
You brought a camera after all
Something to share with the folks back home
Don’t you dare step into that spooky doorless building
infested most likely with spiders and scorpions
Maintain a respectful distance
from the collections of rusty junk in the yards
The people here are sort of peculiar
they’re touchy about their junk piles
and their property lines
just like your neighbors back in Encino or San Leandro
You’ll want to photograph the old gas pumps on the corner
made famous by Google Earth
the Dance Hall with no sign of dancers
and the derelict schoolhouse
with a mysterious crumbling statue in the window
If you peek inside you’ll see a stuffed green alien
sitting at a little student’s desk before a blackboard
There’s a singing bass on the old kerosene stove
The ceiling’s coming down in toxic streamers
The walls are lined with newspapers ragged yellowed pages
with a picture of a beautiful woman who recently got arrested
for possibly murdering her husband in 1896
Up Main Street there’s a large erotic sculpture
Strange music emanates from the cargo box on the corner
A pair of tall dark slabs of rock stand in an empty lot
with a chiseled plaque that says Gates of Hell
What’s going on behind those curtained windows
Did you really think this was a ghost town
You get back in your car and drive away
thinking you’ll never return to this godforsaken place
but something will call to you
The memory of the jagged purple peaks
The gesturing Joshua trees and the photogenic shacks
Maybe you’ll come back and find somebody out in the street
and ask about places for sale
Maybe some day it will be you
running off trespassers guarding your rusty junk
peeking out from behind those curtains
(from NEW WORLD WEATHER CD)
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DECOMPOSED GRANITE It must have been a tiny speck of sand that made a mess of my drive back from Yuma A persistent chirping beneath the floorboard, A scary little noise that the tire man said seemed to emanate from the front transmission seal. So I tiptoed along the empty desert roads, didn’t stop for a soak in Holtville with the gossipy snowbirds holed up for the winter in the BLM campground; I didn’t go by way of Salvation Mountain for photos of adobe forests and flowers and waterfalls and phrases from the Bible REPENT and GOD IS LOVE; I didn’t visit the Slabs with the derelict buses and spiffy motor homes and broken down citizens and scruffy dogs and piles of shit and petty thievery; I didn’t get out on the shore of the Salton Sea to shuffle through the desiccated corpses of tilapia and admire the skimming flight of white pelicans and the patrician stance of a lone blue heron. I let out my breath as I cruised very slowly onto the I-10 at Indio: Civilization at last Close to help in case of a breakdown. It was quiet now under the floorboard |
but I kept it under sixty all the way to Ridgecrest and the transmission place I found on the internet at McDonalds. The guy took it out for a spin rolling his eyes at the three warning lights on the dash Eternal flames which I pay no heed. He found nothing wrong. It didn’t occur to me till the last lonely lap of the long drive home that this kind of thing felt familiar: a disturbing squeal that mysteriously subsides A chunk of slowly melting ice caught against a spinning shaft or in this case a tiny little a devilish little grain of decomposed granite a souvenir of my search for a campsite behind the rocks and out of the wind in the Cargo Muchacho Mountains off Sidewinder Road. |
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MARTIN RAMIREZ, OUTSIDER ARTIST
Martin Ramirez born in Mexico eighteen hundred eighty-five poverty drove him across the border worked as a railroad section hand bewildered by life in the USA his tongue was stopped 1915 still mute in LA's Pershing Square picked up by cops in 1930 communing with pigeons and fellow drifters locked up as catatonic later transferred to DeWitt State nuthouse outside Sacramento where he spent the rest of his life Dr. Pasto Finnish shrink student of art of the insane visits the ward at DeWitt State Martin slips him a roll of drawings hidden in his hospital shirt up till then inmates' art work collected and burned at end of day Martin hid it under his mattress carefully folded it in his clothing |
Huge exuberant linear visions curious tigers locomotives vanish in vaginated tunnels mythic animals mad madonnas horsemen heroes Pancho Villas dance on Martin's proscenium stage Three hundred drawings by Martin Ramirez survive in collectors' hands today he never spoke the rest of his life hummed in singsong to show his pleasure when visitors admired his drawings died at DeWitt in 1960 schizophrenic, paranoid His work now sells for hundreds of thousands he could have been that man beside you on the park bench watching pigeons, humming (from GHOST MUSEUM) |
MARTIN RAMIREZ
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DAZZLE
for Nancy Battleship heaves sideways into view or is that her prow painted in jagged collisions of black white and grey coming or going Is that you against the backlit window are you smiling or frowning displayed on a failing retina cant quite make out your features male or female say something clearly a signature gesture Huge lumbering aircraft blend into dappled sky or mountain terrain flickering shifting patterns mimic the background Surely a heat seeking missile can tell the difference Is your vision so bad you can’t read the height and slope unsafe for eighty Maybe another shot will preserve the peri- pheral acuity Fovea cones |
and rods occipital lobe Mechanisms of sight and comprehension Surely the man at the console can distinguish between bow and stern rudder and wing Surely the Navajo codemen can report which way the deep lurking craft are coming where they will raise their long scopes out of the dark churning seas Surely a camera implanted in your eye- ball will help you negotiate the steps and handholds Clever creatures with opposable thumbs Surely you can protect the women and children from the angles and shadows of your nightmares |
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MESA RAIN
My tracks My tracks over and over in the dead dust exploded at last by the first heavy drops The exhausted sage raises its brittle arms releasing a nervy scent The flycatchers huddle beneath the eaves then flash out into the moist falling light No doubt there will be a new hatch of relentless gnats The walls will melt and subside The frail white blossoms will quickly swell and deliver their troublesome burs A thousand year drought say the seers Whodunit? Not I say the burners of coal and oil Not I, the frugal householder folding her cardboard and squashing her cans |
Not I, the red faced sun from behind a smoky veil Now the price of a walk will be carving the hardened adobe out of the patterns in my soles and scratching the bites of no see ums Mudlocked I’ll wait it out with the phoebes in this fragile and soluble shelter as the cistern slowly fills and the roof reveals its newfound vulnerabilities Soon the neighbors will be complaining about the impassable roads the mud on their jeans and the lack of solar gain Soon we’ll forget the months of breathless waiting in a searing wind amid a dangerous crop of tinder And once again We’ll take the monsoon for granted |
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THE COMMA
With his single string Pythagoras unraveled the hidden truth of the sacred: Cycle of fifths ceaselessly ascending with a slight slippage, never arriving at the perfect agreement of octaves. The music of the spheres is imprecise, its resonance an illusion played to our detuned ears. Forget your sacred geometry, your Vitruvian Man, your golden ratio. Imperfection is the engine of life: the odd photon expelled from the atom, the fine structure constant remaining after E has condensed into mc square. Look for the spirit line, the errant thread that leads out of the woven snare. |
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DISTANCES
The distance traveled by photons
from a struck match
a solar flare
a meltdown
The so-called empty space
within the nucleus
Abuzz with fields
and information
Our flesh separated by molecules
of sweat Exchanging heat
over the unbridgeable abyss
between me and you
The child embraces Grandpa through
the plastic hugging wall Tears
on the old man's cheeks
Entanglement straddles the void
at nerve ends The distance between
the face and the name
the thing and the word
Reaching for the light
across a blinded room
His furred slack hand
backlit by slatted sun
Last traces of heat dispersing
into random staggering photons
faltering breaths and beats
The distance traveled by life
as it closes the gap
between on and off
The distance traveled by photons
from a struck match
a solar flare
a meltdown
The so-called empty space
within the nucleus
Abuzz with fields
and information
Our flesh separated by molecules
of sweat Exchanging heat
over the unbridgeable abyss
between me and you
The child embraces Grandpa through
the plastic hugging wall Tears
on the old man's cheeks
Entanglement straddles the void
at nerve ends The distance between
the face and the name
the thing and the word
Reaching for the light
across a blinded room
His furred slack hand
backlit by slatted sun
Last traces of heat dispersing
into random staggering photons
faltering breaths and beats
The distance traveled by life
as it closes the gap
between on and off
POETRY BOOKS
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CITIES OF ANTARCTICA
Poetry by Kathy Goss 1998 Petroglyph Press 116 pages Order this book on the STORE page. |