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POETRY

SEE MY POETRY BOOKS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

Picture
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)

Picture
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)

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Picture
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Picture
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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.

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)
Picture
MARTIN RAMIREZ

Picture
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


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     
Picture

Picture
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.




Picture
DISTANCING

The so-called empty space
            within       the nucleus
            all abuzz with fields
            and information
Slack furry corpses
            of household pets            dumped
            out of the dead cart            in the hot zone
            cemented for the duration
The distance traveled by photons
            from a struck match
            a solar flare
            a meltdown
Addicted to the illusion
            of embracing                    our skins
            separated        by molecules of sweat
            exchanging messages of heat
            over the unbridgeable
            gap            between you and I
Entanglement the only hope
            of reaching            across the void
            at nerve ends
            vast firing line of hit           or miss
            that becomes more miss with age 
            and forgetfulness   
The distance between
            the face     and the name
            the thing    and the word
Reaching for the candlelight
            across an empty room
            your furred slack hand
            backlit by flame
Last traces of heat
            as it disperses                into random
            slowing photons        
            across the faltering beats    and pulses
The time it takes for life
            to cross the gap  
            between on          and off



POETRY BOOKS

Picture
GHOST MUSEUM
Poetry by Kathy Goss
1992
Petroglyph Press
86 pages
Order this book on the STORE page.


Picture
CITIES OF ANTARCTICA
Poetry by Kathy Goss
1998
Petroglyph Press
116 pages
Order this book on the STORE page.



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