Something Or Other

I am not a lunatic but madness might be a factor.

Do we wait for a savior, or bring one into existence?

Music resonates in consonance with the creator’s voice.

What isn’t transformed by fire is eaten by envy.

Many Boomers couldn’t get enough of the world;

everything opened, everything poured in, then too much.

One day, several years ago, I realized everything had changed.

Inner voices were unhinged by my confusion. Ageing does that.

Innocence has become more important as I have gotten older.

And I have wondered if idealism is another form of innocence.

Little by little, while on the road, a new voice

emerged that I came to recognize as my own;

the extraneous bits of life fell away.

There is no language for that,

only the surge of the soul 

and the swelling of the heart.

from: Buckle Up! A Boomer’s Meandering Musings on

Innocence, Time, and Love, From Then to More Recently

Unpub. MS p. 39

Subversive Meandering

Listen without ears to the voice

that calls you, Come this way.

The intangible things that breathe 

have no names but are life.

Something in the mist and fog

of our mystical musings awaits us. 

One step more into 

the cosmic wobble, lovers,

always one step more.

Heart, mind, compassion, empathy.

Our souls. Even those that are 

imaginary and fictional, we name. 

Words become us, however reckless.

Nothing that lives can be safe.

Stop listening to the music

and become the music— 

bang the drums, play the trumpets,

sing the prayer, be what you are.

Should we trust anyone’s 

proclamation of faith 

who doesn’t argue with God?

From: Getting There

Unpub. MS p. 15

Fire, Passion, And Stairways To Heaven

Ask a question any way you want.

The truth of the answer it won’t change.

Could the answers change the questions

into some other grammatical form or language?

Some day I will reach a place of Knowing nothing.

I’m wondering if invisible I will be. Or empty?

Better you’re transformed into the fullness of a symphony

with lots of brass, with a conductor with strong arms,

swamped by sound, swamped by the sound of love, 

by loving the harmonies, the chord progressions,

digressions, compressions, suggestions, avoiding the

false prophets and easy answers to abstract questions.

But what pain will it bring us, who knows, 

when our kisses fail to rise above simple disguises,

kisses of no fire, no passions, no stairways to heaven?

Answer from fullness, not from emptiness.

Answer with Mozart, with Bach, with Tchaikovsky.

Answer in full voice, sing in full harmony.

From: A Meandering Search for

Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 12

Like Prayer

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

in E minor, Op. 64

From the moment the orchestra begins 

until the last magnificent chord,

I am playing and being played,

stretching myself from low notes to high notes.

It is wine from the glass into my mouth,

a rambunctious exuberance,

stirred in a realm of detached frenzy.

What is the way to pray

when there is no translation?

When I would have so much to say?

I’m left with only the continuous rhythm 

of my aching, pounding heart.

From: In Transition

Unpub. MS p. 29

5/4 Time

Thankfully, we have time and space,

room to gallop and lurch and stumble

in 5/4 time and other odd meters.

The people I love would not sell out 

the Mission Impossible theme to a 4/4 beat.

We possess plenty of madness,

but we are willing to be rational if necessary.

What resonates in our chests 

is brassy, offbeat, and suspiciously earthy.

We are patina-coated non-rationals,

conducting our own fabulous orchestras

at full volume, stomping the ground, raising dirt.

This is our rhythm through life.

It’s our only defense against the maddening crowds.

From: In Transition

MS in progress.

Retrospective Of A Boomer (part 3 of 4)

What a time that was when Elvis Presley and The Beatles

upset the powers that were and sent the rest of us into a frenzy.

The Beach Boys got us all worked up

about cars, surfing, and California girls.

Rock bands with horns— Chicago, The Ides of March, 

and Blood, Sweat, and Tears. They were fresh and exciting;

so was Cream, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, 

Pink Floyd, The Doors, and The Who.

(Nothing like “White Rabbit,” “A Woman Left Lonely,”

“Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and “Good Vibrations.”)

Leonard Cohen’s voice became better with age.

Sadly, we didn’t get enough of it before he died in 2016.

Jimi Hendrix’s “The Star Spangled Banner” still reverberates

the pain of where we have been and where we are today.

We saw the Berlin Wall built in 1961 that failed 

in 1989. Seems that freedom had the final word.

And in the midst of everything, two men landed on the moon,

July 20, 1969. I remember our stunning, speechless awe,

right there with Walter Cronkite.

From: A Rambly Search for

Innocence, Time, and Love

Unpub. MS p. 33

The Way Of Angels

to Mary Oliver

I was a bird that traversed land 

and shadows and heaven’s gardens, 

thinking I could become an Angel.

Some said to find which constellation 

rose at my birth, but it seems like 

they all rose.

When I step into the dim morning air 

without coffee, the birds are puzzled, 

sensing something is missing.

I know music; I know prayer.

I don’t know the way of angels,

but I know they can’t be too far off.

From: Shorts: Short Poems on How We Ramble

Unpub. MS p. 69

Peggy Sue And The Blue Chevy Pickup

 From Willcox, 1960, as best as I can remember.

The music is a surprise without a ribbon.

A box full of sounds, orchestras,

rock bands, and a chorus of sacred lovers.

Such music will take us somewhere wonderful.

Leave trouble behind. 

Get that cold bolt from the blue,

get ball lightning, be the lightning rod— 

unshakable, undeterred, unflinching— 

stay off the highways that go nowhere fast.

Time to get magical, get heated, be fiery!

Get out of the rut...jump, leap, hop-scotch,

pogo stick, bicycle, tricycle, and fire up

that blue ’54 Chevy pickup. 

But it’s a stick shift.

It’s Peggy Sue’s. She can drive anything.

We’ll all ride with her.

Turn on the radio.

Listening to the music, laughing and singing.

Holding hands and shouting, 

It’s Elvis!

Turn it up.

Turn it up.

Go. Go. Go.

From: Memories and the Things Left Behind:

A Non-linear Recollection

Unpublished MS p. 10

One Night With Syrah

Road trip, Northern California, Winter 

Alone with two bottles of Syrah and ocean surf,

Gold Beach, Fern Canyon, redwoods, Beethoven,

a moonless night, a starry-starry sky, galaxies,

chilly air, and a red sleeping bag.

There are sparkling past futures; there are ponds, lakes, 

diamond shoes, and a road to nowhere which ends up being

somewhere near someplace, with hands and arms flailing, 

begging for a ride to Eureka, California.

Look. There are clouds; now there aren’t.

Look again, there are stars, like Deneb and Betelgeuse,

and we can sail away like ancient mariners on a silvery sea, 

breathing deep, but now our lives are shorter, so let’s eat pizza

and BBQ, drink more wine, tequila, and eat tacos and carne asada.

Let’s give coffee to this drunken madness, then we can dance.

Enya is singing in the blue lagoon, in the silence 

of the months ahead, and in the noise of the months behind. 

Now the hellos, goodbyes, deaths, burials, trains, planes, 

and art left over from the good old days, the blue days, 

the windy days, the rainy days, and all the days 

of city traffic that went nowhere fast.

From the silence of lost loves,

the wind of grasslands and oceans,

we finally sing “Hallelujah,” “White Rabbit,” 

“Mairzy Doats,” and an old Vernon Dalhart classic.

Settling in my sleeping bag, unafraid of the noise 

of forest darkness, the universe reveals a secret,

and I sleep.

From: Dreams, Memories, And Leaps Into The Wilderness

Unpublished MS p. 11

Silence

To some of us the world is blue with silence,

because silence is bright yellow, bright green,

and silence is wide and narrow,

full of prayers, full of good and evil.

And following along are the thunderous silences,

like empty sports stadiums, closed race tracks,

and shattering cruelties that surround us in red.

There are curiosities of silence, of the strong, silent type,

the quiet ones, those children who have been too quiet

for too long; the silence of the sulking, depressed, lonely,

contemplative, guilty, puzzler, wanderer, and lover.

There is the silence of love’s hidden work,

the burning silence of sunrise and sunset,

and when the music begins, silence deepens it.

For the troubled: outward silence; inward screams.

Make room for silence; live in the mercy of silence.

When you are in the noise of nature and you hear 

your footsteps and breathing, bow in that holy place.

Let silence be an art we practice.

Musical Notations

I was born in a world of music and abstractions,

sound translated into images that assemble

and disassemble, then reassemble in colorful ways

with new music, old music, the brawling, the serene,

roaming about gently settling here and there like Mozart,

or rampaging through the universe like Beethoven,

pushing me around a bit like Bartok or Nielsen,

astonished by Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich,

tripping me like Charles Ives, to be lifted again

and set on a steady beat by Johann Sebastian Bach.