Act-Tor

To establish 'character':


looks
expression
bearing
gestures
intonation
silences

Knotty Wood Panel

A tribal African

Cricketer's rolled sleeve

Raging hawk, owl chick

White stallion's muzzle

Broad-faced flop-eared goat

A crazy man's face

Getty Mountain

Human clusters children the place

Floors, walkways, marbleize, monumentalate.

One's foot-arches, extenuated hams,

Require the sitting, the terraced concrete stream bed.

Sculptural rest beneath the re-bar stalks --

Sheaves of them -- hung with bougainvillea

Whose bright effloresces till one's breath breathes pink.

One ages up the stairs; on down, oasis.

Demotics

graffiti : graffito : : photiti : photito

Imago: Moi

Critic
Mediator
Counselor
Judge
Poet
Prophet

Getty Garden

Sheaves of rebar, fifteen feet high,

Differing widths,  moptop flopping,

Cascade-curving, ridden by bougainvillea

Breaking Fast

Ten miles from here to there.  Ten L.A. miles.

Passing cars, fast.  Trailing cars, fast.

There: warm late morning, reservoir-cupping hill.

LAMILL Coffee Co.   A simple menu of great sophistication.

My mouth pursed at the waitress, grilled her,

Prosecutorily, and reluctantly ordered safe.

Ate along with B, who swapped bites of my perfect eggs.

With her polenta mixed with butternut squash,

Candied pecans,  and mascarpone.

My smooth, very potent, iced coffee.

My mouth pursed again.

Central Casting

Airport.

Family, two families, of 5 or so people.

Daughter, 12-ish: balloon-shaped, green, festive, dowdy chiffon dress, cowboy boots, hair in German-style pretzel braids.

Father, 45 going on 65: thin jaw-burns, bowed back, extra weight.

Cosmopolitan hub. Rural, very rural, folks. Alaska? Dakota? Manitoba?

Living The History

America's doubts: its policy wars.

Korea, Nam, Eye-rack.

Let America The Small be great again.

Guilt Throwdown

I daresay I bet I'll think

It's a sad day for you when you turn

Your back on me, the last person

I'll ever see! So what I'll have the tubes?

Who'll really feel worse then?!

Live with it, big shot, breathing on

To the haunt of my sobs

The guttering and shh of the machine!

Tempo

Getting older by the week's hours

Feeling stronger every Monday's seconds

From the inside out, the clock's

Old, wise, fucking good

St. Vitus

New Year's Eve, December 31, 1969. Four of us in my car. Rick and Gloria and Laurel and I. On the radio comes Credence Clearwater. 'Fortunate Son'. All the complaint -- Nam, draft, social class, social stasis, social disease, post-adolescent ghosts, bad luck, bad breath, bad karma -- shot through my arms and legs into a drive-by dance, into a shout-along, into a full-body poetry. Me 'speaking' it. 'The whole world was watching'.

Little Church In The Square

Can you direct me to the Protestantized Judeo-unitariarian-panentheistic-taoist congregation?

Lasting Fashion

Tattoos: you wear bad taste on your skin.

Piercings: you wear bad taste through your skin.

Thoughts: you wear bad taste beneath skin.

None of this goes away.

A Sober Accounting

Nothing satisfies the budgeteers except poundage and thickness and heft and faux-intelligible density.

If it looks substantial, it must be so.

Oh. And numbers.