random fragments culled from scraps of paper, 1982-84

Dennis Banks and Abby Hoffman 

are the only real heroes left.

Do you remember when you realized 

you were going to die?

The oppressor and the oppressed

Their women pass time
pressing strawberries between their thighs
The oppressor is always "they"
They have nothing better to do 

than to watch their wives sitting at home 

squashing strawberries between their thighs. 

No strawberry sunday at the fountain

We're all shiksas looking for home

Nuptial

I bet you're so perfect 

you don't even get junk mail.

Primal

As Richard plays the piano late at night
Coastal fog drips from pine trees 

a morose foghorn sounds in the distance
Do we respond to those notes 

the sounds we heard as children
What makes us respond to music?
Certain chords touching off the coastal fog 

dripping off Presidio Pines 

and the forlorn cutting the fog 

1984

When his hand grazes on my body 

reality and memory cease 

and all there is is the moment.
What I want to tell the fish 

rolling in my bed at night 

is that none of us can crawl back 

to that place called home 

no matter what coast we seek.

And the robins sings of smashed mates 

the feathered triumph of my VW 

mercilessly breaking the bondage of robins 

April 1984

I am as innocent as I can afford to be – Howard Hart

I wish bad poems were more like clay pots 

slumped at the wheel
Instead they're fired with air bubbles 

trapped within the clay wall 

and they explode in the kiln 

or break with ease leaving us 

to piece them back together, 

our hands sticky with glue. 

No date I'm guessing 1984

The sand shifting of time
This marriage of poetry and art
The infant weaving the woman's hourglass
The band bird is the color of white horses
I cover my eyes and speak
I cover my ears to see
I cover my mouth to love
My breast is laid bare 

this clothing gathers them in.

I have been running for more than a year 

in the act of running the rabbit legs lengthen

the ears elongate the ratio between ear and hind foot 

measures the distance of fear.

Billowing loose from my shoulders 

the hair at the nape of my neck

gives me chills, like the dead come to visit.

All words are suspect
prepubescent poetic intention 

covering the eye, the ear
Aural intentions of the throat
The ancient sea voice whispering in my ear
Reminding me the shape of time 

is woman shaped. 

And I have hands to turn the glass 

on its side 

looking really looking into another's eyes 

for the first time. 

And as I gather up  my infant body 

covering the exposed flesh along the belly 

where the outgrown clothes pull apart 

revealing the darkness underneath 

in fetal defiance my knees are raised to my chin 

as I survey that mouth I want to kiss again and again

Our bodies never forget the touch of old lovers


After the honeymoon

I come away from the conference feeling both old – 

the wasted time floundering on mnemonic chores 

and doing that the last stages of my infancy

growing pains anchoring the honeymoon 

is this another poem about about writing 

how I bend over while driving to retrieve my hat 

and the feathers licking my fingers greedily 

as the car swerved into oncoming traffic
We are alive for such a short time 

and the unfinished poems remind us 

of the sand sifting through the hourglass 

in the shape of a woman's body
Yet another year passes. 

that odor of tar weed and skunk, 

the aging yellow edges of blank paper, 

wanting to slip off the cliff 

a feeling that lasts longer than the flight of poetry.

7/82  Napa Poetry Conference


Coyotes

Five coyotes emerge out of darkness, 

with strange square jaws with herbivore's teeth. 

The coyote spoke to me but I couldn't understand—

it was a coyote dream. What did the coyote say?

added 9/2016

revised a bit as they don't make a lot of sense.