NO MATTER HOW YOU LOOK AT IT

IT'S

SIDEWAYS

THROUGH

ZION

        Available at all the Amazons, or by order from your local bookstore.

SIDEWAYS THROUGH ZION

MORNING WALK (Caminata Matutina)

(photo:  mine, jacaranda tree and assorted shrubs)

Buenas dias!

(I mean you no harm)

-        buenos dias!

(nor I you)

In our broken

seven billion

intentional harm

is less frequent

than you’d expect

wars

famine

plague

are not normal

everything alive

would like to survive

we are

the many

perhaps the most

of us

held

within the arms

of our better angels

Cuidado

     (be careful)

y no tengas miedo

     (and have no fear)

Buenos días…

-        buenos días.

RW

GTO, Mex.

03.25.2020

(It is striking how many strangers, when passing one another on the narrow sidewalks of Guanajuato, greet one another.  Usually, though not always, with a smile, sometimes with surprise.  If you offer a greeting, it's returned.)

A MINI LESSON IN MARINE BIOLOGY

THE BLUE GLAUCOS

a.k.a. blue dragon

non-venomous

but as lethal

as a syringe

primed with

purloined cyanide

also known as

blue angel

          hovering

               in

warm

ocean

waters

Gulf of California

South Pacific

Bay of Bengal

Bermuda

          and the like.

Blue swallow

pushed & drawn

by winds and currents

charged for its prey

the

grandiose

Potuguese

man-‘o-war

thirty times its size

a feast

for this inch long

hermaphrodite’s

serrated teeth.

Glaucilla marginata

devours the zooid galleon

steals and stores its venom

for the next

target of opportunity.

***

Can it…?

         

          Yes.

Will I…?

          Probably not.

What then…?

pain – nausea – vomiting – rash.

***

“thus endeth the lesson.”

RW

GTO, Mex

03.22.2020

SUB SPECIE AETERNITATIS

(photo:  Christ in the Desert Monastery) 

(written while watching Reggie's shadow during a sunshower)

Under the aspect of eternity

in a moment

that won’t repeat

Stars race

to the edge

though

there

is

no

edge

Light doesn’t

stop traveling

neither do we

After

the

rain

falls

it

rises.

RW

GTO, Mex.
03.20.2020

SRO - THE MISSION

SRO - THE MISSION

My room

airshaft provides perpetual twilight

coughs through the wall

bathroom down the hall.

Downstairs

common room 
TV’s blue stammer

occasional daylight

across linoleum floor

as front door

          swings

open/shut

to traffic noise.

A

soul

enters/departs

no matter

          same

          same.

Rent receipt written in palsied hand.

Another week

          same

          same.

RW

Guanajuato, Mex.

03.18.2020

(SRO = single room occupancy.  I lived in that hotel for about 3 months.  Worked two jobs trying to put a plane ticket and some spending money together, trying to get to Hawaii.  Dishes at the Good Karma Café on Dolores, and day shifts at a nursing home on Van Ness.  Hotel room figures in another poem called Independence Noir.)

WATER

Field Notes:  Delhi, India – 2001

(dedicated to my buddy, Rajiv Gupta)

WATER

As gift and greeting

to my Western sensibility

not rare or precious

just – water

to my hosts

as central to their lives

as if they lived

on the planet Dune

to my Western sensibility

we were on

the planet Dune

                             

this was Delhi – 2001

ninety degrees F.

humidity off the charts

air relatively clear

not yet the gas chamber

it would become.

Rajiv has brought me

to meet a real-estate broker

We’re standing on the downward slope

of a lawn that rolls like a green wave

from the broker’s office door

Water

as gift and greeting

delivered by a servant

carried on a silver tray

held in tall and sweating glasses

Rajiv and I are corporate cas(ual)

broker and servant are trad(itional)

in white khurta and pajama sets

a procession of two with the servant leading

with the water -

leading

imagination might summon

elephants and parasols.

The water is offered

and though I’m as hot and humid as Delhi

I hesitate and find myself on the spot

Looks are exchanged

as I run the math of

need health hospitality and custom

a moment of disassociation

phantom cameras whirring

one of those dramatic crane shots

of four players

diminished in size

on a ridiculously green

and well-watered lawn

I accept the gesture

re-enter my body

our tiny world exhales

and business begins.

Tips passed

fees negotiated

addresses exchanged

we return our glasses

to the servants’s silver tray

and shake hands in that gentle Indian way

ritual

test

and business

blest and complete

contract written

in water.

(PS:  I came to learn the preciousness of water. 

Delhi is a dune city built on sand and rock.  The population in 2001 was about 13 million, as of this writing it is nearer 28 million.

When the population was a mere 17 million, 46% of those had no access to piped water.  Water is politically allocated.  Middle and upper class cantonments have greater access to clean water than the majority of the population.  Even so, scarcity is an issue.

Many of my co-workers were forced to rise at four a.m.,to wait for water trucks so they could get their families’ daily allotment.

“If you like the oil wars, you’re going to love the water wars.”  Zack Works

The perennial conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir is less a sectarian or land dispute than a resource dispute.  Water is key.  The dispute comes very close to war on a regular basis.

The broker’s tip did lead to a fabulous sub-let in Gurgoun, a.k.a., electronic city.  Rajiv informed me there was no way we were paying a fee for a meer “tip”)

RW

Guanajuato, Mex.

03.2020

PS:  TRIBAL WATER

(photo:  unattributed)

.

THE DAYS OF TRUMP #19

HAUNTED

…Trump’s tanking of his own credibility haunts him.

          The Washington Post

I have always thought

of our 45^th as

haunted –

          from day one

          and his inauguration panic.

But not like our other

haunted Executives

Lincoln shrouded by

all those dead

men and boys

         

          special grief for the boys

                    his son Willie

LBJ haunted by the dead

of that lousy Asian war

more like Nixon

haunted by inadequacies

          and the hounds of crime

          nipping at his Achilles'.

Oh, Donald

wandering the halls

of midnight television

feeling your weight gain

and skin sag

staring at your hands

pawing at fantasies

so demon haunted

the world’s prayers

would not provide exorcism.

Donald

haunted

by your fate
to wither in the

gilded chambers

of your highly leveraged properties.

RW

GTO, Mex.

03.10.2020