RETIREMENT OF AN EXPLORER

It was quite a thing to be home,
with the wind rapping promises
at window panes, and his mind
full of sails and horizons and
the great life that was stammered
through departure to return.
He had written books, as though
words could mirror oceans,
and his maps of foreign shores
were universally acclaimed.
But all he saw were lines 
and notations that were soundings
of mere measurable depths
and easy claimed domains.
And he knew it as deceipt made
to entertain those dreamers who
consumed adventure stories in
their safe and cosy rooms. But
beyond all publications, and those
warmly greeted speeches, was
the all he couldn't utter and the
distance that remained.

COMPOSITION

My old fat typewriter
held, in its belly, a silver
spindled chorus line
of letters. On late nights,
when everything felt lost
in that certain dark
of neatly ordered suburbs,
my fingers worked and
words were high kicked
onto pages. There was
hope in that midnight sound
and hope in the black
pressed pattern of the poems
and hope that I folded
neatly into daylight
and sent to the immense
and foreign world.

1960'S DECONSTRUCTED DAFFODIL

Unconvinced by solid regularity,
my lonely cloud breaks up, rains
down on golden daffodils; their
paisley spinning petals tongue
my mind; so trippy happy pretty
pretty cool; everything constructed
- meaningless: the way you walk
and talk and act so wired; why
not just unplug your robot mind;
meaning comes when ego just
lets go; take off your noose tie
and expand your life; feel the way
the air is breathing you; my fingers
peace like branches in a tree,
settle your bird frame, come,
land on me; everything is merging
into one; everything is heavy
as a cloud; everything is rising
like the sun; our mind blissed
life shines gold as daffodils.

HOWLIN' WOLF

Six foot six and bull muscle
fierce: the stage is barely big enough
for that man, who looms over
the mike like the genesis angel
over water. He peers out, takes
a measure of the room, brings
the harp up to his lips to start
the murmuring:

Something coming
right out of the night,
the sound his Mamma
labelled Devil's Music.

He stretches lungs and sounds
out a long dark yowl; soul trouble
shaken down, low as thunder;
all that lonely never left behind,
homeless boy now singing
in a man: oh don't you hear
me crying.