Shiva Waits

Shiva Waits,

He will dance over these wet streets of Manhattan,

Over these bespeckled footprint beaches of Los Angeles,

Shiva will dance and devour our age,

Like a ravenous virgin lover

And all of us will fold again

And mark the dance by the light of our death.

Oh glorious death, Shiva,

Dissolve us in your spectrums!

You will lose us forever

Yet find us again in another dream.

Earth will soon sing to the forests

She will cut down the steel of man,

And set the clouds against his skin,

Freezing,

Peeling,

Melodic,

Revealing the Buddhas and the Arhats,

Who have so long labored in ecstacy

To enroll mankind in their glorious joke,

A performance of dharmas cut so fine

And of such balance,

That to see it once ... .

That's all folks!

Eat for Free

God! Microsoft and money surround my art!

This incarnation is getting old.

At least the pigeons eat for free.

Never Been to San Francisco

Always on Market Street,

Never thinking about the end,

Red brick San Francisco dust,

Never reeking of the art.

Grandmotherly wooden houses never reveal Rome.

Golden Gate Bridge spanning the never of empire,

A finger youthful to the northern forests,

A tingling thigh towards LA's glitter dome.

Never say never in this shell grey town,

Sapped of energy in the never summer of 67'.

Never could a poet have survived such an exodus

Unless the wind carried him beyond the comic-book Haight,

To the never-never rock houses of Oakland basehead babies,

Blow-jobs and AIDS, 

Republican plagues,

The never-ending battleships to amputation Concord --

My god, the city is all cardboard!

At least LA is plastic,

Melting above the swirling always of the desert,

South of this never happening city,

I still 

Have never been to San Francisco.

Travel Light

Travel light and take power gingerly,

Offer cookies to children and rice to babies.

Travel spacious and follow wisdom quietly,

Offer canyon foreheads to Egyptian ladies,

Maybe stopping, but only til' dawn,

Travel briskly with a balanced heart

And you will travel in circles

until you've mastered the start.

Nicaruga Again

Nicaragua Again

Once I came to you,

Ragged Atlantean, I was crow.

Your soft women like spears,

And the jungle drugs,

As if to match the pyramids,

Drove me far

As I assembled you

And the intersections about

Your equatorial wisdom,

Spanning the lines

And times

To Contras

And my LA incarnations,

Tibet notwithstanding.

Never-the-Less

We drank and killed

And war paint marked our edges

And reed to the medicines spun

In your jungles that took me

As Atlantis sank in her arrogance,

Her wings of such potential;

But we men, women,

Were content

With sun and fish

And the Christ's

Who visit such a bright life

And walk the waves

To teach us leaving.

We failed and sit now

With Reagan's idiots,

So close to us both:

Virginia and the Baca,

All reeling to remember

What we took.

I am full of the white man's blubbery attitude,

The bounty of his ironic karma,

The inheritance of the New Mexico power lines,

Binding both you and me and the other surfaces

Of land and tree,

And mysterious winds,

Who assemble so furtively along the borders

Only imagined and crossed by Arjuna,

Asuras, and Hyundais.

Yes,

I am a yuppie incarnate

And your people trounce in the jungles

Red with steal from Uncle Sam, 

Shot into you,

As our media and baseball

Banish the guilt forever.