Old Guy, 3/4 Profile (Napkin Drawing)

Poetics (v. 02)

It comes out
or through
holes like eyes
or windows,

film screens or beams
of light that dance
crossing from past to
cars passing, passed

Your footfalls marking
time or distance
paired like wings
moving air
and sometimes light

Nothing seen
but images
like exhalations
left to fill spaces
unseen until now

pens down,
heads out

Looking North at Sunset, Ocean Beach

For Sarah (v. 05)

"It's like fingers of wind
running over your scalp
and down the roots
of your hair,"
I say
"like a cloud
sailing
invisible currents of sky"
on your brown leather couch
with your simpering dogs,
spackles of sunshine
after bottles of red wine,
green tobiko
and your slow
easy kisses

For Reba & Ashley (LovEvolution 2009)

Another adventure
on the spilling streets
San Francisco
bleeding
pulsing blasts of people,
all from other places

Kids with eyes
their saucers
flying
up the poles &
the light posts, even
the trees

toward
the flipped over blue
of the wind washed sky

Dilapidated Barber Pole

Climbing Bong Cave

high. on the crag.

crevice. dark. unknown.

unfelt. barely seen.

deep? dangerous?

stick a hand in. do it.

like you have to. people. pushing.

in the dark. behind you.

hold yr breath. feel it.

sandstone. and? before your skin

rubs against it. you sink down. into it.

anticipation. electricity.

reaching. in the dark.

with all yr invisible antennae.

your gathered senses.

make fingertips of lightning.

in the darkness.

crackle and hiss. wind borne dust.

kicked up. crevice making space.

pushing us back.

blown like a bucking horse. upward.

turn your head. quick. move your face.

tiny percussions. on your scalp. your squint.

time to use your legs now. time to go.

now your back. make it. hold tight.

face toward the stars.

move up. into the night river. wind.

push. focused.

exhaling.

For Claire

There is something
we are wanting

with passing time
the only hope

we have

a faint optimistic gleam
in the tarnishing distance

more positive than negative
in the worn album of memories

a blurred smile
on a face you won't forget

the boy runs away
out of your arms

into your arms

in a dream that ends
as jarringly as I love you

lay in bed smoldering
touching in ways we don't

often wanting nothing
beyond intimacy

this shared darkness
our wholeness

unequaled

less than this
unequivocal, incomplete

in each attempt
the pang of invisible effort

failure seeming inevitable
glinting beauty fading

still

Bad Math

Long, sunlit,
stretched-out
weekend;

unforgiving malachite
avalanche:
homework

Approaching the Caldecott

For Judy

I've slept with a woman like that
left feeling that I lack
the apparatus needed
for our ongoing happiness

From bog mud toes grow
flowers of infinite delicacy
it's deceptive

Yes, we shared things unique
on climbs through the caverns
of my sheets

Hands held tight
under the weight of coastal clouds
a lack of necessary propulsion:
moving but no motion

Like rocks jutting up
from the waves
our only movements

Down
beneath the loam,
under roiling foam

Poetics (August 2009)

It comes
out or through
holes like eyes or windows,
film screens or beams
of light that dance
crossing from past to
cars passing, passed

Your footfalls marking
time or distance
paired like wings
moving air and sometimes light

Nothing seen
but images
like exhalations
left to fill spaces
unseen until now
pens down,
heads out

The Shaman

The last 9 yrs. I lived in San Francisco. (v. 03)

I work under a bed

at a broken desk

making art,

sometimes poetry

Music is my constant companion

I love monkeys, apes,

gorillas and

Astrud Gilberto's voice,

like vanilla bean ice cream

on a sultry summer evening

My Grandfather, My Papa

Fernando "Fred" Trevino
January 7, 1920 - July 14, 2009

Governor Arnold Delivers Nothing to Californians!

Disney's Dream Debased

For John

Johnny pushes like he means it
and he does
As do I

Between us
it's like a swing set
this way and that, yet always back
to center:

wine, meat, art,
a passion for women
and life,
everyone's lives

Bemused looks pass
like greasy napkins
clumsily mopping at the spilled
and spilling wine

His parents' living room--
beyond his mother's Disneyalia--
a war museum & one-table gun show
of Johnny's odds and ends

Yet I feel welcome and safe:
the good chair,
a tray full of steak & potatoes
waiting just for me

The swing set saves us
this way and that it goes
and back again to center
our shared median

We hop
swerving from the apparatus
We hug and smile

Our greasy napkins
dark,
heavy and red

Electro/Acid Mix - June 10

Krampyre 01a

December's Grieving Face

From Mountain House, 6am Sunday

I'm Straight

Whispers of Mister Peanut

HWY 680, Twilight

On the Train

Some nights it's a smorgasbord
of bristling young energy:
clear, hopeful,
glistening like crystal
flooded with dew-drops and sunlight
smelling like grape candy
impatient when not moving
sugar covered hummingbirds
freshly awake, new and alive
and in plain view of wolves
and aging fading vultures

For Eric (An Ode to Walnut Creek)

Walnut Creek
where a certain type of human gathers
sucks the life out of things
and is filled with a sad, hardened
type of vampirism

People with no desires
beyond their blindly digested,
media-served opinions
morality culled from years of video games
and the bland world of television

For fun they manipulate one another
through ego-driven dead-end trips
strokes and flirts
drunken fucks
performed in temporary locations
promises never uttered to each other
and not kept, even to themselves

Walnut Creek
amazingly picturesque valley
an ancient abattoir
glutted with half-grown souls
sticking to one another
like wet shit in bog mud
only miles from the coast

Pretty Little Eyes

Kim at Ruby Room, Oakland

For Sarah (Random Noodle for Kit & Caboodle v04)

It's like fingers of wind
running over your scalp
and down the roots
of your hair, I say
on the brown leather couch
with your simpering dogs,
after specks of sunshine,
a bottle of red wine,
green Tobiko,
blurring smiles,
and your slow kisses

Kalemba (Wegue Wegue)

For Sarah (Random Noodle for Kit & Caboodle v01)

"It's like the fingers
of the wind," I said
like a cloud
sailing the invisible
currents of sky,
"running their tips
over your scalp
and through the roots
of your hair"
on the couch with your dogs
after a bottle of Italian wine
spackles of sunshine
green tobiko, spicy tuna and
slow easy kisses

For Shane (v. 01)

And now it's March second,
my only brother's birthday
He's 36 now and married
a new father, loving
every minute, every
second, of it

And now I'm an uncle:
A man with a tenuous,
thread-thin connection
to an infant child

Responsibility transferred,
instructions whispered like a late-night story,
as she is first handed to me
My hands together
covering nearly all
of her tiny body

And now her eyes are closed
her face intense and focused
unraveling the entire universe
in silence,

burning stronger and brighter
than this man who made her--
made her with the woman
who loves him most--

He has crossed
another threshold
reaching a man's hand
imperceptibly nearer
to another
Golden Door

Green-Eyed Woman with Pearls