dark rituals

rituals in the dark, a gasket, three.

it’s warm today

the grass isn’t frozen

and the sparrows sing.

another gray day

and maybe the rain will come

to cover up the bleached
river bones.

a cut finger, blood in the river.
Donations to appease the
electric shark, down below.

there’s much ado in the big crew

‘your helmet precedes you’

and it’s not even a raptor yet, or a

chain pickerel.

sharks in the dark, by now,

we’re all well acquainted, the 

micro pins, and silly boofs,

off the rubble left behind by

the Lord’s Beavers

(Oh where are you when we need your beavers lord?)

These little boat games

aren’t old yet

'it's bouncy today'

the tide is up

and the surf on the dark side is in

jacuzzi like, buffeting the willing, rejecting

the tentative.

the friendly eddy, and the whirlpool:

opposing currents, build, ebb, and flow.

all floweth out of the flow

from the flow we come

and to the flow

we return.

A parade of zealots

Anticipation.

Dark rituals: 
through gaskets, we are birthed.

geese in the duckweed, green

ducks in the lemna, the slave built the limnion

of stagnant rushes, and shallow mud

[kanał] a noun.

 no olympus on the water,   just 

 rocky eddy turns and  

 microsurfs, a parade of: 

 ZEALOTS 

 I will break my bread at 

 the edge of the river,  

 greeting dawn where few  have tread or swam, 

 and the eagle will break it  with me, and in this 

 breaking we will also be 

 reborn. 

 błask. the sharp red dawn   over 

 pointed river surface 

 what you see 

 may not matter compared to 

 the deeps’  stealthy teeth. 

 against great slumber and waters’ uphill return 

 I against I. 

 calm before the plunge, oceanic side surfs

 over where the light don't shine. 

 goddamn apes. munched. 

the sycamore seeds pillow  among

old blast holes, and angled stone wreckage

protecting the outfall. 

life collects

at the high water line.

in traffic, it’s all savagery, no rules nor decency

just cold blooded power plays - squinting into the sun

past the baby’s windowshade.

over the buried creek bed \

I will drink the water and 

hang me out to dry.

Deep in the Dark

awake in the dark in the last days of warmth

before the sun

the freeze is coming and the squirrels can feel it in

the breeze from the hawk’s talons close upon their back.

red lights, white lights, the neighborhood sleeps but the thirsty road keeps on drinking

down the gas 

mania underneath the serpentine cement (a drain plug down the sewer - recovered with a crowbar and a grin).

subterranean:

most of the flow, 

is beneath the surface.

If it keeps on burning, the rapid will be submerged, and according to Dave, Chuck and Fred, 

we too will be subterranean, techno-trolls in smogy caverns, claws upon our backs in the

feeding frenzy.

A kingfisher sits, white belt about her neck, daintily plucking a fish from the canal.

The land is fat, the river lazy, wide, a few pointy rocky holes here and there, on the swirl, the current is playful - fast whips into boily eddy lines, the beaver slide, juicy, ripping, bucktoothed and squirty; stay upright to avoid the river's teeth.

No mist today, barely any spray foam, no brown chunder dome off the dino’s back, just two engulfing waves on the way to the darkside, which, safely squirted, plants one solidly in the seam, and the avenging hand of the river must have heard me talking sh*t, cause now I’m upside down, fighting the two downwelling boils into the deep deep deep - the dino’s got me, claws around my neck, the paddle brace squirrelling, oh the horror, the brutes, the brutes, the horror, the deep, relax, feather, feather, relax, find the surface, still squirting down down down, the third roll, still swirling, am I even floating, boom, the catch, I’m upright like a great blue heron leaving the eddy, where I can breathe, sweet breath of life, mind voided of thought, body drained of emotion, the river lazy on the downhill, always going down down down, the surface only hints at whats below. Everybody’s excited, the ride is over, please exit the vehicle, here use this handy pile of blasted rocks and concrete.

Back on the ridge in the autumn orange it’s grey and loud with the leaf engulfing machines rolling round, hearing protection for the labor, smoke for all, the deep for none.


.

Three Weeks, Three Worlds

Three weeks three worlds

There’s never enough time it seems

and though God is Red: and SHE IS

Placed, Rooted, Planted, we

float like the 

whites of their eyes.

in the fog we see what we touch

but the scene

drifts
surreal humans

pass in boats, disappear, appear,
and the sound of the river

almost drowns the big silver birds above.

in the whirlpool, one can 

squart the wall,

or swim in panic from the upside down feeling

and in the dark side at high tide
mega bouncy surfs

pinball on pointy rocks, collide and flip, 

near broach to bow rescue.

the dinosaurs are getting hungry, time is the enemy

the earth is hungry, the river is thirsty, the land is starving 

some people are worrying some people are slarving

it’s all so alarming that the forests are burning and the cars keep carrrring but 

no one seems to care except what the orange lunatics are pardoning

I got ugly in the fog thinking about

the history of blood soaked land
the millions of bodies buried in the name of the canal,
the weight of the road matched only by 

the blood of history: the crimes that don't need to be hidden 

the textbook history of government 

clouded in the enduring fog of war .

And i think - ever since "They" taught us,
why is it that we know what has been done

but 

do not feel we can change the flow?


 time is the enemy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvUeo5sagkA)

and the fog of war (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ZhIi57x-4)

blood bananas

[a draft of an idea that has been circulating for a long time]

and the bananas taste like blood

and a 100 years of colonial solitude

are ended by the reign of ants (a known metaphor for socialists)

and the orange juice tastes like blood

and all the fruits are bleeding

and the earth itself is bloody

and my head swims from the blood

my daughter is drinking

and its normal

like a supercow

and the blood oh the bloody civilization

that makes fruit out of blood

because they

will always pay less and murder

if they can get away with it.

it makes me sick

this drinking of blood in

the milk and the murder on my lips

reminds me of a man

walking like he’s got a 100 grand

in the bank

and credit left over to boot

but he’s still anxious

and yelling at his neighbors

the blood in his face

swelling the veins in his temples

till one bursts, pop!

the blood returns to the land

and the river

by way of the nostril to the gutter.

LF Thursday September 14th, 2017

the city sleeps a pre-smog slumber

and 

Ashberry is dead, like Wordsworth - beautiful words to soothe

the aristocratic mind

from the stress of colonizing.

in nonsense is strength, from metaphysics

comes physics

from the physics of the mind

comes a virtual world,

and a heron hunts in the sewer outfall:

czas pogardy, czas zemsty, czas idiotów z karabinami.

the paw-paws slowly ripen, the mist is thick above the river that tastes like soap

and the heat returns.

7 mellow souls on a float, 

and all of the them came back.

the wave is glass, and pretty fast, 

wide enough to carve on:

the dark is bottomless white

air in the water

won’t support a low brace.

there is glory in this fool hardy life:

 boofs

speed

and pittedness

soothe the psyche; the return to normal

grates, with the sun high it feels the day is done.

momma always told me

no blood no foul.

let me write this down, before i forget (LF Aug. 23, 2017)

the night heron, relaxing

at the top of z-channel

and the pointed teeth of the river invisible

in the low angled sun.

us four, under the tropical verdure,

paddling our way to church,

in acceptance of the forces greater than us

that make our lives great (or not).

last time I was here, the zambezi hole

was in, and you could feel the dinosaur

before you could even see the monstrous waves off her/his spine.

it’s good to get Michael out on the river, bow stalling his way down, and

J man never left, though his surfboard plus cockpit is a little squirrely, nor did Tom

who got a full upside down lap in the room before the second roll up and down the VA side.

there is Always a touch of the Fear. That’s what makes it the Dark Side,

it may never go away, but it can be avoided, that’s for sure.

our own private zambezi

dawn, the birds chirp

off the glass the sky

looks thirsty

after all that rain

last night;

the sun going down over the gorge, the

river brown swollen, fat

fast moving current

the Guatemalan man, incredulous, that

one would lodge oneself in a small plastic boat

and head out into that.

but, 

the sky is iridescent, high-lit- blue and yellow,

the clouds going purple, pink, strung across the

raging golden sun, the tumult above center wave

a big brown hump - locked in it’s almost vertigo 

inducing, a shifting sluice, the chaos, constrained by gravity

shaping up into one glossy wave.

the morning. the brown is still up.

the feeder looks almost the same, but beyond the trees,

a violence stirs

the low violets are almost all dead, back into the ground

for the next season’s food, and the tropical bloom is upon us.

It’s a long quiet flat fast stretch until the waves kick in, and then

a calm like no other, j-man gets eaten by a wave, unfazed, I’m back surfing, shred

has already passed the tongue and is going straight for the hole where the rocks used to mark the takeout.

i make the eddy and watch two heads disappear into the raging foam, reappear down by the bridge and make it to the rocks, hiking back up. 

the dinosaur sleeps but the waves off her back form and collapse

exploding with a fury I used to think was lunacy

and now is church.

river soaked days

the days had become river soaked

juiced through and through

the rinse of

nostrils, ears, eyeballs even,

the fine silt

from the brown being up, dries the skin,

but grins are wide.

a canoe up the gorge with the kiddo and dog and shreduard, into

the late day sun

and the swallows are back, the dippers too,

it’s the spring that brings

the bugs back to life.

above the z-channel - next day

the eagle has lost his mottled colors

and below the falls, the herons are thick, the ospreys too.

the dark side beckons, and we’ve been

getting flirty.

shred is almost upside down in the boiling eddy, and

j-man is fully squirted vertically wrong side up

in the curler off the room

in between the goal posts of two boats, I’m hauling, safe.

the brown is up

the tide is down

and its another juicy line up over and around the Fear.

into the mottled fish stink of that chaotic

wave train,

watch out!

it's when you're tired that the river hand will getcha.

two laps? why not?

the land is fat

full vernal pools and

all the little trickles, through the

stonewalls sunk deeper in the mud than

they were just a few days ago

the snow only lingers in the shadows, the moss is green
on the soft spongy ground.

that sound of 

cavitation:

a cubic foot here 

and a cubic foot there, all springing from
the running land.

the land is Fat,

springs spring eternal

rebirth (what a theme!):

the vernal pools chirrup at night

the warm air full of moisture, that sweet sex smell of
almost summer (it's too soon!)

the dinosaur slowly stirs,

all the details are forgotten

in the primordial mouth

sweep sweep sweepbrace

squirt ! surf!
 the land phat

the river juicy

plump and crispy

frosties and the wheaties and the 

undigested toilet paper

a foamy brown syrup

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

i love chicken i love chicken yes I do !

and I love my antibiotic soup !

to swim in

everybody pooops ...

the land is phat, overflowing now, the ground itself is raining, 

and the rain just keeps juicing, and the land is blooming,

the air is cleaner 

and the land is PHAT !

the fish are jumping and the

human
piscine bird shit stinks 

and the herons gawk, so slowly

before a strike.

dinosaur poem #3

the atmosphere traps more heat than it used to

even from 

when I was a child

thats a fact

and I can feel it 

the ozone layer aint what it used to be

even if the ground level ozone

aint what it used to be either 

it doesn’t work the same anyways

and my arms are just starting to look old

flecked tan and white white and tan

the baltic is a long way away

and it aint what it used to be 

either.

—

we were blessed to 

evolve in a time of plenty

riding the cycles (According to William Calvin)

of boom bust bust boom

opportunistically cooperating to munch 

the grazing animals

and gather the seeds of grasses 

sprung up in the wake of enormous fires (often set by us)

and sometimes,

devouring each other.

—

the river is phat still

a bit muddy, too dark to see the shad even more ferociously roiling 

in the big eddy below the concrete overflow

“I haven’t got a bite all day” he says

I think I got about 5 bites just on my paddle I say

the fish aren’t hungry

they want to fight.

—

but its heron season, shad season

whatever you want to call it

a young beaver

or muskrat is at ease in the high water

another hole to hide in

they are gone

— 

flocks of cormorants sit

on the rocks drying their wings in the morning.

big groups of them, like undertakers

black eyes staring at the sun.

—-

the bluebells are out in a plenty 

says John

I thought they were a fence

says Tom

I had just begun to notice them overpowering

the yellow of the violets.

i’m barely awake these days

the senses deadened

by the heat of the morning.

—-

like an animal

it makes you feel

fighting for survival

or just backwards surfing 

enjoying the heck out of the crashing 

chunderous waves 

that will knock you back

down and out

of your boat.

3 is a good number.

safety 3rd.

—

there’s still a dinosaur down there

head pointed down river

neck vertebrae now visible (at 4.8 on the government gauge above the city’s water intake)

but their tail is covered, and

the meatcleaver spine is just a massive lump of water

hiding a terminal hole.

the beast is always hungry.

satiated

it sleeps.

a 4.91 poem

after the long eddy paddle
down from old angler's (a few nice surfs here and there)
yellow falls, the offut waves, stubblefield

in my mind there is only
that wave - formed for a second there - massive, planar, glassy but surging
at the top breaking foam
probably surfable amidst the frosties.

the low tide drops out from
below the rocks
barely visible and too jagged to form the grand canyon 3-d wave box
too flushy for the boat
eating whirlpools to form
it's still plenty munchy.

it's rowdy rowdy rowdy
and whooping past the fishing crowd
i can't see a damn thing but white
brown
brown
brown
running the brown
claws down

patches of color on the bank
stern sweep sweep
stern sweep sweep
stay upright
brace
sweep to angle surf past the friendly rocks now looking mean.

take a shower when you get home
to flush the brown back down
out to the bay where supposedly,
it belong.

double sided picket fence

the double sided picket fence

never noticed before

except for the sloppy spray job

of paint on the rhododendron leaves and holly trunks

a squirrel nest in the big cherry tree extending its flowers to the sky

and the petals keep on falling falling falling

in the early morning sun.

in rojava they rejoice for spring? and hezbollah overextends

away from home and

into the turmoil of big fish

fighting a shrinking net

as the earth warms

exhaust fills my lungs

and the organs slightly blacken

trees bark split

along the sidewalk a few suckers sprout

will they be cut down?

the squirrels have stayed busy digging

holes in the lawn where

their walnut size brains

can remember a million nuts.

and the backyard doesn’t drain like it used to

it’s all slowly settling

along the too thin foundation

built in the frenzy after the Last GREAT war

back when they were openly kicking blacks out of the neighborhood

before it was uncool to be racist

and you had to blame the market.

the river is pumping

running brown

with sand and silt and human shit

and the chickens all cooped up

and the cows all chickened together

it’s swirling swirling

robins sing and finches twitter, the siskins are out

digging for bugs in the branches.

the woods are full of hedera helix,

the ground ivy, and eurasian honeysuckles,

herb robert - the ubiquitous pelargoniums,

and crowded with the feet of europeans (I among them).

the cardinals beak:

purposefully asymmetrical to shed shells of

seeds with no fingers or teeth to speak of.

love blossoms down in the ivy, 

my neighbor’s (the sociopath) cat stalks across the yard,

and affection is like a battery, needing a circuit to work and be recharged,

even if through murder of the unsuspecting squirrel or songbird.

land of no sympathy

in the country of no shame

you must never ask for help

in the country of no sympathy

you are always by yourself

it’s hard not to think of all the 

white men

who 

were told they were special

because their life was easy

(at least relatively)

and who were stomped upon nevertheless

by the same system that

used them to oppress

and now

flocking to a voice that told them they are indeed victims

they are willing to recreate the mess

(spurred ever onwards through the land of no sympathy)

shad season

another leaden sky

and the smell of diesel fuel in the morning.

yet a congregation gathers (or is it city council?)

and the herons are thick across the clouds

second only to cormorants

something has shifted

where my feet stood 

they no longer stand

though its the same gravel

mud, path, warm and full of bicycles

a swift torrent

overcomes most of the rocks I’ve come to know.

this is new - holes on river right, a zig zag down what used to be a straight

wave

and in a lower eddy, powerfully

sucking small branches around and around

silver shapes flash

dinner plate size with visible eyes and

sharp spines, at least a hundred if not more

potomac pyrannhas? 

they look hungry, swirling en mass in the powerful flow, bumping against the boat

and the paddle

where’s a fishing pole when you need one? or a frying pan (as McPhee would do it), 

the human otter hungers for the ocean flesh

the spring tide pushes the silver bodies upstream,
and yet more and more are coming,
an endless torrent into the eddy
and up around the flow.

the dark side of the river; the dark side of the mind

DEATH before BIRTH

awake in the dark to

no sunrise today

just a grey to grey to grey and brown

they call it mud season up Narth.

as I get older,

the days go by more steadily,

quickly.

unremarkable maybe,

but for

here and there

a pain I didn't have before.

I watch my daughter sleep,

I make her a sandwich for school,

so fresh, her days, too fresh

for the grey to take over.

Two boats in a van

two guys 

in a van. Over the potholes, no traffic

in the murk.

I meditate on this; the murk

smell of bad cats, 

in the eddy of the back patio.

On the river, there is that aroma.

only 10 % sh#!t

90% vital substance, 

flowing into Army infrastructure

 a squat war on the horizon

a concrete pipe

to defy the imagination 

(it's so big they had to put it underground).

RENEWAL

Big mother of a bird

I think

he's that yung guy, who used to sit there speckled,

and now I can see the yellow of his talons

from a river width away.

THE WHITE ROOM

amazing

how vertical

a fluid 

can get.

before crashing

your bow

douching your nostrils.

Tom and John, high speed,
down the slot

pitted.

THE DINOSAUR

the bow wave of fear

and the spiny monster sleeps

Shreduard tempts fate, dissapears over the horizon.

I head right, towards the upper island hole,

a double jump through the upper angle wave, 

and emerge, kissing the white water, safe

above the pit, and then

plunge into it, 

just a little bit.

We wait on the breathing chest of the monster,

fear, anger, sadness

all gone downstream

J-man emerges, and tags the edge

grinning.

It's work to cross the beast's back,

that river seething, and Eddie gets eddied 

by the chunder hole as he tries to catch the top md wave,

right side up again, 

its seems the fear hadn't all gone down river.

ONLY SANE MEN FEAR DEATH
as for the rest,
they usually get 'his' story

the grateful dead made more recordings than
anybody ever.
to this we are
awake


'thine' is the glory
and ours is the sadness
of the unexamined life
only if we forget

despite the passing of
days
spring is coming
a righteous fury of indig-nation

seize the carp.

a day after groundhog day

 along the banks, a few

sandy pawprints, and collected debris.

the top layer of sand is frozen, underneath it's soft
warmth lingering from below.

above us,

the silver lining

a grey, blue silver lining.

covers the muted roar (less loud with the helmet off - must be loooow frequency).

and the trophy houses, from which

nobody throws stones (at least not in public).

and

our national fish bird,
carrion muncher.

soars. and.

I'm awake or dreaming, in the cold

i can't tell which.

(HOLD ON TIGHT MOTHEREFFFFFFERR!)

here is a mussel shell, impaled on a sharpened shoot, gnawed
by an aquatic rodent engineer:

there, a bleached crawdad claw,

ohh. impermanence. sigh.

the same old themes,
so what if the old buddhist is dead (bill murray's producer),
we are just silly little men in silly little boats,
while the water

312 tons/second, flashes underneath.

lf 01.18.2017

today, underneath

fat mist over the river, swollen, 

the sky, blue and gold (as another Tom would say),

the three of us, little people in little boats, upon

the water fast, 

banked by sycamores stark white branches,

there,

behind the angled rocks, a yellow grass, moss, lichen

liverworts, hugging the lee,

we found:

microcell foam, a coke bottle wrapped in fishing line, with hook,

a fishing net, for fish big as a hammock.

and a long run of surging waves, tumultuous, grabby, and

induced rolling courage