Volunteer

VOLUNTEER

They said don’t volunteer

find a paying job

I said I was born to help

they said help us

I said you don’t need help

They said “charity begins at home.”

Charity! Oh charity!

How many definitions do they know?

I finish the quote for them “…and goes into the world.”

Charity begins at home and goes into the world.

But maybe they were saying, wait, there is no charity here

Build it first.

I said too late

I said that it was in our immigrant genes to help

They said I was crazy

that they didn’t come here to be poor.

I said but we’re not poor.

Maybe I will be poor, maybe I won’t.

They said it is not why they came here from over there.

I said but you are wrong --the name of our native town

mandates my altruism

They go bug eyed.

I say we came from Saint Donate.

They say no, it’s Donato

I say “okay, donate to…”

They shake their heads and walk away

[This appears in my "Mexico--Dust in My Blood"]

Birder

I walk in your tropical forest of colors

and scents and birds flying in circles around me

that I want to reach out and grasp;

but instead I find another tale to weave

I offer this shoulder [my head turns to the right]

and then this shoulder [to the left now]

that you in all your forms may alight there

while I, staring straight ahead,

will listen to the breezes in your soft feathers,

the murmured natterings between your many selves

--perhaps there will be a gentle nip at my glowing earlobe.

I want to gaze longingly at you—

but I’m unable to

because the flock of you won’t sit still,

flying off again each time I think that I can single out

which dizzying circle is yours.

I want to reach out.

I want to grasp.

But how do you grasp a flight pattern?—except to ask it to land and

come sit here beside me.

Two American Fables--a Century Apart

(In 2012 I published the following in The WestView News. It was in 1999 that I edited a novel for Macmillan, Empire of Shadows  by Richard E. Crabbe, that included a poem about beavers. The author said it was "anonymous"--which I have to take at his word--I havebeen unable to reach him. I altered the wording in order to show that modern rap and hip hop employ traditional rhythms, and aside from slang and "attitude", these are essentially the same poem.In my "modern version", imagine a scratching record rhythm as accompaniment.)

Once a company of beavers, in their engineering fury,

took a notion that their mission was to dam the big Missouri.

Under consecrated leaders they assembled in convention

for the instant prosecution of their notable intention.

They were able hardwood biters, they were noble timber topplers.

They beavered down the willows and felled the heavy poplars.

They laid them on the riffle. They were very, very clever.

They were brilliant – but the river paid them no regard whatever.

When we try to curb the surges of unchanging human nature,

or quench a conflagration with an act of legislature,

or stem a revolution by the words of quiet thinkers,

or hold religion static with a martingale and blinkers,

or stop the steady current of continuous creation,

or cork the effervescence of a rising generation,                 

or stop our zealous doctors from inventing new diseases,

...or keep a wife from doing just exactly what she pleases,

we are every bit as crazy, as I’ll prove to any jury

as those enterprising beavers when they dammed the big Missouri.

                                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[YO! Beaver!]

Once a posse of ol’ beavers, in, like, engineerin’ fury

got to trippin’ that their “mission” was to dam the wide Missouri.

Under very righteous leaders they all chilled out in convention,

they were sprung up on the big plan that the other brothers mentioned.

They were skeezer hardwood biters, they were slammin’ timber topplers

‘cause they beavered down the willow trees, and laid out all the poplars.

They laid down the riff,                  (over)

they laid down the riff,

logging on a riffle–-like a pattern, like a plan

like a man with a plan--but the river it just ran.

They were beavers who were brilliant, they were Einstein, they were clever,

but the river paid them absolutely no regard whatever.

(Word:)

When you try to chill the surges of unchanging human nature,

or stop a house from burning with an act of legislature,

or turn a revolution by the words of quiet thinkers,

or keep religion harmless with a pair of horsey blinkers,

or stop the steady current of continuous creation,

or cork the effervescence of a rising generation, 

...or cork the effervescence of a rising generation,

…or cork the effervescence of a rising generation,             

or stop the peoples’ doctors from fighting new diseases,

...or keep ya twist from doing just exactly what she pleases,

we are just as wack, and skitzing, like I’ll prove to any jury

as those future-loser beavers when they dammed the big Missouri!

Where Are My Glasses!?

Seeing what they’ve seen and knowing what they know,

I fear them:

my fourteen pair of 99-cent-store reading glasses

are planning an escape

Ridiculous you say?

By what means could they survive me

in the outer world beyond the bridge of my nose?

I remind you: They leave with virtually every bit of

intellectual property I own;

and they know things about people that even I

shouldn’t know....

My friends will receive

blackmail notes from them,

burnt into scraps of paper

by redirected, magnified sun rays.

I must stop this

before it goes any farther.

I must beat them at their own game.

What they’re doing currently is

(they think)

“conditioning” me.

They hide.

I look in the four or five

key gathering places,

but no pair is visible.

I sort through piles of paper matter

and cannot find them....

They think, “When we pull it off–

when we go over the top–

he’ll think it’s just that we’re playing again.”

I am alone in this room.

I cannot see what I hold in my hand

–and I can feel twenty-eight little eyes

watching me.

So it will do the unthinkable:

I will employ brutality, torture...

(I am not a signer of the Geneva Convention, damn it!)

A Prayer at the Moment After the Moment of Truth

Oh, bountiful life!

Behold that brief instant after the coup de grace

when life is known for what it is too late...

when a desperate surge

quivers the legs to stiffness.

 

And then their flashing silk swirls about him,

and their thousand feet,

coming from where they were not before,

dare stamp the dust

to rise

to his heavy eyes.

And his eyes, hoarding sight,

become acquiescent, not knowing

the business of legs that sway

under his decorated corpse.

Swaying redwoods,

a ululating, windswept arena--

scarlet jungle, ringed.

A thousand holy cities,

credos of a million sects,

mouths trembling with curses—

the poor awaiting their portion of gristle--

all mankind throbbing for his demise.

Until the surge saps away,

and those eyes see only pulsating red,

cut short by the small knife behind the skull.

Finally, sand is oblivion,

blotting all traces of the life

drowned in the crimson flood.

And all men shall be glaziers,

amid the sands of eternal oblivion. 
Amen.

[This appears in my "Mexico--Dust in My Blood"]

Clowny the Goof (1963)

I was Clowny the Goof to make her laugh.

Her smile reminded me of some pet shop window wish

of long ago,

and it cuddled me.                                

Her fuzzy perfume

fluttered witty things from my heart‑swollen throat

...everything clever.

I was never serious with her;

for, when she cuddled and fluttered me with

that wide‑eyed laugh of hers,

she made the Goof a coward.

But now the show is over

all my circus tents are folded

my forced good humor,

her amazing laugh

all of a summer world that's gone.

This hearselike bus takes me from her, dead.

Cold, determined wheels whir

the invisible highway.

Sleeping passengers drool their condolences,

slumping to take me by the elbow,

seeming to mouth in large, gaping syllables,

"Gentle. Gentle now."

Wasted concern,

for tears won't escape this pallid grease.

This speeding bus--

tires keyed to my dirge--

streaks the night lights of the city across my window,

where they're cooled through a

sterile blue‑tinted glass that

stirs my memory dryly:

She never called my game,

never gave me the word;

and I can't think of one funny thing to say.

-art gatti, 1963

Failed Voyages

Maybe there never was

wind in my sails.

Maybe the calm, clear sea

I sailed upon with you

was only my lightheadedness.

I scan the empty surface, long and gray,

for a horizon that’s anyone’s guess.

I cannot keep an even keel.

Stiff-masted arms,

nothing to billow their smothering sleeves

as I stand all akimbo, imprisoned with asthma,

bluer than blue.

It couldn’t have been you.

You couldn’t have pulled the rug

out from under me

if I’m standing on my head,

if up has always been down.

Now the sky is where it ought to be—

under my muddy heels.

Washed ashore, I can barely rise.

I am clay,

and I only weep

to  keep from drying up and blowing away.

An Hour After The Wolf

She black-swans soft across a gray marble floor,

silver-tipped nimbus bouncing around her

as she ascends into a gallery of heroes with a

look that is a question

Where do I stand?

arching on her brow.

And I think about that look.

And I wonder about that look,

and guess that she wants me to tell her—

though it’s something she already knows:

In the spotlight, of course.

But when she spins I turn from her, and

when I spin she turns from me.

This is no tryst, no assignation.

This is no serious thing.

This is a person on my arm, a companion for a visit to

a hall of the famous

and nothing more.

Nothing more.

But she outshines them all, so why did we…?

And when I spin

she slowly turns toward me….

The spotlight soon will be daylight, and

if the sun points to her,

should I turn to look?

New Growth

The afterthought of lust

floats like a cloud,

sets off the smoke detector,

but only for two weak cries:

Fie-yah! Fie-yah…

fading like the memory of moans,

They are there in the dark, lurking,

pointing fingers at me,

all the past abortions of the heart,

the living and the dead accuse me with dried up roses.

My eyes stare at the ceiling, your breath is warm at my side.

I do not have to acknowledge the others if I don’t want to—

if I can turn to you with hope and see the same in your eyes.

You become a clear sky

a sky without a cloud to define its infiniteness.

You are breezes and summer rain and brilliant sunshine

and I am new growth.

Gray Season --haiku, some from 1965

In the melting snow,

silent war on the hilltop:

green sprouts are poking.

In a cloudless sky,

all at once, the sun went out!

No...a soaring kite.

A lamp hung in

perennial sadness—

the moon in the willow.

There! In the dead leaves,

one slowly stirs and flutters!

...moth awakening.

Empty beach, black clouds‑‑

and the gull struggles to fly

in its suspension.

Mornings at My Rear Window

There’s a mulberry tree out there.

Not the limb-sprawling giant

cloistered in building-wall backyard

that greeted me my first days here.

The absentee owner decreed its destruction,

and I had to witness its birdie heaven tumble.

An avian fantasy world gone,

I stared out at blank factory walls,

saw no fiery red cardinals lurking,

no turquoise blue jays squabbling,

nor chirping yellow finches;

I saw no parrots or cockatiels

happy to have escaped their hippie prisons,

Free at last, great God almighty,

from those well-meaning stoners

who left the windows open,

or who insisted on a disproportionate quantity

of marijuana seeds

in the feed dishes…

Or who brought them to the park,

never considering the lure of the skies.

I heard no more song,

witnessed no more noisy rejoicing over juicy berries,

because the berries were gone.

When they hung dense and bursting with syrup,

the berries were white, not purple,

on a tree that got an hour of reflected sunlight every day,

and a brush of real rays across its fluttering tops.

And then, like spectral glow worms,

they too were gone.

The tree,

gone,

took up a black space in my vision,

ghost-like.

But life endures.

Three years later a sprout appeared,

poking from a weathered stump.

A decade more, a hardy sapling

on a rooted wooden platform,

the tomb of its mother.

Ten more summers and the tree is back,

having no memory of past losses

or the soft feathers of famous birds.

And new generations alight on the mulberry tree

and dot its branches with fresh bird life...

not as colorful now,

since the neighborhood is far more practical

than way back then.

The birds are mostly brown and beige.

Keeping a colorful bird is too whimsical.

People have designer dogs now

…and aging hippies to walk them.

Mardi Gras Lament

My feelings are too fat.

They hang over the belt that struggles to hold them all in.

I am gross with emotion.

What happened to the skinnier me? Who’s that in my Inner Mirror?

My feelings are too fat.

I crave too much sugar.

Fresh fruit and simple friendships are not enough

I crave the deadlier calories.

A stomach swollen with chocolate mousse love,

all puffy and full of sweet air.

I want to harden my coronary arteries

against what’s to come

the chill winters of the soul

when the soul will behold that my feelings are too fat!

I wear black to hide it

but others can see.

I’m not fooling anyone.

I try vertical stripes on shirts and pants and socks–

but each is only a flimsy bar graph

by which to measure my misery.

I need to exercise and diet and make my feelings more slender...

as if they ever could be.