Suppose its petty
And surely inelegant
but I’ll spill it anyhow
As i recollect
“I still think of all the stuff
I suddenly gave away
When I I though I will die”
All the paintings I sent away
Hoping to be remembered
My hand or another held
The brush and decision
Thought would bring
Safety net and affection
And watchful eye on escape
A photo shows up sometimes
In a flashback and fleeting
Glance
Fireworks or factories
On a Spanish coast, a grotto
Fig de Foz or Gandhi beach park
Lions gate in a windstorm
Pretending i was Varley
Taking late night ferry
Over between drunken tug boat races
All gone but for the snaps
I try to make anew
But hand only knows how
To forget and the paint
Goes on in errant blobs
Maintaining current mood
##
Category Archives: Are no Stranger
poems about death and dying and those who died and might (all of us)
Rest Me Naught
Rest me Naught
The partisans attacked
Shortly after sun dawned
Trapped behind the lines
Two days after the treaty signed
Under grey sky I consider
Am I the last one to perish?
Perhaps the final number
In a redundant skirmish
Papers signed inky in a rail car
I’ll never chance to see
Peace comes for some
But no solace arrives for me
The religious get their rites
Murderers given last meals
I’m ordered a shovel
And to get down on my knees
Night-flashes of lost loves
Forever gone forlorn
First flash of eye glance
Waking early on a first mourn
Distant desperate acts
Seeking a fleeting peace
Unadvised by the muddy
The needy and the weak
Boots and coats removed
To strip last identity
The cold doesn’t sting
As much as anonymity
Trenches are flooded
Mortar shells rest unused
Canteen still has drops
Munitions stockpiled to abuse
Grandmother will never know
When my corpus lays
Flowers will grow eventually
While a Legion prays
I am unknown to no-one
Forgotten by unborn kin
What counts as victory?
Who credits this a win?
No photo in a locket
Soggy letters long left to rot
Telegrams remain unanswered
No lover to forget me not
(All my years for naught)
Witnessed my Own Autopsy
On a concave hardwood slab
(carved in the 16th century
by the Portuguese or possibly Dutch)
I witnessed my own autopsy
Chipped out my draft obituary
on a petroglyph red canyon walls
– surely covered up soon enough
by flooding rivers and reservoirs
Guilt, grief, cold and sorrow
ride in the seats beside me
loss settles in, ticket punched
ready for the full night ride
in which sunrise lasts forever
evidence of absence of time
Roll past all the caskets
rotting for eternity –
there is “really nothing inside“
but exhume just to see
Vasco’s bones are dug up
and carried to his home
I’ll leave yours in the ground
and sit beside alone
with flowers and coffee
both black and soft
Then softly read you endless poems
by Whitman, Baudelaire and Keats
turn leaves like the Chinese fishing nets
seen on Kochi beach
Not Being There (for Rod) / notes
Not Being There (for Rod)
(page 3?
Not being there
Instead a mediocre duo
Plays “Forever Young”
And “Fast Car”)
—
Third time this
Death whilst elsewhere
Occurred in the past 5 years
Austin, Auroville, Athens
Where are you now?
“Fast enough to fly away”
Year is 1988
We are invincible
Marauding Utah Valley
Making best of seemingly
Inconsequential locale
I order a Dead Guy ale
At sea
Such an act
anathema to sensitivity
Me and a disposable fountain pen
Alone
Scribbling as fast as you drive
In an inconsequential notepad
The glue snaps with each page turned
Crackle like broken bones
Your photo on my phone
Plaid shirt, goatee
(before *everyone* sported same)
Holding a child
Is the child the artist of the lad
Who wandered to Diamond?
How do they hold up?
I asked Mikhael at 3AM
As though i expected
A reasonable answer
Next song is about
“Getting here anyway you can”
Airplane, sailboat, across deserts
Everysong is for you
Do they know?
“Holding Mountains…”
Just get here how you can
Fck, I am not there.
Not even close
Instead chasing pariahs
Around Arabia
The beer comes from Oregon
The cruise ship guitar is anonymous
Could be Mike and Denise instead
A mosaic of flowers on the wall
Covering your box
I imagine your hair
“Across the desert by caravan”
This destroys me
I wasn’t there
Next they sing
“Oceans apart”
Describing to you
Where i am
“Wherever you go”
Sappy as a Quebec maple tree
But still i stifle
I don’t want to be asked
But can’t be alone
In my room
Feeling all of THIS
This lost potential
Memories yet to make
Marty wept
Mikhael quavered
Spreading the hardest news
“How will we survive”
The answer is “we won’t”
Life ends for all of us
No SHIT, i sip again
To tentative to clapping
You are so loved
Hundreds appeared
Lined in the rain
Legendary
X will dedicate songs for you
Children will learn of you
Your parents said good-bye to you
The worst occurrence conceivable
To we delicate beings
The others gone before you
From erstwhile tribe
Many tempted fate
Litany of poor decisions
Dalliances and addictions
While you were simply
Pure electricity
Now they sing
“You’re broken”
Yesterday i would hardly notice
Stroll by en route to a chat
With an Indonesian waiter
Or Romanian photographer
Tonight the words burn incandescent
Others notice the lady is vaguely pretty
The guitarist rocks to seem engaged
And i drink and scribble to you
The people wonder about
The temperate “back home”
A concept i lost along the way
I know the air is chilly is all
“Get your affairs in order”
Is sound advice
For a complex chronic wanderer
Prone to mishaps
To me likely
But, i am convinced
No one ever expected
This incident to be you
Whisked to canyon hot pots
Just weeks before
Then “our last song is by our favorite band, the Eagles”
My cue to leave
Hate the fcking Eagles
I pull Greek fisherman hat
(Which made me giggle hours ago)
Down more tightly
Step out onto deck
Into the wind
Observe twinkling lights
From islands which
I’ll never know the names
Time Traveler (for Rod)
Cobbled busy streets
Never felt so lonely and brave
So far away from any lover
Even further from your grave
Remember you on blue highways
See you in crowded bars
Feel you at desert campfires
Where we sing you name to stars
Steady on Time Traveler
We’ll see you in a decade past
Same way we saw you in a silent film
Organ playing far too fast
See you in Paris in the twenties
Drinks with Zelda and Fitz
Or in the Cavern in sixty-two
Lounging with Pete Best
Hot water sizzles in kettles
With black and white electricity
We’ll keep an eye on your kin
As though pleasant and obligatory
We’ll bore them with the stories
Of us – young, invincible and fine
Occasionally beautiful and convinced
We’d live to at least hundred and nine
Driving with your laughs
Talking with your hands
Swerving up forgotten backroads
To a reunion with unknown friends
Everyone’s champion
Tactility of Loss
Tactility of loss
A Pantheon of pals
Ash goes to ground
Ride on endless highways
From Timpanogos
To Olympus
Underway in the Aegean
Thoughts of Odysseus
And his compatriots
Most fond and trusted
Feeling so so alone
Along on a ship of celebrant retirees
And a smattering of newlyweds
Their future i’ll never know
A teleporter does me no good
Body buried and tears all shed
While In Aqaba pretending
To be Lawrence or Wilfred
I sit with futile cigars
And a bitter drink
And wonder
Why not me?
I can count six distinct times
In a four year stretch
Where i’ve fallen with no idea
Where i’d ever be buried
Buried and rotted without a sound
—
Oh Rod Howard, how grateful!
I was a man without a tribe
When i found you at the center
Of everything curious
Making bonfire look like a
Mere lighter flame
Everybody’s favorite
Never an unkind word
From or about you
Making magic
Never on time
But always worth the wait
Odysseus sailed here
According to Homer
Whose existence is debated
Escaping villains in caves
Out to scheme his way to
Kindly strangers
With flagons, actual skins,
Of undiluted wine
—
Your children, your joy
You had no need to run away like me
All your quests took you home
To parents who understood
Your heart, head and desire
To live
Full on
The chatter around me deafening
Who do i commiserate with when
No one knows your lofty heights
Your speed, your softness
You heard me hurt and came without hesitation
Late, but just on time
Rocky coastlines await me
In the coming hours
No helipad exit could
Provide ointment
I will arrive to sit
Perhaps a picnic
At your stone
Perhaps i’ll learn the origins
Of your middle name
Maybe you’ll join me
We’ll play X cassettes on a box covered in stickers
Tom Waits warbles and we’ll make a Jim Jarmusch film
To chronicle your days
From Sunset rock in Los Angeles
To sunset trips in desert canyons
Which still echo with your laugh
—
I wear a Greek fisherman’s cap
And blue woven shirt
Made as coarse as burlap
For shepherds and taxi drivers
Tear it off and scream
Why you? Why now? Why this?
But no answer impending
And frankly i’d be booted from the cafe
Not a hedonist glutton madman you
Taking corners fast because
You knew the limits of your tyres
Fine tuned for performance and attributes
No one else can define
Except those of us you wrested and cajoled
Invited next to you
These rocky headlands
Come into view
As the ship horn bellows a lament
Now as low as my sinking Mediterranean heart
The blue sea unworthy of my unholy
Reflections of me a mortal
Always running towards something you found
Right at home
I snap a photo of a saddest angler
Who never held a Rod
As sleek and strong as you
Held together glue, sounds
Cracking against the bluest sunset
##
Rod Ash 1969-2017
Big brother to us all
Crust of Pumpernickel
Crust of pumpernickel
Reminds me of Mom
Though the reason for this
Escapes my deserted mind
Was it the flood from teenage trips
Across the soon-sprawling suburbs
To a German delicatessen
With rare meats and names too long
For my young tongue?
However, noting
Tongue is available
By the pound or
Even an entire kilogram
Notes about Jogging and Lions on Father’s Day
I tried to avoid paying attention to today
However signs are everywhere
In chalk and pen and bits
Unavoidable to even at the most diligent
So I’ve turned you black and white
So I don’t remember you as yellow
—
Read a story about a 13-year-old girl running marathons after training six days a week
Reminded me of you and I,
We didn’t miss a day for years
Until you caught a cold
Around the school playing field in the rain and darkness
Which, despite the heat, feels like today
—
Before we knew you were sick
I took you to the Lions game
With a signed jersey
And seats that didn’t suck
Thought you’d like to know
They won on Friday
Time Traveller – A poem for Rod Howard Ash (as performed at Creepers and Chums by Mikael and Dave)
Time Traveller, a poem for Rod Howard Ash as performed (in a rather spontaneous manner) with Mikael Lewis at Creepers and Chums.
Inspired by finding a photo that seemed like Rod in another decade past.
++ Time Traveler (for Rod) ++
Cobbled busy streets
Never felt so lonely and brave
So far away from any lover
Even further from your grave
Remember you on blue highways
See you in crowded bars
Feel you at desert campfires
Where we sing you name to stars
Steady on Time Traveler
We’ll see you in a decade past
Same way we saw you in a silent film
Organ playing far too fast
See you in Paris in the twenties
Drinks with Zelda and Fitz
Or in the Cavern in sixty-two
Lounging with Pete Best
Hot water sizzles in kettles
With black and white electricity
We’ll keep an eye on your kin
As though pleasant and obligatory
We’ll bore them with the stories
Of us – young, invincible and fine
Occasionally beautiful and convinced
We’d live to at least hundred and nine
Driving with your laughs
Talking with your hands
Swerving up forgotten backroads
To a reunion with unknown friends
Simon, Stolen, Shame
Simon was all of us in Surrey
“Simon” he exclaimed
in the Mac’s Convenience Store
I stopped at after
my paper route
to buy a 7-up.
“No” i said.
He meant the stolen boy
from Senator Reid school
The posters were unneeded
We all knew the fear.
Blonde mop, skinny boy
rosy freckled cheeks
They’ve gone away
Faded, scarred to haunt us.
He shared my family name
and was evidently charming to most all involved
It’s not my shame, but the scars are
i walked the same road, yet it wasn’t me.
Negotiating, capitalizing, scheming
Selling secrets to wrench the wound
the discovery reveals more pain
Until sometime on a page 3 day this year.
He left. Cancer, like my Dad i think.
72 as well, i think. I didn’t read close.
I didn’t need the fear again –
he brought to 92nd and Scott.
Cedar Hills, Whalley Exchange,
Guildford Mews and King George Boulevard
These were ours, closest to a neighbourhood
Now faded into condo shopping schemes
Only we notice the changes
since we were all 12 years old.
The paper told us he was dead
the neighbours never knew
His wife flabbergasted
And i never cried so hard
as i did for Simon in 82.