At Axolotl
This Too A Poem
Speaking truth at the mic with notebook, with guitar, with typed page,
with iPhone, with hands shoved in pockets, with 2am approaching
with knowing anything done after midnight is art.
The madness in the moment,
the self haircut, the can of beer, the fighter,
the math teacher, the queer poet whose voice
is pure song . . . the geometric performance of truth and what
we say is the truth.
Rocking in your back row chair you go to the front to
lend your voice, sing your song, speak your life, join
the fiber of this night, this midnight mic, this pure grain
flow you come to know when you look this close & listen,
the lives you see, the colors you feel, rhythms alive in the air,
people like you
people not like you,
poets off the street,
army of letters, word delivery,
bringing it, winging it, singing it
behind the mic tonight at midnight.
Or, How we know we're alive.
Rosy Noir
photo by Dennis Bayer
Stormy Night
We got battered pretty good in last night’s storm - usually our paintings start swinging, this time the paintings were stable but the eyes of the characters were moving back and forth.
I ended up out in the bay around 9:00 on Dancer’s Whaler trying to help red haired Stephen whose anchor-out broke anchor and was perilously headed for the rocks on Strawberry.
Somehow it got caught up by Dancer’s houseboat - English Allen’s, and that’s the only thing that held it up.
So we got out there in the driving wind and pouring rain and there was Stephen in his rain gear siting on a bench on Dancer’s anchor-out.
I understand the true anchor-out’s code of staying with your boat in a storm. Being out there in the teeth of it, trying to help, getting knocked around - I went down, bloody knees, but didn’t get wet, helping Dancer so he wouldn’t have to single hand and helping Stephen, well that was a good thing.
Intense, I remember thinking well, it’s been a good life and i did get my book published and I am getting my West Marine rain gear broken in and covered in bay mud. . . surreal because in the teeth of the storm out there in the bay, I could see the skyline of the city in the foggy light beneath the vast dark canopy and it was quite extraordinary.
Lesson 3: How to Get Picked
All that I know most surely about morality and the obligations of man, I owe to football.” - Albert Camus
For me it was basketball ~
Working The First Reef
photo by Jason Bright
“The minute you begin to do what you want to do, it’s a different kind of life.”
― Buckminster Fuller
There are people you meet, who, after they go, you always wish the visit had been a little longer. My friends Neil & Shirlee, on the 39' sloop - their home they built, with one painting, with only what they need, all that they need, who in 25 min. can be at home on the bay with all they own, working the first reef. They teach me without teaching, show me the way by just being ~
