Being Bardi

the earth turned promisewise


When I was not the Emperor of San Francisco
Still there was a strip of unbarren ground
run into a tumble of scent and sight
in homage of domestic untranquility

When I was not the Emperor of San Francisco
There was a stand of peppers shined red
against the brick and lilies that grew
in tall discord of any plans

I was not and am not and most likely
shall never be the Emperor of San Francisco.
Still there is a strip of unbarren ground
soaking the spring rain and dreams

Of a profusion of bright tastes and sights
blending in desires of another spring.

She tries to feel her nose as
\unmasticated corn chips
fall to the floor like

antideluvian dreams of
passion on a sister's couch

They will not mock the
weeds of past sex that
whisper across the table
passing strangers
and each other

They share hopes
aspirations of prescience
sporqadically erect
in their dreamsap

It is a nascent wake of sorts
the cards shuffled and
reshuffled like an embryonic
memory to be kept like
an old song for later nights

but for now the old futures
are dusted off and put into
moving crates for a change
in dreams in lives
no longer postponed

when the cards and cups
are folded into the last
moment they gather for
a hug

I watch before walking
off into other times

This is not a city
of discretion or lost wages
and so there are nights
when they circle

each other warily
within the traces
of other nights
that are whispered

about in truths
or embryonic legends
and leave holes in
the ability to trust

that may mend
or may not.

2AM
Talking to Jay the puck
some say the mental fuck

corvid cousin saying
that at one time poetry
flowed in and out of the
room like diamonds or
moonstruck cats leaving

trails of words and images
strewn about the tables and the
minds like spilled coffee
leaving thoughts before leaving

or that is close to what he said
my poems were busy whispering from
the bag wanting their own voices

bat flies in swift dark
loops;flittering joys in the
twilight and then leaves

He lumbers ancient leviathan
cane protuding through the
conversations knocking them
into each other

It is all just spiritual crap
Except nobody has the time to

You have to have the right points
to have a good character but
It is all about sex

He lumbers on,suspenders keeping
himself together blundering
trying to drink the room into
focus he is still the
large dark shadowm of
someone else's past/

She turns with black
metal crystal and
freezes slices of
each moment this
is her world the
process of restoring
creation to
those created

it is the camera
which is the observer
she herself merely
touches the button
and slides into the
inbetween moments

recorded and recorder
and this was the night when
and this was the night when
and for the time it takes
the shutter
it is that night again

Not so much the unexpected but the unusual
she sits on the sofa of unexpected depth
without depth she sits in imitation
of Edwardian debutantes out of the country

for the weekend and hoping to be
considered a flapper if only
for this one night in dim lights
and the slipslung alcoholic spurts

of men to be gathering in loud
hopes of cutting through the
background of the music and
each other to be the one

the sofa yields to the aspirations
the sofa has yielded to better

Step by
uncertain stumbling step
the scattered old gods
are leaving the hill

they leave behind the
whisper of potentials
the echoes of not
quite realised memory

she will not love he
will learn to love
perhaps perhaps not
why? why not? the

voices leak through
the night Coyote
smiles in the dark
and lags behind the others.