My poetry is an inconstant companion. Years go by between them sometimes. Then there's a spate. 2004 has been amazing. I've already written 4.

Nearly all of my poems are short.

This page is arranged chronologically from the University of Dallas where I graduated in 1966, through Viet Nam, my underground newspaper and other days and years, till now.

Click this and subsequent s to navigate quickly to my 7 best poems, though you may disagree with the choices. They're the ones that usually elicit applause at my spare few public readings.

 

One Last

One last
then bed
for sleep has
chased ‘way
thoughts pen
could say

January 14, 1963

The first poem I ever kept.

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Lavender

Someone spilled lavender
on a sky —
and mixed in gray.
Then disatisfied,
he washed it away —
leaving only the true.
Finally, with a misty tide
of nebulous and stray
wisps of bleached night,
He obscurred even the blue
and doused the light.

January 4, 1965

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If love

If love be close
then I’m trapped.
If love be pain
I’ll be strapped
and beaten
and beaten again.

May 24, 1965

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Dale's 21

Hey what, Birthday Boy!
How’s it feel, to be more?
Not much change,
You say, has come?
Well, I’ll promise you
Birthday Boy, one —
and twenty, and then some
when you are twenty-and-one.

Sept 26 65

For my brother Dale

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Pink, Peruvian, Sunset City

We live in
a pink, Peruvian, sunset city
when the sun
after a thunderstorm
or other blacksky rain
breaks fast
into the last moments of day.
The golden slant stays
only a moment or two
then dissapears into night
after enough light has spilled
to drench our pink,
Peruvian sunset city.

May 3, 1966

From UD, Dallas looked like a...

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For My Cousin Brian, on His Death

     I.

Round it.
Yes!
Round he tried it
but downed.
Found drowned in it
he breathed once.
Drowned in the breathe
he once sailed.

     II.

Fast too,
tho not too fast.
Still not fasting,
no glutton he.
Breakfast for him
life was,
and a full day’s lunch.
Always well lunched, he was
in it —
in a then-fast nonfast
break-fest, broken
only recently.

     III.

Missed now
he didn’t before
miss much.
He saw and
was
some
more than most.
Most don’t ever see.
Most missed things
he brothe
daily till now.

     IV.

Stop gabbering, Cody
remember how he told
you that?)
Remember him.
How he hailed in, and brothe
the sailing-in air.
Remember too
to remember
the dismembered joys
and please stop gabbering, Cody,
please stop gabbering.

June 9 66

Brian died when his car slid on frozen road near Cody,
Wyoming coming back from college for Christmas.

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Red is a verb

Green, bleeding
forests
red.
Turn brown
in the morning.
Then
down in the vast mound
of mourning
death’s blood flows
sowing tears.
And years
again grow forests
who bleed.

July 1966

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Waves

People who don’t have any answers
are the real people.
Those who watch the sea
and say nothing
but just watch
and vaguely hear the
waves crashing the shore,
idly thinking of sun glitter
and water and waves —
unconsciously touching their hands
slightly together.

May 13, 1968

 

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Saigon

I feel the oozing perfumes
of crushed humanity,
Saigon,
losing their way
among your rivers.

 

 

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Nam Lizards

God!
I’ve seen your withering lizard
body slithering into the sands
of Southeast Asia.
I’ve seen it on the beaches
tonguing fury
at the flies
who lie in your wounds
and watch.

October 1968

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Jennifer

Jennifer Sunshine Blue Eyes smiles
and holds her far-back secrets closed.

1971

back in Dallas to start my
underground newspaper career

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Tattered

Tattered and torn
windows worn
with watching out of.
Curtains of glass
are the shattered past
mosaic in her quiet.
The sky, sea, and sands
is all.

(She stands
quite alone.
Sand hair, sky eyes
once were there.)

But the sea looked through
and saw her crying.

1971

for Joanie, after the divorce

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The Stoney Poem

He knew the end was coming
but he didn’t raise his hands
He saw the sun was setting
on the edges of his land.

But all he said was
Sorry friend, I’ve got this
one-man band of gypsies
in my head
and they’re all a leavin’ me.”
He said, “Old friend,
They’re all a leavin’ me.”

Hey Mr. Lonely,
Mr. Underground Press himself

1971

For Stoney Burns, firebrand editor
of Dallas NOTES before I was, after he left Notes.
He said he took acid (LSD) three times but only came back twice.
The last two lines were added by William "Gabby" Gaberino.

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For Joyce

She smiles
little girl smiles
and glows
redcheek joy.
Bursting inside
she’s an indoor/outdoor fountain
splashing flashes
of sadhappyblues again.

January 27, 1972

Joyce Molandes

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last resort

We resort to poetry
sometimes
when nothing else
seems to work.

1972

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Mr. Nomatterwhat

Mr. Nomatterwhat
Came today
And made me promise.

1972

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Rusty Blue Truck

How I envy their togetherness
their fights and spats and even
their rusty blue truck that often
grinds low into nothing when they
try to start it.

August 72

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Tin Soldiers

Like pop bottles
on the fence
and tin soldiers,
I’ve killed them off
by turn.
I’m slow to touch,
to hold, or love,
but quick to spurn.

September 15, 1972

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Brown Ghosts

I hold my hands back
from reaching out
and touching.
I’m keeping myself
to myself
while my eyes wander
like brown ghosts
lost.

1972

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Entangled

 

She flees from me
who, with sudden eyes
feeds my touch
with such wide surprise
of joy
and fear
entangled.

Dec 2 73

For Cheri

 

 

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N.O.

God will love you more
In New Orleans as a whore
Than if you stay
And pray
Your life and love away.

But if you decide
To run, not hide
Out under the Badlands’ good sun,
Please let me know
Where you go.
And the address of your store.

February 21, 1974 

Cheri told me in a letter, "As for me, JR,
I can't decide if I'd rather be a holy hermit 
in the South Dakota Badlands 
or a New Orleans whore."
This was my answer.

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Arc

1) any unbroken
part of the
circumference
of a circle
or other curved line;

2) a luminous bridge
formed in a gap
between two
conductors or terminals
when they are
separated;

3) the part of a circle
representing the
apparent course
of a heavenly
body.

Epiphany 1988

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Cut-up Currency

Ms. Tre,
As you can see,
I’ve brought you
A gift not too
Valueless. (Worth
A little, worth a lot —
Like friends, it
Depends on what
You make of them.)

May 20, 1988

for Tre Roberts

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Why a party

Because it is spring…
Because my house is clean…
Because I feel good…
Because my caterer can make it that day…
Because I feel if not exactly at one with the Universe, at least down to at three or two with it…
Because I generally do have a party about this time…
Because it is not my birthday…
Because the weather ought to be just about right…
Because I would really like to have a bunch of my friends gathered around me right around now…
Because it is still spring…
Because I am happy, and it is okay…
Because I feel a party coming on…
Because I have been making a buncha new friends here lately, and it would be nice to get them all together in one big mix…
Because it has not felt quite this good in too long a time…
Because if I do not do it now I will have to wait until it is my birthday, and that is way the hell next fall…
Because I want to…
Because it is just about time…
And just because…

April 1989

from invitation

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My god's not scary

My god’s not scary, doesn’t hang out
in churches or live in heaven.
He’s neither he nor she, never had
any kids, and doesn’t hold grudges.

She doesn’t keep a list of who’s
been naughty or nice, has never
been on anybody’s side,
and doesn’t grant exclusives.

I call it “The Universe.” It’s out there.
I can see, hear, feel, smell, taste,
intuit, as well as experience it in
ways I don’t need words for.
It is as endless as knowledge,
as old as time, as big as space.

Coincidences occur. They have
purpose but are unplanned. Like
dreams, they imply what we infer.
Rational wisdom is important.
Intuitive action essential.

Friends are those whose inconsistencies
we can overlook. Enemies are people
whose contradictions we will not tolerate.

Change is scary. Fear hurts.
I am here to know, love and serve my
fellow beings and to be happy with them
on earth. Because that’s all we got.

People who enjoy what they do are richer
than those who make more money.
If it’s fun, let’s do it.
If it’s not, let’s stop.

Magic happens. If you believe in it,
it works. Intention determines morality.
Love is possible, but it needs work.

These are my truths. No one else need
own them. They are obvious to me,
and I don’t see why they’re not
to you, too. But it’s okay.

Thanks for being my friend.

Epiphany 90

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Train

Listen. Far away. A familiar sound
behind the children playing.

Now, we know it as train.
It is tramping the noise in
rushing leaves and ice cream trucks
and dogs barking.

Bright houses echo it.

Motion sees the rolling boxes fast
flashing through the neighborhood.
Past children in the park,
past quiet in the trees,
flashing lights, clanging bells.

Closer now,
giant loud, heavy rhythm
banging clanging clacking
wheels on track
close, fast, never clear.

A sudden
it is gone.

April 1992

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Lackey

Shit-eating dog,
if your soul was on fire
I wouldn’t piss on your
rotting corpse.

June 7, 1990

About a guy I put on the Allen Street Gallery
Board of Directors, who later voted me off
the Board for warning of nepotism,
within a year, Allen Street was dead.

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Felling Thoughts

Felling thoughts steep
into the dank, deep
crosslight near sleep.

From that silence,
thoughts creep
uninvited — dark
mind words like
lost souls wander
from limbo heat
to dungeon keep —
wrapped in ancient
bloodless heap.

June 28, 1990

More Allen Street thoughts

 

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TV

 

 

Ceramic Crush

A noisy room of talk and art
all murmur and roar of conversation.
When a sudden silence struck
in the light, hollow, wreck of a
round, empty, ceramic crush
imploding the crowded noise —
sucking the sound right out
of thought. For one long, immense
moment, no one of us present
could conceive any but the crashing
silence. Caught in a sweeping hope
of continuity, fragile transparent
breakables filled our minds —
bottle, punchbowl — anything
but art. Freed by hope, someone
broke from the stillness to discover
what we all wanted to forget.
Then, in a resounding choral rejoinder,
the room resumed its din.

June 25 1992

at the old D-Art building

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Rag Rug

The fabric of my life
is a rag rug all woven
of throwaway moments and
nothing seems to match.

Who or what am I or
who will I be is still
an unanswered question
that begs forgiveness.

The tattered field is worn,
the edges frayed, and
the colors run awry
in a curious state of grace.

June 27, 1992

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It just fell

It just fell
like so many words
flung in patterns
preset, bridging gaps,
rhyming reason,
following thought
to ballistic conclusion.

Through logic's quirk
impended motion chased
voiced unthought words
wagging involuntary, led
into a sudden gale of
laughing echo while
I wonder what I said.

1992

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I Am Owned

August 11, 1992

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_ _ _

The Performance Poems

Malicious Mischief:

Five guys in white, baggy overalls
streaming across a northpark expanse
of steaming asphalt lined with
candy colored cars and trucks.

Nobody's eyes or face is seen,
anonymous white wrapped shoes
quick quiet track the lot,
shade green goggles dart and search —
fast wrinkly white blots sliding
past a stream of shining metal machine.

Trailing jouncing vidcam,
then sound man,
rushing from land barge, aging rust
hulk white van to big dark, tint glass
rollbar chrome pickup funny truck.
Each, in turn turned, bumped, shook,
pushed the intensity
of maybe seven seconds
then on to the next.

In the wake, a dead-waking drone scream
hum bleet black harmonic distortion
bright parking lot full of screaming
car alarms gone beserk.

November 12, 1993

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Floor Song

I have often dreamt
a trio of delicate dancers
dressed in dark,
foot-free floating
un-dance-like
clumsy bump walking
over old, bare wood
floors of art museum
and selected gallery.

Pausing at an image,
one or another lithe
creature tests
underfoot creak groan
squeaking expanse,
matching visual movement
parallel the art.

Unbound by courtesy
or common sense,
another joins the
body-bobbing,
weight-shifting
motion in a
makeshift
rhythm band
quiet cacophany.

And,
in another part
of the art-
lined room,
the third
grind-bumps in
the gentle moaning
of the groaning wood
melody.

November 12, 1993

These two were originally meant to
be screenplays for video productions.

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_ _ _

Clock

Try as I might
my clock ticks the night
and sleeps till day is
half gone.

1994

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Shadow

The time between lovers
lengthens like the amber slant
of late Texas sun
shining a single shadow
on stone.

April 21, 1994

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Jasmine

Tiny white
propellers —
five flat
rounded blades
attached
swasticka like
to the hollow
green fuse.
molten tapered
leaves dwarf
the spray while
dense narcotic
cool heat
floods my nose.
I cannot
imagine
that thick
heavy waft
seconds after
I put it
down.

May 11, 1994

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Sidha

After chanting
more than forty
minutes we
meditate —
max four
thoughts riccochet
through my mind
and gone —
I am never
so clear
again.

May 11, 1994

Chanting with Tre Roberts

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autumn explosive

Today from my office window
at work on the end of October
in the late bright amber I see a
marvelous parade of gilt edged
multicolored trees aft a white brick
wall and gray, red and white-striped
parking lot. Their explosive autumn
branches are rocking in a random
compression of competing breezes
mixing greens and red, brown waving
ochre against a powdery blue sky
puffed with pinkish clouds soft lined
in pre-storm gray rolling in a speedup
rooftop shooting gallery of lilting yellow
light and not a person
in sight.

October 31, 1994

at Gorpucko

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For Libby

Those moments
are fireworks or
eating watermelon
with our bare hands,
swinging in swings,
sliding slides or
jungling gyms.

Child joys, wiggling words,
and then
somebody's
gotta drive home.

July 4, 1996
For my niece, Olivia Dahlquist

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If Only

If only I start
with the words
"my heart,"
you know this poem
is about affection —

But it is my soul
and so much more than that —

The whole of my being that
upon further inspection
proves my connection
with you.

February 9, 1997 

not sure who the you was in this one.

 

Shatter

Glass flowers
don't crisp,
brown in the wind,
or die.

They shatter.

September 13, 1999

at our departure, I
gave her a glass rose.

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Infatuation

She splashes beauty
like a song
when she smiles.
Silent eyes flash the
whiles she sings
my heart in
stills a tune of
conjoin souls.

November 13, 1999

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On Editing Poetry

When I was an art critic
I had trouble with paintings'
plastic view of everything
and anything in that unyielding frame.

But I couldn't touch or walk
or wrap my mind around it,
hold it in my head and taste
its textures, color and mass.

Like words in too many poems
and other glib stories, the meaning
was clear enough, but the
joy of construction, the leap
of faith wild angles and third
or time dimensions flatly
contradicted conventional continuoms
of space and narrative onomatopoea.

Cumulating images jar the landscape
of memory, but the piles of paint —
of rolling rhymed phrases
don't sum to an experiencial
moment of rhyming reason
d'etra.

The detritus of broken
bodies of hue and crying letters
belie the cunning craft
of subtle structure.

Clay pots
conquer inward, implode,
their shiny shards more
impressive than their containing.

February 12, 2000

 

 

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Pencil Cactus Valentine

I'd give you time,
if you thought it would take,
and I'll give you love,
and hope it will make.

But, for now, on this quiet
winter Valentine, I give you
gentle springs of budded
things, like we are, intertwined.

With fine, and tapping roots
to sup the mud a fountain
blessed, the soil I grew
in bequest to you,
and an ancient, dirty
Mexican pot my mother got.

Fear not, there are no
sharp tines to prick your skin,
no tangly vines to hold you in.
No schemes to root, no blight.

Just a couple of slight, leafless
entities that need so little heed,
your smile, a lot of light,
and water once in a while.

February 14, 2000

on parting with Dr. Kathy

 

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Logical Extension of Language — or Projectile Poeting

 

Like a good country & western song,
You can sing along
Never having heard the words
Before.

The mother tongue
Once it's sung
For a thousand years or more
Begins to finish its own
sentences.

Something about leaning
Into the scheming
of language, seeming
to make sense,
Makes, instead,
meaning.

After all, a cliché
is just another way
to say something we all
already know.

And what language is for,
is, more, or less,
a door.

After Hearing Charles Bernstien at the MAC
March 11, 2000

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First Kiss

The moment around
it was lovely, though.
Your smile, hair, us,
aglow. Four fingers of
my right hand touching
your hip. Almost let
you go. Then, reaching
again, slightly, just so,
drawing us in, paired
to our center. Shared,
shocked, momentary
flow. Slow to see
our questioned eyes be
slowly smiling faces
quickly smiling back
in our tendering, stared,
mild astonishment.
Wild discovery we each
willed give way to
a kiss, stiff-lipped like
a friend, fending gentle
softness when, seconds
apart, no parts touch,
nothing to say.
Our selves again
lost and found in
that same moment,
wondering.

March 28, 2000

for Chris, I think

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The Fall

Only in retrospect
can I recall
the inevitability
of the fall.

Falling, there
was always hope
I'd glide up
some long down
slope and ride
the gentle thermal
drafts that slide
soft beneath
my wings to
sling my
shaken craft
aloft again.

March 29, 2000

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for Haley

Every little honey
Needs a little money
from time to time.

December 21, 2001

a Christmas card containing
cash for my niece

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My Friend Richard

 jrc photo

I miss the welcome wagging of an exploding
blond tail, and wonder will he, this time, bark.

His big, round, brown and knowing eyes
watch me, waiting. When he's close,
I test his patience, petting where I know
he does not let mere mortals go —
but a friend, well maybe for a while,
if I don't smile too loud when I do.

From forty feet away, Richard knows
the whoosh of an icebox pulled, even
with a TV blare. Sharing food from the fridge
in the middle of the night — he'll pause
his sleepy sentry of the lady fair.

And be there by the time I figure out what to eat.
I watch his hungry eyes tilt and forehad furrow,
wondering which of the goodies I will share
with my big, brown and furry bear.

Ah, but the best of Richard's bless
is walking through the night around the school.
Him shitting somewhere in the shadows, then
always zigging and zagging, with me dragging
along. We have long conversations out
there in that cool — or hot — wafting air.

January 2004

a dog I learned to love

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Butterfly Fingers

Rachel talks through
long, flute-taught
butterfly fingers
waving delicate
in the breeze,
signing paragraphs
with easy grace,
punctuating her joy
with lithe, blonde
giggles.

March 15, 2004

for Tre's daughter Rachel

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To Ken

when i first got your poem
i put it on a page
without reading it.

i knew
it was good
deep down
where one knows
these things.

i didn't read it aloud
until today
a few moments ago.

i was amazed
it rhymed.
it went a place
too many poems
never arrive

i read poems
often and know
within seconds
it's no good

too this
sucky that
innane, stupid, unwise

other times
i just take them in
and let them
swirl around
in here

read them later
when it's past
counting

October 21 2004

to my friend Ken Shaddock

 

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A Matrix
of Moments

like hands
pressing gentle
together that
never did.

An astrologer who
either didn’t get me
or I her

told a day
a month
last summer,
when I
was thinking
about you,

would be
when I knew
who
my next lady
was.

Roo said avoid
Metal Tigers,
born in 1950
when you
and Kathy
and Karen and

John,
my brother
who has abstracted
from cities,
but lately
realitied
back into
life, was.

He said,
“They will
eat you alive.”

I feared,
then forgot,
in the warm tide
of knowing you
too little.

Near flashing
ice cube time
I reached
unconscious
your hair,
pulled a nit,
dropped it on
your empited
plate.

Surprised me, too —
one of few
unconscious
moments
with you.

A crowded
room I hoped,
in another 
unscheduled
moment,
would think
you were
with me.

I remember
your hair
shining soft,
flowing noble
when you swirled
and swept it back,
gentle and swift,
like unlike
moments
caught in a
matrix of them

I’d wanted
to touch, did.
Drew back
startled.

I wanted time to
know who we are
and whether —
When you
did not respond,

or didn’t
get my letter.

Metal cuts wood.
Tigers devour monkeys,
unless we out-
clever those
fierce beasts.

A matrix of moments
gathering like a storm
over the lake,
darking the sky
long enough
to let go,

soak the city
with sentiments
unwanted.

 

First time I wrote this
a fuse blew
mid the first stanza.

This time
I got to the end
when
my Mac
closed the
program,
but saved
the words.

December 16, 2004

for a friend