Christmas Gifts

Given

Two half-moon hubcaps off a ’56 Chevy

A garland of seaweed

A pair of beach-glass earrings shaped like the

history of Buddhism in America

A rusted compass rose

A ticket to see The Flying Burrito Brothers

at Ash Grove, Los Angeles, November 7, 1969

A barnacle-encrusted horse shoe

Chuang Tzu’s butterfly

The rhyme scheme from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty

Eskimo pajamas

Received

A knowing look from brown eyes that have seen the things

I only thought I saw

There’s a taqueria at the end of every rainbow

Someone says (quite naturally) “Never

eat anything bigger than your head” 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A shopping list:

1) Flowers (light & dark)

2) A pavement saw

3) A repair manual for a California fan palm

4)REVELATION

5) It wasn’t easy but it had to be done

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From here the ocean is

blue, green, turquoise, white & slightly tilted

________________________________

This is where the West begins & ends

(the East as well)

________________________________

I’ll meet you someplace

between where you’re going

& where you’ve been

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

feathery                                 between the stuttering neon

(feathered)                            & the wet pavement

wisps of smoke

Das Gedichtete by Patrick James Dunagan

There’s a wonderful sustained resonance that rings throughout Das Gedichtete, the new chapbbook by Patrick Dunagan.  Whether you hear it with your ears or in some labyrinthine hallway of the mind, it’s like a tuning fork that was struck on the concrete floor of a house of mirrors a hundred years ago, or maybe just a minute ago, but it continues to hum, dialed in to a frequency that causes bubbles to pop in a dream, which describes a presence I think these poems claim. 

I took the assemblage of these lyrics to be both a meditation and an improvisation upon the essays in Adorno’s Night Music, which Dunagan cites as an inspiration, if not a source, or launching pad, for these hauntingly beautiful songs –

Objects in transformation

beloved images

depicted in mental form

evoke memory of Something

no more real

than the scars embedded

upon them

                        (page 6)

There’s no escaping the fact that we are eternally “eavesdropping” on the ventriloquist at work in this artfully composed collage of largely untitled verses.  Dunagan is adept at not only throwing his voice, but at strumming the language.  He is taking a philosophical vocabulary, monotone and appallingly logical, and is tickling out a melody.  This can at first seem merely a poetic exercise, later maybe a bit like hotdogging, but at its core Das Gedichtete is a finely crafted sequence of events that “Go beyond meaning”.  As good a definition of “The Poems” as any.

born into this

eternal delight

how suddenly

it lasts

            (page 18)

Das Gedichtete is published by Ugly Duckling Presse in an elegant chapbook format and only costs $10. 

Eric Dolphy’s Third Eye

All dark velvet, darker silk,

you know what I mean,

maybe you’ve been there?

strumming Telluric currents

emerald & steel

& where it falls in the index of beach pavement

shifting sand             There to glance a moment

surging water           carrying a bent tuning fork

                                     & a bag of flashlight batteries

The drumroll pipes in advance of the sea-

breeze

tumbling across the arroyo alleyway

between tattoo parlors & dive bars

hustling kelp blossoms beneath

the reliquary palm trees of winter

shadowed in pale sunlight

It’s all within walking distance

drifting sand             Conscious recollection

painted water           arranged in acoustic patterns

                                       maybe you’ve heard it?

Chinese surf music

Engines in the bougainvillea

Peruvian wind chimes

often folded into the origami seascape

half past sunset on Green Dolphin Street

One for Odysseus, Elpenor, Tiresias & all the boys down at the shop

What goes here is now gone

a fleeting memory if even that

mid-morning sunlight slanting in thru the

asian pear tree

yellow leaves that

have their own light

as I’d like to think we all do but

wait until after midnight

hibscus chrysanthemum candelabra flashlight

All it takes is a slight push

the city sliding into the sea from whence

w/torches lit we return

shadows disperse & reconvene in a parking

lot near the beach

& though the tide may carry you away

it sometimes brings you back again

blinking the salt water out of your eyes

staggering beneath the neon glitter of sunlit mist

dragging yr knuckles through the sand

Little Green Bag

Maybe a minute before sun-

rise the surface of the ocean

its dark iridescence heaving &

falling (a complex delivery system

driven over an edge that seemed so pure

once upon a time)

hammered steel

& velvet & neon eyes blinking

Quetzalcoatl

(my name is difficult to pronounce as well)

The cool sand streaked w/tar

dual pipes breaking over the reef

threaded w/mist like

Chinese postcards mailed from Guadalajara

& so down the broken concrete steps

one more time reading the waves as though

they were words on a page

There are moments that reveal

less of what we truly are but

this isn’t one of them

Nevermind the flying robotic jellyfish

Tell me something I don’t

know & we’ll

let it go at that thinking

as the reflection lays flat

by merely looking up

we may be just that

far gone & described

even the long way round

Sometimes we drift like this

gathering what others have

let fall whispering like a

20 dollar bill across the counter

from one hand to another

if you think that way

the one with the floral design

& secret compartment

a system of ropes and pulleys

with which to orchestrate the

evening tide as we should either

hitch that mule up or turn him

out to pasture rather than haul

it all back to a place that possibly

exists only in the mind

A page torn from one Homeric

hymn deserves another but

you can burn out the clutch that way

speed-shifting from cypress to starfish

& back again

That blue sparkle on the water

looks as though it’s been spot-welded

to a piece of sheet-metal

& it’s a brand new day

Molotov Cocktails for Two

That the sunset sky is soaked in

gasoline speaks for itself

like a mirror smeared w/lipstick

You might want to ask what it means but

that’s the wrong question the

notion of anything having a “meaning”

is a short, dead-end street w/no

interesting scenery at all

I am more inclined toward

listening to bubbles

in the water

conversing

quite possibly in Sanskrit

That all this could resemble the bent

fender of a stolen Chevy Malibu is

coincidental like my hand beneath your skirt

driven off a cliff just a few miles south of here

where together we can watch the sunset

which I think you’ll agree

looks like a tangle of bright cold flames

hidden beneath a rock

on the bottom of the sea

In my paintings

Blood colors

(crimson, vermillion, rust, or

silver) stain the ceremonial

t-shirt & jeans

I could never see the percentage in

dealing in the sacraments

but then I’m always cutting corners

A norteño accordion is tuning up on the beach

& for all I know multi-colored tears are filling the

eyes of strangers all over town

Green, pink, orange, & blue perhaps

which is strange for this time of year

when pearls & moths should be the prevailing hue

but just as she would reclaim a thousand ships

& tie them round with a colored ribbon

any color will do

An Epithalamium for Joanne & Donald

[A gong is struck offstage, & as the reverberation fades a conch shell trumpets, & then someone rings a bicycle bell.]

CHORUS (comprised of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, sea nymphs, brujas, blacktail deer, a tribe of California quail, & 2 towhees) – Is the paperwork in order?

                        BANG! (backfire from a 1962 Dodge pickup truck)

JOANNE – It took us 35 years to get here.

                        (chanting)

                                                My hand in yours

Your hand in mine

DONALD – Fairest lady, we are as two currents of water thus intertwined.

CHORUS – Harken ye, the gathered

& those that are scattered far & away,

Devas rise up & take flight

like bubbles from champagne!

THE JUDGE ADVOCATE – I declare…

[Violins, harmonicas, and Hawaiian slack-key guitars commence, drowning out THE JUDGE ADVOACTE who continues to speak unheard.]

DONALD – The sun shines upon the foggy glass lake & we shall go hence.

CHORUS (accompanied by a seagull & a chainsaw) -  Lo, they are showered with petals of rose & of nasturtium, all hail!

JOANNE – Well!

Go Ahead & Shoot

A wine-stained tombstone cutback

w/a kamikaze cross-step

however improbable

believes in itself.

Everything I know I learned at the movies

but I didn’t mean it that way.

Darkwater eyes blinking in the sun

as slick waves tumble into foam.

I thought I could taste tequila

& feel the warmth of concrete

radiating up thru my sneakers

at midnight

on a street I didn’t recognize.

Just me & “The Poems”

on the wrong side of the beach

looking for a needle in the sand.

Miracles happen when god makes the impossible

possible.  Breathing is essential,

I suppose, although often impractical.

A day half buried in the sand

half washed away in the tide.

“I didn’t even realize it was happening

& then it was done.”

November 19, 2013.  The mind opens & shuts.

I seem to have lost a day.

Silver Eyes & All

Hung on the wall like an ornament
Impossible hydraulic palm trees

rattling in the night on Beach Street

            their several garlands hoist

                        ensigns of light & proportion

into the star-studded moonless sky

with blonde on blonde enameling

just a few dark syllables from where

moist lips press stained glass

begging if you want me to look

Impossible
“Impossible doesn’t mean very difficult. Very

difficult is winning the Nobel Prize: impossible

is eating the Sun.”    – Lou Reed

Never Apologize: Never Explain
I can’t tell you what I say to the

stars at night because it comes from a

place where there is no language

& no tune to carry it home

Between terror & lust (w/glass in yr sneakers)

I love when you blink my eyes in the chrome sky

it took me years to get that act down

sharpening the edges to a point where they no longer

cast a shadow

                           I was raised on rusted sunsets

& spoonfed sea mist until I learned the proper footwork

from deep green to turquoise

& now every day is Kung Fu Saturday

with psychosomatic swimming pools the size of Nebraska

rearing up on their hind legs when the wind shifts

& it always does

                             just about this time of day

as the haze gives way to

    kool-aid colors

             served on a half-shell

by an out-of-work exotic dancer in a seaweed bikini

who knows my name 

Exit Music

A Feeling for Leaving

Walk in one door & out the other

An explicit ritual

intended to rattle the ice in your drink but

since there’s nothing like it in the phrase book

let’s just say my heart is like a carburetor

flooded w/salt mist

The Long Goodbye

We did the shuffle then

I guess it was predestined

but we played it too close

The wind said what it had to &

sealed each kiss with airplane glue

3-Part Harmony

You say “Aloha”

I say “Adios”

& the mockingbird says

“Sayonara”

Pacific Pipe & Forge Co.

Something doesn’t work, leaky

valve, got bent, blown fuse,

left out in the rain

over-the-counter pain killers not

much good for anything

Hauling water on a shoeless morning in November

takes care of the spiritual calisthenics for the day

No one picked up on the reference to green

nettle tea (Milarepa) so it’ll just have to be

our little secret

We’ll plead the fifth,

as Eddie says, “sometimes

science isn’t good with words”

I had to double-back to make sure it scanned

if only because it was the birthday of John Keats

he would have been 218 years old & most

probably wouldn’t even be able to lift a pen

let alone a flask of laudanum anymore

Keats was born on Halloween

as were two of my 3 sisters

Today is November 2, All Souls Day,

or El Dia de Los Muertos

which along with All Hallows Day &

All Saints Day, as any good Catholic knows,

forms the triduum of Hallowmas

At this time the peek-a-boo veil between the

material world & the spiritual world thins to an

almost transparent layer which is why you may want

to disguise yourself so as not to be recognized

by the dead

Tomorrow the time changes

from Pacific Daylight Time to

Pacific Standard Time

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”

Milarepa may have said that

& if not he should have

We speak a similar language

but no two people ever speak the

same language

Some things are better for being lost

in translation,

    bent, or broken

maybe that’s just the way it’s

supposed to be

In drifts from out

The clouds lay flat against the western

sky like shadows clinging to a brick

wall which from here resembles the warped

pages of a water-

damaged book

the inscription illegible

a map of veins that have burst within the

suicide morning glories

cascading around your shoulders

You gave them away as if anyone could

along w/the signature bump & grind that made the

coastline easy to understand

but difficult to pin down

whispering the way it sometimes does

in the heart’s house

as though it was the first time

& I’m bending like a blade of sand

against the late & early fogmist

w/the steel drum song of El Pacifico

piped in thru the tide

                        darker than yr eyes 

Deep down in the groove

for Lou Reed

From the lounge act’s raucous

serpentine

to the last chance tango

across the bare concrete

You were there

when I wasn’t

& I needed that then

the way I need it
now

Autumn, Rilke, & the First Winter Swell

A scrap of paper tumbling across the pavement

driven along the gypsy string breeze

I wonder where it’s going

                                                where it’s been

but then doll-like syllables

falling  past the lark & seagull sky

painted in colors I couldn’t begin to describe

distracts me like pebbled glass

in what appears to be a peep show mosaic

they should sell tickets to down on the pier

Summer was very great but now it’s gone

& I’m holding on as best I can

when I should just let go let the surge take me where it will

fog spilling in from Japan on a satellite hook-up

preempted by a late-breaking tide

You Don’t Know What Love Is

I had cut the deck to the Ace of Tentacles.  Don’t look back they say but we always do.  The road to Playa de las Palmas was arduous.  I was riding the clutch & she was commenting on the tuck-and-roll upholstery. There are things that are meant to be whispered like seafoam across the sand & I told her so. We had been running on fumes ever since we crossed the border, & we’d gone too far to turn back now.  It’s late at night & it starts to rain.  Windshield wipers slapping like a metronome keeping time.  It’s difficult to see in the blinding glare of oncoming headlights, but is that Janet Leigh hurtling through space towards the Bates Motel?

14 Movies : A Sonnet

for Edward Ainsworth

The Wild Bunch

Cisco Pike

Vanishing Point

Two-Lane Blacktop

The Getaway

Repo Man

The Long Goodbye

The Last Detail

Blade Runner

Chinatown

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Dog Day Afternoon

Big Wednesday

Apocalypse Now

Like a trick you can do w/an ordinary deck of cards

The spaceship touches down

on the bluff above the beach

but I’m not worried I got

1) a machete in the car

2) a bottle of pharmaceutical grade tequila

3) & you

looking like Ava Gardner

in The Night of the Iguana

Today is Thursday but it feels more like Taco Tuesday

diving into a puddle of wet sand

& surfacing like the Jack of Hearts

while stolen shoes & a hand-carved contingency plan might

alleviate the symptoms

we’re still hollow-eyed lifers

testing the water on the last coast on earth

& we’ll be here as long as the gods keep sending us these

postcard sunsets signed with love

which is something you find reassuring somehow

but it’s not that kind of love

Something for the girls back home

Waking up on the bottom of a swimming

pool just in time to take a little siesta

if it wasn’t for the thunder of your eyelashes

fluttering

& the fierce undertow at low tide

stepping off the sunny side of your gondola

onto concrete damaged like Mike Tyson

or me

w/a bloody nose & a greasy blonde

beneath a sky melting like a box of crayons

in the Painted Desert

That’s what made surfing The Cage so tasty

back in the day

The resurgent blue cut with foam

could be your formal invitation to

death by drowning

& it would be just like

dying of thirst in a monsoon

riding in on the shattered chrome drainage

of a single tear

Alien vs. Predator, or The Last Days of Disco

She was there when I got back & it was easy to see why she stood sideways with her sisters in every snapshot pasted into her family’s photo album.  The engines in her eyes were designed for another purpose, one that had yet to be exploited.  Her neon lip gloss gave every word she said a luminous presence that made me think of lights along the pier on a foggy night.  She claimed her mirror engaged her.  It was the kind of dance St. Vitus could appreciate.  I responded with a pipeline tango to music performed by a surf punk band called Horse Latitudes.  My shirt got torn in the exchange of pleasantries.  Love is not a dream returning, she said.  A puff of smoke dissolving, leaving a feather-shaped print on the wall, like the shadow of a wing in flight.

Two Wave Hold-Down

The steam-driven calliope churning underwater. 

Bells in the kelp grove. 

A slab of concrete rotting on the beach. 

I’ve got a hymnal full of the stuff. 

All tricked out & rationalized

like a full-metal bikini swamp anchored to the reef

            slowly swaying like a grass skirt beneath the waves

                        with hand-carved flames

as a classical rendition of the same war of attrition

ripples the mainline stem

to float the memory

of bended knees & cracked radiator hoses

                        on the rusty side of the cypress grove

                                    where the tide plays Topsy on a drainpipe

which is never enough it seems nothing ever really is

you had to be there

from the froth of Ocean crossing

to layered transparencies in the book of the evening sky

& I suppose the appropriate body art

which highlights the memorial slideshow

that begins & ends

right here

Rust never sleeps

Numb w/the relentless details

you could bounce a quarter off the sky

or break an eyeball in a Mexican stand-off

w/the Three Graces

which is reason enough to invoke

Tethys, Amphitrite, Kalypso,

& various lesser sea nymphs & mermaids

cascading vertically on the steps

of an extended vacation

sharpening a southern accent w/a book of Latin

verses & a coping saw

mumbling like no one I know

on a streetcorner in Venice Beach near Sherman Canal

saying “The Egytians built the world’s first

canal almost 4 thousand years ago”

a fact that inspires visions of the pharaohs carrying shovels

& walking sideways

& who knows what desire sleazing up w/the late

afternoon breeze stirring the dust in yr brain

like a black pajama death wish shuffling through beach sand

which could be a

heroic tragic flaw if you’ve got the lungs for it

but with pinpoint hollow eyes reading Ecclesiastes

thru binoculars

in the grip of your own personal endless summer

with all expenses paid

except one

Reading to Celebrate the Release of Ed Dorn's COLLECTED POEMS

Friday October 4, 7:30 p.m.

@ SubterraneanArthouse

2179 Bancroft Way

Berkeley, CA

with Jennifer Dunbar Dorn

and guests:

Maya Dorn

Micah Ballard

Eileein O’Malley Callahan

Steve Dickison

Patrick Dunagan

Stephen Emerson

Gloria Frym

Owen Hill

Joanne Kyger

Duncan McNaughton

Kevin Opstedal

Cedar Sigo

Sunnylyn Thibodeaux

Featuring historic recordings of Ed Dorn

from the SFSU Poetry Center Archives.

Advance tickets$10

Low income $5 at the door

no one turned away for lack of dinero.

Gallons of kool-aid spilling into the sea

There was no place else to go

so I parked it in the spot reserved for those

who have a history of violence

& waited as the tide rushed in

across the sand

No music yet the palm trees on

Beach Street seem to be

gearing up for a rendition of

“Hooray for Hollywood”

buried in a slice of cold ocean water

bite down                     release

burnt kelp, blue agave, morning glory

I know, I read it backwards

on hands & knees     

beneath the display window

A suntan neatly folded over the

balcony of my heart

Silver wrists & fog

drifting in on the wings of Chuang Tzu’s butterfly

as they affect a tropical storm

forming in the Pacific

south of Baja

                                    & the way shadows

fall against her cheek at sundown

as I excavate a smile

5:31 p.m. & the sun is like a turquoise ring

on a finger of fog