Bring Your Jungle Along by Joanne Kyger

Joanne Elizabeth Kyger

November 19, 1934 - March 22, 2017

Drinking From Puddles

Riding on the promise of a rusty hinge
in the pale gray light

the lark & seagull sky
falling between shadows
on the pavement

but if like me you're water damaged it's
all a blur

One foot in a tide pool the other
                                         in The Forbidden City
where one might peruse the take-out menu
               if only to search for secret messages that
tend to drift in on the brilliant
                                                         blue gray silver fog

(If you were asked what color it was you'd
have to say "dark"

& situated in that uncertain area between tides
she wanted to know the preliminary
parts of whatever
empty rules of heaven

clang.  wiggle.  crash.  blink.
The Art of the Fugue

Mariachi Night on Squid Row

She steps out of the skintight laundromat
but like Bo Diddley
behind stained-glass Ray-Bans
strumming tombstones in the rain

& I said "You furnish the
delicata & the ocean of pain
I'll handle the employees"

It was a case of what you believe versus
what you set fire to in the backyard

& wading through the knee-high beach grass
nothing adds up but it doesn't matter

x equals delirium which is what it felt like
down at the Discount Karma Store

"You get what you pay for"

at the corner of Easy Street & Kamikaze Blvd

Revving It Up Between Su Tung-p'o & The Notebooks of Shelley

Knuckle Down
Out on the pier at twilight
with a ballpeen hammer
& a moaning bottle of mariachi

1971
If I could remember that far back
I wouldn't admit it

Million Dollar Bash
I'm down with the mysteries of the universe
"You walk in the front & walk out the back"
Just don't fuck with my car

Spilling the Kool-Aid

You can count your blessings 
if you have any
or shut down in the neon haze that invades
the parking lot & changes the way you think about
moonlight rusting at the bottom of a rain puddle

even when it hasn't rained

& the way you might say it your voice
trailing off into the ozone 
& how I follow it there
like those who know or those who don't but wish they did

a block from the beach 
          where the sky sometimes is like
                              a polished spoon 
& the tripped-up sidewalk
conversant with eucalyptus leaves & damp footprints
is often swept with a whisper of tar-streaked sand
not to mention misty catalogs of ocean sunsets

embalmed in vaseline

Hostage Drama

Inside a cascading sunset the
            bongo relevance
                        staggers the poor mind
susceptible to the incidental
            revery not to mention hosannas
                                                        & epiphanies
spot-welded to a fender of midwinter beach logistics
            bedded down in a swarm of nasturtiums

& the light
like a borrowed kimono falling onto the sand
as the tuning fork lays down
                                           a weary doo-wop
bending the way the sky does
            above the cypress & eucalyptus
                        that rake the pavement with shadows
                                    articulated by the sea breeze

& as though summoned from 
            the liner notes to a 
                        mariachi version of
                                    The Lankavatara Sutra that
                        washes up on the one fell swoop I forgot
memories of other skies insinuate the uncertainties we've
accumulated
                          along the way

Nowhere Near

I've never really listened to the
curvature of the earth which
comes & goes out here on the west
coast
            further enhanced by a variable
compression rate that can only be offset by
learning to endure the kindness of strangers

& so to understand the relevance of monastic
palm trees standing outside the Kung-Fu Taqueria
requires the application of counterweights
along with enough saltwater tequila to strip the paint from
the walls of your soul
                                         or at least enough to skim the 
bliss off our inherent failure like mist 
                          sheering the pavement from the sky

& those trapeze clouds strung from morning 
to dusk with the cigarette girl caressing my indecision

There are other more expedient methods
I'm sure but
                   as for me I've
                                      always preferred the scenic route

Trying to Parallel Park the Theory of Relativity

Behind  every dark night of the soul there's a
victimless crime with your name on it

As Su Tung-p'o might have said "The slow
train stops for no man"

     & even if you could find the
          haystack in a needle
               would it add a new & different
                    voice to the chorus?

Thinking of the
lungs of Sophocles & the powdery rust color of the
sky right now.

            Voices in the eucalyptus?

                                                              Of chorus not

& the shark tooth
I carried with me for good luck
inadvertently left on a beach somewhere between Santa Barbara
& Bolinas

            a dark beach with pale neon blinking in the mist

so that it was like Chinatown under water

                        I have stood on the street there with my
chow mein & notebook
              & a 24 oz. can of Modelo Especial
                                                     in a brown paper bag
as the weather swept up the coast from south of there
            coming in off the water
                                                         (driven it would seem
                                                          by sea creatures
                                                                       who resemble devatas
                                                               from an ancient sandstone carving
but with seaweed in their hair
                                                        & wearing damp sunglasses
to hide their incendiary eyes
                                                        from those like me who would
like to know