Playhouse - with audio

 audio link

In memory of the old Stephens Playhouse the morning after it burned to the ground.
Shakespeare's Tempest had just finished the eve of the fire.

Playhouse
Theatre and Smoke
Storm and Fire
Cold and Heat
Spirit and Passion
Heart and Soul
Tempest and Players
Play and Playwright
Senses and Substance
Time and Season
Change and Moments
Ashes and Black
Dew and Green

Monday April 14th 1980

Okoboji - with audio

audio link

The sky tonight is fabulous,
Already, three shooting stars have crossed the heavens
Looking on further a small plane is sputtering and going down.
The updrafts from the lakes are famously deadly,
The Big Bopper, Buddy Holly and many like them
Have fallen from the skies here
And more than the music has been lost.
Okoboji folks tend to be generally happy,
Blond haired blue eyed Viking roses.
As the fair and ruddy work the land, they are offset,
Like the placidly dripping hot cloudy and sunny blue heaven days
Set against the violently black tornadoes and sickly
Green faced electrical storms as if sent from the devil himself,
By the midnight colored Romany Gypsies, who pave the roads,
Work carnivals and sell used means of transportation.
The land here oozes earthy, perspiring
Gopher, mouse and loon filled plains
And it's fresh lakes and air,
Covered in green trees and corn fields,
Are wonderful and refreshing.
There is always a breeze blowing.
Sometimes when looking across the lane from the ranch
A social party of cows can be found grazing.
A little down the road is a farmhouse on some property.
An old woman is there, happy and full of life,
Painting the house, riding the tractor plowing the fields,
Shooting groundhogs, and providing lemonade for young dandies.
The farmhouse stands like an old wise man
One might read about in a fairytale.
Gray faded peeling paint to match
The enchanting drifting gray of smooth dead trees,
That draws one's whole being into them at a glance.
Dancing, whistling, whispering, shushing;
Wheat, barley and oats add blowing rhythm to the scene
Majestic twin silos stand watch over the house and barnyard,
And seem to be spying on the people; secretly, silently.
It is indescribable the way the sky loves the land here
Embracing or fighting with mauve sunrises,
Red lavender purple sunsets, angry dark storm clouds,
Only to be broken up by bright yellow humid sunshine.
And just when the mind tells the eyes and soul that
Perhaps one should start to carry on with some activity of the day;
Colored urgent by that social tempo, time,
A person find that he or she has been somehow brush-stroked
Onto and into the textured canvas of the landscape.
Part of the self embraces and absorbs the experience
Taking lusty breaths, while the child inside explores
With energetic saturating, seeping curiosity it's every sensation;
Swimming in lakes, running on dusty roads,
Floating in the flowing grasses, tumbling through the breezes,
Chewing on a weed while laying on the table like horizon,
And feeling the smell of the lands damp dark
sand seeded soil flee, falling through dirt leaking hands-
SIFFFFFFT ....................-
Ah,
Turn and walk away,
The moment is over.

Perfect Little Neighborhood - with audio

audio link

I know of a perfect little neighborhood
With perfect little streets
Well walked I, the flowered paths
Perchance there a perfect one to greet
But all with averted eyes and minds
Smile vacantly and follow their lovely little feet
With cleanest clean and whitest white
Each one carries along
All ideas correct and right
In saccharin solace they then retreat
To perfectly well kept topiary haven
There to capture smugly
All that can be taken

So quiet and unaffected

By all that lies without forsaken
Well studied and boorishly dejected

But like hollow Museums. they crumble under
The great fenced Mausoleums, memorials to self
And  Barbarians rush in to plunder
 Nero rakes in taxes, from the sexes, and x’s shelf
Setting fire to our lives
With finest ornamental matches

Telling many lies, like annoying summer flies
But the perfect ones don't seem to care
Like bees in trees of well honeyed hives
They would not know of despair
For ones so perfect, so good, so fair
One look might be just too much to share
Untouched by life's tawdry carnival
Having hearts dull as old porcelain sinks
Silent as sharp mandibles of a carivore

Their oversized carts loaded up like Brinks
Counting coin in broken piggy banks

Oh, No No, do not be so cruel
To break in when their minds are napping
With hellos and non-relevant happenings
For you are there and we are here
Those are yours and ours are these
So be off now, get far away please
Away from the well perfected
Do not infect the affected
With your lower cast disease.

That Queer Bird - with audio

audio link

That queer bird
So absurd
She keeps her heart
Quarried in broken thought

Depart down the gizzard
So cold Tis like a blizzard
Full of rocks and cheesy holes
Frightful to onlooking souls

Busy eggs tunneling
Dizzy legs rummaging
Clockwise in concentric circles
Ever tighter cranial miracles

Flap your wings to catch a gnat
Force feed the chicks this and that
Great birdbrained urgency and yearning
Makes for lots of twisting and turning

Could make a coo coo bird cock-eyed
Fortunate you see from out each side
Yet Henny Penny could not tell
She was not nearly schooled so well

As this fastidious Popinjay
So much learned, so much to say
Welling thus ever upward
With inards wending froward

Bustling activity to spend the bird
Squawking clatter shields her word
Blinded by, hell and heat you see
Not your average chickadee

Trumpeted, brassy, Scythian, bright
Little clamorings of chicks in flight
She stands imperious to the wild peels
Of would be proteges' frightened squeals

Trampled on by her clumsy feet
Scratched like flint in retreat
Bones snapped like whittled matchsticks
G-d save, from her, their tiny necks.

Photos - with audio

audio link

I saw the photos
A forgotten past
Me mother's
Childhood home
Tears came
To my eyes
But there
They stopped
Mother's gone and
I'm no child
Something's
Gone stale
I know now
What I did not then
All humanity suffers
It should not
Need quantifying
Know only that
It must touch all
Young or old,
Spring and snow
You and I
Everyone
We know
Will fall
And die
To see it now
Where that
Flower grew
Is a shaking
An awakening
To others who
Came before
Who lived
In places
We never knew
But now
Discover only
In shadows
And in shades
God Himself
Must laugh
At our
Dim view
Backward
Through windowed
Photograph
Only slightly
Less tangible
Than our
Future's past.

A Time for Reflection - with audio

audio link

When I arrived at court,
I expected, no feared,
The king and queen to be at death's door
However, to my surprise,
I found them both very much alive
The king was gruff,
Full of frowns and forgetfulness
He never spoke unless spoken to
The queen often spoke her mind
In measured words
Loving, fearful, angry and kind
Gentle was the royal egress,
As the handmaids came and went
The king and queen slept and read,
Turning in each page
Waking thoughts and dreams
They came no more to court,
But held fast with guests
In the inner chambers
At court were royalty,
Courtiers and knaves
I was to dine with princes and
Join in much merry making
Yet sadness was upon the kingdom,
The estates lay unkempt
The fields grew fallow
The pale of broken hearts
Veiled many a face,
But love and youth prevailed
With chirping birds in the treetops
To create a sometime betterment
In the dreams at rest.

End of Day Awakening - with audio

audio link

I have found at the end of day
Beyond the night of sleep to lay
Til whence begins the morn

The most assured way
Of winnowing in the play

To rid one's self
Of responsibilities' faces
To fondly love in far off places

Kissing ruddy lips and cheeks
On mares in meadowed peaks

Held captive in dreams
Awash in dawn's blessed air
Sheets and sunlit streams

Brow and hair
Limbs drawn near

Till opening eyes go there
Pleasant images adrift surmising
Are taken back to the center

Like a Jasmine's fragrance rising
Into clouds of coming winter.

Troubled Sleep - with audio

audio link

Billows blue
Rushing onward
Down below
Looking skyward

The prize now eaten
Soul feels beaten
Blankets wet and heavy
Like sand at the levy

Rocks, stones, boulders drop
Falling and rolling down
Plunging over top
Turning ever round

Now overcome
The truth in sum
From the lion's teeth
Is hard to face

Dare not to write
For cruel slight
In clarity speaks
Of one so weak

Hungry soul, inverted mind,
Into self, in every place
To care, to give, to love in kind
These to grasp inside his face.

The Sign - with audio

audio link

The birds fly toward the sunset
When they return I know not

I asked for a sign
From the One on high
I found then the place
Where the Peregrine slept
That prince of freedom
That traversed the
Sunrise heavens
Beyond the peak of day
Lay broken now
In the bushy green shadows
His lifeless talons
Still clutching the tender branch
As if at life to hold
The splendor of his royal coat
Remained undiminished
As was his glorious winged form
So, I buried him
My daughter marked his grave
Beyond the estates and gardens
Not less than 3 loved ones
Flew away
Each one
Greater than most
Each sweetly fruitful

So this is the message then,
Even the greatest among us
Those that we wish to emulate,
Are plucked from the stock,
Tree, bush, field and vine
We to then,
Who, either lowly in visage,
Or climbing to the stars,
Will be harvested
When ripe and
No amount of mourning,
Ceremony or memorial
Can make clear the eroding,
Extinguished life
Save that which is
Eternal and unknowable
At this time

The only certainty
This proclamation brings
Is that with every rising sun
Many countless stars
Drift beyond
Our gravity and view
Until we are invited
And taken in
To shine
In that community
Of the unseen
Forevermore.

Sleeping in the Clouds - with audio

 audio link

Melting, melting
In and out of sleep
Like a rock thrown
Into the slow and deep
Like the pebbles
Back down
The mountainside
On a silent Harley
Blue Electra Glide
Up and down the
Slow motion scene
Thoughts and Whispers
In my head careen
Till the buttery bumpy
Jet engines scream
The G forces
Press my mind
Like soft rubber
Ice cream
Slinky neck
And brow so low
Floating into
The eye of blue
Cold air hangs about
All to cover
Like frozen dew
Then scratching over
My consciousness
Comes the tin can voice
Of aft attending stewardess
Thus the Time is traced
By the dull yawning roar
Speed and splendor embraces
Ethereal snow drifts
Blowing cotton Graces
So turn me now
Like a New York
Spinning door
Hold my soul
As my spirit soars
In the mist, thoughts
Lay on the floor
While In my fist
Lies the grist
Of this
Sleepy
Awakening.