Rain Dancing on the Oakland Streets

By The Light of the Argon

The Master Isherwood
once from the south
so deep
so far into the depths
no one ever goes down there anymore,
Now his son lives in Westwood
nightly steamy sawed off soulfests
works in a punk band called Blood
on the Strip near The Whiskey,
The bar maid owned an old truck
and parked it out back under an awning,
when it rained she'd crawl inside
and listen to college radio,
One day she gave notice at the bar
had enough of LA and the Strip
decided to drive up through Canada
through Painted Woods outside of Bismarck
then onto the Badlands
and the dark forests of the Dakotas
along the wide Missouri,
One late afternoon while putting up her tent
down past an old creek in a cul de sac
she found an old Mandan Indian stash of Custer's gold
he'd stolen from the Apaches just before Little Big Horn,
Now she's living in the South Of France
with a girl named Lilli Marlene
smart as a bell as one can tell,
She loves to sit nude in the sun
and read Mark Twain
sipping on Mint Juleps in the rain

Ode to Marlene Dietrich in Combat Boots

My father during World War II was a B-17 pilot stationed from 1942 to 1944 in the UK. A great story he told me,
when he took leave to London to chase some British gal he had been seeing. While he was gone Bob Hope, Bing
Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and that whole gang did a show for the troops at his base. He was sorely bummed, though
later he got to see Marlene Dietrich perform and that he says made up for everything, including the war.
He also saw one of his favorites, Burl Ives sing and play guitar.

Desert Station

Out along the American desert, even today with cars and trucks things change, views change. You can feel the buried skulls, the arrow tips and the spent cartridges and the Indian wars and the settlers buried out in the flat lonely sanding cactus strewn landscape.
You can hear murmurs of Cochise or Chief Joseph, Crazy Horse, American Horse and even Sitting Bull carrying Custer's scalp.
Occasionally the howling of Geronimo coming off a bluff and the blood curdling moments of your last breaths on the desert.

Even at a lonely gas station out in the nowhere of the American desert there are colors you have never seen and cloud formations so alien you wonder if you are not really in the Sahara with Sophia Loren.

Once Twice, I Think I Now Recall

the days of the wood
(at the feet of the dog)

most people were too busy
to notice the sinking ship
not that far off the coast
past the last light of the pier
on a dim day off the coast of freedom,
it seemed slow in its aching demise
and I just watched and waited
and studied how she went down

flowers and shadows
night and day
waiting for a leaf to drop
and the thoughts of Dunkirk

Chapter 5: The Night I Met Dennis Hopper

Chapter 5: The Night I Met Dennis Hopper


If You've Come This Far

Out there I found eyes that stay blue far into the dusk. Out there you can get lost and no one will ever bother to look for you.
Down the highway there was a gas station liquor store that said proudly on the outside,
"We Sell Maps and Liquor." The day we were there, they were out of both.
The guy at the counter said no one buys the maps anyway and there was a huge party
the night before at Dennis Hopper's place and he had bought out all the liquor.
I had met Hopper, one of the main reasons we were out there in the desert
in the first place, at a Neil Young show years before in San Francisco at the Boarding House.
So circumstances being often what they are, really just coincidences in life, we knew all
too well about the liquor. My head still hurt. As we walked out the door, I noticed a box
on the porch of the store, a label on the outside stating"Maps and Flags."
We drove off, heading north, got back on the highway toward Hopper's house,
and after maybe two minutes, we passed a road sign that said:
'If You Have Come This Far, No Point in Turning Back Now.'
I have always thought that Dennis had staked that out, maybe as a warning.
One we did not take too seriously, or so we hoped. With not a single car in sight,
we kept going, driving in the center of the highway splitting the double yellow line
down the middle as a razor might slice a sheet of paper like soft butter.

the wall of insects

from the old farmhouse
I could see
the wall of insects
coming from across the fields
eating up the plains
like a mower plows through a grass field,
not a stalk was left
as they approached
a quarter of a mile away,
then the buzz saw sounds came in clear
the rattling and the racket,
sound effect crews
movie lights
Raider jackets
truck drivers with skull and roses t-shirts
standing around and laughing

go ask alice

she was like the fire
searing moments of electricity
carried in her purse
notes of the underground
writing scribbles in between the pages,
she knew the names of everyone she ever met
making small paintings on paper
swirling kaleidoscopes of thoughts and passion
the day always came when she left,
she took her heart on the road
met strangers
left donations
sat quietly on park benches
watching the days go slowly by,
very late in the day
she often thought she was Alice
loved to say
"go feed your head,"
loved to walk alone
in the forest
bringing back small animal skulls
she found along the way,
left the bones in her yard
drank Absinthe and sugar cubes
with a straw
smoked Cubans and blew smoke rings
out into the fog

once over the rise

once over the rise

she was a ghost
like a doll
standing on the coast
pointing to nowhere
just smoke and mirrors,
she liked to say,
"next time bring a warrant"

signs on the highway
soaring by her words
and the way she always said it,
"I'm walking here!"

once over the rise
the tracks do not lie,
to the new City of Orleans