No Shantytown

In America
Ain’t no shantytowns
Ain't no shantytowns
They’re all underground
Or stuffed into a shopping cart.

In America
You ain’t not alone
‘cept when you’re on the street:
Nobody you meet
Wants to take you home
sleep at a bus stop, here
Huddled in the evening news.

In America
Everyone got shoes.
No one has the blues;
They’re all underground
Shoved into a plastic bag.

Drowning down under the river
But the river ain’t there,
It ain’t nowhere
Ain’t no shantytown
Round here, anywhere.

This is America
Ain’t no poor man here,
And ain’t no bright noon sun
In America
To hide things from.

Note: The grammar in the poem is intentional.  It's not meant to render colloquial speech as much as it is to lend ambiguity to the statements.

Defense Department

Ground meat gristle war machine
with flag wave cross bone skull in green
it frenzy-feeds, farts and shits out
silver for the new Iscariot.
Kiss the race, the human face
shove your kids into its maw
hear the crow laugh, buzzards flap
sniff the stink of napalm death.
here’s the drug for you, my dear
meat on your plate, now chew, now chew
eat, choke clotted blood and spume,
exploded eye and swollen lung,
expose the spine and nerveless strings.
Ground meat gristle war machine
goes on and on across a plain
folded into fumaroles
where sky once was and in the fog
who sees the ugly ending come?

Metal machine drone insect wing
it roars and screams at everything.
it fills the bank with candy-jack
and slipper-blood and cadillacs
and everything for pretty princes
so witty, killing party jokes
anticipating tasty sorrow
lasting tears and ruined life
(that is no life, it’s just not death).
It really gets them off with glee
they spurt, the slackness flies so free
it's radiant like neutron waste
and glows on every poor man’s face
as they decide, like god above
how many towns to burn today;
and grinding gristle bone-machine
grabs hand and limb for grist and glean
to sweep the universe so clean,
the gleaming, shiny war machine;
the oligarchic endless dream
so safe in happy houses, free;
the Christmas tree is placed with care
above the salt-sown plain of fear.
Oh godly golden death, it gleams!
The gristle bone-crunch war machine.

Mobius Flip

 

 

Don’t tire me out with lies

you don’t know whys.

Don’t give me your sand castles

Or bitten apples

Awful strains to find remains

Of something easy to accrue

Put the pot down

Pour out a cup

And listen to once what’s around you.

 

It floats in transparencies

Outside the pharmacies

Flows without a personal ghost

Up and down if you’ll beam in

The happiness of losing self

And sense.

 

Don’t get comfy in the fat jacket, Jack

Get down under knees to see

Something a little elementary

What’s going on in the immediate, all around you

Down to your soul-feet sky.

 

Get in on this flipper dive

The mobius flip, alive, alive!

Get out of the trip, it’s jive

Check out your sister, brother

Fall in with a new crowd, cloud loud

The blades of tenderness, those little savage

Dander-lions in the slipstream of your one and only

Rising ball of earthly fury, Argus-eyed life.

 

Don’t kid yourself, kid

We never really miss a trick.

The Night Storm

 

Buffet and shake my little house

Dark and raging winds

filled with the lash of rain;

Remind me of mortality

Show me the risk of being alive

Separate from the fury of effervescence;

This restless, driving universe.

Give me this gift of fear

The last door through which I’ll pass;

Opening on the light that is

A Vulcan shower of forging sparks

Of which I am and always was a part

Though I deny it, in my little

Shaking house.

 

 

Unrequited

 

 

Light comes in

through your shy face;

a window

where I can see

all things I know

are beautiful…

 

beautiful and young,

bright and earthy,

new grass, wildflowers

blue skies

Leopard grace

sunshine smile of brighter hue

than the finest, warmest gold.

 

Excited and alive

diamond-eyed

swirling up, a storm

of crackling ideas

childlike and intelligent

given freely to the day

with grins and hope.

 

You don't know it

but I love you today

with all the yearning,

all the soaring arrows

of truth and freedom

in my mind and soul.

 

I'll never tell you

for it wouldn't do

to mar your path

with selfishness

or, witless, heartless

allow you to feel a single pang

of regret, distaste, or pain

for something so unreal

and unneeded.

 

 

Though turned away,

in my hidden thoughts

I kiss your luminous face

hold your mystery in my arms

wonder at the universe

reflected in the surface

of your eyes.

 

I ask for nothing else of God

except-- let me love him

with my secret glance

which whispers

like a breath on glass

warmly, but without harm,

memory, or trace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

School Picture

("1965" By David Salt)

Where the emulsion

Has cracked and curled,

Has torn or worn away

Lies the truth.

 

The shy boy face

The half-smile

Is the mask

worn to school that day;

Like the stiff, red shirt;

Protection against

The cold.

The true self dreamed of

Going somewhere friendlier.

 

Lonely,

Reading ahead in class

Or dreaming

Of red numbers and blue numbers.

He always dreamt in colors

Always--

 

That was one thing that

Couldn't be cured, or slapped away

With incomprehensible

Adult resentment.

 

Ageing Song

"Cell Phone Self Portrait"

It the little things, you know

The sudden ache to go

It’s the breakdown of my body

The breakdown of my body

 

The deadness in the morning

After aching in the night

The breakdown of my body

The breakdown of my body

 

The softening of flesh

As it folds into a wrinkled mess

The turning of my hair

Into tasteless shades of gray

 

The dimming of my eyes

And all the little lies

To which my ears are prey

And fear grows everyday

 

For the breakdown of my body

The breakdown of my body

 

Oh, leave me halt and blind

But leave intact my mind

Or, perhaps it would be better

If my reason left me first

 

Then I’d never know

I’d never even see

The breakdown of my body

The breakdown of my body

 

The creaking bone

And rheumy eye

The birdlike hands

The livered lips

I see them like a hologram

Imposed on my reflected face

One can’t control

Impose one’s will

On ages rolling down one’s back

All I can do is watch and wait

And give up to my fatal fate

And cope somehow, now it’s so late

 

With the breakdown of my body

The breakdown of my body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Your Strange Music (For Jamie Stewart)

Somehow you understand
the world is full of Bali-smash bells
grinding guitars and doomsday drums.
something angry and fierce
is trying to hold on, hold on.
Even though it’s tearing out of my skin
with a long knife, please,
don’t let the sounds of a pretty flute distract you
(for it will try)
or the howl of the maelstrom molest you
(keep walking, keep walking on through)
I’ve noticed it too,
the sounds of frightening decay.
Oh, we’re having a mighty good time.
but we aren’t
and the see-saw of nausea, black blood and gangrene
when you know it’s lose it or die
(no time to laugh, no time to cry)
leaves you waiting in the sinner’s café,
waiting I say, for a bullet in the brain
to make a tunnel for the train
the clouds remain, raining
until you’re met on the street
by crazy Rebecca…


…and something small and still
something that struggled for so long
lifts it’s feeble hands to the sky
drops them and shockingly,
dies.

Mount Rose

In morning

Gray tendrils of clouds

Rise slowly,

Revealing

Mount Rose

Shining

Adorned in white crystalline.

Cars

I don’t know anything

About the threads on a

‘63 Ford Falcon  carburetor

Or if there is any such thing.

But seeing an old Falcon

Reminds me of the one

My mother had; second hand

Even then.

 

All those cars, from the days

When automobiles flashed

Buoyant personalities

And gas was well under a dollar.

 

The smell of gas!

You think it’s bad now?

The world reeked of it

As in a former age

When the world had an odor

Of horse manure

And  sweaty wool clothes,

In my youth grease and gas

Smelled clean, like progress

The exhaust pipes puttered out

 Blue smoke, like joyous

Muscle-god farts.

 

We had Mustangs and Thunderbirds

GTOs and Volkswagens

Camaros, El Dorados

Lincolns, and Buicks and Impalas

Magical chariots, which crashed

And smashed and mangled all sorts

Of reckless modern people.

Seatbelt were optional.

Some cars didn’t have them.

My father had a Nash

Sedan with a back seat

That folded into a bed.

The gas cap hid under the taillight.

There was a velvet rope on the backseat

And ashtrays imbedded in it everywhere.

What a car! I loved it so much.

It felt safe and warm and comfy

Because my parents never crashed.

 

We used to go for rides

In the country, on winding roads.

And I’d get carsick and we’d have to stop

So I could puke on the shoulder.

Mother would pour some coffee

From a plaid Thermos and they’d drink

Sharing

From the plastic cup on the top,

And they smoked and talked constantly

With the windows all rolled up.

I’d zone out from the Dramamine

And fall into daydreamy sleep.

 

Then, somewhere in the late 70s

When everything was turning to shit

The cars shrank into soapbars,

And by the 80s they all looked alike.

Now, the ugliest cars get great mileage

And a few don’t use any at all

But, it hardly matters because

They don’t look special.

Any day on the freeway there’s millions

Muttering like cowed, vengeful serfs

As they creep up and down the lanes

Through the cities of fast-dying dreams.

No one dies in cars now

They just crumple and tie up traffic.

Autos are safer and tamer and muted

But there’s hope--

They’re all made in China.

So, perhaps

I could die like a hero, like James Dean

With a genuine American Yeehah

Over a cliff, off the railing

After all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All You Children

To all you children

Who suffer alone

Who live by your wits

Who tire of four walls

And can’t go outside to play.

All who are lost

All who look death and pain

In the face everyday…

 

Children who are hurt,

Children who have forgotten how to cry

Children with no lullaby…

 

I gather you into my lonely arms

I hold you close

And give you what I can.

If I can’t heal you, perhaps

We can learn to hold on

To the sun

No matter how dirty the sky

Today.

 

 

 

 

Solitude

(Desolate view with bench, Palo Alto Baylands)

 

The wind is as light as a silk shirt

Against my skin, neither warm

Nor cool, its sensuous caress comforting

Holding at bay, just outside my memory

The loneliness I feel tonight.

 

I’m like the last palm

Standing solo in the dunes

Dreaming of the days of groves and springs.

I’m like poor Ishi, alone in the mountains

Family a memory, wandering sick in the trees.

I’m the last dog who was just outside

The gates of Pompeii after

 the mountain gave way…

 

but the dog eventually wanders off

finds a way to live, finds other dogs

forgets Pompeii and his old master.

Ishi comes down to the white man’s town

Resigned to death at their savage hands

 and gets put in a museum.

The palm tree feels its roots dry out

Topples one day and finds a new career

In slow decay.

 

So, as for me

I walk along this ridge

Feel the silk of the wind

Celebrate the scent of sage;

Encourage the sweet darkening of night

Make friends with bats, lizards and stars

And go on

Holding back the loneliness until

Sleep overtakes me and I meet old friends

In the fabric of dreams.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A.D.

(Double self-portrait by David Saltaire)

   I seem to have lost all appetite for food, recently. I hadn’t really noticed, not for days. It suddenly struck me, as I was talking to a friend of mine, my best friend, perhaps. I hadn’t eaten in a very long time, weeks. It simply hadn’t occurred to me. I told Jack about it. He didn’t seem to hear or, he did, but chose to ignore it.

   Funny, hanging out with Jack. It was like we’d never parted. There was a time, not so long ago that he and I were not friends. We had been, long ago but, he had forsaken me and it hurt me, badly. He had refused to stand by me after I was arrested. “I have to think of my reputation,” he told me. “It wouldn’t do to have people think of you and me together.” It was a betrayal. He’d always known about me and my little quirks. I really hated him after that, really resented him. It didn’t seem to matter now, although I couldn’t remember what had led to our reconciliation. Or even that we had reconciled. It just stopped mattering. Things had gotten pretty fuzzy around the edges.

   “Really, though, Jack,” I said, “I’m not even hungry. I passed a restaurant today and I could see in. There was quite a banquet going on in there. The most wonderful food and a lot of it. I looked at all of that food and it seemed beautiful. It almost made me cry.  But, I was just admiring its collective gorgeousness. I didn’t want any. I wasn’t in the least hungry. It was like looking at a mannequin.”

   “Honestly, David, why bother about it? It’s just not important to you, anymore. Just move on and worry about something else.”

   “I wonder why it isn’t important, though. I feel as though I am just a character in a book. They never eat, either. They hunger for love but not food, at least not very often. That’s why I think I like Dickens so much. His people always roll out these great feasts. They hungered like I do… used to, anyway. Even Scrooge blamed seeing Marley’s ghost on something he ate.”

    Jack laughed. “You and your Dickens. Did Dickens ever make the New York Times bestseller list? I don’t know why you like to read that creaky old Victorian stuff.”

   “I like it. It’s about the way people lived then. You should read some for once. You haven’t read anything since you were in school and yet you want to be a writer. What bullshit. How can you write when you never read anything?”

   “Well, I always passed my classes, didn’t I? Who needs to read? I can pick stuff up pretty quick.”

   “Not that it matters.”

   Right, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.”

    Jack gave me one of his patented gingery-beard smiles. It was wonderful to see him looking so young. He looked just the same as when we first met. All the stray hairs in his beard were trimmed for once. His eyes were bright, not all clouded with alcohol and angst about his latest girlfriend.

   “So, nothing to worry about, eh?” He said.

 

   Worried? No, I wasn’t worried about anyone or anything. That in itself was remarkable because I’d always been a person with passionate opinions and gargantuan worries. I was always restless, fretful, opinionated, although good humored enough. Now, I scanned over some of the things I ought to be fretting about.

   Not one of them seemed important. Not even work. Especially not work. Not my relationships with my parents. They had been on my mind a lot the past few years. The fact of my not being involved in my parents’ lives. And they were getting so old. Now, none of that troubled me.  Just some baggage I thought I needed once. But, I’d been carrying it for so long and nothing inside those burdensome cases even fit me, they were worn out, tattered. It was like being on a bridge after walking for twenty miles griping the handles, arm aching, hands all sweaty and blistering. Looking down into the dark water it was a great temptation to throw all of it over the railing. And, why not? Seems I could forgive Jack. Why not just get rid of all that trash? I made the decision to do just that. I hoisted it up to the railing and over. It dangled in my sore hand, straining my arm muscles. With a great sigh of relief, I let the hard-shelled luggage go. I heard it splash heavily, and gurgle as it sank below those calm, calm waters.

   I felt so light, so happy. Gravity didn’t seem to matter anymore, either. I floated with bounding steps until I was actually aloft. It was easy, actually. It had never been so easy. I sailed over rooftops, looking down at the earthbound. All the lonely people, going about their daily business, their foolish, useless business. I felt a love for them, and a pity. They couldn’t be up here with me. They didn’t seem to know how easy it was to fly. It made me wonder about myself. How come I had never noticed it before, myself? That I could fly. By now I was gaining altitude. What was happening on the ground was very small and, very far away.

   “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Jack said in my ear.

   “Hmm… yeah,” I replied. It’s fun.”

   I realized we were flying together.  Something told me it wouldn’t last though. As we were flying through the air, with the greatest of ease we seemed to be getting thinner and thinner, wider and wider. After a while I felt as big and as thin as the whole sky, integrating with it and even into the trees and soil.

   There was a long period, very long indeed, where I wasn’t aware of anything at all, I was just being. There was no Jack, no mother and father, no buildings, jobs, taxes, loves or hates. I saw nothing and experienced everything. Suns were born and died, worlds leapt up and burned to ash.  Entire galaxies grew up before my rapt eyes, turned on an invisible axis. The material world vibrated in a song of indescribable beauty. The forever, endless black turned to light of a thousand colors and began to flash like a strobe. It all seemed to happen within me and without me. I was a part of the nervous, joyous music, ecstatic and free, exulting in the great, over-arching intelligence that was the infinite Creator.

   Finally, there was only the calm. I floated in it like a castaway in a milky sea.  It lulled me for ages, bringing blessed forgetfulness. I was nourished, without striving. I was caressed by the saline universe. Then, the membrane began to crack and the sea leaked out. The warmth became uncomfortable and cramped. I longed to free myself from the cocoon of muscles I found myself in.

   ‘What is this?’ I thought, ‘what now?’ I turned and felt a great pressure squeeze me, propelling me towards a sort of door or hatch, viscous and red. Before I knew it I was through it and blinking, dazed at the light.

   The air felt chill and bracing. I lifted my voice and cried out. I was trying to sing the universal song.  It was a thin, but triumphant sound I made, mingled with regret at having lost my safe, warm home in the sea. I heard about me laughing and delighted exclamations, felt hands as big as giant leaves holding me, laving me, pulling something from my belly and felt the odd pain of severance.

   And so, here I am, again. It’s time for some sleep. I have much to do, much to re-learn. In the morning I’ll begin collecting things to put into my hard bag again.

Intimations of Autumn

("Early Fall View, Palo Alto Baylands" by David Saltaire)

It begins now

although days are still heated.

It begins in deep night

where the cold coils and waits;

it is there in the morning

where the crisp snap of air

makes me reach for my jacket

the light one I bring out

with one missing button .

 

I feel it now

in the ruddy sun’s setting,

in the damp under  trees.

in the midnight it’s creeping

in the rush of water 

soft, in the old meadow

in the business of birds

and soft, timid mammals,

geese huddling, planning

ancestral arc of migration

 

 

I feel them now

as they test heavy wings

in the still of the cooling,

sapphire skies

growing restless in flight

I feel them weigh time,

watching the hours

without knowing they do this

but, soon they must fly.

 

 

Yes, it’s coming in echoes

from summers now past

when in spirals life winds

through it’s course, once again.

I don’t go to meet

what’s coming for me

but I won’t resist the

pull of its will;

I’ll go where I’m led,

with philosophical grace

and pass through the valley

of fall’s unsteady light

to the palace of winter’s

dark, icy might.

Oh, yes,  it is coming

from this very night.

 

 

 

Impress me, she said

 

Who knows what will impress you?

a massive building shining

implacable in the sun?

Something soft and furry, perhaps

or a diamond, or a war.

I could conjure one, with plenty of death

and heartache-- or speak of love instead--

how one afternoon, for hours

I gazed at the myriad expressions

on a lovely face.

Perhaps money impresses you

or, an original Warhol

or furniture, or the glint of gold on your wrist.

 

 

I don’t know. I’m impressed myself

with the desert silence, a cloud

the freedom of animals,

the daily poems in growing grass,

the patient trees. What impresses me

is the savage push and pull of the sea

the ancient shine of stars,

the lonely position we hold, suspended

swimming with life,

shouting into the sky.

Your Poem

One day
all your resentments and anger will dissolve
your daily concerns
will vanish, breath on a mirror…
your prejudices will no longer torment you
your skin color will have lost meaning
your gender will mean less
the things you had gathered to yourself
will pass to other hands
it will no longer matter what you were
wearing or not wearing
your hungers will cease to trouble you
sex will no longer drug you with desire
your hopes and dreams will be at an end
your opinions will be silenced
you will cease to stumble
you will know only the past.


That day
your worth will not
be measured by what you collected
but what you gave away
It won't matter who your friends were
or who your daddy was
but, who remembers you with a smile
and why they loved you.

One day
this will happen to you
the only thing left of you
will be your poem
rippling like an echo
radiating outward
until it becomes part of the background
a movement, a pulse
vibrating forever
woven into the delicate
fabric of the universe.

Know this
and live your poem
let it ring clearly
let it celebrate something
help it to light the truth
it will be here a long time
it will be what’s left of your beauty.

The True Vine

(Passion Flower Vine and Buds by David Saltaire)

Perhaps you are a mirror
for the poor and despised man
to show him the nobility
that he carries deep within

if he cares to see.

Perhaps you are a lover
of all the pitiless and blind
from your tower of open pain
measuring with telescopes

the mercy of the sky.

And maybe you are just
another wavering illusion
on horizons of parched sand
pulling along the hopeful

giving meaning to the void.

Perhaps you were drawn
from the bright nucleic acids
of our yearning to be something
more than mere survivors

on a cinder from a star.


Or, maybe
you just are.

Waterfire

“We know so very little about this strange planet we live on, this haunted world where all answers lead only to more mystery.”
― Edward Abbey

 

how my reedfence

glowed

fluting, golden,

comforting, familiar,

in the heat of settling days.

The iron rolls of clouds

shone over the valley.

Mountains stood,

breathing,

offering bouquets of  rock

waiting

for the sun to drop away

into nearly sudden dark.

Winking lion sleepy linger…

finally,

a pattering song 

rainchimes

water hollows

made of soft wood

printing soul tears

drumming

icesoft

so

the air exhaled

sweeter than virgins,

pungent time

drank madly

rising Minerva-eye mist.

far off

flash/flashed

krakatoa diamond

white/amethyst/

gray

 fading swiftly

quietly indigo

and muttering.

obsidian shine rivulets

snaked and

pooled

down

the

hills

and even

ladyreno

wearing cynical

neons

returns innocent

widefaced

child

holding the hand

of the biggest bigness

it cannot

not now

not ever

really

forsake.