MY SKY

my sky is stirring tonight
     electric, etched, pulsing
       bristling
pacing, mysterious, dark
twinkling
ancient, vast, infinite
blowing
tonight my sky blankets every inch
of everything
sealing every crack
with cold forgiveness 
                              that I need
my sky lights up in the dark
propels moon and stars round the earth
  pinpoint tiny beacons
           track in
              precision
                 tonight--
                   this sky is mine

CHANGE

On a failed night outside in the fog

a friend says

I'm going into real estate

or maybe sales, yeah sales, he says...

Silver hair curled in a froth 

Cars, books, door to door

Ale or stout, the waitress asks,

and

I say ale

My keyboard is empty

words don't come all the time

there are many--

but they don't go together all that well

that is, when I try

and the waitress brings beer and scoops up

bills and says

Do you want change?

STAR POWER

Big Bear City is slow-moving today, locals riding bikes and humming with a rhythm that is familiar to mountain resorts during summer months. It’s a combination of business owners and craftsmen covering their daily chores and ski resorts performing maintenance on lift chairs high on the slopes. A rider in street clothes, lank gray hair and flannel shirt, slides his cycle into the rack in front of Vons, hangs in front of the store for a few moments, as if wondering if there’s enough money to buy what he wants,  settling instead maybe for what he needs. The sun is bright at 7000 feet and feels hot on my forehead and arms, thin air letting the sting of ultraviolet rays tingle on my skin. The lake is deep blue-green, boats bob in the breeze. At the back end of the town the lake reaches shore near the airport and a few twin-engine planes position for takeoff, their props a blur of motion as they crawl across the tarmac to the head of the runway.

The highway splits at the corner back of the airport behind the airplane hangers and I head northeast around Baldwin Lake, up the pass that dips and winds into the Lucerne Valley through spectacular transitional forest. Pinion pine and sage covered with deep blue sky give way to dry chaparral scrub hanging on steep rock walls, before the road empties out past metal silos and rock quarry conveyors onto the widening hot desert floor. I peel off to Old Woman Road and head south through the valley. There aren’t many cars roaming through this part of the desert, and that’s the lure for me, a solitary ride on a weekday.  I wheel along through shimmering heat down towards Landers.

Off in the distance is a white globe poking up on the landscape amid low-slung buildings where people live out here. It’s the Integraton, a once-futuristic and now anachronistic-sounding geodesic bubble. 
The website says The Integratron is the creation of George Van Tassel, and is based on the design of Moses’ Tabernacle, the writings of Nikola Tesla and telepathic directions from extraterrestrials. This one-of-a-kind building is a 38-foot high, 55-foot diameter, non-metallic structure originally designed by Van Tassel as a rejuvenation and time machine. Today, it is the only all-wood, acoustically perfect sound chamber in the U.S.

A dust-covered road leads into Landers, to a sign that points the way to the Integraton. A sign in front of the gate says it’s only open by appointment. No one is around the structure, not at the bungalow that spreads out just to the edge of the fenced off property, and no one hangs about the old trailers that lie at the outside of the graded dirt that circles the dome. Heat bakes my skin and seeps into my clothing and stays there while I photograph the structure and the surrounding low scrub and trees. The white dome gleams, little squared off windows circle its equator.  It's set on what looks like a cement block foundation that forms a circular base. No one appears. Moving along the shoulder of the dirt road I set up for a few photographs, take a couple of close-up shots, medium and longer range views and pack it in. The Jeep fires up, inside a cold blast of air freshens the cockpit. I pull around in a U-turn and head back to the road.

Bruce Cathie, author of Harmonics 33 pronounced: "The Integratron has the same harmonic value that is built into the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid. I believe that this harmonic is connected with inter-dimensional values. The yin/yang or gateway to dimensions." 
According to Van Tassel, the Integratron is located on an intersection of powerful geomagnetic forces that, when focused by the unique geometry of the building, will concentrate and amplify the energy required for rejuvenation and healing. In 2005, a geophysicist measured the earth's magnetic field for up to 15 miles in every direction from the Integratron and then inside the dome. She proclaimed that there is a significant, unexplainable spike in the earth's magnetic field in the center of the Integratron.

It is a hidden treasure, out of the way of most Southern California travelers, secure in Mojave Desert lore. The website announces a star gazing party for the Perseid Meteor Shower later in the summer.

It seems the perfect place to watch stars fall from the sky.
http://www.integratron.com/6ComeOnIn/SpecialEvents.htm 

THE GUMBO POT

I feel good just thinking about eating here. Outdoors under an awning at the Farmer's Market in Los Angeles, the French Quarter Muffuletta and creole potato salad put me in such a good mood I walk around the block to the Fairfax lighter on my feet, if a couple of pounds heavier. No matter...just the idea of eating Creole in LA makes me happy, happy, happy.

Be my guest!  Click to the link and you're there..online anyway.

THE GUMBO POT

R E D L I N E

   I saw my dad on the Red Line subway train.  He looked like I remember him, only a little younger, hipper, with a bit of an attitude I’d never seen.  Not an attitude of superiority─more like a look of knowledge, of wisdom, of things learned from experiences he probably wouldn’t want to do over again. 

  Maybe he was traveling uptown to North Hollywood where he’d be at home with the poets and actors and people who would share his love of words and books. 

  He shows up sometimes, mostly a feeling that maybe he’s close by, or maybe he knows the chords and melodies I like and he waits inside there for a moment to add a note or pluck a string, to ring up a memory or a vision of some grand place to suggest.  I think of him waving and smiling at me from that perch inside a Miles Davis trumpet solo, sitting on one of those half notes, or weaving in and out of the piano solo in Variations On A Theme.  He adds a shimmer, or a muted note, just to let me know he’s around again.   

  But I almost never see him, and in the subway train, he kept his distance, disappearing back among the cars and passengers.  I could imagine him giving up   his seat to an older person, now that he’d regained that youth they say you get back.

  There are other places where I know he lingers, places I don’t get to very often. But when I’m there his presence is so strong and emotional we must both feel stripped of any pretense.  The Disney Concert Hall, with a full symphony, I know he hears it.  And he lets me in on musical secrets even before the conductor lifts the baton.  PacBell Park, on a Saturday afternoon with the wind blowing softly on the flag straight out in center field, he sits in one of those empty seats and he smiles and nods to me when the shortstop makes a smooth throw to first from deep in the hole or the pitcher freezes the batter looking at a perfect curveball for strike three. 

  Flags Of Our Fathers, he just walked in and wrapped his arms around me and hugged me and I cried and he just held me.  He saw a lot of shit over there he never wanted me to know about.  It’s over, Dad.  That’s all over now.    

  So, sometimes he’ll step out from inside those notes and chords and melodies, and take a seat next to me on a drive along the beach.  He never says anything, letting me see and feel for myself, like he always did.  But he knows I’ll notice him when there’s something of a spiritual quality or a moment of unusual beauty, touching me softly on the shoulder, pointing out the magic that’s around us all the time. 

   There’s still plenty of magic left in the world.  He taught me that.  And he’d remember to remind me to always keep looking for those mysterious moments.  Those moments of quiet beauty and unusual quality that define our lives. 

   Keep looking, he’d say.  Even on a subway ride through LA.

    

WASHED UP

Short, round, wide flat nose in the middle of his puffy shiny face,
Thin whiskers pointing in every direction,
This man...
Scrubbing his hands in the restroom with a lot of water, yanking paper towels from the dispenser. . .more paper towels and he wiped his hands with them.
More towels, furiously rubbing--
He ripped four or five more paper towels...opened the door and left the restroom.
Outside he was squeezing the paper towels in his left hand talking to a friend and laughing.
Later he was looking at sex videos next to the Drama section--nothing I haven't done 
Thumbing through racks of sex videos--
While I was torn between. . .Double Indemnity with Barbara Stanwyck . . .Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges 
Where did the wax-like puffy man ditch his paper towels? I think.  
His sterilized hands.
I bought Crazy Heart, wondered where the man was going,
If he bought any videos.
And where he dumped the paper towels.

HAWKING

Warm hawks float up to hunt
Working for a living...
   Skree Skree...from pole to tension lines...
   diving--there
   darting--now
   Scraping meals off the earth, their due
   Roving creatures victims of prey on their 
   planet
Our world