Mother, Father

Our generations

fail you.



You are the sun

You are the forest before fall,

the smell of mushrooms.



We are coffee dripped

into a laughing stream.



Our right hands

caress you

lovingly

we have almost

left them

behind.

mannahatta resources

cool Hudson river environmental resources:

Clearwater!
HYPERLINK "http://www.clearwater.org/education/" http://www.clearwater.org
A great environmental organization built around a working, sailing replica of a 200 year-old ship! Public sailing programs, environmental advocacy, and Pete Seeger!

Hudson River Museum!
HYPERLINK http://www.hrm.org/" http://www.hrm.org/
A museum for all ages and curiosity categories:
Art Peeps: cool art museum, check out the Hudson River School fall show until January 26.
Science Geeks: a permanent, kid-friendly but adult-engaging exhibition on the Hudson as an ecological entity.
Steam Punks: a super decked-out Victorian style mansion you can peruse. It’s nuts. Ask Matt Cleary.

The New York/New Jersey Trail Conference
HYPERLINK http://www.nynjtc.org/content/where-you-can-go-bus-or-train
An awesome nature resource in many regards. They make great trail maps. They maintain trails and you can volunteer to help them do so. And they have a section of their website devoted to public-transit accessible hiking. Bouldering too.... rock on.

Fireboat.org
HYPERLINK http://www.fireboat.org
An historic fireboat that is super cool, and offers free rides up and down the Hudson when weather permits (all seasons ‘cept winter.) Check the “calendar” option of their website when the weather warms.

Hudson Highlands
HYPERLINK http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Highlands
My mecca. I’ll take you hiking there if you want. Or explore on your own. You can’t go wrong. See NY/NJ Trail Conference for some great topographical maps of the area.

Reecent Writing 2

Twilight

Whisper with your eyes, child
the mountain breeze
is listening
the laurels remember you

Listen
with your children
eyes dilating
in longing
we are minarets
forgetting where
we came from
we are broken spines

Listen to your whispering
Lie wide awake
In longing

At this hour
Most abundantly
We love

Recent writing 1

Garden

When trees and light
make a mockery of space
security guards, arms uplifted,
call to each other like birds.
This I have seen.

Cherry trees with raindrops
on leaves’ tips, hanging amidst
incandescent night-
Oh dalliance, oh
sculpted cauliflower, oh
dusk in the Bronx,
cold in the Bronx.

The Oily Beast

(composed of email subject lines from an environmental group's list serve)
Wolves Face Death from Aerial Hunting.
Thanks for Helping to Save America's Wolves.
Jonathan, which wildlife issues do you care about most?
Wolves on the Way to Work.
Jonathan, Pledge a Day of Service to the Earth.
Attention Jersey and New York: Help Save Whales, Sea Turtles.
Jonathan, Give Back on Earth Day!
Jonathan, which wildlife calendar should I send you?
Urgent: Gulf Oil Spill Kills. Please Take Action.
Spill, Baby Spill? Call Discovery and Urge Them To Unplug Palin.
Exotic Snakes Threaten Native Wildlife.
Thanks for Speaking Out!
EMERGENCY: Immediate Oil Threat to Endangered Sea Turtles.
Legal Challenge, Emergency Response Could Save Sea Turtles.
HUGE VICTORY for Polar Bears thanks to YOU!
Wolf pups face guns, poisons in Rockies.
Horrifying.
Urgent: Wolf Showdown Next Tuesday
eNews: The Oily Beast.
Polar Bears vs. Sea Turtles... 48 Hours Left!

A little activism

There’s diesel in the drinking water.

let me tell you something:
we are not the gulf; oil sludge on water,
petroleum on pelicans.

let me tell you something else:
we could be.

Hydraulic Fracturing is Coming Here. We need to stop it,
you and I,
in New York State.
Until the Corporates
can prove
its safe.

They’re going to drill your ground you know,
they’re going to drill,deep, deep down
and they’re going to blast
bruised water
mixed with sand
and toxic chemicals
To break up the stones
where our drinking water
and natural gas deposits
sleep.

they’re going to catch that clear gold
gas
on its way back up
and sell it back
to us.

New York,
poetry
lovers,

when the rain falls
what power
keeps the water
out of subway tunnels?
Oil.

I’m asking you
to live local
and find new ways
if you must
buy, or drive,
and call your state senator
to keep our water
alive.

Because they’ll fuck up Eden
to give you Eden
so don’t believe
their edonomics.

Make the corporate man
prove to us
it’s safe.
It shouldn’t be our job
to clean
or drink
their mess.

Come rally, tomorrow, in Long Island City,
At noon.

Call your New York State assemblywoman,
or go to Frackaction.com.

And when we get it banned here
call you U.S. senator
swear off oil, and get hydro-fracking kicked out
of the U.N.

because we’re where it began
and we’re gonna be
where it ends.

You Asked Me About God

There is something,
A big wonderful nothing,
And some people
Call it God.

The way in two years you will be
Completely different,
Your hair will be longer,
You'll flick it back
With a snap of your neck and I
Won't barely recognize you
But I will, because you'll still
Be you.

And I'll get older,
Maybe shave my beard, and
Green leaves will grow on trees,
Then fall again to to ride down streams,
Or fall apart, yellow, red, to deepest brown,
New soil where you are planted,
Where you will grow.

There is meaning
In the movements.
I know it.
You showed me.
So,
Thank you
For your questions.
I have an answer.
It isn't much.
I simply came here to say that
You are not alone.

4/21/10

Destinations

and
the wealth of distance
in between

our destiny of footfalls
let me
heal those words:
“footfalls,”
“destiny,”
“hour.”

caring hands
forgiveness to muscle groups
that scent and
sugar-wet feel
of oil eucalyptus.
i never felt it while i lay
then when outside, in French-bread sunshine
the city
buildings consorted with me
their roars a hint
less threatening.

and
the trouble with destinations
is.

For the Swampdwellers (supposed to have funkier spacing, but can't do it on blogger... tried...)

Brontosoul

space
bass
d
rums
felt
sounds vel
bet on hour
whirled

introvertus
insanetiable
important.

too many controls
your pilots have no souls.

Ordovician intimate
Lets get down to past,
Play! Man, play!
Woman, woe, get down
Tyrannosaurus meet,
Crimped wrists- grip for a twist
Big ass chicken hips
Do the Chubby Chekr
Shake
“Come on baby,
Take me by my little hand,
And roar like this”.


Bass
Playing
He’s
Bass
Ically
Playing his
Sol
o.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satori

The Foothills of Wonder

Walking, no one around.
I am sorry, Satori;
I didn’t know how
to greet you.
You saw my scared face
and fled,
courteous of mixed company.

4/3, between Scofield Ridge and South Beacon Mountain,
yellow trail.

Fishkill Ridge Poem

Fishkill Ridge

pock-marked hillsides
rocks shimmer through
branches
heat that the heat has not
yet opened
kneads gently skin
light brown smell
gleam silver cornices
soon to be green leaves.

I fight the Garganthor in me.
Man who builds houses
and devours foothills in long drainages.
From Beacon town, up.
Master Fishkill creek,
slaughter and scale Lamb’s Hill, up
the Fishkill ridgeline
and then....
right down the Breakneck
Notch, zooming south
ten miles, swoosh down granite
face of Breakneck
the trees see you/I
flail
like a hawk
through them
preybound-
but where is your prey?

4/4/10 hiking

Proper Names

I return from Breakneck forested
Ridge, fondling spring
to you.
Seder.
Haroset mixing Maror
on dry-flaked Matzah. We bring
spring,
green leaves in salt water,
to Affliction, and affliction
to Spring.


Quiet Sensations
Use all of your senses, child.
There are
salamanders
red-spotted newts
wriggling in the teal
waters between those hilltops,
in recesses.
So don’t take your
SUV.

Blue Table, Blue Sky

The world quavers in my
coffee cup
I’m acting weird in Beacon.
Staring into random mugs
to see a new
reflection.
Of smoke from water.
Clouds above, and trees
that wiggle, from table
vibrations.

Brand New!

Department of Environmental Conservation

With tired eyes, white skin goatee,
forty years old uniform,
brown vest,
DEC,
He’says:
“people always take the easy route”
talkin’ ‘bout trade, and how to save
green. (the environment.)

Forest conservation
loving hand
manicures,
we says.
He’s teaches:
“tradition has a lot of weight too”
I mean, some people have been
doing that for generations.
I mean, progress progress
you shall pursue.
I mean- turtle shells don’t
come separate from the bone.... bon.
That language of plates, sparkles of brownon
hexagonal diamondstones,
dig?
how far different?

Anomie! Anomie! Save the anemones!

Heyo!

You take sea turtles off
Mexican coast I
stockpile livestock
lovestock. cumstock. lode.
californi-uniforma-tearialisn’t.
greenback brow
much do you make in a year?
I make
love in
murder.

cannibalism?
We’re worse.

Rain

A frantic jellyfish, clear,
pulsing against the train window.
Her river-delta hair, red, dancing
in wind.
The entrails of a sow
eviscerated, pumping blood.

Two lovers meet, embrace
under gusting gray.
The sweet tears the salt
tears.
Ocean wending upstream,
rain down the mountains,
Mingling in the marshes.

Now,
thrashing at its swollen lip
infected with industrial plants,
the surging Hudson wails
in white-capped rage.

U.nited S.tates of A.nger

I leave poetry slams a slam
poet
mumbling to myself on city streets
infused with anger that I can’t believe
and still ensconced in our palatial greed.

This anger has subsided ‘least I hope its
stranglehold will soon release I hope it
gets gone so fast that next time I get hopeless
this rhythm humbly strikes me down
so deep I sleep as humming sounds
so deep I redefine profound

yet simple children know much better than
some pompous poet laureate
infused with growing glory
of our gory famous
quest for names its
not something I’m proud of but
I do like people magazine.

ohm shakti, shakti ohm
shock and awe
shakti ohm
shock and awe
Cheney culture, U.S. in craw
of Cheney vulture.

Never thought I had something to say to ya’ll but
bridges fall and buildings crumble
as mistakes and stakes I bumble
release the beast that lives in jumble
rumbling as my lame words leap
from the mind onto the beat
from the fridge onto the heat
so next time you feel defeat,
let my words become your street
let your feet fly, soul flick fleeting
mountain goats bound skyward bleating
corporations crumble seeding
power to the people, united,
Empire burning, Anger divided.

Travelers

Maybe you were right:

That man was moving towards destruction.

Maybe you were 100% correct,

And I was simply incorrect.

In central Canada he would marry her,

And against the Athabascan he would ply his paddle,

Guiding tourists down that tundra ribbon,

Its raging white-capped meanders,

Wearing bulky hats and heavy gloves.

Billowing breath of white steam,

In unimaginable cold.

He came from the humid green Pacquare river,

From Arenal, a small town two hours northwest of there.

We met him

Where she met him,

Where his paddle translated

Our giddy paddles’ enthusiasm

Over rushing bends,

Sinuous black ridges of glinting water

Hiding boulders.