Poems: Of Mountains and Men Collection





Of Mountains and Men


It is for the truth and the beauty that I have seen in the eyes of Kathleen Marie Duncan that I give this work to all children of all nations. Go Climb a Mountain!


Albert Bianchine




Security...what is that? Something negative, undead, suspicious and suspecting; an avarice and an avoidance; a self-surrendering meanness of withdrawal; a numerable complacency and an innumerable cowardice. Who would be “secure”? Every and any slave. No free spirit ever dreamed of “security”- or, if he did, he laughed; and lived to shame his dream. No whole sinless sinful sleeping waking breathing human creature ever was (or could be) bought by, and sold for, “security”. How monstrous and how feeble seems some unworld which would rather have its too than eat it’s cake!


    e.e. cummingsi-

   Six Nonlectures, 1953


On the Wings of the Last Karner Blue Butterfly

 

Come,

Come to North America my friends

see the radiating beauty.

It lies from within

know that it is

under my skin

in my eyes

like the wings of the last

Karner Blue Butterfly.


Upon the Ocean’s Breezes

 

Listen!

The ocean’s breezes are beckoning

across the Isle Ellis

they are calling

extraordinary artisan’s

accustomed to nature listening

Apres her lady’s commissioning

to let our collective lights shine

brighter than the torch

lit for Liberty

to let our collective voices

be raised for all of humanity

crying from the ocean’s depths of peasantries

combating the silence of indifference

armed with swords of insignificance

to stem the rising tides

of Amerekaan Armageddon’s

turning back the raging seas

of Radical Extremism’s blasphemies

spewing from the cauldron’s

tended by the World’s Aristocracies

beckoning across the sea’s of mediocrity.


A Ticket to the Fair

(For the rededication of the Statue of Liberty 1986)

 

I dream that my manuscript of poetry

will be my ticket to fair

so that I could

look into the eyes of

all of the who’s who of the they’s

that will be there.

So that I could scream,

“Set the Children Free”.


From the Belly of the Beast

 

Once,

I stood strong and tall

atop America’s highest mountain peak.

Turning I faced Mecca toward the East,

to my eyes came this vision of a holocaust

that brought me to my knees.

Touching the very depth’s of my soul,

I saw the American Armada’s storming the seven seas.

Hear my voice ring, for truth and freedom for the children.

To every nation’s mountain peaks

From the depth’s of the belly of the beast.


Upon the Mountains

 

Go upon the Mountains,

my beautiful innocent children.

Leave the cities far behind,

for they,

they in their ingratitude.

Condemn themselves

to their solitude.


In the Wake of a Cultural Giant

 

Often,

I would sit on the cobble stone retaining wall

at lookout point in the Helderberg Mountains

and stare at the ivory towers of the Empire State Plaza Complex

marble masterpiece employing the working class citizens.

 

The renaissance and renovation of Albany, New York

was magnificent to live and grow through.

The cockroach filled tenements and slum housing restored

to earth tone colored Historic Brownstones, each bearing

a dated black oval raised gold letter plaque.

Solid upper middle class citizens live there now.

 

Often,

as I would sit on the cobblestone rock retaining wall

at Lookout Point in the Helderberg Mountains

I pondered,

Where have all the poor people gone

in the Wake of a Cultural Giant?


The Liberty Express

 

Mark my name well

against the annals of history

All of you

who dwell so comfortably

among the World’s Aristocracies.

 

I have been among your peasantries.

 

My Liberty Express

is a mythical golden chairlift.

 

It is on time and

bound to the plight

of truth and freedom

for the children of the world.


Into the Light

 

One day,

far above America I was gliding

in my ecstasy I flew too high

and I burnt my wings

down,

            down,

                        down, to the earthen ground I crashed

with a heavy sigh,

in the depth’s of despair and confusion

of a drunken drug filled rage of my darkest hour

whereupon I wailed and bemoaned my fate

I raised my fist to heaven

letting forth a mournful cry.

 

There, there from a blackened sky

came this beam of light

into the light I stand with my outstretched hands.

 

Listen!

Hear my voice ring from every American Mountain Peak!

 

For now I possess this light

it is for you that I will let it shine.

If in your first attempt you fail.

 

Try,

            Try,

                        And try again like I

in your attempt to touch the sky.


Assimilation

 

It is from deep inside

I do perceive

the vicious web

society weaves.

 

When you are young

and your mind still blank

they assimilate you through

their ungodly rank.

 

Where,

 

Conform! Conform!

are the words well worn

and individuality

pays

the price of scorn.


A Free Spirit

 

When they say that I

I have certain dues

that to them in this life

I must pay

or that I

must stand in their lines.

I will say, “Stick it in your ear,

for I am a free spirit

and as a free

spirit I am

willed not to hear it.”


The Wind in the Helderberg’s

 

A sunset’s golden glow

exposing remnants of

Autumn’s crimson leaves.

 

Grass clippings smoldering, smoking

erupting in the twilight

of falls tawny flickering flames.

 

The weeping willow crying out

in a contemptuous moan

grinding wheel grating against

hardened steel grumping

a throaty groan.

 

The wood pile in urgent need

of small kindling and I,

I deftly chopping

dead decaying branches.

 

You,

feeding the fire of the fifty-five gallon drum

carefully examining the rotting tree trunk

finding a fossil.

 

Of what,

some prehistoric animal?

Or, only the antler

of some other season’s deer.

 

Connecticut city boy turned country gentleman

you couldn’t resist using my

newly sharpened axe

to try an punch holes for air

in the bottom of the thick metal drum.

 

“Look!” You say to me.

“Look!

I really love this life

the hard work the

sense of self accomplishment.

 

Look!

Last year this time I,

I was unemployed,

Now I,

I own this home,

I,

even go to church on Sunday”

 

The smoke billows up curling

lazily into wispy cirrus clouds.

 

Listen!

peeling white birch bark

gentle rustling leaves

bare trees.

 

“Listen!”

I say, “it’s that now

your heart,

it belongs

to the wind in the Helderberg’s.”


Uncle George and the Steelies

 

            A small brown leather sewn sack, always clutched tightly by his big dirty hands. A smelly old white owl cigar stuck from his mouth. His dark beady eyes were drawn, as he carefully undid the draw string. Big strong arthritic hands trembling, hands that you didn’t dare shake, for fear he would never let you go from those vice grips. Reaching in his leather bag, he would pull out his closed fist, clenched ever so tightly.

            “If you can get my hand open you can have what’s inside,” he’d say.

            I the younger and the smallest always struggled, strained and pulled one finger at a time. Until I could snatch the large round metal steelie, prized for playing marbles with, from those big misshapen hands.


(Thompsons Lake, The Helderberg’s, New York State)

 

The Thompson’s Lake Refrain

 

Awaken so gently to the music of the breeze

it’s song a sweet nectar

as honey to the bees.

 

The trees’ cry out

with a contemptuous moan

the frog’s are grumping a throaty groan.

 

“Good Morning, Good Morning it’s that time at the lake

the people are all gone and it’s time to relate.

The bunnies have been up and munching for awhile

now bring your face out and give us a smile.

 

Your dog Dusty there has been chasing the cat.

Old Frank on the porch is getting quite fat.

It’s near mid-morning and time for your swim

forget about work, it sounds to grim.

 

Jump In, Jump In, The water awaits you

so nice and warm

it loves to caress you and keep you from harm

remember you love it

every second is a pleasure

it is time you will treasure.”


A series of 5k races sponsored by Stroh’s benefiting the Statue of Liberty. Held in Albany, New York

 

 

Stroh’s Run for Liberty

 

I run for Liberty

where,

I once walked.


A Golden Poet King

 

Sometimes,

I feel as if I

am a marionette

of a golden mountain poet king.

Dancing to a cosmic tune

for her heart,

of golden strings.


Even White Knights Stumble, Guinevere

 

A white warrior walked

amidst the grandeur

of the mountains

that his Lord God had made.

 

Where in he found

inner strength,

peace, and

sobriety.


A question to Guinevere

 

So Listen!

 

When I become,

a golden American Mountain Poet King.

“Would you be,

My Video Queen?”


The Poet that came out of the Closet

 

For so very long now,

I have been struggling, juggling,

fighting a conflict internally.

 

I’ve tried to run and I’ve tried to hide,

I’ve tried to subdue

the growing power

of my love of poetry.

 

Oh! It was a classic case

of the mistaken muse,

the worst of possible maladies.

 

I’d refuse to write,

with any regularity,

not one of the men

in the rest of my working class family,

has been afflicted

with this insanity.


Five will get you Ten

 

“Say Hey, Joe-

Did ya hear about

the man who made it big,

in the big time.

Say’s he started with

Five-

Five Grand-

Then made Ten-.”


That Lost Weekend

 

Don’t tell me it’s over,

a relationship can’t work

you cannot take a seed

plant it in fertile soil

cover it in darkness and secrecy

and expect it to blossom

into a beautiful flower.

Love grows in sunshine

and open air.


A Promise to Katarina

 

Tomorrow I will awake

and you will be there.

The golden sun shining through

your graying hair.

 

You will bring to my heart

the most joyous feelings,

the very sight of your beautiful smile.

 

Then we shall take

each others hands.

Together we will

make them understand.

 

We will give them our love

of each other and illuminate

The American Land.


K now that you are a divine creation the lord has conceived. His gift of love that shines from you illuminates the darkness of the World.

A lways look forward to the future for there in lies your key to happiness. The days well lived will bring fulfillment and everlasting joy.

T races of your yesterdays cloud the sunshine of your skies. The warmth and radiance of your soul clears them to allow in the rays of light.

A nswer on to your heart’s desire. Your capacity for love is your treasure. The greatest romance you could have is yours for the asking.

R emember always the golden moments of your life. Cherish the deep friendships that Blossom within the garden of your personality.

I nnocence is last among the disillusionments of youth. Your perfume of peace, a wild fire of bliss, amidst the compassion of the Divine Mother.

N ow the strength of your magnetism sustains the power of your will. All your sorrows have disappeared with the passing of years.

A wakening the spiritual woman with Divine Love. Endowing her with the goodness and the sweetness of the honey of God.


Restless Spirits, Harnessed Spirits

 

Green fields,

spirits

running wild

across and endless eternity.

 

Hooves pounding on the turf

trodden by many men’s souls

before

slowing, slowing

only to a walk.

For at last a fence is it harnessed in.


Old Man

 

Old Man,

sittin in a chair

ain’t goin nowhere

so you’ve been to war.

 

I guess you know the score.

 

Old Man,

your hair turned grey

whatta you goin to do today.

 

Old Man,

you’re high on life.

 

Old Man,

you gotta skinny old wife.

 

Young Man writing down his rhyme.

 

Old Man,

taught you all about time.


My Mary

 

My Mary comes a totin her acid,

My Mary comes a totin her tea,

My Mary comes to give her love,

and receives it back from me.

 

My Mary she flies so high,

My Mary she flies so low,

I hope my precious Mary knows,

just which way to go.

 

My Mary she sings from cliff tops,

My Mary she sings from trees,

and if My Mary is without a song,

she can come and sing with me.


Nantucket Yacht Club Slip Blue

 

Eerie early morning drizzle dripping

off yellow

Sears rain slickers

blue fog steaming

Captain Zoom’s coke bottle bottomed

John Lennon glasses.

 

“Did I know you

were legally blind

without them?”

 

Starring through streaming

streaking shiny bright brass

framed teak deck

yacht port holes

filled with rainbow colored

crystal liquor decanters

bustling blue

uniformed suited crews.

 

You said,

“Certainly some have not

what the others have.”

 

Your vision was perfect

for the fall of 1973.


A Drunken Sailor in Saratoga

 

A drunken sailor, I met in

a bar in Saratoga said,

“I’ve sailed all over

the World-never seen

anything quite as beautiful

as the Golden Gate of

San Francisco’s harbor

through the dissipating fog

of a morning’s haze.

 

He stumbled to the door

shaking his finger

and looking back at me

like there was some-thing

about me

he found different.


Fat Albert

 

God how I hated Bill Cosby

The goading, teasing, chiding

“Hey, Hey, Hey.”

I grew up in

an Italian family

thought my name

for the first five years

of my life was

“eat albert,” except they said it

differently every good boy deserves

food as much as they can eat

3 times a day

imagine that

fat albert lost his,

fat he no longer lives

on the refrigerator shelf.


Loose Items O.K.

 

So Listen!

The National Centers for Disease Control

unveiled a $20 million “hot lab,”

a super-sealed facility

for the study of

The World’s deadliest viruses,

including pathogens “far”

more dangerous than

AIDS.


(In Protest of the use of explosives for terrorism)

 

Paris, France. Wednesday September 17, 1986 Tati Discount Department Store 3:28 pm

Blast. 53 wounded 5 dead mothers and children.

 

The report of a one hundred and five millimeter recoilless rifle

echoes through Big Cottonwood Canyon of

The Wasatch National Forest of Utah

gently awakening avalanches

rumbling through snowfields

above the timberline

of a sleeping Brighton and Solitude mountain sides

snow shifting, sliding, slicing, slamming, snapping

down among hundreds of year old pines.


Organizations I would like to see

 

M others

A gainst

W ar

 

S tudents

A gainst

W ar

 

W omen

A gainst

N uclear

H olocaust

 

 

 

 

United Food for thought Family Farms

 

I am a man

Alone

I have picked stones from fields.

 

We are men

united we have the strength

to move the mountain.


The Child in My Arms

 

I swear to you

Lord

that the child died in my arms

after a man made storm.

 

When will we stop from

continuing to hide,

against blatant acts

of genocide.

 

Now the coca leaves

I chew.

They help

to ease the pain

between the downpours

of yellow rain.


A Thought in a Garden

 

Strolling across an upward sloping grass hill

ending against a large brownstone building.

A grey slate roof slanting, shading, small

square glass paned windows of

genteel elegance.

 

A white trellised archway opening

pink petunia rows of

crimson roses, chrysanthemum, hyacinth blending,

daisy, dahlias.

 

When the poets dreamed

and writing scholar’s schemed

inside this mansion and garden walls.

 

Did they think of the mason’s fingers split open

sewn together needled black thread against

the drying cracking concrete lye

or the stone laborer

back bone weight weary

that built the grounds

of Yaddo?


A Thought of You

 

I thought of you

the day they launched Atlantis.

In the after burner’s gleam

I thought I’d seen

with a vision of crystal clarity,

another maiden’s voyage

upon an emerald sheen.


Poet to Poet

 

Today,

as many days lately

you

were in my thoughts.

 

Reflections, the way life once was

images

of bright white footlights

and snow covered mountain peaks

cascade

like sparkling, glittering, gleaming crystals.

 

Transforming,

melting, melding

like flowing rivers

into the sea.


Podunk Poet

 

Phoning

Friendly

Felicitous

Females

For

Fun.


Loves Hurts

 

Leaving you

Standing there

Falling wet snow

Me

Tripping over a piece of my heart

As I turned to leave

Ev what a black widow’s web you secretly weaved

 

I wish that you could see

From inside of my eyes

To hear the sound of empty lies

 

Wondering why?

 

Leaving me unaware waiting there.


A Promise to Evelyn

 

Today, I heard

the mountains call our names

through the Northwest Wind.

They said,

I was to be a mountain poet king

and you an artist queen.

A snowflake for your dreams.


The Burning Desire

 

In you eyes,

I see

a sunrise

glowing vibrantly orange

cresting to illuminate the land

of an American Nation

from the top of the Grand Traverse

at thirteen thousand feet in elevation,

my soul smolders like the fires of Yellowstone

off in the distant horizon

making their way

2 days later

into the Vail Valley

 

In your eyes,

I see

destiny

crawling from the frothing seas

growing into an everlasting sanctity,

like a light beckoning

me into eternity.


Unrequited Love

 

Love is a gift,

to be given without the expectation of reciprocation.

 

Love heals,

the wounds of temporary setbacks and failures.

 

To be held in esteem by a loved one,

is one of life’s magnificent pleasures.

 

Mutual love,

forms a bond as healthy and strong a mighty Sequoia.

 

Unrequited love,

eventually empties the well.


Manhattan Midnight Moonlight

 

“Listen,” you say, “it’s the worst case of

blue balls I never go this long

with out it.”

 

You say, “How do you do it?”

 

You mean me

being over thirty never

married, your manhood

suspect by, aunt’s, grandmother’s, divorcee’s.

 

Saying always, “I know this nice girl.”

 

You say, “Your problem is, you place women

on pedestals give them

the top

and they’ll hurt you.”

 

Me saying, “I don’t view all women

as my semen receptacles.”

“Listen,” you say, “I love my wife,

it’s just that I get tired of it,

being the same sometimes’

I just want it to be different.”

 

Me jotting down phone numbers

from a seedy pamphlet

lit by the dim lights on

The Staten Island Ferry

watching the crashing waves by

Ellis Island’s Statue of Liberty.

 

Little pink nipples peering

through black leather bras

crotch less pantied women wielding whips

captions reading Dominique, Desiree,

Master card and Visa accepted.

 

Riding graffiti filled subway cars

into Times Square,

stumbling drunk down cracked concrete sidewalks

cramming quarters into black plastic phones

seeking my idea of getting lucky.

Abandoning the search to purchase

a shish kebob from a man with a hibachi

in the Manhattan Midnight Moonlight.

You saying, “It’s probably dog meat.”

Then a panhandler’s blues saxophone wails.


In a Dream

 

Sometimes,

late at night I

lie awake and I

I catch a falling snowflake

and I wonder where my youthful dreams have gone.

 

It wasn’t long ago

I would sit with

Touloose, Crème King, Fast Eddy (The Buckle Meister), and Captain Zooms

on the various American Mountain Peaks

and discuss all the men wasting their youths

To live in bigger wooden boxes or drive fancier motorized metal containers,

climbing the ladder of corporate and factory society.


Just Accomplish It!

 

In order to put

mountains in the eyes

of your children,

keep them in the eyes

of your characters.


A Gift Given Me

 

One Day,

at the base of Whiteface Mountain

I thought of someone special and

about a gift he’d given me.

 

I ascended swiftly into a silver silken sea

in a crystal vision Mother Mary came to me.

She whispered to me softly,

words to sooth my fear.

I soared so gracefully

far above the timberline.

I descended slowly only

after I had picked my line

down among the emerald pines.

 

One Day,

at the base of Whiteface Mountain

I thought of someone special

about a gift he’d given me.


Written for the shortening of Chair Six of Whiteface Mountain for the 1980 Winter Olympics.

 

 

Chair Six

 

Oh! carousel of well worn

blue wooden chairs ascend me swiftly

upon the summit of your face.

Stark, lonely, loving, longing,

fair milk maiden’s lips

forever locked, granite windswept cheeks

ominous in your blue ice

laden grace.

 

Teeth chattering trembling fear

your North winds wailing,

searching, searing, stiff

frozen denim jeans.

The smell of

wet grey woolen poncho’s.


Turning out the Faithful

 

They,

 

tore down the old rustic white porched hotel and replaced it

with a brand new concrete and steel sparkling Hilton

at one Mirror Lake Drive.

 

I met a man in the Ancient Mariner who sold the Olympic

Organizing Committee 50,000 hot seats for the grandstands

everyone knows just how fiercely cold the winter’s of Lake Placid can be.

 

Everyone was going to make a Million Dollars.

 

Christmas Eve, the Chair Six Lounge, all the non local, especially for

The Olympic Entrepreneurs, tears falling like the rain in the streets.

 

Everyone was going to make a Million Dollars.

 

The Semi’s rolling through town from Saranac

heavily laden with man made snow

a caravan of determination and fierce pride

that is the American Spirit.

 

During the build up to the period

of the 1980 Winter Olympics

many landlords turned out their

faithful tenants of many years

for the high rents they could receive.


Trading Trinkets, Tall Tales, Telling Lies

 

Downtown any town’s Main street

this town, down

passed a shellacked shiny brass handled

carved crescent moon wooden door of

“The Ancient Mariner”

across the street from an old fashioned Bijou

sequenced white bulb Marquee

Flashing, “Fiddler on the roof.”

 

Butted by a brown concrete, steel, Lake Placid Hilton

descending down two flights

of green canopied wooden stairs.

 

“The Artist’s Café”

lapped white waves of Mirror Lake

reflecting the lights of “The Cottage”

and the excitement of the 1980 Winter Olympics

across from the Lake Placid Club

it’s walls filled with the owner’s original art

bustling buxom waitresses.

 

Comrade Ivan leaping to his feet touching my pins from Solitude and Brighton

would I care to trade for his shiny Soviet bears

slapping him on the back saying,

“certainly mine were worth a bit more, perhaps

one possibly two martini’s.”

 

Telling tales till they became martooni’s

 

The bustling waitress asking,

“Was I, could I be, an Olympic Athlete?”

Me smiling devilishly saying,

“Why, yes,

would she,

care to come to my room.

to view my gold medals from Europe.”


“No Hang Gliding”

 

...Goats Path....

dropping off

a narrow winding cat walk

from Mt. Mansfield,

Stowe, Vermont.

 

A square wooden sign says,

“No hang gliding”.

 

Before entering a field of Moguls,

as big as Volkswagens,

parked sideways.


Behind the Times

 

I am just a lonely poet

atop an emerald pine

so come inside of my mind

and live behind the times.

 

Now I,

I ride the six thirty number 55 express

into a three hundred year old Albany, New York.

I,

I stare through my reflection

longing for connection

through the windows of a new days sun’s direction.

All the bitter couples faces

stirs my memories traces

where these haunting feelings linger

giving my Alta ego

the Utah blue’s again.

 

Oh! To be twenty five and hear the report

of a one hundred and five millimeter recoilless rifle echoing

a good morning cry

gently awakening avalanches

rumbling high above timberline

moving mountainsides of Mt. Millicent of Brighton,

and awakening a Honeycomb Canyon of Solitude

in Big Cottonwood Canyon of the Wasatch National Forest.

 

Alas, I choose to be

a lonely poet

atop my emerald pine

but come inside of my mind and live behind the times.

 

By the hourly fruits of my labor

I am the last man in History to be awarded the coveted

seasons ski pass at Arapahoe Basin.

The, then, highest lift operated ski mountain in North America.

 

To the accompaniment of Daniel’s sitar I recited my poetry

to the laughter and gaiety of the passerby’s for dollar bills

in the village square at the base of Vail Mountain.

 

While my contemporaries have accrued the material possessions

that I now desire

by giving up their youths to do so,

I have quietly collected snowflakes and mountain peaks.

 

Forever there will loom a fork in the road of life’s horizon

some will follow the trodden path

while others leave a wagon rutted trail.

 

Neither should carry the label of success or failure

instead we should applaud the individual freedom

to make that choice,

only in America.


Out of the Gondola Shed at Gore Mountain

(with Touloose)

 

Bright radiant red

chariot cherry plastic bubbles

“All the way to the top men,”

a lift attendant’s

warm wry smile.

 

His bright orange ski cap,

pulled well over the ears

Keeping out the biting cold.

 

Clomp and thump,

Clomp and thump,

hurriedly mad crazed killers

Plunging home our skis and poles.

 

Swish,

Heaven’s gate slides shut

a zero down gloved hand

bearing a radiant silver cross

that turns the key

clicking the latch

locking away

the chosen ones.

 

Bumping, bouncing,

bursting out

bathed in luminous sunlight

ivory crystals

set upon forest green pines

sparkling

pale blue skies

swaying, swinging,

precariously perched on a sterling

stranded string

dangling there.

 

Touloose

his purple passion hat

cocked over an optic gleam

a comrade in arms

comes his familiar cackle,

“Ain’t it the tits,” his breath hangs frozen

a cumulus cloud

moist

splashing against my brow

dissipating with our fears

into the quiet

frigid serenity.


The, “Oh My God!” Refrain

 

I have not many material possessions

material possessions are balls and chains

But, I know every inch of every trail

and every mountain peak in America.

 

I once walked from Dillion, Colorado over

the Continental Divide through Loveland Pass to

stop at Central City the oldest City in Colorado.

 

Where God made all men,

but Commander Colt made them equal

To meditate upon Virginia Canyon,

nicknamed, “Oh My God Canyon!”

after the first words that are

uttered by the view

of it’s grandeur.

 

Before continuing through Nederland

and the mountain tunnels of route six

where the prairie dogs play

at the base of the Flat Irons

rising out of the Gold Hills

to welcome you to the Valley floor of Boulder.

just to get the zipper on my tough traveler

knapsack repaired for free at the factory.


Against the Wall

(At Killington, Vermont)

 

Listen!

The prevailing winds

whisper,

they dance,

across the rolling meadows,

at Killington in Vermont.

 

Blowing wet snowflakes

that stick to my eyelids,

and freeze my toes.


A Powder Run

 

Light airy no where,

emerald trees my eyes see.

I hear nothing but fear.

Hidden pockets of which to fall in,

always reminding me of him,

God’s crystalline chowder.


(The further trials of the world’s greatest ski bum)

 

2 cents overdrawn

 

Mick Jagger on a full screen

MTV video screaming,

“I’m just waiting on a lady,

I’m just waiting on a friend.”

 

Gold Peak restaurant bar

warming my hands on a

steaming ceramic coffee filled mug

arriving one day later than,

the Vail Mountain employee draw.

 

Being 2 cents overdrawn and scribbling,

like Gollum caressing his precious, precious,

my powder snow poetry.

 

Leaving the restaurant like that,

I mean with blue words

on a white paper napkin

thinking them worth much

more than 2 missing pennies.

 

Pulling on down gloves

trudging into the wilderness,

like Strider the Ranger.

 

Never really fitting in

like a brown slab wood cabin

mud caulked chinked

with a grey stone chimney

sizzling snowshoe rabbit

smoke billowing wafting

through silent aspen’s.

 

It hangs drifting like

cotton ball clouds

sparkling crystals bending emerald boughs of pines.

 

A skinny ski trail snaking around

deep powder tree wells

to a stoked glowing fireplace

in the Arapahoe National Forest

warding off dusk.


A Tear By The Way

 

“Been climbing at Devil’s Tower

some of he 5-8 pitches were hard

Tho, I laughed all the way up.

 

I live in Breck, (Breckenridge, Colorado) during the winter

work as a waitron nights so I

I can board all day. Same

as now cept

I’m a fly clinging to and climbing

cracks all day.

 

Wyoming is big and beautiful,

endless vista’s and horizon’s

stretching into forever

glowing orange sun hanging

half in, half out of the Earth

light blue hue

tiny white wisps of cirrus

clouds rushing by

winds whipping

ripping my hair blonde

from it’s long pony tail

stinging my breasts.

 

There was nothing I could do

dangling on my descent

rappelling requires

complete concentration.

 

Saw you hitch-hiking your

blue and black Dana Design Pack

against your tan smooth skin

you know you have a climber’s body.

It’s too bad I turn here for

Eldora Canyon tho

this should get you far enough

out of Boulder.

 

It’s a pity

we couldn’t climb with one another.

My name is

Tear by the way.”


Elfie, Mr. Tweedy, and the Missing Insurance Claim Check

 

She is world renowned,

for her stained glass skiers in

Vail Village she cuts colored

pieces of glass places them carefully on

patterns of white Styrofoam

numbered in sequence, one

two, three in her shop she

fluxes between the cracks

before soldering with her hot iron

she reads novels in German

with and accent says,

“I still haven’t received my

insurance claim check for

Mr. Tweedy’s broken

World Alpine, 1989 piece.”

 

We had packed it and shipped it

ever so painstakingly in

bubble wrap, wrapped twice

after cutting foam panels for ends

and carefully placing it in cardboard,

suspended in foam peanuts

Taped in double boxes, prudently.

 

I should have known when

Mad Maxine the crazy U.P.S.

driver in her brown uniform

and red laced hiking boots

black smudged hands, from handling cartons

would come in to the pack-n-ship

telling dirty jokes,

“Do you know why Jewish women

have wrinkles around their eyes. It’s

from squinting at their husband’s

penis behind closed doors.”

Saying, “You want me to do what to it?”

 

She looks at the parcel with

the “This Side Up” and “Fragile”

stickers plastered all over it and

says, “Hey, what state is

the city of “Fragile” in anyway,

and did you know these

are supposed to be packaged

so that they can be

thrown at least ten feet.”


Dr. Bumps!

(of Vail, Colorado)

 

He’s Fred and he’s sixty

and he’s been banged in the head.

The oldest skier on the Pro

Mogul Tour.


How It Should Be

 

Some men grow

and they go away to war.

My friends and I

we went to ski.

It is how it should be.


Free Nelson Mandella

(MON)

 

Harry Belafonte’s voice comes over

the Colorado Zephyr air waves yelling

“Is anybody out there?

Can any one hear me?

Is any one listening?

To a 1960’s movie

where he is the last black man

on earth, co-starring Inger Stevens.

 

“Free Nelson Mandella,” he yells,

“Nelson Mandella has been

a political prisoner for

the past twenty-five years

in a South African jail.”

 

Then Ziggy Marley sings an up

tempo reggae tune asking,

“Tomorrow people where is your best?

“Tomorrow people how long may you last?”

Suddenly I’m trans---ported to

The State University of New York at Albany

I’m in the library reading

the only book by the poet Lyn Lifshin

I can find written through

the eyes of Blue Seneca Indians

waiting for a Bob Marley

concert without Bob Marley

just the wailers

I’m with Touloose

as usual and I say,

“I really wish you were a girl.”

(I’m tired of being alone in a crowd.)

(I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.)

 

I’m suddenly jolted back to reality, back into

my own political exile.

I think of Nelson Mandella languishing

in prison all the time

I was a spoiled young man

skiing all over America.

 

Jimmy Cliff comes on the Zephyr

playground of the rich and the famous

in the pristine Rocky Mountains.

Singing, “Sitting here in limbo

waiting for the sky to fall,

sitting here in limbo

but I know my faith will

lead me home.....

well

they’re putting up resistance,

but I know

my faith will lead me home.....”


(The most insane trial of the world’s greatest ski bum)

 

 

Please! No Ski Boots!

 

“Look, I’m a crazy writer!” I scream at

the sheriff of Nottingham,

“I’m being forced to live

in internal exile here

and I’m not supposed to be driving

and when they find out I was they

are going to lock me up

and throw away the key.

 

It’s ten thirty at night

this drunken skier just

stepped out in front of

my blue Toyota ski

bum car and you tell me

where the hell he was

skiing at this late hour?

 

When I hit him his

ski boots came all the way up

smashed my windshield, I

panicked and slammed on the brakes,

and he shot off the hood

his skis and poles were flying everywhere

and he hit the ground real

hard with a dull sickening thud

and a real deep moan.

 

Now my car is like everyone else’s

in the mountain’s of Colorado

it’s temporary tags

are expired and it’s

uninsured and now

the windshield is

cracked and broken.”


A Gandy Dancer

 

            A gandy dancer is the most primitive form of railroad worker. It is a small closely knit group of men bound tightly by the burden of their great toil. In the summer of 1979 after leaving A-Basin in Colorado, I was ski bumming and found myself in Kendricks Crossing of Wyoming on my way to ski Jackson Hole that following winter. Being broke and destitute I found myself living on a railroad siding in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and sleeping in converted rail cars, washing in shower cars and eating in dining cars.

            The rail was laid onto the rail road ties in one quarter mile pieces and because of the heat of the plains where they joined together they would often overlap as much as two to three feet. A large front end loader was brought in and a twenty foot piece of rail was suspended by a logging chain. The men were lined up on each side of the piece of rail. A maneuver known as bumping rail was performed. By striking the one quarter mile piece of steel with the twenty foot piece, we would take hours if not all day to move the larger piece the distance required to couple the rail together. There was often a song or a cadence shouted or sung to establish a rhythm.

            Thinking about it know, they were some of the best years of my life. The adventure and the humanity of the school of hard knocks. However, I did get to ski Jackson Hole that year.


Written on the plains of Kendricks Crossing, Wyoming

 

Gandy Dancer

 

Steel,

cold, hard, heavy,

steel sings, ring.

 

Gandy Man,

blisters upon your hands,

understand life’s lot.

 

Blue, so very god damned blue,

is the color that I choose,

just a starrin down at my tattered,

hiking shoes.

 

Grey,

grey is the color of my pants,

as yet one more,

of they’re working ants.

 

Writing my poems by the light

of a kerosene lamp,

my arms too tired,

to slide under my pillow,

looking toward another day closer

to a future filled with great white hope,

but a night time filled warding off

the smell of industrial soap.


(The Thoughts of the World’s Greatest Ski Bum)

 

An Alone Poem

 

I was all alone

at Kendricks Crossing, Wyoming

sitting Indian style on the rough wood

of a Burlington Northern Railroad

flat bed car.

 

Discussing life with an itinerant hobo,

when he jumped up and left

a half empty pail of rail spikes

along with his hammer.

 

For the beckoning call

of an open door

on a Santa Fe rail car.

 

Leaving me alone

to watch the sunsets

silhouetted against the ridges of the Big Horns.

 

Dying with the dull aching

in the muscles of my arms

between the lines

of one of my poems.


Written in Sheridan, Wyoming

 

Disco Bars

 

I am

just a child

of the sun, moon, and stars.

Sitting with my beat up brown,

Stetson hat in

Buffalo Bill’s Disco Bar.


Fresh Powder Down

 

A blinding blizzard beckons me into Steamboat Springs.

I arrive on the last greyhound from Vail.

My pockets full of snowflakes, a lonesome geyser’s whistle wails.

Always hiding, never tears to a cowboy’s eye.

Lord don’t let me be forsaken, the Baron’s have already taken

America by rail.

 

(Refrain)

 

(My darling I grow weary often lost without a home

but you know I’ll keep on searchin these mountain trails alone.

I wander through green valleys across the prairies, past the villages, farms and fields,

out beyond the concrete illusions where the Rocky Mountains pierce the aqua skies.

I find solace in the seclusion of another winter’s season, another place to ski,

as long as he will lay fresh powder down for me.

While you seek your fortune or search the world for fame,

be careful what you wish for, because when darkness falls upon you,

you’ll be wailing out his name.

Ski through barren aspens, see the forests through the pines,

sitting on my golden perch, am I crying out in vain?)

Sometimes you awake to find, you get what you need,

other times you take what you can get,

it is from the children that, they take everything.

Now I found that I possess this light,

from these mountains that I bring.

My gift is in my words, and for the children I’ll let them ring.

Go and tell everyone, silence is a snowflake falling,

until they hear me calling, to all the children I will sing.

Never take the last of anything.

 

(Refrain)

 

These day’s I’m a city, pretty girl painted, street wizard in his poems.

My freedom most men will never know, never have been wary of cardboard box labels,

fabled to contain rainbows.

Someday when their hair turns grey, their youth will have faded away,

with the colors that lost their shine.

The all American Gazebo Band plays behind, the new red white and corporate blue,

flag that flies against the changing hues.

Another rock opera story, of old glory and town with out it’s name.

Somewhere in time, the poet’s rhyme, makes a cosmic connection,

Then the Seer Sayers arrive in stages, and history endures the ages.

As a simple man who dreams beyond the Appletree Lane,

he sees a sunrise within her eyes.

And the hobo dude plays Howard Hughes, attempting to fill Dylan’s shoes,

to find out why they came.

But in disgrace, he falls from grace, to find success is not what they claim.

Listen Children to a thorn bird shrilly singing,

this truth you’ve heard, from a poet and his strings.


Fox

 

He said,

“My name is Vondall- but

you can call me Fox,

been all over the world.

 

Lived in Germany in the service.

 

From Oklahoma, if

Ya ever been there

you’d know why

I live in the Vail Valley,

but everyone calls me Little Joe.”


Hit and Run!

 

Sun Valley local sentenced

to 30 days in jail

and a fine of $300

in a hit and run

ski crash.


Million Dollar Cowboy Bar

(Jackson, Wyoming)

 

When I heard they had leather horse saddles

instead of stools

a slick polyurethane topped bar

covering silver dollars

said to be worth a million dollars

I couldn’t help it,

I mean

clomping down the old west

wooden sidewalk

into the local branch bank.

 

Exchanging hard earned

green back paper dollars

for shiny new silver ones.

One precariously placed behind

a rattle snake skin rimmed

beat up brown Stetson cowboy hat.

Sidling up to the row of saddles

stepping into a stirrup swinging

a Frye booted denim leg over it.

 

A real tourist

biting down hard on a shiny coin

not realizing it would hurt my tooth.

The way it never did

my childhood cowboy heroes.

Tossing it clinking on the bar

growling redeye bar keep.

My eyes drawn to his holstered

wood grained handled 44

rawhide string strapped thigh.

 

Thinking about it just now

I’d be tempted to ask.

Listen,

would you consider

a seedy graffiti filled

New York city subway car

5 black men with

razor sharp screwdrivers drawn

menacingly approaching asking

Brother can you spare a five?

A life threatening situation?

 

Or as a columnist for the New York Times

tells the story

a casual shakedown.

 

Would the people of the town of Jackson

erect

a Bernard Getz memorial statue

amidst an ivory elk antlered arched village square.

 

Where an honest man can

still carry a gun.


Lloyd Lambert’s Day At Hunter Mountain

 

You never did find out why you started receiving free passes

to Lloyd Lambert’s day at Hunter Mountain in the Catskills.

Perhaps it was a gift from the snow god.

 

Pure grape wine

that’s what the label said,

“Mad Dog 20/20.”

It certainly was bitter at eight o’clock in the morning.

The wine of the century,

along with a finely rolled joint,

thank God and Mogen David,

the proper tools for the proper job

and attitude adjustment.

 

Touloose,

Expert fire starter, the trick was to use excellent dry kindling,

of course the small jar of aviation fuel, from the silver streak, your BMW motorcycle,

had absolutely nothing to do with your great fires.

 

Spring skiing, magnum of wine,

chilling,

in the melting snows,

sausage patties sizzling on the open fire.

High Noon sun warmly glowing, creating little mountain streams.

 

You said,

“We are wise beyond our years, even the executive who works,

for General Motors and makes,

$100,000 a year,

with a matching 401K,

isn’t here today.

When we are old grey haired men,

about to pass from this world.

We will look back upon our lives and we won’t remember,

how much money we made,

how big our wooden boxes were that we lived in,

how many motorized metal containers we owned,

how big our yachts in our slips were,

we will remember and cherish,

our youth spent on mountains,

these days,

and savor the memories.”

 

Touloose, eminent philosopher, businessman, and ski bum,

comrade,

“Never take the last of anything I told you,”

handing you the last swig of wine.

 

The seventy year old man,

we drank shots with at the bar,

who had just won his first downhill race that day.

He informed us that we were lucky men.

 

We never did get to meet Lloyd Lambert,

although we were always in time for the Smorgasbord.


STH

(Snowbird, Utah)

 

S

T

E

E

P

E

R

 

T

H

A

N

 

Hell

 

I

F

 

You

 

F

A

L

L

 

T

H

A

T

 

I

S

 

A

L

L

 

X


Ski Patrolman

(For Touloose)

 

How is it that you need to be so free?

Why can’t all the other’s see

in a second’s glance

to perceive

the awesome danger of an avalanche.

 

While corporate executives

fill their briefcases with

unearned bonuses of business might

you fill your knapsack

with charges of DHP and pull start igniters

you know your right

when the charge has been thrown

the entire mountainside slides

exactly the way you knew it would.


Suddenly Life,

Was Turning Out To Be,

More than Just Mashed Potatoes and Gravy.

 

Leaving Denver’s

snow capped mountain peaks,

tearing, tugging at my heart.

 

A slick, sleek, silver jet streaks,

over Pac-man like farm fields,

flying towards Charleston, South Carolina.

 

May, Friday the thirteenth,

me, joking with my travel agent.

Saying, “as long I am not

on flight thirteen,

in the thirteenth seat.

Why yes, you certainly are

professional for only

your first week on your new job.”

 

Changing flights in Atlanta’s

soft computerized woman’s

voice saying, “Concourse B-

Use shuttle platform C.”

 

I deplane in Charleston,

walk out of the airport,

into the evening setting sun,

standing with by blue suitcases,

in Charleston, West Virginia.


Little Tommy Toot

 

“Does any body have any speck?”

Someone yells at the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival Theatre

in Charleston, South Carolina.

 

I slink down in my seat as

Professor types with tweed jackets and arm patches

turn to check out the unruly crowd.

 

Little Tommy Toot, the speck man

smiles his teeth clenched tightly

his eyes wide

like a mad crazed killer

as he passes a bindle

and a guitar pick.


Mount Sneffles

(14,150 ft.)

 

The turquoise water ripples

wind rustles yellow

aspen’s among dark evergreens.

Mr. Snuffleuffegus

can’t climb this one.


Mount of the Holy Cross

 

The melting spring snows

from nature’s ivory cross

trickle down through

the jagged rock ravines

filling the high alpine

earthen bowl of tears.

God’s way of crying

for his dying

Coventry.


Morning Light

 

Morning light,

revealed the gently falling snow.

 

Darkness unveiled,

Stole silently, stubbornly, assured of resurrection.


Mr. Plastic Fantastic

 

Old ski bums,

they never die,

they,

just turn plastic

but don’t mind me if

I seem somewhat sarcastic

It’s just that I

am practicing to be

Mr. Plastic Fantastic.


An Apology to all American Children

 

I’m so sorry children

now there is no

Mountain King

to let you

ski for free.


Pure Poetry

 

            Tyler Thompson was an Adventurer and would take his lumps where they came. He was the happiest when he was on a new adventure. It was his responsibility to write about them. If he didn’t who would? The Academic Scholars? The state dull scholars. The stiff upper lipped scholars who had never seen the inside of a railroad box car. The stuffy scholars who talked about grants and artist’s colonies, until you were bored to tears by their stuffy poetry and stale prose.

            Pure poetry he thought was sitting Indian style on the rough plank wood of a railroad flat bed car. The wind is gently rustling through your hair, the cool evening Wyoming wind. Your eyes are filled with thousands of mule deer slowly making their way into the fresh greenness of the Big Horns. The sun is big orange and wonderfully glowing vibrantly. Your arms are aching from swinging a twelve pound sledge hammer all day long. They hurt so much you don’t have the strength to put them under your pillow at night.

            You glance off into the heat shimmer of the distant plain. You squint into the sunset where the horizon and the narrowing tracks come together. You see a Burlington Northern coal train coming. You hear its horn cry. The cry cuts deep, deep into your soul and you are alone. You’re the loneliest you have ever been in your life, and you don’t want to be alone anymore. You have blisters on the blisters of your big hands and for the rest of your life every time you hear a train whistle, you instinctively shiver. You clench your big hand into a fist and you shiver in loneliness.

            Suddenly, you see on the front of the train that a big thick logging chain has come loose. It’s a big black ugly snake and it’s pounding the living piss out of the Wyoming Plains. You see Pedro, the Mexican who works the spike nailer. He can’t speak any English or understand it either. He is by the tracks. Your up on our feet on the flatbed car, your waving your arms, your tired arms, and your screaming into the wind. He can’t hear you. Your screaming and train the is bearing down on him. The chain is furiously pounding the plains. Your running and screaming. The wind is howling in your ears. Your screaming your head off and he can’t hear you or he can’t understand you, because he only comprehends that green means to start the rail road spike nailer and red means to stop it. The train is getting closer and so are you. He hears you holler and turns fully toward you. You yell to him, “Pedro! Pedro! Get the fuck out of the way!”

            You motion to him to turn around and he finally does. The big black ugly snake of a chain catches him in the stomach. The force of six diesel locomotives coupled to a mile of cars filled with Wyoming Anthracite forces the chain through Pedro like he was butter. Pedro’s torso topples to the ground and Pedro’s blood and his guts spill out of his standing abdomen, all over the Wyoming Plains.


A Star Is Born

 

So know you know,

I’m going to be

a golden American mountain poet star,

and I can’t even play a guitarmountain!

 

Albert Bianchine


Security...what is that? Something negative, undead, suspicious and suspecting; an avarice and an avoidance; a self-surrendering meanness of withdrawal; a numerable complacency and an innumerable cowardice. Who would be “secure”? Every and any slave. No free spirit ever dreamed of “security”- or, if he did, he laughed; and lived to shame his dream. No whole sinless sinful sleeping waking breathing human creature ever was (or could be) bought by, and sold for, “security”. How monstrous and how feeble seems some unworld which would rather have its too than eat it’s cake!

 

e.e. cummings

i-Six Nonlectures, 1953


On the Wings of the Last Karner Blue Butterfly

 

Come,

Come to North America my friends

see the radiating beauty.

It lies from within

know that it is

under my skin

in my eyes

like the wings of the last

Karner Blue Butterfly.


Upon the Ocean’s Breezes

 

Listen!

The ocean’s breezes are beckoning

across the Isle Ellis

they are calling

extraordinary artisan’s

accustomed to nature listening

Apres her lady’s commissioning

to let our collective lights shine

brighter than the torch

lit for Liberty

to let our collective voices

be raised for all of humanity

crying from the ocean’s depths of peasantries

combating the silence of indifference

armed with swords of insignificance

to stem the rising tides

of Amerekaan Armageddon’s

turning back the raging seas

of Radical Extremism’s blasphemies

spewing from the cauldron’s

tended by the World’s Aristocracies

beckoning across the sea’s of mediocrity.


A Ticket to the Fair

(For the rededication of the Statue of Liberty 1986)

 

I dream that my manuscript of poetry

will be my ticket to fair

so that I could

look into the eyes of

all of the who’s who of the they’s

that will be there.

So that I could scream,

“Set the Children Free”.


From the Belly of the Beast

 

Once,

I stood strong and tall

atop America’s highest mountain peak.

Turning I faced Mecca toward the East,

to my eyes came this vision of a holocaust

that brought me to my knees.

Touching the very depth’s of my soul,

I saw the American Armada’s storming the seven seas.

Hear my voice ring, for truth and freedom for the children.

To every nation’s mountain peaks

From the depth’s of the belly of the beast.


Upon the Mountains

 

Go upon the Mountains,

my beautiful innocent children.

Leave the cities far behind,

for they,

they in their ingratitude.

Condemn themselves

to their solitude.


In the Wake of a Cultural Giant

 

Often,

I would sit on the cobble stone retaining wall

at lookout point in the Helderberg Mountains

and stare at the ivory towers of the Empire State Plaza Complex

marble masterpiece employing the working class citizens.

 

The renaissance and renovation of Albany, New York

was magnificent to live and grow through.

The cockroach filled tenements and slum housing restored

to earth tone colored Historic Brownstones, each bearing

a dated black oval raised gold letter plaque.

Solid upper middle class citizens live there now.

 

Often,

as I would sit on the cobblestone rock retaining wall

at Lookout Point in the Helderberg Mountains

I pondered,

Where have all the poor people gone

in the Wake of a Cultural Giant?


The Liberty Express

 

Mark my name well

against the annals of history

All of you

who dwell so comfortably

among the World’s Aristocracies.

 

I have been among your peasantries.

 

My Liberty Express

is a mythical golden chairlift.

 

It is on time and

bound to the plight

of truth and freedom

for the children of the world.


Into the Light

 

One day,

far above America I was gliding

in my ecstasy I flew too high

and I burnt my wings

down,

            down,

                        down, to the earthen ground I crashed

with a heavy sigh,

in the depth’s of despair and confusion

of a drunken drug filled rage of my darkest hour

whereupon I wailed and bemoaned my fate

I raised my fist to heaven

letting forth a mournful cry.

 

There, there from a blackened sky

came this beam of light

into the light I stand with my outstretched hands.

 

Listen!

Hear my voice ring from every American Mountain Peak!

 

For now I possess this light

it is for you that I will let it shine.

If in your first attempt you fail.

 

Try,

            Try,

                        And try again like I

in your attempt to touch the sky.


Assimilation

 

It is from deep inside

I do perceive

the vicious web

society weaves.

 

When you are young

and your mind still blank

they assimilate you through

their ungodly rank.

 

Where,

 

Conform! Conform!

are the words well worn

and individuality

pays

the price of scorn.


A Free Spirit

 

When they say that I

I have certain dues

that to them in this life

I must pay

or that I

must stand in their lines.

I will say, “Stick it in your ear,

for I am a free spirit

and as a free

spirit I am

willed not to hear it.”


The Wind in the Helderberg’s

 

A sunset’s golden glow

exposing remnants of

Autumn’s crimson leaves.

 

Grass clippings smoldering, smoking

erupting in the twilight

of falls tawny flickering flames.

 

The weeping willow crying out

in a contemptuous moan

grinding wheel grating against

hardened steel grumping

a throaty groan.

 

The wood pile in urgent need

of small kindling and I,

I deftly chopping

dead decaying branches.

 

You,

feeding the fire of the fifty-five gallon drum

carefully examining the rotting tree trunk

finding a fossil.

 

Of what,

some prehistoric animal?

Or, only the antler

of some other season’s deer.

 

Connecticut city boy turned country gentleman

you couldn’t resist using my

newly sharpened axe

to try an punch holes for air

in the bottom of the thick metal drum.

 

“Look!” You say to me.

“Look!

I really love this life

the hard work the

sense of self accomplishment.

 

Look!

Last year this time I,

I was unemployed,

Now I,

I own this home,

I,

even go to church on Sunday”

 

The smoke billows up curling

lazily into wispy cirrus clouds.

 

Listen!

peeling white birch bark

gentle rustling leaves

bare trees.

 

“Listen!”

I say, “it’s that now

your heart,

it belongs

to the wind in the Helderberg’s.”


Uncle George and the Steelies

 

            A small brown leather sewn sack, always clutched tightly by his big dirty hands. A smelly old white owl cigar stuck from his mouth. His dark beady eyes were drawn, as he carefully undid the draw string. Big strong arthritic hands trembling, hands that you didn’t dare shake, for fear he would never let you go from those vice grips. Reaching in his leather bag, he would pull out his closed fist, clenched ever so tightly.

            “If you can get my hand open you can have what’s inside,” he’d say.

            I the younger and the smallest always struggled, strained and pulled one finger at a time. Until I could snatch the large round metal steelie, prized for playing marbles with, from those big misshapen hands.


(Thompsons Lake, The Helderberg’s, New York State)

 

The Thompson’s Lake Refrain

 

Awaken so gently to the music of the breeze

it’s song a sweet nectar

as honey to the bees.

 

The trees’ cry out

with a contemptuous moan

the frog’s are grumping a throaty groan.

 

“Good Morning, Good Morning it’s that time at the lake

the people are all gone and it’s time to relate.

The bunnies have been up and munching for awhile

now bring your face out and give us a smile.

 

Your dog Dusty there has been chasing the cat.

Old Frank on the porch is getting quite fat.

It’s near mid-morning and time for your swim

forget about work, it sounds to grim.

 

Jump In, Jump In, The water awaits you

so nice and warm

it loves to caress you and keep you from harm

remember you love it

every second is a pleasure

it is time you will treasure.”


A series of 5k races sponsored by Stroh’s benefiting the Statue of Liberty. Held in Albany, New York

 

 

Stroh’s Run for Liberty

 

I run for Liberty

where,

I once walked.


A Golden Poet King

 

Sometimes,

I feel as if I

am a marionette

of a golden mountain poet king.

Dancing to a cosmic tune

for her heart,

of golden strings.


Even White Knights Stumble, Guinevere

 

A white warrior walked

amidst the grandeur

of the mountains

that his Lord God had made.

 

Where in he found

inner strength,

peace, and

sobriety.


A question to Guinevere

 

So Listen!

 

When I become,

a golden American Mountain Poet King.

“Would you be,

My Video Queen?”


The Poet that came out of the Closet

 

For so very long now,

I have been struggling, juggling,

fighting a conflict internally.

 

I’ve tried to run and I’ve tried to hide,

I’ve tried to subdue

the growing power

of my love of poetry.

 

Oh! It was a classic case

of the mistaken muse,

the worst of possible maladies.

 

I’d refuse to write,

with any regularity,

not one of the men

in the rest of my working class family,

has been afflicted

with this insanity.


Five will get you Ten

 

“Say Hey, Joe-

Did ya hear about

the man who made it big,

in the big time.

Say’s he started with

Five-

Five Grand-

Then made Ten-.”


That Lost Weekend

 

Don’t tell me it’s over,

a relationship can’t work

you cannot take a seed

plant it in fertile soil

cover it in darkness and secrecy

and expect it to blossom

into a beautiful flower.

Love grows in sunshine

and open air.


A Promise to Katarina

 

Tomorrow I will awake

and you will be there.

The golden sun shining through

your graying hair.

 

You will bring to my heart

the most joyous feelings,

the very sight of your beautiful smile.

 

Then we shall take

each others hands.

Together we will

make them understand.

 

We will give them our love

of each other and illuminate

The American Land.


K now that you are a divine creation the lord has conceived. His gift of love that shines from you illuminates the darkness of the World.

A lways look forward to the future for there in lies your key to happiness. The days well lived will bring fulfillment and everlasting joy.

T races of your yesterdays cloud the sunshine of your skies. The warmth and radiance of your soul clears them to allow in the rays of light.

A nswer on to your heart’s desire. Your capacity for love is your treasure. The greatest romance you could have is yours for the asking.

R emember always the golden moments of your life. Cherish the deep friendships that Blossom within the garden of your personality.

I nnocence is last among the disillusionments of youth. Your perfume of peace, a wild fire of bliss, amidst the compassion of the Divine Mother.

N ow the strength of your magnetism sustains the power of your will. All your sorrows have disappeared with the passing of years.

A wakening the spiritual woman with Divine Love. Endowing her with the goodness and the sweetness of the honey of God.


Restless Spirits, Harnessed Spirits

 

Green fields,

spirits

running wild

across and endless eternity.

 

Hooves pounding on the turf

trodden by many men’s souls

before

slowing, slowing

only to a walk.

For at last a fence is it harnessed in.


Old Man

 

Old Man,

sittin in a chair

ain’t goin nowhere

so you’ve been to war.

 

I guess you know the score.

 

Old Man,

your hair turned grey

whatta you goin to do today.

 

Old Man,

you’re high on life.

 

Old Man,

you gotta skinny old wife.

 

Young Man writing down his rhyme.

 

Old Man,

taught you all about time.


My Mary

 

My Mary comes a totin her acid,

My Mary comes a totin her tea,

My Mary comes to give her love,

and receives it back from me.

 

My Mary she flies so high,

My Mary she flies so low,

I hope my precious Mary knows,

just which way to go.

 

My Mary she sings from cliff tops,

My Mary she sings from trees,

and if My Mary is without a song,

she can come and sing with me.


Nantucket Yacht Club Slip Blue

 

Eerie early morning drizzle dripping

off yellow

Sears rain slickers

blue fog steaming

Captain Zoom’s coke bottle bottomed

John Lennon glasses.

 

“Did I know you

were legally blind

without them?”

 

Starring through streaming

streaking shiny bright brass

framed teak deck

yacht port holes

filled with rainbow colored

crystal liquor decanters

bustling blue

uniformed suited crews.

 

You said,

“Certainly some have not

what the others have.”

 

Your vision was perfect

for the fall of 1973.


A Drunken Sailor in Saratoga

 

A drunken sailor, I met in

a bar in Saratoga said,

“I’ve sailed all over

the World-never seen

anything quite as beautiful

as the Golden Gate of

San Francisco’s harbor

through the dissipating fog

of a morning’s haze.

 

He stumbled to the door

shaking his finger

and looking back at me

like there was some-thing

about me

he found different.


Fat Albert

 

God how I hated Bill Cosby

The goading, teasing, chiding

“Hey, Hey, Hey.”

I grew up in

an Italian family

thought my name

for the first five years

of my life was

“eat albert,” except they said it

differently every good boy deserves

food as much as they can eat

3 times a day

imagine that

fat albert lost his,

fat he no longer lives

on the refrigerator shelf.


Loose Items O.K.

 

So Listen!

The National Centers for Disease Control

unveiled a $20 million “hot lab,”

a super-sealed facility

for the study of

The World’s deadliest viruses,

including pathogens “far”

more dangerous than

AIDS.


(In Protest of the use of explosives for terrorism)

 

Paris, France. Wednesday September 17, 1986 Tati Discount Department Store 3:28 pm

Blast. 53 wounded 5 dead mothers and children.

 

The report of a one hundred and five millimeter recoilless rifle

echoes through Big Cottonwood Canyon of

The Wasatch National Forest of Utah

gently awakening avalanches

rumbling through snowfields

above the timberline

of a sleeping Brighton and Solitude mountain sides

snow shifting, sliding, slicing, slamming, snapping

down among hundreds of year old pines.


Organizations I would like to see

 

M others

A gainst

W ar

 

S tudents

A gainst

W ar

 

W omen

A gainst

N uclear

H olocaust

 

 

 

 

United Food for thought Family Farms

 

I am a man

Alone

I have picked stones from fields.

 

We are men

united we have the strength

to move the mountain.


The Child in My Arms

 

I swear to you

Lord

that the child died in my arms

after a man made storm.

 

When will we stop from

continuing to hide,

against blatant acts

of genocide.

 

Now the coca leaves

I chew.

They help

to ease the pain

between the downpours

of yellow rain.


A Thought in a Garden

 

Strolling across an upward sloping grass hill

ending against a large brownstone building.

A grey slate roof slanting, shading, small

square glass paned windows of

genteel elegance.

 

A white trellised archway opening

pink petunia rows of

crimson roses, chrysanthemum, hyacinth blending,

daisy, dahlias.

 

When the poets dreamed

and writing scholar’s schemed

inside this mansion and garden walls.

 

Did they think of the mason’s fingers split open

sewn together needled black thread against

the drying cracking concrete lye

or the stone laborer

back bone weight weary

that built the grounds

of Yaddo?


A Thought of You

 

I thought of you

the day they launched Atlantis.

In the after burner’s gleam

I thought I’d seen

with a vision of crystal clarity,

another maiden’s voyage

upon an emerald sheen.


Poet to Poet

 

Today,

as many days lately

you

were in my thoughts.

 

Reflections, the way life once was

images

of bright white footlights

and snow covered mountain peaks

cascade

like sparkling, glittering, gleaming crystals.

 

Transforming,

melting, melding

like flowing rivers

into the sea.


Podunk Poet

 

Phoning

Friendly

Felicitous

Females

For

Fun.


Loves Hurts

 

Leaving you

Standing there

Falling wet snow

Me

Tripping over a piece of my heart

As I turned to leave

Ev what a black widow’s web you secretly weaved

 

I wish that you could see

From inside of my eyes

To hear the sound of empty lies

 

Wondering why?

 

Leaving me unaware waiting there.


A Promise to Evelyn

 

Today, I heard

the mountains call our names

through the Northwest Wind.

They said,

I was to be a mountain poet king

and you an artist queen.

A snowflake for your dreams.


The Burning Desire

 

In you eyes,

I see

a sunrise

glowing vibrantly orange

cresting to illuminate the land

of an American Nation

from the top of the Grand Traverse

at thirteen thousand feet in elevation,

my soul smolders like the fires of Yellowstone

off in the distant horizon

making their way

2 days later

into the Vail Valley

 

In your eyes,

I see

destiny

crawling from the frothing seas

growing into an everlasting sanctity,

like a light beckoning

me into eternity.


Unrequited Love

 

Love is a gift,

to be given without the expectation of reciprocation.

 

Love heals,

the wounds of temporary setbacks and failures.

 

To be held in esteem by a loved one,

is one of life’s magnificent pleasures.

 

Mutual love,

forms a bond as healthy and strong a mighty Sequoia.

 

Unrequited love,

eventually empties the well.


Manhattan Midnight Moonlight

 

“Listen,” you say, “it’s the worst case of

blue balls I never go this long

with out it.”

 

You say, “How do you do it?”

 

You mean me

being over thirty never

married, your manhood

suspect by, aunt’s, grandmother’s, divorcee’s.

 

Saying always, “I know this nice girl.”

 

You say, “Your problem is, you place women

on pedestals give them

the top

and they’ll hurt you.”

 

Me saying, “I don’t view all women

as my semen receptacles.”

“Listen,” you say, “I love my wife,

it’s just that I get tired of it,

being the same sometimes’

I just want it to be different.”

 

Me jotting down phone numbers

from a seedy pamphlet

lit by the dim lights on

The Staten Island Ferry

watching the crashing waves by

Ellis Island’s Statue of Liberty.

 

Little pink nipples peering

through black leather bras

crotch less pantied women wielding whips

captions reading Dominique, Desiree,

Master card and Visa accepted.

 

Riding graffiti filled subway cars

into Times Square,

stumbling drunk down cracked concrete sidewalks

cramming quarters into black plastic phones

seeking my idea of getting lucky.

Abandoning the search to purchase

a shish kebob from a man with a hibachi

in the Manhattan Midnight Moonlight.

You saying, “It’s probably dog meat.”

Then a panhandler’s blues saxophone wails.


In a Dream

 

Sometimes,

late at night I

lie awake and I

I catch a falling snowflake

and I wonder where my youthful dreams have gone.

 

It wasn’t long ago

I would sit with

Touloose, Crème King, Fast Eddy (The Buckle Meister), and Captain Zooms

on the various American Mountain Peaks

and discuss all the men wasting their youths

To live in bigger wooden boxes or drive fancier motorized metal containers,

climbing the ladder of corporate and factory society.


Just Accomplish It!

 

In order to put

mountains in the eyes

of your children,

keep them in the eyes

of your characters.


A Gift Given Me

 

One Day,

at the base of Whiteface Mountain

I thought of someone special and

about a gift he’d given me.

 

I ascended swiftly into a silver silken sea

in a crystal vision Mother Mary came to me.

She whispered to me softly,

words to sooth my fear.

I soared so gracefully

far above the timberline.

I descended slowly only

after I had picked my line

down among the emerald pines.

 

One Day,

at the base of Whiteface Mountain

I thought of someone special

about a gift he’d given me.


Written for the shortening of Chair Six of Whiteface Mountain for the 1980 Winter Olympics.

 

 

Chair Six

 

Oh! carousel of well worn

blue wooden chairs ascend me swiftly

upon the summit of your face.

Stark, lonely, loving, longing,

fair milk maiden’s lips

forever locked, granite windswept cheeks

ominous in your blue ice

laden grace.

 

Teeth chattering trembling fear

your North winds wailing,

searching, searing, stiff

frozen denim jeans.

The smell of

wet grey woolen poncho’s.


Turning out the Faithful

 

They,

 

tore down the old rustic white porched hotel and replaced it

with a brand new concrete and steel sparkling Hilton

at one Mirror Lake Drive.

 

I met a man in the Ancient Mariner who sold the Olympic

Organizing Committee 50,000 hot seats for the grandstands

everyone knows just how fiercely cold the winter’s of Lake Placid can be.

 

Everyone was going to make a Million Dollars.

 

Christmas Eve, the Chair Six Lounge, all the non local, especially for

The Olympic Entrepreneurs, tears falling like the rain in the streets.

 

Everyone was going to make a Million Dollars.

 

The Semi’s rolling through town from Saranac

heavily laden with man made snow

a caravan of determination and fierce pride

that is the American Spirit.

 

During the build up to the period

of the 1980 Winter Olympics

many landlords turned out their

faithful tenants of many years

for the high rents they could receive.


Trading Trinkets, Tall Tales, Telling Lies

 

Downtown any town’s Main street

this town, down

passed a shellacked shiny brass handled

carved crescent moon wooden door of

“The Ancient Mariner”

across the street from an old fashioned Bijou

sequenced white bulb Marquee

Flashing, “Fiddler on the roof.”

 

Butted by a brown concrete, steel, Lake Placid Hilton

descending down two flights

of green canopied wooden stairs.

 

“The Artist’s Café”

lapped white waves of Mirror Lake

reflecting the lights of “The Cottage”

and the excitement of the 1980 Winter Olympics

across from the Lake Placid Club

it’s walls filled with the owner’s original art

bustling buxom waitresses.

 

Comrade Ivan leaping to his feet touching my pins from Solitude and Brighton

would I care to trade for his shiny Soviet bears

slapping him on the back saying,

“certainly mine were worth a bit more, perhaps

one possibly two martini’s.”

 

Telling tales till they became martooni’s

 

The bustling waitress asking,

“Was I, could I be, an Olympic Athlete?”

Me smiling devilishly saying,

“Why, yes,

would she,

care to come to my room.

to view my gold medals from Europe.”


“No Hang Gliding”

 

...Goats Path....

dropping off

a narrow winding cat walk

from Mt. Mansfield,

Stowe, Vermont.

 

A square wooden sign says,

“No hang gliding”.

 

Before entering a field of Moguls,

as big as Volkswagens,

parked sideways.


Behind the Times

 

I am just a lonely poet

atop an emerald pine

so come inside of my mind

and live behind the times.

 

Now I,

I ride the six thirty number 55 express

into a three hundred year old Albany, New York.

I,

I stare through my reflection

longing for connection

through the windows of a new days sun’s direction.

All the bitter couples faces

stirs my memories traces

where these haunting feelings linger

giving my Alta ego

the Utah blue’s again.

 

Oh! To be twenty five and hear the report

of a one hundred and five millimeter recoilless rifle echoing

a good morning cry

gently awakening avalanches

rumbling high above timberline

moving mountainsides of Mt. Millicent of Brighton,

and awakening a Honeycomb Canyon of Solitude

in Big Cottonwood Canyon of the Wasatch National Forest.

 

Alas, I choose to be

a lonely poet

atop my emerald pine

but come inside of my mind and live behind the times.

 

By the hourly fruits of my labor

I am the last man in History to be awarded the coveted

seasons ski pass at Arapahoe Basin.

The, then, highest lift operated ski mountain in North America.

 

To the accompaniment of Daniel’s sitar I recited my poetry

to the laughter and gaiety of the passerby’s for dollar bills

in the village square at the base of Vail Mountain.

 

While my contemporaries have accrued the material possessions

that I now desire

by giving up their youths to do so,

I have quietly collected snowflakes and mountain peaks.

 

Forever there will loom a fork in the road of life’s horizon

some will follow the trodden path

while others leave a wagon rutted trail.

 

Neither should carry the label of success or failure

instead we should applaud the individual freedom

to make that choice,

only in America.


Out of the Gondola Shed at Gore Mountain

(with Touloose)

 

Bright radiant red

chariot cherry plastic bubbles

“All the way to the top men,”

a lift attendant’s

warm wry smile.

 

His bright orange ski cap,

pulled well over the ears

Keeping out the biting cold.

 

Clomp and thump,

Clomp and thump,

hurriedly mad crazed killers

Plunging home our skis and poles.

 

Swish,

Heaven’s gate slides shut

a zero down gloved hand

bearing a radiant silver cross

that turns the key

clicking the latch

locking away

the chosen ones.

 

Bumping, bouncing,

bursting out

bathed in luminous sunlight

ivory crystals

set upon forest green pines

sparkling

pale blue skies

swaying, swinging,

precariously perched on a sterling

stranded string

dangling there.

 

Touloose

his purple passion hat

cocked over an optic gleam

a comrade in arms

comes his familiar cackle,

“Ain’t it the tits,” his breath hangs frozen

a cumulus cloud

moist

splashing against my brow

dissipating with our fears

into the quiet

frigid serenity.


The, “Oh My God!” Refrain

 

I have not many material possessions

material possessions are balls and chains

But, I know every inch of every trail

and every mountain peak in America.

 

I once walked from Dillion, Colorado over

the Continental Divide through Loveland Pass to

stop at Central City the oldest City in Colorado.

 

Where God made all men,

but Commander Colt made them equal

To meditate upon Virginia Canyon,

nicknamed, “Oh My God Canyon!”

after the first words that are

uttered by the view

of it’s grandeur.

 

Before continuing through Nederland

and the mountain tunnels of route six

where the prairie dogs play

at the base of the Flat Irons

rising out of the Gold Hills

to welcome you to the Valley floor of Boulder.

just to get the zipper on my tough traveler

knapsack repaired for free at the factory.


Against the Wall

(At Killington, Vermont)

 

Listen!

The prevailing winds

whisper,

they dance,

across the rolling meadows,

at Killington in Vermont.

 

Blowing wet snowflakes

that stick to my eyelids,

and freeze my toes.


A Powder Run

 

Light airy no where,

emerald trees my eyes see.

I hear nothing but fear.

Hidden pockets of which to fall in,

always reminding me of him,

God’s crystalline chowder.


(The further trials of the world’s greatest ski bum)

 

2 cents overdrawn

 

Mick Jagger on a full screen

MTV video screaming,

“I’m just waiting on a lady,

I’m just waiting on a friend.”

 

Gold Peak restaurant bar

warming my hands on a

steaming ceramic coffee filled mug

arriving one day later than,

the Vail Mountain employee draw.

 

Being 2 cents overdrawn and scribbling,

like Gollum caressing his precious, precious,

my powder snow poetry.

 

Leaving the restaurant like that,

I mean with blue words

on a white paper napkin

thinking them worth much

more than 2 missing pennies.

 

Pulling on down gloves

trudging into the wilderness,

like Strider the Ranger.

 

Never really fitting in

like a brown slab wood cabin

mud caulked chinked

with a grey stone chimney

sizzling snowshoe rabbit

smoke billowing wafting

through silent aspen’s.

 

It hangs drifting like

cotton ball clouds

sparkling crystals bending emerald boughs of pines.

 

A skinny ski trail snaking around

deep powder tree wells

to a stoked glowing fireplace

in the Arapahoe National Forest

warding off dusk.


A Tear By The Way

 

“Been climbing at Devil’s Tower

some of he 5-8 pitches were hard

Tho, I laughed all the way up.

 

I live in Breck, (Breckenridge, Colorado) during the winter

work as a waitron nights so I

I can board all day. Same

as now cept

I’m a fly clinging to and climbing

cracks all day.

 

Wyoming is big and beautiful,

endless vista’s and horizon’s

stretching into forever

glowing orange sun hanging

half in, half out of the Earth

light blue hue

tiny white wisps of cirrus

clouds rushing by

winds whipping

ripping my hair blonde

from it’s long pony tail

stinging my breasts.

 

There was nothing I could do

dangling on my descent

rappelling requires

complete concentration.

 

Saw you hitch-hiking your

blue and black Dana Design Pack

against your tan smooth skin

you know you have a climber’s body.

It’s too bad I turn here for

Eldora Canyon tho

this should get you far enough

out of Boulder.

 

It’s a pity

we couldn’t climb with one another.

My name is

Tear by the way.”


Elfie, Mr. Tweedy, and the Missing Insurance Claim Check

 

She is world renowned,

for her stained glass skiers in

Vail Village she cuts colored

pieces of glass places them carefully on

patterns of white Styrofoam

numbered in sequence, one

two, three in her shop she

fluxes between the cracks

before soldering with her hot iron

she reads novels in German

with and accent says,

“I still haven’t received my

insurance claim check for

Mr. Tweedy’s broken

World Alpine, 1989 piece.”

 

We had packed it and shipped it

ever so painstakingly in

bubble wrap, wrapped twice

after cutting foam panels for ends

and carefully placing it in cardboard,

suspended in foam peanuts

Taped in double boxes, prudently.

 

I should have known when

Mad Maxine the crazy U.P.S.

driver in her brown uniform

and red laced hiking boots

black smudged hands, from handling cartons

would come in to the pack-n-ship

telling dirty jokes,

“Do you know why Jewish women

have wrinkles around their eyes. It’s

from squinting at their husband’s

penis behind closed doors.”

Saying, “You want me to do what to it?”

 

She looks at the parcel with

the “This Side Up” and “Fragile”

stickers plastered all over it and

says, “Hey, what state is

the city of “Fragile” in anyway,

and did you know these

are supposed to be packaged

so that they can be

thrown at least ten feet.”


Dr. Bumps!

(of Vail, Colorado)

 

He’s Fred and he’s sixty

and he’s been banged in the head.

The oldest skier on the Pro

Mogul Tour.


How It Should Be

 

Some men grow

and they go away to war.

My friends and I

we went to ski.

It is how it should be.


Free Nelson Mandella

(MON)

 

Harry Belafonte’s voice comes over

the Colorado Zephyr air waves yelling

“Is anybody out there?

Can any one hear me?

Is any one listening?

To a 1960’s movie

where he is the last black man

on earth, co-starring Inger Stevens.

 

“Free Nelson Mandella,” he yells,

“Nelson Mandella has been

a political prisoner for

the past twenty-five years

in a South African jail.”

 

Then Ziggy Marley sings an up

tempo reggae tune asking,

“Tomorrow people where is your best?

“Tomorrow people how long may you last?”

Suddenly I’m trans---ported to

The State University of New York at Albany

I’m in the library reading

the only book by the poet Lyn Lifshin

I can find written through

the eyes of Blue Seneca Indians

waiting for a Bob Marley

concert without Bob Marley

just the wailers

I’m with Touloose

as usual and I say,

“I really wish you were a girl.”

(I’m tired of being alone in a crowd.)

(I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.)

 

I’m suddenly jolted back to reality, back into

my own political exile.

I think of Nelson Mandella languishing

in prison all the time

I was a spoiled young man

skiing all over America.

 

Jimmy Cliff comes on the Zephyr

playground of the rich and the famous

in the pristine Rocky Mountains.

Singing, “Sitting here in limbo

waiting for the sky to fall,

sitting here in limbo

but I know my faith will

lead me home.....

well

they’re putting up resistance,

but I know

my faith will lead me home.....”


(The most insane trial of the world’s greatest ski bum)

 

 

Please! No Ski Boots!

 

“Look, I’m a crazy writer!” I scream at

the sheriff of Nottingham,

“I’m being forced to live

in internal exile here

and I’m not supposed to be driving

and when they find out I was they

are going to lock me up

and throw away the key.

 

It’s ten thirty at night

this drunken skier just

stepped out in front of

my blue Toyota ski

bum car and you tell me

where the hell he was

skiing at this late hour?

 

When I hit him his

ski boots came all the way up

smashed my windshield, I

panicked and slammed on the brakes,

and he shot off the hood

his skis and poles were flying everywhere

and he hit the ground real

hard with a dull sickening thud

and a real deep moan.

 

Now my car is like everyone else’s

in the mountain’s of Colorado

it’s temporary tags

are expired and it’s

uninsured and now

the windshield is

cracked and broken.”


A Gandy Dancer

 

            A gandy dancer is the most primitive form of railroad worker. It is a small closely knit group of men bound tightly by the burden of their great toil. In the summer of 1979 after leaving A-Basin in Colorado, I was ski bumming and found myself in Kendricks Crossing of Wyoming on my way to ski Jackson Hole that following winter. Being broke and destitute I found myself living on a railroad siding in the middle of nowhere Wyoming and sleeping in converted rail cars, washing in shower cars and eating in dining cars.

            The rail was laid onto the rail road ties in one quarter mile pieces and because of the heat of the plains where they joined together they would often overlap as much as two to three feet. A large front end loader was brought in and a twenty foot piece of rail was suspended by a logging chain. The men were lined up on each side of the piece of rail. A maneuver known as bumping rail was performed. By striking the one quarter mile piece of steel with the twenty foot piece, we would take hours if not all day to move the larger piece the distance required to couple the rail together. There was often a song or a cadence shouted or sung to establish a rhythm.

            Thinking about it know, they were some of the best years of my life. The adventure and the humanity of the school of hard knocks. However, I did get to ski Jackson Hole that year.


Written on the plains of Kendricks Crossing, Wyoming

 

Gandy Dancer

 

Steel,

cold, hard, heavy,

steel sings, ring.

 

Gandy Man,

blisters upon your hands,

understand life’s lot.

 

Blue, so very god damned blue,

is the color that I choose,

just a starrin down at my tattered,

hiking shoes.

 

Grey,

grey is the color of my pants,

as yet one more,

of they’re working ants.

 

Writing my poems by the light

of a kerosene lamp,

my arms too tired,

to slide under my pillow,

looking toward another day closer

to a future filled with great white hope,

but a night time filled warding off

the smell of industrial soap.


(The Thoughts of the World’s Greatest Ski Bum)

 

An Alone Poem

 

I was all alone

at Kendricks Crossing, Wyoming

sitting Indian style on the rough wood

of a Burlington Northern Railroad

flat bed car.

 

Discussing life with an itinerant hobo,

when he jumped up and left

a half empty pail of rail spikes

along with his hammer.

 

For the beckoning call

of an open door

on a Santa Fe rail car.

 

Leaving me alone

to watch the sunsets

silhouetted against the ridges of the Big Horns.

 

Dying with the dull aching

in the muscles of my arms

between the lines

of one of my poems.


Written in Sheridan, Wyoming

 

Disco Bars

 

I am

just a child

of the sun, moon, and stars.

Sitting with my beat up brown,

Stetson hat in

Buffalo Bill’s Disco Bar.


Fresh Powder Down

 

A blinding blizzard beckons me into Steamboat Springs.

I arrive on the last greyhound from Vail.

My pockets full of snowflakes, a lonesome geyser’s whistle wails.

Always hiding, never tears to a cowboy’s eye.

Lord don’t let me be forsaken, the Baron’s have already taken

America by rail.

 

(Refrain)

 

(My darling I grow weary often lost without a home

but you know I’ll keep on searchin these mountain trails alone.

I wander through green valleys across the prairies, past the villages, farms and fields,

out beyond the concrete illusions where the Rocky Mountains pierce the aqua skies.

I find solace in the seclusion of another winter’s season, another place to ski,

as long as he will lay fresh powder down for me.

While you seek your fortune or search the world for fame,

be careful what you wish for, because when darkness falls upon you,

you’ll be wailing out his name.

Ski through barren aspens, see the forests through the pines,

sitting on my golden perch, am I crying out in vain?)

Sometimes you awake to find, you get what you need,

other times you take what you can get,

it is from the children that, they take everything.

Now I found that I possess this light,

from these mountains that I bring.

My gift is in my words, and for the children I’ll let them ring.

Go and tell everyone, silence is a snowflake falling,

until they hear me calling, to all the children I will sing.

Never take the last of anything.

 

(Refrain)

 

These day’s I’m a city, pretty girl painted, street wizard in his poems.

My freedom most men will never know, never have been wary of cardboard box labels,

fabled to contain rainbows.

Someday when their hair turns grey, their youth will have faded away,

with the colors that lost their shine.

The all American Gazebo Band plays behind, the new red white and corporate blue,

flag that flies against the changing hues.

Another rock opera story, of old glory and town with out it’s name.

Somewhere in time, the poet’s rhyme, makes a cosmic connection,

Then the Seer Sayers arrive in stages, and history endures the ages.

As a simple man who dreams beyond the Appletree Lane,

he sees a sunrise within her eyes.

And the hobo dude plays Howard Hughes, attempting to fill Dylan’s shoes,

to find out why they came.

But in disgrace, he falls from grace, to find success is not what they claim.

Listen Children to a thorn bird shrilly singing,

this truth you’ve heard, from a poet and his strings.


Fox

 

He said,

“My name is Vondall- but

you can call me Fox,

been all over the world.

 

Lived in Germany in the service.

 

From Oklahoma, if

Ya ever been there

you’d know why

I live in the Vail Valley,

but everyone calls me Little Joe.”


Hit and Run!

 

Sun Valley local sentenced

to 30 days in jail

and a fine of $300

in a hit and run

ski crash.


Million Dollar Cowboy Bar

(Jackson, Wyoming)

 

When I heard they had leather horse saddles

instead of stools

a slick polyurethane topped bar

covering silver dollars

said to be worth a million dollars

I couldn’t help it,

I mean

clomping down the old west

wooden sidewalk

into the local branch bank.

 

Exchanging hard earned

green back paper dollars

for shiny new silver ones.

One precariously placed behind

a rattle snake skin rimmed

beat up brown Stetson cowboy hat.

Sidling up to the row of saddles

stepping into a stirrup swinging

a Frye booted denim leg over it.

 

A real tourist

biting down hard on a shiny coin

not realizing it would hurt my tooth.

The way it never did

my childhood cowboy heroes.

Tossing it clinking on the bar

growling redeye bar keep.

My eyes drawn to his holstered

wood grained handled 44

rawhide string strapped thigh.

 

Thinking about it just now

I’d be tempted to ask.

Listen,

would you consider

a seedy graffiti filled

New York city subway car

5 black men with

razor sharp screwdrivers drawn

menacingly approaching asking

Brother can you spare a five?

A life threatening situation?

 

Or as a columnist for the New York Times

tells the story

a casual shakedown.

 

Would the people of the town of Jackson

erect

a Bernard Getz memorial statue

amidst an ivory elk antlered arched village square.

 

Where an honest man can

still carry a gun.


Lloyd Lambert’s Day At Hunter Mountain

 

You never did find out why you started receiving free passes

to Lloyd Lambert’s day at Hunter Mountain in the Catskills.

Perhaps it was a gift from the snow god.

 

Pure grape wine

that’s what the label said,

“Mad Dog 20/20.”

It certainly was bitter at eight o’clock in the morning.

The wine of the century,

along with a finely rolled joint,

thank God and Mogen David,

the proper tools for the proper job

and attitude adjustment.

 

Touloose,

Expert fire starter, the trick was to use excellent dry kindling,

of course the small jar of aviation fuel, from the silver streak, your BMW motorcycle,

had absolutely nothing to do with your great fires.

 

Spring skiing, magnum of wine,

chilling,

in the melting snows,

sausage patties sizzling on the open fire.

High Noon sun warmly glowing, creating little mountain streams.

 

You said,

“We are wise beyond our years, even the executive who works,

for General Motors and makes,

$100,000 a year,

with a matching 401K,

isn’t here today.

When we are old grey haired men,

about to pass from this world.

We will look back upon our lives and we won’t remember,

how much money we made,

how big our wooden boxes were that we lived in,

how many motorized metal containers we owned,

how big our yachts in our slips were,

we will remember and cherish,

our youth spent on mountains,

these days,

and savor the memories.”

 

Touloose, eminent philosopher, businessman, and ski bum,

comrade,

“Never take the last of anything I told you,”

handing you the last swig of wine.

 

The seventy year old man,

we drank shots with at the bar,

who had just won his first downhill race that day.

He informed us that we were lucky men.

 

We never did get to meet Lloyd Lambert,

although we were always in time for the Smorgasbord.


STH

(Snowbird, Utah)

 

S

T

E

E

P

E

R

 

T

H

A

N

 

Hell

 

I

F

 

You

 

F

A

L

L

 

T

H

A

T

 

I

S

 

A

L

L

 

X


Ski Patrolman

(For Touloose)

 

How is it that you need to be so free?

Why can’t all the other’s see

in a second’s glance

to perceive

the awesome danger of an avalanche.

 

While corporate executives

fill their briefcases with

unearned bonuses of business might

you fill your knapsack

with charges of DHP and pull start igniters

you know your right

when the charge has been thrown

the entire mountainside slides

exactly the way you knew it would.


Suddenly Life,

Was Turning Out To Be,

More than Just Mashed Potatoes and Gravy.

 

Leaving Denver’s

snow capped mountain peaks,

tearing, tugging at my heart.

 

A slick, sleek, silver jet streaks,

over Pac-man like farm fields,

flying towards Charleston, South Carolina.

 

May, Friday the thirteenth,

me, joking with my travel agent.

Saying, “as long I am not

on flight thirteen,

in the thirteenth seat.

Why yes, you certainly are

professional for only

your first week on your new job.”

 

Changing flights in Atlanta’s

soft computerized woman’s

voice saying, “Concourse B-

Use shuttle platform C.”

 

I deplane in Charleston,

walk out of the airport,

into the evening setting sun,

standing with by blue suitcases,

in Charleston, West Virginia.


Little Tommy Toot

 

“Does any body have any speck?”

Someone yells at the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival Theatre

in Charleston, South Carolina.

 

I slink down in my seat as

Professor types with tweed jackets and arm patches

turn to check out the unruly crowd.

 

Little Tommy Toot, the speck man

smiles his teeth clenched tightly

his eyes wide

like a mad crazed killer

as he passes a bindle

and a guitar pick.


Mount Sneffles

(14,150 ft.)

 

The turquoise water ripples

wind rustles yellow

aspen’s among dark evergreens.

Mr. Snuffleuffegus

can’t climb this one.


Mount of the Holy Cross

 

The melting spring snows

from nature’s ivory cross

trickle down through

the jagged rock ravines

filling the high alpine

earthen bowl of tears.

God’s way of crying

for his dying

Coventry.


Morning Light

 

Morning light,

revealed the gently falling snow.

 

Darkness unveiled,

Stole silently, stubbornly, assured of resurrection.


Mr. Plastic Fantastic

 

Old ski bums,

they never die,

they,

just turn plastic

but don’t mind me if

I seem somewhat sarcastic

It’s just that I

am practicing to be

Mr. Plastic Fantastic.


An Apology to all American Children

 

I’m so sorry children

now there is no

Mountain King

to let you

ski for free.


Pure Poetry

 

            Tyler Thompson was an Adventurer and would take his lumps where they came. He was the happiest when he was on a new adventure. It was his responsibility to write about them. If he didn’t who would? The Academic Scholars? The state dull scholars. The stiff upper lipped scholars who had never seen the inside of a railroad box car. The stuffy scholars who talked about grants and artist’s colonies, until you were bored to tears by their stuffy poetry and stale prose.

            Pure poetry he thought was sitting Indian style on the rough plank wood of a railroad flat bed car. The wind is gently rustling through your hair, the cool evening Wyoming wind. Your eyes are filled with thousands of mule deer slowly making their way into the fresh greenness of the Big Horns. The sun is big orange and wonderfully glowing vibrantly. Your arms are aching from swinging a twelve pound sledge hammer all day long. They hurt so much you don’t have the strength to put them under your pillow at night.

            You glance off into the heat shimmer of the distant plain. You squint into the sunset where the horizon and the narrowing tracks come together. You see a Burlington Northern coal train coming. You hear its horn cry. The cry cuts deep, deep into your soul and you are alone. You’re the loneliest you have ever been in your life, and you don’t want to be alone anymore. You have blisters on the blisters of your big hands and for the rest of your life every time you hear a train whistle, you instinctively shiver. You clench your big hand into a fist and you shiver in loneliness.

            Suddenly, you see on the front of the train that a big thick logging chain has come loose. It’s a big black ugly snake and it’s pounding the living piss out of the Wyoming Plains. You see Pedro, the Mexican who works the spike nailer. He can’t speak any English or understand it either. He is by the tracks. Your up on our feet on the flatbed car, your waving your arms, your tired arms, and your screaming into the wind. He can’t hear you. Your screaming and train the is bearing down on him. The chain is furiously pounding the plains. Your running and screaming. The wind is howling in your ears. Your screaming your head off and he can’t hear you or he can’t understand you, because he only comprehends that green means to start the rail road spike nailer and red means to stop it. The train is getting closer and so are you. He hears you holler and turns fully toward you. You yell to him, “Pedro! Pedro! Get the fuck out of the way!”

            You motion to him to turn around and he finally does. The big black ugly snake of a chain catches him in the stomach. The force of six diesel locomotives coupled to a mile of cars filled with Wyoming Anthracite forces the chain through Pedro like he was butter. Pedro’s torso topples to the ground and Pedro’s blood and his guts spill out of his standing abdomen, all over the Wyoming Plains.


A Star Is Born

 

So know you know,

I’m going to be

a golden American mountain poet star,

and I can’t even play a guitar



                                                          Upon the Mountains



Go upon the mountains 
my beautiful innocent children.

Leave the cities far behind.

For they in their ingratitude.

Condemn themselves to their solitude.


                                                           Lucky Me

Some men grow
and go away to war.

My friends and I
we went to ski.

Lucky, lucky me.


                                                        A Powder Run

Light airy
no where.
Emerald trees
my eyes see.

I hear
nothing but fear.

Hidden pockets
of which
to fall in.

Always reminding me
of him.

God's Crystalline Chowder.


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