1996 Road Movie Road Rant & Buddha Rambling

1996 Road Movie  Road Rant & Buddha Rambling

of beauty
Utamaro's home, Yosemite falling-- 
those dharma bums, 
like the mad Chinese, 
Cold Mountain

those guys at Sabrina basin 
Big Sur, the Birds of America, 
Hokosai and Audubon
gita-sutra, Zen moment 
sitting at Glacier Point, 

little golden Buddha 
to represent something, else yet still--
100 years of Endo push, 
flowers and blue

hidden Pahari histories, 

the light 

comes and goes,

bellows breathe

earth revolving,

flowers bloom--

in and out

the rhythm

dark and light

repeating archetypes

of different seasons, new beginnings

a fall 

into edenic possibility, 

this, journey to the west

this, self against the demise, 

fighting battles 

in the sunny blue

plunging to winter dream, 

yelling across the void 

madly singing

Krishna, Buddha, Walt

all revolving

gulping

after the formlessness

speeding

through

sparkled spaces, one with the stars

walking on

I’m stepping across America 

through daisies,

the American Grain, Davy Crockett, 

Blue Man, with bells--

blue Jay way, 

head full of diamonds 

and black sneakers

planting sunflowers, oh my beloved 

Crispin, friend, tending the birds

Chaplinesque, 

a butterfly net in Toulomne Meadows, 

a fool for art, 

here in the mountain air

gone fishin’, 

insane muttering,

across the silences

I’m out in the trees--

It’s all there is!

I haven’t even started,

but I needed to hear myself,

say it 

to know it.

The Road Movie poem was mostly detailing painting trips out west. Besides that though, it was often an exploration into the profane as subject. Much as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, subjects of the profane world would come up, subjects seeming of the more contemporary world. Subjects which came up but are not yet integrated, so not poetry, or a part of any wholeness.

I find as a result most of it doesn’t hold up as poetry. I could not even find a good example of what I am saying as it is not yet formed just a word or two like Bronco Billy? A hint of an archetype but stuck in a reference to a contemporary situation which will probably be forgotten. 

Maybe what is sacred is that which finds it’s place in the heirarchy which we then call poetry. Much of that poetic subject it seems the contemporary world has tired of.

It is somewhat like tiring of nature! Tiring of that which is, Out There! We are very much today of the political urban existence. It doesnt seem to make what I am thinking of as good poetry.