maybe you haven't seen leaves do this

A Place

she said 
she knew
a place where she 
could make 
stars dance
on fallen leaves

i said
i knew
she might
be fooling
but when she took me there
there they were
...dancing

or did 
they dance
just for us

could no one else see

Milk Weed

leaves quit,drop

seeds will fly 
five to five hundred feet
to meet the monarchs 
now asleep 3000 miles away
to meet them with new pods

we drive past
as if this 
were ordinary

From Grey Beret: Ends and Beginnings

Ends and Beginnings


no stopping till the end of the line,
said the driver

worry was asking 
for the worst at that point,
so we dropped all that,
slid down the window and noticed 
a sharp green smell from the rim of  hills:
anticipation of Spring spoken to the air

and the bus was a dagger,
slipped through the heart
of a long-lost town,
the grey plywood window-fronts
now peeling by themselves,
without a new dress of roller paint

and finally, 
the bus stopped by the sea,
and we marched down
to the pebbles together,
past the rotting cranes
and flapping warehouse panels,

and we dipped our hands in the sea,
and we licked the salt water,
clean with abandonment,
and it spoke of beginnings
for the first time in a while

Grey Beret is Published

I got Grey Beret published at blurb: CLICK_THIS_FOR_GREY_BERET_CATALOG_PAGE

I can't get the preview very large. 
          Clicking the 'full page' button 
           at lower right helps some.

Why just self?
No pressure to sell nnn copies 
    to friends, family, etc...
For the most part I'll just print a bunch 
  at a time and sell some at local events.
  This worked well before.

I'm not worrying about moving 5 or 20 or 100 or 
   even 300 copies(hah).
 
It's great to do the art now
 and package it up, and it might be great later 
    to point to this and "Tahki" and "Nighthawks", 
      my other Blurb titles.

There are a few oldies that fit 
the Existential mold loosely, 
 but most poems are new.
Not sure about the next theme or style.
Something a bit more detached at moments, 
 I hope,
but an explorer never knows for sure.

This theme really needed to be collected and put out.

to the wondering

now
i have to say 
from abandoned sac base to sock drawer
from pallets to paladins
from tears to that last lost touch
goodnight now
goodnight to all the nows
that drove off down the interstate
now is for the living 
but a wake for the waking
the future a harbor for ghosts
history a pastiche 
of tainted trivia in vinyl suits
or mold and cracking leather
a breaking wave fingers reaching
from silent hopes curling drying
imagined posterity or grace
or just a dry cool green moment

lately i hear waves break 
on some tomorrow
do i dare
too late i can''t be stopped
something drifting closer
the earshot before the eyeshot
because the fog
something coming
something coming
say the waves
or the mirage

may there be 
punctuation without puncture
texture without rash

in my falling
may i catch a hand
upon a toughened root
be stopped in a level place
find some perch
where views hold still
enough to open
all around me
because i can do
almost anything
now

may i breath easy
may we start
wondering again

Under a Grey Beret

-------------------------------

I'm putting together a "Grey Beret" collection,
Existential poems for this confused era. All styles.
Not sure what the outlet will be.

The beret is an Existential ref. Grey covers midlife 
and the slushy state of society and economics.
Also, the "Grey Berets" were a division of the US Army
dealing with battlefield weather conditions, so that's
a fit too, for the officepark stuff.  Overall fun 
project title.

-------------------------------
"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!""
                                  ---John Greenleaf Whittier

Dear Mister Whittier

"It might have been";
This covers somewhat more 
Than anything that really was,
And much of what it might have been 
Would never be, because...

We tend to think the best 
Of what we've never had or seen.
So watered, it will bud and bloom,
Expand beyond the very rooms
Where we imagine...
That's right, what might have been,

So blow, But only gently, 
On the coals
Of what you haven't got,
Because that fire in your soul,
That strange resentment,
Doesn't mean a lot
..except
Maybe, that we're simply born 
To walk the rain, alone and plain,
And dream of gold in pots.


       --J.Knowles 2013 (Grey Beret)

Foodie Poems

I've got a few poem's at Chef E's journal new: ANNA_PURNA_MAGAZINE I don't have many food-oriented poems genrally, but I found some for the potluck!

Install blues

install blues


press a bumper sticker on the sky
twenty miles long describing all
the upgrades, downloads, 
fixes, service packages,
spurious offers
and disingenuous warnings,
pop-ups, toolbars, scripts, tutorial clips, 
patches, batches,
prerequisites, 
reboots,
re-launches, 
toggles, dongles,
ISOs you may have RAR'd,
existential moments like
yes-go-ahead-and-run-this-i-dont-know-it-from-nerve-gas,
mantras you speak to the hourglass,
refactorings, that bug-out rap,
printing notes before you close all apps,
fuser burnings, paper jams, 
phonetics for top lid slam,
the sound of that worm screw on paper tray 2,
whether your system "has" V2002.05.X slash 4
for some unspecified thing you restored,
whether you have had contact with 
unsafe cluster groups or stale Java beans recently,
why the system cannot find "path specified" decently
but will not tell me what it is,
why Simon and Garfunkel are top score
in the helpline hits, the call to prayer
on hold for Bob in Bangalore.

Or does the above make the reasons clear?
      "Hello darkness, my old friend..."
..come on in,
 there's plenty of us here.