by R.S. Mengert

     If you can empty your own boat
     crossing the river of the world
     no one will oppose you.
Chuang Tzu

I started emptying my boat
late into my journey,
mid- stream, already attacked, rammed,
boarded by pirates.
My boat was leaking
when I started emptying my boat
to cross the river
unopposed, only to discover
I had already crossed the river
opposing with the cutlass and the cannon
every boat I saw,
full or empty.
My boat was sinking
when I started emptying my boat
not half a league from landing on the shore
only to discover that
for every thing I emptied
from my boat —
anchor, life raft, mast and rigging —
I picked up something bigger, something heavier.
Empty keg, spent cannonballs,
rusted cutlass, albatross carcass,
I picked them up and stowed them in the hull
until my overloaded boat sank
just before landfall.

by Paul Nelson

     The function of waves is to bring the salvage
     from shipwrecks.
                             — Ramón Gomez de la Serna

Went back to the book, had to flesh out what 49 was.  Was a parallel, was a universe.  A series of them.  A quag was where they were headed to, a world without soul or where soul was weak or with held w/ religious zeal.  Back to the book for a whiff of an old song sung new, a star-eyed babe made real again out of meat and memory.  Star dust and comet stuff.  A tail raised at the end of an age end of yet another yuga.

A brother lost, per-
haps for a time, yet another brother made up of mud, not as mad, almost as innocent.  A bother made up of blood’s memory a memento mori of sorts and still seeking sentience often lost between legs (or ahead of them), lost in the reeds as if the product of a bad shank or grief ’s weight abandoned finally shook loose how torque lost its pull, latter day Torquemadas lost their power, laughter cast its healing glance upon the mercenaries and left mercy.

Mercy’s mission mumbled in the round, widdershins.  Mercy’s mumble infinite (or so it seemed) redolent, or so we saw, radiant or so the jewels in the net of Indra surmised.  If it was quag to which we were headed we’d brake,  we’d  wrestle  a  wrench  away  from  mon-keys or from the late capitalist hammer squad- ron. We could smell the quag coming and wanted none, wd find the wealth of wet cement to lay our head on, wd listen for  dreams just this side of bricks and cayenne weapons way away from any gumbo. Where there’d be quag we’d beckon mercy w/ songs mumbled at first, right up past the gut’s obstruction then bel- lowed into latihan air like a bapak wd, blown like Birks fat cheeks a monk’s last remission a bird song hurled at the oncoming winds.

He’d sing it three times
and each time the word
mercy caught a wave, wd
begin to stick.

by Paul Nelson

     Those tiny pocket diaries make the year smaller.
                                 — Ramón Gomez de la Serna

& a year will fit in two pocket journals will fit 400 or so seventeen syllable sentences will take on myriad dream images.  There will be dreams of penis heads restrained by Eddie Vedder’s sutures. The will be a Big Hump fire burning over a thou- sand Olympic acres and Coltrane’s My Favorite Things not quite drowning out the sounds of a cat on the way to the last shelter.

It’s in the pocket
journal those Qinghai memories are toasted water- melon   seeds   and   tsampa   lessons   of  sugared je yogurt and the vivid detail of the thangka Consort of Tantric Deity Who Responds According to Pray – er.

(Your puny prayers
add muscle in this
age of great velocity.)

So you date them add a please return hope the pages don’t stick so you skip or frighten yrself with the notion of a day of no sentence.  You chart your life by ‘em far from the Nepali woman who stitched the latest one which carries pressed flowers from your day on the Great Wall, the day she said with amazement in her wet-the-booth Akasaka way: We’re walking on the Great Wall of China!

You leave the board mutinies to another bit of cloth and pixel where dreams of the odd dark meat have you chewing tough again but being civil about it or a line overheard: If I promise someone a blanket, I give it to them  and how Mary Summer Rain knows it’s solace and you tell no one you know where the tracking device is because you don’t bring your legal evidence to the futbol pitch you know when the wind blows you’ll see a chicken’s ass and a legitimate petition to that side of the veil makes this one sweeter with a local porter and a view of a Big Hump Fire sending its smoke signal to beckon another September pilgrim.

by Paul Nelson

     Horse flies are smudges on the air.
             — Ramón Gomez de la Serna

Dragonflies are silent fireworks.  Into the heart of a carnivore we go & see her arrive 30mph on the solstice see her stalk the rushes & sedges   recon the ponds    work the grass tips    maybe let the fresh sperm be scooped out to mate again maybe see you out thousands of individual eyes maybe shoot up to spy another dragonfly 125 feet above.

Dragonfly  older than dinosaur  cardinal meadowhawk filigree skimmers    western forktail coal-fronted threadtail  Apache dancer  Aztec dan- cer immortal unreliable more spark than flame more action than lengua mala  more meat eater than lilac – sniffer   more drunk than your last hallu – cination   four wing’d independent flight.

Gauzy wings glitter
in summer solstice
sun.

7:04P – 6.25.11

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015387489_solstice22m.html