Needing a place
to rearrange some writing
I rolled into Yosemite on the one-way road.
They gave me a tent and a job as a potwasher.
Over time, the pot room became a place for the mind.
And I became the night man in a winter valley …
I’m a night man on the beach
being chased by the tide.
I gathered up some wood
and began to make a fire.
As the waves came in sevens,
one, two, and three.
The pull of the moon
bringing in the sea.
I need money time and shelter,
to write another while.
Returning to the fire to rearrange my pile.
Rearranging my pile.
Chose someone to talk to
feeling foolish by the heat.
Described an equation
of farm tools, land, and speed.
My choices were all simple,
keep living off the bike
or find a place for a year or more
and settle down to write.
I need money time and shelter,
to write another while.
Returning to the fire to rearrange my pile.
Rearranging my pile.
The bones finished burning.
The sea lulled me to sleep.
A storm was coming
so I started heading east …
Arriving with the storm
with forty dollars and a worn out bike.
Photographed in a Stetson hat
for the union 535.
I took the job, I took the job.
I took the job, I took the job.
Got a tent and an iron bed
An old school table and a rolling chair.
I swept and washed it out.
I said, I swept and washed it out.
I took the job, I took the job.
I took the job, I took the job.
We’re all cooks and cleaners on the line.
We all need money and time.
I’ll take the cash right now.
I’ll take the cash right now.
I took the job, I took the job; I took the job, I took the job …
Take the bus or ride the bike.
Punching in, start at five.
Greasy pans, dirty knives.
What’s the deal, Chef Mike?
I’m going home to write all night.
Greasy floors, loud machines.
Busy time, get em clean.
Mop the floors, wash the mats.
What’s the deal, Chef Mike?
I’m going home write all night
I’m going home write all night …
Yosemite is a small hole
in a the Sierra granite.
and I’ve got a job in the pot room
that works for a while.
I’ve been washing pans at night,
then writing poems and small pieces
about a low winter valley
while the snows are falling.
My employers are large
and impersonal, which is fine with me;
because I borrowed some tools
to write chef Mike a poem
asking for more hours.
But I hit the wrong button
on an office printer
sending it out to every office
the Delaware corporation has, except his.
But I’ve got better equipment now.
So thank you for the Christmas money
and lunch with Uncle Mike …
Evenings til midnight.
It’s white plastic walls
with brown tile floors
as the gray river freezes.
Some cooks burn, I’ve learned, some don’t,
they’re all in their supper years.
And knives scrape off burned onion scum.
The pot room’s a place for the mind.
The pot room’s a place for the mind.
I imagine a woman some nights.
My hands ache from lifting mats in the machine.
Speaking out loud to every last one.
Then my questions, they become …
How are your conditions?
God is all around us, where is your bedroom?
Into the future, with an old life.
This room is a place for the mind.
This room is a place for the mind …
I just came back from the waterfall,
in the shade of a granite wall.
Searching with a borrowed light,
the moon dropped down on a white tree night
with forest greens fading into blackness.
On my way through the valley snow,
wet grime by the meadow
I lost contact with the scene,
that granite is a changing thing.
That granite is changing into blackness
and whatever else fills the sky, whatever else fills the sky.
No, you’re never alone.
No, you’re never alone.
Surrounded by the changing abstract.
Surrounded by the changing abstract.
Surrounded by the changing abstract.
Time stood still in a western haze,
memorized as granite grays,
I drank with immortal logs
in the twisted woods of an evening fog
stepping down to tops of trees.
In the cold night feeling, and whatever
else fills the sky, whatever else fills the sky.
No, you’re never alone.
No, you’re never alone.
Surrounded by the changing abstract.
Surrounded by the changing abstract.
Surrounded by the changing abstract.
Surrounded by the changing abstract …
When the Yosemite sun goes down
sometimes I’ve gone to a stone bridge across the Merced River.
Where there’s a night feeling
between those night trees
along with whatever else fills the sky.
And your letter filled in the gaps this time.
While I sat on the stones
reading with a borrowed light
in the wind sound with a river down below.
Then on my way home, I wondered
if you’d written it
At a table or on your knees …
I’m not a believer, but I believe in people that do.
A paralyzed woman has asked for a poem, others have asked too.
So after work can you touch them with luck, not shooting stars,
and keep them from harder things.
The potroom is running cold tonight, and I hesitate in asking …
. . .
To a Yosemite Friend in Georgia,
When you’re crying in a lonely bed
and paralyzed young in your own way.
I hope that life
becomes an idea in the evening breeze
or a night wind at speed.
I know it’s not
but as the endless moment
you come from unfolds.
You’re young and you’re old.
I’m a grown man
who’s promised you a poem
and you have such pretty eyes …
A long piece of moving water
under the cold sun.
Or an aging motorcycle
riding down a river’s pretty leg.
It’s a day off. It’s a day off.
What’s my kind of life?
A farming desert where I kissed my wife.
After changing the night water in the moonlight.
After changing the night water in the moonlight.
Is there any more? Is there any more?
Is there any more water in the moonlight?
Is there any more …
An old woman on the bus took my seat,
surrounded by her bed light and her old things.
I named her an Anne, maybe an Anne,
a great looking woman ready to die.
Maybe a widow in the dawn,
who’d played the oboe, but her oboe’s gone.
I named her an Anne, maybe an Anne.
I hope she gets to the symphony.
A mile south of the tracks
by an old schoolhouse full of the past,
she put it all away, her oboe’s gone, her oboe’s gone away.
An old woman on the bus took my seat
surrounded by her bed light and her old things.
I named her an Anne, maybe an Anne.
I named her Anne, maybe an Anne.
I named her Anne, maybe an Anne.
I named her Anne, maybe an Anne …
Forest fires outside the valley
meant there was no power in the park
and it was blacker than bare feet bottoms.
Everyone seemed to have flashlights
and candles except me. I was night blind,
avoiding the stumps on my way to the store
for beer and maybe a flashlight.
Inside lanterns glowed over crooked lines
and they were out of lights
so I just bought some warm beer
before walking up toward
the abandoned tents above the store.
My oversized Birkenstocks
carried a lot of sand on the rise
to the granite beneath Glacier Point,
where over time granite slabs have peeled down
and become shattered piles forming the Terrace.
A few stars flickered through the tree tops
as I shook sandal sand loose
and the rugged Terrace rose
seventy yards behind the store.
Working east in the twisted woods and boulders
I tripped through a landscape memorized
as rough granite grays and forest greens
fading into surrounding blackness.
Finally opening a beer in the shipwrecked boulders
I drank with immortal logs stretched longer
than horizontal rockets and kept swallowing,
nodding up at towering evergreens
the smoke filled valley smelled of burning pine
while the abandoned tents
seemed a gathering of stripped frames.
Leaning against one of the two by fours
a woman’s voice echoed from the far end
of the naked frames maybe asking for a companion.
She didn’t ask again. I opened another bottle
without pursuing her in the darkness, then swallowed
more beer on the way down from the Terrace.
Out of the woods and boulders,
I kept going down toward the meadow.
The power was still off after the beer store closed.
And when the apple grove opened onto the meadow
you could see how the western end of the valley
captured most of the smoke from El Portal.
I walked further and sat alone in the grass
surrounded by granite abstract,
except for the same few stars mixed with drifting ash.
Then the wind changed and I found
you’re never really alone with the surrounding abstract
as a few half words floated from the grass.
Three beers left, I opened one
and watched the lights on the canyon walls.
They were big wall climbers flashing lights
at some rangers bellowing back through bullhorns.
Swallowing my beer as voices swam from the meadow
telling them to switch the goddamn horns off.
Then the wind and moon descended on the sea of grass.
And a pot washer hour turned in the northern sky
while time stood still in the western haze.
Smoke drifted away and I went deeper into the sheep grass.
I was laying flat by the trees
when a leafy kind of woman’s whisper
surprised me wanting a cigarette for her journey.
I hand rolled her a Drum, then lit it
with one of my last wooden matches.
The woman had a sun stained face
above some worn travel clothes
she inhaled deeply as the fire still climbed
to that Spanish word for door
with the sound of an employee’s child
conceived in Boy’s Town.
Then she put her face into mine
whispering she’d found a man
hiding in the woods from the rangers.
Her English wandered like a low river.
I nodded as she kept whispering
that the man was a big wall climber
writing a book on physics.
I nodded again so she quickly placed her hands
lightly on my face saying he’d combined two kinds
of weirdness, what kind was mine?
Her question got my hands aching.
Somehow she must have understood
dropping her hands from my face
to crack my fingers one by one
while I asked myself what kind of weirdness was mine?
After my last finger cracked
I told her I’d been writing a letter to an imaginary woman.
Then the pot washer hour continued
and the wind blew over dry grass
before she asked if my woman had an odd name?
I said maybe,
She reached for a Drum and said her name was Johanna
Rolled two and after we smoked,
told me she’d been up in the boulders.
Was she hungry and broke?
No, but she needed to get cleaned.
We got up and Johanna moved through the grass
wearing a kind of dark cloak, brown, black or even green.
We turned right at the road and then we turned left
toward the ice rink and cleared the trees around the parking lot
where she stopped and stared
up at the south rim of Yosemite.
Standing and staring in a maroon cloak, maroon because
some halogens on a pole told me the color.
Nearby was the big green rental tent
and stupid battered trucks.
Johanna turned and faced the north wall.
A smoky kind of place
with the granite’s water stains
stepping down to the tops of the trees.
She looked at the wall for a while and asked my name
which was Roy, and Johanna said
she knew a place called that in New Mexico.
Then after moving a few yards away,
she spoke my name quietly.
And again throwing her head back at the granite.
Kept slowly turning around gazing at everything.
When I joined her,
she asked what was my kind of life?
A farming desert where I kissed my wife
after changing night water in the moonlight.
Is there anymore?
Well, over by my tent someone has a tomato
in a protective wire cage but the raccoons laugh
knowing the fruit will never come
because they hardly grow in the cool,
and I have a towel for you
and a key to the women’s shower …
Mormon dawn muttering through muttering rains
rolling past barns not farms.
Damp gravel road out of another town
passing the twisted frames inside biker graveyards.
Accidental rider shook quivered and died
now their sadness follows you from Utah
oily gray dawn, complicated rain, muttering pain,
twisted frame, biker blood in motorcycle graveyards.
Water Buffalo on the gravel road out of Utah.
My cook friend Glenn,
he told me once a long time ago,
he made a deal with himself,
when it’s time, he’d go.
Maybe in the spring, but better in the fall.
And never with the snow
when it’s time, my time to go,
Glenn said, my cook friend said,
Glenn said I’d know …
You know you’re hammered
when you’ve staggered to the machine in the rain
and bought Three Musketeers instead of Snickers.
And you misread the E-7.
So now you’ve got
a bag of those sun fire Cheetos.
Not the regular kind.
And there’s not enough water at the waterfall
to slake your thirst as those sunfire Cheetos burned your ass.
Then you died lonely from thirst.
And your body was found with orange teeth …
Last month I met a young girl.
She was 8 years old in a bar.
Her name was Lucia Rose Laz.
And we traded poems.
I gave her a copy of my Cheetoh Poem.
She game me a copy of her Rainbow Llama Poem.
So here it is.
Rainbow Llama Poem by Lucia Rose Laz.
When I walked to New York in the summer
with my shaved-hair guy friend,
we saw a rainbow llama on the way to Mexico.
But I don’t get it
we’re going to New York …
Angel Hicks was a centerfold
who was always in the middle of things.
Sometimes they’re blonde
more often they’re red,
depending where the evening leads.
She’s got a standard poodle with orange toenails
His name was six, but he goes by five.
Angel Hicks, she was a southern pro.
She did what she did to survive.
Well, I met her in the Groveland,
a hard little shot place in the middle of town.
She said she’d lied to all her lovers
before ever sitting down.
Angel Hicks was a centerfold
who was always in the middle of things.
Sometimes they’re blonde
more often they’re red,
depending where the evening leads.
Angel Hicks, she was a southern pro,
yeah Angel Hicks, she was a southern pro,
yeah Angel Hicks, she was a southern pro, yeah Angel Hicks! …
Using a lover’s old pen
and wearing a broken down harvest hat
I’m a Yosemite pot washer
offering you cold compass skies and cemeteries
with a sense of two a.m. on the grave stones.
South through the cedars
the moon colors snow streaked granite walls
like an old man’s hands.
And when you glance up
toward the timekeepers in Yosemite
they’re Lindbergh’s successors
leaving superb lines night after night and you hear
the same strange offerings to Woodie Guthrie.
Someday all my bones will be washed
in a sand colored river lined by black oaks
under a black sky in the nuance of the half life
But I’m here by the graves and scaffold branches
making an offering to absent trees
before the granite chairs and benches rise
to ramparts on the high ground
where the halflife on the high ground has a hard voice
with an entry fee lookin’ down and you work to stay there.
Apropos of nothing, I believe it was the political writer
Richard Reeves who said we hire them
for four of five decisions: the kind
that will last down the generations
Makes me wonder what kind of day
Abraham Lincoln was having when he decided
to set Yosemite beside thence, forward and forever free.
These moldering bodies and stones can’t tell me
but some minds see a long ways
past the graveyards and what’s to come.
Bob Dylan’s the cold copper name
of a suspicious old man on a national journey
telling us where he’s been.
His twisting voice has a nasal bass line now
and twelve string Rickenbackers in the background
of a perpetual mirror watched by strangers.
The blown harmonica thoughts hover over the land
with elbow driven pianos and pounding cat paw drums
on the high ground washing down to the downstream union
we all hold in our televisions.
Some time ago the voice evolved
from old stoves or a young boy’s radio.
Over the years lyrics are stubborn thieves
around our fires and easy chairs and there’s eight kinds
of voices in the nuance of the half life.
And sometimes the voice under the moon
becomes a nighthawk over the national diner
above that special land where the harmonicas have meaning.
I imagine that kind of half life is tiring
after climbing over the mountains
and stumbling into anthems.
Maybe it makes you feel like I’m nodding
at an unknown boy’s hole in this Yosemite graveyard
next to where the rangers sleep.
Instead I’m heading through the trees
toward the oneway road
where a white blanket covers eight acres of meadow
and the exchange of ideas has gone plastic.
The original climbers came in old Fords
with packs of Camels without knowing very many routes.
And their canvas baggage was heavier then.
Now the surrounding granite impounds big wall climbers
and changes the nature of marriage
when the jail’s behind the cedars.
Closer to home, there’s eight acres of meadow
with stars bursting over my canoe on the snowy asphalt
and where the hell is Mars as the snow falls
on my hat from overhanging trees.
My socks are swollen scum after washing
the residue of airport food in the Pot Room.
And the sky is shooting light over the Royal Arches
while I’m beggin’ on my bended knee
for more constellations and ships at sea.
But as my shoes track past the moonlit meadow
the larger granite asked if complex tools are necessary.
There’s always a man running straight up the slab
who doesn’t use any tools except for his hands
as the meat bees chase his ass.
And as the black meets the white shoulder blade
of HalfDome. I recalled how Guthrie fell
between the Brooklyn State Hospital
and the Grand Canyon at sundown.
But after he’s gone, I’m just a pot washer
walking from a Dylan graveyard in the pot washer hour
because the voice fifty miles out to sea
needs the universe to swallow him whole.
And the howling moon, she’ll feel lucky that the half life
pounded and whipped him into shape …
The undertow was flowing at two in the morning,
through the hollows, throught the draws,
til I came through a hole and into the wild
with a line about Lincoln’s shawl and Roosevelt’s chair.
I kept on following the right of way.
Of course I look tired and worn
cheat, starve, or leave,
I’m starting to see,
I’m just confused and shut down.
Further down the road through old Mississippi
with abandoned downtowns, but it’s jail still survived
blown pages in a sea of weeds by the tracks
bottomed out, whiskey drought.
My return left me an old man
where everything seemed bought or sold.
Cheat, starve, or leave,
I’m starting to see,
I’m just confused and shut down …
A book is almost never done, so it goes.
A second winter in the park, it told me so.
All those things I imagined.
Oh, they know.
There’s too much drink, I’m written out,
close the doors — it’s time to go.
Too much drink, I’m written out,
close the doors. Shipped the files,
cleaned the tent, packed the bike,
I’m written out, it’s time to go.
Down the mountains,
turning south, Mojave, New Mexico.
Down the mountains,
turning south, Mojave, New Mexico …
