On draining into the this
porcelain commode from the
1860’s, my host told me it’s customary for
Swiss men to sit on the toilet
when peeing, out of respect
to Swiss women.
This is American women who
clean the dribble spots on
toilet seats from American
men each day
~ ~ ~
This a culture where men
sit in honor of women,
who are not under but
over things that are intangible,
things that are not meant to
be understood by lower animals,
men from other cultures may
think Swiss men too soft
to sit on the seat every time,
so it may be the Swiss women
who also sit down every time
they make love out of respect to the men.
~ ~ ~
What does it say about the
men who sit when they pee
out of respect to women.
What does it say of men who
don’t sit when they pee.
This is what life is when people
are living with real people.
To when people are not living.
This is what the clouds rain
when it falls, it just falls
where it may on Earth.
This man
This woman
are not clouds that make rain,
but the Earth, and dampened moss
that absorbs water, land masses,
people, rainwater and wet
cobblestones, where a man sits for
a woman.
~ ~ ~
Epilogue
After 20 years I will never truly
understand the Swiss men, who sit
when peeing out of respect, maybe
it is I who does not understand myself
standing, spraying the toilet seat and
expect women to wet themselves
in my honor. It is women who are
always being sprayed by man,
left with nothing to rinse, these women
stand naked before us, pleading to have
warmth, but are left without, only
a wet toilet seat left by each
man who came before.
~ ~ ~
Restaurant Schongrun
9/18/10 – Zentrum Paul Klee
Inside this gourmet restaurant
glass encased, the husband and wife,
rich American women, and Swiss-French,
never said a word the entire lunch,
5 courses, until it was necessary to
comment on the other couple that
was talking the entire meal,
to make fun that she was black, and
he was white. She was poor, he was educated.
He was lonely in love and moneyed,
she in need of something better.
Then they regressed back into
their silent dinner, empty marriage,
as the other desperate couple, talked,
talked of love, and each other.
~ ~
Requiem for Estherina
There was once was an inkeeper
at Ronco, where she drank
her guests asleep each night,
life was as easy as living could be on the Alps.
As flowers grow and wilt each
season, then death could come
when it waits.
When death visits when it wants,
comes same as living when we want.
Life is quiet here in the Alps,
and death comes quiet the same,
without speaking, with a soft
touch, it takes you when
you are ready, whether ready or not.
Estherina was ready at 90, she served
beer, wine and grappa until age
86, then retired to a world of friendship.
Those she served, now served her
until her service to life slept quietly
into the night.
With a smile death came in February,
so as she smiled back in soft return
to give back the life she lived so well.
That sun that smiled on her face
still shines on another now, and
each day that death never came,
was on her face.
~ ~ ~
Morte sul L’Alpe di Chiera
When you die on the Alps,
you die a death where your
life boils down to one last
mistake, and each mis-step
along the way seems just as
that, another mis-step.
All those safe exits that
always came, only to die
one last aspire to the mountains,
flora that beckoned you, kisses
you one last time.
~ ~ ~
With the sun, and cold mountain breeze
74-year Santino Ghilardi dies
on Alpe di Chiera.
There was nothing to think about
except death, morte, perche, and
death should come, so it comes
now on the Alpe di Chiera..
This women, a mountain of easy
climbing, then the last breath
inside, to exhale life back to the Alps.
The mushrooms he never found, that
dinner the next day – never was,
only death on the mountain.
This lonely life turned into a perfect death.
~ ~ ~
When this small butterfly, lives
one day on the Alps, life
spills each second, one day,
same as the 74-year man that died
searching for mushrooms on Alpe Di Chiera.
This speckled butterfly was born
today, and dies today – each flavor of color,
teeming with life, who says 1 day
is not worth 74 years?
~ ~ ~
To live the perfect death
when a butterfly dies each day
on the Alps.
To die the perfect life,
where each mountain is a perfect
breast of life whose nipple
trickles alpine water toward lakes.
This man with 2 prosethetic legs
bent over as the man people
forgot, teems with the same-day
only life a butterfly riding
some invisible air.
~ ~ ~
Prostethics
Someone said I like to skip
flat stones on Lago Spillato,
this small butterfly that dies today
when the sun goes down to drink beer,
and the 74-year-old man found dead
on L’Alpe di Chiera, from the
mirrored lake where the butterfly
dies, where my mind flattens as water,
a hiker with two missing legs pushed
past me, angled prosthetic, marching
on 4 walking sticks,
and the butterfly died on the Alp.
~ ~ ~
Jambling
Who says life is not for the living
Rosario 1/2-arm moves his tractor,
in a drunken sweat, he pours the
vino of life, then this alpine hiker
missing 2 legs, jambles up the
mountain to take this
breast that never fed him
from centuries ago only a crevasse
to fall, now we ride the
death breeze, same as the butterfly
~ ~ ~
Butterly
I am the farafly
this stone skipping 3 times on the lake
These cats finding sun in the borders
that hide space,
this farafly that lives one day only.
For a lifetime of torment inbetween,
sometimes the flat stone
skips only 3 times before sinking
bottom of the lake forever.
~ ~ ~
Strata
In with the sun’s early rays
flies the farafly, dragon fly and I
meshing into each other, we became
alpine stream of living things,
where the world up high is finally
one, with each other, symbiotic balance
only understood by nature.
Below in the valley machines grind
rocks into gravel every day, all year to
make the ‘strata’, as only mankind
knows,
So to this ‘strata aria’ is only for
the farafly and my absent soul.
~ ~ ~
Morte di Alpi Di Chiera
“The world ends for the last man.”
So in the sunlight as it faded
in the poor eyes of one last man
on the earth, the eyes shuttered
light away, same as a camera
shutter meters light, one final time,
a man bows out to the terra,
under,
in search of mushrooms.
To die with a sense of
order, today, on the Alpes,
same as a camera shutter
when the 74-year heart cuts
out, this is the life of one’s death.
The death of a life forever,
last man dying,
always the last man dying.
~ ~ ~
The Bells
Always been that way in Switzerland
Same invisible group of rich barons,
burgermeisters, and capo’s unknown
controlling the poor to keep working
the fields, the cows until they
say so, and they ring the bells
to spot each movement from sun rise to after dinner.
These bells clang and push
everyone into place, where
the rich stand above, pull
the short cord of life. A damsel
sits in a castle captive, her
long black hair, ebony eyes caste
out toward the valley calling
for love, a savior, but there is
none.
They are all controlled by the bells,
pushed aside for more of this animal life
~ ~ ~
“Meine a Katze
Solothurn 9/ 25/10
After the decision for the best absinthe
in Switzerland, we all made a decision
to drink as many absinthes as life
will allow, and the women made
decision to love and never love,
the men made a decision to live, and life
made a decision to make people
who make absinthe to find some
answer to life, and love, laughter.
That’s all there is and ever will be
forever.
II
Someone made a drunken decision
to throw someone’s bicycle into a fountain.
Peering inside fountain, absinthed,
I did not see the black pipes,
seat, washed my hands, found the bike, pulled it out for
the lost bicycle to be found on a drunken
Solothurn morning.
~ ~ ~
Sequence of Nature Alpi Di Cruina 9/24/10
There is a magnet called time,
which never really moves,
just presses people along,
marks space. How could I meet again
the 80-year-old Swiss-French couple hiking
Passo Novena exactly six hours later all because
I rushed down the Alps from Capanna
Piansecco to a imaginary Poste bus
that came to All’ Acqua
exact second I stepped down
on the strata, as if someone
painted me downstrokes,
whisper colors flowing down,
pushed me along to meet
these people again
at Alpe di Cruina,
sequenced script of life in Val Bedretto.
~ ~ ~
The imaginary Poste Bus driver that carried me
to Alpe Di Cruina merrily
read aloud his stops and times,
as he recorded his logue.
“Statistica,” he sighed.
He whipped the bus up around Passo Novena unconscious.
We talked in Italian about LA, and America that
he’s never seen, and will probably never,
being the Ralph Cramden of the Alps, means
you don’t get to New York, and find out what
bus driving ain’t. He dropped me off at Alpe Di Cruina,
we waved goodbye.
Back at All’ Acqua, he saw me in the lot, and slowed
giving me the hands up to see if I needed another imaginary bus,
I waved him off for a beer, and never saw that imaginary bus driver again.
“Statistica.”
~ ~ ~
DAS PHANTOM DU BIEL
Das Phantom du Biel
is real, he shoots police
in the head and disappears, 67 years,
so now he is a phantom, living up in secret alone cabin – twidling
time away as a ghost. Could be a crime of the century.
Das Phantom du Biel
Lives among us, he lurks,
he hides, he kills for his hause.
He is not a mause,
up above the alps so high
he sees down below so well.
The problem is he thinks he is William Tell.
You will never find him or his body.
It lies at the bottom of a crevasse
below les Diablerets.
~ ~ ~
Pas De Cheval, Anziendaz
At the Pas de Cheval
I fell asleep on a rock.
This sleep pulled me into the rock until I became
the stone, where rain smatter fell,
I became the rain on the rock,
the seeped into the earth below
where the maramut sleeps, a hole
below the ground I filled until
there was no more of me, only
rock, rain, earthen dampness
where crickets jump over. I slept as
long as the earth needed sleep.
Then I became a sleeping maramut
who awakened into the mossy
earth, through the rocks, stone,
then, I meshed with the rain
smatter until I was me
again.
~ ~ ~
Gruyere (9/14/10)
Why man and women need each other
This is not why a tree starts as a
sapling, slowly stretching to the
sun each year, dropping seeds each
season into nothingness, a bottomless
depth this tree will never know. Just
reach upwards to infinity and time-ending
death. Does man and women walk sideways
in front, behind and away, once crossing
paths only. Inside this kernel of nature
a consciousness looks 360 and see’s,
has nothing, same as the tree, only sun, rain,
a spreading out and giving. Women,
barren as the ocean that floats all life
it never really gave, only supports – looks
to something to fill and carry on the wind,
same as an acorn, lonely, forgotten on
the ground. This magnetism, skin to soul,
breathes something a tree will never have.
Connected to the earth, its roots grow
never letting go, underneath this earth
above air and living things that tangle
its hair.
And man and women hold hands
in the skylight draining each second
away as vapor. Touch and hold each,
same as the tree’s roots spreading in
terra.
~ ~
Gruyere (9/14/10)
Sometimes the cackling of women
is mistakable from bird’s screeching.
Flying by fast up above.
Laughter, a crows squawk is all
the same hierarchy of reason.
Schoolchildren laugh that high-pitch of uncertainty.
Each animal has a reason to screech,
laugh or cry. It’s the sun,
the moon, rain and mud that
we slip on, track inside our lives,
where nothing but laughter or invisible
moans echo behind each person for
someone to hear, and leave some echo
for someone behind.
~ ~ ~
Dimanche dans Soleure
If ever was my last day on earth,
would be spent Sunday in Soleure,
movement and my non-movement
makes time and consciousness one.
Families with children, peaceful
people, inside a nut shell deeper
in life’s kernel.
If it ever was my last day on
Earth, I wold spend it Sunday
in Solothurn, each second ticking,
each reminder from the bells every half-hour
remembers inanimate iron bells that
life lives and iron only reverberates
in the living’s eardrum.
Each second I approach death
on this perfect last Sunday in Soleure.
~ ~ ~
Dimanche dans Soluere (4)
One way to fall asleep while
awake is to allow people of Solothurn
to tickle your ears asleep,
each noise, children pretending to be
cats, men pretending to be children,
drunken women laughter, a beer laugh.
Zwei Cappacino, the world waits
for no one, but sleep comes
easy with street noise tickling
feathery the wisp of life as it
pulses away down the cobblestones
~ ~ ~
Dimanche dans Soleuere (5)
If ever I could give you more
flowers, it would be many more
beauty for the remainder of your
beautiful life, and along with that I
would give you, and be the sun that
warms the flowers, the rain that waters
this love, and be the man that nurtures
a flower to a beautiful life,
That you are, and will
always be.
~ ~ ~
Saillon 9-14-10
To reflect on the sadness of
one’s life is to understand the normalcy of
life. Why the mountains seem never to
change, yet the valley’s below move
in rockslides, avalanches from above.
A place where all of is still hovering
down comes a hawk, to touch a mouse,
as man builds castles, ramparts and moats,
what of sad nature that makes the
unloved, this throbbing pulse look past
for something that is always fleeting
to be alive is forever, time is
consciousness. Asking for movement
life moves. Just ask the person
lying under the cemetery if you could.
Instead just ask to chase whatever
needs to be chased.
~ ~ ~
Anziendaz 9-15-10
2 Wild Boars tore my dreams to shreads
From the woods coming opposite
Les Diablerets I dreamed last night
2 Svingelli, wild boars saw me from
above, charged down the mountain
at me. In an instant, I ran
full speed down the mountain, falling,
running, falling, looking back, they were
in full pursuit. Knowing death coming,
I looked for a tree to climb or vines.
I looked back again awake,
knowing I was married, and the 2
wild boars were my wife and death,
hand-in-hand chasing me down
the mountain of life that I tried
so hard to climb my way back up.
~ ~ ~
La Lago – Di Gandria
The fish keep coming for the
fisherman on Lago Lugano.
There must be 300 small
fish below the surface,
must be sunlight or boats
that brings the vapor of fish
to relent, give up,
give up their lives to a invisible
thing that
these men, fishermen. There is no better
pleasure than to pick the pockets
of Earth like a thief to
feed each other again and
again and again.
~ ~ ~
…and the fish keep coming,
like from a chocolate factory, a fisherman on a lake can wait
for months this vein to come
like this September, next
month they troll, then go home
like flowers who never find
each other or anything.
~ ~ ~
Gandria – Wind & Nature
The Wild boar, the farafly all mate with’
each other and nature never goes
without the air that carries
things not understood, the
white bird flies in center of
the lake into infinity. The dragonfly
knows no time only temporal trouble.
The bird flies into infinity, only a
second that keeps lasting forever.
This wind that carries things that
cannot carry me is why each second
is not infinity.
~ ~ ~
The dialogue among fishermen in front
Hotel Mooseman is this theory of
where man must prove its
intelligence above fish that
only understand food, vapor and life.
Death is life, is as the same
each day, as only when a fish
lands in the basket does it
know anything but before.
This argument in life, as man and
fish win alike, the same breathing,
ending that finishes each day.
The smart fisherman said to the
less intelligent fisherman that the lake is
mine today.
“Noi abbastanza logico.”
The fisherman said to the other as the skiff reversed.
And all be damned except the fish,
who have no logic, and do not understand to be damned.
~ ~ ~
If a poet watches three fishermen
on skiffs catch 84 fish on
Lago Lugano, one can see how
nature gives itself up. Does not really
matter of what the fish or the fishermen
want, on the lake even the
fishermen become more tired than
the fish and have to go home.
~ ~ ~
The second fisherman caught so
many fish, it was a joke to throw
fish into the 1st skiff’s ice chest.
The end was never near, the fish
would win, they would keep coming
until we died of exhaustion pulling and
unhooking fish. These little fish
win at the end, make the lonely fishermen
go home and leave pool alone again.
That’s all the hunted life wants after
awhile, to be left alone after being killed.
~ ~ ~
The last fishermen remains
shaking his aching elbow as
he worked one line to the next.
Someday, when no fish could ever
be caught, a different, unseen line
will catch him, reel him up
to fisherman heaven, and he will
never know this, what an ending
is, until it ends.
~ ~ ~
Pink Sunrise on Lake Lugano
When this light comes each morning
old Roman soldiers roll their bones
quietly in th earth underneath Lago
Lugano, the dance some old half-step
march laughing at the little fish
that jumped into the skiffs yesterday.
That’s because light is the alarm bell
that wakes fish and myself, ghosts
from their watery grave looking up
at bottom skin the lake offers, never
does this light not attract life,
gulls scratch a song on
the light each morning, like a memory of
some person who lived a long time ago.
~ ~ ~
Lago Lugano, Grandria, and Byron’s servants (This is a poet’s death).
9-24-10
That lake where Shelley drowned,
something about Byron when he received the
news, went out riding with his bodyguards.
That Italian lake gave up a poet’s life,
same as the fish thrown from boat-to-boat
in jest, since that’s all life is, a little
jest, one final joke on Shelley.
They used to ride together in Italy and
shoot pistols. Byron’s saddle was laden
with more pistols, ammunition than
a poet needed. He never blamed the lake
for taking is friend, he always knew it
was the Carboni Family that killed
love when his servant shot the Turk
~ ~ ~
Spiral & light, Lago Lugano
9-24-10
Sometimes in the spider web
There is no one home, season over,
just spiral and light which nothing
see’s through the lake.
~ ~ ~
This spider web of homeless light
transparent echo morning mildew
is nothing that nature can left to be forgotten.
Some trace of life in this giant spider web.
We weave on earth, leaves just
the same look of forgettable construction.
This is why a spider moves with this wind
away.
Is why we look at things and can only
hope to understand each moment by
measurement.
~ ~ ~
10-25-10
Saledurn Drunken Orgy
In the Solothurn drunken orgy
Heso Festival strange things happen
when a city becomes drunk.
A lone sneaker sits on the cobblestone,
someone half-stepped home,
the bicycle that someone deposited
in the baroque fountain was rode
home, some wet jalopy, some wet
shoe, some yelling all
night in German dialect speaks to
a time when the Celts served
Pan this large vat of wine until
he passed out, sprawled on the terra
hooves misprinted, dangling some teenage
drunken youth 21 centuries later.
~ ~ ~
Dimanche dans Soleuere
The bells ring, and there are no people
anywhere, festival last night left
broken glass everywhere that was
magically picked up by a secret
fairy that came through the night,
keeping Sunday in Soleure, the Sunday
found no where else, soon the clap of
women’s shoes, children asking
mama questions, and with quite
reflection the mother always answers,
just as this bell rings some
truth, some far away response,
that answers my childhood questions.
~ ~ ~
Perfect Moment Soledurn
“Das Regenbogen uber St. Ursen Kathdrele”
This day after 20 years of waiting
the perfect moment arrives in Solothurn.
Over St. Ursen Kathedrale, a Regenbogen.
Teenagers laugh at me for my
salvation over life and the perfect
moment. This Regenbogen, pink, red, yellow
maroon stetched in a arc perfectly over
St. Ursen Kathderale, as if G-d’s hand
took a paint brush, and said, ‘Ecco,’
Io dai la perfecto naturale per voi.”
And the people lamented, and the older Swiss
German agreed with me and called it a
“mountain,” and the teenagers giggled at
my language barrier, and the Regenbogen spilled.
The saints and statues wept at
having their backs turned, and missed
what they have waited centuries for.
~ ~ ~
9-27-10
Dimanche dans Soluere (6) Fin
Sometimes a star is just a light.
Then could a light really be a star.
In some opiate created from the air,
there is a place where life is
something of a plant growing wild,
everywhere moving to a rythm
that exists magnetically beneath earth.
This giggle of life that keeps
laughing, like River Aarhe,
bells toll at 12:45 a.m.,
And all should go to sleep.
~ ~ ~
The Women From Speiz (9/26/10)
There was once was a women from Speiz,
who sweet kisses where very nice,
she was not like Lugano,
where kisses are like red wine,
nor like the tango dance from Lucerne
whose legs I kicked three times,
not like the women of Bern, who
broke my spirit with those heavenly bodies,
astral delight from a faraway land,
nor the laugh of the Solothurn women,
who mock me with every look, or
Zurich women that never kiss at all,
so the women from Speiz was very nice,
as if the world kissed me all at once,
then rivers flooded from such a beauty from Spiez.
~ ~ ~
S.P.Q.S. (10-5-10)
The Gurten Bear collapsed drunk
on the Heso Business Festival floor.
Old men, women, children gathered,
smothered crowd around the big bear.
His long black hair covered his face,
you could only see he was a giant from
some faraway fairy tale, dead or dying
in the isles next to a chocolate, and a credit
card company. I felt his pulse, big black
dirty hands of a mechanic or a drunk.
The paramedic came, so we cleared away.
Next night, there he is:
Gurten bear, big wavy long hair and beard,
again, I can’t really see his face,
covered by long hair and beard.
He was stepping gingerly drunk into
makeshift Gasthause Enge tent. I
Idled up to the bar.
“Eh du, OK?” I asked.
He seemed to growl at me quitely
“Sprechen English, Francese, Italianisch.
“Deutch!” He blurted.
His friend with a steady, curled moustache
to sop up his bear responded: “Nein, Deutch.”
I motioned to the bear’s friend
that he slammed to the ground Samedi
tag, by making the international
right hand at 90-degrees clapping
fast on my flat left hand.
A long monent passed.
“Ya,” The Gurten bear’s friend explained
In broken English:
“Today is a new day!”
~ ~ ~
Au repose
10-2-10
As if someone painted me inside a
Laurent Louis Midart painting, a procession
in Soleuere, minstrals, children, dogs,
princes and barons, and their liasons
all walking by, until I stand still, stuck
in final repose. My sillouette never to
move in time except within your eye.
~ ~ ~
Fin