If the United States made an Ireland . . .
It would be somewhere on the coast.
It would have massive blue rocky cliffs to hold back the ocean.
It would have fields outlined with shallow rock fences.

If the United States made an Ireland . . .
There would be every shade of green as you walk down the street.
There would be moss dangling from the trees reaching out to you.
There would be rain, lots and lots of rain!

If the United States made an Ireland . . .
People would be sailors, fishermen, and drunkards.
People would be cautious and friendly in the same moment.
People would be the biggest jokers you ever met.

It the United States made an Ireland it would be in Oregon. . .

There is a bay on the Oregon coast,
Shaped like a scallop shell
And ringed by rounded stones.
And from the darkening sky
Droop billows of blue and gray
Hanging and lit like Chinese lanterns.
Humans in the damp Northwest
Appear to drip from the clouds
In rain-washed colors
Of blue and violet,
Whose tattered clothes
Are softened and soaked
From ragged wool into rich satin.
Still others bask on shores
Of pebbles rolled by the sea,
Bone white and cloud-gray.
Down and up, down again
The light rays vault,
Painting bipeds into the land.
There are no reflections
But rather water in the air,
Looking like rain
Even on cloudless days.
Their world is saturated
Like the scarlet gowns
Of Waterhouse’s Ariadne
And the ponds of Monet,
Green as the British Isles,
Blue as the Aegean
And white as the Pantheon ruins .
Much like an ancient tomb,
The majesty of mortal lives
Commemorated in stone
Is here splashed in the air
And in every forest or cliff.
Hushing people into silence,
So they conduct the most
Serious customs in whispers,
Knowing how voices echo along
Water droplets
And mountain shadows.

The body positive aren't *** positive.
The *** positive aren't body positive.
Portland, I'm learning my lesson.
You're the city that gives no *****.

What about me, then?
Thirty years at home. No comfort.
My city, what about me?
Thirty years my home, no comfort.

The body positive aren't ******.
The ****** aren't body positive.
Portland, I'm positively down.
What lesson is this supposed to teach me?

Get fit and fall in line,
Get fit and wash my mind,
Get fit and fall in line,
Get fit and wash my mind,

My type wasn't meant to live,
When we do, we tend to live like this.
(repeat)

Songs of Oregon: No. 1 “Gonna Make You Crazy, That Place”

nuts, crazy peeps

whomever wherever,
regardless of race creed color or gender (did I get ‘em all?)
current state of residence (geo-identified)
a poem - the very same recited,
as a disclaimer, a yellow finger wagging warning:

“Don’t go! If you go, you won’t come back”

now kids, I’m a veteran of foreign travel,
many continents, cold and hot, rivers and seas,
some living, some dead,
some so big they named it Endless,
been to the great cities, Swiss villages,
pyramids, climbed Masada,
danced on grapes (why can’t I recall where)
skied the Alps, trekked the Sinai Desert,
clubbed in Rio, and danced till morn,
on a certain Greek Isle that rhymes with Mickey’s Nose
even been to L.A and San Fran, left poorer
but in sync,
always came home
with my mind decently reshaped

me/ a product of gritty unpretty grime,
streets of normal humans
acting like normal escaped mad persons,
this brutal city island instilled a
layer of fat and smog neath my skin,
a kind of migrating duck-like survival kit,
came with a homing beacon included

the those of you who know me,
perhaps too well, ken we citified islanders
love our beaches (fire hydrants)
cherish our sun dappled blessings
upon on farms (window sill herb gardens)
and sunning settlements (rooftops)

they say our tap water is secretly bottled,
sold in places where the springs purportedly
run crystalline

though we don’t got no pinot, just sweet concord grape,
so sweet, the wine of children and street nodders,
needy for instant sugar highs

so as we new Yorkers proudly
say on our license plates,
prove it or stfup!

so a first hand investigation for which
the taxpayers won’t be charged even a lousy mill,
deemed necessary to put to rest this crazy claiming warning

“Don’t go! If you go, you won’t come back”

guessing must be something in the water and the wine

the earth is curved - sure y’all knew that.  
but to get to the Northwest,
Interstate 84
ain’t le route plus directe

nope curve north to Ontario,
wave to Bex as I cross over
London and Toronto, also can’t recall
which poet from Rochester hails,
or did they shuffle off to Buffalo?

Crossing Erie, Huron, and Michigan Great Lakes all,
brings to mind
my mother’s birthplace,
Last of the Mohicans,
and the three years I did in the Cleveland Penitentiary,
where sun was illegal and baseball was a pretend play
of cowboys and Indians
but by god, it made me
the penitent fella I am today

Look skyward to Montreal,
yes, there he is, the Leo Priest,
the baffled king,
blessing this poetic meet ‘n greet trip
with a smiling unsurprising
hallelujah

Apparently some US citizens still can traverse O Canada,
even if one forgot their passports,
and are not PNG’s (Persons Not so GREAT)

over Minneapolis shed a tear for Diane,
a poet- gone-missing, and wonder if you reader come from
St. Cloud, Fargo or Duluth, Bismarck or Aberdeen,
surely they still speak poetic English there
in a twangy metering methodology  - well, message me asap

wow there really is a Saskatoon!

the pilot asks us to lean left in our seats
to help turn the plane
so we go to Portland and not to Vancouver...
me thinks he might be a touch Rockie Mountain High,
considering we are at 30 thousand something Imperial,
as he walks the main cabin with an oxygen mask and a
huuuuuge grin

see the distant Cascades
through a crack in the shuttered windows,
must be close to “the coast”
(as if, harrumph, there were but one)

ah, words in the clouds, ripe for the plucking
must be getting close to Oregon,
where poets grow on trees, woody words like ****,
and log-float poems down the Columbia to the sea

gonna drink me some poets
under the table cause this
trip I ain’t no driving and I am already
“flying” ‘n scribing and arriving
on a high tide and a good wind

In the state of Oregon
the roads of air have names of snakes
and there's a smell of music in the air
music of flowers, scent of love.

Even ravens laugh, and cry with laughter
even ravens smell of snakes
and have names of love.
Blossoms cry love and ask for more,
but it's not to come,
because the grey men creep,
and their grey hands reach
my heaven on Earth.

Both furthest north & furthest west
in all of America, we drove
through pouring rain

A sign on the side of the road
read Beach 1

After days of driving, driving
through Washington, Oregon,
we arrived at a beach we never intended to find

The beach where water flowed
in streams across the sand,
where a family of seals
swam close to shore, playing,
disappearing into the flat & endless water

I saw a bald eagle for the first time
as we drove through Washington,
I watched it fly above us through the window
clouded with raindrops,
I thought I felt patriotic for a minute or two

Though I’m neither birdwatcher nor patriot,
the solemn bird left me
with a strange feeling, which I realized wasn’t patriotism--
the strength & bitterness in the bird’s eyes
and its steady, prideful flight
belonged to no country

The feeling returned to me
on this beach of another world,
or of this world before it was

The feeling was that it was good to be alive
and that I would change nothing
about my existence,
A thousand agonies were worth enduring
to have seen that bird
and the first of all beaches

When the sky is brilliantly dark,
when freshwater penetrates driftwood, joins
the ocean on the first
and only necessary beach:
Yes, it is good to be alive