Petroglyph Americana is a book-length poem about American and Asian landscapes released in 2010 by Empty Bowl Press….

 

I hitchhiked to America, back

across the ocean from a dozen years   

of other shores—

 

home,

            to presidential hitmen, genocide engines, the dust

of burning mountains

                     sloping to the sea—    

 

diaspora of one

           over and over,

         300 million trails, but

 

I am alive

within the wrack and wreck of the world,

ink and oil stains on my hands. 

 

*

 

In a San Diego cul-de-sac

I load the Blue Shark with notebooks and guitars,

the car door hangs open

like a mouth about to speak,

an old friend slaps a hunski in my hand—

“lay it down on red when you get to Vegas, man,

       and let it ride.”

I slam the door, fire up the engine

and drive the afternoon up I-15

with loose tailpipe and rusted wheelwells,

pinecones on the dash,

north through chaparral hills

quilted with avocado orchards,

gardens of granite,

boulders like the backs of whales—

 

desert glare and shimmer of mirage,

daguerreotype clouds spill like iodine and mercury

into the silver sky,

machines blow leaves and grass off sidewalks,

trash trucks hum and lift

plastic recycle bins

stained with grease and wine—

potted plants hang   

from clay roof tiles and stucco walls,

sailboats list in driveways,

garage golf clubs

rust and wait with metal shafts

for the clutch of hands,

the impact of balls on tees,

piston exertion of gasoline

strains against continental mass,

jet planes glide

condominium horizons…

 

Petroglyph Americana is available now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and may be ordered by your independent bookstore. A review of Petr oglyph Americana can be seen here… 

CLICK TO ORDER PETROGLYPH AMERICANA FROM AMAZON.COM

 

 

SONGS FROM A YAHI BOW, a poem-sequence on Ishi by Yusef Komunyakaa, Mike O’Connor, and Scott Ezell, with an essay by Thomas Merton, will be published in 2011 by Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press.

 

From “Ishi,” by Scott Ezell:

 

square tongues   speak brick words

         that couple into nothing,

         surrounded by hair and flowers.

 

decay of fruit and love and sex,

         all subside

                                             into chemical contemplation,

                  alcohol and buzzing bees,

                    sweet sticky scents.

 

 

                              police machines  chop the sky                                   

                              into thistles of noise and fear—

 

 

I pick up and carry a river on my back,

a cloak of home

                    to drape across

                           the shoulders of the world,

                            enfolding streams and stones.

 

 

glaze of bone

across my eyes,

a hood of silence,

 

  my tongue of salt

  dissolving into words

  I speak to you.

 

 

Ocean Hieroglyphics is a poem-cycle in blue and green about the color and texture of the ocean as a physical, metaphysical, and linguistic body. Ocean Hieroglyphics will be published by Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press in 2011, with a series of paintings and photographs by Scott Ezell.

 

So, through me, freedom and the sea

will call in answer to the darkened heart.

—Pablo Neruda

i.

 

the ocean is the blue of wine,

a broken bottle spilling into everything,

the blue of a matador’s cape,

blue defenestrations, silent highway skies,

the blue of beating hearts,

blue homesick sailors and harbor girls,

blue calderas of falling rain,

blue seaweed strands of dream,

blue net of breath and waves—

 

ii.

 

a rolling mass of greenblue waves

folds in across the shore

as gray rain falls

                                                ocean to ocean,

                      brief breaths of sky between,

 

                                                with shards of blue far out

                                                beyond the silver sea—

 

small birds sit

                                 the swinging curves

                                                                           of black line wires,

                                                             singing perhaps—

 

I cannot hear

                                     above the engine’s groan

                             or through the window pane.

 

                                           silent on the running loping line

                                                   backdropped by shining scales,

                                                           eyelashes of sun

                                                            fallen with the rain, grayblue

                                                                  across the autumn sea—

 

 

fishermen squat

                                                      on boulders worn

                           by waves of salt,

                                                                squinting

                                                       to the seam

                                                                              of sea and sky,

 

                                            and grasp their slender poles

                                                    with cracked and calloused hands.

 

iii.

 

 

the green of staggering across a grimy floor, the whiskey retch of bile,

 

green self-preservation, willingness to kill for sustenance.

 

green fighting knives and dying prayers,

 

the green of a scarred and bitter cunt used and discarded by a thousand men,   by all men,

 

green of the open sea, not a soul in sight,

 

green sepulcher of aspiration, the green of striving even after hope is dead.

 

cigarette rasp on tongue and lungs, the green of self-destruction, self-apotheosis—

 

fallen armies, fallen empires lie gray and green at the bottom of the sea.