FLAKES OF SUNLIGHT: November 2018

Spiders

When I’m wasting time, like now

it helps me to look at them

this one just hangs there, upside

down, below the lamp

a daddy-long legs

patient as a galaxy, as if

it has eternity

to wait for its prey. Sometimes, though

they wait so long they die

hanging in their own web.

Glancing over, idly pissing,

(another form of waiting)

I see through them

and realize

they’re gone, their legs folded

into miniature umbrellas

or tiny daisies closed

for the evening— a little hideous

how they silently

evaporate, in the corner of the bathroom

window, where they took all

their chances.

The window sill is

the Altar of What Has Fallen,

littered with specs of spider crap, a wing

floating a rainbow, a bent thread a leg,

a nano knot in it

that’s a marvelous knee,

discarded in the serene dust—

of a deserted, indoor battlefield—

an L A strip mall

after The War of the Worlds.

She wipes it off. There!

Spic & Span. It’s easy to get up

and get going again. We’ve done it

lots of times. It’s fun! Why have I been

wasting so much time?

But who can keep up

with spiders?

Once I cleared everything out of my room

washed it down and painted it.

Within hours a spider appeared in the corner

of the ceiling

the paint wasn’t even dry.

Where do they come from? Out of the air?

I read that no matter where you are

you’re within twelve feet of a spider.

They’re in your backpack. The garage.

But if you look

carefully into the fierce face

of one of those little jumping ones

with four eyes, the beautiful orange

black and white face—

beware. It sees you

with such fearless intelligence and cunning

you realize it

could take you

like in high school

when you might be absent-mindedly caught

staring at some kid, not even seeing him,

a tough kid, and suddenly he says,

“What’re you looking at.”

You snap out of it

look away

slightly bewildered, even embarrassed, and wondering

What were you looking at?

I just went over my room with the swifter,

shook a few outside. I missed a couple.

But even though they’re nowhere to be seen

they’re still here. I’m avoiding things

that need to be taken care of

but can’t handle by myself. I'm brought

back to what's at hand.

Spiders avoid nothing. They’re always

ready. But as the wisdom

in the children’s game Hide & Seek warned us

what’s coming is coming

ready or not.

It just amuses me to think

If I died sitting in this chair

they’d use my body

for tie-down points.

It’s good to waste time like this.

It’s very, very human.

Being human’s a refuge

for awhile.

As for spiders

they’re not only ready

but they'll survive

what’s coming.

Wheelchair at Mission St Garage

He didn’t last long on the corner

a black dude in a wheelchair

two stumps for legs, about the age

of a Vietnam vet, a big man

probably six four if he could stand—

pissed off, a volcanic island spitting fire

really fierce and letting everyone in the crosswalk

hear it.

Crowds at 4^th & Market eddied around him

glanced fearfully, his teeth

spit daylight across the street. People ducked.

Everyone knew he had good reason

but they had their own problems—no little cup

no witty sign no plea—just out there

you could feel what it was to wake up

in the streets, without legs.

There’s a picture in the paper

Clinton shaking hands with the head of Vietnam

cutting a business deal

decades after the war.

Within three days they got him off the corner.

Some are left alone

if they beg within certain rules. This guy

was too much for the city’s face

to face.

There’s a hot thread

in each of us, a fissure of lava

when the hiss hits the sea it’s a sigh

from the middle of the earth

for justice.

Hope’s the dope that keeps you stuck.

Hope your disguise is on tight, hope

you won’t lose what you’ve got

hope you’ll be left alone if you just

shutup.

We’re all eating plastic casseroles.

The signal clicks the light changes.

High-heels hightech running shoes blackened bare feet

step off the curb.

Cityscape on Flame

a car on fire

double-parked in the middle of the block

transparent flames

slipping up between the hood

and windshield

in the sun

no one around

no one in it

sunlight everywhere

shining through

a distant siren

on its way . . .

—downtown, scarlet alcoholic faces asleep

on canoes of lice-ridden cardboard

in city parks, smack addicts

leaning against the Hilton while others

crawl hands and knees along the sidewalk

feeling for crystals spilled into cracks

from the night before, conventioneers,

plastic name tags flipping around necks

like marked down for sale signs

walk purposely past

carrying laptops, coffee

guts full of acid

headed for a keynote—

the flames’ transparency catches me

light everywhere

such a beautiful day

in the city

the car burning quietly

the city a mirage

in graceful flames . . .

we are postponing our only lives

to live in a Society of Spectacle

with devastating implications.

Art, an illusion, reveals delusion.

I finally understand a Rauschenberg exhibit

I saw in 1964, fifty years ago

an obscure gallery just below chinatown

fifty years to understand

several flimsy strips of see-through fabric

collaged with media photographs

—pictures of JFK’s funeral, Vietnam

Muhammad Ali, toothpaste ads—all transparent images

on fabric, a technique Rauschenberg innovated

to portray his vision. The fabric

is the viewer, images floating on his eyes

in his mind, his memory, his imagination,

as he breathes, he is the fabric

that swells with the breeze

from the air-conditioner, aswhirl with reflections

a see-through being?

Just because Rauschenberg's innovation

has had an incidentally commercial use

to a materialistic economy,

and is now applied, on a similar fabric,

onto convention center windows for spectacular tradeshows, Google, Apple Oracle etc, and on

T-shirts sold, in museum stores,

doesn’t dilute its intention:

a technique discovered to show us we are awash

in images, that we are abstracted,

a technique that redefined the artist’s role

beyond that of image maker

implying the artist now has become an actor

in magic again, involving the viewer

the one to be healed! makes the artist

more akin to a sand painter

in an older, more ritualistic act,

a happening for now, a healing

to be blown away by morning wind

not catalogued in a museum, a living

dying medium, the medium

of our eyes, the see-through

film of awareness

beyond

creating an object of verisimilitude,

such as a piéta

—an aid to meditation

on the mystery of mother and child but

perhaps extending the cubist continuum

think of that! in light of quantum physics!

the viewer is involved (in helpless anonymity)

the way the patient is involved in his healing

(not anonymous, not helpless)

the same way a physicist observing phenomena

affects that phenomena, so we can no longer pretend

that pure objectivity

or subjectivity

is the real deal: every artistic perception

is an interaction: in other words, We are In It.

It is in us. Like paradise.

Like cancer.

DuBord would have grasped the implications

of this technique immediately.

So no more art as refuge? Relentless life

is our refuge. We stop the world

by our being. As these pictorial

haphazard, life-affecting events pour

over Rauschenberg’s diaphanous fabric

the eyes of the viewer become that invisible medium

become the see-through.

Events beyond us come from within us.

What happened? When

all of us, thrown from the Titanic into an icy sea,

saw stars rise like notes from our screams and the violins

of musicians playing to the end

became our personal story, our malady, our final redemption

until, fast-forwarding, even poopular bloopers on TV

joined the cavalcade

so we can laugh at what fools we are

(networks making millions off free content—again

that issue) devastating events,

such as war and poisoned water

that we feel helpless to manage on a personal level

we see through wavering fabric, ourselves wavering

in see-through flames.

I’m entranced to see

through these flames

the car burning on the calm street

it is the seeing-through that counts

and yet

this perception doesn’t confer emotional distance!

on the contrary

that very transparency

compels a compassionate eye

everything, everybody, every animal is included

when light goes through fire—

and something must be done quickly!

Again. And again again! But we are as far

above it as an orbiting astronaut who sees

what's happening but can do nothing

about it,