This morning I stood

at the back door waving goodbye to my cousins when they took off for school and there was Mount Rainier so close. Although I'd been there for days, I never saw it until that moment. Somehow my personal daily experience had taken on more meaning; somehow transcended that mundane moment. I thought of William Stafford taking an insignificant personal moment or chance encounter (perhaps with a mountain) and make it significantly poetic. The everyday charged with deeper meaning. This formula has been imitated so often in this region's poetry that it has become tiresome and predictable (even moreso than the new formalism which at least has fun with meter and rhyme). Then I thought of the formalism of haiku and how -- at its best-- it captures and then transcends "the moment" in a few syllables. An American haiku of this morning's experience may go like this:

waving to the boys
on their way to school
Mount Rainier

But there's still too much going on -- waving, going, the mountain. So wouldn't it be better just to write:

I saw Mount Rainier this morning

But even that has too much going on -- the self, the mountain, the morning. So I finally ended up with this poem:

Mt. Rainier!

Using punctuation to carry the familiar and the surprise I first experienced when I saw how close the mountain was this morning.

@Sumner, WA

It's about

time and space. about the debate. mfa or self-disciplined. about cognac and lincoln on his knees. about sewing pages together. about nose hairs and all the young punks. about a new formalism. about rhyming and timing. about the distance between the podium and the audience. about decaf or hi test. about binghamton and goose hunting on xmas morning. about being busy or staying busy. about about about.

Friday night at the chai lounge

and the bongo band packed up and hit the Ave leaving the barrista-fueled crazed audience on its own with the poets who grabbed the microphone (is anyone using this -- is this thing on -- can you hear me) from the bedtime storyteller who almost had the kids asleep before Father came home smoking and reeking of beer -- again -- causing the storyteller to skip ahead in the story to address the audience who was reading fiction and carving initials in treebark tabletops and now the poets distracted taking down each other's phone numbers and so it goes ...

Mummies

wrapped in the smoke of cigarettes walk the streets of Broadway where curtains are pulled back and fans blow on high. Mummies drink wine to a city paralyzed at 27 degrees. Mummies can't get a taxi. Mummies find the runway to be long on going nowhere. Mummies gather in the public space of public buildings mill around until Robert's Rules of Order send a gavel crashing to the table and things unravel into a snowy pile of guaze.

Peter Whitehead shows up

with his camera at a beat reading at the Royal Albert Hall in 1967. Wholly Communion! He finds Corso, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg and some British beats. Audience swings madly between bad acid trips (shouting one skinny poet almost off the podium) and marijuana ecstacy (swaying hippie-like to Ginsberg).

Whitehead seems to wait, wait, wait (as chaos and foreground interference run their course) and then nearly freeze-frames on this incredibly transcendent shot -- beatifully framed and concise in its capture of fleeting moments. Picture perfect!

US vs John Lennon wherein

Peacenik upsets Commander in Chief. Commander in Chief is a criminal and asks Immigration to deport the pothead. Peacenik fights Immigration. Commander in Chief gets J. Edgar Hoover to help. Peacenik writes songs, talks with Talk Show hosts. Commander in Chief resigns. J. Edgar Hoover cross dresses. G. Gordon Liddy puts a cigarette out on his hand. Peacenik wins.

P.S. Yoko Ono deserves more screen time.