City Grill

Swinging City Grill, 1990,
Tucson Air I zona       w/ splashy paintings
lots of chicks and guys               busy bar
and us old ones hanging off the balcony
its too early white lace encased shy buxom girls in booths
thin chic maids across the bar,              bare shoulders
motion             swinging sweet breasts

What is the snow like this morning
I ask myself when I settle into my chair
by the windows, with coffee and cereal
for it seems different each time
sometimes soft, or painfully glittering
so much depends on the light
the angle of the sun, density of cloud
just like everything in our life,
ambiguity, shifting prospects,
but here its the intense whiteness.
Its easy to see the particular,
did it shrink overnight or not
or heightened by new layers.

Into air – my flying dog       seeking an arc of water
high, twisting          finding steps into sky
on the basil, eggplant’s brittle arms
he flies exuberant,     after the flying water
he flings his young life         into clouds of play

Now all that seems clear is tree shadowed
as sun illumination shifts in time
redefining our perceptions
until there are no simple truths
no fixed shapes in snow
in our thoughts, memories
or timeless imagination.

Kent Bowker sometime in 1990, then 2/27/2015 – 4/16/2015

Foggy, dank, albatross tossed

Foggy, dank, an albatross tossed
voluptuous sea, Xanadu’s
feral opium, and flesh
caverns unmeasurable
sweeps into night’s dreams
oblivious to feelings
we easily relate to, poems
uplifting and hopeful.

But the messes
you’ve made, they stick
hang slickly inside you
neither poem or scream
never polite or light,
twist through the nights
consciousness plays upon,
haunts all your compositions
no matter how flitting,
light or slyly evasive,
these dark crawling thoughts
will out.

Kent Bowker 3/31/15