Christmas Gifts

Given

Two half-moon hubcaps off a ’56 Chevy

A garland of seaweed

A pair of beach-glass earrings shaped like the

history of Buddhism in America

A rusted compass rose

A ticket to see The Flying Burrito Brothers

at Ash Grove, Los Angeles, November 7, 1969

A barnacle-encrusted horse shoe

Chuang Tzu’s butterfly

The rhyme scheme from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Pied Beauty

Eskimo pajamas

Received

A knowing look from brown eyes that have seen the things

I only thought I saw

There’s a taqueria at the end of every rainbow

Someone says (quite naturally) “Never

eat anything bigger than your head” 

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A shopping list:

1) Flowers (light & dark)

2) A pavement saw

3) A repair manual for a California fan palm

4)REVELATION

5) It wasn’t easy but it had to be done

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From here the ocean is

blue, green, turquoise, white & slightly tilted

________________________________

This is where the West begins & ends

(the East as well)

________________________________

I’ll meet you someplace

between where you’re going

& where you’ve been

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feathery                                 between the stuttering neon

(feathered)                            & the wet pavement

wisps of smoke

Das Gedichtete by Patrick James Dunagan

There’s a wonderful sustained resonance that rings throughout Das Gedichtete, the new chapbbook by Patrick Dunagan.  Whether you hear it with your ears or in some labyrinthine hallway of the mind, it’s like a tuning fork that was struck on the concrete floor of a house of mirrors a hundred years ago, or maybe just a minute ago, but it continues to hum, dialed in to a frequency that causes bubbles to pop in a dream, which describes a presence I think these poems claim. 

I took the assemblage of these lyrics to be both a meditation and an improvisation upon the essays in Adorno’s Night Music, which Dunagan cites as an inspiration, if not a source, or launching pad, for these hauntingly beautiful songs –

Objects in transformation

beloved images

depicted in mental form

evoke memory of Something

no more real

than the scars embedded

upon them

                        (page 6)

There’s no escaping the fact that we are eternally “eavesdropping” on the ventriloquist at work in this artfully composed collage of largely untitled verses.  Dunagan is adept at not only throwing his voice, but at strumming the language.  He is taking a philosophical vocabulary, monotone and appallingly logical, and is tickling out a melody.  This can at first seem merely a poetic exercise, later maybe a bit like hotdogging, but at its core Das Gedichtete is a finely crafted sequence of events that “Go beyond meaning”.  As good a definition of “The Poems” as any.

born into this

eternal delight

how suddenly

it lasts

            (page 18)

Das Gedichtete is published by Ugly Duckling Presse in an elegant chapbook format and only costs $10. 

Eric Dolphy’s Third Eye

All dark velvet, darker silk,

you know what I mean,

maybe you’ve been there?

strumming Telluric currents

emerald & steel

& where it falls in the index of beach pavement

shifting sand             There to glance a moment

surging water           carrying a bent tuning fork

                                     & a bag of flashlight batteries

The drumroll pipes in advance of the sea-

breeze

tumbling across the arroyo alleyway

between tattoo parlors & dive bars

hustling kelp blossoms beneath

the reliquary palm trees of winter

shadowed in pale sunlight

It’s all within walking distance

drifting sand             Conscious recollection

painted water           arranged in acoustic patterns

                                       maybe you’ve heard it?

Chinese surf music

Engines in the bougainvillea

Peruvian wind chimes

often folded into the origami seascape

half past sunset on Green Dolphin Street

One for Odysseus, Elpenor, Tiresias & all the boys down at the shop

What goes here is now gone

a fleeting memory if even that

mid-morning sunlight slanting in thru the

asian pear tree

yellow leaves that

have their own light

as I’d like to think we all do but

wait until after midnight

hibscus chrysanthemum candelabra flashlight

All it takes is a slight push

the city sliding into the sea from whence

w/torches lit we return

shadows disperse & reconvene in a parking

lot near the beach

& though the tide may carry you away

it sometimes brings you back again

blinking the salt water out of your eyes

staggering beneath the neon glitter of sunlit mist

dragging yr knuckles through the sand

Little Green Bag

Maybe a minute before sun-

rise the surface of the ocean

its dark iridescence heaving &

falling (a complex delivery system

driven over an edge that seemed so pure

once upon a time)

hammered steel

& velvet & neon eyes blinking

Quetzalcoatl

(my name is difficult to pronounce as well)

The cool sand streaked w/tar

dual pipes breaking over the reef

threaded w/mist like

Chinese postcards mailed from Guadalajara

& so down the broken concrete steps

one more time reading the waves as though

they were words on a page

There are moments that reveal

less of what we truly are but

this isn’t one of them

Nevermind the flying robotic jellyfish

Tell me something I don’t

know & we’ll

let it go at that thinking

as the reflection lays flat

by merely looking up

we may be just that

far gone & described

even the long way round

Sometimes we drift like this

gathering what others have

let fall whispering like a

20 dollar bill across the counter

from one hand to another

if you think that way

the one with the floral design

& secret compartment

a system of ropes and pulleys

with which to orchestrate the

evening tide as we should either

hitch that mule up or turn him

out to pasture rather than haul

it all back to a place that possibly

exists only in the mind

A page torn from one Homeric

hymn deserves another but

you can burn out the clutch that way

speed-shifting from cypress to starfish

& back again

That blue sparkle on the water

looks as though it’s been spot-welded

to a piece of sheet-metal

& it’s a brand new day

Molotov Cocktails for Two

That the sunset sky is soaked in

gasoline speaks for itself

like a mirror smeared w/lipstick

You might want to ask what it means but

that’s the wrong question the

notion of anything having a “meaning”

is a short, dead-end street w/no

interesting scenery at all

I am more inclined toward

listening to bubbles

in the water

conversing

quite possibly in Sanskrit

That all this could resemble the bent

fender of a stolen Chevy Malibu is

coincidental like my hand beneath your skirt

driven off a cliff just a few miles south of here

where together we can watch the sunset

which I think you’ll agree

looks like a tangle of bright cold flames

hidden beneath a rock

on the bottom of the sea

In my paintings

Blood colors

(crimson, vermillion, rust, or

silver) stain the ceremonial

t-shirt & jeans

I could never see the percentage in

dealing in the sacraments

but then I’m always cutting corners

A norteño accordion is tuning up on the beach

& for all I know multi-colored tears are filling the

eyes of strangers all over town

Green, pink, orange, & blue perhaps

which is strange for this time of year

when pearls & moths should be the prevailing hue

but just as she would reclaim a thousand ships

& tie them round with a colored ribbon

any color will do