FREEZING/ BURNING
1. Gee Be There Now Himalayas!
“If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.” Ram Dass, Be Here Now
Abodes of snow spiritual
and spectacle seekers,
self-important explorers
or foreign imperialists
from first world countries
turn teeming basecamps
where Wi-fi’s available
currently at 17,600 feet
into shopping malls, make
K2/Everest/Kanchenjunga
accessible to more weekend
warrior adventure packages
for all selfie-seeking bourgeois.
2. Nuclear COVID 2021 Winter: On the Beach Redux?
“…And his ghost may be heard as you pass by the billabong
“Who’ll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me?”
—- André Rieu, Waltzing Matilda
…A Redondo Beach once-upon-a-time-surfer, now CVS cashier, who for decades has mirrored my aging.
Sam, that particularly obese Safeway checker I’ve laughingly danced around carrying bags of groceries for years.
One grandchild’s tearful principal looked forward to retirement last time both chatted in the pickup line eleven months ago.
Woman worked in cube next to mine turned out to become center of a super-spreader, event eventually aerosol-documented despite at that time she being well-known for and proud of her perfect record wiping down elevator buttons etcetera.
My beer-buddy well as +/- masked dentist — during past February’s apparently simpler short-term no-biggy halcyon days — we parted, with in retrospect seemingly quaint, winking cute elbow bumps plus Purell dabs’ll do ya…
I wonder if they are, could or will all still be there; should/ when this tightly-sequestered
hair-on-fire mid-septuagenarian ever again get an opportunity to find out?
3. Not Too Mad Lib Parlor Games
Usual winter dwindles
— now compounded
by COVID sequester
are somehow starting
to bore me to death
so ‘steada fool turning
toward more food/poems
I’ve got no-good mind
to doom-scroll truly
dark net social media
Parler replacements:
don’t really want to
telegraph my moves
… but let’s just say
keeping all options
open for this Jew
to rendezvous with
hate-spewing eww
Boogaloo — or oy
Proud Boys Trump
employs to grift his
Florida satisfaction
guaranteed Fountain
of Youth packages
that include cryonic
reincarnation kits
to morons, idiots.
4. Day In The Life: Mel Gibson Redux
September 13, 2005,
five days into Burning Man’s
annual extravaganza on Nevada’s
red-hot Black Rock Desert playa
among 35,000 gathered international crazies
variously committed to radical
inclusion, self-reliance
self-expression
my son threw me a small surprise 60th birthday party,
the highlight of which was a miraculously cold
half honeydew he’d convinced neighbors
to kept fresh in their refrigerator truck.
After that, a few of us moseyed
over to nearby Mad Max Thunderdome
in order to voyeur over-testosteroned
males in a locked steel cage
observe rules of engagement
similar to those agreed upon between troops
of India’s 16th Bihar Regiment
and China’s People’s Liberation Army
at Ladakh’s ferociously contested border post:
no escalating to firearms
but anything else goes
including rocks plus nail-spiked clubs.
Then we trucked back
to our northern Californians’ campy base camp
collective where one Donald Duck
costumed dudess barbecued USDA prime steak
while most others prepared,
preferred yummy veggies
harvested just last week
from somebody’s truck farm outside Davis.