Free Verse Poetry
Prose Poems, Rants, Docu-Poems
By Mike Garofalo
1.
((((JOLT)])}}]]..........
((((The Jolt)))) Awakened
God, Earthquake!
((((HARD!!!!BAD]]]]
(Shattering Glass!) No nO No NO
Exploding World!
No nO No NO[][][][][] OOOOhhhh No no no NO
Buckling Walls ROAR!! ALLAH!
(((((Heaving!!!!! SHIVA!! Black]]]]
Oh, No!!!!! ((((((((JOLT)))))))
(((((ROAR!!!)))) GOD!! JESUS ((((((((JOLT)))))))
Screaming......... ROAR!!! !!screaming!!
[[[[[^¥^¥^¥^¥^¥^¥^¥^¥)))]]]]
(((((((.................................................)))))))
Tohoku, Japan. 3/11/2011
[[Jolt, Tsunami, Nuclear Disaster]]
Islamabad, Pakistan. 10/18/2005
(((((ROLLING ROAR)))))
Indian Ocean, Tsunami, 12/26/2004
((((((((((COMING))))))))))
((((((((((230,000 Dead!!!!!!!!......
[9.2 Richter High]
Gujarat, India, 1/26/2001
(((((JOLT)))))
Central Taiwan, 9/20/1999
(((((ROAR)))))
Izmit, Turkey, 8/17/1999
(((((JOLT)))))
Afghanistan, 5/30/1998
(((((ROAR))))
Kobe, Japan, 1/17/1995
(((((JOLT)))))
Mexico City, 9/17/1985
((RUMBLING))
Tangshan, China, 7/28/1976
(((((((((((((((((((SMASHING))))))))))))))))))))
Retching Earth Vomits Up Death
(((((ROAR))))
((((Skull Crushing, Back Breaking, Gut Squishing))))
Collapsing their Futures
screaming thud after thud
into seconds of terror
moaning groaning screaming crying
silence
ruin
destruction
dust
Merciless Gaia, wimp Gods, Devil Rocks
2.
I woke at 2am
uneasy brain
working overtime
slippery unaligned
a busy butterfly
sucking up ideas
flowers in the sky
tossed and washed
unclean memories
rottem memes festering
worries gathering
nightmares pestering
messy whims eating
tasteless hours of my mind.
3.
My great grandfather,
Herbert B. Willits,
lived in a small trailer
in a backyard summer green
behind his daughter’s house,
my mom’s aunt Alice,
in north Downey, ELA.
My grandmother Mabel,
Grandma Blaize to me,
watched us weekends
when my parents pleasured
in 1954 in Las Vegas, NV.
We visited Great Grandpa Willits,
slow, and old, and gray,
hobbling-wobbling on his cane,
dressed in a suit,
rocking in his rocking chair
most of his final hours and days.
Once, my brothers and I,
playing in his Downey back yard,
were asked by Great Grandpa
to show him our strength.
We flexed our boyish biceps,
did push ups, sit ups,
ran back and forth,
tossed a ball to catch,
acted rowdy in horse play.
He told us “Be strong,
be brave, be tough, be a Man.”
We listened,
absorbed his advice.
Decades later,
a Grandpa now myself;
I looked at picture
of Grandpa Robert Ast.
Amazed, I look exactly like him
in our Germanic faces and frames.
Uncanny resemblance: genetic strains.
Hopefully, I was adequately
strong, tough, and brave
most of my 65 years
as a Man every day.
Characters in this Family Tree:
Herbert Benjamin Willits (1870-1954)
Robert Dewey Ast (1894-1924)
Mabel Amelia
Willits
Ast Blaize (1898-1974)
Michael James Garofalo (1/10/1916-4/2/1997)
Bertha June Ast Garofalo (4/3/1921-2/12/1994)
Michael Peter Garofalo (1946-)
4.
3am: Roaring surf surrounds incessantly
and swallow’s all my morning sleep;
hungry for the sand and cliff
eating them away
bit by bit. A drone and moan,
incessant groan, burdens of sand,
rubbing cold waves kissing land;
a noise to others, or a solemn tune,
or a burden to nocturnal ears.
I was alone, warm, and dry
in a yurt, by slow silent Joe Creek,
listening to the steady thunder
day and night of waves of energy
plowing, smashing, relentless rush
sculpting the shore incessantly.
Shaping me inside out, round about
dawn and daylight to shout the day
the Sun Rules the Surf
four times each day, each day,
bulging the earth
sounding the Tuba of Gravity.
Reminds me of a busy freeway,
rumbling cars cutting the wind,
roaring like an airports din,
trees trashing in the winds,
open car windows on a freeway.
ambient backgrounds...
5.
Seawall rocks salted daily
resist the high tide’s relentless crash,
keep it at bay.
Where the Joe River sinks
readily into the foaming rich
flowing hair of waves.
The old worn wood homes at Pacific Beach,
or rusting mobile homes in Copalis or Moclips,
or the planned fancy upscale Seabrook Village,
or new condos and mansions at Ocean Shores;
All, everyday assaulted by angry mists,
thick as rice pudding, rain as thick,
claws of Fogs dripping mossy green blood.
Rainstorms draped on the shoulders of
the Humptulip’s hills and river.
King Tides run amok,
washing roads away, felling firs;
harbingers of Nature’s cruelty to come?
The roaring surf rides on driftwood roads
barkless remnants of cut dried pines
dull dark sandy moving shorelines
wood for art mobiles hung on a string.
Indeed, did this reveal something?
A park map, a picture of geography,
obviously not real actuality in spades,
but intimate enough
to accurately guide my walks today.
Is the Territory Mapped Accurately?
That’s the essential message,
the real meaningful question;
not Identity.
A few RVs and trailers settled here
temporarily, like all things, temporary.
Braving a March storm,
rattling aluminum roofs and siding
combined with the surf’s clamors:
campers huddled quietly indoors.
The tongue of the Sun sipped
from the clear creeks rocky run;
the moon ran away from the Sun,
disappeared in brilliance dipped.
Tidepools filled with colored beings
clinging to their fertile homes
stuck tight and right to stones!
My mind’s a mirror to what I see.
Stepping carefully near Grays Harbor
over a gentle flowing Steelhead creek.
Stunning Queets and Quinault Rainforest
Rivers too fast, too wide, too deep.
Joe’s Creek at Pacific Beach
a crawling drizzle of a stream,
Mirroring the fog draped Sun
saying something, trying to teach.
I beachcombed daily near Joe’s Creek!
Found the stones and sea-carved driftwood
that Northwest beachcombers eagerly seek.
Sat on twisted driftwood roots,
scribbled in the damp brown sand,
wrestled with unproductive impulses.
Exploring eyes, listening ears,
ruminating, talking hands.
Men digging razor clams
from Shows in the sand
pushing and pulling tools
sucking up golden bivalves.
Quinault and Copalis rivers
flowing with dirt and branches
covering roads with slick puddled chances
piling up driftwood at Taholah shore door.
Outside, the rain fed the forest of firs,
driftwood piled high on the Quinault spit
where a colorful Thunderbird totem pole sits
and cannery workers nearby put on no airs.
the surf brought driftwood piled on the
6.
Soul Mates Extraordinaire
I never
grasped emptiness
or hiked around Mt. Sumeru,
patted Chao-chou's dog
or teased Nansen's cat,
blocked the Bodhidharma's uppercut
or slept in Han Shan's dirty hut,
borrowed Wendy Johnson's garden rake
or rode the Ox through the Gateless Gate.
I never, ever
suffered the Great Doubt
or solved any of Rinzai's riddles,
looked for sticks in Yun-men's crapper
or broke Tassajara bread with Shunryu Suzuki,
minded the flapping flag for Hui-neng the sage
or heard Jiyu-Kennett move her whisk
in Mt. Shasta's shade,
chanted on Mt. Tamalpais
with Whalen, Ginsberg and Snyder
or saw Dogen's True Eye open just a little bit wider.
I never did.
Nope, never!
Not in 79 lifetimes.
Yet, it seems like I did.
Yep, dayinanddayout,
appearances notwithstanding,
Reality appeared just So.
This I know:
their heritage is in my heart,
their myths mine,
these dear Friends of the Buddha Mind.
7.
People of the Dirt: K'witzqu
The Native People living along the Quinault and Queets Rivers in Washington State share a similiar creation legend. "The Great Changer Kwate and the Great Spirit Transformer S'qitu once came to the mouth of the Queets River. After fording that very cold river they rubbed their legs to warm and restore themselves. Small rolls of dirt formed under their hands. They threw the dirt balls into the river, and from them a man and a woman came forth; who became the ancestors of the Queets people. S'quitu told them they would remain on the river and would be known as K'witzqu because of the dirt from which their human skin was made."
Glaciers slowly melting
rain ever falling
rivers every flowing
S'quitu intentionally
or unintentionally
made human beings
from K'witzqu dirt
and Queets floods
and magical arts
and the K'witzqu People lived
in Taholah huts
praying to S'quitu
8.
John Berryman, Sylvia Plath,
Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane,
Anne Sexton, Hunter Thompson,
Virginia Woolf, Gerared de Nerval,
Arthur Koestler, Yukio Mishima,
Sara Teasdale, Vladimur Mayakovsky,
Sergei Yesenin, Randall Jarret,
Vachel Lindsay, Paul Celan, Freud,
John Davidson, John Gould Fletcher,
Lew Welch, Richard Brautigan ...
It took some guts to pull the trigger
and blow out your brains,
to shake and gasp as you hang,
to jump of a bridge
and drown in the bay,
to swallow the poison
and face dying today.
Yes, it took courage, and focus
and for some
a deep dissatisfaction with
life's willy-nilly unfair
irrational ways.
Enough living facing a future
of the same old dull games, troubles,
dying slowly, unrelenting guilt, pain,
uncertainties, poverty, war,
depression and insane shame.
Yes, some like to dramatize,
act out a role like Yukio,
toss conventions to the ground,
be a meteor fast flying by,
and get others attentions
by their "suicide."
9.
An Old Man Tossed Out
A skinny old man of brittle bones
failing in a screwed dementia brain,
family all dead, all alone,
living in a old ratty group home,
a penniless unknown on Medicaid,
can't think straight, can't vote.
Wears a red MAGA hat
put on his unwise hairless head
by a cruel Nurse Ratched Republican
as a joke.
Millionaire heartless political renegades
with visions of fancy European escapades
decide Medicaid is welfare graft
buy votes for a pompous fat stupid Axe
Cutting the helpless brainless man
Off of Uncle Sam's Medicaid Dole.
Where will he go?
Shame, shame on American ways.
God will no longer bless America;
He is disgusted and dismayed.
"Politics can be the graveyard
of a poet; and only poetry
can be his resurrection."
- Langston Hughes
10.
Slouching Into Incoherence
Incoherent poems of word salads
mis-mashed onions and beets mixed
with an obscure metaphorical dressing of
vinegar and bile, croutons of confusion,
tomatoes of nonsense thrown in.
I can’t figure Robert Creely out:
{or from CA: Philip Whalen or Larry Ferlinghetti either}
[or from NY: John Ashbery or e.e. cummings either]
Brief excursions on bouncing backroads
of wordy mud puddles of randomness
closed the brittle door on hinges of sounds
read out, read out louder,
rant, whisper, shout out,
the spoken word; ritual tails
wagging like memories lost
flocks of vocabulary typhoons
smashing, yelling, broken cocoons
bursting butterflies of spinning sounds
Read out, read out louder
in a dank smoky coffee house
Hip precursor of Hippie clout
However,
Both Sides: Then and Now.
Hip Zen or Square Zen.
Clear as Sky or Clear as Mud,
Coherent as winter Logic or Obscure as summer Fog;
Throughout the Golden Gate...
Jumping off the ground,
falling up Meanings; or,
standing up Clarity...
Hanging around San Francisco City:
"Coits Tower still screws the sky"
Gregory Corso freed St. Michael from Alcatraz
Moscone and Milk: justice denied
Rexroth translated Chinese verses
Maya Angelou Let the Caged Bird Sing
Jefferson Starship wandered into the White Rabbit's hole
Thomas Cleary translated Taoist prose
Alan Watt’s old houseboat was sold
LSD glasses clearly unclear besmirched
Robert Hass pruned apple trees in Olema
Deng Ming Dao's Scholar-Warrior arose
The Summer of Love amplified Hippie Fun
Edward Espe Brown baked bread in Zen Robes
PhD's from UCB and Stanford
ruled the roost
Wendy Johnson gardened the Green Gulch grounds
Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco
Isaac Bonewit's magic arose from Neo-Druid lore
Mike McClure centered Beast Language INCANTATIONS
Silicon Valley kids coded new languages with Fortran lines
Amy Tan put SanFran Chinatown folks on the map
Allen Ginsberg’s Berkeley Sunflowers chanted
Steve Job's last words were "Wow"
Jerry Garcia lifted up the Grateful Dead
Philip Whalen helped the dying and bowed
Robert Creely gave a brief, succinct, convoluted scowl
David Brautigan went lingcod fishing in the Bay
Lawrence Ferlinghetti turned the lights on at City Lights
Eric Hoffer loaded boats and warned of True Believers
Zen Master Suzuki taught what Not to Think
UCB students sat-in & shouted out
Hitchhiking poets cried like clowns
Eyes of my Ears: Mystified
Beat poets died. City Lights sighed.
Befuddled by
some poet's words
repeating rereads
increased the blur.
No pearl in the oyster.
11.
Consumerist Identities
I enjoyed days and days
studying th 'New York School' poets
like Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery
so carefully that
suddenly realized
not watched TV for a week
missing, regretfully, hours
of commercial advertising:
for new hair from Dr. Bosley
for drugs to end pain in the knees
for cars driving on empty streets
for fresh French fries from Burger King
for expensive jewelry for a wedding ring
and cuisine delivered in plastic pans
and for cheap airline flights to Japan
and for fun family adventures in Disneyland
and for cruise ship travel to old Holland
or upcoming sitcoms filled with laughs
or fertilizer sold by Irishmen for green grass
or young men to replace your car's broken glass
or free hospital services for children handicapped
some grocery deals from a Fred Meyer's store
some maids to hire to clean dirty floors
some dogs to save from abusive horrors
some promos about Trump the Savior
or pills to save me from dizzy spells
or new dresses worn by skinny girls
or new movies with walking dead ghouls
or churches selling band-aids to sorry souls.
Geeezzz! To think
about what I missed.
To buy, and buy, and buy
till my wallet's empty
and my edited mind
was hypnotized till blind.
The average American
watches 30 hours of TV per week,
thats 900 commercials
to rattle your dulled brain.
Add 24 hours of Internet surfing
per week, enough ads to
fry you fingers and your eyes.
Consumerism is now America's Identity.
But business is business,
a sales a sale, work is work, man to man,
a rocks a rock
::: tautologies:::
Turn the TV off!
Be Free!
12.
What the Shit!
"Shit" may be the most functional word in the English language:
Gardeners know all about bull shit, horse shit, and chicken shit.
They might be lucky shits, dumb shits, crazy shits, or have shit for brains.
They know that some nights are colder than shit,
and some days are hotter than shit,
and other days are just plain shitty.
Gardeners all throw or sling shit, shoot the shit, occasionally catch some shit,
or duck when the shit hits the fan.
You had better give a shit,
and get your shit together;
or you will find yourself in deep shit,
smelling like shit,
treated like shit,
and end up being shit out of luck.
Once you know your shit, you don't need to know anything else,
and you'll be has happy as a pig in shit;
if you don't, you'll be told to shit or get off the pot,
told that you don't know the difference between shit and shine'ola,
served shit on a shingle,
and told you look like shit.
Shit!
You can smoke some shit,
drink until your shit faced,
buy some more shit,
feel like shit,
look like shit,
and find yourself in a boat load or mountain of shit.
You can have too much shit,
not enough shit, the right shit,
the wrong shit,
or a lot of weird shit.
Shit Happens!
- Mike Garofalo's Version of "Shit Happens!"
13.
The Eucalyptus Trees at Tomales Bay
We laughed over dinner in the Village at Bodega Bay. The shrimp scampi and grilled asparagus, plated to perfection, tasty beyond belief, remembered to this day. Brothers and wives, six old carriers of fading memories, sat together chatting over wine and fancy local cheese.
From our comfortable hotel suites we gazed at the wind-surfers sliding around the quiet harbor today, heard children talking in the shade, walked up to vista points, smelled the salty spray, wondered about our futures fading fast day by day.
Talked about our surgeries, our children's escapades and failures, our trips to places faraway, our dead friends and family erased from time, and our petty habits that directed our minds.
The grassy hills, carpets of green, a few wildflowers of early spring, spread over smooth rounded mounds of earth bordering this quaint smallish bay.
We walked and talked, ruminated, reflected on what we once saw and what we missed. Since we all had worked, saved, invested, and retired, lived in California all our lives, in a peaceful time, our experiences reflected our conservative bourgeois lives.
We drove south along Highway 1, along the lush hills encasing narrow Tomales Bay. Forests of fragrant eucalyptus trees, dense, flaky barked, for miles and miles as far as one could see. Dead pointed arrow-tipped leaves spread thick beneath our booted feet. Eucalyptus seed pods, gnarled and round, twisted in our fingers fragrantly.
The shallow Tomales Bay was calm, subdued, colored in shades of gray. Drivers in the traffic from Frisco, escaping city life, streamed steadily though these rural scenes, past hip cafes, and souvenir packed shops. Headed up the coast, kind of lost, but not, just pretending to be explorers, adventurers, pioneers... but they were not. Just tourists with cash, like us, on a weekend lark.
Below the slender 15 mile long Tomales Bay estuary, Deep Below, under miles of salty rocks, crawling slowly, pushing-pushing, inching along, invisible and real, the Immense San Andreas Fault. One side of the shallow bay moves northwest, the other side shifts south. If the San Andreas Fault faulted, split, rifted, strike-shifted, exploded, rock and rolled ... the earthquakes would send tsunami waves to the height of young Madrone trees, and slash Inverness, Marshall, and Point Reyes Stations to rubbled ground! Leaving broken houses, wrecked cars, rotting herring, salmon, eels, sturgeon, halibut, and human bits scattered all around. Always a disastrous possibility!
Yet, I did not worry, can't fret about every unpredictable or possible threat. Just enjoyed eating a fine carnitas tamale and flirted with a Hot Tamale Lady in an Olema cafe; that's It. Little time to dwell on Death ... the inevitable ultimate Rift.
My brother and I gazed to the South, wistfully, at Sonoma State Beach, near where the Russian River empties down into the Pacific Sea. We were older, wiser, but listing steeply toward our ends from disease. Memories from 2019 ... crumbling.
14.
Mike Garofalo lives in Vancouver, Washington.
He worked for 50 years in city and county
public
libraries, and in elementary
schools.
He graduated with
degrees in
philosophy,
library science, and education. He has been
a web publisher since 1998.
25 Steps and Beyond: Collected Works
This document was last edited, revised,
reformatted, added to, relinked,
changed, improved, or modified
by Mike Garofalo
on April 27, 2025.