Juxtaposition of Empires

Coos Bay, NSP Meditations, Poetry

Elmer and I meander our Empire neighborhood on April 9, 2026.

Our meander begins at 6:45 AM.

Destination: the boat ramp and beach.

A woman lights a pipe

behind the grocery store.

I hear laughing.

A man standing near steps forward.

They break meth together.

A woman sleeps under the mural of Empire’s heyday.

They thought the big trees would never run out.

A man riding a red bicycle

gripping chopper handlebars

skids to a stop in a lazy intersection.

A woman sitting on his lap jumps off,

pants slide to her shins.

I see a quarter moon in the sky,

a full moon on the street.

A man harnessed to a rectangular rickshaw

pulls the contraption up a hill.

It is empty.

No passengers or possessions.

A prayer flag attached to a fishing rod

wedged into the rickshaw

waves in the breeze.

A maroon Jeep Cherokee from the 90s

rests near a thicket of blackberries.

All windows blasted out except one.

A master of applying black duct tape

has worked wonders.

I call this art of the survival,

displayed in street side galleries

all across the Republic.

Perpetual free admission.

We descend to the beach.

Low tide.

Salt suffuses the air.

Pilings from the old lumber mills still here.

A rotting graveyard of Empire’s former prosperity.

I hear disembodied voices

in the willows of Coos Bay.

An argument rages:

He complains about inadequate fellatio.

She wants more cunnilingus.

He yells something I can’t make out.

She screams, “When I suck your dick you wag your tail like a dog.”

I was told there was once a Hooverville in the area.

Sunrise paints the bay a dull orange.

Nary a ripple, everything pacific.

An osprey flies clutching

a stick in its beak,

construction materials for the

nest cohering in the channel marker.

A sandpiper skewers a sand shrimp.

Pelicans glide inches above water.

Gulls dismember crabs in the mudflats.

A blue heron hunts in a slough.

I’m looking for my buddy the seal

and a freighter named Lily of the Sea

that conveys across the ocean

death from the clearcuts

in the upper watersheds.

I find a shaving kit washed ashore

and read equations of sweet horny math in the sand.

I write one myself for her,

one she’ll never read.

Back in the willows,

she bellows, “Get the fuck out of here!”

He says nothing.

Dead Jellyfish

NSP Meditations, Poetry

Dead jellyfish rot at the wrack line of Coos Bay

A homeless woman wearing yoga pants hunts for shiny stones in a rivulet

Another homeless woman screams, “Shut the fuck up!” in the willows

Her tiny red dog wanders out with the appearance of suicide in its face

Four geese waddle toward water

Ospreys build a nest

Elmer takes a triple Mike Johnson

Dad’s probate nightmare finally ended

It left me with visions of violence,

machinations in the mind

Earlier, I saw a bald eagle scavenging

a crab in the sand

Interesting we chose a scavenger as our national bird

Sounds about right

Ben Franklin wanted the turkey.

There are no Ben Franklins defining the Republic today

Only Mike Johnsons

After the bald eagle,

I saw a seal dying near the jetty,

BLM lackeys spraying herbicides

in the shore pines

I’m writing this in a dive bar

The regulars are singing the Oscar Meyer wiener jingle

A homeless man entered to gamble

He’s wearing a Timex watch

Why?

I want to write a love letter,

but don’t know her address

When the Rainstorm Hits

NSP Meditations, Poetry

The principal

said she wanted to have sex

in the back of her tiny pickup

when a Sometimes a Great Notion level

rainstorm walloped Waldport.

It was her favorite novel.

She was kind of a Hank Stamper

in her own modern way.

She’d pull the tailgate down,

throw open the canopy,

shove her surfer shit to the side,

we’d dive onto the yoga mat,

rustle up some moldy blankets,

she’d wrench up the tailgate,

slam down the canopy

with a super clank!

She wanted to hear the cannonade

of rain smashing into the canopy,

the shaking,

screws unscrewing,

clamps unclamping.

Maybe rollers on the ocean

mixed in the soundtrack.

She didn’t want to hear anything human.

Her husband wouldn’t know.

They were swingers anyway.

When the rainstorm hit,

and school wasn’t in session (!)

she’d text me.

I would race to the parking lot overlooking Alsea Bay.

Twenty minutes

if I don’t get stuck behind

an RV or log truck.

What happens if it’s light outside?

Or the parking lot is full?

All the better she says.

We’re going to make our own country song!

With no lyrics!

Rainstorms came and went.

It never happened.

If it had, no poem.

Mystery over planning,

I think.

More Roses in the World

NSP Meditations, Poetry

Black rain imprisoned Fort Clatsop

and the Corps of Discovery

during a winter on the Oregon Coast.

Two centuries later,

Rose and I paid a visit to the fort

on a December afternoon.

A squall hit like sheets of plywood falling from the sky.

Dark, twisting gremlins blew trumpets of rain.

Water ran down conifers like waterfalls.

The grounds were a lake.

Not a vehicle in the parking lot.

Gift shop and museum closed.

No rangers around.

Free admission.

We began our tour of the fort.

Just walked right in.

Rose lit an American Spirit.

How she kept smoking in the deluge

was something out of noir.

I narrated my version

of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,

the real one,

not the account recorded for future publication,

worshiped by the academic priesthood

who believe what happened in the journals

is all that happened.

Omissions, the real story.

We inspected the kitchen,

imagining stringy elk,

endless smoked salmon.

On to the barracks,

so dark inside Rose had to

torch the way with her lighter.

What mold and masturbation,

fellatio and fornication

went on among the troops in here!

Next, we entered the melancholy

Captain Lewis’ quarters,

the dank, dreary place where he suffered

the greatest writer’s block

in American history.

Rose looked out the only window.

She lit another American Spirit,

flung the lighter,

dangled the cigarette in her lips,

slid down her Lycras and panties,

clenched the jambs,

exhaled smoke,

(always through the nose, a real pro),

and thrust her ass toward me.

She never said a word.

I wrenched her hips with my hands.

She sashayed.

Oh Sacajawea!

Oh Meriwether!

She blew a smoke ring into rain.

Top that Veronica Lake or Barbara Stanwyck.

We repaired to the Sipin’ In Tavern

on the Skipanon River.

I refused Rose

her usual can of Hamm’s.

We were celebrating.

Sacajawea must drink the best,

a well vodka cran.

The tavern listed over the river,

reeked of grease and popcorn,

dead animals mounted on the walls.

Rose wanted to know if I was going to write it up.

I started right in with a golf pencil on a napkin.

Rose always loved watching me write.

And correcting her atrocious grammar.

The gorgeous queen of double negatives!

A week later Fort Clatsop burned to the ground.

It made the national news.

Coals from the re-enactors’ forge

ignited a fire at midnight.

We laughed at that.

Sure, blame the coals.

I recount this true tale

not to drink a milkshake of nostalgia.

Rose was free verse.

We need more Roses in the world

to undermine

everything insidious

that digital life has inflicted upon us,

such as you can’t get laid in Fort Clatsop anymore.

If Roses don’t bloom,

we all wilt.

Gregg Allman

Coos Bay, NSP Meditations

An elderly man exuding the unmistakable vibe of homelessness sat on a rock facing Coos Bay. Fifty feet away, wind whipped up whitecaps on the water.

Elmer and I walked toward his direction on a weekday afternoon.

We passed ten feet away from him. He was the spitting image of late stage Greg Allman. He wore cowboy boots, cowboy hat, and a black and red motorcycle jacket. Greg took no notice of me.

Music blasted from Greg’s phone. It sounded like a heartbreak country song. I didn’t recognize it. Greg accompanied the tune on a harmonica, but his harmonica was the wrong key and dissonance resulted. That hardly mattered. Greg was blowing the hell out of the harmonica. That’s what mattered.

Elmer was baffled by the sound of the harmonica and reared up and down. I felt tempted to stop and ask Greg the name of the song, but refrained. You don’t interrupt a homeless man blowing the hell out of a harmonica while he’s playing along to a heartbreak country song on the edge of Coos Bay and relishing the moment of heartbreak the song obviously represented for him.

The husky and I performed our beach shtick. On the return leg, the song was still blasting and Greg still playing along.

Greg nodded to me and stopped playing.

“What song is that?” I said.

He told me and the name no longer sticks. It was a track I’d never heard.

We struck up a conversation about harmonicas and I shared my eccentric history with the instrument. He dug the story.

“Hey, I love your dog!” Greg said.

“He’s a good dude,” I said.

“Thanks for talking to me brother.”

I love when homeless people call me brother. Housed people never do.

“You keep on with your dream brother,” said Greg. “Whatever it was at 15. (My only one was to become a writer.) You start living it today!”

“I will brother!” I said.

Elmer and I went on our way. Behind us, I heard the sound of a harmonica drifting this way and that on the shifting winds of Coos Bay. What music!

Reflections on My First Year in Coos Bay

Coos Bay, NSP Meditations

This May marks my first year living in the Empire neighborhood of Coos Bay.

I want to take stock of this year:

The house has turned out far better than I imagined. I completely restored the back fence and resurrected the back yard. I built two garden beds and the garden is doing well. I also planted two apple trees.

The propane stove in the living room has been a fine addition. Same with the burn barrel.

I’m lucky to have some good neighbors. The saga of a a distressed American family across the street continues to unfold, and I do watch from my front window.

Elmer and I have walked to local bay beach every morning of our residence. It’s truly an inspiring way to begin my day.

I’ve written approximately 200,000 words about Coos Bay since moving here. I have no idea what to do with them as far as a book goes.

I have not availed myself of Coos Bay’s cultural offerings. I remain mostly in solitude with Elmer and we do our beach thing. The exception to this are my irregular visits to my local Oregon Tavern Age joint. I’ve written up a few good stories originating there, but my enthusiasm for the joint has faded.

I continue to interact with the homeless but nothing proactive like I did in Portland. It seems impossible to that in Coos Bay.

The Coos Bay Library has been an excellent friend.

I’ve found a few places I like to patronize and the local seafood shop is sensational.

I’ve considered attending a Church of Christ service, the religion of my youth, for the sheer hell of it. What’s transpired in the half century since I was a preacher’s kid.

I haven’t made any real friends here, but I haven’t made any substantive effort, either.

I should play more golf.

I’ve built about 50 driftwood forts on the local beaches.

I met one woman who intrigued me and then she was gone.

I may enter the Prefontaine Memorial Run again. I found last year’s event exhilarating.

I’m still making sense of my dad’s death and the horror that was the probate process precipitated by two of the beneficiaries. At times, I wanted to exact some kind of cosmic revenge, but then I always remembered an immortal line from Confucius: “On a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

So what do I expect or envision for year two in Empire? I don’t know. I will publish a volume of my poems written over the last 25 years. I do hope to reconnect with a few people from my past who reached out to me. It’s all about follow through.

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