"Breaking Free - A Poetic Journal of Turning On, Tuning In, and Dropping Out" 
was self-published in 2009, but the poetry was written in the period of 1969-75, when I dropped out just short of a doctorate in music at Stanford, became a street musician for a while, and moved to Bolinas.

I have mostly concentrated on music, and have not pursued the profession of poetry, but I continue to write and give readings from time to time.

A sampling of poems from "Breaking Free", and some more recent poems are included below. 

"Breaking Free" is available to purchase directly from me. 
$18, shipping included

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From the Back Jacket of "Breaking Free"

This is a story, in poems, of the transformation that so many of us went through in the late sixties and early seventies.

In that turbulent time, at age 32, Dale Polissar went from being a married Stanford doctoral candidate with a promising academic career ahead of him — an accomplished classical clarinetists, a composer, a music critic — to being a musical adventurer at large in the world, playing solo improvisatory clarinet in the streets of San Francisco — a roving bachelor, jamming with blues musicians, playing in cafes for a troupe of belly dancers.

Through it all, an educated mind came together with a musical ear and a newfound wildness of spirit, to produce a surge of inspired writing.

Vividly, the poems recount a lot of the sixties experience — from "Acid at Noon" through Viet Nam protest, from sexual odyssey through spiritual awakening.

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A Selection of Poems from "Breaking Free"


Can I, covered with dog hair

Can I, covered with dog hair, go 
Apply for a job? Is it not 
Significant that, by the car just now, 
When I noticed all this hair on me,
I rushed back to the house — not 
To get a brush (I didn’t even 
Think ‘til now of doing that), 
But to get a pen to write the line: 
“Can I, covered with dog hair, go 
Apply for a job?”

                     Can I decline 
Verbs for a living, or define 
Words for a living, or refine
Turds for a living? What shall I do? 
If I say “Boo!” to my students, if 
I wiggle my tongue at them, what 
Will they do? Will they say “boo” too?

I am too old to smile at people I don’t like.

I am a shaggy creature from the hills 
Who likes to roam. For twenty years I thought 
Schools were my home — only to find, too late— 
That school is a zoo in which I had been caged. 
Now, released, and having raged at myself 
A year or two for not being able to move, 
I see this peculiar stiffness is not age, 
But comes from incarceration. Now I feel 
My muscles start to move, feel them smooth 
And stretchy, ready for anything. No thought- 
Induced contractions, anxious spasms, I 
Am free, and feel my arms and legs glide, 
Like they haven’t since my childhood, and my mind 
Is like that too: doesn’t judge itself, 
But moves, avoiding precipices, seeking 
Food. And if I seem rude, if I 
Snarl, when you pet me, or seem shy,
Remember I am new to wildness: I 
Still bear the memory of the cage, and fear 
That I’ll be caught again. I glide unseen 
Through night and rain, nuzzling the creatures who, 
Like me, have escaped; and some of us convene 
In quiet, drippy hollows in the woods, 
To drink cool water, lie together, lick 
Each other’s wounds.


Walking Home

The sky of shattered crystal, starry black, 
And blacker shaggy shapes of trees around it, 
Cool creek breeze that gentle flows my face, 
Summer cricket quiet night, delicious air, 
My long limbs swimming slowly through the fluid 2 a.m.

What music can compare? — star-glimmer bright, 
This black sky sings so myriadly! Vast, 
And delicate as lacey snowflakes blown apart, 
This frozen motion of eternity exploding wide.

God, how it swells heart sends gush tears eyes: 
The smell of warmed earth fields the smell of love, 
The dirt dung underfoot a road in paradise — listen! 
Twisted oak trees, silhouetted, utter now.... 
a dove’s soft cry.



To be with a woman?

To be with a woman? 
          Yes, if we could be speechlessly. 
          Molten as lava flowing, Trembling as the aspen.

          I am tired of words.  
          Of mine especially. 
          Tired of being this or that, 
          And social screwing.

Let’s talk paw-talk, back-bone bending.... 
Tongues are for licking.

           Let’s be dumb and powerful 
           As tides drifting in and out,
                 Eloquent as dirt, and irrefutable 
                      as fog      blowing trough pine trees....

           I am sexy as a scraggly stump! 
           Passionate as boulders in the snow.

I am a toad — croak! — who are you? 
You think I’ll turn into a prince? 
— Get lost!

Ahhhh.... but I long to speak oceanly 
                                    with someone..........




Moon talk

Moon talk. The language of gods.

The wind-whistle walking alone 
In the star-swarmed cold.

            Children being born, 
            And wrinkled children dying.... 
            A sucking in and out of space.

            What do the waves say?

            Hush..... Hush.....

Infinitude of crystalline sands — 
           Toss them into the air:

           There somewhere a green one whirls....

And creatures stroll its gardens 
With pale and delicate hands.



After twenty years of make-believe

After twenty years of make-believe 
I woke up in my own body, free 
To resume life, free 
To move as I wished.

I was thirty-two. My teeth were decayed from years 
Of drinking sugared coffee, lungs decayed 
From years of smoking cigarettes. My back 
Was weak from years of slouching, eyes 
Weak from years of trying to look 
The way I thought I should. My mind 
Was weak from years of being pushed 
To do so many things it didn’t care to do.

But all in all, I was still in good shape.

Certainly I felt like a young buck— 
I was finally my own 
Man. I hung in the air, 
Resilient and alert,
Ready to move 
Where my senses moved me. 
Body had no encumbering self-conceptions: 
Poet, artist, writer, intellectual, 
Playwright, critic, clarinetist and composer— 
All these titles dropped away.

I felt myself move, 
Walking across the room, and realized 
That I was moving free: 
No conception of a social role. 
Body and awareness only, 
Sliding through colored room and lambent air, I was 
A thing aware, in a world of things: I was

Extraordinarily vacant.  I was
Extraordinarily there.




Outdoor Restaurant Terrace, Ghirardelli Square, 1971

Oh you smart, smart people, 
With your leather coats, your furs, 
Your shiney boots, your elegant coiffures— 
Look, look out there, those ships, 
Those sleek grey iron phantoms— 
Those are destroyers of our fleet 
That go now to protect the carriers 
From which the planes rise up 
To drop their fragmentations bombs 
Upon a people we have never known, 
Upon a land of peasant farmers: 
Gentle people who would be content 
To be allowed to plow their fields 
And watch their children grow, 
But now instead must know 
The terror of our power at their flesh.

Ah, how can we use our riches so?

How can we sit and sip our scotch 
Upon the terrace of this red brick citadel of fashion, 
Watching the sparkling waters of the bay, 
While grey ships slide out of our harbor 
To bring horror blasting into some farm village day.

Surely we shall be destroyed for this. 

Surely such cruelty must ensnare the user in its mesh.

Oh you smart, smart people— 
Laughing, talking while this death 
Goes drifting by — What, 
In all you say, can bring back breath 
To even one of those whom our indifference has killed?

And who among you has the cash to buy 
          — Once we have shattered it --
The sparkle of a single infant’s eye?



Bolinas, 1974

Rain fingers on my roof, candle-light. 
The fire crackling orange in the hearth. 
Out there the night is dark, the village nearly lightless. 
Most people abed by now.

I feel surrounded by these 
Warm sleeping people in the night. 
Their lives— 
Cuddled now in blankets, snuggled close or apart— 
Now rest in the mothering darkness. 
Their breath comes slow.

I have come to know them for a year now, 
And feel so fond of them— 
Their joy of living strong, 
And they do glory in the multiplicity
Of ways that people can be. 
And when they come together, 
My Lord, how they can dance 
And give each other pleasure! 
I feel surrounded by these warm 
Sleeping people in the night: 
Their bellies, their hands, their thighs. 
Each creature lying still now is so perfectly 
Itself— 
In vacation of its having to be 
A person — they now retrieve 
Some great dark source 
In which they 
Gather their will to be.

And they will wake 
And be reborn 
In the morning.

And the town will don its colors once again 
And the ageless promenading will begin: 
The generations passing, short and fat, tall and thin,
Shuffling and swooping and grinning and grumping, 
With their instruments and liquor
            and their groceries and their mail, 
They’ll promenade the main street in the sunlight.

I feel surrounded by these 
Warm sleeping people in the night.



Wild Bride 
(for Judy Molyneux)

She is like a huntress, wild 
Until my taming tender touch 
Bring her to curling close and nuzzling. Then 
Soft moans and cries we make, 
Arch tight and yield and rise together.

Yet I have strong flights to fly and lone 
That cannot be flown with her, 
And languages to speak that are my own.

There are ancient places inside my heart 
                                  that I must visit.
I a wild thing too, impatient with the down 
Of her soft nest, my senses pricked alive 
By the hunt, the stalking of my destiny.

Oh but her colors are so bountiful. 
And when I leap sky meadows, her beside, 
How I feel her my soaring sister, 
My wild bride.




Compassion

Compassion, oh my people, have compassion for yourselves. 
What a clumsy, graceless, painful job was done on you, growing up! 
How you were processed, pushed and pulled, like a bunch of metal scrap, 
And stamped this shape or that according to somebody’s plan, 
And made to think the whole time you were free, while specialists 
Assembled you, like cars doing down the line in a factory— 
Blind specialists, who were themselves assembled clumsily. 
How you were made to feel your life was like a graded test, 
Or like Monopoly — a matter of power and property!

Oh flesh, soft flesh, soft watery flesh we are. Like plants we are. 
We grow — and only partly can control the way we grow. 
Our being is deeply rooted in the soil of endless time. 
Nothing our minds can know can touch the hugeness of our being: 
Whole galaxies expand behind the blinking of your eye,
And ancient creatures howl within your own moon cry. 
You cannot know. You are not what you think you are. Be still— 
And let this wondrous thing you are unfold ... the way it will.