Here and Now: February 2007

1 Comments:

at 1:03 PM Alice Folkart said...

Great issue, and I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm in it. The Vietnamese poems took my breath away, as did William Heyen's - they just reach out from the page and touch me. The closing poem, about how you feel now and sitting there with your camera waiting to see if anything interesting wanders by is wonderful. I am feeling more and more like that. Arlene's poems are, as usual, charged with energy - I can see that old lady with her black eye, maybe I'll even become that old lady . . . And, the lampshade - oh yeah.

Everything, especially the super photos, just extra special in this - the barkus show well, don't they?

I know I'm forgetting something, but I liked everything . . .thanks for making this for all of us and for the honor of including my work.

Alice

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Winter Day to Winter Night Sunday, February 18, 2007

This will be "Here and Now" number II.2.3, if I ever finish it. It is Sunday morning and I'm just beginning to work on it, at a time when I'm usually on my final proof.

The reason for the delay, two words you never, ever want to hear together, kidney and stones. Without going into detail, I'll just say that my life experience for the past couple of days has been limited to lying on the floor in a fetal position and moaning.

But, all trials pass, providing you find the right drugs (which I did), so "Here and Now" is back on track, maybe a little late (we'll see) and maybe a little shorter than usual.

Readers of "Here and Now" are familiar with Gary Blankenship from his ten commandment series which we featured here over a number of weeks. Those poems are emblematic of the way Gary works, he lays out a challenge for himself, like the ten commandments series or his fifty states series, then sets out to meet the challenge, providing us, along the way, with some lovely poetry.

An earlier challenge resulted in his book A River Transformed: Wang Wei's River Wang Poems as Inspiration. (For more information on Gary's book, click on the link to his website on the right.) His aim in this book was to transform through his own reinterpretation the poems of the Chinese poet Wang Wei.

I had the honor of providing an introduction to the book and, in that introduction, I wrote that the result of Gary's effort is both a book of wonderful poetry, as well as an introduction to the ancient arts of Chinese poetry for people like me who knew little of those arts and who, through Gary's book, came to appreciate the beauty and soulfulness of Chinese poetry from a time when the Western tradition of art was still mostly about painting their faces like Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart.

Here are a couple of Gary's "transformation."

After Wang Wei's Waves of Willow Trees - What Isn't, Is Forgotten

There are no castles on our horizon;
no ramparts to fly banners and warn
seabirds we have fled and do no follow!

Footsteps lead towards smoke and home,
We look back to the sea as if to recall
who was left behind unharvested.

Your hair floats unlike kelp at low tide,
fingers grasp unlike roots in soft sand,
your limbs as white as split driftwood.

I cannot see what you are, only what you aren't.
Your are flesh, blood and bone, but I see
shell, beach and surf as the moon turns orange

Around and around , a toy boat floats:
and old man argues its sail was ever blue.

After Wang Wei's White Rock Shoals - If Not One Lake, Another

Loons call across water lilies and eel grass.
Spooked by clothing tossed on autumn's breeze,
doe and fawn leap along the lakeshore.
Upstream, village dogs greet each passing car.

A truck door slams to drunken laughter.
Startled, we splash to shore and quick cover.
Redwings and bluebirds gather threads
o repair long abandoned nests.

On green rocks, once smooth and soap slick,
we listen to gossip cared across the water.
A muskrat dives beneath bleached sticks;
the wind rises to meet your shirt's wet touch

fawn nibbles a forgotten tube sock
under a cracked harvest moon.

After Wang Wei's Temple-Tree Path - Above the Tidal Flow

The path to the bay is slick with slush,
treacherous along a creek bed swollen
with a quick thaw and dead madrona leaves.

With each step, mud and winter grip
the bottoms of our boots like spider webs
cling to a frayed side porch screen .

We walk on as if the beach's wet boulders
mark the only rail that allows us
to journey with a modicum of surety.

You sit. Unable to continue?
Or more aware we were signaled
is it time?

The stylus no longer casts a shadow,
the calliope is deaf.

Arthur Rimbaud, the wild genius, scandalized French society, wrote some of the most visionary poetry or his or any other time, and ended up a merchant in Ethiopia. He made a small fortune as a gunrunner, but developed health problems that forced him to return to France, where his leg was amputated. He was going to stay at his sister Isabelle's house to recuperate but never left the hospital. Rimbaud died in Marseille in 1891, at age 37.

Here is one of his poems.

Evening Prayer

I live seated, like an angel in the hands of a barber,
In my fist a strongly fluted mug,
My stomach and neck curved, a Gambier pipe
In my teeth, under the air swollen with impalpable veils of smoke.

Like the warm excrement of an old pigeonhouse,
A Thousand Dreams gently burn inside me;
And at moments my sad heart is like sap-wood
Which the young dark gold of its sweating covers with blood.

Then, when I have carefully swallowed my dreams,
I turn having drunk thirty or forty mugs,
And collect myself, to relieve the bitter need;
Sweetly as the Lord of the cedar and hyssops,
I piss toward the dark skies very high and very far,
With the consent of the large heliotropes.

(Translated by Wallace Fowlie)

In the last two weeks, we have read from Listening to the Light by Cyra S. Dumitru as she let us into the mind of Eve and Adam in the Garden. This week, we finish the triangle with words from the Snake.

Words of the Serpent

I loved her too much to see her kept in that garden forever.
All that perfection and beauty, after a while it's numbing,

one ripe apple indistinguishable from the next.
Nothing ever dies, hardly ever changes.

We need bruises on the peaches, worms in the fruit,
long stretches of drought so we can live

the meaning of water.

Oh yes, I imagined the consequences.

I knew sooner or later
she would have to feel pain, feel her body

split open with seed. I trusted her
strength, believed she could grown

another skin bigger than the one before.
The first time I offered her the fruit

I thought I'd hooked her with the smell.
But then she darted away

among unopened lilies.
Persuading her certainly wasn't easy.

Her awe ran deep (as mine once did)
before I broke the confines of God,

sought less constricting skin.
The seeds in her were fierce embers.

Her hands had to make; they used to twitch in her sleep.
"See how far they can take you," I whispered.

"Turn piles of stone into mountains that sing the sky."
Finally she came to me.

"I am ready," she said, shoulders trembling.
The first bite she took was dainty. "Eat!" I said.

Her face, neck hands became sticky from the succulence.
I know because I flicked my tongue once across her.

Abruptly she stopped eating,
Wind filtered through her black hair; she tossed her head.

With her whole glistening body she listened
as if the felt the lark thrum the air.

Then Adam found her, scolded her with narrow eyes.
The fruit she offered him was juicier than what I had picked.

At first he drew back.
She rubbed the fruit between her hands

tore a piece with her fingernail
and he slipped it between his lips.

She then held the fruit while he chewed slowly,
eyes riveted on the small fires of her eyes.

That was when their love really began
when their souls first felt the weight

of bones pressing against them
when hand reached out for hand

not knowing how long warmth would answer.:

Here's a new poem from me.

I was just thinking

it's a dreary
drab
drizzly
sunday afternoon
about 5 o'clock
with an unsure sun
not
up
not down
settling somewhere
in the middle
until further orders
are received
and I'm sucking
on a latte
at one of my back-up
coffee shops
surrounded by medical
students
talking loud
in some kind of latin
hip hop
while studying pictures
of intestines
and other bloody
viscera
and I'm not in a mood
to be thinking about
my innard
parts
but what else can you do
when someone else's gizzards
are laid out in full color
photographs
and besides that
don't these kids seem awful young
to be looking at other peoples
insides -
baby docs
god help me
I'm feeling
a little
sickly
but afraid
to show
it
around these kids
who might want
to try to cure
me -
damn
I miss my old doc
the one who knew
everything
and had a German
accent
and walked
in teeny tiny
little slide slide steps
like Tim Conway's
old man
character
on the Carol
Burnett show
in the good old days
of television
before everyone wanted
to be an idol or at least
famous
for five minutes
like whatshisname
you know who I mean
the one who
killed himself with an overdose
of boston baked beans
or was it navy

W. S. Merwin is said to be one of the most influential American poets of the latter 20th century.

He made a name for himself as an antiwar poet during the 1960's. His interest in Buddhist philosophy and Deep ecology also influenced his writing. He continues to write prolifically, though he also dedicates significant time to the restoration of rain forests in Hawaii, the state where he lives.

Merwin has received many honors, including a Pulitzer Prize and a Tanner Prize, one of the highest honors bestowed by the Academy of American Poets.

I have seen the effect he describes here. Salt water from bays along the lower Texas coast seeping underground to turn fields that previously produced two crops a year of watermelon, cantaloupe and cucumbers into salty wasteland. The bad news is farm land disappears; the good news is large ranches, like the King Ranch, have developed a grass that will grow in this environment and produce pastures for their Santa Gertrudis cattle.

Low Fields and Light

I think it is in Virginia, that place
That lies across the eye of my mind now
Like a grey blade set to the moon's roundness,
Like a plain of glass touching all there is.

The flat fields run out to the sea there.
There is no sand, no line. It is autumn.
The bare fields, dark between fences, run
Out to the idle gleam of the flat water.

And the fences go on out, sinking slowly,
With a cow-bird half-way, on a stunted post, watching
How the light slides trough them easy as weeds
Or wind, slides over them away out near the sky.

Because even a bird can remember
The fields that were there before the slow
Spread and wash of the edging line crawled
There and covered them, a little more each year.

My father never ploughed there, nor my mother
Waited, and never knowingly I stood there
Hearing the seepage slow as growth, nor knew
When the taste of salt took over the ground.

But you would think the fields were something
To me, so long I stare out, looking
For their shapes or shadows through the matted gleam, seeing
Neither what is nor what was, but the flat light rising.

This is the second appearance by Dan Flore in "Here and Now". Dan leads poetry workshops for the mentally ill and says he would like, eventually, to become a certified poetry therapist.

stained glass pictures

mother's eyes go black
images of me in a baby carriage
somewhere in Mexico,
and the old padre stroking her cheek
with the back of his hand
swim in her mind

she falls to the ground
every street noise
begins articulating her name

mother, let me hear your prayers
the churches stained glass pictures
all dance and spit on you

feel your lips
the ones that sang
the songs you wrote
just for me
songs of orchards waiting for us
and lightening bolts
we could swing from
mother, bring me the melody
I must sing to you now
where is it?
lost in your
mildew smelling bible ?
how many times did
you dunk it in holy water?

mother, I've seen you weep
after holding it in for so long
everyone who left you
is a diamond now
in your mind
all you can think of
was when
they were all
still coal

high in a steeple
a robed man lights candles
illuminating you and I
from years ago
my infant hand
around your finger
hymns swirl around our younger selves
golden, dreamy, and cradling
then all is dark
unlit candlesticks
plummeting

Howard Moss, poetry editor at The New Yorker for many years before his death, wrote often of the coast. This poem reminds me of Corpus Christi (pictured above), a city on the middle Texas coast where we lived for fifteen very good years. I will never forget driving along Corpus Christi Bay in a heavy fog just at sunrise, when the only contact with the world was a light lapping of waves against the shore and the muffled sound of gulls crying on either side as you passed.

That's my poem, not yet written. Here's Moss'.

At Georgica Beach

How roughly ambivalent the seizure is
Of the sea to fix each wave it undoes
In the wake each time of the breakage it was,

Each coming in to the edge of dry-dock,
And then, underneath, the long drawing back,
Leaving the minor clatter of shellshock....

It's day. The wind's up. The ocean's gambling
With light. The dice thrown, the game is running
Away with itself in runnels and creases -

The long cliffhangers, just as they strengthen
Their hold on the surface, break and capsize
Into the sinking spools and renewals

Of things getting ready only to be things.

Here, a small quiet moment on the rocky shores of Lake Travis, near Austin, Texas. Forty years of so ago, I sometimes went to a little cabin there to study and to write. The poem was written then, when I should have been studying. It was published in The Green Tricycle in 1999.

dusk

the midwinter lake
heaves and rustles
like some great animal
shuttering
in the gathering dark

under pins of
white and yellow light
crickets chip
the soft stone of night

smoke and scents
of campfires rise

quiet
falls with the sun

From Elegy For The Departure, a book of poetry and parables by Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert, this poem on the politics of crucifixion. A fervent and public anti-communist voice during his country's occupation by the Soviet Union, Herbert was familiar with show trials.

On the Margin of the Trial

Sanhedrin's court was not open during the night
blackness was needed by the imagination
it was in flagrant contradiction of normal practice

it is improbably
that the holiday of Passover was violated
because of a not very dangerous Galilean
the agreement of opinion of traditional antagonist -
Sadducees and Pharisees - is suspicious

it was for Caiaphas to carry out the interrogation
ius gladii was in the hands of the Romans
therefore why call on shadows
and a crowd roaring Free Barabbas

the whole affair it seems was played out between officials
pale Pilate and he terarch Herod
and impeccable administrative procedure
but who could ever succeed in making a drama out of this

hence the scenery of frightened bearded men
and the mob going up to a mountain named
for a skull

it might have been gray
without passions

Though we've featured her poems before, and will again in this issue, Jane Roken isn't just a poet. Here's evidence of her other talents.

Photo by Jane Roken

And here's another quiet moment from me, also published in The Green Tricycle. This one appeared in 2003. The Green Tricycle is another former publication of Cayuse Press that is greatly missed.

The poem also appears in my book, Seven Beats a Second

caress

midnight

hot breath
and
whispers

soft
  slow
    glide
      of skin
        on skin

tongue

strikes
like the bite
of a velvet adder

secrets
unveiled

surrendered

to the touch

to the smoldering
touch

of midnight

From her book Of Gravity & Angels, Jane Hirshfield tells us about her horse.

Heat

My mare, when she was in heat,
would travel the fenceline for hours,
wearing the impatience
in her feet into the ground.

Not a stallion for miles, I'd assure her,
give it up.

She'd widen her nostrils,
sieve the wind for news, be moving again,
her underbelly darkened with sweat,
then stop at the gate a moment, wait
to see what I might do.
Oh, I knew
how it was for her, easily
recognized myself in that wide lust:
came to stand in the pasture
just to see how it played.
Offered a hand, a bucket of grain -
a minute's distraction from passion
the most I gave.

Then she'd return to what burned her:
the fence, the fence,
so hoping I might see, might let her free.
I'd envy her then,
to be so restlessly sure
of heat, and need, and what it takes
to feed the wanting that we are -

only a gap to open
the width of a mare,
the rest would take care of itself.
Surely, surely I knew that,
who had the power of bucket
and bridle -
she would beseech me, sidle up,
be gone, as life is short,
But desire, desire is long.

And now, a couple of new poems from frequent contributor Don Schaeffer.

Memory as Hologram

The past is a story
told by someone else.

My life is a string
of the present.

Sometimes I have
the tools of speech and hand.

Sometimes I wander through the present
listening and watching like a ghost.

Corridor

He has to wake up
by six in his memory
to a warm breakfast.
There will be
an hour in the cold
waiting for the full
heat of dawn before
he can arrive amid the
false friends and pretensions
of the day.

Now there isn't much
he has to do and the
memory of swimming in a
sea of ambition and fellowship
has dulled. The hallway
is a long journey.
Tiny step followed by
pause to catch breath
follows tiny step.
He clings to the walking aid.
And when I look into his face
as I pass him, all I can see
is patience.

This seems to be the week for golden oldies (perhaps because my new stuff is not so golden), so here are two other sort poems written forty or so years ago. At the time of their writing, I was a frequently intoxicated American soldier living in an air conditioned American enclave far out on the West Pakistan frontier, within sight of the Hindu Kush.

Both poems were finally published in 2001, the first in Hawkwind and the second in Experimentia.

blackout at the oasis

listen now....

it's quiet

the sound of a thousand air conditioners suddenly stilled
and our island is one with the desert-blowing night

summer night at the end of the world

platt kerplatt kerplatt
tennis ball sounds far lit court
drunker than I thought

Now, Audre Lorde, from her book The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance speaks to us of perception.

Syracuse Airport

Clean jeans and comfortable shoes
I need no secrets here at home
in this echoless light
I spread my papers out
around me.

Opposite alert
a grey-eyed lady takes fire
one pale nostril quivering
we both know women
who take up space
are called sloppy.

You've seen her photographs this week, now here's another of Jane Roken's poems.

Mongolian prospect

The scourge of God grows
like a hardened crust
upon the wall of the town, its
ringwall of garbage, offal, rubble
Empty rusty oil drums resounding
with empty prayers to rusty ghosts
of Manchu, Soviet Union, Great Khan,
in vain, all in vain

Under a sooty shed roof
a child is soaking scraps of dried meat
in a leaky tin can,
feeding ancient three-legged
perplexed-eyed cat,
bringing stolen hay
for cat's bed,
saying goodnight
calling cat Grandma

And this
may be the sole reason
that some day
in spite of all
an Angel will descend
and alight
right
here

And I almost forgot. Here's another of my "name" poems. This one was published in Scope Journal in 2002.

Imogene gets away clean

Imogene
comes and goes
in a swirl of sex
and musky intrigue
leaving men of every age
to twist
in the vapors
of her libidinous wake

copulatory
imaginings burn
like a fever in their softened
brains
brains
made irrelevant
by that lower consciousness
that hangs between their legs
rising
like a divining rod
rising
as those very night fantasizes
that have nurtured the growth
of a thousand fancied dissatisfactions
pass in the flesh

Imogene
comes and goes
leaving a path of wreckage
like a summer storm
across the green and golden
pastures of well-ordered lives

wreckage
she leaves behind
like the wind leaves behind
a broken tree, like a flood
leaves behind sodden fields

unaffected untouched

Imogene gets away clean
every time.

And we end with Bukowski on the prideful excess of poets.

words for you

red dogs in green hell, what is this
divided thing I call
myself?

what message is this I'm offering
here?

it's so easy to slide into
poetic pretension.

almost all art is shot through with
poetic
pretension:

painting
sculpting
the stage
music

what is this foolish
strutting and posturing
we do?

why do we embroider everything we say
with special emphasis

when all we really need to do
is simply say what
needs to be said?

of course
the fact is
that there is very little that needs
to be said.

so we dress up our
little artful musings
and clamor for attention
so that we may appear to be
a bit more
important
or even more
truthful
than the others.

what is this I'm writing
here?

what is this you're
reading here?

is it no worse than the rest?

probably even a little bit
better?

Love those last two lines. Even in the middle of self-flagellation, the poet's ego makes its plea for assurance and recognition.

Until next week.

1 Comments:

at 2:42 PM Alice Folkart said...

Note: webpage referenced is under construction (2/20/07). Wonderful issue. "I was just thinking' - the kind of poem I'd like to write, observation, just being alive, turned into a poem. Cyra Dumitru's 'Words of the Serpent,' opened my eyes, made me look again and again and think about the price we have paid for the ability to experience pleasure. Very well done. Moss's 'At Gerogia Beach,' read out loud is a revelation, a pleasure in itself and a lesson in observation and really good writing. Great choice. 'Heat,' Jane Hirshfield - her compassion and love for her horse come through in her comparison of her own urges and needs with those of this filly in heat, one almost feels that the poet has also at some time been restrained from acting upon her instincts - as have we all, I suppose.
Enjoyed both of Allen's poems 'Blackout at the Oasis' - the sound of all those air conditioners and 'Summer Night at the End of the World,' of course, tennis thwacks - the whole thing could only be bearable if you stayed just slightly drunk. 'Syracuse Airport' tickeled me - especially the idea of a woman watching a woman watching her and knowing that the other is thinking 'women who take up space are sloppy' - I've often felt this way, judged in public, not quite understanding, but Audre Lorde has the wit to define it and put it into a poem. Hooray! And, last but not . . . Jane Roken's 'Mongolian Prospect' - the child and the cat in the midst of all this want and need, the boy calling the cat grandma - this spark of sad love which will, if anything can, call down the visit of an angel. And, her photos, as also the photos by Allen, are wonderful and amazing!

Super issue - Glad that the kidney stone demons have gone away.

Alice
Alice.Folkart@Gmail.com

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Birds of a Feather, Poets Together Sunday, February 11, 2007

Welcome again to "Here and Now," this one number II.2.2, another abbreviated issue as I tote various barges and bales for da man and too damn little of his filthy lucre.

We begin this week with Mary Jo Caffrey, appearing here for the first time.

She describes herself as a retired GI who did mercenary work for a few years as a substitute teacher. She says she and her husband live in Gretna, Nebraska with lazy dogs and silly parrots.

I began reading Mary Jo on one of the poetry forums recently and was especially struck with this one.

The Act of Reading Poetry

Most people who write poetry fall into a category
somewhere between nuts and famous, you know,
the sort of people read about in school,
either driven insane and into writing about it or the
authors of trendy sentiments that rhyme.
Advertising jingles are mostly to blame,
making readers and book buyers of people
not gainfully employed in endeavors
beyond eating chocolates and reading rhyme.

People who read poetry are an elite group,
whether they actually do read poetry or
just read the book jacket while eating chocolates,
before placing the poetry book
on the cocktail table,
the latest bestseller to gather dust
in the family home while nevertheless,
emitting the scent of good literary taste
to family guests.

Most people who actually do read poetry
do so because a beloved or physically bigger
family member writes poetry
Just as any self-respecting member
of society does not discuss
ess–eee-ex in public,
most stalwart people do not discuss reading
poetry unless the topic comes up -
and they always share a love for
reading poetry,
all the while thinking to themselves,
"roses are red,
violets are blue,
poetry is so much doo-doo"
and smiling sweetly
while thinking up worse rhymes
in their heads that can't be printed here
for fear of offending readers who might
actually read this poem.

The few, the brave,
the poetry readers in this age of humanity
caught in the Internet and mostly not kicking,
admits of poems only in songs sung with angst or abandon,
the world's experiences captured in MP3 players
for the listener's enjoyment.
Reading evolved into a selectively Internet skill,
accompaniment on screen to movies and photos with
an electrical gleam, except where newspapers are concerned.
People read newspapers mostly for a little diversion.
When vision blurs after hours on the computer screen,
the printed word beacons clarity in lettering and a chance to
ease eyes beaten to within an inch of their pixels.

Most people are exposed to poetry
in church, the safe once-a-week dose
in a Psalm from David, the first poet
of note expressing the inexpressible,
love of God, the only entity truly loving
words of praise for the gift of life
and redemption in a prayer in meter.

I suppose poems are prayers,
sentiments from the heart and mind
seeking a home in heaven or some
facsimile where the best human thoughts
find fulfillment,
if only in the words rising.

God loves a poet,
if only for a moment,
some small piece of
human thought
finding redemption
for the soul of a poet,
the part most like God
in even the briefest moment.

James Merrill was a Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, one of the most acclaimed American poets of his generation.

Despite great personal wealth derived from unbreakable trusts made early in his childhood, Merrill lived modestly. A philanthropist, he created the Ingram Merrill Foundation. which operated during his lifetime to subsidize literature, the arts, and public television.

Merrill served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1979 until his death in 1995 from a heart attack related to AIDS.

The Pier: Under Pisces

The shallows, brighter,
Wetter than water,
Tepidly glitter with the fingerprint-
Obliterating feel of kerosene.

Each piling like a totem
Rises from Rock bottom
Straight through the ceiling
Aswirl with suns, clear ones or pale bluegreen,

And beyond! where bubbles burst,
Sphere of their worst dreams,
If dram is what they do,
These floozy fish -

Ceramic-lipped in filmy
Peekaboo blouses,
Fluorescent body
Stockings, hot stripes,

Swayed by the hypnotic ebb and flow
of supermarket Muzak,
Bolero beat the undertow's
Pebble-filled gourds repeat;

Jailbait consumers of subliminal
Hints dropped from on high
In gobbets none
Eschews as minced kin;

Who hooked themselves - bamboo diviner
Bent their water
Vigorously nodding
Encouragement -

Are one by one hauled kisswise, oh
Into some blinding hell
Policed by leathery ex-
justices each

Minding his catch, if catch is what he can,
If mind is what one means -
The torn mouth
Stifled by newsprint, working still. If....If....

The little scales
Grow stiff. Dusk plugs her dryer in,
Buffs her nails, riffles through magazines,
While far and wide and deep

Rove the great sharkskin-suited criminals
And safe in this lit shrine
A boy sits. He'll be eight.
We've drunk our milk, we've eaten our stringbeans,

But left untasted on the plate
The fish. An eye, a broiled pearl, meeting mine,
I lift his fork....
The bite. The tug of fate.

I wrote this several years ago as part of my occasional "name" series. It was published in 2004 in The Muse Apprentice

five minutes in the fire with fiona

under the table
    her leg
    against mine
    moves
    slowly
    up and down

reaching for a paper clip
    her hand
    brushes mine
    long red nail
    leaving a trail
    of fire a scar
    smoldering

peering intently
    at the paper clip
    turns it over
    passes
    her fingertip
    slowly over
    the rounded
    end tongue
    pink against
    her lip in
    concentration

    (does she
    sneak a
    sidelong
    glance
    at me....)

I hear my name called...

for the third time
I realize
and look to the end
of the table past
the double rows
of staring eyes

yes sir
I ask

your report
he says

my report
I ask

your report
he says,
we're waiting
for your report

a laugh beside me
    like a whisper
    like a breath of
    warm air in a
    in a frigid room

    later
    she said

or

    was it just
    another
    laugh....

We have Jack Hill back with us again this week, with this piece that I spotted on one of the workshop forums we both frequent.

There is an air of sweet and unexpected melancholy to much of Jack's work. This piece is no exception.

Frost on the bedpost

My legs are cold but I'll be dammed if I'll wear
long-johns in the house; they make the hair on my
legs crawl.

The little stove in the lower level was tryin' hard,
doing it's best but losing ground.
Got to admit it had heart, if a four hundred pound
chunk of cast iron could; it truly did.

I'm tryin' to hold the cost of winter down but like
the little cast iron stove, I'm losing ground.

The wood pile is shrinking fast and the tractor called
it quits for the winter. Any ways, I don't think the
chainsaw will start.

Who'd a thought it'd get this cold....or is it my old
fire needs stoking.

When I go into the bedroom I can see my breath and
that ain't good, no one to warm my side of the bed.

I do recall the fun that was had warmin' a cold bed.

A few short Greeks from 200 to 400 B.C.

Cydias was a painter and poet bon in the island of Cythnus.

Beware

Beware. There are fawns
who, facing the lion,
die of fright just thinking
the lion might be hungry

(Translated by Sam Hamill)

Theocritus was a creator of pastoral poetry. His poems were termed eidyllia ("idylls"), a diminutive of eidos, which may mean "little poems."

There are no certain facts as to his life beyond those supplied by the idylls themselves. Certainly he lived in Sicily and at various times in Cos and Alexandria and perhaps in Rhodes.

Epitaph: Justice

The poet Hipponax lies here.
In justice, this is only fair.
His lines were never dark or deep.
Now he enjoys (like his readers) sleep.

(Translated by Fred Chappell)

Asclepiades was a physician/poet born in Prusa, Bithynia (modern Bursa, Turkey). he died around 40 BC in Rome.

Here lies Archeanassa

Here lies Archeanassa
the courtesan from Colophon
whose old and wrinkled body
was still Love's proud domain.

You lovers who knew her youth
in its sweet piercing splendor
and plucked those early blooms -
through what a flame you passed!

(Translated by Frederick Morgan)

Aristophanes of Byzantium was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian
credited with inventing and naming some of the first forms of punctuation, including the period, comma, colon and semicolon.

On The Advice Of Praxilla

On the advice of Praxilla,
we are asked to look
under every stone
for a hiding scorpion.

The proverb sounds all right.
But, turning stones,
remember,
poets also bite.

(Translated by Sam Hamill)

Philodemus was an Epicurean philosopher and poet who studied in Athens, before settling in Rome about 80 BC.

Apparently, there was an extensive library at Piso's Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, a significant part of which was formed by a library of Epicurean texts, some of which were present in more than one copy, suggesting the possibility that this section of Piso's library was Philodemus' own. The contents of the villa were embalmed in the eruption of Vesuvius, 79 CE, and the papyri were carbonized and flattened but preserved.

During the 18th century exploration of the Villa by tunneling there were recovered carbonized papyrus scrolls containing thirty-six treatises attributed to Philodemus. These works deal with music, rhetoric, ethics, signs, virtues and vices, the good king, and defend the Epicurean standpoint against the Stoics and the Peripatetics. The first fragments of Philodemus from Herculaneum were published in 1824.

I Loved - Who Hasn't?

I loved - who hasn't? I worshipped - hasn't
everyone been in that congregation?
But I was crazy - did a god do it?
The forces that drove through my black hair drives the gray
announces the age of reason - I'm done.
As playtime I played, now I'll act my age.

(Translated by George Economou)

It's a cold, gray dismal day here in San Antonio, making this cold, gray dismal poem appropriate.

The poem is an "approaching my 60's poem," written four or five years ago. The interesting thing is, the further I get on the other side of 60, the less it worries me. I'm not sure if that represents coming to terms or giving up.

The poem is included in my book Seven Beats a Second

weather report

it's supposed to snow
in the hill country tonight
and now, near midnight,
clouds are banked high
in that direction, swirls
of clouds, mixed gray
and white and black,
reflected in the city lights,
they look like polished granite
piled helter-skelter
against a black felt sky

it won't snow here,
but it's cool enough,
a little above freezing,
with a strong north wind
that stings my face
with icy drizzle

wet days, cold nights,
it's like winters years ago,
cycles and cycles,
weather cycles,
life cycles,
death cycles, too,
I guess,
they always come in threes
it's said and it seems to be true

I used to think my life
was lived in five year cycles
and for a long time
it seemed to run that way,
with changes regular
as clock work
every fifth year

but now it seems
the pattern is broken
and my life is a a lull
even as time races past

I feel disconnected
from that flow
and I begin to wonder
if this is how life
winds down.
like being sunk
in plush leather seats
in a fast moving car

the world rushes by,
a blur of passing lie
and I want nothing more
than to stop,
to walk again,
to live again,
not behind glass
as the world passes,
but on my own feet,
to control again,
like before
when I was the one
who set the pace
of my life
and the direction
I would live it

the night is chill
and wet
but it will not snow for the snow cycle
is done and now
the night is just cold
and I am cold in it

Now for a visit with a couple of the good citizens of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River.

Francis Turner

I could not run or play
In boyhood.
In manhood I could only sip the cup,
Not drink -
For scarlet-fever left my heart diseased.
Yet I lie here
Soothed by a secret none but Mary knows:
There is a garden of acacia,
catalpa trees, and arbors sweet with vines -
There on that afternoon in June
By Mary's side -
Kissing her with my soul upon my lips
It suddenly took flight.

Dr. Siegfried Iseman

I said when they handed me my diploma,
I said to myself I will be good
And wise and brave and helpful to others;
I said I will carry the Christian creed
Into the practice of medicine!
Somehow the world and the other doctors
Know what's in your heart as soon as you make
This high-souled resolution.
And the way of it is they starve you out.
And no one comes to you but the poor.
And you find too late that being a doctor
Is just a way of making a living.
And when you are poor and have to carry
The Christian creed and wife and children
All on your back, it is too much!
That's why I made the Elixir of Youth,
Which landed me in the jail at Peoria
Branded a swindler and a crook
By the upright Federal Judge!

John M. Church

I was attorney for the "Q"
And the Indemnity Company which insured
The owners of the mine.
I pulled the wires with Judge and Jury,
And the upper courts, to beat the claims
Of the crippled, the widow and orphan,
And made a fortune thereat.
The bar association sang my praises
In a high-flown resolution.
And the floral tributes were many -
But the rats devoured my heart
And a snake made a nest in my skull!

We have another first-timer for "Here and Now" this month, another from the wilds of the on-line workshop forum world, Billy Howell-Sinnard.

Billy lives in Hawaii where he is a nurse, and also a caregiver at home. He says he writes poetry, which his wife calls his mistress, when he can find the time.

I read this poem on one of the forums and immediately felt like I'd slipped back into my own childhood.

Blackberry Hunting

A sign reads DIP AHEAD,
and I remember dad grinning,
"Hold on." The two-tone Edsel dove
like a whale absorbing a wave,
breached the swell with long,
slow motion bounces. I screamed, giggled,
tummy a rolling jar of gumballs.

We lived in a small town that doesn't exist.
Grandma Collins lived across the street.
When Grandpa gathered blackberries,
she baked pies, her apron and fingers
stained the color of the droppings
on Dad's new Edsel. The houses
are gone. A few foundations remain.

I still crave blackberry pie. At the Red Barn
Buffet, I bought a slice advertised
as homemade. It wasn't the same,
don't think it ever can be.
I cross the dip. My stomach turns.

Next we have three anonymous poems/songs from Africa in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The San, also known as The Bushmen, are an indigenous population of the Kalahari Desert, which spans South Africa and neighboring Botswana and Namibia as well southern Angola. Archaeological evidence suggests that they have lived in southern Africa for at least 22,000 years. Genetic evidence suggests they are one of the oldest, if not the oldest, peoples in the world - a "genetic Adam" from which all the worlds ethnic groups can ultimately trace genetic heritage.

The Day We Die

The day we die
the wind comes down
to take away
our footprints.

The wind makes dust
to cover up
the marks we left
while walking

For otherwise
the thing would seem
as if we were
still living.

Therefore the wind
is he who comes
to blow away
our footprints

(Translated by Arthur Markowitz)

The Yoruba are an ethnic nation in Africa which constitute approximately 30 percent of Nigeria's total population. Many people of African descent in the Americas have claim to Yoruba ancestry to some degree because a significant percentage of Africans enslaved in the Americas originated from this region.

Several versions of the Yoruba origin exist, the most popular of which revolves around a figure named Oduduwa. Oduduwa was the head of an invading army from the East (often identified as Mecca, Egypt, the Sudan, or northeastern Nigeria) who established a constitutional monarchic system of government for the indigenous population he found.

Other versions suggest that Odduwa was sent by Olorun Olodumare (Sky Father), the Creator, to fashion the first humans out of the clay soil of lie lfe, an ancient Yoruba city in southwestern Nigeria. Evidence of this city has been discovered dating back as far as 500 B.C.

Oshun, The River Goddess

Brass and Parrots' feathers
on a velvet skin.
White cowrie shells
on black buttocks.
Her eyes sparkle in the forest,
like the sun on the river.
She is the wisdom of the forest
she is the wisdom of the river.
Where the doctor failed
she cures with fresh water.
Where medicine is impotent
she cures with cool water.
she cures the child
and does not charge the father.
She feeds the barren woman with honey
and her dry body swells up
like a juicy palm fruit.
Oh, how sweet
is the touch of a child's hand!

(Translated by Ulli Beier)

The Galla, also known as the Oromo, are found in Ethiopia and to a lesser extent in Kenya and Somalia. They are the largest single ethnic group in Ethiopia today, numbering around 25 million. They have inhabited parts of northeastern and eastern Africa for as long as recorded history.

Love Song

If I might be an ox,
An ox, a beautiful ox,
Beautiful but stubborn:
The merchant would buy me,
Would buy and slaughter me,
Would spread my skin,
Would bring me to the market.
The coarse woman would bargain for me;
The beautiful girl would buy me.
She would crush perfumes for me;
I would spend the night rolled up around her;
I would spend the afternoon rolled up around her.
Her husband would say: "It is a dead skin!"
But I would have my love!

(Translated by Enrico Crulli)

And another poem from Seven Beats a Second.

unfinished business

I have reached the point in my life
when I begin to understand
that I will not get out of it alive

and with that,
clarity

a million years of back-story
before us and consequences lingering
for past even a memory of our time,
leaving no end to things but the dark end
that comes to us all, despite the struggles
with pharmaceutical metaphysical
manipulations that occupy our final days

but even as we fight to change the rules
of life an death, it's not closure we want
but a chance to stay on this well-lit stage
past our character's plotted time, a chance
to see the play unfold past the limitation
of our own poorly written walk-on part,
waiting for a final act that will never come

your life....

my life....

it's all about unfinished business

Last week Cyra S. Dumitru let us listen in on Eve's thoughts as she dealt with the ease and challenge of the Garden. This week it’s Adam's turn.

Adam

I did think Eve peculiar
when I found her in that clearing,
hair tied wildly back with a piece of vine,
shoulders straining over a big rock.
Circles of stone everywhere.

"What are you doing?" I said,
almost tripping over a jagged rock.
"Making circles."
She didn't even stop to glance at me.
"I can see that. But why?"

Eve stood up straight,
gave me a look made my soul quiver.
"I don't know exactly,
Suddenly I just had to."
I caught her hand, "Let's go for a swim."

"I want to finish."
"How many more will you make?"
She shrugged, "As I make one,
the image for another begins.
It’s strange."

Off I went, hurt she wouldn't come too.
Floating on my back, slowly paddling my feet -
I noticed the ripples my body made,
circles that grew bigger even as they thinned.
A tortoise slipped into the water
green shell glistening in sunlight.
I closed my eyes and drifted.
Warm water easy as my own skin
world without edge
everything in place.

As the sun shone on my face,
orange spots gleamed beneath my lids
like small flaming stones.
I thought of Eve, sweat
beading along her back.

Rearranging, replacing.
My soul quivered again
as if trying to name
something yet to come.

Nancy Williams Lazar is another forum-mate, returning for her second appearance in "Here and Now" with a poem about a funeral practice that will seem very strange to many. She explains the practice and her poem with these words:

"For over a thousand years the Parsi people of Mumbai, India, have relied on vultures to carry out their funeral rites. In the last ten years these birds have become almost extinct from the use of diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory given to livestock to treat minor injuries. The loss of up to 30 million vultures is leading to a major health crisis across the region - a rise in rabies and bubonic plague will be likely result of this ecological tragedy."

I previously read about this in my old reliable New York Times Tuesday science section and thought I might try to write about it, but never felt I had come up with anything that treated the subject with appropriate respect. Nancy has done that quite well, I think, making a of it a matter-of-fact and moving love poem.

Here it is.

The Vanished Vultures of Mumbai

I have laid my dead upon the Tower
of Silence whose black door has no opening,
and painted windows give no view.

The dead may not touch ground
The dead must not go into water
The dead can not be burned

On a wide roof I have left my offering
to be carried away piece by piece,
consumed in the gullet of the sacred bird
whose neck glides like a finger
through shredded skin, goes for the liver
first, then to reams of soft chords
streaming in the sun.

The caged heart will be a trophy won
in a panic of black feathers.
I see my love take flight
my god requited.

Two Native American poems/songs from the 19th century.

Uvavnuk was a Netsilik Inuit shaman.

Shaman song

The great sea
frees me, moves me,
as a strong river
carries a weed.
Earth and her strong winds
move me, take me away,
and my soul is swept up in joy.

(Translated by Jane Hirshfield)

Another Inuit poem, this one both poet and translator unknown.

I Think Over Again My Small Adventures

I think over again my small adventures,
My fears,
Those small ones that seemed so big,
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach;
And yet there is only one great thing,
The only thing,
To live to see the great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world.

This is, by my count, the 38th issue of "Here and Now" posted online since May, 2006. At some point, very soon, I need to make the time to go back to the beginning and identify everything, poem and photo, that I've used. Having not done that, I'm not sure that I haven't already used this poem. It's a popular poem at readings, so I read it often, which makes it always fresh in my mind. Now I can't be sure if the freshness if entirely due to that frequent reading or partially due to using it hear before. All this is by way of an apology if this is a rerun.

The poem is included in my book Seven Beats a Second

Texas BBQ

here it is, Sunday afternoon, as, as the sun begins to fall
to the west, I'm thinking of driving to Leon Springs for dinner

it's a bit of a drive for a BBQ sandwich but the brisket there
is the best and sliding along that scarred rail to order,
breathing in the mesquite smoke, watching them pull the
meat off the fire, fat all burnt black and dripping juice as they
slice it, reminds me of when I was a kid traveling with my
family trough East Texas piney woods, stopping along the
way at rickety stands half hidden in the tall pine trees
that came right up to the edge of the little two-lane highway,
just a lean-to shed, a roof over the pit, sweet smoke wafting
through the trees like ghosts of a time before, great slabs
of meat, spicy sauce hot as South Texas asphalt
and big bottles of sweet apple cider, all this I think of, then
settle for steam table mystery meat and canned pinto beans
from a generic BBQ chain closer to home

why do we do that, I wonder, we know what's good,
but settle for easy, turn our backs on the better days
for the convenience of now, build soulless hot tar deserts
from the gardens that were blessings given by the mother
of us all, like the hills all around the city, stripped of native
cedar and oak to make way for new Wal-Marts and multi-
screen cineplexes full of pimply faced kids with $10,000
teeth watching soul-dead comedies about other kids, libidos
unleashed, fast-food joints and same-same houses with
central air dens on postage stamp lots, nature fighting
to survive, as we are, crab grass in the cracks of our own
creations, innocent, yet the scourge of all we desire

Here is a found poem, literally found by artist and poet Lawrence Trujillo, neatly hand printed on the front and back of a sheet of lined notebook paper and folded into the pages of an old book he bought at a used book store.

It is both the bane and the blessing of the internet that nothing can remain mysterious long. I did a Google search on the first line and discovered that this is a song from an album titled Into the Mirror Black by a heavy metal group called Sanctuary. May be others are familiar with the group, but I'm not. But it's available from Amazon for under $10, so I'll probably give it a try.

The song/poem was written by Sanctuary members L. Rutledge and W. Dane.

I tell you, doing this blog, I just keep learning and learning things I didn't know.

Epitaph

Mark my grave, and call the winds of torment
Oh, remember me now, and feed the wind with your dreams
Feel my name, and feel my blood in your veins
Now the tide will turn, I will live on through you
Mark my name upon the flesh you create
No, don't cry for me, my son, myself

I am waiting my son, on the threshold to the other side
Cannot tell you what is here
What I see now is beyond your mind

I am formless, but I feel
All the questions burning in your head
Learn your lesson and never grieve
For there is no beginning, and there is no end

I'm standing at the door of time, I see life complete

Truth is never what is seems
Bodies wither, but your mind still dreams
No one ever can rest in peace
Until they've learned the game and become light to darkness
See me shine

I'm standing at the door of time, I see life complete
Oh father where will I be when I meet my time?
You will pass on and follow me, into the sanctuary

I am in the mirror, see my reflection in the stars
And as you search for truth, so I will shine to spur you on
Spur you on
Bathe in the pure truth of my light

Time is an illusion, death is not conclusion

All those who seek the truth will questions still remaining
Now listen closely, and all will be so clear
I am a messenger, a bringer of light from the other side
So chosen now to teach while drifting between lives
Drifting, drifting

I will be reborn

So let's end with a short (yes, there is such a thing) Bukowski poem.

unclassical symphony

the cat murdered
in the middle of the street

tire-crushed

now it is nothing

and neither are
we

as
we
look
away

What a downer, a terrible poem to end on. Let's find something a little more mellow to take us out the door.

catch of the day

it's not the fish we catch
that count
or the fish that get away

the catch of the day
is the time we stay
and the walking home
together

a last note

Lawrence Trujillo at February's Casa Chiapas Poetry Table

We continue to work on making our monthly read-around-the-table at Casa Chiapas an event and are hoping that improving weather from now through the Spring will allow us to continue to grow. What I can tell you San Antonio folks is that it is a fun, relaxed, no-pressure event and you're welcome to join us.

Hope to see everyone here next week and there next month.

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Friday Night Lights Sunday, February 04, 2007

Welcome to "Here and Now" number II.2.1.

I'm back in the ranks of the downtrodden employed for a couple of weeks, so the next few issues might seem a bit abreviated. Lots of typing involved here, especially the way I type (and retype and retype - thank you all relevant gods for word processors, the greatest thing to happen to writers since we were allowed to put our stone tablets and chisels away.)

We begin this week with a prose poem from Portuguese poet Eugenio de Andrade.

Walt Whitman and the Birds

On waking up, I remembered Peter Doyle. It must have been six o'clock, and in the mimosa tree across the way a bird was singing. I won't swear it was singing in English, only Virginia Woolf's birds have such privileges, but the jubilation of my bullfinch led me to remember the sky lark of American meadows and the chilled face of the young Irishman whom Walt Whitman loved that winter, seated at the back of the tavern, rubbing his hands, close to the heat of the stove.

I opened the window and, in the first thin light that was approaching searched in vain for the spotless joy that had awakened me to a puff of feathers one could scarcely tell from the leaves. Then, invoking ancient metaphors of song, I turned to the venerated book in my hand, and, stanza by stanza, opened the floodgates to the waters of being, like one who prepares himself for flight.

(Translation by Alexis Levitin)

Gary Blankenship concludes his Ten Commandment series with this, an Eleventh Commandment, surely the most important of all commandments for us all and especially timely now, with the release within the past days of the latest global warming report.

The Eleventh Commandment

Honor your Earth, and all that resides on her, everything that crawls, swims, runs and flies, everything that grows upon and in the Earth.

As you erect your cities in the dead places,
only fit for cacti and scorpion
where water grows with great difficulty
and asphalt reeks of what it once was

As your cities climb across jungle and forest,
spread over lands meant for harvest,
sink beneath the waves

Remember even dead places
have a purpose

and rich land
productive land
overgrown with weed and vine

once dead
cannot be recovered

with your machines
virtual reality
ego
pride
laws

faith

From the book The Jazz Poetry Anthology, a poem by Langston Hughes.

Jazzonia

Oh, silver tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul.

In a Harlem cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.
A dancing girl whose eyes are bold
Lifts high a dress of silken gold.

Oh, singing tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!

Were Eve's eyes
In the first garden
Just a bit too bold?
Was Cleopatra gorgeous
In a gown of gold?

Oh, singing tree!
Oh, silver rivers of the soul!

In whirling cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.

I wrote this poem four years ago to describe an actual event. It was only after I finished writing and started thinking about a title that I realized I had created another in my on-again, off-again series of poems with female names in the title.

It's never been published.

dancing with Dorothy

I don't hear the roar
that's always talked about,
the sound of a hundred freight trains
echoing in a dark tunnel,
none of that,
nothing, in fact,
dead silence,
the pounding of the rain
on the metal roof overhead
gone, absorbed by a cottony silence,
like my ears have been stopped somehow,
leaving me dislocated and off-balance

I see it though

I see the dark deluge of rain,
so much rain, like a gray curtain
around me, the buildings next door like shadows,
and within the gray deluge,
black rain, swirling in counterclockwise rotation,
and within the swirling black rain,
debris, bits of brush, tree limbs,
a large piece of tin roofing,
rising within the swirling black rain,
the long flat tin roofing sailing in the vortex
like Aladdin's carpet, then discarded,
thrown to the side, crashing to the ground
as the swirling black cloud passes
and the gray pounding rain subsides and,
from all around me, the different pitches
of a hundred car alarms shrieking

This a poem was written by Frank Horne in the early days of an awful war. Horne, in addition to his work as a poet, was a Doctor of Optometry, a college professor and, after a long career in government, recognized as a leading authority on housing. I pulled the poem from the book American Negro Poetry.

Kid Stuff

December, 1942

The wise guys
tell me
that Christmas
is Kid Stuff....
Maybe they've got
something there -
Two thousand years ago
three wise guys
chased a star
across a continent
to bring
frankincense and myrrh
to a Kid
born in a manger
with an idea in his head....

And as the bombs
crash
all over the world
today
the real wise guys
know that we've all
got to go chasing stars
again
in the hope
that we can get back
some of that
Kid Stuff
born two thousand years ago.

We introduced S. Thomas Summers' Civil War series two weeks ago with two poems. Now here's a third, with the hope we'll see more in the future, either before or after his chapbook is published.

Anyone who remembers the movie Glory will recognize the story here.

Niggers: The 54th Massachusetts Storms Fort Wagner

I figured they'd be fightin'
like a troop of African monkeys,
flailin' their rifles above their heads,

rollin' in the sand, scootin'
from the ocean as it slid up
on the beach like a silver tongue,

but they came straight
at us, pieces of night,
screamin' hell and spittin' lead.

I seen one take three bullets
'fore he fell. Each time
blood puffed from his belly

like a red cloud at sunset.
And the one clutchin'
the flag made certain them stripes

never scraped the ground.
I swear them niggers be men.
By God, they be men.

We featured Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti last week with one kind of poem. Here he is again with something that seems to me completely different from what we might expect after reading him last week.

Where the Light

Like the undulant lark
In glad wind above young fields
My arms know you are light, come

Let us forget all about down there
And about evil and heaven
And my blood quickly towards war,
And of footsteps in the shadow of memory
In the red colors of new morning.

Where the leaf moves light no longer,
Dreams and angers have crossed the river
Where evening is spread
I shall carry you
To the hill of gold

That unchangeable, ageless gold
In its lost nimbus
Shall be our winding-sheet.

(Translated by Dennis Devlin)

'
We're having another touch of winter here in San Antonio this weekend, so here’s another little winter poem. This one was written seven years ago and published in 2001 in The Horsethief's Journal.

For me, a poem is never finished.

I think that's true for most of us. Tastes change or we mature as writers, and a poem that looked fine when first done seems completely different. Mistakes are noted. bad habits are uncovered, like in this poem which, when first written and published suffered greatly from the beginning poet's bad habit of trying to make images by piling adjective upon adjective before every noun. In preparing the poem to post here I eliminated most of those adjectives and made it, I think, a much better poem.

At least, I hope.

when winter finally came

when winter finally came,
it came hard,
like a great white bear
from the furthest northern night

ravenous and cruel, it came
sweeping with cold ferocity
across the Laguna Madre, swirling
artic mists over fishing camps
and salt flats and shallow inlets
that run along the coast
from Matagorda to Mansfield Bay

it brought snow that day to deep South Texas,
dusting cactus already set to bloom,
coating mesquite and yellow huisache,
covering the coastal prairie grasses,
as cattle, left on their own to graze,
turned their back to the wind
and huddled close to the warmth
of their own steaming breath
and snakes curled tighter
in their winter dens
and hawks soared the frigid air,
watching for prey slowed by
the unaccustomed cold

in the city, foam splashed up
by the tide left a treacherous glaze
on steep seawall steps, iced-over algae
green in the muted light of the overcast day
and the people, the thin-blooded people of the city
huddled like the cattle, drinking coffee,
talking, finding warmth in the companionship
of an unusual day, stories
for a generation in the making

When we've talked about Li Bai before, we've paid most attention to his persona as a hard-living, hard-drinking Norman Mailerish figure and selected poems that reflected that persona. But there's much more to him than the drunk who spends the night drinking with his shadow as company or drowns by falling into a lake trying to embrace the moon's reflection. Here's that other side.

Seeing a Friend Off at Jingmen Ferry

When you sail far past Jingmen
you enter the land of Chu
where mountains end and flat plains begin
and the river pours into a huge wilderness.
Above, the moon sails, sky mirror,
and clouds weave nd swell into a sea mirage of terraces.
Below your wandering boat, water from the home you love
still sees you off after ten thousand miles.

Watching the Waterfall at Lu Mountain

Sunlight streams off purple mist from Incense Peak.
Far off, the waterfall is a long hanging river
flying straight down three thousand feet
like the milky river of stars pouring from heaven.

River Song

Magnolia oars. A spicewood boat.
Jade flutes and gold pipes fill the air at bow and stern.
We have a thousand jugs of tart wine
and singing girls who drift with us on the waves.
Like a Daoist immortal floating off a yellow crane,
my wandering mind empties and soars with white gulls.
Qu Yuan's poems hang overhead with sun and moon
but the Chu king's palace is an empty mountain.
Inspired, each stroke of my brush shades the five mountains.
The poem done, I laugh proudly over the hermit's land.
If fame and money could last forever
the Han River would flow backward.

I Listen to Jun, a Monk from Shu, Play His Lute

The Shu monk carries a green silk lute,
west down Omei Mountain
and each sweep of his hand
is the song of a thousand pines in the valley.
Flowing water cleans my wanderer's heart
and the sound lingers like a frost bell
till I forget the mountain soaking in green dusk,
autumn clouds darkly folding in.

Seeing a Friend Off

Blue mountains past the north wall,
white water snaking eastward.
Here we say good-bye for the last time.
You will fade like a hayseed blowing ten thousand miles away.
Floating clouds are the way of the wanderer.
The sun sets like the hearts of old friends.
We wave good-bye as you leave. Horses neigh and neigh.

(Translations by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping)

Here are a few untitled winter moments from Alan Addotto, a much more restrained and contemplative "Splinter" than we've seen before.

The day, coldgray, hard
sparrows out in the back yard
land on the bird bath.
Stand on the rim, sip water
but none of them go in.

...

Inside....the dogs sleep
curled up beside each other
dreaming doggy dreams.
Outside....past the window screens
our fruit trees wrapped in burlap.

...

The concrete....rain drop speckled.
Kwan Yin's car's at her work place
leaving her parking space unprotected
and expectantly waiting.

...

Cedar Waxwings flocks
of hundreds maybe thousands
doing tsunamis
shaken from the hackberries
windhair's....avian dandruff.

Yuan Haowen was a Chinese poet of the late 12th and mid-13th centuries. He wrote and served as a public official during times of repeated Mongol attack and invasion.

from In May of 1233, I Ferried Across to the North

1

Countless captives are lying stiff by the roadside
as Mongol wagons pass and pass like flowing water.
You rouged women walking weeping behind Mongolian horses,
for whom are you still looking back at each step?

2

White bones lie in a tangled mess like hemp fiber.
In a few years mulberry trees have withered to a dragon's desert.
It seems to me like life in Heshu has utterly ceased.
But look! Smoke rises from these broken houses.

Cyra S. Dumiru is a San Antonio area poet who I don't know but would love to meet. She is a former theology student who moved to San Antonio from Ohio.

Her second book of poetry Listening to Light, which I am reading now, reflects that theological background, featuring short poems about biblical figures and Egyptian and other myths. In writing of these people we are mostly all familiar with, she takes them out of their usual context and treats them as contemporary human beings, almost like we might read about in current weekly or monthly magazines, their various stories coming together as you read to form a narrative.

It makes for some very interesting pictures, like this one.

Eve

Eden was glorious.
Lillies large as Gabriel's trumpet
roses with the width of my hands
nectarines so sweet my toes tingled.

How could I have imagined anything else?
We were absolutely new.
We had no memories of Other,
knew only what we lived.

It never occurred to me
that the evening breeze could bring
anything but the Always One.
What did "storm," "hunger," "broken" mean?

Much less, "displeasure."
I know, it astounds even me
that any place in any time
could be seamless, perfect.

But how do you fathom still waters
until you've nearly drowned?
How do you feel sheltered
before you've known battering?

As I watched honeybees
fly from blossom to blossom
robins build their nests twig by twig
my hands swelled from emptiness.

I wanted to make something too.
One day I found myself at the river
filling my hands with smooth stones
carrying them to a clearing of softest grass.

I made circles all day - little ones, big ones,
circles of wet river stones, of small boulders,
circles made from stones that sparkled.
It felt strange, wonderful.

I saw how flat stones
held moonlight on their backs
how shadows crept around the boulders.
I fell asleep among them.

Images of flying filled my dreams.
I awoke expecting wings sprouting from my back.
Instead my arms and back ached from stooping.
As I wandered the orchard, Serpent called.

her emerald coils twined across a low
branch of the Not Tree.
Never before had I stood close
enough to smell the shining fruit

a fruit Adam never dared to name.
"Your hands have a life of their own," Serpent said
with a flicker of tongue. "See how this feels."
Then she swung a fruit

into my startled hands.
It smelled of sunrise, the constancy of light.
My face, hands, my whole body trembled a new song.
Then words whipped my ears: "caution."

I dropped the fruit, heard it splatter
bits of flesh scattered across my toes.
I ran to the river, bathed.
On the other bank was Adam

fingering the stones.
I placed a flat on upon his palm.
"So smooth, cool," he murmured.
Together we curled among the circles.

We are in the middle of the two week period that is the annual San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo.

The event started last week with the traditional "cowboy breakfast" when thousands of men and women in cowboy hats and boots, including trailriders who ride in into San Antonio from all directions in groups of a few to a lot, as well as real and for-pretend local cowboys, meet at a central, outdoor location for god-awful coffee and potato and egg tacos at 5:00 a.m. on what often turns out to be the coldest morning of the year.

What can you say, tradition is tradition

The actual rodeo started today with bulls and horses and all the rest, followed each evening by cowboy singers, both the already famous and the trying to get there.

Supposed to be a great event, but I don't know. The last time I was on a horse was fifteen years ago and it damn near killed me.

But there was a time, as in this poem, written in 2001 and published in Hawkwind in 2002.

barrel-racing

it's about
grace,
agility,
communion between horse and rider,
the fluid movement
of two as one,
each alternately
controlling, anticipating,
become a single thing
together, dancing
through the dust

that's the way of
barrel-racing,
best done when both
are evenly matched

I had a horse once
who always threw me
on the second turn
and a long-time lover
who did the same

both
just a little better
at the game
than me

Marianne Moore on how to be a proper houseguest

Silence

My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
or the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self-reliant like the cat -
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth -
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "Make my house your inn."
Inns are not residences.

And now another winter moment, this one by Dave Ruslander, from his book Voices In My Head. More information on Dave's book can be found by clicking on the link on the right.

The poem.

The Swamp at Sunset

A cold sterling reflection glows
from the frozen swamp; a streak
of butter on a Wedgwood sky.
Through gray gnarled cypress,
Virginia deer flicker, white and brown,
as pink tongues lick ice waters.
A red tail soars.
The ghosts of doomed voles
will waft through the swamp
at sunrise.

Charles Reznikoff was born in Brooklyn of Russian parents. After a year studying journalism, he entered the law school of New York University in 1912 and graduated in 1916. He practiced law briefly and entered officer training school in 1918, but failed to see active service before the end of the war.

Reznikoff worked for a time for his family's business as a hat salesman. He then worked for a legal publishing house where he wrote summaries of court records for legal reference books. This experience was to prove important for his later writing.

From his teens, Reznikoff had been writing poetry and publishing it himself using handset printing plates. Throughout his writing life, Reznikoff was always concerned to ensure that his work was published, even at his own expense.

He lived and wrote in relative obscurity and poverty for most of his life, with his work being either self-published or issued by small independent presses. In the early 1960s, this situation seemed set to change when New Directions published two books, including the first installment of the verse Testimony. However, critical reaction to this book was generally negative and Reznikoff once again found himself publishing his own work.

In 1971, he was awarded the Morton Dauwen Zabel Prize of $2,500 by The National Institute of Arts and Letters. In the years immediately following he found a new publisher who, after his death, brought all his major poetry and prose works back into print.

Four Songs of the City

1
Showing a torn sleeve, with stiff and shaking fingers the old man
pulls off a bit of the baked apple, shiny with sugar,
eating with reverence food, the great comforter.

2
In steel clouds
to the sound of thunder
like the ancient gods:
our sky, cement;
our earth, cement;
our trees, steel;
instead of sunshine,
a light that has no twilight,
neither morning nor evening,
only noon.

Coming up the subway stairs, I thought the moon
only another streetlight -
a little crooked.

3
If there is a scheme,
perhaps this too is in the scheme,
as when a subway car turns on a switch,
the wheels screeching against the rails,and the lights go out -
but are on again in a moment.

4
What are doing in our street among the automobiles, horse?
How are your cousins, the centaur and the unicorn?

A few short pieces from Octavio Paz

Calm

Sand-clock moon:
the night empties out,
the hour is lit.

Stars and Cricket

The sky's big.
Up there, worlds scatter.
Persistent,
unfazed by so much night,
a cricket: brace and bit.

Dawn

On the sand,
bird-writing:
the memoirs of the wind.

Orange

Little sun
silent on the table,
permanent noon.
It lacks something:
night.

We've had three of my older poems so far this week. We'll end with a new one, written in the past week or so. In fact, you might say it's still being written since I have an ending stanza I've added and taken off several times now, unable to decide if the poem is better with it or without it. This is the without-it version.

I am impatient with the night

I am impatient
with the night

sleep is restless
true rest
rare,
while the new day
coming
entices me
and though
I do nothing
of consequence with
that day, I
am comfortable in the
routine
of its doing

early breakfast
and a local paper
near home,
then a drive
to the northside
for coffee
and a Times
and some jokes
with the morning
regulars
and finally
I-10 to South Alamo,
downtown,
where I can sit
in the open
and watch people
pass, some pulling
a poem
behind them
like an unacknowledged
shadow
guilt
lover
a deep and lasting
sorrow
left in the past
but not forgot;
all day like this
moving place to place,
talking to strangers,
listening,
watching,
sometimes
finding pictures
and stories
that spark across the gap
that separates them from me

So that's it for this week.

We leave with a reminder to San Antonio area readers that next Friday, February 9th, is the second Friday of the month, which means the Casa Chiapas Poetry Circle will be in session. We're beginning to build the beginning of a crowd at our monthly poetry-do and welcome all, to read, to talk, to drink coffee or just to listen. As usual, we'll be beginning about 7:30 (ish).

Until next week.

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