at 1:15 PM  Jim Doss said...

Allen,

Great looking site, and I love the variety of materials you post here. I'd like to find out more about Blaise Cendrars. Is there a book you would recommend?

Jim

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II.7.2


It's the middle of the summer and it's to hot to go out and play, so let's read some poetry.







We start this week with a little something in defense of my style which, for better or worse, is what I do.


I like foreplay

some say
my lines
are too
short and
s
k
i
n
n
y
and my poems
to long
and
it takes too
forever
to get past
the foreplay
and into the
good stuff
and I say
hey
foreplay's
not so bad
and how can
you have a third
act
if you don't have
an act I
and an act II
I mean after all
consider
shakespeare
(and I don't compare
myself to him though
we do face similar
problems at our own
respective levels)
what if he wrote like they say I ought to write with long lines and got to the point just right away without the all the messy stuff up front and all those silly rhymes that slow things down and that really weird english and so many characters with all those strange names and long speeches like who cares about benvolio anyway I don't

well
maybe
like this

romeo and juliet....
....no too long
just....

maybe just
this...

roy and julie

boy thinks girl is dead kills self girl finds boy dead kills self too curtain applause

that wouldn't be
any good at
all







Here's a poem by New York poet Brian Blanchfield from his book Not Even Then.


String Theory Readymade

Number one, draw on your paper your paper on fire.
Get this down. Use this red. Any line you start
is a hose in half, and from third dimension
a fourth is siphoned, but that suggests as far as it goes.
By no power higher can you raise yourself and document.
Make fire, page one of one. With fire
or with red or with rise begin.

        International operator, come on with patience.
Once I have you I think that once I was imaginative
and more than once imaginary, closely
an ant at the date line climbing over.

I answered Susan Mensch's cell phone because it rang and,
from Four Seasons Chicago, Susan said she'd cancel usage,
so, darling say hello in English remember I miss you.

If Duchamp made quite the New York snowshovel and from
scratch the vial of Paris air, such is art more material to love.
Once Mrs. Stephen Jay Gould makes a name for herself,
rest assured everyone's units are like assholes, and there is one
theory of everything:

One's attention is divided between following that car
and stepping on it. To have come by pursuit is fait accompli,

the skin and trail and look of getting out but not the serpent self.







Next we have web-poet Dale McLain. Although I've been reading Dale on-line for at least a couple of years, this is her first time in "Here and Now."

Dale describes herself as a suburban wife and mother who lives just north of Dallas, Texas. She says she considers art her first language and works in many mediums with collage being her current passion. Her poetry has been published online and in print.

We are pleased to have her here. You can see more of her work at her site http://seadreamstudio.net/

Here's her poem.


past solstice

We breathe in blind syncopation
on this bed of banked ashes.
Side by side we watch the sky,
the pinwheeling stars, Venus

rises to the west like a beacon
or an unblinking eye. Between us
lies an ocean and a wall of years.
Unbreached, it takes the wind

like a lover's kiss, sways and sighs,
but stands, impenetrable. My hand traces
the lower stones for hints of warmth
or the memory of what I imagine

we shared. Surely some tenderness
lodges in these grey clefts. Only one
pure place remains. I find you
always in this sky of myths.







From the book Across State Lines we have this poem by Kathryn Stripling Byer which ws selected by the book's editors to represent North Carolina.


fromMountain Time

Up here in the mountains
we know what extinct means. We've seen
how our breath on a bitter night
fades like a ghost from the window glass.
We know the wolf's gone.
The panther. We've heard the old stories
run down, stutter out
into silence. Who knows where we're heading?
All roads seem to lead
to Millennium, dark roads with drop-offs
we can't plumb. It's time to be brought up short
now with the tale-tellers' Listen: There once lived
a woman named Delphia
who walked through the hills teaching children
to read. She was known as a quilter
whose hand never wearied, a mother
who raised up two daughters to pass on
her words like a strong chain of stitches.
Imagine her sitting among us,
her quick thimble moving along these lines
as if to hear every word striking true
as the stab of her needle through calico.
While prophets discourse about endings,
don't you think she'd tell us the world as we know it
keeps calling us back to beginnings?
This labor to make our words matter
is what any good quilter teaches.
A stitch in time, let's say.
A blind stitch
that clings to the edges
of what's left, the ripped
scraps and remnants, whatever
won't stop taking shape even though the whole
crazy quilt's falling to pieces.







And now another first-timer for "Here and Now," Dan Tomsett. As with our other first-timers this week, I read Dan's poem on the Wild Poetry Forum and invited him to join us here. He is from Seattle, a beautiful city we visited in May as part of a wonderful drive up the Pacific coast.

I'm thinking it might be helpful to explain to readers who might not be card players the meaning of the word Dan uses in his title, "mucked." In poker, the pile of discarded cards is called the muck. When you discard your cards, as when you fold your hand, you have mucked.

Here's Dan's poem.


Eden Mucked

So the apples fell,
and Adam bruised easily
as the first leaves cracked.

Eve gathered there'd be grumbling.
The damn kids heave stones
towards the river, the birds, each other,
and she knew
there'd be days like this:

"But at least there's seasons!"
she screams,

as a once monotonous,
green idea of paradise
rots around her feet.







The next poem is from the book Forbidden Words, a selection of poems by Portuguese poet Eugenio de Andrade. The poem originally appeared in his book Dark Domain published in 1971.


Music

Poplars.
This music
of morning's whitewashed walls.

Sweet vowels
of shadow and water
in a summer of tawny
lazing animals.

Morning lark
in the happy
air of June.

Tart music
of thistles.

Music of fire
around the lips.

Unbuttoned
round the waist.

Between the legs
gathering.

Music
of the first rains
upon the hay.

Fragrance only.
Bee of water.

A lap
where the brief flame
of a pomegranate shines.

Music, take me.

Where are the boats?
Where are the islands?

(Translated by Alexis Levitin)







Now we're back with an old friend of "Here and Now," Jane Roken.

Welcome back, Jane.


Lonely attic manga blues

... sometimes
I'm a manga bird
and nothing
is impossible
I know it all
and when the moon rises
it rises for me
I have that power

... sometimes
I'm content to let
anything happen
in its own unit of time
I watch
starry-eyed
shameless
translucent

... sometimes
I'm a skewed nail
in a lonely attic wall
in an abandoned house
windows broken
I can't get out
only feel
the draught







A couple of weeks ago, we used an essay by Victor Hernandez Cruz on poet Juan Felipe Herrera. After reading the essay I resolved to go find one of Herrera's books. Well, I did and now here's a poem from that book Giraffe On Fire.

I like it. You'll see more of Herrera here on "Here and Now."

This piece is from the poem which gave name to the book. It is a long poem of 28 parts. This is part 12.


12

First of all: cinnamon,

then turquoise.
First of all crimson powders,

then fire.

First of all, scars in braids across the back,
then colony, then origin, then you begotten in power.

You begotten in tranquility. You in megalomania,
American new furniture.

You in blues and man in blue, in nails, in Madrid, with Juan Gris
drawing your nose and multiple eyes.

You, first of all in Diego Rivera's rogue trousers and boots.
First of all, you in thigh mambos. You in Erzuli's light captives
off the shores of Trinidad.

You marooned in Dutch ships.
First Zulu, first in Sudan, then Dinka.

First, the drum in the Sea of Cortez, across Janitzio, in Veracruz.
Tumbao, Chekere in octagons, crushed pubis and clenched bellies.
First, the feline stone in the portrait, the one where you reach for me,
without language, you say. Without the sludge and cottage industry
of apparitions for English trinkets.

First of all, Cha-Cha-Cha, then waves.
First, then second Rumba, Queen of Cosmic Sweat, the night.
Do not believe this gutter guitar. This Velazauez, this time.

Do not believe it. Take the easel down. See through, for once.
See through Coptic, see through the Orange Free State,
the diamonds enlarged as penis and vulva.

I am in a half stance. One half goes into darkness with a rag of light
on my leg. The other half goes into you as you come to me,
as you march with your instruments and your continent,

blood soaked against your jacket,
tarnished by minstrel water.







Some days, the poetry business can just get plain discouraging, as I explain here.


I do not want to write

tonight
I do not want
to write

tonight
I read a new poet
and it was like flying
inside a skyrocket
crashing into the sky
exploding over an ocean
a thousand sparkles multiplied
in briny reflection
above
and below
and all around
and I am struck
dumb by the green fire
above
and below
and all around
and do not want
to write
tonight






Our next poem is the second section from the poem The Teeth Mother Naked At Last, the anti-Vietnam War poem by Robert Bly. We did the first section last week.


    II

Excellent Roman knives slip along the ribs.
A stronger man starts to jerk up the strips of flesh.
"Let's hear it again: you believe in the Father, and the
    Son, and the Holy Ghost?"
A long scream unrolls.
More.
"From the political point of view, democratic institutions
    are being built in Vietnam, wouldn't you agree?"

A green parrot shudders under the fingernails.
Blood jumps in the pocket
A scream lashes like a tail
"Let us not be de-terred from our task by the voices of
     dis-sent...."
The whine of the jets
pierce like a long needle.

As soon as the President finishes his press conference,
    black wings carry off the words,
bits of flesh still clinging to them.

****

The ministers lie, the professors lie, the television
    reporters lie, the priests lie,
What are these lies? They mean that the country wants
    to die.
Lie after lie starts out into the prairie grass,
like mile-long caravans of Conestoga wagons crossing the
    Platte.

And a long desire for death goes with them, guiding it all
    from beneath:
"a death longing if all longing else be vain,"
stringing together the vague and foolish words.

It is a desire to eat death,
to gobble it down,
to rush on it like a cobra with mouth open.
It is a desire to take death inside,
to feel it burning inside, pushing out velvety hairs,
like a clothes brush in the intestines -

That is the thrill that leads the President to lie.

****

Now the Chief Executive enters, and the press
    conference begins.
First the President lies about the date the Appalachian
    Mountains rose.
Then he lies about the population of Chicago,
the the weight of the adult eagle, and the acreage of the
    Everglades.
Now he lies about the number of fish taken every year in
    the Arctic.

He has private information about which city is the capital
    of Wyoming.
He lies next about the birthplace of Attila the Hun,
The about the composition of the amniotic fluid.

He insists Luther was never a German,
and only the Protestants sold indulgences.
He declares that Pope Leo X wanted to reform the
    Church, but the liberal elements prevented him.
He declares the Peasants' War was fomented by Italians
    from the North.
And the Attorney General lies about the time the sun
    sets.

****

These lies mean that something in the nation wants to
    die.
What is there now to hold us to earth? We long to go.
It is the longing for someone to come and take us by the
    hand to where they all are sleeping:
where the Egyptian pharaohs are asleep, and our own
    mothers,
and all those disappeared children, who went around
    with us on the rings at grade school.

Do not be angry at the President -
He is longing to take in his hands the locks of death-hair:
to meet his own children, dead, or never born....

He is drifting sideways toward the dusty places.    







This is an old poem, written a couple of years ago and included in my book Seven Beats a Second. I think I've used it here before, but it seem to be appropriate to use it right here again. Sometimes, when we are most passionate about something, most committed and most certain of our own intelligence and virtue, it is time to ask, with humility, whether we are all really asking the right questions.

That's what this poem is about.


antiwar poems are easy

the heart of the matter is that
the heart of the matter
sometimes doesn't matter much

antiwar poems are easy
since, in our hearts,
we all know that the logic of war
that says I will kill strangers
until a stranger kills me
is insane

and who can deny that in our hearts
we all know a human fetus
no matter how small
and misshapen and incomplete
is a human-in-waiting
holding within its tiny bounds
all the capacity for love
and laughter as any of us

and who,
even among the most aggrieved of us
could, without a tremor
of hand and heart, push the button
that drops the cyanid pellet
ending the life
of even the bloodiest
of our murdering kind

yet we kill strangers
who might someday
have been our friend

and we erase from the future
the love and laughter of those
we decide will never be

and we murder the murderers
with appropriate
writ and ceremony

all these terrible things we do
because our heart cannot guide us
in choosing the lesser of evils

it is our lizard brain we must turn to
when the heart of the matter
doesn't matter enough







Here's a short piece by Carl Sandburg. Most would say his time has come and gone but I think he'll be back, valued at some point in the future. if not for his artistic merit, at least for his acute eye and sharp pen, just as we value many of the ancient poets for the glimpses of real life in times long before our own.


Cumulatives

Storms have beaten on this point of land
And ships gone to wreck here
      and the passers-by remember it
      with talk on the deck at night
      as they near it.

Fists have beaten on the face of this old prizefighter
And his battles have held the sporting pages
      and on the street they indicate him with their
      right forefinger as one who once wore
      a championship belt.

A hundred stories have been published and a thousand
   rumored
About why this tall dark man has divorced two beautiful
   young women
And married a third who resembles the first two
      and the shake their heads and say, "There he
        goes,"
      when he passes by in sunny weather or in rain
      along the city streets.







Carl Sandburg was the working man's poet. I'm ok with doing that, as long as I don't get confused with a working man. My days of that are over.

Like it's said, I love work and could watch it all day.

That's me.


working man blues

did
some gainful
employment
today

I try
to keep such
antisocial
behavior
to a minimum
but do stumble
into it
now
and again
though
I much prefer
pecking away
at this key
board
ungainful
though it may
be
there is a certain
soul
satisfaction
to it when
the stars
are
aligned
and it
feels like
just the thing
that ought to be
done
right now
right here
with
you







I think this must be the darkest poem I've ever read, with an ending that sucks the breath right out of you. It's by Wendy Rose and it's from the collection Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry.


The Day They Cleaned Up the Border El Salvador, February, 1981

      "(Government Soldiers) killed my children. I
      saw it. I saw the head of a baby float-
      ing in the water."
        Surviving village woman as quoted in
        the news

How comforting
the clarity
of water,
flute music
in a rush
or startling
hush,
crackle of grass
like seeds
in a gourd
and the soothing
whisper
of the reeds.
I prayed the whole night
to be taken to my past,
for the pounding of rifles
comes again and again
morning by morning
till my two babies lay,
names stolen away,
in their beds
and in the yard
where they had played.
so many gone
and I pray to be taken,
for the lizards to notice
and begin eating
at my feet,
work their way up
till even my heart
is nibbled away.
I have come so many mornings
to the stream, so many times prayed
in the glistening mist
and now
drink oceans to drown myself
from the mountains
of memory.    But look -
that little melon rind
or round gourd, brown and white
in the water
where I could pluck it out
and use it dry, slipping past me
in the ripples and turning
till its tiny mouth,
still suckling,
points
at me.







Now, another vision of hell on earth, this one from Laura Ring, another "Here and Now" first-timer. I think this was the first of Laura's poems that I read, just a couple of days ago, on the Wild Poetry Forum.

Here it is for you to read.


Dis-articulated

          "Body parts were scattered over streets and buildings today
          after an explosion in Karachi's busiest marketplace."

At high detonation velocity, bomb beats body
every time. I imagine a headscarf of white chiffon, snagged
on the splintered beam of a tea stall; Bata sandal
thrown atop canvas awning.

You tell me I must picture the phalange of a young man
coiled in a dust-strewn skein of Chinese silk, or a child's
distal metacarpal as it tears through toppled aluminum pans
but the mind does not work this way.

The physical laws of the universe
are unbending. In the blast perimeter,
there is little for the eye to linger on.

Bangle Market is gone, redacted
like the anatomical terms in Modi's Medical Jurisprudence
I picked up on a lark at Urdu Bazaar.

The dark-eyed vendors who slide bracelets of colored glass
onto newlywed wrists. Beggar children
with infected nose rings and tiny-beak fingers who peck
the memsahib's forearm. Donkey carts, hagglers, merchants, all
removed from the knowable world.

Not removed, you say, just blown to bits: zippers, snaps,
belt buckles soldered to pavement; nubuck falling
like confetti - the fanfare of a second slaughter. Skull
nestled in gray matter, flesh painted on stone and I

hate you, staff reporter, for your pitiless turn of phrase.







Our next poet, Shawn Nacona Stroud, is another first-timer here at "Here and Now." He is a native of Florida and now resides in Charlotte, NC where he paints and writes poetry. He also works in graphic arts. His poetry has appeared in Mississippi Crow Magazine and the Loch Raven Review.

Here's Shawn's poem.


Becoming Virginia Woolf

Everything wavers,
iridescent glass
moils above me
as a chilled gush-gust
continually flaps me
along the riverbed.

I sway like seaweed.

Carp, Pike, and Barbel
regard me with interested eyes
while awaiting dinner.

My fingers glide across
anchors of stone
that pack each pocket,
stroke the smooth surfaces
which weigh me down
with unquestionable intent.

I watch trapped oxygen escape
from each waterlogged nostril -
air balloons rise towards the heavens.
They tick time like a doomsday clock
constantly counts down seconds.

Soon the mouth dam will fail -
aquatic air will flood in
and fish will clench and gnaw
with cannibal jaws
while they eat me as their own.







Over past weeks we've read a number of the short travel poems of French poet Blaise Cendrars, taken from his book Complete Poems. Last week, he was in the eastern United States. Now we have several short poems from a section he called Far West


I. Cucumingo

The San Bernadino hacienda
I ws built in the middle of a lush valley fed by a multitude of small
   streams that run down from the surrounding mountains
The roofs are tile red in the shade of sycamores and laurels

Trout thrive in the streams
Immense flocks graze untended in the lush meadows
The orchards are thick with fruit pears apples grapes pineapples figs
   oranges
And in the truck gardens
Old World vegetables grow beside those of the tropics

Plenty of game here
The California quail
The rabbit known as the cottontail
The long-eared hare known as the jackass
The prairie hen the turtle dove the partridge
The wild duck and wild goose
The antelope
It's true you still see wildcats and rattlesnakes
But there aren't any pumas anymore


II Dorypha

On holidays
When the Indians and vaqueros get drunk on whiskey and pulque
Dorypha dances
To the sound of the Mexican guitar
Such exciting habaneras
That people come from miles around to admire her

No woman knows as well as she
How to drape the silk mantilla
And to fix her blond hair
With a ribbon
A comb
A flower


III. The Mockingbird

The heat is staggering
Balcony shaded with trumpet vines and purplish honeysuckle
In the big silence of the dozing countryside
You can hear
The gurgling of little rills
The distant mooing of big herds of grazing cattle
The song of the nightingale
The crystal-clear hissing of big bullfrogs
The hooting of the owl
And the call of the mockingbird in the cactus


IV. Mushroom Town

Toward the end of the year 1911 a group of Yankee financiers decide to
   build a town way out west at the foot of the Rocky Mountains
Not even a month goes by and there are three Union railroads although
   still no houses
Workers pour in from everywhere
As early as the second month three churches are built and five theaters
   are going full blast
Around a square that still has a few nice trees a forest of metal girders
   rings day and night with pounding hammers
Winches
Machines huffing and puffing
The steel skeletons of houses thirty stories high start lining up
Brick walls ar often plain aluminum sheets fill in the interstices of the
   framework
In a few hours reinforced concrete is poured using the Edison method
Because of a sort of superstition no one wants to christen the town and a
   contest is announced with a raffle and prizes given by the town's
   biggest newspaper which is also looking for a name


V. Club

Although it's on the official map of the town this street still consists only
   of plank fences and piles of rubbish
The only way to get across the street is by hopping in zigzags over the
   mud and puddles
At the end of this unfinished boulevard lit by powerful arc lights is the
   Black Bean Club which is also a matrimonial agency
Wearing cowboy hats or wool caps with earflaps
Faces hard as nails
Men get out of the 60-horsepower cars they're breaking in and put their
   names on the list look through the photograph album
Choose their fiancees who are cabled to embark at Cherbourg on the
   Keiser Wilhelm and who sail full steam ahead
Mostly German girls
A stable-boy in black wearing swansdown shoes opens he door with a
   glacial propriety and gives the newcomer a suspicious once-over
I drink a whiskey cocktail then another then another
Then a mint julep a mother's milk a prairie oyster a nightcap

(Translated by Ron Padgett)







Next, here's a little travel poem of my own.


prelude to the afternoon of the froot loop

the clouds
were hanging low
black
as the joke
that made the
hang-
man
laugh
but the rain had been
sporadic and light
so we took a drive
out to Medina Lake
for a late lunch at
Oasis Bar and Grill
right on the lake
in little Mico
so small
they didn't even
bother
to widen the road

(thick boneless
pork chops
with razzberry
chipotle sauce -
the best ever)

then scouted out
some of the little
one and a half lane
county roads
that run patched
and bumpy
over rocky hills
through little
stone canyons
not sure
usually
where we were
or where we were
going and
all around
green trees
green hills
green meadows
green valleys
green
green
green
in the hill country
in July, what
a marvelous
believe-it-or-not
thing it is to see

finally
found our way
to County Road 471
where we started
then to Culebra
to Grissom
Bandera
Rolling Ridge
and finally home
for a bowl of
Froot Loops
and Law & Order
reruns







Next, a little fun with e.e. cummings from his book is 5. This poem is the eleventh poem from the second section of the book, titled in true cummings fashion, Two


XI

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera,my
mother hoped that

I would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
  ecetera,of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)







Sometimes it's fun to just let the old brain ramble off on its own.


it's about the syrup

just
riffing
in my head with
no particular
place
to go poem
wise
and I'm
reminded
it's friday
night
so it was dinner
at cha cha's
a family friday
tradition
the san antonio
branch of the family
getting together
on friday night
usually
at cha cha's
since they
have a botana
grande
platter that'll
feed four
or five
and my favorites
pollo en mole
chili rellano
and texas style
enchiladas
which is a kind
of a gringo
enchilada
smothered in
american
cheese
velvetta
for
authenticity
and chile sauce
with onions on the
side and crackers
yep crackers
like I said a
gringo enchilada
and since I'm
the only gringo
in the bunch
I'm given a pass
especially if I
show proper
respect
by alternating
with the rellano
and the mole
I'm telling you
this diversity stuff
works out if you
give it a try
I'm even allowed
my tennessee hillbilly
beans and cornbread
at home if I don't
make a fuss
about the beans
and rice
and we don't
have
company
to see
what I do
with the syrup







Now, two short poems from Guillaume Apollinaire, another French poet from the same milieu as Cendrars, contemporaries in both time and style. (Also like Cendrars, a traveler, including visits to the United States at about the same time as Cendrars.)


The Wind by Night

Oh! the pine tops grind as they collide
The wind is moaning from the southern places
From the river nearby triumphal voices
Of pixies laugh into the gusts
Attis Attis Attis bare breasted sexy
It is you the pixies ridicule
Your trees are falling in the gothic wind
Your forest panics like a primitive army
Whose lances o pine trees tremble in retreat
And now and now extincted villages muse
Like virgin girls or poets or old men
They will never respond no matter what happens
Not even when vultures pounce on their pigeons


Autumn

In the fog the knock-kneed peasant and his ox
Go slowly through the autumn fog
That hides the villages and all their ugliness

The peasant keeps on walking humming
A song about love and deception
A song about a ring and a heart on fire

Oh autumn the autumn ambushed the summer
In the fog I saw two shadows going

(Poems translated by Donald Revell)







Here's a new poem from a web-friend we haven't seen in a while, Alan Addotto.


Subdivisions

Zeno, an ancient Greek philosopher thought
that no journey could be undertaken
because there was an infinity of subdivided distances,
an uncountable sum of fractional parts to traverse
between the origin and the destination.
Halfway there broke down to quarters
which broke down to eighths......ad infinitum
and worse.

This morning as you left for work
walking toward your car
after your goodbye kiss for the day
I thought of this.

How long is a second again?

a minute?

an hour?

a day?

While you are away
I wait
Caught
between anticipation and fear







I visited my favorite Half-Priced Books on Broadway this morning and found I, In The Membership Of My Days, a book of poetry by the now-deceased British actor Richard Harris. I think the last thing I saw him in (maybe the last thing he was in) was Eastwood's Unforgiven. He played the gunfighter English Bob, almost a comic character until Gene Hackman beat the crap out of him.

Here's a poem from the book.


On The One-Day-Dead Face Of My Father

              May 1968

Can you touch me
now
With your marble lips
and increase your love?

Can you now touch me
with your dead hand
and direct me in my path?

Now can you see me
in your dea'
and say 'What is right”
Though you know the answer now
Now in your stillness
Pave the way of my doing

Cold thoughts in your give
creep away
and say
in your marble walk
and cold tombstone of you stare

Rise
now
above your mound and wound
and see you son in your eye
Touch again
the fond fountain of his
flow;
Grow
in the dead and deadly of your going

Can the paint and corrupt of your image
colour the size of my want?
Can your star in its mighty walk
balk
my evolution in its stride?

Guide me
now
in your silence
Cough up one silent prayer and stare
at me again
and see the woven fabric
of your doing
bend his knee
and plea in the tired optic of your stare
a prayer
of acceptance

Father in your mound
and farther away
I stay
at marble length and cry
Hoping that by and by in your height
I might grow
in your marble sight







Memory is a little thing we take out of the drawer sometimes to play with. Sometimes we get more than we bargain for.




memories are like roses

memories
are like roses
the more you pick
the more they
bloom
and
lately
I've been
trying to pick
some of my
earliest
like I remember
when I was four
sitting on the floor
by my parents' bed
with my father and my
older brother
learning that I had
a new baby brother
born that day
and a year or two
before that in another
city playing in the
sunshine with a little
blond girl just a moment
I remember as light
bright sunlight and
the brilliant light
of the little girl's
hair like that
nano-moment
when a flash camera
flashes and all is
bright then gone
before you can blink
and between those
two found pieces
of my life
waking up at midnight
when my dad came home
from work with a present
for me a little metal
airplane with wooden
wings he made for me
and it's only many years
later I think of that and
of the time it took to
make that little
airplane by hand
and the love
that went into it's
creation
and recognition
that it was
the best present
I ever received
and a better present
than I ever gave
my son better
than the nintendo
and the ninja turtles
and the transformers
and all those other
like things that came
and went before one
year's birthday
could be overtaken
by the next
and I am saddened
by my failure and
even more
by my too-late
recognition that
time to do better
is
past







I also found this morning a night without armor, a book of poetry by singer/songwriter Jewel.

Here's the poem.


Underage

I hung out once in the bathroom of Trade Winds Harley
    bar in Anchorage
with several biker chicks for company until the cops left.
They had pale skin and thick black eye makeup
and they asked me to sing at their weddings.
I said I'd ask my dad.

We all sat on the counter and waited for the pigs to leave.
Some guy O.D's and was outside foaming at the mouth.

I remember looking in the mirror
and seeing this white face,
my shirt all buttoned up.
The women were nice to me
and looked like dark angels
beside me. I like them,
and together we waited
patiently for the cops to leave,
so I could go back out
and join my dad up
on stage.







I made a new poetry friend at the Casa Chiapas Poetry Table, Lori L. E. Simpson. Lori is a short story writer, novelist and performance poet. Here are three short poems she read for us Thursday night.


Pantoum of Saldana Street

I grew up on a mostly quiet street,
There's not much more I can say.
I grew up listening to a heavy beat,
And I still hear it today.

There's not much more I can say...
Except the song my heart sang was not always sweet,
And I still hear it today.
It still moves my soul and feet.

I wish there was something more I could say.
I grew up listening to a heavy beat,
Though I'm learning to listen to myself any way,
I grew up on a (mostly) quiet street.


For Finding Your Poetry Again

Take your pen in hand,
There's no need to rush,
No need to understand
What your heart won't hush.

Write down the first thing
That comes to mind.
If it makes your heart to sing,
That's just fine.

If it makes you heart to weep.
That's fine, too..
Simply wake from your sleep
Poetry...will come to you.


If Shakespeare Were Alive Today Would He Write?

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women
Are merely TV addicts.
They leave their sets
To enter the kitchen,
Only to exit with junk food,
And lie around on the sofa,
Waiting to be entertained,
As reality show players,
Instead of true actors.







Well, have to leave now. The situation has gotten dire and if I don't leave quick I may be put in charge of fixing it. Here's the problem, as I see it.


the threat grows worse by the hour

I avert
my eyes
as I walk
from the front door
to my car, trying
not to see the grass
grown to savannah
heights as I pass

it was the rain

miracle grow
falling from the
sky and falling
and falling and
falling

more, more
more
until
the rivers are
high and lakes
are full and the aquifer levels are risen to
restart natural springs
dormant for fifty years
and
all of that's nice
but
the grass
the thick high grass
growing still
higher
even as I sit
here typing
this desperate
missive
to you, growing
even as I sip my
latte in this pleasant
air-conditioned
enclave
of books and
studious people
type type typing
on their laptops,
taking no notice
of the threat
gathering
in yards across
this city
as the grass
grows
and the temperature
rises
and the humidity
turns the yards
in which the grasses
grow into open air
steam rooms

and
sooner or later
someone
will have to go
out into that
hell
to cut
this grass as
it grows grows
grows
even more
and I'm
afraid
afraid afraid
it's going to be
me







Well, that's all for this time out. We'll be back next week with more of our jams and jellies for your consideration.

I'll be watching for you.

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Summer Rain Brings Desert Flowers   Friday, July 06, 2007

II.7.1


We're posting a day early this week. Tomorrow is full of stuff to do and it's not ever here yet. So, early though we may be, welcome to "Here and Now" and the midpoint of summer. It'll be a hot time in the old town tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow....

Maybe some cool poetry will help.







We take up this week where we left off before, with more travel poems by Blaise Cendrars



VII.Work

Some crooks have just blown up the railway bridge
The coaches caught fire at the bottom of the valley
The injured swim in the boiling water from the disemboweled
   locomotive
Living torches run among the debris and spewing steam
Other coaches stay hanging 60 yards up
Men with flashlights and acetylene torches follow the trail down the
   valley
And the rescue is organized quietly and quickly
Under the cover of rushes and reeds of willow the waterfowl make a nice
   rustling noise
Dawn is long in coming
But already a gleam of a hundred carpenters called by telegraph and
   come by special train is busy rebuilding the bridge
Bang bang-bang
Pass me the nails


VII Trestle Work

Should you come to a river or a deep valley
You go over it on a wooden bridge until the company receipts allow
   them to build one of stone or iron
The American carpenters are unrivaled in the art of building them
They begin by laying a bed of hard rock
Then a first support goes up
Which supports a second than a third then a fourth
As many as are necessary to reach the height of the bank
On the last support two beams
On the two beams two rails
These daring constructions are reinforced by neither Saint Andrew's
   crosses nor T girders
They are held only by a few smaller beams and a few spikes that
   maintain the gauge of the trestles
And that's it
It's a bridge
A beautiful bridge


IX. The Thousand Islands

Around here the countryside is one of the most beautiful in North
   America
The immense sheet of lake is a blue that's almost white
Hundreds and hundreds of little green islands float on the calm surface
   of the clear water
The delicious cottages built in bright-colored brick give this landscape
   the appearance of an enchanted kingdom
Luxurious maple mahogany boats elegantly decked out with flags and
   covered with multicolored awnings come and go from one island to
   another
Any suggestion of fatigue or labor of poverty is missing from this
   gracious setting for multimillionaires

The sun disappears on the horizon of Lake Ontario
The clouds bathe their folds in vats of purple violet scarlet and orange
What a beautiful evening murmur Andrea and Frederika seated on the
   terrace of a medieval castle
And the ten thousand motor boats reply to their ecstasy


X. Laboratory

Visiting the green houses
The thermo-syphon maintains a constant temperature
The soil is saturated with formic acid with manganese and other
   substance which give the vegetation tremendous strength
In one day the leaves grow the flowers bloom and the fruits ripen
Thanks to an ingenious device the roots are bathed in electric
   current which guarantees this monstrous growth
Anti-hail guns explode nimbus and cumulus
We go back to town across the barren waste
The morning is radiant
The dark purple heather and golden broom still haven't shed their petals
The seagulls trace big circles in the light blue sky


More of Cendrars next week, when he leaves the east coast and goes west.







I share an on-line poetry workshop with Alice Folkart (along with most of the other web-poets I feature here). The workshop is on the Blueline Poetry Forum and the challenge of the workshop is to write a poem a day for at least 30 days. I've only recently come to the workshop to participate and, as of today, have only 77 days of poems. Some of the participants have as many as 600 or 700 days of writing a poem a day.

If you play the game, you are not only challenged to write every day, you also get to read a whole new crop of poems every day. Alice in particular has been posting some really sharp, enjoyable stuff.

So, this week, we have an Alice Extravaganza, featuring several of her poem-a-day poems.

Here they are.


Tokyo Cyber Cafe

My cubicle at WIP, the cyber cafe in Ogikubo,
third from the left, number 11, on the
fourth floor of a twelve-foot wide building,
above a bowling alley and darts club,
below, an indoor tennis academy,
and somewhere in here,
a dental surgeon and wigmaker,
not one in the same, I hope.

It's home to me, and they're very nice.
For about $5 an hour I get a good chair,
all the tea, coffee or corn soup I can consume
and a library of tens of thousands
of porno comic books to be read in private booths
way in the back, where it's dark and scary.
There are showers too, and towels and slippers
for sale along with bags of potato chips
and girlie magazines and any brand of cigarette you'd like.

I think I'm the only poet.
I'm certainly the only foreigner and maybe
the only non-smoker and non-porno reader-player in the place.
They don't bother me. I don't bother them.
Don't ask. Don't tell. People don't look at each other here.
The whole point is anonymity. Valuable commodity here
in Tokyo where everyone huddles together in the same living room
even in the park or on the sidewalk and especially in the train station.


Terminal Sag

Wet rag, jet lag, torn bag, Terminal sag,
bloodshot hag, no tail to wag,
staggering.

The stewasaurus,
too much mouse in too little hair,
breached, as they say in Japan, admonished me

"Close the shades!
This is a night flight,
sun comes up too soon as it is!"

They fed us something.
"You want animal, vegetable or mineral,
coffee, tea or just go to Hell?"

I gave it all
back, put on my life jacket,
circled my seat three times
and curled up to sleep,

but didn't and it was my own fault.
But I got all my joints and senses
safely home to find it's not a dream.

The cats are warming up the bed,
and I'm leaning more learnedly
toward a little temporary oblivion.


Getting There is Half the Fun

Yes, I'm going.
Don't push!
I'm running as fast as I can
toward the cliff,
cat hanging underneath one arm,
steering with the other.

My box-kite wings
flap and rattle.
Is escape velocity possible?
Here comes the edge.
Will we fall or soar?

Updraft!
wheeeee!

Over the hungry waters!
Sharks and eels
look up through their ceiling
at this woman and her cat
careening above them,
dangling from a
fragile paper kite.

No superheros here.

It's a long flight.
No movie.

"Where's our island,"
asks Cat,
"How many
long nights and days
must we battle winds,
skim tops of storms,
look down at that awful sea?

"Shush, dear cat," I say,
"Everything will be hunky dory.
Just hang on."

And it is,
or will be.

Ahead, just below
the setting moon,
a volcano pokes its head
above creamy clouds,
shoots a toot of fiery smoke,
to show us the way,
belches a welcome.

I land, letting my feet down
as I have seen seagulls do.


The sand is hot
on my bare feet.

Cat jumps from my arms
dancing.

An ukulele bird
sings nearby.

Palm trees laugh,
titter in their fronds,
pitch coconuts
at us.
It's all in fun
they say.

An Island welcome


On Hearing a Lawn Mower in the Distance

Someone
is working.

Not I.

I sit and write.

Hope for pie in the sky,
getting prosy,
not rosy, from hot
summer sun.

I'm made for the shade.

Don't like to run.
Would much rather pun.
More fun.

So someone,
not me,
is working.


Hour of the Cat

Day cools,
sun tumbles
toward silent sea,
cats creep out,
blue-black, gray,
marmalade orange,
plain and striped,
mottled in motley,
round green-yellow-eyed,
wild-whiskered, sharp eared,
tails taut or winding wrapped
around perfect prissy paws.

Wakening from their
all-day naps,
they stroll
in sundown breezes,
strike poses
among the roses,
disdain my pretty compliments,
and ask when dinner will be served.







Speaking of cats, here's a cat piece I wrote last week after hearing some cat news on NPR.


what can we do, they're smarter than us

there are 600
million
house cats in the
world
spread
from pole to pole
from all the way
east
to all the way
west
and they all
descend
from one of five
female
wildcats who
in the barely
historical
mid-east
noticed
that filthy-
living human-kind
were vermin
magnets
and that living
off the vermin
who lived
wherever
humans lived
was a hell'uv
a lot easier
than trying
to chase down
prey
in the wild

and
thus did
the cat
domesticate
itself
on its own
terms
&
conditions
and thus
did little
muffie
assume her
smart-ass
air of feline
superiority
and
if you know
the whole story
it's hard
to argue
with
them







This poem, by Beryl L. Bonney, appears in the book Bread and Roses: A poetry Anthology for Adult Children. The book, published by Heath Communications, Ind., and U.S. Journal, Inc., includes mostly poems submitted in response to a poetry contest conducted by Change Magazine relating to growing up in a family torn by alcoholism. This poem was the second place winner in the contest.


Family Abuse

In the silent war
only wishes die
and love is buried.
Wordbullets
speed into rooms
where tension is smoke to be cut
with laughter, a camouflage
to cover wounds of smiles, and the blood
   that spills
is always called pride.
We limp away
to amputate
another feeling.







Next, we have a poem by young New York poet, Daniel Donaghy. The poem is from his book Street fighting poems published by BkMk Press in 2005.


One Thing That Didn't Make the Papers

Found on silver Bridge,
hung, belt around his neck:

Ready Eddie Dillaplane
from Oakdale Street;

old Jameson drinker
who never lost a fight

or a pool game at Felix's;
who coughed railroad dust

and Chesterfield phlegm.
Who shoveled walks

for nothing after storms,
who neighbors called

when roofs leaked;
who had a '66 Barracuda

he called his only child,
and a wife who didn't drink;

who had a horseshoe scar
on his back from a fight

they had one Christmas,
And who, having outlived her,

settled his tab with Felix,
checked himself in the mirror,

said good-bye to no one,
just walked out.






Dan Cuddy is another of the Blueline "poem-a-day" poets and he's getting to be a regular in "Here and Now" with his intense, close to the bone poems.

Here's another.


whether weather or not

weather creates worlds
I grab you by the collar and tell you this
maybe if
but it is not
I want to tell you
that the morning haze is sfumato
or the afternoon haze is a squeegee smear of paint
over what was a perfectly articulated morning landscape
or the flick of white dots sticking to roads,trees
is cold,calculated, intellectual art
attempting to cover the edges and curves of the sensuous
with the one-dimensional plane of willed thought
art is the weather found in the mind
but you are not the artist but the object
displayed everyday in a huge gallery of objects
I tell you this,
not the rhetorical you that is me,
but you, not show you this
because my individual egotism is my personal art
a pop artist would say
"it is all about ME"







Our next poem is from James Laughlin and is taken from his book The Secret Room


That Afternoon

when we were walking in the sunbright woods
and you were laughing so deliciously,
"dulce ridentem" said Horace of his girl Lalage
when suddenly I did what I'd been longing to do,
pulling you to me and touching for an instant
your sweet little breast, an impulse of courage,
and of course you sprang away,
but you did not reproach me, you put your arm
around my shoulders, as if to say
you were pleased by my avowal...

but the god was jealous of my happiness;
you haven't come to walk with me again.







With this poem, Jessica VanDriesen makes her second appearance in "Here and Now." Jessica usually posts on another workshop associated with Blueline. I don't post on that workshop often, but I do find poets on it, like Jessica, to use here.

(Jessica writes from Poland. Being a somewhat old guy, this "world wide web" business just blows me away. I am in awe that, first, it exists and, second, that it is such a scarcely noticd, routine part of our live.

By my count, we've had four continents represented here in the last month by web poet comrades of mine.


Tea Leaves

If I had read the leaves that night
what would I have seen,
or understood?
If I had held on to the kiss,
would it have made
a difference?

If I had read my soul that night,
what might I have said-
stay? take me
with you?
- and so saying,
where would I be
today?

If I chart the stars, strands of our fate,
will they ever bring us together?
Would we ever bring
ourselves?
And, if so,
would we be happy?







Or next poem is by Paul Durcan, from his book Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil


Jack Lynch

to Mike Murphy

Jack Lynch is an accountant n Rio.
Born in Sao Paulo in 1939
Of a first generation Brazilian, middle-class father from
      Allinasloe
Who was devoured by a mulatto working-class goddess.
His father had him christened Jack because he liked the black
      look of him.
If he hadn't like the black look of him he'd have called him
      Claude.
(His father divided up the human race into Jacks and Claudes.)
Jack made his home in Rio thirty-odd years ago.

Nothing happens in Rio that Jack Lynch doesn't know about.
Yesterday I sat with him in a cardboard shack
In a shantytown in Rio and listened to him
Tell the wide-eyed chisellers about his own daughter
Jumping off the top of Cocovado.
(His daughter is a champion hang-glider.)
He shakes his head, holding back the tears.
"I can't say I'm not proud of her."
The slum kids offer him handfuls of grime
Crying out to him - tell us again.

Today it's the same story.
Only this time we're on the patio
of the private members' bar
At the Gold Club 10 kilometers west or Rio
Gazing up at yet another Sugar Loaf mountain
With yet another shantytown adhering to its precipices
And from whose peak his daughter has jumped off in her hang-glider.
Back in Rio at twilight walking the Red Beach
Under the Sugar Loaf mountain at Urca
Just when I think there's nothing more
He can tell me about his hang-gliding daughter
He points a finger up at a cliff-rim -
His daughter has been known to ride a motorbike
Along the edge of the cliff.

Jack, what do you mean -
"Along the edge of the cliff"?
He explains about a two-foot wide rim.
Anyway ... that's another thing his daughter does:
She rides her motorbike along narrow spaces
On the top of things - cliffs, roofs, parapets,
It's not just that Jack Lynch lives on another planet
It's that Jack Lynch is himself another planet.
Jack Lynch is a Brazilian who lives in Brazil.
The slum kids offer him handfuls of grime
Crying out to him - tell it again.







Here's a little paranoid fantasy I wrote this week for the poem-a-day workshop.

Fantasy, probably, but you know Big Brother has to be working on it.


small dreams slip by unnoticed

don't
dream
too large
tonight

they know
who
the dreamers
are

and
they are
watching







One of my used book store finds is a collection of work from Gilbert Sorrentino titled Selected Poems 1958-1980 with nearly 300 pages of poems.

Here's one of them.


Nightpiece

Rats move swiftly along a wall,
they can frighten by moonlight;
while a mouse
can leap the rafters

of the house more
noisily, there is nothing
quite like a rat
blinded by nature

and fear, swallowed
by space, dead
center in the room;
you can see the mustaches

twitching. He doesn't know
which direction to take,
he is lost in the open area,
men have shot themselves

in the head
for less reason.







Now we have a fun piece by Khadija Anderson, another web poet compatriot. Khadija also posts on Blueline, but I found her this time on Wild Poetry Forum, another very fine on-line poetry workshop. I used to post there often, but lately just haven't had the time.


Happy Hour

today I wanted to lie on the floor
chin on the ground
and look across it eye level
like I might find something
under the furniture
but the only thing is
there is no furniture
only a mattress and
I don't want to look under that
I would have to pick it up and
I might only see dust and maybe
a used Kleenex

so I stood up and looked at the floor today
and out the window
and at the sidewalk
and at a pigeon
he was fat
for the winter and gray
maybe to match the sidewalk
he looked really good
and warm

someone came over and said
what are you thinking about
and I said
nothing
cause they wouldn't understand about
the pigeon
or the floor

I wanted to lie on the bed today
and stay there forever
but I knew someone would come in
and make me get up
so I left the house quickly
I went and had a beer
and deep-fried mozzarella
Happy Hour $4.95
but I'm not very happy about it

I am sitting in the corner
drinking a beer and waiting
for mozzarella
and waiting
for Wednesday
cause it's only Monday and
today I wanted to lie on the floor







Well, we haven't had any fun with Shel Silverstein in a while. Let's remedy that, with these poems (sorry no illustrations) from his book A Light in the Attic


Crowded Tub

There's too many kids in this tub.
There's too many elbows to scrub.
I just washed a behind
That I'm sure wasn't mine,
There's too many kids in this tub.


Rockabye

Rockabye baby, in the treetop.
Don't you know a treetop
Is no safe place to rock?
And who put you up there,
And your cradle too?
Baby, I think someone down here's
Got it in for you.


Strange Wind

What a strange wind it was today,
Whistlin' and whirlin' and scurlin' away
Like a worried old woman with so much to say.
What a strange wind it was today.

What a strange wind it was today.
Cool and clear from a sky so gray
And my hat stayed on but my head blew away -
What a strange wind it was today


Magic Carpet

You have a magic carpet
That will whiz you through the air,
To Spain or Maine or Africa
If you just tell it where.
So will you let it take you
Where you've never been before,
Or will you buy some drapes to match
And use it
On your
Floor?


Anteater

"A genuine anteater,"
The pet man told my dad.
Turned out, it was an aunt eater
And now my uncle's mad!


Hinges

If we had hinges on our heads
There wouldn't be no sin,
'Cause we could take the bad stuff out
And leave the good stuff in







I shaved my beard last night. I do that about every five years of so, just to remind myself what I look like. Every time I'm hoping for something better than the last time, but it never works out.


defoliation


elderly
gentlemen
with beards
should shave them
every five years, at
least, if only to account
for their accumulation of chins.

I do
and I did
and I still have now
the same two I had before
and their bobble and shake is
near imperceptible when I laugh

that's the good news
for this independence day,
this warm and wet fourth of July







Next we have three poems by 8th century Chinese poet, Wang Wei, considered, with Du Fu and Li Bai, one of the three greatest poets of the Tang dynasty. While his poems seem very straightforward, they also include subtle infusions of Buddhist consciousness.

The poems are from The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry, an anthology
that surveys the full 3,000-year traditions of Chinese poetry, from the ancient to the contemporary.


Green Creek

To find the meadows by Yellow Flower river
you must follow Green Creek
as it turns endlessly in the mountains
in just a hundred miles.
Water bounds noisily over the rocks.
Color softens in the dense pines.
Weeds and water chestnuts are drifting.
Lucid water mirrors the reeds.
My heart has always been serene and lazy
like peaceful Green Creek.
Why Not loaf on a large flat rock,
dangling my fishhook here forever?


Visiting the Mountain Courtyard of the Distinguished
Monk Tanxing at Enlightenment Monastery

He leans into twilight on a bamboo cane,
waiting for me at Tiger Creek.
Hearing tigers roar, he urges me to lave,
then trails a pouring brook back to his cell.
Wild flowers bloom beautifully in clusters.
A bird's single note quiets the ravine.
In still night he sits in an empty forest,
feeling autumn on the pine forest wind.


Song of Peach Tree Spring

My fishing boat sails the river. I love spring in the mountains.
Peach blossoms crowd the river on both banks as far as sight.
Sitting in the boat, I look at red trees and forget how far I've come.
Drifting to the green river's end, I see no one.

Hidden paths wind into the mountain's mouth.
Suddenly the hills open into a plain
and I see a distant mingling of trees and clouds.
Then coming near I make out houses, bamboo groves, and flowers
where woodcutters still have names for Han times
and people wear Quin dynasty clothing.
They used to live where I do, at Wuling Spring,
but now they cultivate rice and gardens beyond the real world.

Clarity of the moon brings quiet to the windows under the pines.
Chickens and dogs riot when sun rises out of clouds.
Shocked to see and outsider, the crowd sticks to me,
competing to drab me to their homes and ask about their native places.
At daybreak in the alleys they sweep flowers from their doorways.
By dusk woodcutters and fishermen return, floating in on the waves.

They came here to escape the chaotic world.
Deathless now, they have no hunger to return.
Amid these gorges, what do they know of the world?
In our illusion we see only empty clouds and mountains.
I don't know that paradise is hard to find,
and my heart of dust still longs for home.


Leaving it all, I can't guess how many mountains and waters lie behind me,
and am haunted by and obsession to return.
I was sure I could find my way back on the secret paths again.
How could I know the mountains and ravines would change?
I remember only going deep into the hills.
At times the green river touched cloud forests.
With spring, peach blossom water is everywhere,
but I never find that holy source again.







The best thing about barku is they feel like haiku, but they aren't nearly so demanding. (Also, I get to make up the rules. Oh, also, don't go looking for a definition of "barkunal." It's my word, not in the dictionary yet, but I have hopes, for a barku bacchanal)

I wrote these last week.


a barkunal

1
bird
song
in the morning
from branches
hung
with dew


2
vultures
circle
at noon
lunch time
for me
as well


3
day ends
with five o'clock
storms
raging
freedom puddles
gather







We have a poem now by Paula Rankin from her book Augers.


For My Mother, Feeling Useless

Some people grow chalky dust on their skin
like leaves on a dirt road.
My mother, who would not run to the drugstore
without clean underwear, stockings,
hair pinned, two spots of blusher,
who believed everything mattered,
now sighs, no need, no need

Who am I? she asks
of my father's, my sister's and my faces
on the wall, under glass.
Her face lies on them
until it cannot bear the likenesses.

If she goes out for supper
no one knows if she comes back
or keeps driving
into the ocean
or down a dirt road spraying dust.

On her last plane ride
she had a vision
of being taken up
beyond the top cloud;
then she heard a voice
telling her she had to go
down, she was needed.

When I was a child,
she owned two dresses,
many aprons. There was great need
for her hands in the sink,
in the threadbox with needles.

There was great need
when my grandfather's brain
turned to mush, when my father lost
his sense of touch.

I leave my house
and go down the clay road
where the trees smother
into ghosts of themselves.
A car spins past, coating my legs
with gravely powder
and I warn, Back off, dark space,
I've got connections
My husband and children saw me leaving.








Susan McDonough splits her time between Arizona and Maine, a great combination, in my mind, as long as it's mountain Arizona and not desert Arizona.
Too many deserts in my life already.

Sue is also a "poem-a-day" vet and that's where I got this poem.


Among the leaves

Morning
peanut butter
toast eaten in the cool
you see your breath and write your day
hopeful

Garden
weeds challenge zen
campanula bloom tall
slender stalks away from the fray
free rein

The sun
backlights spider
web decorated with
morning's dew - symmetry's practiced
pattern

muscles
send messages
of use and worth to brain
hands callous while the heart softens
grateful







We used a poem by Elizabeth Seydel Morgan for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Here she is again, with another poem from her book Parties.


Power Failure

All the relations sleep

Forced to early beds by lack of light
Mother, sister, husband, children
have left me
cat-eyed
to delight in my own power.

The storm that downed the wires is over,
steady rain's moved into the backyard.

I sit on the top of the steps,
bare feet getting rained on,
watching the lightning bug
high in the pin oak
bright as the end of my cigarette.
Below me a gardenia glows
unconnected to its charcoal foliage.

A gray shape shifts among these
blacks and lights.
Another cat does not surprise me.

Leaning against the screen door
I'm vanishing with a Cheshire smile.
For not one of them -
Mother, sister, husband, children -
will travel the black house sightless,
come up behind me,
see what I am up to

until the power comes back on.







Our next poem is by Aaron Silverberg, from his book Thoreau's Chair. It's kind of smaltzy, but I'm of an age and personal history to be moved by it.


Already Arrived

My son Joel and I went to the nearby park together.
I sat at the far end of the children's wooden play tower,
basking in the dusking sun.
Joel played nearby, all around me, and finally went off
by himself to swing on the swings.

A part of me wanted to watch over him and assure his
safety. Another part knew better and I stayed to enjoy my
own sustained peace.

When I went over to join him, he walked up to me and
said, "Let's go home Dad."
I replied, "What a wonderful idea."

As we strolled down the path I held his hand, but almost
immediately he moved my hand around his shoulder and
hugged my thigh.
We walked in this awkwardly beautiful manner down
toward the basketball court.

He said to me, "Dad, I love you so much."
With a tear in my eye I replied,
"I love you too Joey, so much."

It was a little embarrassing. The court was full of strong,
sweaty, bare-chested young men. But I didn't let go until
the very last second.

On the other side of the court he ran up ahead,.
I watched his sturdy little frame pad up the blacktop
wishing with all my might that this precious little boy
never change or
that I might never reach the turnoff
head between two tall firs,
getting somewhere
when I had already arrived.








This is the opening section from the antiwar (Vietnam) poem The Teeth Mother Naked at Last by Robert Bly. The whole poem is much too long for our format here, but considering the similarities between then and now, I expect I'll do the entire poem, in sections, over the coming weeks. I think I mentioned when I used one of Bly's poems a couple of weeks ago, though I appreciate the artistry of his anti-war poems, there is, to me, an attitude of superiority to them, an aura of one species judging another, lesser species. I sense no feeling of commonality in his poems with the killed and the killers and that commonality is where the tragedy lies. Humans killed by Klingons is one thing; humans killed by humans is a much deeper, more tragic other thing.

I believe our current war is an abomination, made even more so by the stupidity that led us to start it and the incompetence of its execution, and I write antiwar poems. I hope in all such poems I write, I do not loose sense of my brotherhood with all involved, those that die, those that kill and those that order the killing. We are the same kind, after all, and to deny that is to shirk responsibility and to deny the tragedy.

This poem, along with many others, is in Bly's collection Selected Works, available, possibly, at a used book store near you.


The Teeth Mother Naked at Last

    I
Massive engines lift beautifully from the deck.
Wings appear over the trees, wings with eight hundred
    rivets.

Engines burning a thousand gallons of gasoline a minute
    sweep over the huts with dirt floors.
Chickens feel the fear deep in the pits of their beaks.
Buddha and Padma Sambhave.

Meanwhile out on the China Sea
immense ray bodies are floating,
born in Roanoke,
the ocean to both sides expanding, "buoyed on the dense
    marine."

Helicopters flutter overhead. The death-
bee is coming. Super sabres
like knots of neurotic energy sweep
around and return.
This is Hamilton's triumph.
This is the triumph of a centralized bank.
B-52s come from Guam. Teachers
die in flames. The hopes of Tolstoy fall asleep in the ant
    heap.
Do not ask for mercy.

Now is the time to look into the past-tunnels,
hours given and taken in school,
the scuffles in coatrooms,
foam leaps from his nostrils.

Now we come to the scum one takes from the mouths of
    the dead.
Now we sit beside the dying, and hold their hands, there
    is hardly time for goodbye.
The staff sergeant from North Carolina is dying - you
    hold his hand.
He knows the mansions of the dead are empty.
He has an empty place inside him,
created one night when his parents came home drunk
He uses half his skin to cover it,
as you try to protect a balloon from sharp objects.

Artillery shell explode. Napalm canisters roll end over
    end.
Eight hundred steel pellets fly through the vegetable
    walls.
The six-hour-old infant puts his fists instinctively to his
    eyes to keep out the light.
But the room explodes.
The children explode.
Blood leaps on the vegetable walls.

Yes, I know, blood leaps on vegetable walls...
Don't cry at that.
Do you cry at the wind pouring out of Canada?
Do you cry for the reeds shaken at the edge of the marsh?
The Marine battalion enters.
This happens when the seasons change.
This happens when the leaves begin to drop from the
    trees too early.
"Kill them: I don't want to see anything moving."

This happens when the ice begins to show its teeth in the
    ponds.
This happens when the heavy layers of lake water press
    down on the fish's head,
and send him deeper, where his tail swirls slowly,
and his brain passes him pictures of heavy reeds, of
    vegetation fallen on vegetation...
Now the Marine knives sweep around like sharp-edged
    jets;
they slice open the rice bags, the reed walls, the
    mattresses.
Marines kill ducks with three-hundred dollar shotguns
and lift cigarette lighters to light the thatched roofs of
    huts.
They watch the old women warily.


We will continue with this poem in coming weeks.







Now a little poem by me. I hope I pass the Robert Bly test.


here's an idea

charlie parker
said
after
a solo long
even by his
usual lengthy
standard
I was just
looking
for a good
way to end it

well did you
think
about taking
the horn out
your mouth
said miles

now our set
goes
on and on
in Bagdad
and Abu Ghurayb
and Sadr City
as well as
Mosul
Basrah
Kirkuk Najaf Karbala
Nasriye Ramadi
Ba'qubah
Fallujah
and all those
other
far away places
with strange
sounding
names
where we die
piece by piece
day by day
week by week
month by month
and year after year
after year
and
everybody
sees
all the bodies
all those broken
bloody
bodies
and says
this has to
stop
we have to
end it, we
have to stop
all this death
and destruction
and dishonor
and there are a
thousand
complicated
suggestions on
how
and none
seems good enough
fair enough
safe enough
elegant
enough
to satisfy
those
addicted now
to the taste of
blood
who want
this death music
to go on and on
and on
and
from the
corner
of saints
crackpots
and musicians
miles croons
did you ever
think
to
just take
the horn
out
your mouth







This poem by Ishle Yi Park is from her book The Temperature of This Water


Turtles

This is a story about two people
searching for a home. No. This is a story
about a country searching for a home --

liberation fighters spilling blood
to speak their own words, whole as moon-dusted
pears weighing down orchards. Farmers beating
hourglass drums on dirt, cracking their throats
and sweatriver backs to call this land Chosun. Son.

My father grew up barefoot, eating robins' eggs,
ripping skins off trees, kicking a leathery rugby ball, prying open
a locked door to get at candy and toy trucks
the GIs left his father.

My mother also grew up chasing army trucks
for bubble gum and trinkets,
until she realized some things are not
worth chasing. For bending into dust.

But they bent for each other -
in dust, in drinks, with handwritten letters
in a language I must mouthe to read,
their words forming calligrams of love.
No. This is not romantic.

These were my parents, running
with students, rioting and beaten,
tanks riding bareback through Seoul.
This is about my father, waiting tables at Friendly's,
sloppy and loose-tongued, the other whiteboy waiters
laughing at his flustered mouth.
This is about my mother, picking thorns
off roses in a factory with her sister,
her fingertips scarred and bleeding.
This is about her sister,
who bought them over by marrying
a white soldier who became crazy,
then a family secret.

Breaking bones of mackerel.
croaker. Over the dinner table.
Breaking each other. Bruised rib,
scarred elbow. Twenty-five years of
selling fish. Breaking backs. Promises.

This is about a daughter..
With a suitcase packed with Wise onion chips
and a moth-eaten blanket. Typing fourth-grade runaway letters
Staring into her rice,
kimchee flung, guksu spilt, bowl chipped -
thrown. Girl, curled in a bunk bed.

Girl grown.
Trying to find home in wild asphalt rhythms,
a bleeding copter-scarred sky.
Headlights and searchlights and strobelights
and him. Wire-thin , carved.
His eyes swallowed by her whole.
He was beauty. He split her skin,
kissed her hip bones, bruised her jaw.
She pried him open, searched he chords of his hair,
listened to the clave of his heart, punched his chest. Tried to leave.

Dragged him across carpet,
his arms a bracelet around her ankles.
He refused to let go of his only home.
And she began to see: how we cling to frail walls,
dilapidated roofs, rib-like planks, knobby floorboards,
this first home/body pounded and grown out of necessity,
love. Biting love. Survival love.

The daughter looked back.
At her. At him. Calloused. Apron-stained. Graying.
And she began to cry.
For them,
her country.
Ravished, split, clawing.
      All for home.
            And began to love
               this leatherbacked thing she called a heart.







We will finish this week with this poem, written a couple of years ago as a hurricane was coming in somewhere along the coast and I was remembering the only (and the last) hurricane I ever sat through. It was a little one, but still enough to convince me to never try to ride out another one. Oak trees, I am certain, were not meant to bend that way.

Thinking about the rains we’ve been having for the last two weeks brought the poem to mind.

after the storm

absolute still

leaves hang limp
like fresh-washed socks
on a clothesline

after
the winds blow

after
the rains pass

after
the tides recede

the heavy tropic air stays,
thick, like a wet curtain
pressing
all around, and the sun

in a bright sky
blown clear of clouds,
burns down
on the wet earth and
all the wet things on it

and the roar of recent hours
is forgotten, the blowing
and the crashing and
the rain surging
like a rampant flood

forgotten

as bone-weary
discomfort
settles in






That's it for this week.

Back to the old bunkhouse. As John McClain would say (did say in all four movies), yippee kai yea ............

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