Dawn's Early Light
Saturday, August 25, 2007
II.8.4.
So here we are again, lots of poets, a mixed bag of styles and origins. Don't know that you'll like everything, but I pretty sure you'll find and enjoy something new to you. Enjoy.
We have two poems this week from This Same Sky, A Collection of Poems From Around the World, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye and published by Aladdin Paperbacks in 1996.
The first poem from the book is by Zia Hyder, a poet from Bangladesh. The poem is translated by Bhabani Sengupta with Naomi Shihab Nye.
Under This Sky
There's an enormous comfort knowing
we all live under this same sky,
whether in New York or Dhaka,
we see the same sun and same moon.
When it is night in New York,
the sun shines in Dhaka,
but that doesn't matter.
Flowers that blossom here in spring
are unknown in meadows of distant Bengal -
that too doesn't matter.
There's no rainy season here -
the peasant in Bengal welcomes the new crop
with homemade sweets
while here, winter brings mountains of snow.
No one here knows Grandmother's hand-sewn quilt -
even that doesn't matter.
There's an enormous comfort knowing
we all live under this same sky.
The Hudson River freezes,
automobiles can't move.
Slowly city workers will remove the snow.
The old lady next door won't go to work -
it's too cold.
Maybe my old mother far away
will also enter her kitchen late.
Naked trees in Central Park and Ramna Park
quiver with dreams of new life and love.
Fog hangs on the horizon -
suddenly New York, Broadway, Times Square
look dimly like Dhaka, Buriganga, and Laxmi Bazaar.
The next of our poets from around the world is Alberto Blanco of Mexico. His poem is translated by Jennifer Clement.
Horse By Moonlight
For Juan Soriano
The horse escaped from the circus
and lodged in my daughter's eyes:
there he ran circles around the iris
raising silver dust-clouds in the pupil
and halting sometimes
to drink from the holy water of the retina.
Since then my daughter feels a longing
for meadows of grass and green hills
waiting for the moon to come
and dry with its silk sleeve
the sad water that wets her cheeks.
Gary Blankenship is back with us now with another in his series of poems inspired by his reading of Allen Ginsberg's Howl.
After Howl V
With Sauerkraut, Hold the Chili
who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
--Allen Ginsberg, Howl
on the corner of 5th Avenue and E. 26th, a one-man band rings cymbals beneath his knees as a street preacher shouts repent, repent loud enough to scare all the seagulls in San Francisco Bay to Utah in time to devour a plague of locusts and the BYU football field in Provo
library pigeons discuss the meeting of the Bryant Park Tuesday Afternoon Book Club and why every book is discussed either after it was made into a movie or a Classic Illustrated and banned in Levitown
Prudence swears at the delay in fixing the elevators to the top of the Chrysler Building
Patience yawns bored at the shallow pretensions of rats with feathers
a few tentative trumpet notes drifts down Broadway as the last zoot suit manufactured in the USA dances across the bridge
to Queens in search of a mime and a man with a peg leg
the aroma of sweet peppers and onions invade a pizza parlor on 45th, the garlic objects
the scent of coleslaw goes nowhere
the Beatles are due in the city in three months, they won't play the Apollo or a remixed Rockin' Robin
bottled water comes in 137 flavors, Nehi is sold in only 3
a couple meets under a sign advertising Dave Garroway's next show; he offers her a ring, she offers him a child
down in the subway never makes the charts until it is rerecorded as under the boardwalk
a weed grows next to the stoop of a house with a dog locked in a Village apartment for a long working day
Miles, Duke and Dizzy jam to the beat of Allen's typewriter clicks
a padded cell makes no sound
We're on the road again with that great Traveler, turn of the 20th century French poet Blaise Cendrars. In this poem, he is still traveling in the American South.
Vomito Negro
The pretty gardens and woods are all behind us
It's a bare and dismal plain with an occasional
Stand of bamboo
A stunted willow
A windblown eucalyptus
Then marshland
You see this yellowish smoke
This gray fog along the ground continually quivering
With thousands of mosquitoes and the yellow breath of the rotting muck
There are some places where even the blacks can't live
On this side the bank is lined with big mangroves
Their tangled roots plunge into the sludge and are covered with clusters
of poisonous oysters
The mosquitoes and poisonous insects form a thick cloud over the
stagnant water
Beside harmless bullfrogs you see incredibly fat toads
And the famous hoop snake which chases its victims as friskily as a dog
There are stagnant pools teeming with slate-colored leeches
Hideous scarlet crabs playing around sleeping caymans
In the spots where the ground is hardest you meet gigantic ants
Thousands of them all voracious
On these stinking waters in the poisonous muck
Flowers bloom with a stunning scent a heady and persistent smell
Bursts of blue and purple
Chrome leaves
Everywhere
The black water is carpeted with flowers nest to which will protrude the
flat head of a snake
I walked through a thicket of big mimosas
They parted in front of me as I went
Their branches moved aside with a small swish
Because these trees have a sensitivity almost a nervous system
Among the jalap vines full of talking blossoms
Big pink and gray birds on long thin legs feasting on crusty lizards fly off
with a great bating of winds as we approach
Then giant butterflies the color of sulfur of gentian of heavy-duty oil
And really big caterpillars
Experimenting with colors now. This is red.
red
blood
on white paper,
bright red,
like an apple
on a bed of
snow
I mentioned last week Aristotle's view that the central essence of art is narrative, that to gather human engagement, there must be a story that reveals something of humanity, whether it's a baby deer who loses its mother to a forest fire or a prince of Denmark struggling with his father's murder.
And that's the secret to the art of Charles Bukowski, every poem is a story that is part of a another, larger story centered around the life of the not always pleasant or likable narrator.
Here's another chapter in the Bukowski story.
life of the king
I awaken at 11:30 a.m.
get into my chinos and a clean green shirt
open a Miller's,
and nothing in the mailbox but the
Berkeley Tribe
which I don't subscribe to,
and on KUSC there is organ music
something by Bach
and I leave the door open
stand on the porch
walk out front
hot damn
that air is good
and the sun like golden butter on my
body, no race track today, nothing but this
beastly and magic
leisure, rolled cigarette dangling
I scratch my belly in the sun
as Paul Hindemith
rides by on a bicycle,
and down the street a lady in a
very red dress
bends down into a laundry basket
rises
hangs a sheet on a line,
bends again, rises, in all that red,
that red like snake skin
clinging moving flashing
hot damn
I keep looking, and
she sees me
pauses bent over basket
clothespin in mouth
she rises with a pair of pink
panties
smiles around the
clothespin
waves to me.
what's next? rape in the streets?
I wave back,
go in,
sit down at the machine
by the window and now it's someone's
violin concerto in D,
and a pretty black girl in very tight pants
walking a hound,
they stop outside my window,
look in;
she has on dark shades
and her mouth opens a little, then she and the
dog
move on.
someone might have bombed cities for this or
sold apples in the
rain,
but whoever is responsible, today I wish to
thank him
all the
way.
Cliff Keller, a first-timer for "Here and Now," says that he is an inveterate traveler, who enjoys experiencing a broad swath of people and experiences to inspire original music and poetry. His home base is in North County San Diego by the beach where he says he enjoys his favorite surf.
You can hear samples of Cliff's music by clicking on the "Cliff Keller's Music" link on the right side of the page.
Little Miss Raincloud
Everything
annoys her
the curves in the unfamiliar road
imposition of wind in hair
even good weather is so damn....cheerful,
in a cloying way
Miss Raincloud on holiday
it doesn't make her happy
but it could, if she so decided
or if some crowning achievement
culminated in this backwater beach town
Still
her elegant mouth enthralls me
lips gliding over teeth
like a pianist's hands
caressing a nocturne,
her smile: an infrequent and beautiful flourish,
the rising pitch that ends each phrase
(the sweet embellishment of Western Canadians).
I couldn't watch her enough
as I drove and she sang
(Kodachro-o-ome, it gives us the nice bright colors...)
that's my only regret
(*apologies to Paul Simon)
This poem by Thomas Lux is from the book The Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry published in 1989 by Longman Inc. It appears to be a textbook, filled with great American poets and poetry.
Thomas Lux grew up in the Boston area and was educated at Emerson College. He has taught at a number of schools, including Oberlin and the University of Houston, and was for some years part of the writing staff of Sara Lawrence College.
Barn Fire
It starts, somehow, in the hot damp
and soon the lit bales
throb in the hayloft. The tails
of mice quake in the dust,
the bins of grain, the managers stuffed
with clover, the barrels of oats
shivering individually in their pale
husks - animate and inanimate; they know
with the first whiff in the dark.
And we knew, or should have that day
the calendar refused its nail
on the wall and the crab apples hurling
themselves to the ground....Only moments
and the flames like a blue fist curl
all around the black. There is some
small blaring from the calves and the cows'
nostrils flare only once
more, or twice, above the dead dry
metal troughs....No more fat tongues worrying
the salt licks, no more heady smells
of deep green from the silos rising now
like huge twin chimneys above all this.
With the lofts full there is no stopping g
nor even getting close: it will rage
until dawn and beyond, - and the horses,
because they know they are safe there,
the horses run back into the barn.
Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis. He is a prolific web and print poet who can be read often on poetry workshops like the Wild Poetry Forum perfecting his art and craft. This is his first appearance in "Here and Now."
Alex says that this poem is the first in what will be a series based on the Tarot deck. We will be following this series in the weeks ahead.
In the meantime, here's the first in the series.
Card 0
The Fool tries to throw his voice
his efforts seem less than
adequate - his mouth moves,
shapes nouns, forms verbs.
gravity seems reluctant
to follow his commands.
the absence of smoke leaves
him silent, he moves to light
a cigarette.
he strikes the match,
sees words
alive in sulfur.
taking a drag, he listens
for a voice,
untethered.
This poem by April Bernard is from her book Psalms, published by W W Norton and Company in 1993, so titled because all the poems are written in the style of the Psalms.
Psalm of the Beaten
When they hit me, it was like flowers, bright and exploding
along the soft skin of the inner thigh, the open softness
around the eyes
Or there was the time when your face turned away at last,
disappearing behind the veil
more definite than death, indifference
Pray for death to my enemy? My enemy is myself:
Dwelling amid the fists like one who sits calm under hail
striking the tin roof -
Reading, maybe, or drinking tea -
But wait. There is screaming in the alleyway, shouts upon
the boulevard
It is possible now to walk with those
who wear their flesh like summer cotton
We are calling to each other in the city:
Lie down with the butcher and the blood will wash away like water
For the blow to your face, tears for the wash bowl
For the boot in your back, dance
Dace above the dirt of the body, unbeaten at last.
Next, a little yellow.
yellow
lemons overflow
a pewter
bowl,
roll across the floor,
crying
caution....caution
Poet, teacher and dotcom entrepreneur, Charles Entrekin was born in Alabama but has done most of his work in California. This poem is from his book In This Hour, published by Berkely Poets Workshop & Press in 1989.
For No Reason
Again, it can't be mended.
You watch me mumbling at the window,
something's lost that we can no longer
get from one another. It happens,
gets broken,
becomes asymmetrical,
and even when we count everything twice,
still, it can't be found.
It slips down in the leaf pile, between us.
In winter air, white slips of paper
blow across the parking lot.
And now, a seagull, only one leg,
stands before us on the beach.
He uses the wind as his crutch,
precariously balanced
until he takes the air.
Steve Williams is poet living in Portland, Oregon. In addition to his own writing, he is co-administrator of Wild Poetry Forum, the workshop where many of our regular web-poet contributors work on their poems. We have a link to the forum on the right side of this page.
Here's one of Steve's poems, taken from his book, Skin Stretched Around the Hollow, published this year by Rattlesnake Press.
Complexity of Taste
Slip a sliver of dark chocolate onto tongue,
do not chew. We push morsels against
our cavity roofs, suck the sugar melt.
Bitter need trickles back, remembers
the cocoa bean, aroma of Sumatran coffee.
Saliva gathers on the tongue, asks for rococo.
PIquancy spreads above my teeth, wafts
into my throat, up the back of smell -
a cloying compulsion.
She reclines over a chocolate mound, ribs rise
with her spine. Pour Shiraz into the more of her.
I savor mouthfuls of truffles,
drool the wine into a pool, submerge her navel,
mingle the harvest of skin, sting, sugar, surprise -
tiny hairs tickle the tip of my tongue.
Beneath her, the confection softens, mixes,
ferments into rhythm oil - primitive pounding
of Delta blues. We cry names
of unknown spirits, thrash into string bass vibrations.
Our throats grown past ursine tongues, bodies
smeared in petroglyphs of the wanton hunt.
We are cross-legged figures in our white
noise room, eyelids closed, mediating.
This poem by poet and teacher Elizabeth Seydel Morgan is from her book Parties published by Louisiana State University Press in 1988.
Stillness Like This
It's stillness that gets you,
not a dingy Greyhound leaving at dawn,
grinding to somewhere strange.
But sit very still in a familiar diner,
expect no one.
Such times you'll feel like a building.
Even leaving you was motion -
your car, then
three airports, two planes, a taxi.
The pilot pointed out Manhattan, Ellis Island.
When we passengers leaned together to look,
the plane tipped to the left. And flying
low over Maryland it cast a shadow
sharp as a sparrow hawk cruising the cornfield.
But what gets you is stillness like this,
lying awake before birds sing to light.
No one is breathing in this hours except me.
Out at the curb my car is parked in stone.
Still with colors....
green
bay water
roils against
the seawall
froth gathers
where salt water
and concrete
collide
bubbles green
in the sun
bright scales
from the back
of the dragon
in the gulf
This poem by poet and English professor Michael Van Walleghen is from his book Blue Tango, published by University of Illinois Press in 1989.
Hidden Meaning
Someone has parked her car
as far back as you can go
in Kickapoo Park - and now
she sits there eating candy
and listening to the radio....
A blinding, late November light
glitters on the windblown river.
a flurry of green cellophane
flutters from a side vent. Violins
banjos, that thin country voice
getting lost among the trees....
It all appears arranged somehow
charged with hidden meaning....
But what is it? Faint dogs
dim gunshots when the music stops....
Even the petty, disconsolate detail
of a coat hanger bent into an aerial
becomes important - as in this light
the merest inkling of the moon
becomes a puff of frozen breath
or vague, translucent sail
stranded in the empty trees....
As in this light I might see myself
home on leave again from the navy
because my girl got pregnant
and we've come here to talk....
But later on, I'll meet my buddies
in the parking lot. Their cars
have names painted on them: Virgo's
Good Time Machine, Evil Rasputin
and the one called simply
Paronoia
Khadija Anderson returns with a new poem, a mild rant, really, about the shallowness of a particular, unnamed poet. Khadija most frequently posts on the Wild Poetry Forum where I found her this time with this poem.
poems that really pissed me off
or
could have been a PC Jerry Springer guest's confessional
the poet read too many poems about what we were all supposed to be able to relate to about reconciling with our fathers and being bipolar
the poet scanned the audience and said, "Men, your wives will understand this poem" - it was about the poet's self described "big ass, belly and thighs"
the poet came to the last poem and told us we would all recognize the biblical references in it
everyone applauded heartily
guess I'm an asshole
This poem is by Indian poet and film director Sudeep Sen is from his book Postmarked India published in 1997 by Harper Collins Publishers.
Govind Dev Temple, Vrindavan
Pink-buttocked monkeys leap from one lichen-layered eave
to another, as the parrots' plumage splashes the deep red
of the wall green in patches: resident bees drone
from the hives stuck to the ceiling, and the screeching
bats echo, flying in and around, tracing arced orbits.
Govind Dey sands steadfastly, propped with monumental
blocks of red and ochre sandstone, where solidity and finery
of architectural execution are married in an art,
both Islamic and Hindu, high on the hill in the center of
Vrindavan, rising above everything around.
In 1590 when Emperor Akbar's general Man Singh
supervised its creation, his cavalry bowed as they marched
past this splendor on the hill enroute from Delhi to Agra.
Now, the surrounding tenements invade, inching their way into
every square of the courtyard space, and the pilgrims walk.
Here, under the old sanctum, Krisna's idol was found,
celebrated, worshipped, rasa-lilas sung by Chaianya,
his followers, and people. Through four hundred years
generations of devotees, bats, parrots and monkeys
have lived here, prayed here, and changed hands,
but one fact has remained constant
Every year, on nights when the moon appears full
for the first time, its incipient rays streak through
the main archway, lighting Krishna's forehead faint blue,
and the empty temple halls echo - "Radbey, Radbey."
Doc Dachtler is back this week with two poems from his book Waiting for Chains at Pearl's published in 1990 by Plain View Press
The Old School and the New Windows
to Steve Sandfield
(Who made a motion before the board of directors
this evening to take them out and it never even
received a courtesy second)
The North Columbia Schoolhouse
has four 6 ft. double hung windows
on each side of he building
symmetrical
with respect to each other,
floor and ceiling.
It is classic 19th century California Victorian
one room schoolhouse;
long, tall, 12 in 12 pitch handsme.
Now it is a cultural center
and a window has been hacked in on each side
just above the front set of double hungs
running up from the top of the old window
to just under the plate line of roof and wall.
Aesthetically a devastation,
historically a desecration
to this 112 year old building.
When my boss, Jon, heard about it as a plan he said,
It's going to look like hammered shit!
We think
he hit the nail
right on the head.
August 27th, 1987
after the meeting
Historical Picture
An old friend
handed me this flyer about taking
a picture
in front of the North Columbia Schoolhouse;
an historical update of an 1875 photo
I found 20 years ago
in the Firehouse Museum in Nevada City.
She said I should be in it.
I put my arm around her
and took a long look at the flyer
with it's proud new school complete with
cupola, tall shutters, scrollwork bell tower.
Yes I should, I said.
But I knew I wouldn't.
I thought how funny to have taught in this school
before 99% of the people in the 1987 photo
lived here.
When you're out of the picture,
you're out of the picture.
Steve Healey teaches writing to prisoners in several Minnesota Correctional Facilities and is Associate Editor of Conduit Magazine. This poem is from his book earthling published in 2004 by Coffee House Press.
why we continue
Because nerves need more staircases to climb,
streets need skids to absorb, eyeballs
see only antonyms gathering on horizons,
even a round Earth dreams flatness,
a muscle stretches from here to heaven
like a braille menu of stars, because kids
go down on each other on a basement couch,
a clock is always visible, oxygen diminishes,
small windows promise transportation
and a future of pickled matrimony,
years inhale property tax, attics fill
with bat excrement till homeowners sell it
as fertilizer, and roof are tightly sealed,
each bat is an object of extermination
while mosquitoes proliferate madly,
piercing virgin skin, stealing blood before
it circulates back as predictable wisdom
to the heart, a parched dowser nears
a suburban mirage, what were once
mountains are neighborhoods made of sand
where those who wake against a body
weigh the opportunity cost for kindness,
fingers grow guilty for begging a dime's worth
of candy, because a signature grows illegible,
and as mercury drops, seconds drip,
and unnamable ailment erodes the bosom,
because a prison song repeats impossible gods,
a greeting card arrives to explain how
a friend suffered and "accidental overdose"
and emerged from a coma having forgotten
the past several years, because there's a place
where conversations and faces go,
where we find the soldiers gazing at us
from the sepia war, because we believe.
Photo by John Strieb
We interrupt the poetry for some images taken John Strieb, a long time friend. In addition to being an amateur photographer, John, collects and repairs old cameras.
John delights in sending me photos taken with a junk camera I gave him. The camera was a 40 year-old Argus that had gathered dust in one of my closets for about 35 of those years, broken and unusable. John fixed the camera and uses it regularly, winning photo contests with it, in fact. The photo above and the five that follow below all were taken with that junk camera.
John took these photos in Corpus Christi, a small city of about a quarter million on the middle Texas coast. My family and I lived there for fifteen years before moving to San Antonio. Great city, lovely people, lousy climate for those of us who don't take to hot and humid. Goes with living on the beach, I guess.
Here are more of John's pictures.
Photo by John Strieb
Photo by John Strieb
Photo by John Strieb
Photo by John Strieb
Photo by John Strieb
Me, still with colors....
black
black
was the life
that drove
the knife
that pierced
the heart
of my
darling
mad
a
line
Texas poet W. Joe Hoppe is back this week with a poem from his book Galvanized, published this year by Dalton Publishing.
What Are You Doing This Saturday Night
I'll bring you a bouquet of banana slugs
wash salt water off your snuffbox with sweet gasoline
obscure your porch light with a pawn shop oyster
and darken your doorway with romantic intentions
The slather your sidewalk with Burma Shave
coat your lawn in a deep pocketed London fog
prevaricate your daddy with a jar of cigars
and a mystery utensil meant just for your mom
We'll bounce off on two wheeled shoe leather souls
bursting forth on the evening like soda pop angels
in a broken drum roll just as far as it'll go
to find ourselves golden in the warm donut of dawn
Now another poet from far away (far away from me, at least), Ku Sang, born in Seoul, grew up in North Korea, studied in Japan, fled to South Korea where, in the fifties, he was imprisoned by the country to which he fled for writing essays on the Corruption of Power.
We have four short poems in an "eros" series. The poems are from the poet's book Wasteland of Fire published by Forest Books in 1990. The poems are translated by Anthony Teague
Eros I
A torso like a ripe peach.
A butterfly fallen
drunk in ecstasy on a flowery tomb.
A tongue with the perfume of melons.
A seagull plunging
into blue waves that flash white teeth.
In a gaze fixed on the distant horizon.
A roe deer
drinking at a secret spring in a virgin forest.
Abyss of Eros
beauty of original sin.
Eros II
The purring cat's
deceitful, mysterious face.
Venus' neck
spun about with hempen locks.
On breasts of velvet
the imprint ot a hawk's claws.
An hourglass navel.
Buttocks the smooth bottom of a wooden bowl,
secret flesh of tree-trunk thighs.
The narrowing rapids of rendez-vous,
a grassy bank aflame on a spring day.
In primitive darkness,
beneath an azalea-cliff blanket
a naked woman
on a foaming, lapping wave-white sheet
joins her arms
like the cords
that criminals are bound with
....
The cooing of doves.
Breathtaking moment, oh, mystic ritual!
Eros III
I draw in empty space
That face,
that voice,
that smile,
those thighs,
but that love
cannot be drawn.
Things drawn in the heart
may not be given form.
Eros IV
With the same hand
that caressed her naked body
I stroke my gray beard.
Passion faded into pale silver....
That loving, riding the bucket,
has been drawn up to the heavens.
Henceforth, all those times and places
are one with Eternity.
Still with the colors....
blue
blue eyes
under clear
skies
ice
on crystal
Before closing, a little attaway for myself.
The InterBoard Poetry Competition (http://www.webdelsol.com/IBPC/) represents a large number of on-line poetry forums/workshops. Among it's other activities, the IBPC selects for special mention every month several poems from among all the poems nominated by the various member boards.
Selected for first place for August was the third in Gary Blankenship's Howl series. You have seen other pieces from the series, but you have not seen this one. You will see it next week.
The surprise was the third place selection, one of mine, fulton street hustlers. The reason for the surprise is that I know my stuff takes some getting used to. Because of that I don't usually expect to win anything, even third place, and am usuually proven correct. So, it's a happy surprise for me, which I share here because I think it's cool.
The judge was Deborah Bogen. These were her comments on the poem.
This poem breaks a lot of rules and it knows what it's doing when it does. That's a good thing because you better be on your game when you decide to dispense with capitalization and periods, and when you write in lines so short that one is "the" and another is "down-". But as soon as you start reading "fulton street hustlers" you understand that you are on a fast train meant to knock you off your reading feet, that the poem's rhythm is as purposefully offbeat as the lifestyle of the hustlers it describes with its marvelous eye for the right detail and its fluid command of the line. - Deborah Bogen
I don't remember if I used the poem on "Here and Now," but either way, here it is.
fulton street hustlers
it's eleven
in the morning
and you can tell
the drinkers,
the
down-
but-not-
outers,
squinting
in the mid-
day sun
as they cross
fulton street,
leaving their
$40-a-week
motel room,
heading for
breakfast
at one of
the dozen
taco shops
in the neigh
borhood,
chorizo and
eggs with
a side of
re-fried
beans, two
flour tortillas
black sludge
coffee and
six aspirin
for the head
that won't stop
aching until
they get their
first beer,
their scrambled
eggs chaser
that officially
starts the day
mostly men,
careful with
appearances,
fresh shined
boots, sharp
creased jeans
and starched
long-sleeve
cowboy shirts
with fake pearl
snaps,
pool shooters,
dart throwers,
penny tossers,
pinball wizards,
and hustlers of
most every kind,
living on the edge
always, on the edge
of losing usually,
they live on alcohol
and beer nuts,
cheap
meals at flytrap
eateries and
dark places where
the truth is only
what you can seen
in a smoked bar
mirror, where pre-
tending is easier
than not
****************************
That's all folks, until next week.
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Dreamdust Saturday, August 18, 2007
II.8.3
We're back on this third Saturday of August with our latest "Here and Now" outing. It's been a good summer so far, with July setting records for cool temperatures and rain. There's a storm system in the Gulf as I write this that promises us several more days of rain to cool us off again for at least a while. All in all, it hasn't been bad this year in terms of hideously hot weather, good news for those of us who, even through we spent most of life in it, find it harder and harder to endure each year.
I think you will enjoy us this week, old and new poets, establishment stars and a good selection of writing-as-we-speak web poets, American poets, as well as British, Mexican, French, Chinese and Pakistani poets, and a rapper-poet for seasoning. This week it's a little bit of everything, which is as good a definition of what we hope to be about as you'll find anywhere.
Happy reading.
Here's a piece by Nikki Giovanni from her book My House published in 1972 by William Morrow & Co.
When I Die
when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries
and if they do cry i hope their eyes fall out
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that I probably tried
to love
when i die i hope every worker in the national security
council
the interpol the fbicia foundation for the development
of black women gets
an extra bonus and asked why they didn't work as hard for us
as they did
them
but it always seems to be that way
please don't let them read "nikki-roasa" maybe just let
some black woman who called herself my friend go around
and collect
each and every book and let some black man who said it was
negative of me to want him to be a man collect every picture
and poster and let them burn - throw acid on them - shit
on them as
the did me while I tried
to live
and as soon as i die i hope everyone who loved me learns
the meaning
of my death which is a simple lesson
don't do what you do very well very well and enjoy it it
scares white folk
and makes black ones truly mad
but i do hope someone tells my son
his mother liked little old ladies with
their blue dresses and hats and gloves that sitting
by the window
to watch the dawn come up is valid that smiling at an old
man
and petting a dog don't detract from manhood
do
somebody please
tell him i knew all along that what would be
is what will be but i wanted to be a new person
and my rebirth was stifled not by the master
but by the slave
and if ever i touched a life i hope that life knows
that i know that touching was and still is and will always
be the true
revolution
[9 jan 72]
Here's a small short piece by S. Thomas Summers from his book Death Settled Well published last year by Shadows Ink Publications.
Scott has been with us several times and we're always pleased to read his work.
Again at the Corner of Parish and Pike
Today, it's the red sneakers
hanging from a telephone
wire like an earring
hooked to the soft
flesh of this sunrise.
A breeze teeters on the tips
of cornstalks, caresses
my face - an old mother
who needs her boy home.
This poem by Hawaiian poet Juliet Kono is from the book Across State Lines published in 2003 by Dover Publications. It is dedicated this week to "Here and Now" friend and frequent contributor, Alice Folkart, former Californian and now Hawaii's newest poet.
Silverswords
At cold daybreak
we wind
up the mountainside
to Haleakala Crater.
Our hands knot
under the touch of
your old army blanket.
We pass protea
and carnation farms
in Kula,
drive through
desolate rockfields.
Upon this one place
on Earth,
from the ancient
lava rivers,
silverswords rise,
startled
into starbursts
by the sun.
Like love, sometimes,
they die
at their first
and rare flowering.
This is another old poem rewritten. The original on this was only about five or six years old, but much to dense, wordy and long. The only thing I left in this of the old piece is the central idea of family as music.
blood
blood
like music
flows
in repeated
patterns
and themes,
in elaborated
variations
never far from
it's archetypal
score,
like families
that separate,
each of the one
traveling
time and distance
to places
foreign and remote,
like planets
spun off from
their primordial source
but still of that
source
and of its binding
harmonics
Here's something a little different for "Here and Now," two short poems by Tupac Shakur from his book The Rose That Grew From Concrete, published by MTV Books/Pocket Books in 1999, three years after his murder. These poems were transcribed from his handwritten notebook and were not previously published. The book includes his original notes, with changes and revisions he made as he was writing. It is interesting to see his self-editing, as well as the doodles that accompany some of the notes.
Untitled
Please wake me when I'm free
I cannot bear captivity
where my culture I'm told holds no significance
I'll wither and die in ignorance
But my inner eye can c a race
who reigned as kings in another place
the green of trees wee rich and full
and every man spoke of beautiful
men and women together as equals
War was gone because all was peaceful
But now like a nightmare I wake 2 c
That I live like a prisoner of poverty
Please wake me when I'm free
I cannot bear captivity
4 I would rather be stricken blind
than 2 live without expression of mind
And 2morow
Today is filled with anger
Fueled with hidden hate
Scared of being outcast
Afraid of common fate
Today is built on tragedies
which no one wants 2 face
Nightmares 2 humanities
and morally disgraced
Tonight is filled with rage
Violence in the air
Children bred with ruthlessness
Because no one at home cares
Tonight I lay my head down
But the pressure never stops
gnawing at my sanity
content when I am dropped
But 2morrow I c change
A chance 2 build anew
Built on spirit, intent of heart
and ideals based on truth
And 2morrow I wake with second wind
And strong because of pride
2 know I fought with all my heart 2 keep my dream alive
Tina Hoffman writes about herself:
I am a 45 year old Ohio native who lived most of my years so far where I'm currently at except for a slight departure of seven years in West Virginia, from where this piece was originally submitted (November, 1998, posted on St. Agatha's.) It sprung from a philosophical discussion on a forum about creativity, what inspires, and how best to utilize and synthesize inspiration without stepping on the original creator's toes.
I was the first woman poet to win the IBPC contest in February, 2001, only a year after its inception with Revelations 361 (first place, submitted by The Writer's Block) and Saving Grace (second place, submitted by Gandy Creek.) I have alternately enjoyed and been disappointed in watching the growth of the Internet as a place for poets, artists and people to practice their own freedom of speech and expression but am proud to be among one of the first women to be recognized on this venue as an aspiring female poet. (The Internet was sort of the Wild West of poetic freedom, then .... and now? Perhaps. Let's hope!)
Readers may have also seen my postings in the past at other forums, such as Blueline, Web del Sol, Alsop Review (Gazebo/St. Agatha's, MiPo Zine, The Melic Review, Poets4Peace, among a few others that I don't believe even exist anymore.) I am now, as time permits, primarily posting old/new works at the Wild Poetry Forum. There are great teachers everywhere out there, you just have to seek them out and listen for their words.
Find your favorite place and stick with it for awhile. That's what I do and did - it still pays off in the perfection of my personal growth as a writer, plus you get to read alot of really great poems and see things from other people's perspectives!!
My poetry has only been published once in hard copy, in a local Toledo city paper, two poems, also both poems at once (2001, Sunset Silhouettes"and Wet, I think, I'd have to dig out that rag again to check, under the pen name "Marie Brown" - my middle name and my maiden name) and as a result of winning a contest. I have never been paid for my poetic works. I hope one day to get paid a little for my writings, but don't really feel that to be critical - my reward is rather, just to utilize my art to learn, inform, relieve personal stress, and to feel my own inspiration and creativity burst forth. The medium I use is less important to me, as is the cash, though of course, as I continue to grow and improve my craft, I am likely to pursue Capital Avenue. We'll see. I could use the money. LOL. Stay tuned.
I read this piece on Wild Poetry Forum and found it both interesting and fun. There is a wild soul at work here. Enjoy it, they are rare.
Some unoriginal thoughts about plagiarism (1) and my poetic misdemeanor:
I was just thinking....(2) that all this noise about plagiarism (and I shudder at the word (3) ) is much ado about nothing. (4) Frankly, the concept for my poem "Window Seat" (5) came from one of those global spam email things that clutters everyone's mailboxes these days. I received it a few months ago, read it....went "hmmm....thought provoking....cool" and deleted it. There was no attribution of author or the story in the email, it just was. (6)
Well, a few months later, home alone (7) and bored, I sat down to my pc, feeling creative, in a vacuous way, and started playing around with that idea from the old email, vaguely recalling the general concept, and thinking, originality is measured by how well you disguise your unoriginal idea. (8) After all, truly wise thoughts have already been thought a thousand times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience. (9) Hey. I can do that. I think I can (10) anyway. I forged ahead, recalling discussions on various poetry forums recently regarding plagiarism, and stealing for creativity's sake...."bad poets borrow, good poets steal," (a11) right? The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources ....(12) but I had nothing to hide! I had nothing in front of me. This was no wholesale theft (13) or kidnapping of someone else's words, no plunder of phrasing or sentence structure (14) or appropriation of ideas, writings, or inventions of another without due acknowledgment. (15) Who the hell would I acknowledge? (Sorry Bob, those 50's Sci-Fi movie plots are WAY before my time!) Ignorance is preferable to error, (16) and fortuitously, I couldn't even remember who sent me the email. But still, some unknown soul came up with the general concept, should receive credit where credit is due. (17) Isn't it funny how when people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other? (18) Well, my fingers hovered over the keys, itching....it was such a wonderful concept! Would definitely make a great poem. Still, I wrestled with doubt....doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainly is absurd! (19) I decided, what does not destroy me, makes me strong! (20) I started to create. I saw the whole design. (21) As I typed, I seemed to vaguely recall some little known fine print statement in copyright law which "generally allows fair use of up to 300 words that may be used without the permission of the copyright owner, copyright law could not be applied to certain cases of lengthy paraphrases." (22) Type. Type type. Tippy type type. OK. So I can use the idea and not get sued by "anonymous." Cool. What about ethics? I thought about my motives; was it the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness? (23) Some benefit to mankind? Looking for personal glory, recognition of self-fulfillment? (24) Hell no! Mostly I was seeking boredom relief and waxing poetic. Well, nobody asked me, but (25) I do know that the nice thing about standards are there are so many to choose from! (26) Besides, I have an attorney, I wasn't trying to publish anything, my intentions were an honest indulgence in frivolity and boredom relief, and it's all one big note (27) anyway. So I wrote the poem and posted it. I didn't think, I experimented. (28) I'm still learning.
(29) Yes, I's wicked....I is. I's mighty wicked, anyhow. I can't help it...(30) I can resist everything but temptation. (31) I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I'll do it again. (32) But I did. These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others. (33)
Hey, call me Ishmael, (34) but let's make the punishment fit the crime(35); there are bigger fish to fry. (36) Forgive and forget. (37) That's what friends are for. (38) The poet will go and sin no more. (39) Quoth VM, nevermore. (40)
Besides, this report, by its very length defends itself against being read. (41) I'' writing another poem.
Yours in creativity,
~VM~
The author gratefully acknowledges the following living, anonymous, or posthumously for their contributions:
1) Jack E. White, columnist, Time Magazine
2) Mike Barnicle, columnist, Boston Globe
3) Virgil
4) William Shakespeare
5) VM (no one is really sure who this is)
6) some Zen saying I think
7) Movie title
8) Randy Breneman II ( a friend, he is probably quoting somebody also)
9) Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
10) The Little Engine That Could
11) T.S. Eliot
12) Albert Einstein
13) Bob Billard, Alsop Review
14) Sharon Williams "Avoiding Plagiarism - Academic Writing at WFU" quoting Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary
15) Baylor College of Medicine Dept of Microbiology and Immunology "Plagiarism and the Art of Skillful Citation"
16) Thomas Jefferson
17) Hell if I know who said that
18) Eric Hoffer
19) Voltaire
20) F. Nietzche
21) Elizabeth Barret Browning
22) Baylor College of Medicine Dept of Microbiology and Immunology "Plagiarism and the Art of Skillful Citation"
23) The Declaration of Independence (too many authors to name)
24) Baylor College of Medicine Dept of Microbiology and Immunology "Plagiarism and the Art of Skillful Citation"
25) Jimmy Cannon
26) C. Northcote Parkinson
27) Frank Zappa
28) Shelly Wilhelm Roentgen
29) Michelango
30) Harriet Beecher Stowe
31) Oscar Wilde
32) Bart Simpson
33) Groucho Marx
34) Herman Melville
35) Cicero
36) still searching for the credit on this one
37) and this one too
38) Burt Bacharach and Carol Bayer Sager
39) Jesus (paraphrased)
40) Edgar A. Poe (paraphrased)
41) Winston Churchill
Thank you for listening.
(Tina Hoffman, the artist formerly known as VM.)
Su Shi lived in the first century of the second millennium, born of a family of officials and distinguished scholars. With his connections and ability he secured a high imperial position. In addition to his not always calm and stable political life, he was also an innovator and master of poetry, prose, calligraphy and painting. Nearly 3,000 of his poems survive. Here are several of them from The Anchor Book Of Chinese Poetry, published by Anchor Books in 2005.
Boating at Night on West Lake
Wild rice stems endless on the vast lake.
Night-blooming lotus perfumes the wind and dew.
Gradually the light of a far temple appears.
When the moon goes black, I watch the lake gleam.
from Rain on the Festival of Cold Food
2.
The spring river is pushing at my door
but the rain will not let up.
My small house is like a fishing boat
surrounded by water and clouds.
In the empty kitchen cold vegetables are boiled,
wet reeds burning in the broken stove.
Who knows it is the Cold Food Festival?
Ravens carry the dead's money in their bills,
the emperor sits behind nine doors,
and my ancestors' tombs are ten thousand li away.
I want to cry at the forked road.
Dead ashes won't blow alive again.
Because of a Typhoon I Stayed at Gold Mountain for Two Days
Up in the tower a bell is talking to itself.
The typhoon will wash out the ferry by tomorrow.
Dawn comes with white waves dashing dark rocks
and shooting through my window like deflected arrows.
A dragon boat of a hundred tons couldn't cross the river
but a fishing boat dances there like a tossed leaf.
It makes me think, why rush to the city?
I’ll laugh at such fury of snakes and dragons,
stay aimlessly till the servants start to wonder
- with this kind of storm, my family won't mind.
I look for my friend, monk Qianshan. He's alone,
meditating past midnight and listening for the breakfast drum.
(Poems translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping)
Connie Walker is a retired RN after 40 years of Critical Care and Diabetes Education. Served in the US Navy Nurse Corp. She lived and worked in Saudi Arabia from 1980-1990, during which time she traveled to about 40 different countries. Lived in Cornwall, England where her first novel takes place. She's been writing poetry for about 25 years and hopes to write for another 25 years.
Saudi Haibun
Sand dunes sculpted by the winds change from tan to red as we near the escarpment. A small cluster of date palms seems lost in the vast stretch of nothingness. Scorching sun blazes down, sending heat waves quivering along the horizon.
a cloudless blue sky
golden sands of days gone by
beauty fills my heart
White tents of the Bedouin camp come into view. A thread of smoke curls skyward. In a nearby pen, goats curiously watch us approach. In another pen, several camels send us a haughty glance. It is Ahmed and Hassan who rise from the sand near the campfire to greet us, as old friends do.
salaam aleikum
smiles spread on craggy faces
welcome to our home
Women in their colorful robes, spread blankets on the sand. Soon cardamon flavored coffee and hot mint tea are passed around this circle of friends. Children peek from behind their mothers skirts and giggle, curious yet shy whenever we catch their glance. They never ask but wait anxiously for the gifts they suspect and hope are in my bag. Toy flutes and bubble pipes bring laughter to their hearts.
bubbles surround us
iridescent in the sun
drift up to heaven
Soon sun sets in westward skies, painted with red and violet. We bid good bye to friends and a life I can't but envy. Time stands still in the bedouin camp. Their lives unchanged over centuries. They possess no golden coins, no palace walls shelter them. Their riches are in their kindness and welcoming spirit. That is the treasure they gave to me.
time has slipped away
a lone flute bids fond adieu
night's silence descends.
Back, now, to the travels of Blaise Cendrars at the tail end of the 19th century. This week his journey has taken him to the American South.
The poems are from the book Blaise Cendrars, Complete Poems published by the University of California Press in 1992. All poems in the book are translated by its editor, Ron Padgett
Tampa
The train has just stopped
Just two passengers get off on this broiling end-of-summer morning
Both are dressed in khaki suits and pith helmets
Both are followed by a black servant who carries the baggage
Both glance absentmindedly at the distant houses that are too white at
the sky that is too blue
You see the wind raising swirls of dust and flies pestering the two mules
harnessed to the only coach
The driver is asleep his mouth open
Bungalow
It's small but quite comfortable
The flooring is held up by bamboo posts
Vanilla plants climbing all over
Angola peas
Jasmine
Above which burst magnolia and poinciana flowers
The dining room is designed with the sense of luxury characteristic of
Carolina Creoles
Big chunks of ice in yellow marble vases keep the room deliciously cool
The plates and crystal sparkle
And behind each guest stands a black servant
The diners take it slow and easy
Stretched out in rocking chairs they surrender to the softening climate
At a signal from his master old Jupiter brings out a little lacquered stand
A bottle of sherry
An ice bucket
Some lemons
And a box of Havana cigars
No one spoke
The sweat was steaming down their faces
It was absolutely still
In the distance the loud croaking laughter of the bullfrog which
abounds in these parts
Jim Corner is becoming one of our regulars on "Here and Now." In this poem, Jim investigates two different kinds of exile.
About My Distance: Pablo Neruda's Self Examination
I am in exile from my country
on this miniscule island. Everyday
I walk across the estuary conduit
to secure my mail. I'm alone
among these forlorn folk - peasants
without visible means of self-support.
My small fortune offers little joy,
but my passion for writing, in spite
of banishment, injects an energy
that fuels a safari for the perfect
word. I often forget my failure,
a loss of self.
Mario, for a few coins will deliver
my mail daily. Perhaps, in spite
of his minimum ability, I may find
an interest, a friendship
as he seeks words that will win
his senorita. His stammer,
though filled with ardor seems void
of desire, empty without saga,
falling short of lust. I yearn to share
my obsessions for the power
of words, but I fear I will walk
away as esoteric as ever
Next we have a poem by 1990 Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz from the book The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987 edited and translated by Eliot Weinberger published in paperback by New Directions in 1991, original clothbound published in 1987.
Between Going and Staying
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I pause.
In 1969, while serving on Pakistan's northwest frontier, I took a week's leave in Kabul, Afghanistan, I visited a downtown bookstore and bought a book The Afghans. The book was printed by The Punjab Educational Press in LaHore, Pakistan, and written and published by Professor Mohammed Ali of Kabul University, originally in 1958 in celebration of 5,000 years of Afghan culture and history.
My book was of the 1969 third edition. In 1969 the country was still under the rule of a gentle and progressive king (who died just a couple of weeks ago after returning to his country following the ouster - we hope permanently - of the Taliban) and had not yet seen its years of destruction and rape first by the Soviet Union, then by it's own warlords and finally by the Taliban.
The book deals with the history and culture of the Afghan people and includes a large segment on Afghan literature. This poem, written by Abdul Rauf Benawa, is from the book.
Referred to in the book as a modern Afghan poet, Benawa was a writer, Pashtun activist and diplomat. He was born in 1913 in Kandahar and educated in that city. In addition to his poetry, he published a newspaper and numerous articles and books. He was highly influential in the culture of his country and served in high official positions under several Afghan governments. He died in the United States in 1984.
The book was translated from Pashto into English by Professor Ali.
The Kohistan Twilight
The crests of the Hindukush are ablaze,
Or the horizon is hemmed with red string;
It is a heart writhing in agony.,
A blood-fount playing in full swing.
It may be the saber of Chengiz,
Drawn from sheath for a fresh clink.
These may be the flames of love,
or a fire in the heavens above.
The victims of Alexander's onslaught,
Are looking wistfully towards Bagram;
Or the soul of a distressed lover
Is greeting his love with a song.
It may be a cup being filled up,
From a stream of wine strong.
It may be the ground of Kerbala,
Or a veil of the face of Laila.
It's heat of the shattered heavens,
Or the bosom of a desperate lover;
It may be a cup of beloved
Fallen down from her with a quiver.
It can be a lesson in deterrence,
Or a tale of impeccable lover.
Our fathers and hundred crises,
A saga of their sacrifices.
It is blood of the crusaders,
Ensanguining the hands of belovedsl
Or coffins of martyrs,
Have been sequestered by the angels.
It is reflection on the horizon,
Of the earth scarred with battles;
It is twilight on the mountain,
A sprinkling from red fountain.
Stars shimmer on the horizon,
Like pearls in fanthomless ocean;
It may be the poet's imagery,
Steeped in poignant emotion.
These may be the tears of an orphan,
setting waves of the mains in motion.
May be teeth like pearls sparkling
Ensconced in the mouth of a darling.
It is not a cloud that is hovering,
Like exhalation from the Kohistan;
These may be the pages of history,
Telling stories of the haloed Bamian.
It may be the dust that flies,
Taking tribute from the skies.
This must be a rivulet shining,
Or face of the heavens pining.
I picked up a book from a remainder table at Borders, Aristotle's Poetica As A Guide for Screenwriting, or something like that. It was interesting, including some really brilliant parts that agreed with my own preconceptions about the centrality of narrative to all art. One quote on that exact subject led to this poem.
old mcdonald
the poet must be more the poet of his stories or plots than of his verses, inasmuch as he is a poet by virtue of the imitative element in his work, and it is actions he imitates.
.......Aristotle's Poetics
old mcdonald
had a farm,
e-i
e-i
o
and on this farm
there were
oink oinks
quack quacks
cluck clucks
moo moos
etc. etc.
that did nothing
but oink
and moo
and quack
and etc.
and that amused
children
and that's a pretty
good thing
but it's not art
it's just a little
nursery
rhyme
but then
one
day
the animals
quit their mooing
and quacking and
cluck clucking
and whatever
and took action,
tied old mcdonald
up in the barn
and took
over
and mcdonald's
farm
became
animal farm
and there was art
as defined by mr.
you bet
it's greek to me
aristotle
The saying is: Behind every great man stands a greater woman.
Carol Ann Duffy applies that idea in her book The World's Wife, published by Farber and Farber Inc. in 1999, and tells the stories of those women.
Here's one of those tales.
Mrs Aesop
By Christ, he could bore for Purgatory. He was small,
didn't prepossess. So he tried to impress. Dead men,
Mrs Aesop, he'd say, tell no tales. Well, let me tell you now
that the bird in his hand shat on his sleeve,
never mind the two worth less in the bush. Tedious.
Going out was worst. He'd stand ar out gate, look, then leap;
scour the hedgerows for a shy mouse, the fields
for a sly fox, the sky for one particular swallow
that couldn't make a summer. The jackdaw, according to
him
envied the eagle. Donkeys would, on the whole, prefer to be
lions.
On one appalling evening stroll, we passed an old hare
snoozing in a ditch - he stopped and made a note -
and then, about a mile further on, a tortoise, somebody's pet,
creeping, slow as marriage, up on the road. Slow
but certain, Mrs Aesop, wins the race. Asshole.
What race? What sour grapes? What silk purse,
sow's ear, dog in a manger, what big fish? Some days
I could barely keep awake as the story droned on
towards the moral of itself. Action, Mrs A., speaks louder
than words. And that's another thing, the sex
was diabolical. I gave him a fable one night
about a little cock that wouldn't crow, a razor-sharp ax
with a heart blacker than the pot that called the kettle.
I'll cut off your tail, all right, I said, to save my face.
That shut him up. I laughed last, longest.
Somebody said something last week about "family," which reminded me of an old poem from I which pulled a couple of lines to write this.
fighting the war
he was my brother,
ten years older,
joined the army the day
after high school,
then went off to fight the commies
in korea
(this was around the time Jake Cain,
our town sheriff, was talking to him
about the hell raising and general
deviltry ascribed to him by some,
mostly old hard-shelled Baptist,
jealous of any free spirit and highly
concerned that such an attitude
might be contagious, might even
infect some of those little Baptist
boys and girls that pushed
against their traces
even without his encouragement)
so off he went,
june 1st, 1952,
supposed to be a paratrooper
but broke his foot
on his first jump,
then Ike went to korea
and the war ended
so there wasn't to be
any fighting commies
anyway,
meaning he had to make do
fighting other GI's
in German GI bars,
making rank,
losing rank
for one offense or another
until 1954 when he came home,
grew some bodacious ducktails,
bought a '52 Chevy fastback
with fender skirts
and took up singing
rock and roll songs on the radio
From Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, published by HarperCollins in 1988, we have this poem by Simon J. Ortiz.
Ortiz was born in 1941 and raised in the Acoma Pueblo in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and was schooled within the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the Acoma Reservation and later received a master's degree in writing from the University of Iowa. He has taught Native American literature and creative writing at San Diego State University and at the University of New Mexico. He has authored many books, including From Sand Creek for which he won the 1982 Pushcart Prize.
Here is his poem.
A Story of How a Wall Stands
At Acu, there is a wall almost 400 years old
which supports hundreds of tons of dirt and
bones - it's a graveyard built on a steep in-
cline - and it looks like it's about to fall
down the incline but will not for a long
time.
My father, who works with stone,
says, "That's just the part you see,
the stones which seem to be
just packed in on the outside,"
and with his hands puts the stone and mud
in place. "Underneath
what looks like loose stone,
there is stone woven together."
He ties one hand over the other
fitting like the bones of his hands
and fingers. "That's what is
holding it together."
"It is build that carefully,"
he says, "the mud mixed
to a certain texture," patiently
with the fingers," worked
in the palm of his hand, "So that
placed between the stones, they hold
together for a long, long time."
He tells me those things,
the story of them worked
"with the fingers," in the palm
of his hands, working the stone
and the mud until they become
the wall that stands a long, long time.
Here's another poem from Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, this one by Jimmie Durham.
Durham, a Wolf Clan Cherokee, was born in 1940 in Arkansas. He received a B.F.A. from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Geneva, Switzerland. During the 1970s he was a member of the Central Council of the American Indian Movement and a founder and Executive Director of the International Indian Treaty Council. His poetry has appeared in many journals and a book of his poems, Columbus Day was published in 1982.
He is a sculptor and performance artist as well as a poet.
A Woman Gave Me a Red Star to Wear on My Headband
We say that a loon, most graceful and dark
Of all water birds, sings a song
That makes stars fall onto its back,
And that is why a loon has those white spots.
The people sing for changes.
In the history of my people it is found,
"In 1833 stars fell," in a list of great events
Such as, "in 1814 we won a battle against
The Soldiers."
The people remember changes
It is known that we collected the iron
Of meteors and made of it knives like birds,
And impressed into the red hot knife blades
Patterns of stars. Star knives from that time
Are displayed in museums of the Americas, but
The Americans know nothing about the patterns.
The people search for changes.
The Commanche chief Quanah followed the cult
of Waterbird Dreamers, and in his old age painted
Stars on his roof. A Comanche fried of mine
Goes all over the hemisphere
Collecting what he calls "indigenous red stars."
Woven into blankets, painted on leather, spoken of
In stories, thought of -
The people prepare for changes
Alan Addotto joins us again this week with a contemplation of his sins.
Bless me, Father
It's not so much the major screw-ups
I've done so much.
Though there were plenty enough of those
God knows.
No.
It was the small selfishnesses
the venial crappy ones
that cause the most regret.
Yes.
Those small unseen, mean useless acts
that I've done.
The ones no one knows about but me,
the ones I didn't have to do.
The spiteful or lazy or pointless things
that advanced nothing
helped nobody.
The bad choices made, the missed chances
at gaining a higher elevation
deciding instead to take a lower primitive brain option,
a medulla oblongata stance.
At night it's my venial sins that purgatory me though
my hypnogogic states,
not the human/mortal of rage or fear or lust.
Those large sins are understandable
if not entirely forgivable.
It's the niggard, cheap and shabby selfish peccadilloes
that bother me most.
This is another product of the poem-a-day workshop. I wrote this last week.
random passes at self-knowing
1
I'm not one
to look far
for adventure
not anymore
I like closer
to home
things
familiar things
prized
for their
knownness
I like
the people
I know,
people
who know
me
and calibrate
their expectations
accordingly
2
I have been the
center
of attention,
a familiar
face
to many
whose faces
I did not know
the cheap seats
are for me, now,
the ones in the
shadows
where all faces
blend to gray
and indivisibility
3
I want
to be a cloud
that passes
through the sky,
impressed
no more
by the appearance
of my shadow
below
I want
to feel the truth
of my insubstantiality,
that I only am
what the winds
make of me
I would have fought
that knowledge
in days past, but
there's another truth
I know now -
no one
can push a cloud
against the wind
This poem by Susan Holahan is from her book Sister Betty Reads The Whole You, published in 1998 by Gibbs-Smith Publisher of Salt Lake City, Utah.
The Park at Texas Falls
on both sides of the dirt road, water
roils among boulders the way words run in you had all night
steep into the forest under ochre haze that lies on clearings
you're inclined to say "beauty" roars
a darkness under old trees
you at a loss the falling -
passages of sculpted rock so strait the water
squeezes through to mingle bottle-green and white
- fills your skull as though you'd left the porch light on
past three a.m. a nimbus filled the hall
there's "memory" and there's seeing again
like finding late in history the very book you learned to read in
I report on the truism, some nights you eat the bear; some nights the bear eats you.
bravo! bravo!
read tonight
at the opening
of a little coffee shop
on the north side,
me
and a couple of others,
better readers than me,
won't deny that, but still
can't help but be bothered
by the little old hispanic lady
in a red dress
and frosty gray hair
who shouted
from way in the back,
bravo!
bravo!
bravo!
every time the others
finished a poem
I read my six poems
and never got a single
bravo
until after my very last poem
and even then, a weak and timid
bravo
it was
kinda like, oh well,
bravo
if I must
I hoping even that little
bravo
wasn't just because she knew
I was finished and wouldn't
be bothering her anymore
Finally, as another week fades into the dusk, "Here and Now" lays its weary head down to bed for a day of well-earned rest.
Or, in other words, that's all.
from the book Seven Beats a Second, Poetry by Allen Itz with Art by Vincent Martinez
Wait, wait, not yet.
I just ran across the following from the recommended reading list of Tryst. I knew they had given my book an excellent review, but I wasn't aware they had included the book on their recommended reading list. Here's what it says on the listing.
SEVEN BEATS A SECOND by Allen Itz
Sometimes, I get tired of all the deep, intellectual, academic, even the political stuff I read - it can weigh heavily upon a day: "Dude, it's not that serious." Pick up a lighthearted, but well-crafted book of poetry and life begins to start looking up. On the flip side of the grill, Allen Itz gives us raw, smoky, Texas humor that invites us to remember Sunday barbecues, hamburgers, apple pies and down-home, downright good riff to beat the band. Throw in some fabulously talented artwork and music and you have Seven Beats a Second. This book is sound proof that poets can have fun and be witty at once - sometimes raunchy, sometimes serious, but never without a good sense of timing. Peppered with some wicked hooks, a little tabasco, this book is hot. - Tryst Editor
Wonderful reading, for me, at least.
Until next week.
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Soft Shadows in Hard Places Saturday, August 11, 2007
II.8.2
Welcome to "Here and Now" in the 8th month of its second year.
We have a lot of good work this time around, poems from 15 poets as well as several pieces of my own. Most of the poets you will read here this month you will likely not have read before. I hope you share my sense of discovery as you read them for the first time.
My bookstore haunt this week was especially successful, leading me to several poets new to me who are now on my list of favorites.William D. Barney is one of those.
Barney, a retired postal worker and former president of the Poetry Society of Texas, moved to Fort Worth, Texas in 1928 and has been writing poetry since, serving as Texas Poet Laureate and receiving numerous awards, including being handed the Robert Frost Memorial Award by Frost himself in 1962. In addition to his own eight books of poetry, he has been included in numerous anthologies.
This poem is from his ninth collection, A Cowtown Chronicle: William Barney Poetry, published by Browder Springs Books in 1999. He was 80 years old when the book was released, so I don't know if he's still active.
Canticle for a Cutting Horse
Dun as an oak leaf dead, triggered and taut
upon wind is the mare, the palomino.
She dances upon tanbark, a ballerina, a blade
of exquisite balance;
her flesh is a furious woman,
a blend of desire and dissent, and of power
and delicate motion;
chastely the saddle begirds her,
and the rider bestride bends like a whip
as she pivots.
Relaxed in her sensitive step, patient yet
wholly alert, the mare,
the palomino, walks the tight-rope of the
lightening.
Shall I say she is merely animal, creature of
instant, instinctive precision,
the flower of bestial blood?
She is spirtuelle, she aspires toward flame,
to the fools' fire in dark pastures.
Her skin is pumpkin smoke,
a smoldering satin, the dust of an evening
cloud.
In her sleek strength the mare shall, as men,
have glory,
but in her responsive heart let her rejoice.
She is poised as a fencer's foil,
she stalks her prey like a tigress;
like a spider she weaves the kinetic web of
enclosure,
she throws her great breast as a shuttle.
Make her a symbol for mind, a talisman
in her tawniness
for any who praise pursuit
of the quick metaphor, the well-cinched
word, the honest, honorable tone,
the summer within the seed.
Make her a ballad seeking right speech,
a strophe kindling to song,
Yet none of these you make her.
She herself is sufficient, the palomino,
the perfect, the slim-legged mare;
leave her to the high mesas,
to the rust-rimmed llano, her proper
stage, let her dance
her tango of intricate measures.
Nothing shall match her image, nothing
shall rightly encompass
her competence, her brute beauty.
It is the question of the day and, I'm sorry to say, probably the next several years. Having stupidly gotten ourselves involved in an illegal, immoral war, how do we get out less stupidly and more morally than we got in.
the question that confounds us
once in the
wrong place
how
to get out
without leaving
the devil's
own sea
of blood
behind
Julia Alvarez was born in New York City, but spent her early years in the Dominican Republic. She has been a scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and has won an American Academy of Poetry Prize, and the Jenny McKean Moore Visiting Lectureship in Creative Writing from George Washington University.
This is the title poem from her first collection of poems, Homecoming, published The Grove Press in 1984. Alvarez is another of my finds from last week's used book foraging.
Homecoming
When my cousin Carmen married, the guards
at her father's finca took the guests' bracelets
and wedding rings and put them in an armored truck
for safekeeping while wealthy, dark-skinned men,
their plump, white women and spoiled children
bathed in a river whose bottom had been cleaned
for the occasion. She was Uncle's only daughter,
and he wanted to show her husband's family,
a bewildered group of sunburnt Minnesotans,
that she was valued. He sat me at their table
to show off my English, and when he danced with me,
fondling my shoulder blades beneath my bridesmaid's gown
as if they were breasts, he found me skinny
but pretty at seventeen, and clever.
Come back from that cold place, Vermont, he said,
all this is yours! Over his shoulder
a dozen workmen hauled in blocks of ice
to keep the champagne lukewarm and stole
glances at the wedding cake, a dollhouse duplicate
of the family rancho, the shutters marzipan,
the cobbles almonds. A maiden aunt housekept,
touching up whipped cream roses with a syringe
of eggwhites, rescuing the groom when the heat
melted his chocolate shoes into the frosting.
On too much rum Uncle led me across the dance floor,
dusted with talcum for easy gliding, a smell
of babies underfoot. He twirled me often,
excited by my pleas of dizziness, teasing me,
saying that my merengue had lost its Caribbean.
Above us, Chinese lanterns strung between posts
came on and one snapped off and rose
into a purple postcard sky.
A grandmother cried: The children all grow up too fast.
The Minnesotans finally broke loose and danced a Charleston
and were pronounced good gringos with latino hearts.
The little sister, freckled with a week of beach,
her hair as blonde as a movie stars, was asked
by maids if they could touch her hair or skin,
and she backed off, until it was explained to her,
they meant no harm. This is all yours,
Uncle whispered, pressing himself into my dress.
The workmen costumed in their workclothes dance
a workman's jig. The maids went by with trays
of wedding bells and matchbooks monogrammed
with Dick's and Carmen's names. It would be years
before I took the courses that would change my mind
in schools paid for by sugar from the fields around us,
years before I would begin to comprehend
how one does not see the maids when they pass by....
- It was too late, or early, to be wise -
The sun was coming up beyond the amber waves
of cane, the roosters crowed, the band stuck up
Las Mananitas, a morning serenade. I had a vision
that I blamed on the champagne:
the fields around us were burning. At last
a yawning bride and groom got up and cut
the wedding cake, but everyone was full
of drink and eggs, roast pig, and rice and beans.
Except the maids and workmen,
sitting on stoops behind the sugar house,
ate with their fingers from their open palms
windows, shutters, walls, pillars, doors,
made from the cane they had cut in the fields.
Martha Galphin returns with this poem on a solution to the communication failures of lovers. Martha is a regular on the Blueline Forum's poem a day workshop, so I get to read a lot of her poems.
Now That We Are Dead
Now that we are dead
can we talk to each other?
I felt as if ...
"we
shall
continue in force
for a period
of five years
from this date,
"and
thereafter
for successive
five year terms,
unless and until
terminated
"by one year
prior notice
in writing
by either
of
us."
....as if it had
all turned
into this.
I wanted
to quit,
my darling.
Pain spoke, and there
were times when
I didn't want to stay.
But I could not write it,
sign it, nor say it.
Could not give notice.
I hadn't anger to fuel
such an untruth, just
sadness and bewilderment.
No, you weren't that way;
you didn't speak legalese.
But I felt....as if
I were in the courtroom.
Sometimes you ridiculed me.
A good man,
an honest man,
an intelligent man
and
you loved me,
you loved the children,
you provided for us.
But....what happened to us?
May I ask you something?
Do you think....
now that we are dead,
we can talk to each other?
Here's another poet I'm ready to add to my list of favorites, discovered in my used bookstore foray this past week.
Wendy Barker has a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Davis and currently teaches English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is the author of Lunacy of Light, a study of Emily Dickenson, and another book of poetry, Let The Ice Speak. I've never met her, but would certainly like to someday.
This poem is from her book Winter Chickens and Other Poems, published in 1990 by Corona Publishing Company of San Antonio.
Cub Scouts and Yellow Corn
We figured they might run out of food
by the time our turn came,
but no, a drumstick and wing, skins
crackling fat, and bright yellow
ear of corn on styrofoam plates.
Award night for the Cubs
at Braun Station elementary School.
Neckerchiefs folded, sleeves pressed crisp,
the members of Den 4 have earned
their transformation into bears,
Den 6 into wolves, small white teeth
stripping the rows of corn.
The boys have not grown fur, only
tufts of hair that poke
and tangle under their caps.
No more woods in this neighborhood.
The few cedars left will be cut down -
rough, shaggy tree, they don't bend
to garden plans. This past summer
a bobcat came through these hills,
maybe driven down by the drought,
killed a Golden Retriever.
When he last raffle ticket has been drawn
from Frank Vargas' blue and gold cap,
we scrape back our chairs,
drive home in the cold blue night
with our boys who are wolves, who are bears.
We ask if their homework is done
before we make sure the dogs are in,
before we turn out the lights.
We sleep on clean sheets
and dream of corn - fields, miles
of corn, stretching, chattering
under the moon, tassels spilling
feathery, yellow fur.
I felt myself in need of some comfort food earlier this week, so I went down to the supermarket and picked up one of those Wick Fowler 2-alarm chili packets. I made up a big pot of it in the afternoon while Dora was at work, then ate about half of it before she got home.
The result, in addition to major heartburn, was this poem.
I like food
I like food
that comes
in a bowl
chile
stew
soup
oatmeal
grits
I'll even go
cream of wheat
there's something
about a thick
heavy bowl
that says
this is real
food, none
of that foo foo
stuff you get
on a plate,
probably
"beautified"
with some kind
of green weed,
I mean real food
solid
reliable food
that I can
cup in both hands
and bring up slowly
to savor the flavor
vapors that rise
up curl around
the sides of the bowl
to waft gently
into my nostrils
activating all my
taste sensors even
before the first
spoonful is blown
cool then sipped
slowly between
my lips
that's
what I'm saying
if it's in a bowl
I'll like it
and come back
for more
Now, part 3 of the continuing story of Giraffe On Fire, the poem by Juan Felipe Herrera from his book by the same name.
Newcomers to the story can refer back to last week and the week before for parts 1 and 2.
Giraffe On Fire
3
Hold up the right corner of the sea, pleated. Lift it and find pleasure
snoring, cut open by crystal and stone. Look down at your shadow by the
sands, by the gilded whiteness of your legs.
Below you:
a wrapped hydrogen scarf, an ink cactus stuck to the dry galaxy below the
sky veils. Touch down. Come to the ground, the talc, this desert - peeled
and washed by distant clouds? The perfume is solar. My nakedness is
simplistic. As the sleeper searches, I find America rising on his back,
mottled, brownish. Above the water, the stone folds, clutches itself, peeks
through holes and rivets. We are playing. All of us, then just one. The sand
has been swept with a wide brush. The girl - pensive as she lifts the folds of
the water. One hand. One arm and on the other the conch shell waits.
Poised.
I know the stone is the secret. The secret in the shut mouth. When I was
five I cut my fingers. I cut off my thumb. I delivered ice on the back. Wolves
sang from the mountains. Julian, the violin man next to us, in the Mexican
village paced his floor. Julian knew his wife, Jesus, was shaking and another
man was raising her hair.
Bernard Henrie lives in the Mojave desert and can be read frequently on the Writers Block workshop forum using Mohave as his screen name.
Bernie says his fish poem was inspired by Mark Doty's poem, A Display Of Mackerel which begins: They lie in parallel rows,/on ice, head to tail,/each a foot of luminosity/barred with black bands,/which divide the scales/radiant sections/like seams of lead/in a Tiffany window.
(http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.pp/prmMID/15847)
Not Enough to Say They are Green
Fish flip as though writing calligraphy,
currents buoy their gills as they swim
in water that must all look the same.
Their green idleness, their stillness eerie
like a body placed in a receiving room
or white statuary in a closed museum.
They are fish Buddha. Their reclusion
is not possible to express in words.
Their capacity for vast indifference
is thrilling. Date and time mean nothing.
When we return home from waterfalls
they circle in vast cascades of space.
Fish fountains and fish tanks
are the same to them as the Black Sea.
They are overlooked as parents overlook
a nearby child that has stopped his play.
In their scornful serenity they float
know nothing and have nothing to forget.
In the preceding weeks we've gone from the beginning through part 5 of the anti-Vietnam war poem The Teeth Mother Naked At Last by Robert Bly.
The reason I wanted to do this poem has nothing to do with Vietnam (on that subject, I find Bly's thinking shallow and simplistic), but, instead, on the applicability of much of the poem to our new war. And, of course, because it's a great poem.
This week we finish it.
from The Teeth Mother Naked At Last
VI
But if one of those children came near that we have set
on fire,
came toward you like a gray barn, walking,
you would howl like a wind tunnel in a hurricane,
you would tear at your shirt with blue hands,
you would drive over your own child's wagon trying to
back up,
the pupils of your eyes would go wild.
If a child came by burning, you would dance on your
lawn,
trying to leap into the air, digging into your cheeks,
you would ram your head against the wall of your
bedroom
like a bull penned too long in his moody pen.
If one of those children came toward me with both hands
in the air, fire rising along both elbows,
I would suddenly go back to my animal brain,
I would drop on all fours screaming;
my vocal cords would turn blue; so would yours.
It would be two days before I could play with one of my
own children again.
VII
I want to sleep a while in the rays of the sun slanting over
the snow.
Don't wake me.
Don't tell me how much grief there is in the leaf with its
natural oils.
Don't tell me how many children have been born with
stumpy hands
all those years we lived in St. Augustine's shadow.
Tell me about the dust that falls from the yellow daffodil
shaken in the restless winds.
Tell me about the particles of Babylonian thought that
still pass through the earthworm every day.
Don't tell me about "the frightening laborers who do not
read books."
The mad beast covered with European hair rushes
towards the mesa bushes in Mendocino County.
Pigs rush toward the cliff.
The waters underneath part; in one ocean luminous
globes float up (in them hairy and ecstatic men);
in the other the Teeth Mother, naked at last.
Let us drive cars
up
the light beams
to the stars....
And return to earth
and live inside the drop of sweat
that falls from the chin of the Protestant tied in the fire.
A very useful thing about the poem-a-day workshop on th Blueline Forum is that it forces us to write something everyday, whether we want to or not. Sometime we strike out and sometimes we hit one over the fence, but every day we go to bat.
Since everyone else is writing a poem a day, the workshop allows me to read new poems everyday, poems written under the same production pressure as my own. Lots of times, I find my inspiration coming from the new poems others are writing.
Thane Zander wrote a very good poem last week, a remarkably good poem, one in a series of very good poems he's been writing daily for some time now.
His poem, touching on the subject of global warming, led me to this poem, not so much about global warming itself, but more about my perplexity at how, given incontrovertible scientific evidence, the fact of global warming continues to be denied by people who seem otherwise intelligent.
hubris
all
the most knowing
warn
that it is real
that it is just
beginning
that it is the product
of human
arrogance
and disregard
and
that in the end
all
the works of man
are at risk
while
all
the most unknowing
deny
deny
deny
because of politics
because of debts
owed to the profiteers
because of in-
convenient truths
that shame a
lifestyle
because of desperate
clinging
to the pleasures of
self-indulgence
because
in the end
hubris
will not allow
the thought
that this earth
and the universe
that surrounds it
can get along
without humankind
Now, the poem from Thane Zander that triggered my poem. Although Thane wrote this poem before I wrote mine, he gets the last word on the subject, mainly because his is a better poem than mine.
The Glacial Degradation Theory
You sit at your work desk
twiddling
thumbs
as the day rolls on
the light of electric glow
senses
reel
as the heat
melts your mood
the lady in Pink
drips sweat
onto a computer keyboard
designed for soft touch typing.
You drive home air con on
the heat of the traffic
melting
tar
and sensibilities
the steering wheel sweaty
from wringing wet hands
the day wanes
dips
dives
and glaciers survive
to live another eon, ancient
the last podocarp forest
as global warming
takes
effect
crumbles under the weight
of oxygen regeneration
the ladies inside
spill
lemonade
for children thirsty.
Sea levels rise and fall, the tides
the wash eroding beaches
time
rolls
on houses moved to sate owners
to provide air con and sweat
to changing changelings
Frost
cools
freezes
a glacier growing
global warming
is both fact and myth
a recycling event from eons old.
John Ashbery was born in 1927 and, over the course of his years, has won nearly every major American award for poetry. He is recognized as one of America's most important, though still controversial, poets.
This poem is from his sixteenth volume of poetry, And The Stars Were Shining published in 1995 by The Noonday Press.
Just For Starters
Charges about this unhappiness:
They would run out and stay a minute,
exhibit the requisite stinginess,
roll up in a blanket.
That's how they and she looked to you and me.
But, of course we were vendors of a sort,
tied to no actual drift, and so
when it became poorer and spoons were put up for sale
we stood in our back alleys, chagrin
painted brilliantly on our faces.
I don't know what got me to write this poem
or any other (I mean, why does one write?),
unless you spoke to me in my dream
and I replied to you waking
and the affair of sleeping and waking began.
No matter how hard I try
I can't get back on the tricycle.
Look, a fish is coming to save us.
A sail nods gallantly in our direction.
Maybe unimportance isn't such a bad thing after all.
Blackbird Bye Bye, the first book of poetry by April Bernard, won the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets.
This poem is from her third book, Psalms, published in 1992 by W. W. Norton & Company.
Psalm of the Spit-Dweller
The wavelets hot against my toes, the distinctive smell: of groper,
washing bloated carcasses along the sand
Where the log has charred from beach fires, where the grass
has scorched from sun, and the dogs that trotted down the line
together and they said last year they age a baby
White fish jump frantic into the air, white terms dive frantic
upon them, lozenges of white deserting their elements
Come down upon me now, O wrath implicit in that wall of black
that looms quickly, almost comically, from the north:
But now it is like a lid closing over the greasy white
and snow-blue eye
of the sky: the lid will close forever
But the wrath is plain, unamused, as is apparent
once it has passed,
and the spit is two miles shorter than two ours ago
Meanwhile, crazy cottages stuck like bird houses above
the shifting sand
tell their own Pentateuchal comedy, as it will
someday also please the storm to laugh out loud
Here's Gary Blankenship again, with the next in his series of poems inspired by Allen Ginsberg's Howl.
After Howl IV
Wish You Were Here
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
- Allen Ginsberg, Howl
under the boardwalk
down by the sea
needles
used rubbers
dead fish
discarded Polaroid's
you pray
I pray
when we play
all the lines in the penny machine
the monkey appears
to spin the prayer wheel
for the bonus round
and round
and round
around
the world's largest ball of string
largest bat and ball
largest bong
largest cat
(left over from a VFW parade
urging a boycott of RJ Reynolds
for selling smokes made
in communist Albania)
boards littered
with flyers
for 50% off
two for one
another for a penny more
six for five
a baker's half dozen
a group of preppies
sneak under the boardwalk
with a handful of French postcards
half pack of Kools
Mark's hard cranberry
as I hit the jackpot
while you pray
for a bonus round
We haven't done Langston Hughes in a while. Here's a remedy to that, two poems from the book Selected Poems of Langston Hughes published in 1987 by the Vintage Books division of Random House.
Ruby Brown
She was young and beautiful
And golden like the sunshine
That warmed her body.
And because she was colored
Mayville had no place to offer her,
Nor fuel for the clean flame of joy
That tried to burn within her soul.
One day,
Sitting on old Mrs. Latham's back porch
Polishing the silver,
She asked herself two questions
And they ran something like this:
What can a colored girl do
On the money from a white woman's kitchen?
And ain't there any joy in this town?
Now the streets down by the river
Know more about this pretty Ruby Brown,
And the spinster shuttered houses of the bottoms
Hold a yellow girl
Seeking an answer to her questions.
The good church folk do not mention
Her name any more.
But the white men,
Habitues of the high shuttered houses,
Pay more money to her now
Than they ever did before
When she worked in their kitchen.
And a second one from Hughes. He does tend to make you want seconds.
Roland Hayes Beaten (Georgia: 1942
Negroes,
Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble, and kind:
Beware the day
They change their minds!
Wind
In the cotton fields,
Gentle breeze:
Beware the hour
It uproots trees!
West Virginia poet Sara Zang is back with us this week. She posts on The Peaceful Pub, which I visit every week or so, on the lookout for good poems like this one.
Rendezvous
I wear the night
like a shawl,
Star fringed and misty
it settles over my shoulders.
Cygnus
raises a graceful head
toward August
I open my basket
of wine and cheese
How comfortable this communion
with the willow,
we think
the meringue moon
a just dessert
Photo by Chris Itz
I started going through some old stuff the other day and found a bunch of crappy old early poems begging to be to worked on (I almost said "fixed," but I not sure that's possible).
This poem, like the one I used last week, was originally written forty years ago after returning from military service. Both the poem last week and this one have been retitled and extensively rewritten.
whispers
shepherds
graze their sheep
in the afternoon sun
as men in the village
rest
in the shade
of a large banyan tree,
the murmur of their voices
drifts through the silence
of the dusty street, whispers
on the weak desert breeze
I went used book store shopping again and picked up Neither World by Ralph Angel. The book was published in 1995 by the Miami University Press.
Angel teaches in the writing program at the University of Redlands in California. He has published in numerous journals and magazines, including The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and Poetry. He also published a previous book of poems, Anxious Latitudes. His awards include a Fulbright Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize.
This is a poem from Neither World.
Unspeakable
Summer has its way
around here. People kind of
cave in, weary
with the certainty of nighttime,
how it draws even these last
illusory shimmers of tropical ice
into its own oblivion.
And all the flowers
have withered away. The animals
too, are forgotten.
Now the pavement
keeps getting hotter.
City lights churn.
And out in those parking lots
and behind iron doors
your neighbors stare into their
billion broken mirrors.
A desire
perhaps to blame them,
to give them all new faces,
the ones you've painlessly
selected-brisk and cheerful-
until each prisoner's
freed from his imagined
demands and all your hope
becomes your nature, out
among the lush foliage
of the future.
A desire to be noticed
perhaps, by the old guy
who rants in the stupid
glow of his icebox,
to show your scars
to the scowling landlady,
absolutely terrified
of lifting the lid of the dumpster,
to point them out,
to brush them aside with a laugh
and a wave of the hand
for the boy who
wanders these rooftops
each night, envying everyone
who can walk well enough
on the ground, even though
they're obvious and ordinary
even though
what you'll finally speak of
does not belong to,
and longer resembles,
your wound.
I like the rain, but not so much the aftermath
defoliate and pave
I keep pushing
the lawnmower
and the damn grass
just keeps on growing,
right behind me,
without even
the courtesy
of waiting until
it's out of my sight
and I'm back
in the house
with a cold Carta
Blanca
the lesson is
learned -
the wages of rain
is sweat on a job
that will almost
immediately
need to be done
again
leaving
no doubt,
now, it's
time to mull
the advice of the good
General Curtis LeMay,
considered insane
by the better minds
of his time, but then
none of his critics
ever had to face
the jungle that is
my backyard -
demonstrating
that,
however maligned,
the poor general
had the right solution,
he just never found
the right problem
I've been missing my weekly shot of Bukowski. Here's my first step in catching up.
At The Edge
a smoky room at the edge, it's always
been a smoky room at the
edge.
the edge never goes away.
sometimes you understand it
better,
sometimes you even talk to it, you might
say, "hello, old friend,"
but it has no sense of humor, it slams you in the
gut, says,
"this is a serious business, I’m here to
kill you or drive you mad."
"all right," you reply, "I under-
stand."
tonight this room is smoky
and I am alone
listening to the silence.
I am tired of waiting on life,
it was so slow to arrive and so quick to
leave.
the streets and the cities are
empty,
love is on the damned cross
and death laughs in the back
room.
at the edge, the edge, the edge.
it's so sad: the flowers are still trying
to please me,
the sun shouts my name,
but my courage fails
as the animals look on with large
eyes.
this smoky room.
a stained rug.
a few books.
a painting or two.
a broken chair.
and empty pair of shoes
a tired old man
subordinated debt.
I had some stray thoughts last week, driving downtown to one of my coffee hangouts, resulting in this poem.
making do
I'm much better
at other things
but
this is what
I do now
and
having done
this for nearly
ten years
I hardly ever
think
of those other
things
at all
Well, we've come to that bridge and it's time to cross it.
Thanks for stopping by. Come again next week.
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Summer Fire Saturday, August 04, 2007
II.8.1
Welcome back.
We have new stuff and some old stuff, including continuation of several series.
We're doing something a little different with images this week. Usually I spend a lot of time trying to select images that, in my own mind at least, seem to relate somehow to whatever poem follows. In fact, once the poems for the week are selected, a large part of the time actually preparing the blog for posting involves working with the images.
This week, to save time and avoid mental strain at a time when both my time and mentals are straining, I'm declaring this week the first annual "Here and Now Garden Issue," meaning, all our images this week will be flora in nature. Watch closely, since there probably won't be a second annual "Here and Now Garden Issue."
Hope you like flowers.
We begin this week with Jim Corner, regular contributor to "Here and Now". Jim can be read frequently on the Wild Poetry Forum workshops.
Six Seasons of the Desert
A first bird sings in the earliest warm crack
of light above the craggy Superstitions.
Palm outlines monitor the half-light
of March. Sun's flourish fills
the daylight hours only to fail
when the east diffusion takes control;
Billows spread shades
of magenta on the spheres.
II
A lazy buzzard rides the boiling blue
as airstreams rise and fall; feelings
of languor infect the mortals who rush
into deep caves of stone or stucco.
Evening struggles to cool lovers departing
from theaters, but the dew-point's froth
rides invisibly over the buttress.
III
Torrents of grime fill innocent daylight;
east winds scatter ground-articles
as battering downpours fill arroyos
rushing to create flash floods in homes,
streets and highways. After fall
and coming scant winters, wild flowers
and cacti will burst upon the desert -
line highways with sprays of blue,
pink, yellow-orange and white.
IV
Halloween cools the air and brings
a tad of umbra, a need for light
sweaters and long pants, a relaxed
populous waits for magic of the Celtic
Gods; a slight chill of apples, the hunger
for soup and chowder, warm slumber
beneath the patchwork quilts.
V
There is seldom bleakness
nor the froth of snow, only spinal chills
in the early hours - darkness until a late sun
decides to rise on the eve
of Christmas bells and sparkle, carols
in joyful sanctuaries and grateful hearts
of children. A stasis falls upon the cacti
as human beings muse a new outlook -
an angelic mode throughout the planet.
VI
The break of spring pounces
upon the catnap of winter;
it brings a feeling of trust -
a slack of frost will have fostered
elements of living, the redemption
of estrangement, the gathering
of community.
Time to return to Blaise Cendrars in the middle of his travels in the United States at the turn-of-the-20th century. This poem, and all of my Cendrars poems, are from Blaise Cendrars - Complete Poems.
To those who have asked for more information on Cendrars, I have to admit I had never heard of him until I picked up this book at a used book store. The poems in the book are translated by Ron Padgett The book itself, nearly 400 pages of poems, was published in 1992 by the University of California Press.
Mississippi
Right here the river's almost as wide as a lake
The yellowish muddy water rolls between two marshy banks
Aquatic plants extending the acreage of the cotton fields
Here and there appear the towns and villages lurking back in some little
bay with their factories with their tall black chimneys with their long
piers on pilings running way out into the water
Overwhelming heat
The ship's bell rings for lunch
The passengers sport checked suits blinding ties sunset-red vests like
flaming cocktails and Louisiana hot sauce
You see lot of crocodiles
The young ones frisky and wriggling
The big ones their backs covered with greenish moss just drifting along
The luxuriant vegetation indicates the approach of the tropical zone
Gigantic bamboos palm trees tulip trees laurels cedars
The river itself is now twice as wide
Dotted with floating islands from which our boat scares up clouds of
waterfowl
Steamboats sailboats barges boats of all kinds and enormous rafts
A yellow steam rises from the overheated river
Now there are hundreds of crocs thrashing around us
You hear the dry snapping of their jaws and you see very clearly their
wild little eyes
The passengers get a kick out of firing into them with hunting rifles
When a sharpshooter kills or mortally wounds one
Its fellows rush to tear it
To pieces
With small cries rather like the wailing of a newborn baby
We began a series last week by regular contributor Gary Blankenship inspired by his reading of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. For reasons too complicated to get into, we started with the second poem in the series. This week we get back on track and present the first in Gary's Howl series.
After Reading a Line from Howl
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg
- Allen Ginsberg
down on all fours like a stray dog
caught with a frozen steak beneath his teeth
(except dogs do not walk on their knees)
they saw an oil leak
nasty enough that if the truck
was driven another block or two
its engine would blow
and in their examination of the stain
missed shells dropped from a Corvette
on its way to New Jersey
missed the rattle of the compressor
that kept the steaks between
the dog's teeth frozen
their load starting to thaw
before delivery to the plump housewife
in 4C of a brownstone walkup
on the Lower East Side
missed the Easter Egg hidden
in the Word 2003 software used
to write this strophe
missed the Sunnyside sailor
hitchhiking under the Queensboro bridge
an unused condom in his wallet
missed the ex-Ukrainian baron
selling egg cremes
and wooden dolls to tourists
on their way to the Statue of Liberty
missing spring wheat on the Dnieper
missed the howl of the stray dog
as he bit into a frozen steak
as he fought to keep the steak
against a pack of his mates
as Moloch laughed
Every once in a while it doesn't hurt to slip back to the classics, in this case John Doone who, judging from this poem, did not place great faith in individuals of the female persuasion.
Go And Catch A Falling Star
Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake root.
Tell me where all past years are,
or the cleft of the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing.
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
I thou be'st borne to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till hairs snow white hairs on thee.
Thou, when thou return'st wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true, and fair.
If thou find'st one, let me know,
such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not. I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two or three.
Now we have this, a sad, sad story from our own place and time by Korean-American poet Ishle Yi Park, The poem is from her book The Temperature of This Water.
Sa-I-Gu
"we are our first and last line of defense. me. you."
- k. w. lee
fire. if I touch
the screen my fingers
will singe or sing.
raw hands rip nikes
our of boxes, break glass
into white cobwebs.
my mother presses her hand
to her ruined lips.
*
we see grainy reels of black fish
on concrete, arched,
kicked, nightsticked,
flopping, not fish but man -
here I rub my own tender
wrists, ask unanswerables -
why are cops doing this?
my mother answers simply,
wisely, because they are bad.
of the looters, because they are angry.
and why hurt us - she chokes -
because we are close enough.
I sigh, slip under the fold
of her arm, she strokes my hair
and keeps me protected
as I must one day protect her.
*
l.a.p.d. ring beverly hills like a moat,
won't answer rings from south central
furious and consistent as rain.
where did they hide, our women -
under what oil-stained
chevy did they breath,
light, light, covering
the biting mouths
of wet-eyed children?
who pulled them
by hair into a riot
for a crime
they did not commit -
who watched and did nothing?
*
mile-high cameras hover,
zoom in, dub it
war of blacks & koreans,
watch us ripped
to red tendon for scarps
in a district, abandoned,
latasha shot on 50 channels,
not 200 shot korean grocers
whose names & deaths are kept local:
silence white as white silence.
we have no jesse
no martin malcolm
no al, no eloquent, rapid tongue,
just fathers, thick-tongued,
and children too young to carry
more than straw broomstick and hefty bag.
all the women cry and hurl
what is not already shattered.
*
koreans mark disaster
with numbers.
4/29 - Sa-I-Gu
south central - metal husks
of burnt cadillacs, exxon, michelin,
factories bare as cotton pockets.
this grocer with knotted tongue
stacks rows of bottles -
shining liquid copper.
he beats his son, no innocents here.
this customer slops in, slurs over
and Old E. no innocents here.
her hand hurls bottle and brick
for what is lost,
for what she cannot attain,
her open, laboring palm,
and the emptiness that
leans out to meet it.
his hand grips rifle on roof,
yes, for what is lost,
for what he, too, cannot attain,
his open, laboring palm,
his broken sign, burnt oranges.
god, it is a matter
of food to mouth,
of notions of home and house.
*
a son returns
with straw broomstick.
a daughter cooks rice
that steams untouched on the kitchen table,
slips off her mother's
devastated keds, slips her into bed.
to mornings after,
they march over ashes,
dust licking proud ankles.
30,000 koreans
sing in a language
most will never master:
we shall overcome
someday.
I have been feeling lately that my new stuff is going a bit stale so I'm going back to early stuff, the oldies and not-so-goodies, and see if I can do something with them now I couldn't do years ago.
The original version of this poem was written nearly 40 years ago during my first period of trying to be a poet. I wrote it shortly after retuning from a year in the northwest frontier of Pakistan, back then mostly tribal area, now, mostly osama country.
Making no claims at this point beyond that it is better now after rewrite than in its original version.
morning song, revisited
a path wound its way
along the brick wall
that separated
our oasis
from the desolate
desert
all around
from the other side
of the wall
I heard a soldier
in the sentry camp
outside the wall
begin a song,
a plaintive
morning song
strange to my ears
but soul-stretching
as natural as the sun rising
another soldier
joined in with a flute,
its high clear whistling
and the deep-voiced
soldier singing
pierced the early hour,
reaching, in my mind,
through the cool morning air
to the mountains beyond
the desert badlands,
then even further
to breach the walls
and move me
British poet (living now in the US) Christopher George is a frequent contributor to "Here and Now."
Here he is now with another of his new poems.
London Fog
I was the bloke in the London Fog
raincoat, magically on your porch,
romantic suave writer from England
- though they made London Fog not
back in Jolly Old but right here
in Bawlmer beside the expressway,
in an old cotton duck factory.
So our relationship was doomed
from the start, based on a lie.
My, my! Oh so many lies told since!
Who's the abuser, who's the abusee?
Yes, S, was it you - or was it me?
Some days I just need a good laugh.
where are all the comedy writers when you need them?
I'm tired
of wars
and politicians
who couldn't find
their ass
with both
hands
even if it was
pointed out to them
with a
day-glow
red &
yellow stick
written instructions
and explicit
illustrations
I'm tired
of being
sad
mad
scared &
lied to
every day
and twice
on wednesdays
I want to laugh
instead
like I
laughed
at
Laurel
&
Hardy
Abbott
&
Costello
the Bowery
Boys
and all those
terrific
Billie Wilder movies
but the new stuff
now is
mostly about
farts
&
dicks
and isn't funny
at all
(except for
Harold
&
Kumar
Go To White Castle
and
Something About Mary
which even
though mostly about
farts
&
dicks
were still the funniest movies
in years and years
and ever so much better
than thinking about
the Dicks In Charge...
DICs for the squeamish...
who are hardly
ever funny
at all.)
Giraffe On Fire is the title poem from the book by Juan Felipe Herrera. It is a long poem of 28 parts. I don't know that we'll ever get to the 28th part, but having done part 1 last week, here's part 2 for today.
The book, Giraffe On Fire, was published in 2001 by the University of Arizona Press.
Giraffe On Fire
2
I always dreamt of holding up a champagne bottle, etched and intricate as
an embossed Finn manuscript. This is not a dream, I am to one side. The
left as usual. You cannot see my arm or my destitute mouth. There is a
giraffe on fire. Tlaltelolco shadows purge the sea before us. Both of us.
Remember Tlaltelolco, the ancient city of Mesoamerica where they carried
Quetzal plumes and marred Indian goddesses with chocolate, where the
military dropped a helicopter of shame and grenades, helmets and ratchets
on the open skulls of the peasant students?
Go to the right. The anus comes at you. The apple entices you. The chalice
with wide ceramic lips and pearl-like shadow calls you. But first you must
drink from my glass. Even if I am not holding it. There is more interest in
the brain. In New York. In Toledo. In Lorca's bubbling grave; the brain is the
master. Parsley. Cauliflower, a vaginal swirl, gray matter between your
chest, in Huichol Indian Morse codes. In red. Cutouts from my spleen.
The Consulado wants this. Wants to taste, wants to eat freely. Wants to
tilt the table and plea for a flat samurai sword. Destruction tastes better
with a hanging cherry. A riot in the center of things gone awry. A tin-
colored mantle juxtaposed next to blackness. Velzauez sees this and
smiles. I smile. I am the one crying. Wine and anise, cerulean blue drops on
my wrist. They stand for a shred of sky. perfected by the whore priests on
your corner. You don't call them that. You have changed our terms, you
have learned the art that Goya admired. The somnambulant one-eyed
terror over our houses. War. A cock and a hummingbird full of mercy. The
cloth, the smock of my childhood.
Alan Addotto returns this week with another of his "Kwan Yin" poems.
Household mythology
One of those moments.
unguarded,
hers....not mine
Kwan Yin of another time
at the far end of the house
listening to music there
completely unaware.
Playing the air-drum,
the air-guitar,
the air-keyboards
and remembering when
she was that wild punk rock
New Jersey girl then
and
playing in an "alternative" band.
Well-hidden form the now
that sweet vixen rises now and again
reminding the sedate
the elegant
the graceful
woman
that beneath the tranquillity
Beneath that
are strange hairdos
and the loud joyous cacophonies of her youth
that survive
still very much alive
like spice
like an undertone
She shakes her hair
and a Maenad wind from
the Near East
sweeps through the house.
A slight movement
and she is aware of her observer,
blushes beautifully and then laughs
Dionysus smiles at her discovery
of him.
We return this week to poet Daniel Donaghy with a poem from his book Street Fighting Poems published in 2005 by the BkMk Press at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Conversion
When Sister told us the human heart
grows heavy and hard from sin,
each curse adding another ounce,
each lie another squeeze
inside the sinner's black chest
until he repents or drops dead
from the weight, I looked out
the barred window wondering
how long my father had left,
knowing it was only a matter
of time before he fell down
the one-way road to Hell,
as Sister called it, knowing
my father said more than once
that he'd never repent, that if God
had any guts He'd repent
for leaving my father an orphan
at fourteen, for the year in Korea
he keeps reliving in his dreams,
for the shakes he steadies with booze,
arthritic knee he quiets with pills,
reminding me once that God
didn't put food on the table,
didn't pay our bills, rising
into the smokey cave of that kitchen
to say that God's never helped him at all,
chalking up his few breaks of luck,
pointing to the Coral Street woman with twins -
one deaf, the other half-blind -
asking Where was God for her?
me unable to answer before he said,
See what I mean, boy? Do you see?
spreading his arms until his emptiness,
looking up past the stained ceiling,
past the attic and cracked roof,
past the few stars of the smog-dim city,
looking all the way to God to tell Him
He could save His sacred breath
because there was nothing He could do
to change his mind, he was a lost soul,
a heathen, a Cardiac Christian
who'd shout Sweet Jesus, I'm sorry
just before he died and not one second before.
Here's a new piece from regular contributor Don Schaeffer. Don works on both the Blueline and the Wild Poetry Forum workshops.
When I Couldn't Call My Daughter "Dude"
When we visited the fountain
in nine-teen-sixy-seven and went
to the Electric Circus,
when they told us about lasers
and that women would be wearing
boring mens clothes because unisex
was here I was not outraged but
disappointed. It was like
going without breakfast.
Now to me a "dude" is a man
from an Eastern city who sojurns
to the uncivilized West, maybe
visiting a ranch. My mind,
content in its categories sees
the pants, the dust on the boots,
the uncomfortably worn Stetson.
I could live with calling all men
"dude." But when my daughter who lives
in Vancouver said that I must
address her as "dude" because
all women are called "dude" now,
I got stomach cramps.
Here's a little piece I wrote a couple of days ago, demonstrating, if nothing else, that thinking about dreams and reality can give you a headache.
a memory of a dream
I have a
memory
of a dream
that through
constant dreaming
has become a memory
of another life
that with constant
remembering
seems as real
as the life
I might have
with you tonight
I read in the Times Sunday book review section last week that a new collection of poems by Zbigniew Herbert is in the works. The story mentioned that all of his books are out of print, which makes me feel especially fortunate since I found and bought one of those out of print treasues, Elegy For The Departure, at a used book store last year.
These short pieces, fables that everyone in both the anti-communist movement and the communist government in Poland at that time understood, are from that book.
Hotel
The carpet is too soft. Also the palm tree in the lobby is
unbelievable. For a long time the Maitre looks at our faces,
shuffling passports in his hands. "Such dark-ringed eyes, such
dark-ringed eyes. I knew a merchant from Smyrna, who also
had a false front tooth. Nowadays one has to be terribly careful:
informers and scorpions are everywhere."
In the elevator we stand facing the mirror, but already at the
first jerk we see silvery mildew in the place of our faces.
Clock
In appearance it is the peaceful face of a miller, full, shiny as
an apple. Only a single dark moves on it. But when one looks inside:
a nest of worms, the inside of an anthill. And this is supposed to lead
us to eternity.
The Poet's House
Once there was breath on these window panes, the fragrance
of a roast, the same face in the mirror. Now it is a museum. The
flora of the floors has been exterminated, the chests emptied, rooms
flooded with wax. For entire days and nights they kept the windows
open. Mice avoid this infected house.
The bed is nearly made. But no one wants to spend a single
night here.
Between his wardrobe, his bed and his table - the white
frontier of absence precise as the cast of a hand.
Principality
Designated in the guide by two stars (in reality there are
more), the entire principality - the city, sea and a piece of sky -
at first glance looks wonderful. The tombs are whitewashed, the
houses opulent, the flowers fat.
All the citizens are guardians of souvenirs. Because of a
small inflow of tourists there is little work - an hour in the morning,
an hour in the evening.
In the middle, a siesta.
Red as an eiderdown, a cloud of snoring hovers over the
principality. Only the prince is not asleep. He rocks to sleep
the head of the local god.
The hotels and boarding houses are occupied by angels who
have taken a liking to the principality for its warm spas, serious
customs, and air that is distilled by the labor of pens polishing
memory.
Chinese Wallpaper
A deserted island with the sugary head of a volcano. In the
middle of smooth water, reeds and a fisherman with a pole. Higher,
an island is spread out like an apple tree with a pagoda and small
bridge, where lovers meet under the blossoming moon.
If that was all, it would be a nice episode: a history of the
world in few words. But it is repeated into infinity with thoughtless,
stubborn exactitude: volcano, lovers, the moon.
One cannot make a greater insult to the world.
Here are a few short poems from singer/songwriter Jewel.
These are from her book A Night Without Armor
A Couple Sitting on a Bench
He's the skinny one of the two.
He reminds her of it constantly.
He's a very funny guy that way -
ha-ha as she wobbles-to-walk wobbles-to-walk.
Envy
passionless bodies
with pointless little limbs
that flaunt in vain
such narrowness of frame
with nothing to offer but bone
Pretty
There is a pretty girl
on the
Face
of the magazine
And
all I can see
are my dirty
hands
turning the page
Those Certain Girls
I am fascinated by
those certain girls
you know the ones
the women that are always girls
their tiny bodies like
neglected willow trees
controlled and contorted
which may blow away with
the slightest disappointment
I found this poem by Vienna on The Wild Poetry Forum and am very pleased she agreed to share it with us here and now.
Vienna is a first-timer for "Here and Now." She lives in Hull, East Yorkshire, where she writes when she cannot paint and paints when she cannot write. Published in print and online magazines and anthologies in the USA and Europe, she says she is a typical Sagittarian, has three cats and a fondness for wild places.
You can see her beautiful portrait and animal art by visiting her website at www.viennasgallery.homestead.com. To get to the site, you can either copy and post this url or you can just click on the link to the right of this page.
Sleep
When you fall, your breathing dips;
hard edges smudge into softness.
Eyelids, when kissed, do not flicker.
I time my breath to yours; wait, exhale.
Fingers drum and pluck my shoulder,
wrists arc, relax; hips shift and we meet
bone to bone, collision of dream and flesh,
and you, so far away in my arms, deep
and sleeping. Such sweet entanglement
My touch must not wake, but still
your brow invites adoration.
Delicacy of temple, silkness of hair.
You sigh, fall further into me. I know
the exact weight of your head, how it
rests, cheekbone to slanted breast.
This is the time I know I can trace
the red bow of your lips, slip limb
over limb so we meet in the middle.
When I wake to your mouth on mine
the blues of your eyes remind me how
amazing it is to breathlessly drown.
When distance breaks the dream
tides overwhelm. This taste of salt
is love, a constant pull of moon.
I was at my occasional job the other day, waiting for coworkers to complete some work that it was my function to review and approve, basically nothing to do, when I noticed a pad of post-it notes in front of me and decided to, in the time I had, see how much meaning I could squeeze onto those little yellow stickies.
This is what I came up with.
post-it notes
small dogs
nip
at heels
with tiny
yips
&
yaps
and sharp
little teeth
white
shinning
*
pitty pat
pitty
pat
little baby
footprints
fresh from
the bath
*
this is like
a note
I would pass
when I was
fifteen
in fits of
abbreviated
angst
*
I love
you
in little
yellow
flashes of
sticky note
passion
*
crowd murmurs
in a large room
hundreds
of stories
shattered
into random
word pieces
*
if you find this
know
I was
thinking
of you
way back
when
We started our homage to the seminal beat poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg last week by posting the first part of the poem. We complete the poem this week with parts 2 and 3.
II
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi-
nation?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
tainable dollars! Children screaming under the
weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun-
ned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni-
bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking
tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac-
tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about
us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies!De-
spairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the
street!
III
Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful
typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the
abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're
free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night
That's it for this first Saturday in August. Hope you enjoyed the poems and the flowers.
Back again in a week.
What a pleasant way to spend time on a hot August afternoon. Your publication continues to transcend the ordinary.
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