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Midnight Musicale   Friday, October 19, 2007

II.10.3



Back again for another week. I have to step our of blog world and deal with some reality-based issues just about all day Saturday, so I'm posting a day early again. I didn't have as much time as usual to chase down work from web-poets this week, so there more of me in this issue than I normally use.

So, no more of me right now. Let's move on to the good stuff.








I start this week with a poem I like by Alaskan meatcutter, bookkeeper and poet, Arlitia Jones. The poem is from her book The Bandsaw Riots, published by Bear Star Press in 2001.



Radical

The cases of whole chickens are on a pallet
clear back in the freezer, under
the evaporators where ice collects

like a smooth clear hide, making
a single block of the entire shipment.
I/ve come for one case

and beat at the ice-bound mess like a crazy woman
until the box comes loose and my hands
go numb, no more dexterous

than feet. Sometimes I yell out
poems, my cloud breath winding away
in the whirring fans, to keep my mind

off the cold. I will arise and go
now...something something...bean rows...
The lines get lost. This isn't the bee-loud glade.

And I'm not Yeats.
Just a woman hating her job,
freezing her ass off in a meat locker,

a woman who found books early in life
and always came at them like a stray
to a strange hand offering food.

Really meant for me? I took the bait:
One woman in all of Moby Dick, scrubbing pots
at the Spouter Inn. To Henry James,

the literature of manners, I was
eavesdropper, maid
behind the door to the magnate's

mahogany room. At coffee break
we fight over the padded chairs
in the office, the cutters and I.

White coat, white apron, hair done up
in a bun, I look like the bride
of the USDA, nothing like a poet

who has anything to say. And I almost
believe it until I think of this:
that my mother, who survived her childhood

hiding in the tall grass out back
until the house fell quiet, didn't
fuck me up

despite every excuse,
the poverty and the anger,
the mother with the knife, the father

drunk and mean on a fifth of anything,
and the nuns who would have her believe
people live the lives they're given

not the lives they choose.
She's proof that's not always true,
I'm proof for what is given:

food on the table and my own clothes to wear,
books on birthdays, so much love and
a crack at something she never had.

In the family business she's teaching me the books
because a a woman should always have something
to fall back on, and so I balance ledgers,

bring accounts receivables up to date. Should I die
before I wake, you'll have to know
where the money is, and in this is her faith

that the daughter will carry on,
finish what the mother leaves undone.
That's how it is with us, work

always on the table, the day's receipts to tally.
She's patient with her poet-girl and curious
sometimes about what goes on in my head.

She caught me reading at the front counter
the day our hometown paper carried the story
of Bella Abzub's death.

Born in Manhattan, 1920, U.S. Congress-
woman and a butcher's daughter like me, she called for
women's worth to be held the same as men's -

how strange to think this radical.
I know I'm worth the men.
What I think of are the women,

the books I read, and the animals I eat - I hope
I'm worthy of them. And the family
that raised me up. My mother asks

Are the invoices done? and I go back
to the 10-key. I know whose daughter I am,
and the woman I'm determined to be.








I introduced Wayne Scheer to you a couple of weeks ago. Wayne is a writer from Atlanta. After teaching writing and literature in college for twenty-five years, he says he retired to follow his own advice and write. He can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.

Here's one of his short, very funny prose pieces.



Lentil Soup

Will Squires flirted with the language but he had commitment problems. Mixing metaphors like James Bond mixed martinis, Will liked to shake things up and stir the drink with the last straw.

He tried running the gamut while toeing the line, but occasionally he'd end up towing the line from here to China and back on a slow boat. He'd let out enough line to go deep but just as he prepared to reel her in, the Great White Tuna would take him east of Eden, this side of paradise, unable to go home again.

But his heart was where his hat hung, where folks always took him into their confidence and showed him what they were made of. Exhausted, he'd return, like the prodigal sun on a cloudy day or a horse that escaped after the barn door was closed. And just when he thought it was safe to go back into the water, he couldn't stop thinking about yesterday.

Will tried finding his way, or his will, but no matter which way was up he'd go down the staircase to heaven and find himself up the creek with too many paddles. Simply put, when the road of life forked, he took the spoon and ran away with the cow.

But that's not to say he didn't try to find a new paradigm; it's just that when he thought out of the box, he heard Pandora laugh. He sought connection and closure, but he found himself caught between the moon and New York City.

Will flirted with coherence, but when he finally took the bull by the horns and ran with it, he preferred a bowl of lentil soup.








Next, we return to our late-19th/early-20th century French traveler-poet Blaise Cendrars, last seen in Japan. This seems a rare Cendrars to me, slipping into a kind of surrealism at the end that is not usual for a direct, earth-bound poet like him. Nice just the same.



from IslandsXI. Softened

Garden overgrown like a clearing in the woods
Along the shore drifts the eternal humming of the wind in the leaves of
    the filaos
A straw hat on my head and a big paper parasol over that
I contemplate the games of the gulls and cormorants
Or I examine a flower
Or some rock
Every time I move I scare the palm squirrels and palm rats

Through the open window I see the entire length of a steamer of
    medium tonnage
Anchored about a mile off and already surrounded by junks sampans
    and boats loaded with fruit and local products
At last the sun sets

The air is crystal clear
The same nightingales are singing like mad
And the big vampire bats glide silently across the moon of velvet wings

A young girl goes by completely nude
On her head on of those old helmets collectors are so crazy about these
    days
In her hand a big bouquet of pale flowers which give off a powerful
    scent reminding you of both tuberose and narcissus
Suddenly she stops at the garden gate
Some lowing bugs alight on the horn which forms the top of the
    helmet and the apparition becomes incredible

Night sounds
Dead branches braking
Sighs of animals in heat
Crawling
Humming of insects
Birds in their nests
Whispering voices

The gigantic plane trees are pale gray in moonlight
Light lianas sweep down from their tops and are gently blown by an
    invisible mouth

The stars melt like sugar








We haven't seen Sara Zang in a while. Well, she's back with us this week. Sara is from West Virginia and operates The Peaceful Pub poetry forum at http://p206.ezboard.com/thepeacefulpub.



A Moonbeam Tapping at my Window

surely
Basho wrote the moon
tonight

without punctuation
a brief moment
of brilliant glow

floating
over windfall apples
fire and music

a moonbeam
threaded through the eye
of silver needle

a beacon
slicing indigo
the planet ever grateful








The next poem is from American Dreams, a book of poetry and prose by Sapphire. The book was published in 1994 by Vintage Books.

The first time I used a poem by Sapphire her, I described her poems as screams. They are some of the darkest, strongest poems I've ever read. They are full of despair and anger, and also, honesty. The poems are excellent, making it especially difficult to pass over many of her poems as too angry, too strong and too dark for for "Here and Now." What I'm left with are milder, but still excellent, poems such as the one that follows.



fromArisa

4/23/86   9:50 A.M.'
Weatherman had said mostly sunny but it’s snowing today.
Arisa committed suicide yesterday.

4/29/86   4:05 A.M.

sleep is over me
like a dark cloud
my throat is raw tight
my mouth sour salty
robbed of dreams
coming from the underground
I awake.

I'm tired already
of cleaning
this white bitch's house,
her white body
clad in black.
IRT line brings
me down from
Harlem to clean today.
I worry when
I'm gone,
3 locks
I leave
the radio
& lights on
still I worry
they'll get in.
I try to think positive
in circles of shimmering
white light;
everything is white
down here on the upper west side,
you are over it all
invisible
does anybody
see me?
I hope not,
pushing this
baby carriage
4:15
in the morning
sour fuzzy shit
lives in your mouth.
you have gone
thru this
before,
it's all
frightfully hard,
you wish
you were dancing
on long legs in Paris,
but you're not.
J. says Arisa
was mentally ill
& we don't know what
that's really like.
I know that
she fell
flying,
Arisa's jumps
were always
good.
up until
this last one
I felt she lacked
a sense of drama,
the ability
to express herself
fully,
but she did
just fine
this time.
my pen stops
at the bruise on
the side of her face,
and how old she looked
in that casket,
jaw clenched
lips pierced like clay
and pressed together
over her large teeth,
that white dress
folded hands waxen.
your father says
he never saw you
so peaceful,
he was probably
tired of you
too.
you were a
hard one to get
anything out of
and always angry
sometimes
I saw breath
fill your body
& turn you
soft cloud
turquoise blue,
rest
sigh
you hated
me too.
you knew
what was wrong
with everyone
except yourself.
now you
are gone,
you who never
really had to
work for a living,
fine tuned
cellulite-free
burning bright
stumbling
silly
pitiful
admirable
strong
courageous
Arisa,
who never wore
the rubber gloves
of defeat.
I can't guarantee
how,
but that you'll
be remembered
is sure,
as I trudge thru
white ladies' houses
without style
or dreams,
things you never
had to do,
I'll remember
your horrible
bright smile,
how strong &
beautiful
your legs
&
ahh yes -
how well
you
jumped.








Next, we have our web-poet friend from New Zealand, Thane Zander. I've been critiquing Thane's poems (as he has mine) for several years now and every new one he writes seems better and deeper than the last. Here's one of his latest.



The Life of A Poor Man in Armistice Avenue

The footpath his domain
a red wall his bedstead
bus stop seat, his bed
traffic passing, lullaby
bag and booze, sleeping tablet .

His name once was Jerry Falwell, an affluent ne'er do well. From a family which held respect and standing in the neighbourhood. All the sons (five in all) successful, scholars, businessmen, a preacher.

He rifles through his long coat
finds the Bible, prays
opens the page anywhere
reads a scripture by heart
the lifeblood of a step down.

Jerry went through seminary, passed with flying colours, given a parish in Lower Brooklyn, the place a haven for all the street dwellers escaping the law. It was his demeanour to help the lowlifes, though he never thought of them that way, life's lost minds.

The brush in his right pocket
used to fluff down the sleeping areas
to remove lint and dust and unwanted leaves
once used to paint life’' sorrow
today the brush is in bed, ready.

He found it hard to follow the teachings. So much hypocrisy, so much not to be understood, yet people would recite it verbatim or read between the lines, to each their own. Unfortunately in charge, he'd argue.

The state of the Nation
well that was their business
(pointing to the passing cars)
the dog from 1st and 40th peed
as it always did, near his bed.

He looked again at the Bible, knew which Psalm to say for his peace, which passage of Genesis to appease. Still even on a cold street corner the words were too much to take in.

He stepped down from life
decided to walk the streets
attend to the "lowlifers" - bowed
speak to them at their level
street preacher and believer - just.

The paint on the seat was a rustic brown, sort of earth tones meant to give the city a little life. The fire Hydrant next to it a shiny Yellow, the bus stop sign red and ready. The police haven't been for days now, they usually move him on daily.

Food courtesy of the Food Bank
toileting, a shelter around the corner
for street folk to come in and shower
to do their toileting needs,
another ex-padre runs the joint.

The key date was 11th September 2001 when the madness hit the Twin Towers, when his parish was inundated with grief and morbidity. Wives and children of Firefighters, the dust coated urchins choking to death, the poor lucky to survive.

Across the street, Subway
scraps from the bin interesting fare,
the daylight hides it's flashing sign
hides the well to do clientele
capable of paying for their meal.

He long gave up on money, it never meant anything to him anyway, just something to burn holes in pockets. His total life, even in the seminary, geared to pennilessness. He does whistle though, and does it enough throughout the day to afford a packet of smokes and a bottle of wretched wine.

Sometimes he'd wake up,
rummage through pockets
find another ten dollar bill
stuffed in his greatcoat pocket
the donor a complete mystery.

The walk to where the Twin Towers stood was lengthy, but necessary, to see why the world had gone crazy. On the way, he passed several homeless people and asked them what they thought. Most mentioned they were lucky not to be there, the subterranean carpark a common haunt.

The dark of night finds him walking
searching for the forbidden truth
searching for a dog to pat
reaching a hand out to humanity
supplicant in his demeanour.

The Bomb that dropped on Baghdad was beyond his comprehension. Violence should never begat violence in his mind. If he was punched by the street gangs he’d cower until the attack was over and move on, licking his wounds.

The Teacher, another homeless man
passes the time of day while walking
they speak of nothing in particular
though their life is sort of like that,
dawn reaches into their psyches .

Towards Central Park, to feed the birds with scraps from the Subway bin, the peace and solitude a boon, maybe good does exist he thinks. A female jogger runs well round him, must be the stench, he's used to it now, the shunning. The birds are happy though the pickle gets met with disdain.

Homeless people live long
some can be homeless all their lives
others, mostly start after failure
failure to fit in with society
the need to just drop everything and crash.

Father Dominic from the Catholic church looks after all the central city lost, ministering all the spiritual needs, looking out for the dying, the doomed, the ones that have given up life totally. There are a few. Jerry doesn't exactly trust him, but lets him carry on. Just cause.

The story of the Homeless
never ever stops, ceases, ends
every time you look and see them
see the lives they left behind, help
by passing the time of day if they ask.








This next poem is by Earle Thompson and was taken from the book Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poets.

Thompson was born in 1950 and grew up on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington. He has published a chapbook, The Jupiter Moon Pulls at My Bones. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies.



Mythology

My grandfather placed wood
in the pot-bellied stove
and sat; he spoke:

"One time your uncle and me
seen some stick-indians
driving in the mountains
they moved alongside
the car and watched us
look at them
they had long black hair
down their backs and were naked
they ran past us."

Grandfather shifted
his weight in the chair.
He explained,
"Stick-indians are powerful people
they come out during the fall.
They will trick little children
who don’t listen
into the woods
and can imitate anything
so you should learn
about them."

Grandfather poured himself
some coffee and continued:
"At night you should put tobacco
out for them
and whatever food you got
just give them some
'cause stick-indians
can be vengeful
for people making fun of them.
They can walk through walls
land will stick a salmon up your ass
for laughing at them
this will not happen if you understand
and respect them."

My cousin giggled. I listened and remember
Grandfather slowly sipped his coffee
and smiled at us.
The fire smoldered like a volcano
and crackled.
We finally went to bed. I dreamt
of the mountains and now
I understand my childhood.








I wrote this a couple of days ago after hearing a news item on National Public Radio.



my evolutionary theory rebutted on NPR

some years ago
I was having some internal
maintenance
done, and the doc and I
decided that, as he
was passing though the
neighborhood
he would pick up my
appendix
along the way

everything went fine
except after it was over
the doctor said he
didn't take my appendix
because he couldn't find it

since word was the appendix
didn't do anything anyway, a
"vestigial organ" they called it,
I wasn't too upset, in fact
my apparent lack of appendix
supported the theory I had
that I was of a higher
evolutionary
order than most of the people
I ran into in south texas,
having evolved past the need
for an organ that was supposed
to be in place so that ancient
man could digest tree bark
and I was surely past that

alas,
I learned today on NPR
that scientists now think
they have discovered a
reason for the existence
of this little sac glued
to the top of your stomach

(it retains a cache of good bacteria
to be pumped into the system
if some event depletes
your gut's
normal supply of the
good bacteria
needed to maintain a
healthy
happy stomach)

such a fall from grace

one minute
an evolutionary marvel,
homo sapien of the future,
and the next
a bacterially challenged
loser
missing essential
parts








It's been a while since we've looked in on Robert Bly. Here's a poem from his book Selected Poems, published by Harper Perennial in 1986.



An Evening When the Full Moon Rose As The Sun Set

April 11, 1976

The sun goes down in the dusty April night.
"You know it could be alive!"
The sun is round, massive, compelling, sober, on fire.
It moves swiftly through the tree stalks of the Lundin
    grove as we drive past....
The legs of a bronze god walking at the edge of the world,
    unseen by many,
On his archaic errands, doubled up on his own energy.
He guides his life by his dreams;
When we look again, he is gone.

Turning toward Milan, we see the other one, the moon,
    whole and rising.
Three wild geese make dark spots in that part of the sky.
Under the shining one the pastures leap forward,
Grass fields rolling as in October, the sow-colored fields
    near the river.
This rising one lights the pair of pintails alert in the
    shallow pond.
It shines on those faithful to each other, alert in the early
    night.
And the life of faithfulness goes by like a river,
With no one noticing it.








I'm pleased to welcome back Nancy Williams Lazar who appeared in one of the very early issues of "Here and Now."

Nancy lives in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. She worked for two years as a freelance reporter for the Allentown Morning Call after retiring from her furniture manufacturing business of 20 years. She is back now to her first love- poetry and taking the time to explore.

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




The Vanished Vultures of Mumbai

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

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

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

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








The next poem is from the book The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, published by Thunder Mouth Press in 1999.

The poet, Reg E. Gaines, is Grand Slam champion of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, winner of the Bessie Award, a Grammy nominee and a two-time Tony winner for best book/lyrics for Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk. At the time this book was published, Gaines had a new book just out, The Original Buckwheat. Since then he has done more work on stage and has released several cd's.



welcome to mcdonalds

(may i take your order please?)

as i bust into mcdonalds and this sister ringing fries
is squabblin with this brother moppin the filthy floor
now the sister (who's kinda cute)
is in the process of bein steam/roomed by some buppy
who's droppin lines he must have lifted from some
nineteen seventies black exploitation flick
so the sisters pissed the brothers stressed
and the buppies new nikes was gettin wet
all this time i'm standin in line
tryin to order a fish filet with no tartar
seems the sisters sick a ringing fries
cuz she hikes her hands rolls her eyes and says
"punk motherfucka coward ass bitch
yours hairs too straight and you walk with switch"
the buppies french wave stood at attention
as his boys frick and frack cracked the fuck up
then/the manager
who happened to be a male member of the
caucasion pursuasion
tried to pull a newt gingrich impersonation
and set the sister straight
so she hits void
snatches the cheese stained apron
from around her dancehall hips
pokes out her lip
then precedes to rip into he boss
who makes like forest gump
then runs to the back
and hides behind a freezer
meanwhile the brother with the mop
was diggin into his thick grey sock
tryin to find a vial a rocks
seems like he got his slick lil hustle goin down
and like a circle is round we wind up back at me see
i was just tryin to order a fish filet with no tartar
when i stated getting impatient
cuz you know how shot go at micky dees
"when you getting off?"
"girl how much your earrings cost?"
"i heard she's fucking the boss!"
and i should been more patient
but i had to catch a bus
and maybe i need to get in touch
with my more sensitive side
but then i thought
fuck this shit
walked outside and split








I don't know what brought this poem back to mind, maybe the rash of "noose" incidents we've been reading about.

I wrote the poem several years ago when there was a photographic exhibition of old pictures of the lynchings of blacks in the southern and not so southern parts of the country. I never saw the exhibition but I did read a story about it which included one of the pictures. The picture is as described in the poem and it a great impact on me.



pictures from an american lynching

it's not the hanging black bodies
that chill me,
it's the smiling white faces below.

so familiar, those faces.

the white man standing
under the swinging body
of the young black girl,
smiling,
beer in his hand, hat cocked to one side
like he was a movie star.

the two pretty girls
arm in arm beneath the carnage,
smiling,
posing for the camera
like for a picture at the county fair.

the child
in dusty overalls
standing at his mother's side,
wide-eyed,
holding on to her dress
with one hand,
pointing
with the other
to the bare feet of the black man
dangling over his head.

so familiar, these faces.

like from the family albums
I looked at as a child,
seeking among the pictures there
the story of how I came to be.








Gordon Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. The youngest of fifteen children, he worked as a pianist, a busboy, and a basketball player before he took up photography, and later the work of poet and film director. His many books, in addition to this one, include The Learning Tree, A Choice of Weapons, and Voices in the Mirror. Until seeing this new book of poetry and photography on the remainder table at Borders, I though he had died several years ago. Wrong. Gordon Parks is now in his nineties, living in New York City.



Haram! Haram! Haram!

During those same merciless moments
when four mangled corpses were
burning and being torn apart in Falluja,

Haram (the Arabic word for forbidden),
prayers were touching the blue-domed mosques.
There, in Islam, where the human body is sacred,
to desecrate on is to commit the gravest sin.

So for Haram's sake, and none other, Arabia's clerics
voiced apologetic confusion. That macabre celebration
that took place afterward was throbbing but unacceptable.

Long ago the cries of worshippers filled the mosques of Falluja.
The assassinations were heroic.
But Haram frowns on burning torsos strung from bridges!








Here's a little bitty bite of a poem I wrote last week. As I've mentioned before, I post on the "House of Thirty" workshop on the Blueline Forum. The objective of that workshop is to write a poem a day for thirty days. I'm on my sixth 30-day series. Some of the workshop participants have like 30 30-day sequences, which, without breaking out my higher math skills, works out to a heck of a lot of poems-a-day. The pressure of the poem-a-day regime means, at least in my case, falling back on short-form poems when it's bed time and I haven't done my poem for the day. That's fine with me because I like the shorties and I've now used about four times as many words to introduce the poem as I did writing the poem.



october sunset

clouds
trimmed in pink
like the center
of a peach

tangerine
on the horizon








The next poem is by Wendy Barker. It is from her book Winter Chickens published in 1990 by Corona Publishing Company.

Barker has published four collections of poetry. Her latest book, Way of Whiteness, won the Writers League of Texas Violet Crown Award for Poetry in 2000 and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.

Individual poems and translations have appeared in such journals as Poetry, The American Scholar, North American Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Nimrod, to name a few. She has received NEA and Rockerfeller Bellagio fellowships. She is a professor of English at The University of Texas at San Antonio.



Drive to the Pig Farm

Past clipped yards.
Nasturtiums hang over slat fences.
Fields rise out of wounds left by the road.
Jagged places, healed with lupine, poppies.

Drive toward he hills.
Waves of wild carrot, yellow clumps
of wild mustard. Drive past all these,
past the small purple-bladed flower

opening in the shade of live oaks.
Past the farm with red stables.
Round the final turn
mud reaches to the horizon.

Hills of mud piled with pigs.
Hundreds of pigs, sprawled
on their sides, fat haunches limp,
stiff blond hairs rising

over the flesh like sparse fur.
One hunches dog-like,
two-toed foot under its belly.
Their feet mince through the stink, old

potatoes scattered like stones
over the ground.
They lift wet noses over barbed wire,
grunt quietly as we scratch their backs.

Swarms of pigs, half in,
half out of warm brown mud.
Noises from somewhere under their throats,
insistent as the buzz

of flies circling their eyes.
We turn from the fence, pull shut
the doors of the car and drive,
drive back to the rows

of hourse, pastel colors,
pruned roses climbing the walls.








I haven't used any of the really old stuff in a while, so here are some Egyptian love songs (author[s] unknown) from the period 1600-1000 B.C. The songs were translated by Ezra Pound and Noel Stock.



I

You, mine, my love.
My heart strives to reach the heights of your love.

See, sweet, the bird-trap set with my own hand.

See the birds of Punt,
Perfume a-wing
                Like a shower of myrrh
Descending on Egypt.

Let us watch my handiwork,
The two of us, together in the fields.


II
The shrill of the wild goose
Unable to resist
The temptation of my bait.

While I, in a tangle of love,
Unable to break free,
Must watch the bird carry away my nets.

And when my mother returns, loaded with birds,
And finds me empty-handed,
What shall I say?

That I caught no birds?
That I myself was caught in your net?


III
Even when the birds rise
Wave mass on wave mass in great flight
I see nothing. I am blind
Caught us as I am and carried away
Two hearts obedient in their beating
My life caught up with yours
Your beauty the binding.


IV

Without your love, my heart would beat no more;
Without your love, sweet cake seems only salt;
Without your love, sweet "shedeh" turns to bile.
O listen, darling, my heart's life needs your love;
For when you breathe, mine is the heart that beats.








Here's a love poem, of a sort, I wrote several years ago. It's included in my book Seven Beats a Second. It seems a little strange to some, because of the way it comes at the love theme.



flambeau

no moldering
in a dank and dismal box for me

I want to go out in a fiery flash,
consumed in flames and heat
until all that's left of used-to-be-me
is ash and bits of charred and brittle bone

mix this small remainder of what I was
with water, a cement base,
and shiny river pebbles, with a poem
or two cut in paper strips
to weave through the mix
as my love for you has been threaded tight
through all the better parts of my life

from this potion,
make a little concrete bowl
where birds can come to bather
and drink and preen their feathers
in first and last light of every day

set this bowl with its elements of what's left of me
on a pedestal in a shady place near a window
so you can see as the birds come and go
and sometimes think of me








The next poem is by Jack Kerouac. It's one of the 242 Choruses of his book Mexico City Blues. He called these pieces choruses as part of his wish to be read as a "jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday."



25th Chorus

Don’t worry about death
Once you're there
Because it is trackless

Having no track to follow
You will rest where you are
In inside of the essence

But the moment I say essence
I draw that word back
And that remark - essence's
Unspoken, you cant say a word,
essence is the word for the finger
that shows us bright blankness

When we look into the God face
We see radiant irradiation
From mindless center
Of Objectless fire roe-ing
In a fieldstar all its own

Is my own, is your own,
Is not Owned by Self-Owner
but found by Self-Loser -
Old Ancient Teaching








Bush was on tv today explaining about how we have to be careful to not let those poor kids get too healthy. I didn't watch, but wrote this instead.



cold shoulder

liar murderer
thief-in-chief
on tv
again today

didn't watch
never have
never
will

used
to make me
spout
angry poems

no
more

anger
has burned itself out

nothing left
but ash that crumbles
at the merest touch

and indifference,
like an icy
prison
cell








I'll end this week with several short poems from The Same Sky, A Collection of Poems from around the World selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. The book is an excellent anthology published by Aladdin Paperbacks in 1996.



The first poem is by Eka Budianta from Indonesia. The poem was translated by E. U. Kratz.

Family Portrait

I am like Jojon, the farmhand from Tegal
Who left his wife and two children behind
To pedal a pedicab in Jakarta.
Like Salka, the fisherman in Cilincing
Separated from his family on Madura Island.
Every three months or twice a year
We meet our wives and children, to free ourselves from longing.

I am a contract coolie, far from family.
That is common, sir, common. Very common.
We are the hundreds of thousand of coolies
as the city's construction sites
Who have left our families behind in the village.
When looking at the clouds in the bright sky,
We do not cry, but neither are we delighted.
White clouds that pass over my village,
Tell them my life in the city's alright.

I'm just Jojon, on contract in London.
You and the children live quietly in the village.
When you see the mist descend from the sky,
Or when it rains for days before Christmas,
Relax, sleep in peace
In your dreams I will send millions of stars,
As long as you, in your prayers, also mention my name.


The next little poem is by Christine M. Krishnasami from India.

beside a stone three
thousand years old two
red poppies of today


And finally, this poem by Karl Krolow from Germany. The poem was translated by Kevin Perryman.

The Open Shutter

Someone pouring light
Out of the window.
The roses of air
Open.
And children
Playing in the street
Look up.
Pigeons nibble
At its sweetness
Girls are beautiful
And men gentle
In this light
But before the others say so
Someone shuts
The window again.








Time to be heading on down the road. Until next week, remember, all the work included in this blog is the property of its creators, while the blog itself is produced by and the property of me....allen itz.

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The First North Breeze   Saturday, October 13, 2007

II.10.2.



And we're back again. I had an interesting week, at least the first several days of it when I did some traveling. I drove about a thousand miles last weekend, making a big circle from San Antonio up into West Texas and back, trying, as much as possible, not to take any road twice in different directions. For the most part I was able to do that, taking pictures all the way. All of the photos in this week's issue are from that excursion.

There'll be more about that as we go along.








I begin this week with several light poems from The Same Sky, A Collection of Poems From Around the World



Ingemar Leckius is from Sweden. He was born in 1928 and published his first book Other Rites in 1951. He is also a critic and translator. His translator for this poem was May Swenson.


Locked In

All my life I lived in a coconut.
I was cramped and dark,
especially in the morning when I had to shave.
But what pained me most was that I had no way
to get in touch with the outside world.
If no one out there happened to find the coconut,
if no one cracked it, then I was doomed
to live all my life in the nut, and maybe even die there.
      I died in the coconut.
A couple of years later they found the coconut,
cracked it, and discovered me shrunk and crumpled inside.
      "What an accident?"
      "If only we had found it earlier...."
      "Then maybe we could have saved him."
      "Maybe there are more of them locked in like that."
the said, and started knocking to pieces every coconut
within reach.
      No use! Meaningless! A waste of time!
A person who chooses to live in a coconut!
Such a person is one in a million!
            But I have a brother-in-law who
      lives in an
      acorn.



Our next poem from The Same Sky is by Miroslav Holub, a Czech poet and immunologist. He was born in 1923 and died in 1998. The poem was translated by Kaca Polackova.


Napoleon

Children, when was
Napoleon Bonaparte
born? asks the teacher.

A thousand years ago, say the children.
A hundred years ago, say the children.
Nobody Knows.

Children, what did
Napoleon Bonaparte
do? asks the teacher.

He won a war, say the children.
He lost a war, say the children.
Nobody knows.

Our butcher used to have a dog,
says Frankie,
and his name was Napoleon,
and the butcher used to beat him,
and the dog died
of hunger
a year ago.

And now all the children feel sorry
for Napoleon.



And our last poem for the week from The Same Sky is by Michael Ondaatje, a Canadian born in Sri Lanka in 1943. His book The Cinnamon Peeler includes poems spanning twenty-five years.


Sweet Like A Crow

for Hetti Corea, 8 years old

Your voice sounds like a scorpion being pushed
through a glass tube
like someone has just trod on a peacock
like wind howling in a coconut
like a rusty bible, like someone pulling barbed wire
across a stone courtyard, like a pig drowning,
a vattacak being fried
a bone shaking hands
a frog singing at Carnegie Hall.

Like a crow swimming in milk,
like a nose being hit by a mango
like the crowd at the Royal-Thomian match,
a womb full of winds, a pariah dog
with a magpie in its mouth
like a midnight jet from Casablanca
like Air Pakistan curry,
a typewriter on fire, like a hundred
pappadams being crunched, like someone
trying to light matches in a dark room,
the clicking sound of a reef when you put your head into the sea,
a dolphin reciting epic poetry to a sleepy audience,
the sound of a fan when someone throws binjals at it,
like pineapples being sliced in the Pettah market
like betel juice hitting a butterfly in mid-air
like a whole village running naked onto the street
and tearing their sarongs, like an angry family
pushing a jeep out of the mud, like dirt on the needle,
like 8 sharks being carried on the back of a bicycle
like 3 old ladies locked in the lavatory
like the sound I heard when having an afternoon sleep
and someone walked through my room in ankle bracelets.

The book's editors were kind enough to include this note: A vattacka is a vegetable. Pappadams are extremely thin, crispy, round lentil wafers, which can be dipped into various sauces. Brinjal is a British word for eggplant.










My favorite part of my weekend drive was Hwy. 170 from Presidio to Terlingua. The road goes along the path of the Rio Grande, within view of the river in many places, and on the southern edge of the Big Bend State Ranch. This is a huge ranch adjacent to the Big Bend National Park. It was sold to the state for a small price or donated outright (don't remember which) by the ranch's owners. It's not a long drive, only about 80 miles, but it took nearly all of Sunday morning because of the twist, turns and frequent stops for pictures. Along the drive, you get to see the river in both a desert environment, where it is a green belt crossing the sand and caliche flats, and through the mountains where you can see it far below on the floor of canyons it's carved through the ages of its flow.



rio grande

carves
canyons
through mountain rock;
lays a winding ribbon
of green
across white desert
dust

creatures
great and small
come to it,
drink,
live another day








One more little bite from Marfan by Peter Reading then I'll let it rest for a while.



fromMarfan

Presidio County Courthouse, Marfa, built
in 1886 of native stone
and bricks made locally, three stories high
with an octagonal tower capped by a dome
on top of which the fancy classical figure
of Justice once held in her outstretched digits
the symbol of her calling but now fingers
only the dusty hot air off the desert -
an irate cowpoke back in history,
quitting the calaboose across the street
(where he'd been held for being drunk), observed
"There ain't no justice in this goddam county",
and shot the scales plumb out of the goddess's hand.








Again, this week, another love poem from Beki Reese.



confused

Sometimes
you are exactly what I need.
Our years together
left an easy understanding between us;
I fit just right beneath your arm
and when I'm lonely
your presence here can ease the ache.

Sometimes
I want more than this easy friendship.
I need the comfort of skin on skin,
to cool my fevered blood with you.
But something in me holds me back,
cannot commit in exchange for love.
There are some hurts that haven't healed,
some fears that are not put to rest,

some dreams my heart still can't let go.








Through many dynasties, the writing of poetry, along with other refined arts, was a social requirement of China's rulers and the Chinese ruling class.

I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the poems of China's elite during the sixteenth century. These poems are from The Anchor book of Chinese Poetry, published by Anchor Books in 2005. The poems were translated by the book's editors, Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping.



The first poet of that period we look at is Yang Shen, born in 1488 and died in 1599. (It seems unlikely that he lived to such and old age, but these are dates the book gives). He began his life as a high-placed member of Chinese society, but fell from the emperor's grace and was sentenced as a convict to permanent military service in exile. During his 35 years of exile, Yang Shen became a very successful and prolific writer and scholar, traveling widely in his mind even as his body remained stuck far away in Yunnan province.


On Spring
Ocean wind blows ocean trees
and for ten days I shut my doors,
sitting here, grieving the loss of spring blooming
and counting red petals falling the wall.



The next poem is by Wang Shizen, born 1526 and died 1590. Wang was another highborn. He passed the highest imperial exams and achieved high position, but returned to the capital in an unsuccessful attempt to save his father, a famous military man who had been ordered executed by the prime minister, Wang's enemy.

After this, no longer able to sustain regular postings, he turned his life to writing and scholarship and became a leading literary light of his day.


Climbing Up the Taibai Tower

It is said in the past Li Bai
gave a long howl and climbed up this tower.
Once he paid a visit here
and his high reputation remains for a hundred generations.
Behind the white clouds the sea dawns
with a bright moon, a celestial gate, and autumn.
As if to greet Li Bai's return,
the Ji river water flows with music



Gao Panlong (1562-1626) came from a wealthy family of landowners who gave him away to a granduncle who was unable to have his own children. A neo-confucianist, a stoic and a fatalist, he became a serious scholar. After a political schism in 1593, he was demoted and sentenced to live far from the capital as a jail warden in Guangdong province.

After the death of the emperor, Gao's friends came back to power, appointing him to a number of important positions. Another political turnaround 1624 put him in jeopardy again, this time for his life. Learning that imperial bodyguards were coming to get him, he drowned himself in a pond on his family's estate.

This poem describes his life as a scholar.


Idle in Summer

I sit in meditation in the long summer,
not a single word all day.
You ask me how can I do that?
My heart is at ease when I have nothing to do.
Fishing boars are returning in fine drizzle,
children are noisy in woods.
Northern wind suddenly turns south,
the sun sets behind a distant mountain.
I feel happy at this scene
and pour a drink to go with this great mood.
Gulls fly away from the pond.
In twos they keep coming back.



Zhang Dai (1597-1684) was born into a family of wealthy scholars and officials. He was a tea connoisseur and like his family lived extravagantly, surrounded by elegant art and fine antiques. This life of ease changed after the 1644 Mongol invasion when he lost all and fled to the mountains where he lived as a hermit - penniless, hungry and cold - for the rest of his life. Many say he wrote many of his finest pieces during these difficult last years.


fromTen Scenes of the West Lake: Broken Bridge in Melting Snow


A long bank and shade of tall willow.
Sparse moonlight shifts through.
My feet step in the loose sand
as if walking in snow.








There's something about driving on a long highway, listening to old music, that brings back old times, old regrets.

I wrote this last week while on I-10 heading west.



singing with Peter, Paul and Mary

it's raining in Alpine
they said
but I'm still
a long way from there,
doing 80
under clear
West Texas
skies,
singing along
with Peter, Paul
and Mary
with her long
blond hair
and strong
clear voice
and we're
singing about
hammers and
lemon trees
and fast race horses
and magic dragons
just like we
did back in the
day,
good days,
those several months
in '64-'65 when it
looked like it was all
going work out really
OK, when it seemed
peace and love
and social justice
were within our grasp,
sure, then, that we
were a better,
brighter
future,
not just regurgitations
of the dismal
past

that future is with us, now,
and what cynics we have
become in this new age,
our better selves
laughable
and remote








I don't use Charles Entrekin often. His poems are very personal and indirect and centered on relationships. You have to be in a mood to set yourself aside so that you can slip into his mind before the poems work. They are not poems that can be experienced successfully from the outside. I guess I'm in one of those moods today because I really enjoyed this poem.

The poem is from Entrekin's book In This Hour, published by Berkeley Poets Workshop & Press in 1989.



Point Pinole

Lying in sunlight, I know her like memory
eyes closed, freshly
fallen, veins and dreams over her eyelids.
I stare into Eucalyptus leaves, watch
two black fishermen hold up their catch
to one another. In the distance
behind the Golden Gate, the sun
casts everything in pink. In a few minutes
we will leave. Nothing will be the same.

A barge creeps across the skyline.
She sits up, legs straight out like a child,
and I see beyond here, almost breaking,
the top branches caught in the heavy wind,
bending something inside me, and yes,
this is what follows, these winds
blowing always from the same direction,
from what we leave behind,
a reality of mornings,
of lone day after another,
of keeping safe in a safe house.








Alex Stolis is writing a series of poems based on the Tarot deck. Here is the third in that series.



Card III

The Empress becomes an Agnostic

she imagines blackbirds flying in a straight line
over flat land, wonders how love feels when it's raw
before the sharp edge of regret cuts down the sun.

night drifts to dream and she sews a scarecrow
using rags from the past.
she'll hide her sins and wrap his straw arms

around herself to keep warm. she never believed
in second chances and even now is not willing
to trade memories for repentance.

one day, when loneliness is gone and forgotten
she'll hear a voice catch in the wind and listen
for the distant sound of beating wings.








My next poem is by Michael Van Walleghen, professor of English, at the time his book was published, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The poem is from his book Blue Tango, published in 1989 by the University of Illinois. This is his second book. His first was The Wichita Poems.

There's usually a at least a touch of humor in Van Walleghen's poems, as well as an air of exaggeration. He writes about his father often, the kind of off-kilter father you wouldn't want to have yourself, but one who would be fun if he was the father of your best friend.



Peach Isle

first the sky turns green, then
green-black, crepitating, alive

with lightening. Car lights
start coming on, streetlights

the lights in riverside apartments -
while on the river there begins

a cacophony of anxious whistles
thunder, the clangorous alarms

of a channel buoy, close by....
This is not a good idea Joe

I hear my mother say. Already
an icy spray has soaked us

to the bone. Our stupid oars
are useless. We bobble merely

in the wake of motorboats, yachts -
everyone fleeing for cover but us

and the keening oar-boat dreadnoughts
anchored in the gloom above Peach Isle

our Sunday paradise and picnic spot.
I'm six weeks old on this picnic

an infant Jonah, fitfully asleep
still dreaming the panicky instant

of his own conception - dreaming
monstrous fish, the destruction

of cities, all the Hieronymus
Bosch landscapes of 1938....

Let's throw him overboard Bernice
my father whispers, Otherwise

it starts to rain - egg-sized hail
starts bouncing from the seats

and we huddle there like refugees
machine-gunned in their dinghy....

Sinking instantly, sucked down
like the swatted flies I'd throw

years later, when the war was over
to sunfish on our bright lagoon -

eight years old, mysteriously alive
a stormy price living with impostors.








Jim Corner is, like me and many of the poets I've met in internet workshops, a retired person, in his case, a retired minister. There are many of us who, given time after a busy life, find the exercise of poetry a way to keep our brains from coagulating as well as a way to think about things in our life we never had time to think about in any serious, sustained way before.



Several Ways to Spend the Hours

I never thought I would splurge
five days, each week alone,
attached by your love - connected
by cell phone. Strange how my
retirement dream consists of hours
to fill: discoveries at Starbucks,
those vanilla cinnamon twists,
meeting a woman with theology
darn near mine, a man whose alloy
leg allows him to ride his motored
tricycle, a reporter who asked
for an interview before writing
an article about my poetry.

I almost never read the paper
except for movie reviews;
I find better writers on CNN
or NPR. That's not all: I love
to converse; those dialogues
and interviews fill my cup
along with my aromatic java.

I sing beneath my breath
"I love coffee, I love tea;
I love java and java loves me -
a cup, a cup, a cup!"

My wrist watch reports moments
and hours. Today we will meet for lunch
about noon; we will chat about you
and the Mexican children you teach,
about this poem I composed
as you crossed Apache Trail at 6:30
a.m. this morning.

I sing the old ballad, Silver Threads
Among the Gold: "Darling we are growing
older, silver threads among the gold,"
huummmm....








My next poem is by Steve Healey from his book Earthling published by Coffee House Press in 2004.

Healey teaches writing to prisoners in several Minnesota Correctional Facilities and is Associate Editor of Conduit Magazine.



I live two doors down from the powerball winner

She's bathrobed in her backyard,
    her first cigarette of the day.

The sun just scalped her lilac hedge,
    she's headlined in orbit.

Doing last night's dishes I soap
    her queendom logarithmically,

Rooftops free from gravy stain,
    hills of misc. sink below skyline.

It's all you minus the germs:
    everyone wins a staring contest.

Everyone either spoon, fork, or knife,
    that's what I try to remember.

Give the dog a bone for love,
    find something else to hold.

Those buttercups weren't lying
    to our chins (weren't the TV people

more beautiful in person?).
    Same with grass blades, just mown,

greener than green, despite no rain.
    Not real rain whose rust licks

a few generations, not lightning
    as your now-disposable time/income.

Dear Director of Human Resources,
    my nom de guerre is good neighbor.

I'd like to be swaddled in the Battle
    of Hastings, as seen on tapestry.

This is only a test. One if by land,
    two if by three. So much quiet,

gossip makes it a garment
    we share like a short alley.

Surround my arousal, if you would,
    with pocket-sized Presidents.

According to Pentagon sources
    the bellybutton can't be located,

there's no source. As a result,
    congratulations, and welcome

to the Fertile Crescent. Do you
    need a light? How about some sugar?








Ku Sang was born in Seoul in 1919 but grew up in what is now North Korea. After studying in Japan, he returned and began to work as a journalist, then was forced to flee to the southern part of Korea before the Korean War. He was an editorialist and columnist in one of the major Korean newspapers for many years. He taught in universities and published many volumes of poems and essays, as well as writing a number of plays. He died n 2004.

This poem was taken from his book Wastelands of Fire, originally published in 1984 under the title From Dreyfus' Bench. It was republished under its new name in 2000 by Forest Books.



Here and there

A turnip field on a mountainside.
Around an ancient, springtime-drowsy rock
a single blowfly buzzes.

It comes and goes, all the time,
among old, panlid-like pats of dung
that lie in the grass on the crestward path,
now perching low on the rock's shaded waist,
now squatting high on its sunburned brow,
now moistening itself at the stagnant water
held in deep pits on the rocky crown,

then delicately folding its legs in prayer,
depositing spots of pustular waste
or laying tiny, nit-like eggs,

then flying off to land on a spring chrysanhemum's
                                      stamens,
a single red spot in the midst of the turnip field,
and there, like a little boy hypnotized by a cinema screen,
stares down at fields, rivers, roads,
as they stretch out level to the far horizon

and suddenly the world seems all suspended,
like a green, dead body,
a moment without the sound of breathing,
a moment delivered from starvation, disdain and
                                      slaughter,

this moment, without curses or conspiring,

and somehow, blowfly, dungfly,
as if for you this stillness
bead a grieving fear,
echoing, your buzzing seems to weep.








Shafter, Texas is about two/thirds of the way between Marfa and Presidio, on the Presidio side. The first you see of it as your crest a hill is the white steeple of a church in a little valley below. Then, as you pass the church, you see crumbled, overgrown brick buildings on either side of the road. I wrote the next poem, which tells a little of the story of Shafter. In a way, Shafter is unique only that it is a whole town that has faded away. As you pass through this whole badlands region you see abandoned homes and buildings frequently, adobe, brick, wooden structures where people once at least temporarily found a way to live in this rough country. But it doesn't ever seem to have lasted.

The latest example of this is the town of Lajitas, bought by a developer who built a championship golf course and an international airport and luxury condominiums on the theory that there were people of great wealth around the world who would be willing to pay big bucks to get away from it all. What he discovered is that people who said they wanted to get away from it all really didn't mean all.

If you want to buy a town not too cheap, the owner Lajitas recently declared bankruptcy and is willing to talk.

Anyway, that's another story. This is the poem about Shafter.



ghost town

Robert Speed,
a Texas Ranger,
known as a
rowdy drinker
and bully
of the weak
was killed here,
shot twice with a 45
colt revolver
by William Howell
in his saloon

the day before,
Speed
shot Howell's
dog
and since Howell
was holding the dog
at the time
it was assumed
by most in Presidio
County the dog
was not the
target

most agreed
it was a clear case of
self-defense

on Cibolo Creek
at the east end
of the Chinati Mountain,
16 miles north
of Presidio
or 16 miles
north of nowhere
you'd probably say
if you'd ever been
to Presidio

a ghost town
now, but in 1880
is was a silver mining
town, growing to
1,500 souls, all
well cared for now
by a new church,
white, with a steeple
that shines bright
in the West Texas sun

all the rest
is old stories
and crumbling brick








Now, back to the travels of Blaise Cendrars, half a world away from where we last left him.



fromIslands

I. Chow

The little port city is very busy this morning
Coolies - Tagals Chinese Malays - are unloading a big junk with a
  golden stern and sails of woven bamboo
The cargo is china from the big island of Japan
Swallows’ nests harvested in the caves of Sumatra
Sea cucumbers
Ginger preserves
Pickled bamboo shoots
All the merchants are very excited
Mr. Noghi pretentiously dressed in an American-made checkered suit
  speaks very good English
Which is the language these gentlemen use in their arguments
Japanese Kanaks Tahitians Papuans Maoris and Fijians


III. The Red-Crested Adder

Using he hypodermic needle he administers several injections of
  Doctor Yersin's serum
Then he enlarges the arm wound making a cruciform incision with the
  scalpel
He makes it bleed
Then he cauterizes it with a few drops of lime hypochlorite


IV. Japanese House

Bamboo stalks
Thin boards
Paper stretched across frames
There is no real heating system


V. Little Garden

Lilies chrysanthemums
Cycads and banana trees
Cherry trees in bloom
Palm trees orange trees and wonderful coconut palms loaded with fruit


VI. Rock Garden

In a basin filled with Chinese goldfish and fish with hideous mouths
A few have little silver rings through their gills


VII. Light and Delicate

The air is balmy
Amber musk and lemon flowers
Just being alive is true happiness


VIII. Keepsake

The sky and the sea
The waves come in to caress the roots of the coconut palms and the big
  tamarinds with metallic leaves


IX. Fishy Cove

The water is so calm and so clear
In its depths you can see the white bushy coral
The prismatic sway of suspended jelly fish
The fish darting pink yellow lilac
And beneath the waving seaweed the azure sea cucumbers and the
  green and violet sea urchins









Dave Ruslander and I have been critiquing each other's work on workshop forums for nearly ten years now. It's always a pleasure to sit down and take a read with him through his book Voices In My Head




James River

Silver-blue water boils,
pounds boulders,
roils alive.

Whirlpools swirl and
I taste eddies.
Vortices rush my ears.
My eyes skitter over whitecaps
that tickle running water.

Up a path through the trees,
away from the river,
a stagnant green pool waits.
A weathered pier reaches
toward pond's center
where a white-haired man
swishes his fly rod.

Back and forth rhythm,
nine o'clock, twelve o'clock, three.
He casts an offering
and optimistic whim.

The bait skates
and the line floats after
nothing that I can see.








Next, two more entries from the journal of Julia Alvarez. (I know they aren't really journal entries, but that's the way they read to me and that's the way I think of them.) These are from her book Homecoming published by Grove Press in1984.



I met a man at self-improvement
weekend. Most people who were there were sad,
divorced and sad, or in bad marriages
they couldn't leave for convincing arguments
they sadly told about. When his turn came,
he said right out, I want to sleep with you
and touched my hand. The leaders of the group
invited me to share whatever came
into my head. The sad participants
waited; his sad eyes wouldn't let me go.
My sad ex came to mind. He said he hadn't
meant for us to go bad, he loved me so....
Couldn't we try once more? I looked the man
straight in the eyes and sadly answered both.

**************************************

A man invited me to eat with him
at the Sirloin Saloon. I accepted
although I'm borderline vegetarian
and conversation was all I wanted....
don't ask me why. I said, I know I'm not
supposed to come unless in the back of
my mind I think maybe we've got a lot
in common and could maybe fall in love.
Of course, that's the prime cut! Most likely we're
both starved for sex and split up when we get
too serious. We gabbed till our order
cooled down. It was a pleasure to have met
a woman he could just talk to, he said.
My steak was raw. I cut it and it bled.








Such a sad life had Sylvia Plath, always heading, it seems, into some dark night. Even her poems on motherhood have in them some dark air of despair.



Morning song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
in my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.








Here are several little bits of observation from my drive last weekend.



three bits

1
driving due east
directly into the early sun
on a flaming sea of
orange glare
and haloed silhouettes

2
vulture circles
overhead
rising with desert
heat
falling between
shadowed
canyon walls

3
snake
crosses ahead of me
head swaying
left and right, pulling
its long body
behind,
slowly slithers
behind a boulder
beside the trail








Here's a short piece by Patti Smith, singer, songwriter, poet, and, as described by William S. Burroughs, shaman. This is from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.



Notebook

I keep trying to figure out what it means
to be american. When I look in myself
I see arabia, venus, nineteenth-century
french but I can't recognize what
makes me american. I think about
Robert Frank's photographs - broke-down
jukeboxes in gallup, new mexico....
swaying hips and spurs....ponytails and
syphilitic cowpokes. I think about
red, white and blue rag I wrap around
my pillow. Maybe it's nothing material
maybe it's just being free.

Freedom is a waterfall, is pacing
linoleum till dawn, is the right to
write the wrong words, and I done
plenty of that....








I wrote this poem several weeks ago, then set it aside, not sure what to do with, whether it was good or it stunk. Finally took it out of limbo to expose to the world to sink or swim on its own.



watch a mason build a wall

I have watched
a mason
build a wall,
straight and level,
brick on brick,
until space
became a room,
a house, a place
of living,
dying,
a place
of love and
despair,
all from space
shaped
by the hand of man

I have watched
a mason
build a wall
like a teacher
shapes a mind,
opening
by enclosing,
bringing discipline
to unruly
thirsts
to know

I have watched
a mason
build a wall
like a saint
restores
a sinner,
bringing order
though forgiveness,
banking
fires that rage
within

take some time
from your day

watch a mason
build a
wall








Jim Barnes, born in Oklahoma in 1933, is of Choctaw-Welsh descent. In the 1950's, he migrated to Oregon where he worked for ten years as a lumberjack. He returned to Oklahoma and earned a Bachelors Degree at Southwestern State University and later an M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Arkansas. His poem is from Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry.



La Plata, Missouri: Clear November Night

Last night in La Plata an avalanche of stars
buried the town in constant light the way the red
coalburners on the Santa Fe used to send fires

climbing night and falling back again, burning sheds,
hay, carriages, whatever was set along the track.
An avalanche of stars, last night the Leonids

fired every farm with ancient light, curdled mild
in Amish churns, and sent dogs howling through field
and tangled wood. Never was there such a night like

this. Lovers sprang from one another's arms, reeled
away from lurching cars and thoughts into a state
of starry wonder no human act could have revealed.

As if by common will, house lights went out. The late
work left, families settled out into the snow
unaware of cold, unaware of all except that state

which held us all for those long moments. We saw
and saw again the falling stars course Bear and Swan
take field and farm, take all, and give it back as though

a gift given was given once again. Our lawn
on earth was full of promise in the snowing light.
Earthbound, we knew our engine on a rare November run.








Let's end the week with some fun by that very serious funmiester - e. e. cummings.



This is poem XXXVIII of Part ONE of the book Is 5

Will i ever forget that precarious moment?

   As i was standing on the third rail waiting for the next rain to grind me into lifeless atoms various absurd thoughts slyly crept into my highly sexed mind.

It seemed to me that i had first of all really made quite a mistake in being at all born, seeing that i was wifeless and only half awake, cursed with pimples, correctly dressed,cleanshaven above the nombril,and much to my astonishment much impressed by having once noticed(as an infantile phenomenon)George Washington almost incompletely surrounded by well-drawn icecakes beheld being too strong,in brief:an American,is you understand that i mean what i say i believe my most intimate friends would never have gathered.

   A collarbutton which had always not nothurt me not much and in the same place.

   Why according to tomorrow's paper the proletariat will not rise yesterday.

   Inexpressible itchings to be photographed with Lord Rothermere playing with Lord Rothermere billiards very well by moonlight with Lord Rothermere.

   A crocodile eats a native,who in revenge beats it insensible with a banana,establishing meanwhile a religious cult based on consubstantial intangibility.

   Personnel ne m'aime et j'ai les mains froides.

   His Royal Highness said "peek-a-boo" and thirty tame fleas left the prettily embroidered howdah immediately.

   Thumbprints of an angel named Frederick found on a lightning-rod,Boston,Mass.

   such were the not unhurried reflections to which my organ of imperception gave birth to which i should ordinarily have objected to which,considering the background,it is hardly surprising if anyone hardly should call exactly extraordinary. We refer,of course,to my position. A bachelor incapable of occupation,he had long suppressed the desire to suppress the suppressed desire of shall we say;Idleness, while meaning its opposite? Nothing could be clearer to all concerned that that i am not a policemen.

   Meanwhile the tea regressed.

   Kipling again H.G. Wells, and Anatole France shook hands again and yet again shook again hands again,the former coachman with a pipe-wrench of the again latter then opening a box of newly without exaggeration shot with some difficulty sardines. Mr. Wiggins took Wrs. Miggin's arm in his,extinguishing the spittoon by a candle furnished by courtesy of the management on Thursdays,opposite which a church stood perfectly upright but not piano item;a watermelon causes indigestion to William Cullen Longfellow's small negro son,Henry Wadsworth Bryant.

   By this time,however,the fight of crows had ceased.   I withdrew my hands from the tennisracket.   All was over.   One brief convulsive octopus,and then our hero folded his umbrella.

   It seemed too beautiful.

   Let us perhaps excuse me if i repeat himself:these,or nearly these,were the not unpainful thoughts which occupied the subject of our attention,to speak even less objectively,i was horribly scared i would actually fall off the rail before the really train after all arrived.   If i should have made this perfectly clear,it entirely would have been not my fault.






That's it for this week. But, before closing, I want to slip into a little bit of politics, especially in light of the late breaking news of Al Gore's winning of the Nobel Peace Prize.

I address this to Americans like me, who look forward to the next election with dread, seeing the whole thundering hoard of candidates and finding no one about whom you can say anything more than - better than the mess we have now.

I think "better than the mess we have now" is much too low a standard, particularly considering that what we have now is the worst that's ever been. If you agree and if you would like to see a candidate you would feel good about voting for, I encourage you to go to www.draftgore.com and sign the petition.

As time passes it unfortunately seems more and likely that there's nothing that can be done that would make Al Gore want to face another presidential election campaign and the abuse he would be bound to get from the low-life sleeze-balls on the other side, but think how good you would feel on election day if he does change his mind and you get to mark your ballot for him.


re-elect Al Gore


1. climate change

hot
cold
cold
then hot
don't know
what to wear


2. selective service

wars fought
by fools
who sought them
are extraordinarily
rare


3. what a mix

curiosity
honor
serious thought
depends on neither
lies
nor tricks

www.draftgore.com.

What the heck, it can't hurt.


Finally, must add, as always, all the work included in this blog is the property of it's creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me - allen itz.

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Chasing Marfa Lights   Friday, October 05, 2007

II.10.1.



I'm posting on Friday again this week because I'm leaving early tomorrow for Marfa, Texas, a little town of a couple of thousand West Texans way-out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere. I'm going to hang around and see what's happening at the Chinati Open House Weekend, sponsored annually by the Chinati foundation.

The Chinati Foundation is a contemporary art museum located in Marfa, conceived and founded by the late artist Donald Judd. The nonprofit museum opened to the public in 1986. It was Judd's goal at Chinati to bring art, architecture, and nature together in order to form a coherent whole.

The Chinati Foundation preserves and offers for public viewing large-scale, permanent installations by a limited number of artists. Originally conceived in order to present installations by Judd, Dan Flavin, and John Chamberlain, the museum's permanent exhibitions include works by Carl Andre, Ingolfur Arnarsson, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Richard Long, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, David Rabinowitch, and John Wesley. Throughout the year, the museum hosts temporary exhibitions as well.

The whole enterprise just goes to show what you can do with a couple of empty aircraft hangers.

The weekend is a two day arts party that includes official foundation events as well as wide range of other activities scheduled around the Open House to take advantage of the several thousand arts enthusiasts (and hangers-on like me) who will come to Marfa from all around the world, doubling, or more, for the weekend, the town's population.

Sunday, I think I'm going to take a drive along the border on the southern edge of Big Bend State Ranch, passing through Terlingua, then Lejitas and on to Presidio and, finally, spend all day Monday doing the 500 or so miles to get back home. A nice little weekend plus one excursion.

I'm taking my camera and hope to come back with interesting pictures for next week's "Here and Now." Maybe I'll even get a shot of the famous "Marfa Lights."








Since I'll be in Marfa tomorrow, it makes sense to start this issue off with selections from Marfan, the book of poems and other jottings by Peter Reading I introduced several weeks ago.

So, we begin with two pieces from the Marfan, one an explanation of how the town got its name and another that expresses the sense of most of us who live or have lived in the bi-national culture along the Texas-Mexico border

First, about the name....



from Marfan


In January 1881
work on the Galveston/San Antonio
Southern Pacific Railroads reached this site,
a water stop and freight headquarters which, then,
had no name. Southern Pacific's Engineer
was married to a woman who aspired
to higher things (was reading Dostoevski,
The Brothers Karamazov, 1880);
she dubbed the tank town Marfa, after the loyal
retainer of the Karamazov household,
omniscient old Marfa Ingatyevna
who did not see the fall but heard the scream,
the strange, foam-stifled, long familiar scream
of an epileptic falling in a fit.


And as to the "fence" and all such foolishness....



from Marfan

It's Xenophobia, but pretends to be
outraged concern that hundreds of tons of drugs
are flooding across the Mexico/US line
each year - the hatred's in the stupid faces,
the stupid quasi-military duds,
the stupid guns of off-duty Patrolmen
in Carmen's stuffing their porcine guts with shite
before resuming the cat-and-mouse charade
of rounding up the smooth-faced, terrified hijos,
viejas, campesinos crowded in scrub
this side of the Rio Grande....

                  Washington:
congressional Republicans are baying
for bigger fences, more technology,
more agents and the US military
to stem the tide; the House of Representatives
is calling for 10,000 soldiers to guard
2,000 miles of US/Mexican frontier,
elaborate triple-fencing barriers
(expecially whar tham mothers tries to crass
from Juarez to El Paso) and an entire
new agency for borderline enforcement
(our border's a national secur'ty threat,
and bah God, sah! bah God, sah! Congress better
start a-securin-of our border, pronto!)
The Senate is considering these demands
together with one to add 5,000 more
Border Patrol Gestapo and to provide
sophisticated high-tech apparatus
for the fat, trigger-happy, complacent twats.


(A pretty good rant, harder on Border Patrol agents than I would be, but otherwise expressing what a lot of people on the Texas border feel about the "wall" which they (me, too) see as having the same effect, if not purpose, of the Berlin Wall, sundering into two what has historically been one community, not to mention destruction of several long-established wildlife habitats. Don't let anyone tell you different. Whatever's going on elsewhere, opposition to "the wall" along the Texas border is widespread and intense, though probably futile.)








Sometimes you try your best to be sociable and it just doesn't work out.

I wrote this last week.



frankly, my dear

I spent a good part
of a day last week
trimming
the hedge in front
of my front porch

it was about chin
high
and I cut it back
to about knee high
with the idea
that we could sit
out there in front
and watch life go by

so far
life going by
amounts to cars
going by way too fast
for a nice Andy
Taylor/Aunt Bee
wave and howdy,
several dog walkers
mostly
with ugly dogs
who I suspect are
the producers of the
dog poop
I always find in the yard
- the dogs
not the walkers -
and the very large lady
in the very tight shorts
who jogs by
twice a day huffing
and puffing
and I guess there'd
be a story there,
a real slice of life
story, but frankly
my dear
I don't give a hoot
- I stole that line,
but cleaned
it up for general audience -

so that, as the say,
is life
on Clearview Street
in San Antonio
Texas,
not much
to spend a whole day
trimming hedges for

well
there was the young
girl
who missed the turn
at Callaghan & Clearview
and drove her Ranger
pickup
through my neighbor's
fence this afternoon
but that doesn't
count
because I didn't see it








N. Scott Momaday is a member of the Kiowa tribe. Though born in 1939 in Oklahoma, he claims northern New Mexico as his spiritual home. He graduated from the University of New Mexico and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his novel House Made of Dawn. An artist in addition to being a poet and novelist, his work has been shown in the United States and Europe.

This poem is from Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry.



Four Notions of Love and Marriage

for Judith and Richardson Morese, their wedding

1.

Formerly I thought of you twice,
as it were.
Presently I think of you once
and for all

2.

I wish you well:
that you are the runners of wild vine,
that you are the roan and russet of dusk,
that you are a hawk and the hawk's shadow,
that you are grown old in love and delight,
I wish you well

3.

Be still, lovers.
When the moon falls away westward,
there is your story in the stars.

4.

In my regalia,
in moccasins,
with gourd and eagle-feather fan,
in my regalia
imagine me,
imagine that I sing
and dance at your wedding.







Beau Blue, a "Here and Now" first-timer, lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains, California. He calls himself the stage manager of Blue's Cruzio Cafe (http://www.cruziocafe.com), a virtual performance venue that features flash animations of contemporary poetry, but actually is its creator.

Here's a tip for you - check out Blue's Cruzio Cafe. It is terrific. Either copy the url above to your browser or go to it directly by clicking on the link on the right side of this page.

In the meantime, here's his poem.



The Camel in the Needle's Eye

sometimes through the door, a moose

Please announce yourself to the receptionist.
She'll notice your antlers immediately
and escort you to Pete's pristine cubicle.
If by chance she misses them,
you can bray at these gothic columns
until echoes fill the room,
which happens with incredible dispatch,
and brings prissy Huguenots who'll wave
every manner of banner and scream
about what's best and proper etiquette.
You can act surprised and point
to your jewel encrusted crown.
Then the big guy'll decide if some mistake's been made.
And if that is the case, he'll cancel the parade.








I like both the poems and the essays of Victor Hernandez Cruz.

Most of the essays in his book Red Beans, published by the Coffee House Press in 1991, are too long to use here. But I did find this one about Christmas in Puerto Rico that I'm sharing here today.



Celebrating Puerto Rican Style

          For my children

     Taking an airplane from one age to another was the highlight of my childhood.
     You must get the picture of what it felt like to move, at five years old, from a small tropical village in Puerto Rico to New York city, the largest, most developed urban center on the planet. It was as if we penetrated another dimension. I remember my town, Aguas Buenas; small wooden homes with the touch of Spanish colonial, which in turn contained the Arabic influence of the Moorish occupation of Spain. The town's steep streets were surrounded by a green, lush flora from which descended the singing of the coqui, a unique Puerto Rican toad that permeates the island nights with its mating call.
     The Puerto Rican migration of the late forties and early fifties was one of the great exoduses of recent times, emptying out much of the campesino population amid a collapse of the agricultural system, mainly sugar cane. The bulk of those immigrants arrived in the large northern cities of the U.S. mainland.
     We are a people descended in part from the indigenous population that Columbus described as copper-skinned with straight jet black hair, living in oval-shaped villages of wooden homes that had palm-leaf rooftops. They had their own linguistic, religious and governmental systems until, the anthropologists tell us, this society was exterminated by the cruel policies of the Spaniards. In their quest for cheap labor, the Spaniards introduced Puerto Rico's African element, mostly Yorubas from that continent's west coast. And so the Indian, the Spaniard and the African are the ancestors of the Puerto Rican people - impart a lasting flavor in the language, music, food and spirituality which we describe as criollo.
     On the island of Puerto Rico we never dream of a white christmas or of a Santa Claus being guided through the clouds by Rudolph the Reindeer. On Christmas Day on our island it might be 87 degrees with the gentle East Trade Winds blowing. Islanders begin their festive spirit some three weeks before Christmas Day and go on for another two weeks after. It is as if Christ's radiance were descending upon the earth.
     I remember Christmases so joyful and full of music. Aguinaldo, a form of Puerto Rican carol, jumps with the vitality of life, using drums, guitars and maracas. The songs speak of Jesus as if he were being born again that very moment when the voice and the heart administer the lyric. The songs glorify the Virgen Maria and her divine conception. They venerate the divine, and - as if on the same note - the joys of drinking rum and dancing, of flirting and falling in love, of piercing a hog with a spear and roasting it in the open air.
     Jesus wants us to have a beautiful time, to dance the traditional mapayes, plenas and bombas as well as any bugaloo of invention on the day of his birth.
     A most important feature of Christmas in the traditional towns of Puerto Rico is the asaltos or musical assaults. Each town has its own groups of singing bards who go on a musical rampages, stopping at the entrance of homes or directly below balconies, singing the famous Christmas jingles or improvising their own on the spot. At the end of their rendition it is the custom for members of the household to bestow gifts of food or drink as a sign of appreciation.
     Coquito, a blend of coconut milk and rum, is a traditional Christmas drink that should be sipped sparingly, for it gives you the illusion that you can gulp it down like milk - a great way to end up falling down a mountain and finding yourself in a bushel of guayabas. The Puerto Rican pastel is another must around the holidays - gated plantain, port meat, olives, garbanzos and hot peppers placed within a banana leaf and boiled. The aromas of this and other traditional dishes rise from Puerto Rico's towns on Christmas, waking the palates of the living and the dead.
     In North America's cities, Christmas trees are purchased in lots set up under freeways. In Puerto Rico the tradition is different. The holiday of Los Tres Reyes Magos, the three wise kings, is celebrated on January 6th, and it on that date that Puerto Rican children receive their gifts. But first they must prepare for them. Each must go out into the countryside with a box and gather grass. They then place the boxes under their beds, and it is there that they discover their gifts on the morning of January 6th. This grass under the bed is Puerto Rico's Christmas tree.
     My island home is fighting for its cultural values and economic survival under the pressure of North American control. But at Christmastime Puerto Rico may have the upper hand. All airlines going into San Juan around the holidays are booked down to every seat. If you fly standby, rumor has it that sometimes you can get in but you can't get out.
     Well, if that happens to you, take to the mountains of the interior, for those are the pictures sent by Christ from the heavens.
     Feliz Navidad.








My next poet, James Lineberger, is appearing in "Here and Now" for the first time.

James is a retired screenwriter, sometime playwright, and full-time poet. His work has appeared in a number of print and online publications. Some of his poems can be found through google. He also has eight volumes, and a full-length play, available here: http://www.lulu.com/james_lineberger



drought

there's an old southern tale
dating back to slave times
that water
is composed of lost souls seeking
a place to rest
but what was true back then
has somehow gone awry
much like the weather itself
in this deadly piedmont summer
where to hear tell it
even your dashboard jesus
needs a face mask
and red dust rains in a crazed rapture
upside down








Next I have two poets from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry I wrote about last week.

First, I have a poem by William Wantling who, in the brief 44 years of his life, went from hardened convict to underground poet to full-fledged academic.



Poetry

I've got to be honest. I can
make good word music and rhyme

at the right times and fit words
together to give people pleasure

and even sometimes take their
breath away - but it always

somehow turns out kind of phony.
Consonance and assonance and inner

rhyme won't make the real or the true
which we call Life. Like the other

day. The other day I was walking
on the lower exercise yard here

at San Quentin and this cat called
Turk came up to a friend of mine

and said Ernie, I hear you're
shooting on my kid. And Ernie

told his So what, punk? and Turk
pulled out his stuff and shanked

Ernie in the gut only Ernie had a
metal tray in his shirt. Turk's

shank bounced right off him and
Ernie pulled his stuff out and of

course Turk didn't have a tray and
caught it dead in the chest, a bad

one, and the blood that came to his
lips was a bright pink, lung blood,

and he just lad down in the grass
and said Shit. Fuck it. Sheeit.

Fuck it. and he laughed a soft long
laugh, 5 minutes, then died. Now

what could consonance or assonance or
even rhyme do with something like that?


Next from the "outlaw bible" is this Cleveland based poet, artist, and alternative publisher, d.a. levy. Levy was born in 1942 and died in 1968 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.



The Bells of the Cherokee Ponies

i thought they were
wind chimes
in the streets at night

with my young eyes
i looked to the east
and the distant ringing
of ghost ponies
rose from the ground

Ponies Ponies Ponies

(the young horse becomes
a funny sounding
word)

i looked to the east
seeking buddhas to
justify those bells
weeping in the darkness

The Underground Horses
are rising

Cherokee, Delaware, Huron
we will return your land to you

the young horses
will return your land to you

to purify the land
with their tears

The Underground Horses
are rising
to tell their fathers
"in the streets of night
the bells of cherokee ponies
are weeping."








I was a huge reader of science fiction in my teens and twenties, but I drifted away as the writers I knew and looked for died off. There is so much crap in science fiction and it is such a struggle to get through the crap to find the really good stuff, I just kind of left it behind.

But I still remember those old science fiction stories that moved me and filled me with awe when I was young. And I still read the New York Times Science Section on Thursdays and often find new science that seems awful familiar to me.



sol brother

I read a story once
that imagined
stars
were sentient creatures,
unimaginably remote
from all others like themselves,
great lonely beings
who, through loneliness
and the weight of billions
of years of life,
grew wise as any god
ever imagined

I remember this story as,
just minutes ago,
I heard on the news
of the discovery of something
called "plasma dust,"
inorganic matter that
creates
little DNA-like links
that define it, that replicates
itself, that grows, and that, in all
other ways, demonstrates
something that looks like
a kind of inorganic life
flourishing in the blazing
furnace
of
stars like our own,
a kind of life
unimagined
by anyone but, maybe,
a science fiction writer
forty years ago








I made a run to my favorite used book store last week and picked up several poetry books. One Dark Sky Question is a collection by Larissa Szporluk. The book was published by Beacon Press in 1998.

Szporluk is author of two books of poetry in addition to this one, which won the Barnard Poetry Prize. They are Isolato, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize; and The Wind, Master Cherry, the Wind with Alice James Books.

In addition to having received a 1998 Rona Jaffe Writers Award, her poems have been widely anthologized in Best American Poetry 1999, Best of Beacon 1999, New American Voices, and Young American Poets.

She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Bowling Green State University.

I have to admit that, as something of a literalist, I have some trouble with "getting it" in a lot of her work.



Under the Bridge

You never know when someone will
stick a little knife
in your heart and walk away -

and the handle that smells of his hand
vibrates by your breast
as he ducks through the trees

and minutes later blows like a shirt pin
across the frozen lake.
And you're all wet, and he's in love

with what he's done.
And because of the cut,
the distance of your life pours out,

and because of the clouds
like fat that surround you,
you don't hear

for a long time
the tom-tom beating
in the sky, letting shadows

too heavy to be birds,
and yelling with a message
to forgive him

like the others did their father
under the bridge there
where ropes still linger

in remembrance of their necks,
where a flute in case lies cold
forgive him. Say

his name. It was only
power that he had to have,
and look what the one thrust gave him.








It has been a couple of years now since Gary Blankenship, a familiar name here, published his book A River Transformed: Wang Wei's River Wang Poem as Inspiration. In the book, Gary writes his own poems inspired by poems from Wang Wei's (701-761 AD) "Wang River Collection." With each of his original poems, Gary includes a literal translation of the original poem plus his own version of the original. If Gary still has any copies of his book available, you can get information on how to purchase one by visiting his web site. Just click on the "Gary Blankenship" link on the right.

I've used Gary's original poems from the book before. This time, to give readers a better perspective of the book, I will include all three elements.

All of the following is from the book.



After Wang Wei's South Hill - Leaving the City

A fisherman waves,
his skiff lifted by the ferry's wake
and curls from a tramp steamer headed north
to deliver toys to the river's children

A blackfish pod breaks the surface,
passengers crowd against wet windows;
the city's lights shatter behind,
the sun's last red radiance ahead.

I leave with too many questions.
Do the answers lie in firs near a gravel stream?
You seem certain, your smile without doubt,
except when you glance south, behind us.

Beneath the water, ghost nets, spotted shrimp,
shadows lost to a painter's palette.


The literal translation of the original from the Chinese web site is:

Light boat south hill go
North hill vast expanse hard reach
Separate bank see person home
Long way off not recognize


Gary's version is:

A light boat takes us to South Hill,
the north a long, hard voyage.
Across the wide lake, I see villagers,
strangers to us on this dark shore.








Another book I picked up this week is Poems 1959-1979, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1989, which brings together under one cover two previous collections of work by Federick Seidel, Final Solutions, published in 1963, and Sunrise, published in 1980.

Since releasing this book, he has published his collection, The Cosmos Poems, which was commissioned by the American Museum of Natural History to celebrate the opening of the new Hayden Planetarium in 2000, Going Fast, which was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and his most recent book, Ooga-Booga, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was shortlisted for the 2007 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

Here are two poems from his 1980 collection.



Death Valley

Antonioni walks in the desert shooting
Zabriskie Point. He does not perspire
Because it is dry. His twill trousers stay pressed,
He wears desert boots and a viewfinder,
He has a profile he could shave with, sharp
And meek, like the eyesight of the deaf,
With which he is trying to find America,
A pick for prospecting passive as a dowser,
He has followed his nose into the desert.

Crew and cast mush over the burning lake
Shivering and floaty like a mirage.
The light makes it hard to see. Four million dollars
And cameras ripple over the alkali
Waiting for the director to breathe on them.
How even and epic his wingbeats are for a small fellow.
He sips cigarette after cigarette
And turns in Italian to consult his English
Girlfriend and screenwriter, who is beautiful.

In Arizona only the saguaros
And everybody else were taller that he was.
Selah. He draws in the gypsum dust sela
He squats on his heels for the love scent, finally
The technicians are spray-dying the dust darker.
It looks unreal, but it will dry lighter,
Puffs of quadroon smoke back out of the spray guns.
The Open Theater are naked and made up.
Between his name and neant are his eyes


Robert Kennedy

I turn from Yeats to sleep, and dream of Robert Kennedy,
Assassinated ten years ago tomorrow.
Ten years ago he was alive -
Asleep and dreaming at this hour, dreaming
His wish-fulfilling dreams.
He reaches from the grave.

Shirtsleeves rolled up, a boy's brown hair, icy eyes
Softened by the suffering of others, and doomed;
Younger brother of a murdered president,
Senator and candidate for president;
Shy, compassionate and fierce
Like a figure out of Yeats;
The only politician I have loved says You're dreaming and says
The gun is mightier than the word.








And now we have something I'd like to do more of, a piece of short fiction by another "Here and Now" first timer, Wayne Scheer.

After teaching writing and literature in college for twenty-five years, Wayne retired to follow his own advice and write. He's been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net. His work has appeared in The Pedestal, Pindeldyboz, and Eclectica Magazine, among others.

Wayne lives in Atlanta with his wife and can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.

Here's his story.



Brooklyn, 1960


If ten year-old Arnie Goldbladt ever answered his relatives honestly when they asked the "so-what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up" question, he would have answered, "Italian. I want to be Italian when I grow up."

Italian kids, it seemed to Arnie, had muscles where he had bones, never wore glasses and could mold their hair into a perfect pompadour while Arnie's hair, no matter how much Brylcreem he applied, formed ringlets, hardened curls his mother thought cute.

As stubble sprouted on Arnie's dimpled cheeks and his voice covered the range of a Doo Wop group in a single sentence, he held steadfast to his life's ambition. Although Arnie's family regaled him with lists of famous Jews in history, from Einstein to rock 'n' roll's Neil Sedaka, he knew that although Sedaka sang of his "Calendar Girl," the real Miss April dated Frankie Avalon.

So Arnie slicked back his hair as best he could and befriended Vinny Moreno, who lived across the hall of their Brooklyn apartment house.

In turn, Vinny and his friend Bobby Russo introduced Arnie to beer and girls. One hot, humid evening the three boys shared a six-pack and Mary Carbone. Mary, at sixteen, was one year and a lifetime older than the boys. For five dollars, she let each of them slip their sweaty hands under her shirt and touch her bare breasts.

With hands trembling, Arnie felt the quivering mounds of flesh, thinking how utterly wonderful it was being Italian.








Of the four new-to-me poets I picked up this week. My favorite is Charles Harper Webb. The book I found is Reading the Water, published by Northeastern University Press in 1997.

Webb was educated at Rice University, the University of Washington, and the University of Southern California. He worked for fifteen years as a professional rock singer and guitarist and, as of publication of this book, was a licensed psychotherapist and professor of English at California State University. His poems are honest and direct, qualities I especially admire.




Prayer for the Man
Who Mugged My Father, 72

May there be an afterlife

May you meet him there, the same age as you.
May the meeting take place in a small, locked room.

May the bushes where you hid be there again, leaves tipped with
   razor blades and acid.
May the rifle butt you bashed him with be in his hands.
May the glass in his car window, which you smashed as he sat
   stopped at a red light, be embedded in the rifle butt and on the
   floor to break your fall.

May the needles, the doctors used to close his eye, stab your pupils
   every time you hit the wall and then the floor, which will be
   often.
May my father let you cower for a while, whimpering, "Please don't
   shoot me. Please."
May he laugh, unload your gun, toss it away,
Then may he take you with bare hands.

May those hands, which taught his son to throw a curve and drive
   a nail and hold a frog, feel like cannonballs against your jaw.
May his arms, which powered handstands and made their muscles
   jump to please me, wrap your head and grind your face like
   stone.
May his chest, thick and hairy as a bear's, feel like a bear's snapping
   your bones.
May his feet, which showed me the flutter kick and carried me
   miles through the woods, feel like axes crushing your one claim
   to manhood as he chops you down.

And when you are down, and he's done with you, which will be
   soon, since, even one-eyed, with brain damage, he's a merciful
   man,
May the door to the room open and let him stride away to the
   Valhalla he deserves.
May you - bleeding, broken - drag yourself upright.

May you think the worst is over,
You've survived, and may still win.

Then may the door open once more, and let me in.


Here's Webb in a more mellow mood.


Back Flip

"Ten bucks says you can't do it," shrilled Zack Boles,
who didn't have ten bucks, but had a Junior
Gymnastics gold medal from the "Y."

Dad leaned his rake against our sweetgum tree,
lowered his hands, and sighed. His belly - soft
and rounded as a pile of leaves - flexed

with his knees before they straightened, shooting him
up higher than I could have dreamed, his arms
level to the ground, knees lifting to meet

his hands, which pulled his knees over his head
as he spun like a cam on a drive-shaft,
a Foosball-man on its shis kebab of steel.

For an instant he hung, a poor, tricked codger
upended in his chair, thin gray hair plummeting
straight down, I pictured him stretched

on the ground, spine snapped, heart burst,
white-coated medics mouthing, "...nothing
we can do." but he kept turning, his tuck

opening, legs feeling for the ground.
His feet hit hard . He staggered, took a half-step

a Victory V - as the lawn, a Texas sponge,
sprayed cresosote into Zack's face,
and streams of crystal glory over me.








And now, even another contributor making his first appearance on "Here and Now," Billy Howell Sinnard.

Billy describes himself as a poet trying to find honor in life. He says he clearly believes, just as his poems change and grow, people can change and grow, or unfold.



Even The Child Sits Up Straight

He sits on mother's lap looking out the window
expecting to see something he's never seen before.

An old man smoothes a pant leg between thumb
and index finger, folding and putting away
another year. He is nearest the bed.
When the bed breathes, he breathes.

The others also wait.
The hands of the clock are a mime's.
Through the picture window, the day passes
as it did yesterday.

The bed is still.
The old man sighs.

The others breathe on their own again.
The child spies willow branches in the courtyard
lifting in the wind





Painting by Vincent Martinez



I found a book with poems like screams. It is American Dreams by Sapphire published Vantage House in 1996.

Sapphire lives and works in New York City, and was born in Fort Ord, California. American Dreams is her first collection of prose and poetry. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including High Risk 2: Writings on Sex, Death & Subversion, Critical Condition: Women on the Edge of Violence, and Women on Women: An Anthology of American Lesbian Short Fiction. She graduated from City College in Harlem with a degree in Dance. She also earned an M.F.A. from the writing program at Brooklyn College, where she was the 1994 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Scholarship in Poetry. She was the first place winner in Downtown Magazine's Year of the Poet III Award for 1994.



boys love baseball (or a quarter
buys a lot in 1952)

the little boy
gets into the car
with father.
father drives,
father drives the car
fast.
father drives the car fast fast.
it scares the little boy
it excites the little boy,
little boys like to be scared
little boys like to be excited.
the car is brown.
it is a Pontiac,
can you spell that?
P-O-N-T-I-A-C
that's right,
Pontiac.
father is driving the brown Pontiac.
that's right
father is driving.

the little boy is riding
the little boy is riding in the car
the little boy is riding in the car to the baseball game
with father.
his sister is at home
with mother
getting her hair burned
& playing with dolls.
girls love dolls,
boys don't.
boys love baseball,
girls don't.

the car stops
the car stops in the light
the stops in the light on the road.
only father can stop the car.
only father can start the car.
father lifts the boy from the passenger seat
& pulls his pants down.
something hard hurts the boy
for the rest of his life,
splits the soft brown skin
of his buttocks and pushes him in.
father is fucking
father is fucking the boy in the light
father is fucking the boy in the light
stopped on a road.

father gives the boy a quarter.
a quarter buys a lot in 1952.

the little boy's mother had dressed him
so carefully (navy-blue short pants, milk white shirt,
bow tie, new shoes)
so he would look nice on Sunday]
when he went to the baseball game
with father.
when she asks,
"what happened to him?"
father is going to say the little boy
peed on himself, that the little boy didn't
speak up and say he had to go
to the bathroom.
it's not father's fault the little boy
doesn't look like the picture anymore.

father did the best he could!
why, no one ever took father to the baseball game
when he was a little boy.
why, when father was a little boy
they didn't even let black people
play on the same team as white people.

father is thoroughly disgusted with the little boy.
father is not taking the little boy anywhere
ever again.
why, next Sunday, after Mass,
after the Latin speaks in the priest for 30 minutes,
the little girl,
in her freshly ironed curls,
will go riding, riding with father.








I was sitting at my favorite bookstore/coffee shop the other watching the scene go by and this is what went by.



watching old folks

watching
old folks is different
now that it's clear
I am soon to be one -
for example,
I'm more ready than before
to forgive them
their
frailties
as I recognize that
they will be mine
in time

still,
it's a bit over-
whelming
when the bus
from the Rest Your Bones
Home
for the Chronologically
Challenged
pulls up outside
and drops a gaggle
of them on the sidewalk
and they all come in
at the same time,
all that white
hair
all that wrinkly
skin
all those slow
uncertain
steps
as they shuffle
around the store,
examining the merchandise
studying the price,
holding
the price tag
an inch and a half
from their droopy eyeballs

it is a sight not likely
to encourage happy
anticipation
of the days ahead








This is a bit of a longish poem, but I don't see any way that it could be presented other than whole. It is by Shirley Kaufman, born in Seattle, lived in San Francisco, and, now, 79 years old, a resident of Jerusalem since 1973. She is winner of two NEA fellowships and many other awards and has published eight books of poetry, the latest Threshold published by Copper Canyon Press May, 2003.

I found the poem in The Longman anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Second Edition, a textbook I inherited from my son when the bookstore wouldn't buy it back because a new edition is now available.

Forget about writing the "Great American Novel," write a textbook that you can update every couple of years and you're set for life.

Anyway, here's the poem.



Looking at Henry Moore's Elephant Skull
Etchings in Jerusalem During the War

It wants to be somewhere else
remembering anything somewhere
private where it can lie down

floating in the warm belly
of the Dead Sea

so that the skull keeps
growing in the room
and the loose skin

until the whole head sees
its feet

from a great distance

    * * * * * *

Heavy as earth is heavy
under its own weight

it's the same skin
wrinkled on the back of hills

gray in the early morning
on the Jericho Road.

    * * * * * *

The brain scooped out of it
lets in the light
we knew at the beginning

when our eyes were dazzled

pushed
without wanting to be pushed

out of the dark.

    * * * * * *

The mind of the elephant
has nothing to lose.

    * * * * * *

I was begging you
not to go
when you closed the door

and left me
watching the skull's
round openings

the eyelids gone.

    * * * * * *

There are caverns
under our feet
with rivers running deep in them.

They hide
in the sides of cliffs
at Rosh Hanikra
where the sea breaks in.

There is a way to enter
if you remember
where you came from

how to breathe under water
make love in a trap.

    * * * * * *

Step over the small bones
lightly when you feel them
tripping your feet.

    * * * * * *

Fear hangs over your shoulder
like a gun it digs in my arm

but the live head knows
that the eyes et used to darkness

fingers learn how to read
the signs they touch.

    * * * * * *

Ditches where bones stand up
and shake their fists at us

sons in the shadows
and the shadows flattened
like grass rolled over

one-eyed Cyclops
slit of a concrete bunker
we bowl through
looking for flowers.

    * * * * * *

We are going down a long slide
into the secret chamber
we bought our tickets for the ride

the passage is narrow
and we can't find ourselves
in the trick mirrors

we lie down in the fetal position
back to back
each of us in his own eye socket

marvelous holes
the mind looked out of
filling with dust.

    * * * * * *

My lips on the small
rise of forehead above your eyes

mouths of the women in Ramallah
who spit when the soldiers go by

huge head of an infant
shoved out of the birth canal

faces stretched over us like tents
wet bandages over burns

and the white skull balder
than rock under the smile.

    * * * * * *

If the smooth joining of the bone
makes arches from here to there

if the intricate structure yields
arms resting desert landscapes mother and child

if the thin membranes and the thick
weep in the naked bone

then the whole elephant can rise up
out of its flesh

as in the torso of Apollo

something is pulsing
in the vacant skull

making us change.

    * * * * * *

I don't want to stand
on our balcony with the lights out
black buildings
street lamps
and headlights turned off

and nothing
against the sky

the stars get closer
but it's not the same
as when you plug in.

    * * * * * *

There's an elephant inside me
crowding me out
he sees Jerusalem
through my eyes my skin
is stretched tight
over the elephant's skin his wrinkles
begin to break through
I taste the coarse hairs
crowding the back of my mouth
I fall down gagging over my four feet
my nose turns into a tongue with nostrils

it starts to grow.

    * * * * * *

I see bodies in the morning kneel
over graves and bodies under them
the skin burned off
their bones laid out in all the cold
tunnels under the world.

There is a photograph in the next room
of a dead child
withered against its mother
between the dry beans of her breasts

there is no blood
under the shrunk skin

their skulls are already visible.

    * * * * * *

The elephants come after us
in herds now

they will roll over us
like tanks

we are too sad to move

our skulls
much smaller than theirs
begin to shine.








Same place as before, different scene.



watching the fat man sleep

several years older
then me,
five or so inches
shorter
and 100-150 pounds
heavier,
he's sitting at a table
in the coffee shop,
across the room
from me,
catty-corner
to the chair,
legs wide apart
belly
hanging between
them,
a little white slice
of skin
showing
between his t-shirt
and his pants

waiting
for his wife
would be my guess,
he has that look,
eyelids droopy
until finally they close
and his breathing
settles and
slowly
so slowly
he begins to tilt
to the side
until finally he's
very close
to that point
where gravity
will exercise its full
force,
but
just then
he wakes, blinks,
straightens in his chair
and just as quickly
his eyes begin to droop
again
and we're in a race
between
his wife's need to shop
and that old devil
gravity

I wait
for him to hit the floor
but he gets the breaks
this time
and his wife shows up just as
gravity prepares to announce itself,
and she shakes him
impatiently
until his eyes
clear, stuck wide open
like eyes do
when surprised or
when working very hard
not to close
and
together
they walk out the door








Next, appearing for the first time in "Here and Now" is Nadia Tarasova.

Nadia was born and raised in California where she attended U.C Santa Cruz. She says she loves surreal and experimental poetry.



Hard Journey Into NIght


The phone rings a man on the other end
breathing heavy

I want to make love to you!
What?
I want to make love to you!

My eyes are shiny with tears
as my father's gold watch

Why this feeling
I have already been possessed








I had my first job when I was ten years old, then, except for some time off during rambling season, worked until I retired for the first time ten years ago. I retired again a second time five years ago. Despite doing it twice, I guess you could say I'm still not entirely comfortable with the concept.



an in-between season

it's not autumn
yet, but not summer
either, an in-between season
of dark,
cool
mornings,
with hot afternoons
and early dusk
and a million
cicadas
crying from the trees,
the end of their cycle
or the beginning,
I don't know
which, but
I feel it myself lately,
like somethings over
and I'm in a lull
waiting
for whatever's
next








Speaking of the "R" word, it's time for us to retire for the week. But I don't want to do that without first giving myself an attaway.

Since I started doing "Here and Now," in addition to the other stuff I do on the web and in real life, I haven't had time to send my work out for possible publication. But I did, two months ago send several poems off to Loch Raven Review for their consideration. They selected two of the poems which now appear in their autumn issue. It's an excellent journal featuring good work from a number of writers. I recommend it to you and remind you that you can get there by clicking on the "Loch Raven Review" link on the right.

Until next week, I remind all and sundry that all work included in this blog is the property of its creators. The blog itself is produced by and the property of me - allen itz.

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