Blue Harbor   Friday, November 23, 2007


II.11.4




Welcome back, all. Still suffering from pecan pie overdose and don't feel up to preliminary chit chat, so on to "Here and Now."







My first poem is by A.D. Winans from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.

Here's what Winans has to say about himself.

"I made North Beach my home away from home for 1958 through much of the eighties, but never considered myself a Beat poet or writer. If one must use labels, I would prefer the label of bohemian. T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams were two of the earliest poets to influence me. However, it was jazz and jazz musicians like Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Leadbelly, and Miles DAvis that excited me early on. I'm not a guru. I don't go to the mountains looking for the Dalai Lama. I create largely in isolation. I don't long for academic recognition, but neither do I see the academic world as my enemy, as Charles Bukowski did. I simply write from the heart.

I've published 22 books of poetry and have been published in over 500 literary periodicals and anthologies, but that isn't what is important. What you do with it is a different matter. I hope I have earned more good karma than bad karma points. I hope in the end I can look death in the face and say that I've played the game honestly and that I never sold my integrity."

Here's his poem.



Poem for the Working Man and the Upper Mobile Yuppie

Some people guard their lives
Like a eunuch guards
The Harem door
Like a stock broker with
A hot tip
Like a banker who knows
That today's dollar will only
Be worth one-fourth what
It is today
In less time that it takes
To die
Better to linger over
A cup of coffee
Like a skilled lover with
No need for bragging rights
Remember that every newsman
On every street corner in America
That every meat packer and fisherman
Knows more about life than
Your average poet
That blind man rattling
An empty tin cup
Makes more noise than
A yuppie gunning
His BMW
On his way
to the graveyard








This is a good poem for this time of the year from Gary Blankenship. It is from Gary's series based on Whitman's Song of Myself.

Section 16 of Song of Myself includes about sixty lines of occupations, types of people, and the like (for example, pilot, duck hunter, bride, and so forth. The challenge Gary set for himself was to write a series of short poems each inspired by one of the occupations, people mentioned by Whitman in his poem.

We did the first two poems in the series two weeks ago. Here's number 3.

Note: The italic lead at the beginning of each poem is quoted from Whitman's text.



Song of Myself #3 - Children


3. The married and unmarried children ride home

on freeways and city streets
the unexpected and expecting

with thoughts of Mama's cornmeal dressing
Delilah's green beans topped with crispy onions
sticky buns and pecan pie
Wilbur's special blend

after - satiated
asleep through the rattle of dishes
Sam pays me cause he didn't make the spread
a fight between Robert and his friend

until the next holiday
the children married and unmarried return home
on thruways and country roads

some stay the night on Mama's couch
some hit the bars
I sleep off Wilbur's special blend








I made a run to the used book store last week and picked up several good poetry books. This next poem is from one of them (purchased for the grand total price of $4.98), One Hundred Poems From The Japanese, collected, edited and translated by Kenneth Rexrote. The book was originally published in 1955, but the paperback version I have was published by New Directions Paperbacks in 1964.

I selected five poems to present here, the first five in the book, all by Yamabe No Akahito who lived during the reign of the Emperor Shomu and who is thought to have died in 736 A.D. He is a kasei, a deified poet.

Rexrote, in his notes, suggests that the point of the first poem is the contrast of white on white, typical, he says, of he kind of perception prized in Japanese poetry. The next poem is often used to mean "I had such a good time in Yoshiwara, or elsewhere, in feminine company, I forgot to come home." In Akahito's time it probably referred to one of the ladies of the palace, or, it could mean just what it says. The third poem, he says, could refer to the sudden realization of old age during a love affair with a young girl. He makes no suggestion about the fourth and fifth poem, so I guess we'll have to figure it out ourselves.

Here are the poems, figured out or not.



I

I passed by the beach
At Tago and saw
The snow falling, pure white,
High on the peak of Fuji.


II

When I went out
In the Spring meadows
To gather violets,
I enjoyed myself
So much that I stayed all night.


III

Tomorrow I was
Going to the Spring Meadows
To pick the young greens.
It snowed all day yesterday
And snowed all day today.

IV

On Fujiyama
Under he midsummer moon
The snow melts, and falls
Again the same night.


V

The mists rise over
The still pools at Asuka.
Memory does not
Pass away so easily.








Alice Folkart invented a little three line form that ended up being called a "miku" because they're so tiny.

Mine aren't as good as hers, but I tried anyway.



after alice

dogs bark
moon
slips between low clouds

****

morning mist
warns
dreary day

****

sunburst
as clouds
part, make way

****

child
with book,
miles away

****

bright wrapping paper
christmas
for sale here









And now, a shortie by e. e. cummings from his book is 5.



XX

mr youse needn't be so spry
concernin questions arty

each has his tastes but as for i
i likes a certain party

gimme the he-man's solid bliss
for youse ideas i'll match youse

a pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues





Photo by Michaela Gabriel




Now, as promised last week, we have photos from our friend in Vienna, poet, artist, English and computer teacher, web designer and photographer Michaela Gabriel.




Photo by Michaela Gabriel



Photo by Michaela Gabriel



Photo by Michaela Gabriel



Photo by Michaela Gabriel



Photo by Michaela Gabriel









Here's a fanciful tale from our friend from Denmark Jane Roken.

Hang pictures with no tools or use of studs

We meet in the stage props storage hall
for the annual picture hanging séance.
Three days we have fasted and prayed.

The pictures are waiting. Mostly portraits:
founding fathers of the town, fossilized mayors,
dismantled parish councils, antediluvian squires.

Before we enter the hall, we strip and leave
everything in the cloakroom. No cheating. No
hidden tools or studs. (Grant us fortitude!)

Don't expect to come away smelling like roses.
What we're dealing with is an unholy ordure
of pictures like chopped-off heads of monsters,

they cling to everything, thinking they are still
something or other, their voices scratching
raucous, invisible words on any surface.

The worst part is when they start mocking us,
their long yellowish hog-eyes poking
at our nakedness. Their unbearable laughter.

No chance of calling them to order. And then
finally, the undignified, frantic scurrying
to get away from the giggling reptiles.

It is tough, not least on new participants.
Comrade, are you alright? Are you still with us?
Rap once for yes, twice for no.








Another book from my buying spree ($2.98) this week is Storyville, A Hidden Mirror by Brooke Bergan.

The poems are about Storyville, that part of New Orleans just two blocks from the French Quarter that was the city's Red Light District from 1899, when it was created by city ordinance, to 1917, when it was abolished. It was probably the most famous district of it's kind in the United States, producing, along with its whores, gambling and night life, the invention of jazz.

Along with Bergan's poems, the book includes several photographs by Ernest J. Bellocq, a commercial photographer who specialized in boats and machinery parts, but whose total surviving photos are of the prostitutes of Storyville. An artist, Bellocq did portraits, revealing a part of Americana unique to our history. If you remember the movie Pretty Baby, Keith Carradine played a fictionalized version of Bellocql. Many of the poems in the book are based on Bellocq portraits.

Bergan has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has taught writing classes and workshops for fifteen years in grade schools, high schools, libraries, colleges, and universities to widely diverse audiences around the country and is herself widely published.

In some poems, such as this one, Bergan imagines the voices of people from the era.



Voices 4

Jazz is what white folks should be. It come from everywhere - from
Africa, from white folks songs, from the riverboats...

         Jelly Roll, he was half-way a pimp. Most of those fellows
         that played the District were. He could play and he knew
         it alright. But he wasn't the best, and he knew that too.
         The best, the greatest bluesman ever was Tony Jackson.
         We all copied him. Sometimes there'd be so many people
         crowding around his piano he could hardly move his
         hands. He was, well, a sissy, I guess you'd call it. Moved
         on to Chicago after a while and just drank himself to
         death playing in the tenderloin up there.

                  After the district closed, I left and was married in
                  1919. My husband knew nothing about my
                  previous career. I maintained no contact with the
                  colleagues of my Storyville days, except Gertrude
                  Dix Anderson, whom I visit whenever I find
                  myself in New Orleans. I go back frequently,
                  especially for Carnival, which I love dearly.

                           May Spencer, she take me in
                           her house 1911 - I coo'n't
                           speke no English. She's treat
                           me better than my mawther.
                           May Spencer. People says she
                           rooeen't me! I was
                           puta at home before I come
                           dees country. May Spencer
                           treat me real good. Like
                           mawther. Better.

                  All my three girls is older now than I was
                  when I quit the business. They've been to
                  college but I don't see that they're much
                  better off than I was at their age. I know
                  it'd be good if I could say how awful it
                  was and how crime don't pay - but to me
                  it seems just like anything else - like a kid
                  whose father owns a grocery store. He
                  helps him in the store. Well, my mother
                  didn't sell groceries.








This poem got started at the end of a day last week when I signed off on several thousand dollars in renovation and repairs on the place. That's about what we might have cleared in profits on it for the year. Buy high, sell low, that's my investment motto.



to be a country boy again



we have a little rental property
outside San Marcos,
a mobile home on three/quarters
of an acre, set high among rolling hills,
on the edge of the Edwards Escarpment,
that geological separation
marking the end of the Texas
hill country and the beginning
of the Texas coastal plains -
and just a mile away the
San Marcos River,
cold and clear even
in the hottest
days of summer
because of it's proximity
to it's headwater springs

we bought the place
for a purpose and when that purpose
expired we kept it to rent
because that seemed easier
than trying to sell it -
now we have a good tenant,
the kind of golden tenant
landlords dream of
and selling it now would
seem like betrayal of them

even so, every now and then,
caught here in city traffic
or tossing in restless sleep
as the fourth ambulance
of the night passes just
a half a block away,
I think of those rolling hills
and the river and country quiet
nights country fresh air
and decide, maybe,
just maybe, I could learn
to be a country
boy again








This poem is also from one of my book store finds, Two-Headed
Poems by Margaret Atwood.

Atwood is the author of four novels, as well as numerous collections
of poetry. At the time this book was published by Simon and Schuster
in 1978, she was living in Toronto with her daughter and the novelist,
Graeme Gibson.

We've been hearing a lot about torture in the news, more than I want
to hear, anyway. Well here's a view from inside the chamber as seen by
the cleanup help.



Footnote To The Amnesty Report On Torture

The torture chamber is not like anything
you would have expected.
No opera set or sexy chains and
leather-goods from the glossy
porno magazines, no thirties horror
dungeon with gauzy cobwebs; nor is it
the bare cold-lighted
chrome space of the future
we think we fear.
More like one of the seedier
British Railways stations, with scratched green
walls and spilt tea,
crumpled papers, and a stooped man
who is always cleaning the floor.

It stinks though; like a hospital,
of antiseptics and sickness,
and, on some days, blood
which smells the same anywhere,
here or at the butcher's.

The man who works here
is losing his sense of smell.
He's glad to have this job, because
there are few others.
He isn't a torturer, he only
cleans the floor:
every morning the same vomit,
the same shed teeth, the same
piss and liquid shit, the same panic.

Some have courage, others
don't; those who do what he thinks of
as the real work, and who are
bored, since minor bureaucrats
are always bored, tell them
it doesn't matter, who
will ever know they were brave, they might
as well talk now
and get it over.

Some have nothing to say, which also
doesn't matter. Their
warped bodies too, with the torn
fingers and ragged tongues, are thrown
over the spiked iron fence onto
the Consul's lawn, along with
the bodies of the children
burned to make their mothers talk.

The man who cleans the floor
is glad it isn't him.
It will be if he ever says
what he knows. He works long hours,
submits to the searches, eats
a meal he brings from home, which tastes
of old blood and the sawdust
he cleans the floor with. His wife
is pleased he brings her money
for the food, has been told
not to ask questions,

As he sweeps, he tries
not to listen; he tries
to make himself into a wall,
a thick wall, a wall
soft and without echoes. He thinks
of nothing but the walk back
to the hot shed of his house,
of the door
opening and his children
with their unmarked skin and flawless eyes
running to meet him.

He is afraid of
what he might do
if he were told to,
he is afraid of the door,

he is afraid, not
of the door but of the door
opening; sometimes, no matter
how hard he tries,
his children are not there.








Nancy Williams Lazar is with us again this week, talking about her chestnut obsession.



American Chestnut Obsession


From the sky, angular tongues of land lay
fallow, ready for their Spring sowing -
squares of golden, brown or emerald

with early sod. As my plane descends I spy
my hill, a wide scar covered with silver rooftops
and a patch of woods where I once searched

for American chestnut trees. I'd memorized
points on leaves that swished like a skirt
and their spiral stems; scoured ground

for bowl-shaped nuts to indicate American,
not Chinese or beech. All I discovered were small
trees with diseased bark, red with virus.

My obsession lasted through my last
year of menstruation, the year
I knew I would never be a bearer of fruit.








Here's something from Guillaume Apollinaire, a turn-of-the-century contemporary of Blaise Cendrars and like Cendrars a world traveler. The poem is from the book Alcools, a collection of his poems, published by the Wesleyan University Press in 1995. The translation is by Donald Revell.



The Bells

Fair gypsy my fuckster
Listen to the bells

Our love was a secret
We kept to ourselves

But we weren't invisible
Every tower in town
Saw what we did
And the bells spread it round

By tomorrow St. Ursula
Catherine and Henry
The baker her husband
And all of my cousins

Will smile as I go by
I won't know where to put myself
Now that you're gone
I might even die








So here, AGAIN, is another poem about not being able to write a poem. If I keep this up, I may do a whole chapbook of poems about not being able to write a poem.

This one's not so bad, though, poem-wise.



the best of intentions

i was going
to write a poem
today
about the beautiful
morning
that began it

but
everything
i write
sounds like a
parody
of the poem
i would write
if i could write
a poem
today

so i
won't








I used the first two sections of this poem by Sapphire last week. It's from her book American Dreams.

If you didn't see the poem last week, you can read it now by scrolling down to last week's issue. In the meantime, here are the concluding two parts of the poem.



from Rabbit Man

3.

you saw death like the black legs of your mother
like the bent teeth of your retarded sister
like the wet smell of light in a fish's eye.
you saw death riding without a car or credit cards.
you saw death creeping waddling like the fat women
   you hated.
you saw Jesus could not save you.

god's hand is creased with the smell of burnt hair and
   hot grease,
she hears you tell your sons don't get no
   black nappy-head woman.
her titties sag down sad snakes that crawl up your legs
till your penis talks and with blind sight you see
the two daughters you left in the desert without water.
oh death knows you and invites you for dinner,
rolls out the driveway like a coupe de ville,
is a snake-tongued daughter who turns on you,
is a thirsty rabbit choking on a lonely road.
death is an ax in an elevator rising to the sun.
death is god's egg.
death is a daughter who eats,
you are the table now the wet black earth lays upon -
you are dinner for dirt,
a cadillac spinning back to a one-room shack.
you are the rabbit released from fear,
the circle broken by sun
the handle of a buried ax,
head rolling thru the desert
like tumbleweed -
back to Neptune.

4.

now I am the queen of sand,
wind wrapping like wire around the rabbit's neck,
the end of a cycle.
my children refuse to believe your penis is a lollipop.
my children are the desert in bloom
cactus flowers opening to forgiveness,
millions of rabbits hopping -
hopping over you








I wrote this poem six months to a year ago, a social commentary type piece. I may have used it here, but maybe not. It does seem to flow from Sapphire's poem.

It later appeared in Hiss Quarterly.



invisible

I saw it in the paper
yesterday - invisibility
is proven theoretically possible,
with individual Harry Potter-like
clocks of invisibility likely available
within ten years
for those who can afford them

it has to do with adjusting
the thingamawompers
or realigning
the woolypodaddles
or some such...

it's all physics to me

I don't understand the technical
elements involved and neither
do I understand why, with
so many people already invisible,
a scientist needs to make an
invisibility cloak

all a person needs to do
to be unnoticed and unseen
is be poor, no money required

now, I don't mean poor like
those street corner pity panderers
who've figured out there's
a pretty good living to be made
appearing miserable in public
so that otherwise unexceptional people
can feel good about themselves

only costs a buck
and you can be special, too

no, I'm talking about the really
invisible, the real poor people
with a sick kid
and no insurance
paying two-thirds their income
for rat-hole housing
on dirty and dangerous streets
in a part of town you'll never see

unless your maid misses her bus
or your yardman's car breaks down

but you'll probable do without them
if that happens, because, you know,
it smells down there and there's
plenty more where they came from
anyway, or how about the children,
unprepared to learn, sent to schools
that expect them to fail,don't see
much of them, and old people
turning into husks of the men
and women they were, lying alone
and untouched by love or attention
in tiled rooms on tiled halls
awaiting their date of expiration

so many

so many invisible people already
unseen

science is a wonderful thing,
all my life it's made
my fantasies come real,
from moon walks to the daily dose
of drugs that will keep me living
beyond the time I've earned
with the reckless life I've led,
but its moral blindness makes
it not the tool for seeing true

for that, other vision is required

leaving me with no way to end
this poem but with a preaching
and if sermonize I must, I will try
to preach it straight - there is no god
who has an eye those whom we deny

if they are to be seen it must be done
by the likes of you and I








I found some really nice stuff in my used bookstore haunt this past week, including Gourd Seed by Coleman Barks. It was published by Maypop Books in 1993. It cost me the grand total of $3.98.

The poet, Barks, published his first book of poetry in 1972, though he was primarily known in 1993 for his translations of the 13th century mystic, Jelaluddin Rumi. Accordingly to the book, this book represents his collected writings for the fifteen years prior.

I like the way this guy writes. He has a clear, direct style that appeals to me. I heard him this afternoon on NPR, reading one of his Rumi translations. I also like the way he reads.

The thing to remember as you read this poem is that this was the "good" Gulf War, not the abomination going on now. It serves as a reminder that whether it's a good war (and I believe there can be such a thing, maybe not "good" but necessary) or an abomination, the effects of it are the same on the body and soul of those who fight it.



Becoming Milton

Milton, the airport driver, retired now
from trucking, who ferried me
from the Greenville-Spartanburg airport
to Athens last Sunday midnight to 2:30 a.m.,
tells me abut his son Tom, just back
from the Gulf War. "He's at Fort Stewart
with the 102d Mechanized, the first tank unit
over the line, not a short fired at them.
His job was to check the Iraqi tanks
that the airstrikes hit, hundreds of them.
The boy had never even come up on a car accident
here at home, twenty-four years old. Can you
imagine what he lifted the lid to find?
Three helmets with heads in them staring
from the floor, and that's just one tank.
He has screaming flashbacks, can't talk about it
anymore. I just told him to be strong
and put it out of his mind. With time,
if you stay strong, those things'll go away.
Or they'd find a bunker, one of those holes
they hid in, and yell something in American
and wait a minute, and then roll grenades in
and check it and find nineteen freshly killed guys,
some sixty, some fourteen, real thin.
They were just too scared to move.
He feels pretty bad about it, truthful,
all this yellow ribbon celebrating.
It wasn't a war really. I mean, he says
it was just piles and piles of bodies.
Some of his friends got sick, started vomiting,
and had to be walked back to the rear.
Looks like to me it could have been worked
some other way. My boy came through it OK,
but he won't go back. I'll tell you that.
He's getting out as soon as he can.
First chance comes, he'll be in Greenville
selling cars, or fixing them. He's good at both.
Pretty good carpenter too, you know how I know?
He'll tear the whole thing out if it's not right
and start over. There's some that'll look
at a board that's not flush and say shit,
nail it, but he can't do that, Tom."








Here's a nice little autumn poem from friend of "Here and Now" and administrator of The Peaceful Pub poetry forum, Sara Zang.



Barely Skimming the Surface

willow leaf floating
barely skimming the surface
still waters run deep

a season of sun
glinting red, orange and gold
pied colors swirling

frost etches dark veins
a rose struggles in blooming
last trace of summer

night blankets the earth
whispers of moonlit shadows
dance past the pine trees








Here's a short piece from Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry by George Clutesi, a Tse-Shat artist and writer. He has published two books, including Son of Raven, Son of Deer which is used as an elementary English text in British Columbia. He is widely known as a spokesman for the traditional fables and stories of his people.

This is one of those fables.



The Beast in Man

From out of the waters it came with a moan.
Was it animal? Was it a man?
Alone it came for no other would condescend
To be its foe and not a friend.

You saw it gnash a dog in twain,
You saw the gore spill down the chin
While it the water trod.
You saw a grisly sight driven deep within the mind.

In the black waters of our lore
You saw a savage, a savage to the core.
The evil that you saw in the mist of the morn -
It was the beast in man.









I was looking for this piece last week, but couldn't find it because I couldn't remember what I had called it. I meant to use it as a companion to David Cuddy's poem about coming up on an accident on the road.

It's an older poem, written in 2001, published in 2002 inHawkwind.



road sign

blue sky

red cacophony
flashing
on black asphalt

yellow sheet
unfurled
like a flag
in the wind

lowered slowly
over the still
form

red
on black

blue sky
yellow flag








Jimmy Carter, former president and global activist, has written something like 20 books since he was voted out of office. One of those was this book I picked up last week, Always A Reckoning and Other Poems published by Random House in 1995. Like a lot of second life poets (like me), his poems are simple things, about people and places familiar to him, things he cares about.




A Motorcycling Sister

Her lives were always, simply said, her own,
So no one ever knew which one we'd come
To find - a charming southern lady who
Was dressed for tea, or one who made her home

A pad for biker gangs, Daytona bound,
Who'd stop and sometimes stay a week, as though
They'd found a mother - one who rode with them
On many trips. Once, down in Mexico,

She broke her leg, which kept her home awhile
But gave her extra time to freeze and can
Her garden's harvest for the crowds that came,
And ate, and slept on floors, then rode again.

Her final illness filled our town with men,
Leather-jacketed, with beards, who stayed
In shifts, uneasy, in her darkened room.
Telegrams were sent. The hearse was led

To graveside by those friends, two by two,
With one ahead: in all by thirty-seven
Large and noisy bikes. And on her tomb
They had inscribed SHE RIDES IN HARLEY HEAVEN.








Here's another fine piece from Thane Zander, our friend poeticizing away in New Zealand




The Last Train to Babylon

You made a million dollars last week, yet you cry the world owes you a favour. The washing in your room ranks five deep, and rank is what it is. Spend some money on a maid or housekeeper.

The Last Train to Babylon
left the rails south of Baghdad
the carnage for all to see
Sunni, Shia, Kurd, and foreigners
the taste of blood drying on a mouth smashed
I open
the emergency
box
try
to lift
the last
medical supplies
to help
patch
the wounded.

The cup on the nightstand beamed piping hot coffee, the cigarette in the ashtray drawing down. The polite discussion on the TV makes for background noise. I see the love for the written word flash across the screen as you tempted another morsel from the acclamation journal.

The Iraqi's flashed a warning to all
the tracks being blown to smithereens
no, the oil pipeline is safe, secure
the days of Hussein the Hated passed
you crawl
through
damaged
carriages
looking for children
broken bones
dead hearts
the loss
great
compared
to the war
that rages
diminishing now
a scream
another
lost mother

The ride downtown to choose your next business partner a major hassle with cars locked in grid-lock, the cell phone constantly beating out the next meeting. Cairo called to say something big is going down in the Middle East, something about a train of peacekeeping citizens being sabotaged for the sake of religion.

The crucifix, the star of David,
a Mullah with a memory of the Koran
practice death rights amongst the carnage
the disinterred bodies of the dead and dying
passing on their way, no matter the medical supplies.

I walk amongst
the evil
stand pithy
to their
ministrations
toss love bonds
deep
into
the
bowel
of the Eagle
silently
the Last Post
plays
another soldier
another three
citizens
the delay
between now
and then
the outcome
ongoing.

She draws the curtain in the office, now dimly lit by fluorescent tubes, the computer screen blinking email. You watch her go about her job, wondering if she would wear a burkha? Of course not, this is the free world. The urgency of another phone call reminds you to check your investments, to dial the doctor for another check up. Oh, she says the doctor is in Baghdad to help.








And yet another find from this week's used bookstore scavenging is Kenneth W. Brewer and his book of poetry Sum of Accidents

In 1995 when the book was published by City Art of Salt Lake City, Brewer was Poet Laureate of the State of Utah and was retired from Utah State University where he had taught in the English Department for 32 years.

Born in 1941, he died in 2006.



Sucker Sky

Early March
snow still piled
from late November,

and one morning
the sky opens
to blue.

Water drips
from the roof.
The road steams.

Jakob remembers
the tools left
under the snow,

begins to think
of long, warm evenings,
iced tea, corn.

"Sucker sky"
Uncle Lyman says.
"Don't turn your back on it."

Jakob nods,
drinks coffee
hot on his lips.

Out here
the sky
palms aces.








I broke for lunch a few minutes ago, came back, and wrote this, all broken hearted.



coconut cream pie

we had guests over
for dinner
yesterday evening,
family, for
a little
celebration,
chris,
back from colorado
for a couple of days
cooked,
tortilla soup,
beef and chicken
fajitas,
rice and beans,
guacamole,
pico de guillo
and a coconut
cream pie brought
by a guest

great meal,
but my sugar level
has been extra high
lately and I'm not suppose
to even think about things
like a coconut cream pie,
but I had a piece
anyway,
maybe two,
well, actually,
three

fixed lunch today
of leftovers,
fajitas
beans
soup

but no pie,
just an empty
pie pan
in the sink

looks like my
mate and protector
took the rest of the pie
to her office today

what
a sweet
and thoughtful thing
to do

damn!








Poet in New York is said to be one of the most powerful and influential works of twentieth-century verse. The poems were written while the poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, was a student a Columbia University in 1929-30 and were unpublished during his lifetime. This 8th edition of the book, published by the Noonday Press in 1995 is bilingual with original Spanish and English translations by Greg Simon and Steven F. White on facing pages.



Blacks Dancing to Cuban Rhythms

As soon as the full moon rises, I'm going to Santiago,
   Cuba,
I'm going to Santiago
in a coach of black water.
I'm going to Santiago.
The palm trees will sing above the rooftops.
I'm going to Santiago.
When the palm wants to be a stork,
I'm going to Santiago.
When the banana tree wants to be a sea wasp,
I'm going to Santiago.
I'm going to Santiago
with Fonseca's blond head.
I'm going to Santiago.
and with Romeo and Juliet's rose
I'm going to Santiago.
Paper sea and silver coins.
I'm going to Santiago.
Harp of living tree trunks. Crocodile. Tobacco plant in
   bloom!
I'm going to Santiago.
I always said I'd go to Santiago
in coach of black water.
I'm going to Santiago.
Wind and rum on the wheels,
I'm going to Santiago.
My coral in the darkness,
I'm going to Santiago.
The sea drowned in the sand,
I'm going to Santiago.
White heat, rotting fruit,
I'm going to Santiago.
Oh, the bovine coolness of sugar cane!
Oh, Cuba! Oh, curve of sign and clay!
I'm going to Santiago

                  Havana, April 1930








I'm reading a science fiction book and enjoying it, my first in years. I quit reading sci-fi after years of devouring every sci-fi book I could find, beginning when I was 11 or 12 years old. Then it came to a time when all the old pioneering masters were dying and I couldn't get into any of the new ones.

I picked this one up at random. I was going to lunch and like to read whenever I'm eating by myself and didn't have anything so I grabbed this one off the shelf at Borders just to have something.

Turns out it's good, Odyssey by Jack McDevitt. It's a bit old fashioned, but that's the point.

In that mood, I close this week with a sci-fi inspired poem. It's one from several years ago and it's included in my book Seven Beats a Second.



our place in the story of space and time

we are of the same stuff as stars,
made in the spasm of creation
that began all space and time,
electrical impulses,
static of the expanding universe,
positive and negative influences
that form a thing we call matter
arranged in a manner we call me.

our birthing
not the arrival of something new,
but reincarnation,
rearrangement of the elements present
since the first day, sparks
thrown off by that day's conception

our death not the end
but another reformation,
a recycling of the stuff that made us
so that we might become again
a star or a tree or another babe in arms
or just a speck of universal element
drifting for as long as there is time

until it will finally come
that all the pieces come to rest
and slowly fade away in the darkness
of never-light, never-time, never-space
never was and never will be again

from nothing came all
and to nothing it will all return








It appears the fleet is about to sail without me, so,with a hope that all had a happy, turkeyful Thanksgiving, that's all until next week.

In the meantime, be reminded that all work included in this blog is the property of its creators while the blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.
1 Comments:
at 10:52 AM Anonymous Nancy said...

HI Allen- Just a note to say I liked your poem, "to be a country boy again" -Laz

Post a Comment



Dreaming Of The High Country   Friday, November 16, 2007


II.11.3



A lowlander born and raised, I always begin dreaming this time of year of the high country and the high country air, fresh and unspoiled.

For now, though, we have to make do with the air we have, not bad as city air goes, but would be better if everyone who got here after 1994 went back wherever they came from. (Naturally, we got here in 1993 so we're not part the problem.)

Whatever the air, here we are with the new "Here and Now," a day early because tomorrow is already full and I haven't even got there yet.




Photo by Michaela Gabriel




I begin this week with a poem by Michaela Gabriel a friend an fellow web-poeteer for about eight years now. She is also a photographer, one of her photographs appears above and more of them will appear here next week.

Michaela is a young poet born in Spittal/Drau, Austria in 1971. She wrote her first poem over 20 years ago. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, both online and in print, mostly in English, but also in German, Italian, and Polish. As most of us who do this know, writing poetry does not pay the bills. For Michaela, teaching computer classes and English carries that load.

Michi has edited the German issue of Poems Niederngasse (where, over the years, a number of my poems have appeared, though not in German) and moderated critique workshops. She says she dreams of editing her own poetry magazine some day and believes that the English language has chosen her and not vice versa, and she prefers it to her native German.

She says she loves strawberries and warm October days, despises beer and tuna, has seen the northern lights, sunbathed on South Pacific islands, and begun love affairs with New Zealand as well as Lapland. She's a night owl, she says, with always music in her head. When she is not writing, she is reading, playing tennis, watching people, blogging, corresponding with friends around the world, traveling or enjoying The Gilmore Girls - usually several of these at the same time.

Michi lives in Vienna, a place brimful of history, where she is weaving her own colourful thread into the fabric.

In addition to all these other accomplishments, she also a web-designer who designed and built this "7beats" website, including the "Here and Now" blog. My function is to merely fill in the blanks.

This poem is from her chapbook the secret meanings of greek letters published by Dancing Girls Press. To find out more about the book, copy and past this url to your browser:

http://www.dancinggirlpress.com/secret.html

To find out more about Michi, click on her link to the right.




the secret meanings of greek letters: tau

tempests blow gates shut
a tree bleeds crimson leaves
under dying stars

trapped in darkness
another moon fails you
unfurls black petals

truculent footsteps
a man follows his shadow
unsaid words crumble

tiny snowflakes like
asterisks in winter vines
unhinge your world

tender snow blankets
all you didn't dare to dream
unsings your sorrow

two hundred breaths
awaken a pale princess
undo her braids

three doors in spring
a slice of sky on your plate
under apple blossoms








Rita Dove was born in 1952 in Ohio. In 1987 she became the second African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize (after Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950). From 1993 to 1995 she served as the first Black and the youngest Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant to the Library of Congress.

This poem is from her book On the Bus With Rosa Parks, published in 1999 by W. W. Norton and Company. She had previously published ten other books of poetry, short stories and essays.



Against Self-Pity

It gets you nowhere but deeper into
your own shit - pure misery a luxury
one never learns to enjoy. There's always some

meatier malaise, a misalliance ripe
ripe to burst: Soften the mouth to a smile and
it stutters; laugh, and your drink spills into the wake

of repartee gone cold. Oh, you know
all the right things to say to yourself: Seize
the day, keep the faith, remember the children

starving in India ... the same stuff
you say to your daughter
whenever a poked-out lip betrays

a less than noble constitution. (Not that
you'd consider actually going to India -
all those diseases and fervent eyes.) But it's

not your collapsing credit, it's
the scream you let rip when a centipede
shrieks up the patio wall. And that

daughter? She'll find a reason to laugh
at you, her dear mother: Poor thing
wouldn't harm a soul! she'll say, as if

she knew of such things -
innocence and soul smart enough to know
when to get our of the way.








Here's a little poem I wrote sitting on my favorite porch on South Alamo, about some scuttlebutt (don't we have some great words) I had picked up just a few minutes before.



talent

I can see
workers
in the loft
across the street
remodeling
for a new owner

I've heard
it's for that
actor guy,
the one
who had some
success
on TV
then decided
he was god's
gift
to the movies
only to discover
after a string of
really bad movies
that he heard wrong,
that he was really
god's gift to TV
so he's back now
in a third-rate
series
that's a rip-off
of a second-rate
series
that's a rip-off
of the series
he thought he
was too good for

I wonder
how it will be
to sit here on the
porch
drinking my coffee
right across the street
from such all-around
talent
for downward
mobility








Next, I have a short poem by Henri Coulette from his collection published by The University of Arkansas Press in 1990.

Coulette was born in 1927 and died in 1988. His first book, The War of the Secret Agents and Other Poems, was greeted with acclaim, while his second, The Family Goldschmitt, received little attention. No surprise to that, since it has been reported that much of the first edition was accidentally pulped. He did not publish another book during his life. Donald Justice and Robert Mezey prepared this collection after his death and brought it to The University of Arkansas Press for publication.



Doors

The two-sided nature of doors
Is disturbing to lovers.

They would have them have
One side only as walls have.

We can forgive the lovers -
And haven't we always? -

Their being so unhinged
By hints of duplicity.

Trust, rather, the pensioners,
Who know that doors yawn

As friends do at daybreak,
And that they close like wings.








Now, I have another love poem from Beki Reese.



Quartet

with lips
softened by dew
I taste this evening's cask
and chase it with an ounce or two
of you

your words
resonate deep
within my hearts caverns,
echoing desire throughout my
senses

you eyes
whisper promise,
look where no one else dared
to seek the secrets of my heart's
lost faith

your touch
seals the bargain,
my renegade heart for yours,
given without hesitation
or fear.








I looked up Doc Dachtler on the web and the most comprehensive information on him I could find was in "Here and Now" some months ago when I used some of his work. And that's not much - he's an actor, carpenter, poet and chronicler of Nevada County, California.

I enjoy reading him.

These two short pieces are from his book ...Waiting for Chains at Pearl's, published by Plain View Press in 1990.



Frogs in an Airbucket

     for Christine Hundemer and Nathaniel
      Springcreek Dachtler in the drought of 76 & 77

I'm framing a little house for a friend.
They bring a bucket of moribund frogs
whose skins are dull brown and dry;
not moving.
I pour a cup of fresh water into the bucket
and they start moving and jumping
so we put a lid on quick
nbsp;  See Dad! They're not dead!
They want to take the frogs to Uncle Pete's Pond
because their home pond is just a mud spot.
I look at them;
going down the road, no shoes,
skinny and dried on dirty.
Two kids
holding the bucket together
leaning out with grins,
they too are
frogs in an airbucket.


It Gets to Kids Even if They Read by Kerosene,
Shit in Outhouses and Don't have TVs

     For Aaron Sanfield and Nathaniel
Springcreek:

They are coming through the woods.
I hear them talking.
Aaron has a small box on his shoulder
like a porter in a safari of two.
nbsp;  What's in the box? I ask.
He brings it off the shoulder,
lid flips open,
one motion.

There rubber banded,
labeled
like gold bars neatly stacked:
STAR WARS CARDS!

We look at each other.
Bubble gum grins.








Didn't have anything else to do so started thinking about sex. Heck, sometimes I do that even when I do have something else to do.



sex

I was thinking
about sex, maybe
a weird thing
to be thinking
about at 4 pm
on a sunday
afternoon
but it's not
as bad as it
might seem
since it was
just a piddly
little
non-prurient
internal
discussion
of a
philosophical
nature
concerning the
onset of sexual
maturity, attitudinal
that is, not hormonal,
arising from the viewing
of a movie trailer
for one of those
teenage
grope a dope
movies
it just got me
thinking about
how some kids
grow out of their
natural fifth grade
obsession with sex
early, while others
of great age and ex-
perience
die with that
obsession still
driving
their
lives

having considered
this question,
I have concluded
sexual maturity
arrives at that
moment
you realize sex
is not something
done in the dark
that nobody else knows
about, that, in fact
everybody
not only knows about
it, they do it,
everybody
you see on the
sidewalk
at the supermarket
at work
at the park
where ever you are
does it or did it
or wants like crazy
to do it, that
presidents and
prime ministers
do it, that ship
captains do it,
that lawyers and
judges do it
that the barber
who cuts your hair
does it, that the
prime and proper
lady at the library
and the people
on fox news,
for crying out
loud, do it and
that your preacher
does it and your
sunday school teacher
and even some priests
do it, though they're
not supposed to tell,
that your mother
and your father did
it or maybe even still
do it, that
their mothers
and fathers
and their mothers
and fathers
mothers and fathers
did it, back
10,000 generations
to two monkeys
jumping and bumping
and humping
in a tree,
all of that doing
and thank god for
it or you wouldn't
be here to do it
today

what's the point
of all this I can't
say, it's just once
you start thinking
about all these people
doing it, doing it,
doing it
every where
you turn, you have
to wonder how
the earth doesn't
just get knocked
to a wobbling
right
off its
axis








I have this piece by the one name poet Sapphire from her book
American Dreams.

Sapphire is a performance poet. She lives and works in New York City and was born in California. American Dreams, published by Serpent's Tail/High Risk Books in 1994, 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. Sapphire earned a degree in Dance, from City College in Harlem, where she was the 1994 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Scholarship in Poetry, and an M.F.A. from the writing program at Brooklyn College. She was the first place winner in Downtown Magazine's Year of the Poet III Award for 1994.

She writes of the bleak streets with no punches drawn, about things you usually see reported in the back pages of your newspaper in more circumspect language.

This poem is in four parts, altogether too long from this venue, so I'm breaking the poem in two, the first two parts this week and the last two next week.



Rabbit Man

1.

he's the night
chasing rabbits,
a pot of dust
under the asphalt sky
cracked with stars.
athlete,
"colored boy from Houston makes good."
standing straight as a razor
he cuts my vagina open
stretches it like bleeding lights thru dark air
his rabbit teeth drag my tongue
over sabers hidden in salt,
from the slit tip
red roses drip
screaming: daddy don't.

I'm not supposed to be
your dinner nigger.
your semen forms fingers
in my throat,
furry fingers.
I cough all the time
rabbit man
colored boy
run
jump
hurdle after hurdle -
higher.

till your penis melts
like a marshmallow in fire
and your fear is a desert with no flowers
except two daughters
American Beauties,
tight rosebuds you hew open,
petals of pink light left bleeding
under a broken moon.
pine needles spring up in the sand
but you don't ask what they're for
surrounded like you are by infant daughters,
little dog fish drowning in diapers.
you did this rabbit dick,
rabbit dick
rabbit dick
hopping coprophagous freak
blind eyes opening
like terminal disease
in mouth after mouth -
paralyzing light.

2.

I slide between cold polyester rooms,
into your bed -
everything is so cheap and falling apart.
I recoil from the blond skin and
bleeding blue eyes of Jesus.
most nights you slept
in the obituary of light -
alone.
the picture is positioned
so when your head hit the pillow
you saw Jesus.
the what?

continued next week








Here's an interesting magazine piece written by Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg. It appeared in Esquire in 1986, under the title "Ten Angry Men." It is taken from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, which, with literally hundreds of poetry and prose pieces, is becoming a major source of a particular kind of American poetry for me for "Here and Now."

The "outlaws" were a group outside the mainstream, speaking mostly to each other. As usually happens in such closed-loop conversations, both brilliance and bullshit are produced. Both are in evidence in this piece.

I post it here under the title given it by it's authors.



Ten Outlaw Heroes

William Carlos Williams (1883 - 1963): Respectable pediatrician by trade, by vocation and outlaw from an Academy that didn't understand his Einsteinian invention of a "relative measure" as a new law of verse form to articulate living talk on the poetic page. Proposed that American poets write American; after Robert Lowell had a nervous breakdown, most did, Following generations still hear Dr. Williams speaking to them kindly from the grave.

Willem De Kooning (1904 - ): Made and broke art. The fourth top Dutchman, after Vermeer, Rembrandt, Ban Gogh. Abandoned the literal image of empty lot fence & steam shovel; taking their abstract forms, excavated giant city holes in the 2-D 1940s canvas. Experimented the volumes of breasts, thighs and holes a lifetime, saw women for what they were. A classic moderne American.

William Seward Burroughs (1914 - ): Inventor of a literary collage montage cut-up jump-cut technique for novel writing (Naked Lunch, Wild Boys, Place of Dead Roads) as a counter-brainwash method for reversing effects of mass media, Military-Industrial communist-capitalist CIA-KGB disinformation Reality Image Bank. Inventor of Heavy Metal, Soft Machine, Steely Dan concepts for multitude of garage bands across the MTV globe. A doctor of doctor'd time and space. Rimbaud's Poet of Science.

Charlie Parker (1920 - 55): Took off from spoken black street-speech cadence in an alto saxophone breath that blew down the skyscrapers of New York. 'When the mod of the music changes, the walls of the city shake," quote Plato. Parker proved it, changing the time of gutbucket jazz, transforming the cadence of prose novels and lyric poetry, altering the rhythms of white speech, syncopating up the mechanistic metronome of modern thought. Once busted for drugs, was outlawed from playing music in New York clubs in the last decade of his brief life for lack of a police-OK'ed cabaret card, made and broke jazz, the supreme intellectual of Afric sounds.

Jack Kerouac (1922 - 69): Visionary Seer of his own beatific generation looking up out of the bottom of the empty-barrel of the atom-bomb world, prose creator of twentieth-century intercontinental myth of personal-heart consciousness in over twenty tomes writ in obscurity saintly solitude prior to enlighted Fame. Bodhisattva behind the solipsistic Arhats of New Journalism; redeemer of individuality in the hyperindustrialized metropolis, poetic adorer of humankind whose Mexico City Blues inseminated the hearts of a hundred younger poets including immortal Dylan. Hermetic messenger of Buddha consciousness in the American Half-Century; yet suffering Christ-loving alcoholic body crucifixion, took care of his cracked mother & "didn't throw her to the Dogs of Eternity." Wrote the first true North American haikus; gave speech back to Bop, gave Bop to speech; scribed sacred prayers in guise of modernistic novels that for a single vast and interconnected visionary Bookmovie of his mortal life.

Neal Cassady (1926 - 68): Prototype inspirer of Kerouac's telepath prose of 1940s Roads, Johnny Appleseed of Bay Area Aquarian weed culture; living human phantom behind the Grateful Dead, king of Ken Kesey's 1960 cross-continental psychedelic Wheel; tenderhearted lover of melancholy poets, family railroad brakeman father husbandman, classic jailbird orphan haunted by his lost father the United States itself. Dragon slayer of squaredom, the hip-cocksman of the American vulva, spoke faster than a bullet and hit the mark because he could recollect recall entire contents of some moments of his universal mind.

Julian Beck (1925 - 85): Helped invent Nike Laughter peace protest refusing to duck-and-cover underground mid-1950s for atom-bomb drill. Then as American Living theaterman survived the glory of 1960s Paradise Now and brought his pacific-Anarchy onstage for Europa; as did Shelley, ventured to free the heirs of Prometheus from their bondage on the Military-Industrial rock where an American eagle plucks perpetual War-Tax from the liver. In his last year insulted from the aisles by homophobic bourgeois press reviewers in America, rose from cancer bed with a hollow-eyed finely chiseled intelligent skeleton face to act Cotton Club film Mephistopheles, pre-record television serial dream Lama reappearances, then fly off to a Swiss graveyard with video innovator Nam Jun Paik and read a page of classic anarchist text, "Slavery is the necessary consequence of the very existence o the State" (from Rousseau's "Theory of the State" by Mikhail Bakunin), over the grave of the great Bakunin while smoking a cannabis joint, breaking the laws of death.

Robert Frank (1924 - ): Abandoned imitation of classic art picture misty naked girls on Turkish rugs and Swiss chalets with cuckoo clock snowpeaks, came down to the gutters of Paris and black Mississippi backroad America, inventing the Leica gut portrait of jukebox coffins & and Chicago flag cigars. Gave up on snapshots and invented spontaneous chair-scratching-across-the-floor underground movies that turned Hollywood upside down till Marlon Brando stuck a buttery finger up his lady's behind in a last tango of cinema-inspiration breaking the bonds of commercial censorship. The map of the wandering Jew on his face, his eyes are human, but arm'd with lens and shutter can be gods spies thru 35mm stills black & white 16mm cinema scriptless classics like Mick Jagger in Cocksucker Blues, or video-haunted spots of time home-make on Daytona Beach, by the 1990's some kind of million-dollar full-scale genius accident film likely'll get shot far from Hollywood.

The Vidyadhara, The Venerable Chogyam Trungpa, Rimpoche (1939 - ): A bona fide guru Tibetan Lama, knowledge holder of Thousand year-old Wild Wisdom lineage teachings of the Kagyu-Nyingma Buddhist schools of actual Shambhla kingdom once misnamed Shangri-La. A Renaissance man of the highest peaks of East, meditation emperor, space awareness Dance-master, witty rude calligrapher whose poetry and flower arrangements unite the Mind with Body; Admiral of Tibetan Navies, Prime Minister of Imagination in the Gkuddhafields, General of empty Doorkeeper Armies at the Eternal Gates in Rocky Mountains' American spine; founder of Naropa Institute: 2130 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80302 - the first Buddhist college in the West, whereat students can attend the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics; Vajrayana vehicle teacher, Chairman of Board of Directors of Ordinary Mind.

Bob Dylan (1941 - ): One of the most powerful blues singers ever heard in the West, peer of Ma Rainey and Leadbelly in long unobstructed ecstatic breath, his body consciousness of column of air stopping time inspired at the international microphone, Poetus Magnus at the piano of conscience, so hard-working, got no time to answer telephone and mail media vampiric flattery insult lacklove paranoia; genius of the ethic metaphor from Hard Rain past "Idiot Wind"... "to live outside the law, you must be honest." A literary heir of early-century black lyric minstrels, white Bardic rebels of the 1950s. Stands alone the world's troubled muse - He has nowhere to go, a singing bum of the mind.








There are several references to William Carlos Williams in this issue so it's only fair that we give San Antonio wit David Kelly a chance to abuse Williams with this parody.

Since WCW is like a rockgod to me, I am happy that David spreads his abuse to include Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.

(Actually, David says that he has affection for all three of these poets and couldn't parody them if that wasn't so.)



To Hell With William Carlos Williams

free form poetry


oozes from the brain,


turdlike


in


chopped,


rabbity,


pellets,


or in great dribbly-long gushes, uncontrollable, as from a spastic
                                                                colon.



To Hell With Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And so it was the dice were tossed
I studied both roads from where I stood
Which didn't do me any good
Except to get me good and lost.

So here I am in the yellow wood
Devoid of clean undies or a comb -
As I wander through the yellow wood,
I'd take my turns over, if only I could.
I wish to Christ I'd stayed at home.

I've come to despise this yellow wood,
It's birds in song, air fresh and clean -
If I can escape the yellow wood,
I may return, someday I think I should
And bring with me matches and gasoline.



To Hell With Emily Dickinson

Because I would not stop for Fate
She knocked me on my ass
And danced with cleats upon my head,
Told me She was the boss.

She pummeled me quite handily
And then, to my surprise,
She gave me to her sister Luck
To further tenderize.

Then Happenstance dealt me a blow
That knocked my breath right out.
I flopped and gasped for breath like an
asphyxiating trout.

Then Serendipity jumped in
And with a piercing cry
And heroic, wasted effort
Fought Them off valiantly

So to this day the Universe
Is my sworn enemy
And I'll not hesitate to put
A thumb into Her eye.








I'm pleased to welcome back to "Here and Now" Susan B. McDonough. She is a poet with one foot in coastal Maine the other in the sonoran desert. She splits her time working at small Maine Farm and as a desert landscaper. Along with all her other activities, she describes herself as tamer of two teenagers.



Forecasting Daybreak

I count window
panes and silverware,
welcome infomercials
after midnight.
Daylight is invited -
a long awaited
guest. I pull on
the weary handle
to let him in,
but find its weight
in my palm.
Wait, wait!
I'll let you in!
I'll let you in!
But, the Atlantic
has found
the darkest cloud
to blow between
sun and earth.
Now Daylight
flounders and wallows
its way west.








Robert Lowell (1917 - 1977) had a great interest in history, which is reflected in much of his work. Originally a very successful traditional poet, he came under the mentorship of William Carlos Williams and put aside the dense, allusive, ornate of much of his earlier work and turned to more open forms and more personal, even confessional, subject matter.

I took this poem from The Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, originally published as a college textbook in 1989.



For the Union Dead
    "Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam."

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled
to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and the reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gourge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
A girdle of orange, puritan-pumpking colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breath.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
It's Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He's out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life land die -
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New england greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion: frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year -
wasp-wasted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns...

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statues for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
When I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessed break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.








Charles Bukowski didn't let his image slip very often. Here's one of those instances when he did.



the man?

my daughter said this when she was 5:
HERE COMES THE MAN!
what? I said. what?
I looked all around.
HERE COMES THE MAN!
O, HERE COMES THE MAN!
I went to the window and
looked out. I checked the latch
on the door.
she came out of the kitchen
with a spoon and a piepan:
clang, clang, clang!
HERE COMES THE MAN!
HERE COMES THE MAN!
O, LOOK, SEE THE MAN!
SEE THE MAN NOW!
HERE COMES THE MAN!

she means something else,
I thought, and I clapped my hands in
rhythm and we both
marched around and
sang and
laughed. me
loudest.






Photo by Thomas Costales




Thomas Costales is back with this week, with more of his moody and mysterious night images.




Photo by Thomas Costales




Photo by Thomas Costales




Photo by Thomas Costales












It's been a while since we had a poem from the tarot series by Alex Stolis. Well, I just received several new ones from Alex. Here is the first one.



Card VI

The Lovers have second thoughts

I've never seen a wounded bird
in flight but have heard the sound
of longing as it walks out the door.

there are no words to describe the moon
as it ripens on the horizon.

after you go I will dye my hair
again and again until its original color
is forgotten

every moment feels caged and quiet,
the sting of penance becomes dull.

magnolias remind me of our first time,
a dry summer and intentions that crumbled
to dust at sunset.

I could leave without a trace,
not even a whisper to mark my path.








The anonymous Nineteen Ancient Poems were written in the second century B.C. and helped shape the themes and forms of Chinese poetry for the next two thousand years. We don't have space for all nineteen, so I'll just pull several that particularly appeal to me.

The poems were translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping.



fromNineteen Ancient Poems

1
Traveling traveling, and still traveling traveling,
you're separated from me for life,
ten thousand miles apart,
gone to the other end of the sky.
With your road so long and difficult,
how can we know if we'll meet again?
A northern horse leans against a northern wind;
a southern bird nests on southern branches.
This separation lengthens day by day,
and day by day my gown and belt grow slack.
Floating clouds obscure a white sun
and wanderer, you do not return.
Missing you makes age come fast.
Years and months spin past.
No need to mention you abandoned me.
Just take care of yourself and eat enough.


2
Green so green is the river grass,
thick so thick are the garden willow's leaves.
Beautiful so beautiful is the lady upstairs,
shining as she stands by the window, shining.
Pretty is her powdered rouge, so pretty
with her slender, slender white hands.
Once she was a singing girl,
but now is the wife of a womanizer.
He travels and rarely comes home.
So hard to sleep in an empty bed.


3
Green so green are the cypress over the burial mounds.
Boulders upon boulders in the rushing ravine.
Born between heaven and earth,
a man is a long distance traveler.
Let's take joy from this pitcher of wine
and drink with heart, not thin pleasure.
Whipping slow horses pulling our wagon,
we'll play at Wan and Luo.
It is so noisy and crowed in Luoyang,
officials with caps and belts visit each other,
there are main streets and tributary lanes,
and mansions owned by kings and princes.
The two palaces gaze at each other from afar,
yet their watchtowers seem just a hundred feet apart.
Let's exhaust ourselves in banquets to entertain our hearts!
Sorrows and melancholy - who needs such pressure?

6
I cross the river to pick lotus flowers
where fragrant grasses grow in the orchid lake.
But to whom can I send these flowers?
My love is far away on the road.
I turn my head and look home
down the road so long and wide.
We share one heart yet live apart
in sorrow and grief till age takes us.


7
Clear moon pours bright light at night
and crickets sing in the eastern wall.
The Big Dipper's jade handle points to midwinter,
all the stars incredibly clear.
White dewdrops hang to wild grass,
as seasons flow by fast and change.
Autumn cicadas rub their wings in trees.
Where have black swallows migrated to?
Once we studied together,
but you have soared on powerful wings,
forgetting we once held hands.
You abandoned me like old footprints.
The South Basket and North Dipper can't be used
and the Pulling Ox won't bear a yoke.
Indeed, nothing is solid as rock.
What's the use of empty names.


17
A cold current in early winter,
a north wind of bitter shivers.
This grief lengthens night.
I look up, see a million stars arrayed,
a full moon on the fifteenth
but on the twentieth the moon-rabbit's part gone.
From a far land, traveler, you came
and handed me a letter
with a first part about missing me,
a second part mourning long separation.
I put the letter in my sleeve
three years ago. The characters still speak.
My whole heart holds on with a passion.
I fear that you won't understand.









Back again to thunderous applause, here's California-dreaming Hawaiian poet Alice Folkart with two short poems from her recent visit to Tokyo.




Hot Time in the Old Town

Morning.
Old man sweeping
last night's drunks out of sight.
Hot time in the cold streets - Tokyo.
Start over.


Rainy Afternoon in Tokyo

Rain, like needles,
just this side of sleet,
almost snow,
enough to knock
the tender white petals
off the cherry boughs
onto the thick green waters
of the palace moat,
enough to encourage
the hoary algaeified carp,
tarnished copper bodies,
to distemper the glassy stream,
dimly taking the fractured blossoms
for tasty, struggling insects








Next, I have several poems accredited to King Nezahualcoyotl of Texcoco(1403 - 1473), described by Jim Tuck in one of his articles on Mesoamerica cultures, as a true philosopher king, a ruler who was able to combine intellectual pursuits with war and the perils and pitfalls of ruling .

His people were the Alcohuans, part of the third migratory wave of northern tribes into the Valley of Mexico. The first of the three waves were the Toltecs. Between the 7th and 11th centuries A.D. Toltec civilization flourished, then abruptly disappeared for reasons still unknown. The next wave were people called Chichimecas, an inferior civilization to their predecessors. who were centered in the city of Tula.

The next wave were made of of several tribes. The most powerful of the tribes were the Aztecs and the Alcohuans. Both enjoyed a more elaborate and developed civilization than the Chichimecas. The Alcohuans settled at the eastern end of Lake Texcoco and became known as Texcocans.

Nezahualcoyotl was heir to the Texcocan throne but had to fight an invading tribe, the Tepanecos, to retain it. He spent eight years in exile in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, devoting those years to intellectual self-advancement.

After finally regaining his throne, his first act was to devise a code of laws so well-regarded by his allies the Aztecs and the Tlacopanes that they adopted the same code. The code created a number of councils including war, finance, justice and a "council of music" that devoted itself to music, as the name implies, but also to science, art, literature, poetry and history.

The above information came from an web article by Jim Tuck.

Here are the poems. The first three were translated by Thelma D. Sullivan and the last by Stephen Berg (after Angel Maria Garibay K.).



Where Will I Go?

Where will I go?
Where will I go?
To the road, to the road
That leads to God.
Are you waiting for us in the Place of the Unfleshed?
Is it within the heavens?
Or is the Place of the Unfleshed only here on earth?

We vanish,
We vanish,
Into his house;
No one abides on earth.
Does anyone ask,
"Where are our friends?"
Rejoice


Be Indomitable, O My Heart

Be indomitable, O my heart!
Love only the sunflower;
It is the flower of the Giver-of-Life!
What can my heart do?
Here we come, have we sojourned here on earth in vain?

As the flowers wither, I shall go.
Will there be nothing of my glory ever?
Will there be nothing of my fame on earth?
At most songs, at most flowers.
What can my heart do?
Have we come, have we sojourned on earth in vain?


Our Lord

Our Lord,
Ever-present, Ever-close
Thinks as he pleases,
Does as he pleases,
He mocks us.
As he wishes, so he wills.
He has us in the middle of his hand
And rolls us about,
Like pebbles we spin and bounce,
He flings us every which way,
We offer him diversion,
He laughs at us.


Flowers of Red and Blue

flowers of red and blue
mix with flowers of fiery red
it is your word your heart
Oh, my king
for a little while I can see earth
I cry because death kills
everything I did
everything I sang
for a little while I can see the earth








I have a poem now from "Here and Now" friend Dan Cuddy with a scene we've all seen, some of us from both sides of the picture.



Interstate

rain
an overturned car
state police, a man in a black suit
trees afire with waning light
two lanes tapered to one
a few speed their cars up the shut down lane
wheedle in
just to get ahead
with their selfish life








Reba and I were out for our walk the other evening and it was one of those real creepy nights where much seems hidden and you can easily imagine being alone in the world.



the last

fog on apache
creek
moon
lost in overcast
sky
streetlights like
liquid
splash and pool
on the path
we
walk alone
as if always
before
and forever
hence

we are the
last









Here's a little poem by William Blake from a collection I picked up this afternoon, published by Penguin Classics in 2005.



The Little Vagabond

Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold,
But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm:
Besides I can tell where I am used well,
Such usage in heaven will never do well.

But if at the Church they would give us some Ale,
And a pleasant fire our souls to regale:
We'd sing and we'd pray all the live-long day;
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray.

Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing,
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring:
And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church
Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch.

And God like a father rejoicing to see
His children as pleasant and happy as he;
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel
But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel.








Speaking of sex, as I was earlier, here's a short poem from my book, Seven Beats a Second.



lying in the sun with susan

quiet bay

no sound but the light rustle
of marsh grass in the gulf breeze

she
lies on the deck, legs spread,
as if to thrust herself
at the summer sun

sweat glistens
on the inside of her thigh
and my tongue aches
for the taste of her








I welcome back Christopher George, another friend of "Here and Now" we haven't seen in a while.



Flight of Eagles

Friday and I'm fleeing D.C.
Eagles hug the cornices
of Union Station.

Monumentally facing east
and west: talons, wings, beaks.
The eagle flies on Friday.

Folks lug luggage, huge
enough to transport mothers
and fathers, haul their insecurities.

A red-turquoise eagle screeches,
emblazoned on a girl's ass.








It's been a dry spell of a week writing-wise, haven't been able to come up with much of anything. It reminds me of this poem I wrote several months ago during similar writing doldrums.




there are poets

there are poets
who can write
a poem
every day
any time
morning
noon
or night
even when
they don't have
anything to say

they can spread
words
up
and
down
a page
about the least
most inconsequential
humdrum
day
magnifying
the picayune
to epic
proportions
and you
poor
reader
are dazzled
by their
erudition
sure that
secrets have been
revealed
deep truths
uncovered
precious jewels
of thought
polished
to a sheen
and laid before
you like a gift
from gods
and philosopher
kings

there are poets
who can do that

poets
who can
write
with the ease
and flair
of a rock star
flying
on coke
and groupie
buzz
even
on a day
when they have
nothing
to
say

I could never
do that

never
ever

could
I
do that







This is a great picture of a lighthouse on the coast in the fog and it has nothing to do with this being the end of this issue of "Here and Now," but it is a very nice picture that I haven't used before for some reason or other.

So there is is. Back next week.

As usual, all the material included in this blog is the property of it's creators. The blog itself is produced by and the property of me....allen itz.
0 Comments:

Post a Comment



Badlands Bouquet   Saturday, November 10, 2007


II.11.2




Welcome back "Here and Now" readers.

No chit chat this week, right to the good stuff instead








We begin this week, with a little weather report from me.



tides

october blue
gives way
to november
gray

and you can
feel
the tides
of an old
year
turning








With typical self-deprecating good humor, William Barney makes his claim to be a "man of letters" based not on his sixty years as a poet, but on his 35 year career with the U.S. Postal Service.

His poems, like this one from his book A Cowtown Chronicle, are about people and things that interest him. Sometimes sounding a bit old-fashioned, they are clear and direct expressions of his interests.

The book, published by Browder Springs Books in 1999, is one of nine books of poetry he published in his lifetime.



Seneca Xenophon Swimme

Remembering, how can I stay a smile?
For his name alone sings. Think of it:
Seneca Xenophon Swimme. How can I help,
for a glorious classical name like that -
(look how the Roman and Greek entwine)...
A great tall man, with a large bald head.
I saw him once at a tent revival,
sitting up front, hat on his head,
and I thought, the fellow has poor piety.
Later I learned - he was an elder
in the Methodist church. And he kept his hat on
because his head was cold.
          But once again,
that incredible names! Who was his father,
his mother, to set that grandiose name?

I met him in a newspaper shop
where I hoped to learn the trade of reporter.
He was using the Linotype to print
his book. A Composite Gospel,
all four of them, and no event missing.
I invited him to have dinner with us,
and he told us some of his life.
How he married a mountain girl
back East somewhere, I suppose.
She couldn't read, so he taught her -
reading, for one thing, who but Shakespeare?
From one thing he told he had a sharp eye:
that Mary (my wife) was one of two
of the prettiest girls in all Riverdale
(I had always thought she was The One).
I looked in the library to find his name
in a Methodist book but had no luck.

So I'll never know how, why, that name
makes history shout. And I'm envious.
There are William's, of course, in literature;
Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Bryant, and Yeats -
I'll never add mine to a list like that,
though Barney's a sound enough name, I think,
it doesn't quite ring like the name "Swimme,"
with "Seneca Xenophon" spreading their wings.








Here's a little poetic attaway to myself.



skin and bones

229.5
at seven this morning,
down from the peak 280
a couple of years
ago

that's
a whole big lotta
moonpies released
unharmed
to run
free
in the wild








Charles Harper Webb was educated at Rice University, the University of Washington, and the University of Southern California. He worked as a professional rock singer and guitarist for fifteen years and, at the time this book was published, was a licensed psychotherapist and professor of English at California State University, Long Beach.

In addition to this book, Reading the Water, published by Northeastern University Press in 1997, he is also the author of a novel.



My Muse

He's short - shorter than I - thinner with frizzier,
redder hair: Woody Allenish, but gentile,
which makes it worse; he wanted Abdul Jabbar's
height, Schwarzenegger's muscles, Eastwood's face.
His skin is thinner than mine, too. He can't read
The Times without screaming. A distant mayoral race,

court ruling, car-jacking, mystery virus
makes him seethe. Picture the response to his own
termites, insurance hikes, full audit by the IRS!
He wrote a book called Everyday Outrages -
unpublished, naturally. He works as a lounge guitarist,
though he loathes club owners, Top 40 and drunks.

He's nearly scored eight record deals. (The Tantalus
Predicament, he calls it, hoping for a bestseller.)
He married a beautiful blond, but she wanted him
to be "more mainstream" - i.e., rich. After two years
of monochromatic bickering, they divorced.
A year later, she's sharing a one-bedroom

in Topanga with an apprentice psychic surgeon.
"The main theme of modern life is the humiliation
of the protagonist," he likes to say. Actually likes to.
Left on my own, I could never invent a man
who, to stand out from the crowd, replaced his legs
with a calliope blaring "Darktown Strutters Ball."

I see a light bulb as a glass shell surrounding
tungsten filaments, not a cell imprisoning a tiny
Thomas Edison, so irate his body glows. Lately
though, my muse has mellowed, or his level
of testosterone has dipped, or maybe he's worn out
from pummeling stupidities. At any rate, he's dictating
more words of praise, fewer of contempt.
He says that people need to hope more,
the less reason there is. He admits
he's been anorexic for acceptance,
bulimic for love. If he runs off and joins
a commune, my poems, will I still need you?








Here's Cliff Keller returning with a funny piece on, among other things, self-delusion and its benefits.



Disclaimer: I Plagiarized This

I read this poem last night and loved it!
So I ripped it off, folded
it into a pocket-sized thought;
now I call it my own.

Then,
I updated it with 41 small cuts,
one more than Mary Oliver mandates
in her textbook.
No biggie, took less time
than a cheap haircut.

I got rid of the "...ings" to sharpen my impact.
(Whoops! Forgot: show, don't tell)
"...ings" drop to the floor, cheeks red lined from
the switch of my hand.
Ooh, that's better.

Took both the elevator AND ran up a flight of stairs to make sure I could read each line without running out of breath.
Whew!

Finally,
I changed the title
to fit my own style.
Although I must admit, it was my lawyer's advice
(He also suggests a smiley emoticon
that winks; it may sway a jury).

I prefer the original,
but I think I found my "voice".








Luis J. Rodriguez, founding publisher of Tia Chucha Press and cofounder of Tia Chucha's Cafe Cultural in Los Angeles, is the author of Trochemoche, Always Running, and It Doesn't Have To Be This Way.

His poem is from bum rush the page, an anthology of spoken word poets and poetry. The book was published in 2001 by Three Rivers Press.



My Name's Not Rodriguez

It is a sigh of climbing feet,
the lather of gold lust,
the slave master's religion
with crippled hands gripping greed's tail.
My name's not Rodriguez.
It's an Indian mother's noiseless cry,
a warrior's saliva on arrow tip, a jaguar's claw,
a woman's enticing contours on a volcanic rock.
My real name's the ash of memory from burned trees.
It's the three-year-old child wandering in the plain
and shot by U.S. Calvary in the Sand Creek massacre.
I'm a Geronimo yell into the canyons of the old ones.
I'm the Comanche scout; the Raramuri shaman
in soiled bandanna running in the wretched rain.
I'm called Rodriguez and my tears leave rivers of salt.
I'm Rodriguez and my skin dries on the bones.
I'm Rodriguez and a diseased laughter enters the pores.
I'm Rodriguez and my father's insanity
blocks every passageway,
scorching the walls of every dwelling.
My name's not Rodriquez; it's a fiber in the wind,
it's what oceans have immersed,
it's what graceful and sublime over the top of peaks,
what grows red in desert sands.
It's the crawling life, the watery breaths between ledges.
It's taut drum and peyote dance.
It's the brew from fermented heartaches.
Don't call me Rodriguez unless you mean peon and sod carrier,
unless you mean slayer of truths and deep-sixer of hopes.
Unless you mean forget and then die.
My name's the black-hooded 9mm-wielding child in all our alleys.
I'm death row monk. The eight-year-old gumseller
in city bars and taco shops.
I'm unlicensed, uninsured, unregulated and unforgiven.
I'm free and therefore hungry.
I'm seed of resistance in pod of domesticity.
Call me Rodriguez and bleed in shame.
Call me Rodriguez and see if I whisper in your ear,
mouth stained with bitter wine.








Here's another in my coffee shop series, this time on how easy it is to mis-judge people based on appearance.



strangers in the house

strange looking
group
for this middle-class
yuppy-puppy
coffee shop,
look like extras
in a barrio
gang-banger movie
or maybe the real
thing, banditos
or mexican mafia,
three mean-looking
dudes all dressed out
and a pretty girl
with stars tattooed up
her long lean legs

or
maybe not

freshman chemistry
it looks like
when they pick up
their textbooks and clean
their table before they leave,
I hear them talk about
going next door to
macaroni grill
on their way out,
no motorcycles
or lowriders in sight








The next poem is from A Working Girl Can't Win and Other Poemsk by Deborah Garrison. Garrison was born in Michigan and worked on the editorial staff of The New Yorker. She is now poetry editor for Alfred A. Knopf and senior editor at Pantheon Books.



You Prune Your List in Summer

Where I am the sky has been trying
to clear all morning.
At noon the sea is sparking
green, a giant coin flipped and

falling, and there are warnings:
a plane towing an ad for cigarettes
(pleasures are dangerous),
the sun's fuzzy mouth sucking the day back

in through the haze
I am in search of the perfect stone
for you - as if it would help!
What good are stones to you

now, rose or black,
pointed, smooth?
Why remind you? Why be
heavy in your hand?

Where you are -
the truth is I don't know
where you are.
Maybe the city:

lunch date with a noisy woman,
rainstorm, the umbrella forgotten.
And more phone messages!
All afternoon you prune your list,

and I can see you crossing us off,
peeling back layers, working
down to the ribbed, worn
pit of your self, then

setting out, tons lighter,
like the prow of a boat without
its boat behind, and ladyless
in front: no more breasts to the wind


no more long, carved hair.
Don't worry. Already it's weeks
I lie in bed mourning your loss,
already I remember this summer

like a summer gone, and myself
like a woman who rented here years ago -
her radio and sunscreen, her stack
of paperbacks. It was she

paddling the warm wave of getting away,
she slender, on a diet from love
who was free. Free!
Best self, lost sister, I start

to forget her, wondering
if at the corner of your day
my colors don't still go up,
a small disturbance, a tat of flag

nicking the morning at the edge of your view.








Here, from New Zealand, is our friend Thane Zander to remind us that fans and players are the same always, no matter what the game and no matter where it's played.



Days when rain makes for a gloomy time.

In a stadium, rugby being played
teams run to and fro, saturated
players displaying adept skill
as we the spectators stand drenched.

The wives at their Saturday Fair
crowds milling, the throng beating
drizzle puts off children playing,
profit down as the wet continues.

Out on the lake, rowers ply their trade
putting muscle to oar, back to the rain
sweat mingling as effort expended
days when tedium is broken by hardship.

A timer on a bench top oven chimes
seven trays of cookies ready for family
a picnic outside wrecked by precipitation,
Police give up the chase at 230kph.

Diehard supporters back their team
rain, hail or snow, the flow back and forward
as each team wrestles with a wet pill,
my mates wife stands transfixed at the door.

A players jersey is ripped asunder
another player pulls it more, for effect
the ground erupts in a roar, the rains gone,
the referee calls time, we have won, just.

A happy crowd wanders out to a full carpark,
find their vehicles, the losers with head bowed,
trudge wearily to the bar for a few quiets,
the winners off home to a promised picnic.








My next poem is by Irish poet Paul Durcan from his book Greetings To Our Friends In Brazil published by The Harvill Press in 1999.



Notes Towards a Supreme Reality

I

Because the supreme reality in life is fiction
It is vital not to meet the writer in person.
There is no necessary linkage between the egotist who is
       overweight and vain
And the magic connections, dreams, constructions of his brain

II

Life's supreme reality is reading fiction
In poetry or prose, most likely prose,
(Fiction is scarce as water in poetry);
Afterwards telephoning Niall MacMonagle in Rathmines,
Conversing nonstop for three hours,
Putting on aerial displays for our sleeping daughters.
Flying low, fast, looping the loop;
Or taking a Super Low Floor
Green Engine Kneeling Suspension
Dublin Bus into the city centre
to Cormac Kinsella in the Dublin Waterstone's,
Stealing in half-hour Comac behind the bookshelves.

Thanks to Comac Kinsella
I have spent the last five years
Reading Richard Ford and Don DeLillo.
Oh yes! Behind the bookshelves!
Like two haymakers siesta-ing
Behind a hay cock in Provence
Cormac and I -
We repose vertically in a Ford sun
Cooled by a DeLillo breeze
Analyzing the universals of light,
The particular of power.

III

The evening is as long as life is short.
Reading Independence Day or Underworld
I am a tern detecting Dublin Bay
At a cruising altitude of thirteen feet;
Or a flock of swallows on a warm June evening
Trawling to an fro the mown lawn
Netting succulent midges, snaring thousands of 'em.
The evening is as long as life is short.








I wrote this last week, a last ditch effort to come up with my poem for the day.



supposed to be writing a poem

supposed
to be writing a poem
right now
or working on the blog,
one or the other,
but reba has been sitting
on the carpet by my feet
for twenty minutes now,
staring at me, letting me know
it's nine o'clock,
time now to sate her canine need
to walk, to sniff, to explore,
(if a piece of paper is on the path
that wasn't there the day before,
she will not move until it's been
properly investigated and peed on)

oops,
she caught me thinking about walking
and has moved in closer, eyes boring
into me, never blinking, never wavering

no poem tonight, I think, unless
you count this - the queen has
made her decision clear, we walk








Next I have a poem by Mexican poet Ramon Lopez Velarde from Song of the Heart, published by University of Texas Press in 1995. It's a bilingual book with Spanish and English on facing pages, providing the first book length translation of Velarde's work into English. Translation to English was byMargaret Sayers Peden.

Velarde (1888-1921) was called "poet of the provinces" because of his love of rural Mexico and the old traditional ways of those regions. Much of his poetry dealt with old/new, rural/urban contrasts. He was particularly interested in recording many of the old ways in the countryside that were disappearing due to modernization.



To Sara

    For F. de F. Nunez y Dominguez

You chanced, as I passed by, to drop free,
the most irreverent windfall
the summer's benevolent grace
could bestow on me.

(Blonde Sara, ripe grape; today's frank
fascination compels me to ridicule
my yesterday, and deny the foolish
credence I, the young Levite, placed
in my dubious vocation.)

Sara, Sara: you are as plaint as David's
sling, as bruising
as his lyric pebble;
with that dual essence come
both icy torment and the pyres candescence,
and although in the chasm's vertigo your hair may fall,
in the ever-more-dizzing descent your lover,
confident, is safe within heroic arms.

Sara, Sara: sweetmeat of hedonistic hours,
fruit so lush, so great with promise, you bow
the backs of two Hebrews;
may you be forever warmed by
blazing sun and carnation's flame; but should
the backbone of your being snap like and imperfect thread,
then may your brow, deep beneath
the grieving earth, somehow be spared,
and may your golden tresses shine
like buried treasure, and, like a royal seal,
may your arms, and the column of your throat
lie inviolate.









I try very hard not to take afternoon naps because I still work occasionally and don't want to get into the habit of going to sleep every afternoon. The truth is the job is boring enough with out such extra inducement to zzzz out.

Some days, though, are just too nap-friendly to ignore. So, I wrote this to ease my guilt.



sweet dreams

had
a lot to do
this afternoon,
all planned
and prioritized,
but slept it through
instead

three hours
of sunday afternoon
dreams,
the light
and happy kind
that make you want
to turn over
and pick them up
where you
left off,
but it never
works
they are like
clouds of sweet
smoke
in the air,
once the wind
of wakefulness
blows
they are lost
and gone forever





Chris on a Rock - Photo by Andre Lamar




Our son, Chris, recently moved to Colorado. He loves the mountains and deserts and is an avid primitive hiker and camper, always with camera in hand.

Here are pictures from his first foray into Utah's Canyonlands National Park.




Canyonlands, Utah - Photo by Chris Itz



Fischer Towers - Photo by Chris Itz



Colorado River - Photo by Chris Itz



Fall in Utah - Photo by Chris Itz



Desert Makes Sunset Fine - Photo by Chris Itz









The next poem is by Al Mahmud of Bangladesh. It is from an anthology of poems from around the world titled, This Same Sky published Aladdin Paperbacks in 1995, edited by Naomi Shihab Ney.

The poem was translated by Marian Maddern



Wind's Foam

Nothing remains, see, leaves, flowers, village elders,
the river's dancing waves, brass pitchers and the hookah's coal;
groups of growing girls one by one dwindle like the ilish season,
yellow leaves in the wind on the rainless fields and meadows
        drop rustling. The migrant geese go to,
their bodies like multitudinous bubbles
        in the sky's blue cup.

Why does nothing remain? Corrugated iron, thatch or mud walls,
the ageless village bat tree uprooted in the terrible
            Chittagong typhoon.
Plaster cracks, as vast as faith,
with a great crash, finally
        crumbles and falls the local mosque.

Sparrows' nests, love, creepers' leaves, book covers
fall torn and twisted. Bitten by the Meghna's waters
the harvest's green cry shivers to the horizon.
Houses, water-pitchers, cowsheds float,
and an old pillow, flower-embroidered, sinks like childish affection.
After this, not a dwelling remains,
water-loving birds fly, wiping the wind's foam from their beaks.








I welcome for his first visit to "Here and Now" fellow web-poet Walter Durk.

Walter was born in New York city in 1946 and he has lived in Asia and the United States. His experiences in Asia are evident in his poem.



journey to nowhere

Just bought a ticket
Taichung to Taipei.
First class.
Clean car with steward.
Hot towels for my face.
Not a cattle car
packed with peasants.
Not white globs of pork fat
shivering in tubs.

I used to watch
the slaughtered pig race by
slung on the rear of a motorcycle
right outside a rice factory
where children swept errant grains.

Taipei.
Hot, humid.
Air reeks of truck
and motorcycle exhaust.
Soot coats my face, sucks
into my nostrils.
About a mile to the hotel.
A fair place except for rats
racing above the ceiling at night.
Damned if I could sleep.
Scared the shit out of me.
Need to spend a little more,
I guess.







From The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry I have a poem by Kenneth Patchen.

Patchen (1911-1972 ) was born in Ohio. A poet, novelist and artist, his ambitious body of work also foreshadowed literary art-forms ranging from reading poetry to jazz accompaniment to his late experiments with visual poetry (which he called his "picture poems"). These experiments included a collaboration 1942 with the composer John Cage on the radio play The City Wears A Slouch Hat and collaborating with Charles Mingus in the 1950's, reading his poetry with Mingus' jazz combo.

This poem illustrates and illuminates Patchen's pacifism and refers to his continued opposition to American entry into the Second World War, positions that marginalized him in his own time. It is my first experience with Patchen and I'll certainly be looking for more of his work. It's a wonderful poem.



What is the Beautiful

The narrowing line.
Walking on the burning ground.
The ledges of stone.
Owlfish wading near the horizon.
Unrest in the outer districts.
And begin again.
Needles through the eye.
Bodies cracked open like nuts.
Must have a place.
Dog has a place.

Pause.

And begin again.
Tents in the sultry weather.
Rifles hate holds.
Who is right? Was Christ?
Is it wrong to love all men?

Pause.

And begin again
Contagion of murder.
But the small whip hits back.
This is my life, Caesar.
I think it is good to live.

Pause.

And begin again.
Perhaps the shapes will open.
Will flying fly?
Will singing have a song?
Will the shapes of evil fall?
Will the lives of men grow clean?
Will the power be for the good?
Will the power of man find its sun?
Will the power of man flame as a sun?
Will the power of man turn against death?
Who is right?
Is war?

Pause.

And begin again.
A narrow line.
Walking on the beautiful ground.
A ledge of fire.
It would take little to be free.
That no man hate another man,
Because he is black;
Because he is yellow;
Because he is white;
Or because he is English;
Or German;
Or rich;
Or poor;
Because we are everyman.

Pause.

And begin again.
I would take little to be free.
That no man live at the expense of another.
Because no man can own what belongs to all.
Because no man can kill what all must use.
Because no man can lie when all are betrayed.
Because no man can hate when all are hated.

And begin again.
I know that the shapes will open.
Flying will fly, and singing will sing.
Because the only power of man is in good.
And all evil shall fail.
Because evil does not work,
Because the white man and the black man,
The Englishman and the German,
Are not real things.
They are only pictures of things.
Their shapes, like the shapes of the tree
And the flower, have no lives in names or signs;
They are their lives, and the real is in them.
And what is real shall have life always.

Pause.

I believe in the truth.
I believe that every good thought I have,
All men shall have.
I believe that what is best in me,
Shall be found in every man.
I believe that only the beautiful
Shall survive on the earth.
I believe that the perfect shape of everything
Has been prepared;
And, that we do not fit our own
Is of little consequence.
Man beckons to men and this terrible road.
I believe that we are going into the darkness now;
Hundreds of years will pass before the light
Shines over the world of all men...
And I am blinded by its splendor.

Pause.

And begin again.








Wayne Scheer is back this week with another piece of flash fiction.



Haunted By Jack Kerouac's Ghost


Harlan hungered for the night, starved for the flashing of evening stars popping like paparazzi bulbs spotlighting the path to holy Vegas where greed lights the way to the American dream.

Harlan hankered for the night, after the streetlights zapped on and the safe suburban homes dim to only the ashen flicker of TVs and the sad gray gloom of computer screens - where sadsack souls hide in work stations by day and play stations by night dreaming of dancing like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire on the tables and walls of America.

Harlan howled into the night, searching for a pretty girl who'd sing sweet songs of love to a stranger, dance to the hip hop of her heart and Velcro green florescent strips to her bare ass and roller blade nude down the American Road into the starry evening sky.








Now, from one of my favorite source books, Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, I have this poem from Emma Lee Warrior.



New Indian Medicine

You can become a shaman,
it's easy, ask that guy,
what's his name,
the one by Spokane.
He charges $350,
payable in advance, of course.

There are other cult leaders
who also want your treasures
for a dose of Indian medicine.
They pretend to cure you
or put a hex on an enemy.
Again, it'll cost;
if you don't have the bread,
your car will do
or a favorite horse,
maybe some artifacts.
Allegiance alone
isn't quite enough.

They mix a bit of Sioux,
a little Northwest Coast,
a dab of Southwest,
and just for good measure
a pinch of Plateau
sprinkled all over with Plains.

Crazy Horse's pipe,
how they got it a mystery,
Sitting Bull sweats with them
every now and then.

Indian medicine, Hollywood style,
visions and visitations
brought with a welfare check.
Guardian spirits, Indian names,
plucked out of the air
like cottonwood in June.

Shamanism is lucrative,
a trip to New York,
Europe, around the world,
a book on the market,
a guest on a talk show,
awe, respect, fame,
paid for by the weak
grasping at straws,
seeking identity at any price;

government grants
for survival camps,
medicine people,
Indian Sun Myung Moons.








I welcome back Nancy Williams Lazar with a short poem reflecting her interests in places and cultures.



Bride Rock

The woods that remain in the hollow
stand like a bruise in the middle of the horse-
shoe curve of the mobile home park

wrapped like a blanket on the shoulders of
the snow paths of Mount Macungie.
They wait for the old ones who used to

hunt along the banks of Bear Creak
and sleep under the shelter of Bride Rock
who still hovers over her husband, defiantly

upright, even though the fires of their love
long ago lost their reason.








Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking too much about the art or the craft or whatever the hell it is I'm doing.Best to just do.



so who's the poet now

given that the origins
of poetry
lie around campfires
in preliterate societies
it's not possible to argue
that poetry
as performance art
is not a revival
of the truest
and most ancient
of poetic tradition

but why, then, do
I so miss the
architecture of words
arranged on a page
when I hear a poem
performed by a master
of that art
and why do I feel the
integrity of my words
debased
when performance
exploits them for sound
and mood rather than
image and meaning

could it be that
what I do
in managing lines
and breaks
and shapes
and forms is
not poetry at all,
just
manifestation
of industrial-age
bondage to the
tyranny
of movable type








It's been several weeks since we checked in with our one-armed, turn of the century, French adventurer and poet Blaise Cendrars.

When last we saw him he was in Japan. We take up with him again in Africa, on the Behr el Zeraf, a section of the White Nile that passes through Sudan.

Try to imagine what these missives from mysterious lands must have meant to readers at the turn of the 20th century. How strange and exotic they must have seemed.



The Behr el Zeraf

There isn't any tall grass along the banks
Great flat stretches of lowlands fade away into the distance
Islands almost flush with the water level
Big crocs warming in the sun
Thousands of big birds cover the muddy or sandy banks

The country changes
Now there is some light brush with a sprinkling of stunted trees
There are some beautifully colored small birds and coveys of guinea
   hens
Now and then in the evening a lion roars and his silhouette is seen on
   the west bank
This morning I killed a varanian a yard and a half long

Still the same landscape of flooded plains
The Arab pilot has spotted some elephants
Everyone is excited
We go up to the upper deck
For each of us it's the first appearance of the emperor of animals
The elephants are about three hundred yards off two big ones a
   medium-sized one three or four babies
During lunch ten big fat hippo heads are seen swimming ahead of us

The mercury hardly moves
Around 2 in the afternoon it's usually 90 to 100
The dress is khaki good shoes leggings and no shirt
One does justice to the good cooking on board and the bottles of brown
   Turin
In the evening one simply adds a white jacket
Kites and vultures graze us with their wings
After dinner the boat moves out into the middle of the river to elude the
   mosquitoes as much as possible
The banks drift by covered with papyrus and gigantic euphoria
We see a lot of rather tame antelope and gazelles
Then an old water buffalo but no rhinoceros









It's an event that happens the first friday of every month. I don't go that often (I'm crowdaphobic), but had special reason this month, as explained in the last issue. But, there's excitement in the crowds and the music and, of course, anytime you get a crowd together here, food.



southtown - first friday art walk



it's an art
fair
so there is much
to feed the soul

but
with funnel cake
turkey legs
bar b que
and
roasted corn
the more substantial
elements
of an art lovers
needs
are not ignored








Time to fade back into the mist for another week.

As I do, remember, all of the works presented in the blog are the property of their creators. The blog itself is produced by and the property of me....allen itz.
0 Comments:

Post a Comment



Blue Skies and Golden Meadows   Saturday, November 03, 2007


II.11.1.



This is the best time of the year here in the Texas hill country.

Temperatures are cool at night and pleasant during the day. The days start with a few clouds in the morning, then clear skies the rest of the day, with skies the deepest blues you can imagine.

No color in the leaves yet, and when it happens, it'll be over quick. One day green trees and two days later a yard full of brown leaves. There is a small area a little further west and north called Lost Maples where leaf peepers can go for their annual fall colors fix. We might go next weekend.

In the meantime, there's "Here and Now." Hope you enjoy.







The fact that October 31st is just several days past is probably the only excuse for this.



on this last night of October

black cat
in top hat
and gold
trimmed
spats
dancing
on a pine
cone
fence,
tempting
the shine
of the jitterbug
moon

such an
strange night
this last night in
October








After that shaky start, we settle down a bit with a quiet poem by Indian poet Sudeep Sen from his book Postmarked India.

Sen was born in New Delhi in 1964 and studied literature there and in the US. Since he earned an MS from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University his writings have appeared in leading newspapers, magazines, and journals and he has read his work worldwide (including, apparently San Antonio since the book I picked up at a local used bookstore is autographed by him, along with a nice handwritten note to the original purchaser).

The book was published by HarperCollins Publishers India in 1997. At that time, Sen was living in London and New Delhi.

Here's the poem.



Silence and Light

All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent,and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to light.....Louis Kahn

Between weighted whispers of silence and night's
mirrored moments of slow-released light,

lies a vast construction of "darkless" shadow,
creviced in a history of reverberating waves. Shadow

that flickers and folds, undulating with
each and every waft of wind,

and the unpredictable strike of the sun.
Silence: with pulses, each of them immeasurable - and

light: measurable, that peels the prism in a
curious spectrum of seven strands, englobes a spirit - a

threshold, where architecture stands, between
ourselves and the world, where it belongs. In

the mist of penumbra, where tones of silence darken,
and definite rays light, each skin

of this shadow, the black blanket moults, layer
after layer of indistinguishable grey, like sheer

flakes of ash from an ever-burning log, where angles,
lines, and this crumpled mass of material

meet between buildings, blocks, bricks, and beams,
drafting a penciled palette, a blue-print

of immutable shapes, entombed in the Treasury of
the Shadow. And here, etched in the instant of

a grand plan, everything meets, collides, and forms,
amidst the omnipresent architecture of man, and god








I'm happy to welcome back, after his brief absence, Jim Corner.



Discovery

No halo glows above Mary's head,
not even a garland pressing

her startled white hair. Imagine
her an undernourished feline

sidling into Starbucks, tail curling
down - a light fear of gathered

broods. By the window I sit as I read
the news, she gazes beyond my

transparent profile forming
into voluptuous whitened cyan

rushing across my table. "The light
is surreal" I note. "There is no

commonplace, only the baroque,"
she replies. Our mutual whispers

translate into truth; our spirits fuse
as if our ambiance is a unicorn's meadow,,,








Next, I have a darker piece by Frederick Seidel from his collection Poems 1959-1979. Born in 1936 in St. Louis, Seidel attended Harvard College and, at the time the book was published (1989 by Alfred A. Knopf), he lived in New York.



A Widower

He still reads his paper in there; the john's what he comes
   home for,
The door kept locked the way some men keep a whore
Was his whore while his wife lived. Still up at eight,
In bed by ten. But sometimes he's up late,
Biting his tongue to tears, to masturbate.

And now always his angina schreis like a boiling kettle.
His breath shrieks when he reaches to wash the newsprint away,
Still seated, from his cigar-stained fingers. Like rusted metal,
The white and gray tiles: a veined, brownish light gray.

When he tries to think of her face,
He sees the drops clinging to the faucet droop and ache.
He sees his shadow on the pebbled glass,
covered with the tears he's held back.

Outside the door, his visiting granddaughter barks at the dog,
Asleep there, gassing and grumbling. One foot must be bare -
The other in what must be her grandmother's beach clog,
She slops down the hall rug. She should care?

The bathroom cares for him like a wife.
But his little legs, swastika-like
In black sharkskin, still run his coalyards and his life,
He has no say. His dry throat stabs, like a spike

Of unpaid bills, counting the white tiles, then again the gray.
He'd like a cigar for every time that kvetch killed
Him in her dreams every day
And knew he knew it - and was thrilled!

Except - the almost odorless warm sand and the smell of salt -
Where? - where they were happy. Atlantic City? LA?
The waves gush in fizzing, halt,
Trailing seaweed and sunlight, and flush away.

On its back, opened up, his billfold sweats on the damp tiles,
As if helpless, where it was dropped. His wife's snapshot smiles
Up from the floor. He opens the door. Turning gold-
Rimmed silver cartwheels on the hall rug, a blond child.
Shocked by the static in his kisses, she starts to scold.








I am getting really tired of all the political doubletalk about Iraq. Everyone claims to know what needs to be done - stay in or get out - but no one ever talks about the big question, how to do what they say they want to do. It's all about ends on both sides and nothing about means which is where there are the most important and most difficult problems that must be solved.



how I said and I ain't no damn movie indian

back
in the day
when
I had
an agreed
upon
properly
prescribed
described
decreed
and documented
real life
my
function
was to make
things happen
which began
of course
with the question
"what"
followed by
"how"
and ending with
"when"

observing
the events
of the day
by which I
mean
primarily
that fucking
dumbass
bloody
tragedy of a war
we started
cause
goddamnit
we felt like it,
it seems
that everyone
is talking about "what"
and "when" but never
"how"
which doesn't surprise
me
since "how"
is the hardest
maybe impossiblist
nut
in the whole fucking
dumbass bloody
affair
especially
when everyone
wants
a happy ending








I have a poem now by James Galvin from his book X : Poems published in 2003 by Copper Canyon Press.

This is Galvin's sixth book of poetry. He also has a book of prose and a novel. At time the book was published, he lived in Wyoming and was on the permanent faculty of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop.



Prevailing Wind

Without inherent power to exist,
Attempting bravery to preserve some form,
Leaning into your confidence like pure
Time with nothing in it, giving deeper
Draft to stars' keels, you stop, and the night
Leaves hang like phials of morphine. Inept ecstasy,
Ecstatic inanity, despondent, burning
Splendor, prevailing wind, prevailing modest
And hushed, paying strict attention while
Reviling thunder. A yellow aspen, caught
In a whirling updraft you didn't think about,
Sketches you, your portrait, capturing
You perfectly, with ease, your hurricane
Mane swirling as you pass without passing.








It is great to have Jane Roken back after a considerable absence.

With this poem she demonstrates why I'm a "never do-it-myself" guy. In all my years I've yet to find a household maintenance issue that I can't make into a full grown disaster.



Plumber's nightmare


You hear strange noises from the basement,
read bewildering instructions hanging from banisters,
and messages scrawled on the wall, some vague, some violent.


Steady now, keep going. Don't flinch, don't falter.
Negotiate precariously stacked broken tiles
and pipe sockets that open and close like hydraulic maws.


The passage fills from above with dangling kite strings,
twine, barb wire vines and soggy streamers;
underfoot, nothing but ice floes that melt away deliriously.


Like a cattle vet, never make an impatient gesture,
and never jerk or turn so quick,
fixing the drip in the intricate gut machinery of a new toilet.


Like a locomotive driver, never take your eyes off
the line ahead, never doze, never slip
one fraction of a moment, or the hissing cistern will triumph.


Drum rolls fill your ears. One irrepressible shiver,
and you wake up, marooned in the no-man's land
between the dusty naked light bulb and the waste pipe.








Next, I have the title poem from the book Mi'ja, Never Lend Your Mop....and other poems by Brigid Milligan. At the time the book was published by M&A Editions in 2000, Milligan was a senior at Health Careers High School in the Northside District here in San Antonio. In addition to the recognition she received for her poetry, she won regional awards for her one-act plays and video productions.




Mi'ja, Never Lend Your Mop....

         for Denise Chavez>

mi'ja, never lend your mop to a stranger, she told me
it's worse than sharing underwear -
inevitably a social and moral dilemma
you mop has been on your floor, seen
your dirt, your feet,
mi'ja, you don't know enough about his floor

it might be his floor's first mopping
mi'ja, you don't want your mop to be his first -
it sets the standards
then you might want to clean it,
avoid any preconceived notions

he might be an experienced mopper
and would judge you mop cruelly
setting you up for comparisons -
he would know just what to do
mi'ja, heaven forbid he try to show you how to mop!

mi'ja, he might not even need a mop -
assuming his floor is dirty, but seeing it is not
you might be giving your mop away to an obsessive
compulsive nobody
who thinks a mop is a way to analyze a person

he might not even want it - just an excuse
to check out your floors and then run off
with your mop
what if you never saw it again,
then what would you do?

mi'ja, never lend your mop to a stranger








Here's a coffee shop piece. Drinking coffee, watching people, it's what I do.



study hall

she
has brown,
secret-keeping eyes
and perfect teeth
that flash white
when she
smiles

studying
with three fellow students,
all boys
competing for her attention,
with one well-arched brow,
she controls the
agenda








My next poem is by Francisco X. Alarcon from his bilingual book De Amor Oscuro/Of Dark Love. The book was published by Moving Parts Press. There is no publication date in the book itself, but there is a handwritten note signed by the poet and dated October 1997. Francisco Aragon is credited with assisting the poet with English translations of some of the poems.

Like many who live or grew up near the US/Mexican border, for Alarcon, the border is more an inconvenience then a real geopolitical feature dividing two nations. Like many other Mexicans at the time, his grandparents moved to the U.S. following the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917), then returned to Mexico after the Big Depression. His U.S. born mother and uncles returned to the U.S. in the 40s during the war effort.

Born in the U.S. but spending most of his childhood in Guadalajara, Alarcon is a bi-national, bi-cultural, bilingual poet and educator. His children's books vividly paint pictures of Latino culture, family, fun, and flavor. He currently directs the Spanish for Native Speakers Program at the University of California, Davis.

The poems are numbered and otherwise untitled, heavily romantic, with English and Spanish versions on facing pages. Poem pages are separated by pages of drawings by Ray Price.



I

there has never been a sun for this love,
like a crazed flower it buds in the dark,
is at once a crown of thorns and
a garland of spring around the temples

a fire, a wound, the bitterest fruit,
but also a breeze and water-source,
a bite to the soul - your breath,
a tree trunk in the current - your chest

make me walk over turbid waters,
be the ax that breaks this lock,
the dew that weeps from trees

if I become mute kissing your thighs
it's that my heart is eagerly searching
your flesh for a new dawning








I have a poem now by San Antonio poet Rob Soto from Atheist In A Foxhole, a little pocket book of his poetry released this month by LeArtWorks, also of San Antonio.

I introduced Rob to "Here and Now" readers several weeks ago and am very pleased to have him back.

He is primarily a spoken word poet and, having heard him read several of his poems, I can say he's very good at it.

Rob returned not too long ago to San Antonio from Afghanistan where he completed his military service. I understand he intends next to begin a career in law enforcement.



Ugly Zen

Purgatory is a late night flight into Grand Forks, North Dakota that never ends
you just keep going back to Minneapolis to get more fuel. And I've got too
much time to think, too much time to think about her, and way, way to much
time to look at the handle on my window that says "exit" and think "what if."
And as I peer out into the pitch black void l imagine I'm looking into her eyes,
because even at 35,000 feet she still has me completely hypnotized. Even at
35,000 feet I can still feel her under my skin. Even at 35,000 feet all I can
think of is how I wanted to ask her the question, but I don't even know
what the question was. And I try to swallow this regret down my dry throat because
my ears just popped again. And where the hell is my complementary soda and
honey roasted peanuts. Anyways, I keep expecting to see lightning strike the starboard
engine and end this mid-air nightmare in a twisted burning wreckage
scattered across downtown Minneapolis

OK, I admit it, Part of me wanted to see the plane go down. Does that make me
a bad person? Does that make me sick and wrong? No! It just makes me tired.
Tired of pre-boarding, boarding, and seemingly endless hours of apathy
interrupted by turbulence. But not even that can shake me from thinking of
her. NO. Not even if I see the stewardess making the sign of the cross, not
even I saw the ghost of Richey Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big
Bopper break into a chorus of La Bamba in the center isle. I could feel nothing
but her coursing through my veins like an espresso drain-o drug cocktail with
a twist of lime to take the edge off. I am captive by her essence, wrapped up
in this ugly Zen, and falling to pieces over lips I never had the courage to kiss.
So, as the plane safely touched down in near perfect landing through limited
visibility, I was the only one who came crashing down.








Zhao Yi was born in 1727 and died in 1814 in his 87th year. He was born poor and supported himself at first as a private tutor. In 1761 he passed the imperial examination and over a long career served in many official capacities, often taking the role of reformer, helping the common people. In addition to poetry, he wrote critical notes on poetry, a dynastic history, histories of military campaigns and other important works.

I have two of his poems, taken from larger works.



fromReading at Leisure

6

When people read classics,
they read themselves.
This is like a plaza
where an audience rings the high stage.
The short man stands on the floor,
he stretches his neck and stands on his toes.
But there are people in high towers on balconies
who watch the performance at eye level.
The show is the same
but the impressions are different.
The short man returns from the theater
bragging about having a close look.
The people upstairs
cannot help cracking up.

fromPoem Composed While Living at Houyuan Garden

I

A guest suddenly appeared knocking at my door
coming to give me a commission for my brush.
He asked me, "Write an epitaph
that will be elegantly written and flattering.
Compare his administration to Long and Huang,
his scholarship to the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi."
I did it as a joke
and gave him just what he wanted
in a patchwork composition.
I made the man sound like quite a gentleman.
Check his epitaph against his deeds
and you'll find not one ounce of truth in a hundred pounds.
If this epitaph is passed on
who can know who's really a paragon and who is not?
Maybe people will quote my epitaph
so it ends up in the history books.
Now it's clear to me; at least half
of history is pure lies.








Gary Blankenship is, as we've seen before, a master of poem series. He's been working for several weeks on a series of poems inspired by Whitman's Song of Myself.

I'll let Gary do his own explanation in the preface to the first two poems in the series.



Section 16 of Song of Myself contains about sixty lines of occupations, people, etc. - pilot, duck hunter, bride, etc. And this era's poet wonders if he can pen a short verse for each, even those politically incorrect. I do not always use the entire line from Whitman. For example, the full line in #2 is: The carpenter dresses his pla...the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp, And after the series was started, I decided to make them first person and to add a connection, even if light, between them. So that the carpenter in #2 planes a pew for the church in #1.


Song of Myself #1 - Contralto


1. The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,

the wind chases a sycamore leaf
the river flows past abandoned battlefields
the reverend seeks different verse for his Sunday sermon
ravens gather on the steeple,
badgers under the porch,
the soprano joins in

a hallelujah chorus
sunflowers seed a fence line
rye ripples in the shadow of headstones


Song of Myself #2 - Carpenter

2. The carpenter dresses his plank...

curls for pews thrown off by my plane
gathered in my daughter's skirt

sawdust thrown off by my saw
swept into bags

red curls adorn my daughter's hair
cedar sawdust fills eggshell white sacks

her hope chest empty
she elopes with a poet who stutters

hope fulfilled
she runs off with a tin whistle drummer








Here's another piece of the strange black humor of Michael Van Wallenghen. It is from his book Blue Tango, published in 1989 by the University of Illinois Press. At the time of the books publication, Van Wallenghen was a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.



The Cat's Meow

At first he was going
to be a priest. Then

the depression hit
and he had to find work.

Finally he found a job
working a punch press

at Briggs - a "butcher shop"
where doing piecework

meant missing fingers
hands mangled into claws....

But it's just about here
the story starts to wander.

At this point, my father
might talk about the guys

he hung around with, thugs
with names like "Killer George"

or "Two-Belly Buffalo Joe."
Other times he'd ramble on

about St. Edward's, assisting
the old monsignor at mass

and acting in that play
where he met my mother

She was "the cat's meow"
as my father liked to say.

But then she got pregnant -
a detail I had to figure out

years later, all by myself.
Other details went nowhere -

dreamlike divagations
through old dance halls

corny pranks, stale jokes
from fifty years ago....

And then, as by accident
he'd find himself once more

drinking in that crummy joint
adjacent to the factory....

a huge tomcat paced up
and down along the bar

one eye, mangled ears....
just the kind of mascot

you'd expect. Except
he needed to be fixed.

Anyone, even my father
could see that, And now

comes the strange part
the five-dollar bet

and my father shoving it
headfirst into an old boot

and just doing it, snicker
snack, with a pocketknife.

It all happened so fast
no one could believe it

not ever my father
who pauses at this point

like a man discovering
his own flat fingers

splayed out in the die
of the uplifted press....

He can't figure it out.
It might even be funny

and so he laughs, ha-ha
like the old monsignor

when the innocent wine
began looking like blood.








Now, here's a poem from a friend we haven't seen in a while, Dan Cuddy. Welcome back Dan.



A Failure To Grow

Never learned
How to get beyond the child in the crib

Crying

For attention
Usually not grief
Just attention

Never learned
The niceties
The cool, neutered, inert, dumb, mouthings
Of a moment
Talking of the weather

Damp, cloudy, pavement wet,
Pings of waves as drops fall
From the indifferent sky
Where clouds in all shades of gray
Slide off
Into the horizon








Charles Entrekin was born and raised to Alabama. He taught at various colleges and universities and served as Associate Director of the Center for Contemporary Writing at the John F. Kennedy University in California. He was also founder and partner of a computer consulting firm in San Francisco.

This poem is from his fourth book of poetry, In this Hour which was published in 1989 by Berkeley Poets Workshop and Press.

At the time the book was published, he lived with his family in Berkerley.



Hawaii

In the thick sweet smell of burnt sugar
and Pulmeria,
under high ridged shadows of extinct volcanoes,
with cliffs so high the eye loses perspective
and all sense of balance.
   I dream I'm wearing the wrong clothes,
wrinkled, gray corduroy pants, loafers,
a World War II leather jacket.
I can't remember where I am.
   We're sweating, no clothes on, and
nestled in the crook of each other's arms,
almost asleep. The trade winds flow
over our bed lifting away our perspiration.
   The sunlight, the waves, the days
pump regularly, unconcerned as sand,
and I slip into drifting
how out there just over the first horizon,
just below the reach of my hand,
a blue-green ocean washes us
with the smell of the planet's life,
briny and complete,
as if we were never here.








Speaking of Hawaii, here's Hawaiian poet Alice Folkart with more travel tales.



It's the Law

There's a good reason for deep, restless oceans separating countries:
the humidity rising from them helps to reassemble the fragmented souls of those who dare to travel back and forth at high altitude and unimaginable speed.

There's a good reason for pulling the window shades down, down, down,
shutting out the day or night in your average overstuffed, dehydrated jet liner hurtling high over endless seas at the very sticky edge of the earth's envelope.

We're not supposed to see the long, diaphanous strands of soul and personality, the metallic gleam of crumpled thoughts, brilliant ideas, unborn madness, clouds of mistrust, no not the pulsating plum-colored light of fear or the steady pink glow of love that crowd the universe, and are often mistaken collectively for the Aurora Borealis,even in the horse latitudes where you can hardly hear yourself think for all the neighing,and the ink won't ever dry upon the page, meaning failing all words.

But, against advice, I looked, flying east to west, and saw disembodied business men typing dreams into their laptops, lap dancing with lap dogs, lapping up lost thoughts, riding logs over celestial waterfalls after having stood in line for centuries, ticket in hand.

Alas, I peeked, wide eyed at the opulence of mind and body parts dancing on Saturn's rings things I'd never thought to see, Ah me, but now I pay the price of two weeks eating rice and squid, my Id will never be the same, and, although I am supposedly at home, and don't want to roam, even to the store for bread and milk and more, I'd swear that I am only partly here, the fear is gone, one ear hears, the other's jerking, but my heart and most of my digestive tract I've left back there, lurking I don't know where.

It's been this way before, and worse, but I've got my purse and passport,
and I've slept athwart my bed one night and yearn for sleep again, and feel forgetful, freighted with that unexperienced pulling-yet-together, but I will - it is the law of travel.








Korean-American poet Ishle Yi Park was born in New York in 1977. She has received many honors, presented her work in numerous publications and was a featured poet on HBO's Def Poetry Jam
.

This poem is from her book, The Temperature of This Water, published in 2004 by Kaya Press.



Samchun in the Grocery Store

Last night I walked into a grocery store on East 3rd and Avenue B,
shocked by my uncle's face behind the counter:
Issilah! he smiled, with a broad sweep of arm,
Take anything! in this store that wasn't even his.

I wander a labyrinth of stacked aisles,
smell of orange yam meat roasting dark
and sweet as the sight of my samchun: dirty Mets cap,
chipped front tooth, crescent-moon eyes spilling light
over his rough beach of brown skin:

this samchun, who taught me to crack open warm walnuts
with my teeth, back cracked from hauling fish-store crate
and fruit carton, spine held stiff with a leather safety belt.

My samchun, hands exploding knife-into-fist,
telling my father: if you ever hit that woman again
I chop off both your hands, like this -

Samchun, After 26 years, just recently blessed
with a fat-cheeked granddaughter
whose Yi family earlobes
turn up like little buttons....

A customer enters. Grabs a Hershey bar,
a Heineken, a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes.
Asks, How much is this? What? How much? Speak English!
1.19...1.19...1.19, I hiss from behind the rack of Wise chips,
Lemonade chilling my palms. I watch a mask eclipse
my salmchun's face as he swallows the spit insults,
the go-home-chink, speak English bullshit,
clicked trigger and bullet: I imagine him falling,
snapped neck under cigarette shelves, Fallen,

crushed flower at an altar of jagged store windows,
white picket signs, white arm bands,
Latasha Harlins, Soon Ja Du: thick blood
pooling on both sides of the counter....

I want to run up and bitch slap the man
for disrespecting my uncle, but this is not my battle;
this is just his job.

Somewhere, La India streams out an open car window,
Samchun rubs his temple. The customer slaps
silver change on the counter and leaves. Solitude freezes
this store trimmed with icicles and wet, black snow.

Suddenly, I know why my love is a clenched fist,
why I can only love like this.
Samchun bags my Countrytime Lemonade
and tells me to watch it. Music outside
trails off like a torn ribbon -
we hug over the dividing counter
as if our lives depend on it.








Sit at a coffee shop long enough and you will see someone to write about.



story time

the girl
with the ruined
face,
eyes dancing
as she tells
a story

too low
for me to hear
but her
companion
leans forward
almost touching
listening
intently

I envy his
proximity
and the
air
he shares
with her
smile








The next poem is by Gary Snyder from the anthology Across State Lines. The book is a collection of poems by poets both well known and not so well known that reference, directly or indirectly, the various states of the United States. This poem represents the state of Washington.

Snyder is a poet (originally, often associated with the Beat Generation), essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. He has also translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese. Snyder was for many years on the faculty of the University of California, Davis, and for a time served on the California Arts Council.

Here's the poem, a short one.



Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.









Daniel Donaghy has an M.F.A. in creative writing (poetry) from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Rochester. He has received numerous honors and publishing credits. Many of his poems are taken from his experiences as an urban youth.

This poem, a character sketch, is from his book Street Fighting Poems published in 2005 by BkMk Press.



He Sold Me My First Car For Two Hundred Bucks

Even on summer's hottest days
we knew we'd pass Blind Ed
on our way to shoot hoops
at The Lot, that by noon he'd
be deep in one of his junkers,
checking plugs and points,
hoses and valves, leaning close
to the blurred flywheel
to set the idle speed, reaching
surely for each part even though
cataracts took most of his sight,
left him with shadows for a family,
no money in the bank, dead
cars scattered on his lawn.
We knew to say his name softly,
to approach only after he extended
his greasy hand, which we shook
in spite of the awkwardness we felt
when he talked about nothing,
about school and our parents,
the loud jeeps that raced our street
at night, no one able to look too long
at his roaming pupils and blue irises
gone white, or at the hands shaking deep
in his pockets, as though he might
pull out something other than smokes
or a buck for one of us to rake his leaves,
something he just had to show us -
watch or ring a vanishing coin -
some small thing to take with us
and pass back and forth like a ball.








And here's another of my coffee shop piece .



enter the dragon

a little
guy,
looks like
Bruce Lee
when he was
young,
back when he was
Kato,
Green Hornet's
sidekick,
before he was the
Dragon

must be a med student,
looks like body parts
in the book
he's studying, or
it could be serial
killer school, one
or the other, some
doctors it's hard
to tell the difference

intense
young man

seems ready
at any instant
to break the table
in half with
one mighty
karate
chop

hiiiiiiiiyahhhhhh








Here's a short poem by W. Joe Hoppe, Austin poet and underground film maker.

The poem is from his bookGalvanized published this year by Dalton Publishing.



Hombres Solitarios

Seven Mexicans on the stereo
sing of loneliness
together in fine harmony

Two kinds of accordions
three kinds of guitars
and a pair of fiddles
believable lonely in the same key

Certain that this
is the way a man
truly exists








It's been a while since we joined our German expressionists. So here's August Stramm with two of his poems from the anthology Music While Drowning, both translated by Patrick Bridgwater.

Stramm was born in 1874 and was killed in hand-to-hand combat in 1915, a casualty of the World War I. He is considered one of the first of the expressionists.



Dream

Through the bushes wind stars
eyes submerged film sink
whispering babbles
blossoms cleave
perfumes spray
showers deluge
winds hurry flurry scurry
sheets tear
falling starless into deep night.


Fickleness

My groping gropes!
Many thousands change I
I search I
and catch You
and clutch You!
Lose I.
And You and You and You
many thousand You
and always You
all ways You
mazed
maze
mazed
ever more mazed
by this mazement
You
To You
I!








Qualified Halloweenies have some special abilities which I fear I do not share.



halloween, near midnight

and I
ain't
scared nobody





BOO!!!!!



how
'd
I
do
?








Ku Sang is a Korean poet I have come to like very much. Born into a Catholic family in Seoul, grew up in what is now North Korea, studied in Japan, then fled to South Korea where he was later imprisoned for writing essays on The Corruption of Power.

Here are four of his short poems from his book Wastelands of Fire, published by Forest Books in 1989. The poems were translated by Anthony Teague.



Eros I

A torso like a ripe peach.

A butterfly fallen
drunk in ecstasy on a flowery tomb

A tongue with the perfume of melons.

A seagull plunging
into blue waves that flash white teeth.

In a gaze fixed on the distant horizon.

A roe deer
drinking at a secret spring in a virgin forest.

Abyss of Eros,
beauty of original sin.


Eros II

The purring cat's
deceitful, mysterious face.

Venus' neck
spun about with hempen locks.

On breasts of velvet
the imprint of a hawk's claws.

An hour-glass navel.

Buttocks the smooth bottom of a wooden bowl,
secret flesh of tree-trunk thighs.

The narrowing rapids of a rendezvous,
a grassy bank aflame on a spring day.

In primitive darkness,
beneath an azalea cliff blanket
a naked woman
on a foaming, lapping wave-white sheet
joins her arms
like the cords
that criminals are bound with

........

The cooing of doves.

Breathtaking moment, oh, mystic ritual!


Eros III

I draw in empty space

That face,
that voice,
that smile,
those thighs,
but that love
cannot be drawn.

Things drawn in the heart
may not be given form.


Eros IV

With that same hand
that caressed her naked body
I stroke my grey beard.

Passion faded into pale silver...

That loving, riding the bucket,
has been drawn up to the heavens.
Henceforth, all those times and places
are one with Eternity.








The weather's been great for sitting on the porch at Casa Chiapas. In fact, it's where I am right now as I edit and proof this.



early lunch



I've been sitting
on my favorite
porch here in
southtown
since nine this
morning,
sucking up
as much as I can
of blue skies
and air cool
and fresh
like clean white
sheets
when you first
slip under them
at night

I've done
the work I came
to do
but don't want
to go home
so I call D
for an early lunch,
maybe walk across
the street to
Madhatters
where we can split
one of their good-
for-more-than-one
club sandwiches
or maybe walk
a block to Rosarios
for some high-end
tex-mex
or another block
to the real mccoy
and newly famous
(featured in the Times
food section this week)
El Mirador for some
pollo en mole
or maybe a block
the other way
to Cascabel
for their little
Brazilian tacos
(not really tacos
but something like
tacos with a
Portuguese
accent)

anyplace
with a patio
so we can
eat outside,
ready to do
anything we have
to do to avoid
indoors
on a day like
this, hell, I
might even
go home after
lunch
and mow the yard





Shown Left to Right - Thomas Costales, Jessica Reyna, Le Lowry





Before closing, some well-deserved attaways for Le Lowery of LeArtWorks for the multi-artist show he put on at Casa Chiapas for the November First Friday Art Walk and to two of those artists, photographers Thomas Costales and Jessica Reyna, presenting their work to the public for the first time after their previous on-line debut in "Here and Now."

Congratulations to all three

And, finally, as always, all of the work shown in "Here and Now" is the property of its creators, while the blog itself is produced by and the property of me....allen itz.
0 Comments:

Post a Comment
return to 7beats
Previous Entries
This blog has moved
A Potentially Possibly Provisionally Great Blog
I Am the Postman
On the Road With My Pal, Reba
May I Show You My Etchings, M'Dear
Dreams in a Land Under a Far Red Sun
Blue
Winter on the South Frontier
Ups & Downs
Road Work
Archives
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009
May 2009
June 2009
July 2009
August 2009
September 2009
October 2009
November 2009
December 2009
January 2010
February 2010
March 2010
Links
Loch Raven Review
Mindfire Renewed
Holy Groove Records
Tryst
Poems Niederngasse
BlazeVOX
Eclectica
Michaela Gabriel's In.Visible.Ink
zafusy
The Blogging Poet
Poetsarus.Com
Wild Poetry Forum
Blueline Poetry Forum
The Writer's Block Poetry Forum
The Word Distillery Poetry Forum
Gary Blankenship
The Hiss Quarterly
Thunder In Winter, Snow In Summer
Lawrence Trujillo Artsite
Arlene Ang
The Comstock Review
Thane Zander
Pitching Pennies
The Rain In My Purse
Dave Ruslander
S. Thomas Summers
Clif Keller's Music
Vienna's Gallery
Shawn Nacona Stroud
Beau Blue
Downside up
Dan Cuddy
Christine Kiefer
David Anthony
Layman Lyric
Scott Acheson
Christopher George
James Lineberger
Joanna M. Weston
Desert Moon Review
Octopus Beak Inc.
Wrong Planet...Right Universe
Poetry and Poets in Rags
Teresa White
Camroc Press Review
The Angry Poet