Another Chance At The Brass Ring   Friday, December 28, 2007


II.12.5.




Welcome, Readers and Happy New Year from the San Antonio Riverwalk.








Galway Kinnell was born in 1927 in Providence, Rhode Island. He studied at Princeton University, graduating in 1948 alongside friend and fellow poet W.S. Merwin. He received his master of arts degree from the University of Rochester. He traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, and went to Paris on a Fulbright Fellowship. During the 1960's, he became committed to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Upon returning to the US, he joined CORE and worked on voter registration and workplace integration in Louisiana, an effort that got him arrested.

In addition to his works of poetry and his translations, Kinnell published one novel Black Light, and one children's book How the Alligator Missed Breakfast.

Kinnell was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University and a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets. He is now retired and lives in Vermont.

I took this poem from the college textbook The Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry



Ruins Under the Stars

    1

All day under acrobat
Swallows I have sat, beside ruins
Of a plank house sunk up to its windows
In burdock and raspberry cane,
The roof dropped, the foundation broken in,
Nothing left perfect but axe-marks on the beams."
A paper in a cupboard talks about "mugwumps."
In a V-letter a farmboy in the marines has "tasted battle..."
The apples are pure acid on the tangle of boughs,
The pasture has gone to popple and bush.
Here on this perch of ruins
I listen for the crunch of the porcupines.

    2

Overhead the skull-hill rises
Crossed on top by the stunted apple,
Infinitely beyond it, older than love or guilt,
Lie the stars ready to jump and sprinkle out of space.

Every night under those thousand lights
An owl dies, or a snake sloughs its skin,
A man in a dark pasture
Feels a homesickness he does not understand.

    3

Sometimes I see them,
The south-going Canada geese,
At evening, coming down
In pink light, over the pond, in great,
Loose, always-dissolving V's -
I go out into the field and listen
To the cold, lonely yelping
Of their tranced bodies in the sky.

    4

This morning I watched
Milton Norway's sky-blue Ford
Dragging its ass down the dirt road
On the other side of the valley.
Later, off in the woods
A chainsaw was agonizing across the top of some stump.
A while ago the tracks of a little snowy,
SAC bomber when crawling across heaven.

What of that little hairstreak
That was flopping and battling about
Deep in the goldenrod -
Did she not know, either, where she was going?

    5

Just now I had a funny sensation,
As if some angel, or winged star,
Had been perched nearby.
In the chokecherry bush
There was a twig just ceasing to tremble...

The bats come in place o the swallows.
In the smoking heap of old antiques
The porcupine-crackle starts up again,
The bone-saw, the pure music of our sphere,
And up there the stars rustling and whispering.








Here's a fun poem from Khadija Anderson. We haven't seen Khadija in a while. It's good to have her back



wish you were here

I'm getting ready to go out
at the bathroom sink
in the big mirror I see
that my gray underwear is peeking out
over the top of my low
brown pants
you would notice that
because you notice those things
and I have no top on
but my bra is also gray
and I know you would like to watch me
as I bend over
brushing my teeth like that
I notice that the brown animal spots on my gray bra
match my pants
and I wonder if you would notice that
but probably not
you'd probably just pull me
back into the bedroom
throw me on the bed and
well, you know








I used a poem by Charles Bukowski several weeks ago written near the end of his life. Although I don't have a date on it, I think this poem was also written late in his life. For most of his fifty year writing career Bukowski was careful to project and protect in his work the persona of his hard-drinking, hard-living alter ego, Hank Chinaski. As he grew older, especially near the end of his life, Hank became less the center of his poems, as in this poem where we begin to see more and more behind the Bukowski image, protecting Hank, in a way, from the decay of advancing age and death.

This is Charles' poem, not Hank's.



something's knocking at the door

a great white light dawns across the
continent
as we fawn over our tailed traditions,
often kill to preserve them
or sometimes kill just to kill.
it doesn't seem to matter: the answers dangle just
out of reach,
out of hand, out of mind.

the leaders of the past were insufficient,
the leaders of the present are unprepared.
we curl up tightly in our beds at night and wait.
it is a waiting without hope, more like
a prayer for unmerited grace.

it all looks more and more like the same old
movie.
the actors are different but the plot's the same:
senseless.

we should have known, watching our fathers.
we should have known, watching our mothers.
they did not know, they too were not prepared to
teach.
we were to naive to ignore their
counsel
and now we have embraced their
ignorance as our
own.
we are them, multiplied.
we are their unpaid debts.
we are bankrupt
in money and
in spirit.

There are a few exceptions, of course,
but these teeter on the
edge
and will
at any moment
tumble down to join the rest
of us,
the raving, the battered, the blind and the sadly
corrupt.

a great white light dawns across the
continent,
the flowers open blindly in the stinking wind,
as grotesque and ultimately
unlivable
our 21st century
struggles to be
born.








I don't know what started me on this train of thought, but this is where the tracks led me.



rubbing elbows

I bumped into
Chet Huntley
in the Indiana University
library and David Brinkley
about twenty-five years later
at a chamber of commerce dinner
on the Texas gulf coast;
I saw Dwight Eisenhower
and Charles de Gaulle
as they passed in a motorcade,
Ike in Texas and de Gaulle
in Paris; I sneaked into
a lecture by LBJ at Texas
State University and had
several interactions
with George Bush while
he was governor; I was
on the University of Texas
campus when the crazy guy
started shooting people
from the UT Tower, but
I was on the north side
while he was mostly shooting
south, all the way downtown,
and didn't know anything
was going on until it was
almost over; I saw Freddy
Fender once when he was
visiting a friend of his who
was a coworker of mine; I've seen
David Robinson at the bowling
alley and at a bookstore, and
I saw Popovich once at the same
bookstore looking at magazines

that's pretty much all the famous people
I've had any kind of contact with

I've seen a bunch of unfamous
people, too, but I don't
remember their
names








Here's a cool piece by Tony Hoagland from his book donkey gospel for which he received the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets in 1997.

He was born in 1953 in Fort Bragg, North Carolina and educated at Williams College, the University of Iowa, and the University of Arizona.

He currently teaches in the University of Houston creative writing program.



Muy Macho

I can't believe I'm sitting here
in this dark tavern,
listening to my old friend boast

about the size of his cock
and its long history,
as witnessed by the list of women

he now embarks upon, enumerating them
as a warrior might recite the deeds
accomplished by the family spear,

or like an old Homeric mariner might
go on about the nightspots
between Ithaca and Troy.

The bar tonight has the feeling
of a hideout deep inside the woods, a stronghold
full of beer and smoke,

the tidal undertow of baritones and jukebox
punctuated by the clean, authoritative smack
of pool balls from the back.

It's so primordial,
I feel my chest grow hairier
with every drink, and soon

I'm drunk enough to think
I'm also qualified to handle
any woman in the world.

You can talk about the march
of evolutionary change,
you can talk about how far we've climbed

up the staircase lined with self-help books
and sensitivity exams,
but my friend and I,

we're no different from any pair
of good old by Neanderthals
crouching by their fire

a million years ago,
showing off their scars and belching
as they scratch their heavy, king-sized balls.

I know that we are just an itchy spot
in the middle of the back
of the great hairy beast, The Truth;

I know that every word we say is probably a stone
someone else will someday have to
kick aside,

- still, part of me feels privileged,
belonging to this tribe of predators,
this club of deep-voiced woman-fuckers

to which I never thought
I never would belong;
part of me is more than willing to be wrong

to remain inside the circle of this
conversation,.
- to hear the details, one more time,

of how she took her shirt off, smiled,
and then they did it on the floor.
Even if the roof were falling in,

even if the whole world splintered and caught fire,
I would continue sitting here, I think,
entranced - implicated, cursed,

historically entwined -
another little dinosaur
stretching up its neck and head

to catch the last sweet drop of drunken warmth
coming from that ancient, fading sun.
We can't pull ourselves apart from it.

We don't really believe
there is another one.








Here's a poet that describes himself as a 42 year old male, born in New England and currently residing in Oklahoma. He says he is an explorer & adventurer that finally ran out of money, so he's now doing the "working for a living" thing.

The name he uses in posting on Wild Poetry Forum is DC Vision. I may not know his real name, but as someone who smoked for forty years before I quit eleven years ago, I do know what he's talking about in his poem.

To those still smoking, quitting is the hardest thing you'll ever do, until you really want to, then it's the easiest.

Here's the poem.



Smoking Momentum

sometimes
I feel as the message
is delivered
from appetite to flesh
and in a flash
my arm lifts
to light another
cigarette in contemplation

and sometimes
I feel nothing at all
except the impulse
and my arm lifts
to light yet another
cigarette in unconsciousness

and sometimes
my arm lifts
but i forget why
so I light another cigarette
to punctuate the moment
of forgetfulness

and sometimes
I have to remember
that I smoke too much
and think too little
for my own good








Next, I have three short poems from Blaise Cendrars that come from his experience during World War I when he fought in the French Foreign Legion. He served on the front lines from 1914 until he lost his right arm under attack by the enemy in Champagne in September, 1915.

Reading a little further into Cendrars' biography I learned that I have been wrong about something. I previously thought Cendrars had been an inspiration, especially in his travels, for Guillaume Apollinaire. Turns out, it was the other way around, Apollinaire inspired Cendrars.

After the war, he became involved in the movie industry in Italy, France, and the United States, and then, in 1925, he stopped writing poetry and concentrated his efforts on novels and short stories which provided him a greater income.

Here are the war poems.



Shrapnels

I.

In the fog the rifle fire crackles and the cannon's voice comes right
    up to us
The American bison is not more terrible
Nor more beautiful
Gun mounting
Like the swan of Cameroon

II.

I have clipped your wings, O my explosive forehead
And you don't want a kepi
On the national highway 400 thousand feet pound out sparks to the
    clanking of mess kits
I think
I pass by
Brazen and stupid
Stinking ram

III.

All my men are bedded down under the acacias the shells rip through
O blue sky of Marne
Woman
With the smile of an airplane
We are forgotten

    October 1914








This is one of those late night dog-walking poems. Seems my ideas come either while I'm walking my dog or while I'm at a coffee shop. To bad I can't walk my dog at a coffee shop, I'd probably come up with some classics.



halfway house

the sky
is full of
stars
tonight;
the moon
bright
and almost full

if I could
throw
a line from here
to there
I'd climb
this night

halfway to
those
stars








Now, here's Paul Durcan, a contemporary Irish poet born in Dublin in 1944. He has published eighteen books of poetry, including Greetings to Our Friends in Brazil which is the source for this poem.



        - A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the
       same people living in the same place.
       "Ulysses," Bodley Head edition, 1960, pg. 489

The Bloomsday Murders, 16 June 1997

Not even you, Gerry Adams, deserve to be murdered:
You whose friends at noon murdered my two young men,
David Johnston and John Graham;
You who in the afternoon came on TV
In a bookshop on Bloomsday signing books,
Sporting a trendy union shirt.
(We vain authors do not wear collars and ties.)

Instead of the bleeding corpses of David and Hohn
We were treated to you gazing into camera
In bewilderment fibbing like a spoilt child:
"Their deaths diminish us all."
You with your paterfamilias beard,
Your Fidel Castro street-cred,
Your parnell martyr-gaze,
Your Lincoln gravittas,
O Gerry Adams, you're a wicked boy.

Only on Sunday evening in sunlight
I met David and John up the park
Patrolling the young mums with prams.
"Going to write a poem about us, Paul?"
How they l laughed! How they saluted!
How they turned their backs! Their silver spines!

had I known it, would I have told them?
That for next Sunday's newspaper I'd compose a poem
How you, Gerry Adams, not caring to see,
Saw two angels in their silver spines shot.

I am a citizen of the nation of Ireland -
The same people living in the same place.
I hope the Protestants never leave our shores.
I am a Jew and my name is Bloom.
You, Gerry Adams, do not sign books in my name.
May God forgive me - lock, stock and barrel.








My next poem is from fellow webpoet Cliff Keller. I'm pleased to have him back with us.



Post Me

She may have noticed
the cursive scratching
or my posture's gothic arch
crumbling into the table.

"I'm a writer, too."
I can tell she means it.

Doesn't matter if
her "i"s are dotted with little hearts
or she rubs her eyes raw 'til 3 am,
she means it.

I blush, search for
the little billboard:
Jessica.
A rug of drinks levitates above her
and floats off to the stuffed men
measuring out their days with
Blackberries

I wonder
if she'll write about me tonight
if I'm a poem already
conceived in the lunch rush








Here's a poem by Roberto Sosa, a poet from Honduras. Born in 1930, his poems have been, at different times, both banned and highly honored. He writes of the oppression and poverty in his country, which accounts for both the banning and the honors.

I took the poem from the book The Same Sky, with poems from around the world selected by the book's editor, Naomi Shihab Nye. The poem was translated into English by Jim Lindsey.



The Indians

The Indians
descend
maze after maze
with their emptiness on their backs.

In the past
they were warriors over all things.
They put up monuments to fire
and to the rains, whose black fists
put the fruit in the earth.

In the theaters of their cities of colors
shone vestments
and crowns
and golden masks
brought from faraway enemy empires

They marked time
with numerical precision.
They gave their conquerors
liquid gold to drink
and grasped the heavens
like a tiny flower.

In our day
they plow and seed the ground
the same as in primitive times.
Their women shape clay
and the stones of the field, or weave
while the wind
disorders their long coarse hair,
     like that of goddesses.

I've seen them barefoot and almost nude,
in groups,
guarded by voices poised like whips,
or drunk and wavering with the pools of the setting sun
on the way back to their shacks
in the last block of the forgotten.

I've talked with them up in their refuges
there in the mountains watched over by idols
where they are happy as deer
but quiet and deep
as prisoners.

I've felt their faces
beat my eyes until the dying light
and so have discovered
my strength is neither
sound nor strong.

Next to their feet
that all the roads destroyed
I leave my own blood
written on obscure bough.








I was watching this scene at Borders and one image, the boy standing with his arms crossed in front of him, like he was hugging himself, crystalized the poem for me.



chess night at the coffee shop

the young chess player,
dark hair spiked
and pointing
in every direction,
concedes
to his older,
more experienced
opponent,
shakes hands,
then moves
to the next table,
standing,
arms folded in front
like the young boys
do
who
were in my younger days
called
eggheads
or brainiacs
or some other
dismissive name
that served to define
a particular class of queer,
boys
never at ease with their bodies
whose ineptitudes
shame them in their own minds,
making them always ready
for a challenge in the realm
of the mind, a chance to join
other brainiacs around a chess table
where minds could make moves
without the clumsy
interference
of inadequate
flesh








John Ashbery, born in 1927, has won nearly every major American award for poetry and is recognized as one of America's most important, though still controversial, poets.

Our next poem is from his book And the Stars Were Shining, published in 1995 by The Noonday Press.



Like A Sentence

How little we know,
and when we know it!

It was prettily said that "No man
hath an abundance of cows on the plain, nor shards
in his cupboard." Wait! I think I know who said that! It was...

Never mind, dears, the afternoon
will fold you up, along with preoccupations
that now seem so important, until only a child
running around on a unicycle occupies center stage.
Then what will you make of walls? And I fear you
will have to come up with something,

be it a terraced gambit above the sea
or gossip overheard in the marketplace.
For you see, it becomes you to be chastened:
and for the old to envy the young,
and for youth to fear not getting older,
where the paths through the elms, the carnivals, begin.

And it was said of Byges that his ring
attracted those who saw him not,
just as those who wandered through him were aware
only of a certain stillness, such as precedes an earache,
while lumberjacks in headbands came down to see what all the fuss
    was about,
whether it was something they could be part of
sans affront to self-esteem.
And those temple hyenas who had seen enough,
nostrils aflae, fur backing up in the breeze,
were no place you could count on,
having taken a proverbial powder
as rifle butts received another notch.

I, meanwhile...I was going to say I had squandered spring
when summer came along and took it from me
like a terrier a lady has asked one to hold for a moment
while she adjusts her stocking in the mirror of a weighing machine.
But here it is winter, and wrong
to speak of other seasons as though they exist.
Time has only an agenda
in the wallet at his back, while we
who think we know where we are going unfazed
end up in brilliant woods, nourished more than we can know
by the unexpectedness of ice and stars
and crackling tears. We'll just have to make a go of it,
a run for it. And should the smell of baking cookies appease
one or the other of the olfactory senses, climb down
into this wagon load of prisoners.

The meter will be screamingly clear then,
the rhythms unbounced, for though we came
to life as to a school, we must leave it without graduating
even as an ominous wind puffs out the sails
of proud feluccas who don't know where they're headed,
only that a motion is etched there, shaking to be free.








The next poem is by Thane Zander. I don't usually use poets two weeks in a row, but I've been saving two of Thane's poems, the one last week and this one, that I think are exceptionally fine and I want to use them both before I forget where I have them.



Headline 73 buried in Page Forty of the Newspaper

There it is, found it. I'd been waiting for the snippet of information since the interview seven days hence. The Cub Reporter was true to her word, within one week and there it is, "Mentally Ill have been Great People"

Winston Churchill it is said
was mentally ill
lived a life coupled with depression
not sure he was Manic Depressive
possible though.

The window of Depression is always dark
the mood of the bearer often slouchy
the light of day darkened when passing through,
I suffer Mania, so can't comment
though I'm sure it's as debilitating.

The article was two hours of interview, though the short piece surely doesn't warrant mentioning. Maybe I wasn't that interesting, though in my own mind I find myself highly worthy of mining, yet I get the feeling the gold I tried to pass off as my illness was subjected to editorial dismantling.

A lot of stars of stage and screen
suffer from Bipolar,
suffer from depression,
suffer from drug abuse
and maybe alcohol too,
The Lap Dancers in some hotels
snort cocaine to stop the pain,
the degradation of self
degeneration of mind,

a young kid in a classroom shows disinterest
shows signs of fidgeting,
knows he's not fitting in
he's got puberty to wait for the outcome
the diagnosis,
a mental illness part hereditary
part self abuse,
all to often seriously underrated.

I read the article another time, just to be sure that it would articulate with fellow sufferers, to accept my invitation to join our consumers group, to offer peer to peer assistance, to let them know they are not alone. She highlighted the meetings every second Wednesday. I think "is this enough?" then ruminate that maybe it could be too much for some. Such is life.

We meet every second Wednesday
to keep the pace of the meetings going
to do crafts and the likes
to sing
to rhyme
to make things happen,
numbers are low
we expect that
to start with,

this week we hope after the paper article
things will pick up, improve, increase,
of course, buried on Page Forty
not many would have the patience to read that deep,
I sure as hell wouldn't,


The register we sign when we clock in shows a marked increase. Maybe the Winston Churchill reference or the elucidation of famous actors, but this week coming indications are more people will be there, the phones of the organizers running red hot. Someone read, yes, and they read me, now time to meet and mingle as fellow humans afflicted with likewise ailments.








James Galvin was born in Chicago in 1951 and raised in northern Colorado. He earned a B.A. from Antioch College in 1974 and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa in 1977. He has published several collections of poetry, most recently Resurrection Update: Collected Poems 1975-1997, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; Lethal Frequencies, Elements, God's Mistress, which was selected for the National Poetry Series; and Imaginary Timber.

Galvin lives in Wyoming, where he has worked as a rancher part of each year all his life, and in Iowa City, where he is a member of the permanent faculty of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop.

The poem I have this week is from his book X Poems, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2003.



Wild Irises On Dirty Woman Creek

Stars leak mixed feelings
Over sheet lightning's weft of echoes.
You, I can't get over your shoulder blades,
Like music from the center of the earth.
I want to live happily.
You can have the ever and the after.
You are quite lifelike, but you can't fool me.
I know the unearthly when I die from it.
I'm not talking about the body's mutable components -
I'm not talking.
Look - wild irises, like every spring,
In the salacious green of Dirty Woman Creek.








I wrote this while sitting at a very crowded espresso bar in a supermarket, waiting for my son to finish shopping for the Christmas dinner he's going to prepare for us.



at the grocer's

two days before
christmas,
at the market,
very upscale,
with valet parking,
an overflow of BMWs,
and Escalades and
Lexuses (Lexi?)
in the parking garage
downstairs,
and a crowded little espresso
bar for those in need
of a caffeine snort at a
crucial
shopping moment

for all its pretensions,
this is a place for
serious cooks
and gastronomes
and chris,
who is a serious cook,
buys his groceries here
when he prepares dinner
for us, as he will do
on christmas
day

so as he shops,
I stand by,
debit card in hand,
sucking on a latte
at the espresso bar,
surrounded
by the kind of Texans
with a lot more money
than me, bankers
and lawyers dressed
like ranchers or farmers
just off the plow,
and I realize,
in the milieu
they have chosen,
I, in my faded jeans,
Walmart tee shirt
and Goodwill jacket,
am better dressed than
they are, in all their
pre-stressed, faux
working man finery,
which is such a shock
to my usual relaxed (read
sloppy) self, I think
for a moment that
we ought to do
all our grocery shopping
here








Although Julia Alvarez was born in New York City, she spent her early years in the Dominican Republic, until political insurrection forced her family to flee the country. After their arrival in New York city, she and her sisters struggled to find their place in a new world.

Her most notable work How the Garcia Girl Lost their Accents, a collection of related short stories, was published in 1991 and is drawn from this immigrant experience. Alvarez released her second novel, In the Time of Butterflies in 1994.

In addition to novels, she has published several books of poetry, beginning with Homecoming in 1984. In 1995 she released The Other Side: El Otro Lado, another poetry collection.

Alvarez is married, with two children, and is currently professor of English at Middlebury College in Vermont.

This poem is from Homecoming



Heroines

For C.

We keep coming to this part
of the story where we're sad:
I've broken up with my true love
man after man.
You've found It.
Once, It was God.
Once, revolution
in the third world.
Now, It's love.

You'll survive, our mothers said
when romance was once.
Now they keep tight faces
for our visits home
and tell their friends
all that education
has confused us,
all those poems.

They have, we laugh,
and buy the dreams -
Redbook, House Beautiful,
Mademoiselle. and Vogue -
to read our stories in them
and send the clippings home.
Sometimes the bright chase
of lovers in a meadow
sets us to believe again
in the worn plot of love.

Sadly, we turn the page
to right our hearts,
knowing our lives too well
to be the heroines
of our mothers' stories.
We're careful with the words
we pick, the loves with no returns
like the ones we wanted.
Godmothers to our sister's girls,
we bring them squawking rubber monsters,
birthday poems pasted in the growing albums.





"Idle"
Photo by Thomas Costales




I've shown you some of the stark, late-night photos of Thomas Costales several times. Thomas recently came back into the daylight to try some portraiture. Here is some of his new work, beginning with the self-portrait above.




"Intrigue"
Photo by Thomas Costales




"Peace"
Photo by Thomas Costales




"Sorrow"
Photo by Thomas Costales




"Surprise"
Photo by Thomas Costales









Chao Meng-fu was a prince and descendant of the Song Dynasty, and a Chinese scholar, painter and calligrapher during the Yuan Dynasty. He was born in 1254 and died in 1322.

Why does an artist or poet continue to do his art even if it seems no one cares. He explains it in this poem, translated by Jonathan Chaves.



An Admonition to Myself

Your teeth are loose, your head is bald,
                  you're sixty-three years old;
every aspect of your life
                  should make you feel ashamed.
All that's left that interests you
                  are the products of your brush:
leave them behind to give the world
                  something to talk about.








This is another coffee shop scene, written last night for my poem for the day.



the chill of the night

two women,
one blond,
the other,
long dark hair
with the sheen
of fresh-mined coal,
both
bundled
against the cold
in identical red coats

their eyes
meet
and the chill
of the night
deepens








Jimmy Santiago Baca was born in 1952 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He and his brother and sister were abandoned by their parents when he was seven years old. They stayed at their grandparents house until their grandfather died. He and his brother were sent to an orphanage, while his sister stayed with their grandmother to help her. Running away from the orphanage when he was thirteen, he and his brother found his abusive and alcoholic father and lived with him. He eventually escaped his father by moving to California.

Baca continued to get in trouble and at the age of twenty-one was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison for drug offenses. It was in prison that he learned to read and write and began to compose poetry.

His book Martín & Meditations on the South Valley, a pair of long narrative poems, including the poem sequence below, won an American Book Award in 1988. I pulled the poem from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.

In addition to his poetry collections and stories, Baca wrote the screenplay for the movie Bound by Honorr, which was released by Hollywood Pictures in 1993.


from Martin XIV

El Pablo was a bad dude
Presidente of the River Rats.
(700) strong from '67 to '73.
Hands so fast
he could catch two flies buzzing
in air, and still light his cigarette.
From a flat foot standing position
he jumped to kick the top of a door jamb
twice with each foot.
Pants and shirt creased and cuffed,
sharp pointy shoes polished to black glass,
El Pachucon was cool to the bone, brutha.
His initials were etched
on Junior High School desks,
Castaneda's Meat Market walls,
downtown railway bridge,
on the red bricks at the Civic Auditorium,
Uptown and Downtown,
El Pachucon left his mark.
Back to the wall, legs crossed, hands pocketed,
combing his greased-back ducktail
when a jaine walked by. Cool to the huesos.
Now he's a janitor at Pajarito
Elementary School -
                  still hangs out
                  by the cafeteria, cool to the bone,
                  el vato,
                  still wears his sunglasses,
                  still proud,
he leads a new gang of neighborhood parents
to the Los Padilla Community Center,
to fight against polluted ground water,
against Developers who want to urbanize
his rural running grounds.
Standing in the back of the crowd
last Friday, I saw Pablo stand up
and yell at the Civic Leaders from City Hall,
"Listen Cuates, you pick your weapons.
We'll fight you on any ground you pick."








Now, here's another in the Tarot series by Alex Stolis



Card VIII

Strength is a prime number

You tell me everything
I need to know about my sins -
how they will be stones

that weigh down my pockets
how they are the missing page
in an attempt to write a story.

Tomorrow and the tomorrow
after is time enough to believe
in ghosts,

today we will be unafraid
with nothing left to break
but promises.








Next, I have five short poems from the Japanese. The poems are taken from the book One Hundred Poems From The Japanese. All of the poems are translated by Kenneth Rexroth.



The first poem is by Bunya No Asayasu who lived about 900 A.D. The poem was written at the request of the Emperor Daigo during a garden party and poem-writing contest.

In a gust of wind the white dew
On the Autumn grass
Scatters like a broken necklace.


The next poem is by Fujiwara No Atsutada. He is believed to have died in 961 A.D. He was a high functionary during the reign of Emperor Daigo. His family, which continues today in Japan, has retained power, influence and service to country for centuries, providing Japan with administrators, regents, Shoguns, poets, generals, painters, and philosophers .

I think of the days
Before I met her
When I seemed to have
No troubles at all.


The last three poems are by Kakinomoto No Hitomaro. He lived during the reign of Emperor Mommu (667-707 A.D.). Nothing, outside of his poems, is known about him, though it is speculated that he might have been a personal attendant to the Emperor.

In the empty mountains
The leaves of the bamboo grass
Rustle in the wind.
I think of a girl
Who is not here.

..........

Gossip grows like weeds
In a summer meadow.
My girl and I
Sleep arm in arm.

..........

This morning I will not
Comb my hair.
It has lain
pillowed on the hand of my lover.








I'll end the week with an old poem. I wrote the first version of it in 1968 while in the military, posted to a USAF facility near the town of Peshawar on the frontier of Northwest Pakistan.

According to legend, in ancient times, the city began its existence as a wintering place for Alexander's armies. I don't think it's a secret anymore that in the 1950's it was the last refueling stop for the U2 spy planes that overflew the Soviet Union, an intelligence exercise that ended when one of the planes was shot down and its pilot, Gary Powers, taken prisoner. The primary intelligence learned as a result of that flight was that Soviet anti aircraft missiles could fly a hell of a lot higher than we thought.

The city has been in the news in recent years as the center of tribal areas that are harboring Osama Bin Laden and the remnants of his murderous crew.

I spent nearly a year there, from mid-1968 to mid-1969 at a "secret" facility outed while I was there on the front page of the New York Times and closed upon the overthrow of the government of Mohammad Ayub Khan by Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan, himself later overthrown by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, father of the just assassinated Benazir Bhutto.

I was one of several hundred American airmen pleased to see the gates close behind us as we left.

Here's the poem as it was published in The Horsethief's Journal in 1999 after an extensive rewrite.

It's curious, there's something both discouraging and encouraging about reading a poem written by a forty-year younger you. It's like looking at yourself in an old high school yearbook, pimpled and with a ducktail construct impossible to rebuild today, causing a reaction combining "jeez, that's me?" with "jeez, if I survived that, I can survive anything!"



APO New York

So I'm sitting here,
at the at the absolute and eternal center
of all that is lost and lonely,
cataloging my sins, thinking,
which one was it, oh Lord,
that caused you to leave me here,
forsaken and abandoned
when there is so much goodness and beauty
still to be tasted in life....

I'm thinking of mountains,
maybe the Sandias or Manzanas,
and the way they look from the desert floor in early winter,
snow clouds slowly spilling over the crest
like a dime's worth of ice cream in a five cent cone.

Or waking on a mountain top,
making coffee with water come from snow
melted in a pot over a juniper fire,
smelling the air, fresh made for the morning,
never breathed before, never close to anything
that wasn't clean and bright and wholesome.

Or the back roads and fields
and lakes and wooded hills
of south central Missouri,
the golden, October shimmer of an aspen grove
amid a stand of deep green pine,
the cool and ageless presence
of Anasazi ghosts in the canyons of Mesa Verde,
the boulevards of Paris glistening in early April rain,
the splash and rumble of South Padre surf at midnight.

Or the essences of home,
the slam of a screen door
with it's too short spring,
the creak in the kitchen floor,
the bite of cold cactus jelly on hot cornbread,
the luminous green of the lightning-split mesquite
shading the backyard in early spring.

And the best things,
the peace and love and heart-full joy
of you in my life,
the taste of your lips,
the softness of your skin,
your warm breath on my chest
as you curl against me sleeping,
the sweet smell of your hair
framing your face,
the sound of your morning laughter,
your secret whispers in the still of winter night.
These are my comforts tonight, my love,
as I try to sleep in this place
so far from my life's essentials.

You are the sum and substance of my dreams
my love,
my breath, my life, my evermore
and I am missing you tonight.





Dark falls and a new moon rises on a new year.

As this old year ends, I am rewarded by the fact of someone on TV finally got the courage to tell the truth about the last seven years and those who misled us through them.

If you didn't see this live, go here to see it now. I saw it. And if I'd had a flag I'd stood up and saluted.

(you'll have to copy and paste to your browser)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5-pi8bnuh0

With that closing note, I remind you that all the work presented on this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself is produced by and the property of me...allen itz.
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Foggy Morning Mysteries   Friday, December 21, 2007


II.12.4




This being a holiday week issue, I expect there'll only be about seventeen people reading it. If I knew who you were, I'd send you a Christmas present. But since I don't, I guess the best I can do is wish you a Merry Holiday of Your Choice.

I think I have some really good stuff this week, so I bet all those other people off drinking eggnog and stuff are really going to be jealous that you read "Here and Now" and they didn't.

Well, maybe so...








My first poem this week is from a book that is practically a relic - an original, first edition copy of A Coney Island Of The Mind, published by New Directions Paperbook in 1958 when Lawrence Ferlinghetti was only 38 years old, one of the new voices of his generation.

I had this book years ago, lost who knows when, probably in some move from one place to another.

The poem is one of his best known and a good one for this time of year.



Christ Climbed Down

Christ climbed down
from his bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
theis year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in mange
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carolers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
ice skated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings








My next poet, David Anthony, is appearing here for the first time.

David is a British businessman, born in North Wales and living near London in Stoke Poges, close, he says, to the church where Gray wrote his "Elegy", which he describes as a source of much inspiration.

He has published two poetry collections: Words to Say in 2002 and Talking to Lord Newborough in 2004.

David says this poem has an element of fact, telling this story:

My uncle was entertaining an American friend and his wife. His father (my grandfather) was the village carpenter, and when he heard the saw he knew a coffin was being made, while the guests of course did not. The friend wrote an account of it for his Illinois university magazine.

The banshees are fanciful.

To read more of his poems, you can go to his website either by clicking on the link on the right or by copying and pasting this url to your browser:

http://www.davidgwilymanthony.co.uk/index.html



Tale From a Merioneth Village

A howl cut through the winter's wind. "Who died?"
the young man asked. His thoughts were torn away
from college friends he'd just brought home to stay.
"Poor Hywel Jones", his grandmother replied.

The guests shared glances, knowing ghosts abide
in Celtic lands - those keening wraiths who stray
when souls are crossing - and they felt the fey
forebodings carried where the cold wind cried.

Across the road, his grandfather once more
bent to his task: the same old man who made
the babies' cots, now built a thing to hold
no hope, no future. As his power saw
began to turn again, its cutting blade
bewailed an ending and the wind blew cold.








My next poem is by Leslie Ullman, from her book Slow Work through Sand published by the University of Iowa Press in 1998.

Ullman is the author of two other poetry collections: Natural Histories, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award in 1979, and Dreams by No One's Daughter. This book, Slow Work Through Sand was the co-winner of the 1997 Iowa Poetry Prize.

Ullman has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. She directs the MFA Program at the University of Texas at El Paso and is on the faculty of the Vermont College MFA Program.



The Mountain outside My Window

is the only one of its kind.
And one of millions.
I look into its face
and feel clouds moving

across my skin. And felt
animals begin a slow
migration inside me. I wait
for words I've never spoken

to arrange themselves, to push
boulders and dead trees aside.
Words from my belly, heart, and bones.

The animals move like lava
over flat land. Their dark fur
is full of silver. Fox
I could say, but these animals

are huge. And graceful as bears.
And the light in their fur is
flint, is deer streaking across

an ice field, is hundreds of white
birds rising from black water.
I want to put my arms around them
but I would be hugging air,
I learn to wait in this chair
for one word, then another
to appear like stars that only

seem, to one who doesn't know
the stars, to rise at random
from the dusk as the mountain
glows by itself, then goes out.








Now, let me introduce you to our dog. You would like her if you knew her.



reba

it is a damp night
with low clouds
that reflect back
to earth
all the lights
of the city
making
it brighter
here in my
neighborhood
than under even
the most
radiant
moon

reba and i
are taking our walk,
the almost-mile
we do every night

it's late

reba is very
jealous and protective
of me and bristles
and barks
at every dog we meet
and i can't get her
to stop, so,
even though she begins
to follow me around
with the walk-me stare
beginning about six,
we don't go out until
after nine, when we have the
streets to ourselves

she's a lovely dog, a
border collie mix,
gently and sweet natured,
and bright and curious
as a young child - we
got her at the humane
society, the second to
take her home; the
first returned her
for reasons i cannot
even guess, but it's
clear they disciplined
her with a broom
because brooms
terrify her - she hides
in the bedroom when
we sweep the kitchen
and comes out
only when it's clear
the broom monster
has been returned
to its closet

it is in the nature
of having pets
that you will probably
outlive them
and having kept dogs
all of my life
i've outlived
many,
but none of those
losses, i think,
will compare to the loss
when this dog's time
arrives

but that's not now

now
she's in the den
by the fire,
waiting
for me to come in
and finish the
Harry Potter movie
we started
before the walk








And now I have poem from Whole Sky by Pamela Kircher. The book was published in 1996 by Four Way Books.

Kircher lives in rural Ohio, and holds a MFA degree from Warren Wilson College's MFA Program for Writers. Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals including Best American Poetry, 1993. She has been awarded three Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships and a resident fellowship at the MacDowell Colony.



No Telling

Every year before Christmas
death, it seems, throws down
more tight nets than ever before
and pulls harder, like the moon,
on everyone. There is no telling
who lays a pistol, one bullet
in a briefcase and goes to work,
which one rattles pills
in the cup of a hand for hours
and who spends seven nights
before the mirror touching
the razor's edge then lying
smoothly in the tub,
the porcelain a little like the feel
of faith, cool and unsurprising,
The beauty of it is there isn't any
question anymore, only the inevitable
rising of the wind that combs the trees
knowing what is lost
is lost and this, the thin branches
holding no secrets, is all there is.








Next, a return engagement with our friend T Rasa, back to writing poetry after a four year hiatus.



Pete and Me

      I.
I always worried
when Pete's lips turned blue
it happened when he became passionate
about some or other violation
of social protocol
Today it was graffiti
We aughta shoot'em all he said
as we slipped under the overpass
I almost said
that seemed a bit severe
but he was driving
and his face was getting red
blue lips would be next
and we still had fifty miles to go
I told him the graffiti will crumble
along with the overpass
when the N American and Cocos plates
heave up another nine point five
That we'd always have spray can freaks
and it's not worth having a heart attack
Then I wondered about CPR
at seventy miles per hour
decided to let it rest
but Pete persisted
said he hated how we always
tried to make things nice
only to have some prick come along
and muck it all up
I said the Hopi
probably feel the same way
about someone building a stupid overpass
in the middle of their sacred desert
I knew I was pushing it
had to get us out of this
let Pete chill
Yea I guess we aughta shoot'em
I said

      II.
With his constant whining
I didn't care much for Pete
but had to vaguely agree
with some of his thought
and simple ideas
It would be nice if we could just
get rid of all the hucksters
spammers thieves and despots
just shoot the morally depraved
but good god the magnitude
of that endeavor left me breathless
yet didn't phase Pete in the least
Just do it was his anthem
and I depended on him
He was my ride to work
I couldn't drive since I came down
with a vertigo my doctor couldn't diagnose
lost my depth of field
when I turned my head too fast
Off balance all the time
I paid gas and oil
Pete the payments and maintenance
Good deal for me
but damn the constant harangue
Pete had an audience at work
A small group at breaks
larger one during lunch
oil conspiracies and communists
mormons on a mission
rap music and moral decay
how it was when they were young
now going to hell
because we're always changing
from what was good
to who knows what
His veins never popped
when he spoke to his group
they never disagreed
only my retorts colored his face
Close to quitting time
I wondered if I could
keep the conversation topical
Yea right I thought

      III.
Twenty miles south of town
we passed a couple of oddly dressed
young something or others
Orange and green spiked hair
faces full of pins and darts
skinny with black tooth smiles
trying to change a tire
Pete didn't even slow down
or swerve to give them room
blew past like a formula one
I wouldn't want to stay within
a hundred feet of someone
who looked like that he said
I said it's just a style
My neighbors looked askance at me
when I grew duck-tails as a teen
My dad said his uncles told his dad
he'd never amount to anything
when he trained his pompadour
then said very little
when he returned from the war
with a purple heart
Get over it I said
but his face was puffing up
He was nearing apoplectic
I sensed his eyes roll back
the steering wheel steady and unmoving
Slumped in my seat
I could barely see the looming culvert
as the sound of tires on gravel
roared above the wind noise
I felt the impact in the chest
remember a far off siren
the sound of shearing steel
a hand on my shoulder
telling me it was all right now
they were here
and I would be ok
I looked toward Pete
but there was just a mass
of tangled metal
Six days later in a foggy room
a nurse said he's awake
heard my brother ask me
if I thought I was going to make it
Couldn't talk
with the tube in my throat
blinked twice for no
Brother ambled over
well Pete I don't know
if I can get here tomorrow but
I'll check in on you thursday
for sure
I stared and tried to nod
I'll have to get used
to having a name
after living so long
without one.








My next poem is by Travis Watkins from his book My Fear is 4 U published in 2006 Laymen Lyric Productions of Houston.

Watkins is an exciting young poet.

Here's what they say about him at laymenlyric.com, a website where you can hear Watkins read as well as a number of other young poets. I'm going to be putting that website on my links, so you'll be able to click on the link to check it out. Once you get to the site, click on poets and you'll a large selections of poets to choose from, including Watkins.

Anyway,here's what they say about Travis Watkins.

As a 6 foot 4 inch 300 pound former Division 1 football star, Travis Watkins doesn't seem to fit the image of a stereotypical Spoken Word Poet. Yet as the winner of the coveted National College Language Association Award for poetry, and a top 8 National Poetry Slam Ranking, it's clear that Travis isn't concerned with images and stereotypes.

Travis spent 4 years as a starter and 2 year team captain of the University of Kansas football team, where he was honored as a finalist for the District V Academic All-American Team, before graduating with honors in U.S. History and African American Studies in 2005. While attending K.U., Travis also managed to find time to volunteer as a mentor to "at-risk" youth at VanGo Mobile Arts, while making a name for himself as a dynamic up and coming performance poet.

Travis won his university's monthly Poetry Slam for a year straight before being retired and given hosting duties his senior year. As host of K.U.'s Poetry Slam, Travis shared the stage with Def Poetry Jam Poets Jason Carney and Helena D. Lewis, and, in 2005, the scholar-athlete turned poet was honored with the College Language Association's national award for poetry.

After graduating, Travis was accepted into the highly selective Teach For America program, committing 2 years to teaching in our country's most poverty ridden inner-city schools. While teaching high school U.S. History in Houston TX., Travis began a meteoric rise in the world of contemporary Slam Poetry by leading his team to the semifinals at the 2006 National Poetry Slam, and making it to the Individual Final Stage finishing 8th out of over 350 poets at his first official National Slam Competition.

Travis now ranks as one of the top young poetic talents in the nation and is touring the globe as a performance poet and motivational speaker. Travis incases his touching personal stories and insightful socially conscious views into a powerful display of poetry unlike any you've ever seen. You may have read poetry, you may have heard poetry, but you've never truly "experienced" poetry until you've witnessed Travis Watkins live.

That's a much longer introduction than usual and a bit over the top, but I'm really excited about this guy.

Before you go to the website, here's the poem from the book.



"Those who would give up essential liberty, to gain little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
                  Benjamin Franklin

All Terrorists Rejoice

"And I'm proud to be an American..."
Where at least I know the bombs ain't bombin' me.
But the malicious tendencies
Of our domestic policies
Are now worse than overseas.
At least as far as I can see.
From sea to shiny sea,
Seems like this freedom isn't free
Oh no, with freedom come a fee, cause'....

If you sacrifice your rights
And give all your liberty,
In exchange get peace of mind
and sense of security
Well, isn't that just slavery? Listen...

When Bush offers protection
In every place I'll be
That doesn't mean I'm free,
That means somebody's watching me.
Now I don't want no' nut-job
Flying his planes into me
And, I'm not anti-American
Though I see how some could be.
And I don't believe in terrorism, but
Wasn't Mcvae from Tennessee?
And Malvoe was a Muslim
Not no' Pakistani.
I bet you Afghanistan
Wouldn't claim no Ted Kaczynski.

If it's terrorism you want
You ain't gotta swim no' sea.
If it's terrorism you want
It could be you, hell, it could be me.
Cause' hate's not innate, it's taught
And it ain't no' foreign theory.
So before you look at me with complexity
Let's examine history.

Now, everybody loved Osama
When he was killin' those commies.
And we gave a damn about Sadam
Till he affected currencies.
Then we go and set up shop
On land that's called holy.
And if you want something to top
We take the side of Israelis.

All evil has a cause
Even Hitler blamed treaties
And, all evil has a cause
Even if it's not rightfully.

So we can fight the war on terror
But, don't forget our liberties
Cause', all terrorists rejoice
When we destroy democracy.

All terrorists rejoice
We've...
Destroyed democracy

Fall 2003








I've been noticing how expressive some people's faces are as they talk and how different that is from the normal blank look with which I usually face the world.



know what I mean?

i've
been watching
faces,
watching
their expressions
as people talk

i'm a bit of a
stoneface
myself, well not
entirely stoneface,
i can do maybe
three different
faces,
mean,
pissed-off,
and mean and pissed-off,
but I have to concentrate
to do them and
not a one of the three
is much use in non-
adversarial
social
situations

(this doesn't count
the goofy
look
that comes over me
way too often,
with no effort
on my part)

dissatisfied
with my own minimalism
face-wise,
i've
been watching,
thinking
i could maybe
learn a thing or to
by watching others,
studying them,
you might say
and I've run across,
just in the past two days,
two fascinating
faces,
both girls
in their twenties
who must be
master-orators
in the nonverbal
world,
faces so expressive
i could almost
hear them
talking to me
all the way across
the room,
nothing exaggerated,
just casual brilliance
in the way their entire face
was involved in every word
they said, making me
feel like that skinny
weakling on the beach
who gets sand kicked
in his face by the
muscle man
who then walks off
with his girl
friend
and i'm thinking
holy cow, these girls
use muscles
in their face
that i just don't
have and no
amount of
physiognomical
charles atlasing
is going to change that

i guess when
it comes to non-
verbal communicatin'
i'm stuck with a lifetime
of eating sand and
losing the girl

know
what I mean?








I visited the used book store again this week and bought this weird little book of poetry by Rikki Ducornet called The Cult of Seizure. The book was published by The Porcupine's Quill in 1989.

Ducornet was born in New York and has lived in North Africa, South America, Canada and France. In 1988 she was a Fellow at the Bunting Institute and recipient of a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. As of the time the book was published, she was teaching Creative Writing at the University of Denver in Colorado and working on her fourth novel. The Cult of Seizure was her sixth volume of poetry.

To tell the truth, I can't figure this book out. It seems like all the pieces are a part of some whole that I can't see. It seems to be about a certain Hungarian countess of the 16th and 17th centuries who murdered over 600 young women, apparently convinced by two of her servants that she could be young beautiful forever if she bathed in their blood.

I don't think I'll be able to use anything else out of this book without using the whole book, but here's one of the pieces from the book that gives a hint of the whole thing.



3 - Magic Snow

Witches hop croaking from the pyre
Gunpowder tied to their throats with wire.
Anything is possible. Anything at all!
Hypochondria! Melancholia!

Eat snow, Erzebet; may your lips be cold-
The world is burning.
Rub your lips with snow, name the hour,
Kneel before the first man you see.
He will be horned.

Tear from the earth a rooted man;
Animated by the heat of your hand
He will struggle and try to bite.
Threaten him with fire. Lick him with your cold tongue.
He will relent, foretell the moves of constellations
And instruct in the secrets of pleasure.

He will sing of the girl crushed beneath the moon,
Of the sting of the King's scorpion,
The exact words of the talking Teraphim;
Together you will dismember Eve.

Blue spirit, white spirit
spirit of the knife -
You will hold him to your lips.
You will play the Game of Breatings.

Endings.








Here's a wonderful new piece by Alice Folkart. The minute I first read it on the Blueline Forum, I knew I wanted it for "Here and Now."



Beauty, Courage Too

The local pub, a thatched shack on the beach beneath brooding volcanic mountains, features Hawaiian music on Fridays, Aloha Friday, it's called here because, PAU HANA - work is done. Three mid-life guys in Aloha shirts play uke, guitar (slack key) and bass and sing, all in Hawaiian, songs you might not have heard before. The food's not much - beef stew, sandwiches, soup, drinks from the bar, but people drop by to listen and sometimes sit in with the band or dance a hula or two.

It's an older crowd, mostly Hawaiian. Last night the band started a song, and there was a twitter from a front table. A white-haired woman stood up and pushed her walker out in front of the band, stood for a moment with her hands raised, to test her balance, I think, and called out, "Keolo!" The man she'd been sitting with, maybe her husband, reached forward and pulled the walker away and she started to dance. Yes, her hips swayed. Yes, she floated her arms above her head, looking up as if at stars, down as if into the waves, yes, she turned and moved with swooping grace. She cared, at least for a few minutes more about the music and the beauty than about the pain.


Beauty
Courage too
danced








Ramon Lopez Velarde was a Mexican poet, born in 1888 and died in 1921, who was often called "poet of the provinces" because of his love of the old rural customs of his country during a time of rapid change.

My poem is from a collection of his work titled Song of the Heart, a bilingual book with Spanish and English on facing pages. The book was published by the University of Texas Press in 1995.

The book's translator was Margaret Sayers Peden.



Avid, Ambivalent Lips....

At midday I honor
the commendable precept of going to hear
Sunday mass; and at these high rituals
you, too, appear: chiseled profile, riotous
hair, a warm brown neck, intent stare,
ambivalent lips avid to savor scruples:
lips formed for bestowing lingering kisses
and for slowly mouthing love's syllables
in assiduous idylls, but also
for persuading a dying man
to say "amen."

Slender silhouette escaped
from an oblong window of stained glass
or from the warp-waist flask of some alchemist;
you couldn't know that at one such mass
when with anguish I observed
your eyes mist during a passage
of the Gospel, I stood nearby, ready to dry
your tears with loving tenderness,
nor could you know
what a sweet danger you pose
to my arrogance...Like the rosy fingers
of a child to a fragile castle
of cards or dominos.








It's really hard to read a newspaper without feeling the need to rant and rave. There are so many rantable things, every single day; Bush and his crew of malignant nitwits, the Texas state emergency services director who has decided that in future disasters people wishing to get out the way of, for example, a hurricane will have to be background checked before they can get on an evacuation bus, or the state higher education board (Texas, of course) who seem to be on the edge of allowing the recognition of a degree in Creationism for a religious hocus pocus college somewhere in the state, and the list goes on. Many days I find it hard to restrict myself to just one rant.

Well, here's one from last week.



where does justice draw the line

i want to write
about the four
children
murdered
by their parents
in this city
in the last two weeks,
to memorialize them
somehow,
but cannot

i don't have the language
to say what i want to say
and my mind drifts
to other things
related,
to evil,
for example

i don't believe
in god
but i do believe
in evil,
the diabolic
evil
of mass murders
and the casual
evil of parents
who kill
their children -
the mother who
smothered her baby
because it would not
stop crying,
the father,
angered to madness
by his wife,
who shoots their
two daughters,
age 10 and 5,
in the head,
then kills
himself,
the woman
who swings her
baby like a baseball bat
to strike her lover -
what do we do
with these people?

i'm a believer
in capital punishment,
i believe humanity
has the right and obligation
to protect itself against
the most evil among us,
some born that way,
i am convinced, evil
from the moment
they leave their mothers'
wombs, others who learn
their evil from the circumstances
of their life,
born or made, i don't care,
it is the consequence
of their act
not the consequences
of their lives that matter,
as a consequence
of their act
they do not deserve
our solicitude;
maintaining the life of
charles manson
for a year
costs as much or more
than sending a needy
student through a year
at an ivy league college -
I say kill the bloody
son of a bitch
and send the money
to the kid

but that's an easy case

it's the drawing of the line
that makes these questions hard

three parents killed four children
in this city in the last two weeks

where do we draw the line
for them?

where does justice
draw the line
for these four
children?








Carl Sandburg has been out of fashion for many years now as we have come to value "cool" more than his kind of hot passionate denunciation of the lies and inequities of his times (and ours).

He's just a little too corny for our postmodern sensibilities.



The Right to Grief

To Certain Poets About to Die

Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to scratch
    off
And get cashed.

    Very well,
You for your grief and I for mine.
Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to.

I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky.
His job is sweeping blood off the floor.
He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works
And it's many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom
    day by day.

Now his three-year-old daughter
Is in a white coffin that cost him a week's wages.
Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty
    cents till the debt is wiped out.

The hunky and his wife and the kids
Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white
    box.
They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor
    bills.
They are glad it is over for the rest of the family now will
    have more to eat and wear.
Yet before the majesty of Death they cry around the
    coffin
And wipe their eyes with red bandanas and sob when the
    priest says, "God have mercy on us all."

I have a right to feel my throat choke about this.
You take your grief and I mine - see?
Tomorrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back to
    his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar sev-
    enty cents a day.
All he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood
    ahead of him with a broom.








There are many things I admire about the Whitman series by Gary Blankenship. First, of course, there's the elegance of his language, but, also, the sense of history he brings to each piece, almost as if he's writing in Whitmen's time, seeing the things and feeling the things Whitman saw and felt.

Here are two more poems in Gary's series, poems inspired by the people in Whitman's Song of Myself

The italic lines are quoted from Whitman's poem.





Song of Myself #4 - Pilot

The pilot seizes his king-pin

I grab another
and another
truncheons juggled
as my tug pushes a barge up the river
past deadheads
sunken boats
rotten wharves
and an old black man
asleep on the river bank
as the world's largest catfish
nibbles his hook clean
I juggle
a wife in Orleans
mistress in KC
nibble another at Natchez
dodging cannonballs
from a lost rebel regiment


Song of Myself #5 - Mate

The mate stands braced in the whaleboat

I contemplate the greats:
Moby who took Ahab's leg
Monstro who swallowed Geppeto
Jonah's
Orca
the humpbacks yet to be saved by the USS Enterprise
sperm who battled giant squids in the briny trench
narwhale
the last beached at San Clemente
and wonder if my harpoon is sharp enough
lance is honed enough
hawsers are strong enough
that I might join the legendary hunters
and defeated
rest
beneath








As we kill the best of our new generation in our own foolish war, it might help to remember the death of generations before us in foolish wars of their own. Like Harry Williams of Spoon River.

From the Spoon River Anthology, of course, by Edgar Lee Masters.



Harry Williams

I was just turned twenty-one,
And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-scholl superintendent
Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House.
"The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said,
"Whether it is assailed by a barbarous tribe of
    Tagalogs
Or the greatest power in Europe."
And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag
    he waved
As he spoke.
And I went to the war in spite of my father,
And followed the flag till I saw it raised
By our camp in a rice filed near Manila,
And all of us cheered and cheered it.
But there were flies and poisonous things;
And there was the deadly water,
And the cruel heat,
And the sickening, putrid food;
And the smell of the trench just back of the tents
Where the soldiers went to empty themselves;
And there were the whores who followed us, full of
    syphilis;
And beastly acts between ourselves or alone,
With bullying, hatred, degradation among us,
And days of loathing and nights of fear
To the hour of the charge through the steaming
    swamp,
Following the flag,
Till I fell with a scream, shot through the guts.
Now there's a flag over me in Spoon River!
A flag! A flag!








We went out to dinner a couple of nights ago and mariachis at a party across the room reminded of some earlier times.



volver

dinner
at Casasol
tonight,
chili con queso,
crispy taco,
margarita
on the rocks,
the stuff I like,
and at the other end
of the room
some kind of party,
with mariachis
playing my favorites -
Volver,
El Rey,
Jalisco -
reminding me
of the years I spent
working further
south
and the parties
at the end
of every month,
men only,
bbq and lots
of beer
and singing,
always singing,
gathered around
Gustavo
and his guitar,
full-fed,
some-drunk,
and singing
all those wild
and mournful
Mexican songs
of love and
loss and
brave soldiers of the
revolution








Neeli Cherkovski was born 1945 in California. He has written biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Charles Bukowski, with whom he co-edited the Los Angeles zine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns. He was a sometime political consultant for candidates in the Riverside area and came to San Francisco in 1975 to work on the staff of then-State Senator George Moscone. He produced the first San Francisco Poetry Festival and in the mid-1990s founded Cafe Arts Month, a yearly event celebrating San Francisco's cafe culture.

Cherkovski is the author of Whitman's Wild Children, a collection of essays about twelve poets he has known: Michael McClure, Charles Bukowski, John Wieners, James Broughton, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, William Everson, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, Jack Micheline, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. This book combines biography, personal stories, and poetry analyses.

Cherkovski is currently writer-in-residence at the New College of California in San Francisco, where he teaches literature and philosophy. Cherkovski's body of poetry includes Animal, Elegy for Bob Kaufman and Leaning Against Time, for which he was awarded the 15th Annual PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award in 2005.

Here's his poem, taken from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.



The Woman at the Palace of the Legion of Honor

She does not know that I am staring at her
       as she stands in her bright yellow dress
       looking at something by Rodin,
She does not know that I believe in the solemn
       things sculpted by Rodin,
Looking like poetry
       or the secret of clay.

If only I were brave and handsome,
       I would let her hear my mind
       as I equate her with the statue.
I don't think she has even glanced at me,
       and here I am, so close by,
       confused,
       listening to Rodin,
And listening to the woman
       who stands there,

looking like poetry
       or the secret of clay

1965








Next, I have a wonderful poem from our New Zealander, Thane Zander.



My children

I don't know why, but I haven't ever written any poems about my children. It was always a struggle bringing them up and I guess because I missed the last seven years of their lives I missed all the good and bad that didn't escape them.

I was there for both births
I held Marita's hand
mopped her brow
helped her with her exertions.

The first was plain sailing
pure natural birth, at first I thought "a boy"
when a rebuke from the midwife
suggested girl.

Amy, right from birth, was a dream girl
she grew well, learnt well, behaved well
an overall joy to have as a child.

I think of the times when my illness ruined her outlook on life. Why was I mad, I was never like that, always a cool calm collected character, yet sometimes my then ten year old could get under my skin. I guess she forgave me, we talk and chat and generally love each other as adults.

I ducked out for a smoke
Marita was still in Labour
but things weren't going well,
the epidural was a sure sign.

I got back and was in time
to see Ashleigh born, blue though
the medical staff in a race for life
to resuscitate her, breath life into her.

They succeeded, but it was the start of a difficult life for all. After three months she was back in hospital, not feeding, breast or bottle, and she wasn't thriving. The next nine months saw her in and out of hospital with all manner of reasons. She had to have a gastric tube feeder, something we got used too, but having to take her out in public was a problem. People cringed. They didn't understand.

The doctors told us
she would probably be dead
by seven, a deadline
we were determined to beat
she was a little fighter
on medication for epilepsy
still only able to eat soft food
but she got our love
unconditional, and sadly maybe
to the detriment to Amy.
Amy loves her now more than she did
so that's made me happy,
after me and Marita go,
it's odds on favourite Amy will look after her.

Are we a happy family. Generally yes, we had to go through it all and have to come out smiling. Sure the hard times are still there for Marita (as we split when I was diagnosed Bipolar), she had to bring up the girls herself as I struggled with my problems. Will we get back, probably not, though one never knows.

I haven't seen my girls for three years now,
though I chat with them often on the internet,
but it's not the same, I'd love to go see them now
to share a moment or two, to dance, to smile
but alas my situation forbids me this luxury.

I'm lucky, I have two lovely girls, both finding life as I found it, an open book and a open mind. I hope both will find their own paths and make a mark on an otherwise loveless world. Tomorrow I'll sleep contented, after talking to my girls.








Some people have bad days; some people have really, really, really bad days.

This is dated about 400 B.C. with its author unknown. It was translated for our reading by R.P. Secheindlin.



from Job

Chapter 3

Then Job spoke and cursed his day and chanted and said:

Be damned, day when I was born
    and the night that said, "A man has been conceived!"
Make that day dark!
No god look after it from above,
    no light flood it.
Foul it, darkness, deathloom;
    rain-clouds settle on it;
heat-winds turn it into horror,
That night - black take it!
    May it not count in the days of the year,
may it not come in the count of the months.
That night, that night be barren!
    No joy ever come in it!
Curse it, men who spell the day,
    men skilled to stir Leviathan,
    to stir him up to war again
    and put an end to time.
May its morning stars stay dark,
    may it wait for light in vain,
never look upon the eyelids of the dawn -
because it did not lock the belly's gates
    and curtain off my eyes from suffering.

Why did I not die inside the womb,
    or, having left it, and give up breath at once?
Why did the knees advance to greet me,
    or the breasts to give me suck?
I would be lying now asleep;
    then I would be at rest
with kings and counselors of the earth
    who would build its ruins into palaces,
or with princes, men with gold,
    men who fill their tombs with silver.
Why was I not stillbirth, hidden,
    like infants who never saw the light?
There the wicked cease their trouble,
    there the weary find their rest
where the captives have repose
    and need not heed the taskmaster,
where low and great all abide,
    the slave, now free, beside his lord.


why is the sufferer given light?
    Why life, to me who gag on bile
who wait for death that never comes,
    though they would rather dig for it than gold;
whose joy exceeds mere happiness,
    thrill to find the grave?
Why, to a man whose way is hidden,
    because a god has blocked his path?
For, my sighs are served to me for bread,
    and my cries are poured for me for water.
One thing alone I feared, and it befell:
    the very thing I dreaded came to me.
No peace had I, no calm, no rest;
but torment came.








There I was, working hard to get my poem for the day.



poem for the day

I'm on the
starbucks
balcony atop
the hard rock cafe
looking down
on the river
and the riverwalk
hoping for a poem
to leap up
from the crowd
grab me by the
ears
and say
write me, fool,
before I get away

but that didn't
happen
so I'm stuck
with telling you
about the river
and how they've
been trying to
clean it up,
make it a clear
stream
instead of the muddy
river it is; they made
a little progress, can't
see, never will see
the sludgy bottom,
but you can see now
the ducks' feet
as they paddle under
water, a kind of
revelation
especially when you
see them paddling
like a power ranger
when they get in front
of one of the tour
barges, it's a funny
sight, as are many
of the tourists
but I always figured
it is a tourist's
responsibility
to look like a
yahoo
so locals have
some comic relief
as recompense
for the crowded
highways
and lack of
downtown
parking

looking down
on the riverwalk
it's clear the tourists
are living up to
their responsibilities
today
as I've lived up to mine,
making a poem
for this
day








My next poem is by a poet I had not know before, Arthur Sze. Born in New York City in 1950, he is a second-generation Chinese American. He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley and is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998 from which the following poems are taken, published 1998 by Copper Canyon Press. The poems originally appeared in his collection The Willow Wind first published in 1972.

He is also a translator releasing The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese in 2001.

He is the recipient of a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowships, a George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, three grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, and a Western States Book Award for Translation.

He was a Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University and a Doenges Visiting Artist at Mary Baldwin College. He has also conducted residencies at Brown University, Bard College, and Naropa University. He is a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts and is the first poet laureate of Santa Fe.

Here are several of his short poems.



Strawberries in Wooden Bowls

You carry flowers in a jug of green wine,
and the smell is that of the first fires in autumn
when the leaves are blown into their reds and grays.

The sunlight rains through the glass.
As you reach across the table
the fences outside disappear.
The fields are green with their rain
and the wind curls the stars in the cold air.

You stand now, silent in the window of light
and the milk you pour is glazed.
The strawberries in the wooden bowls
are half-covered with curdled milk.


The Olive Grove

Up on the hill
the morning moon washed clean.
Thin dogs no longer
leap in the sunlight,
and I walk, easily, up the path.
The gatekeeper snores
in his rocking chair,
and only the wind
keeps him moving

Turning now through the yard
I recall his eyes.
The leave tinged
with inevitable grays.
With one hand
I pluck the olives off the white lattice.
Their thick skins
rinsed in the moonshine.


A Singer With Eyes of Sand

A singer with eyes of sand they said -
the western wind
                sweeps me home,
and I'm carrying you, my desert,
in my hands.








I'll finish up this week with this little piece of...well, I'm not sure what.



the girl in white stockings

the girl
in white stockings
swings her leg,
her unshod foot,
perfectly arched
instep,
like a metronome

fantasies
ensue

on a snowy field
under
bright december sun

in a white room
white walls
thick white carpet

popcorn







Before I go, I want to pass on a word to anyone who may have purchased one of my books via my 7beats.com website. Because of my error (I didn't do what they didn't told me to do), the charge for the book may not have gone to your credit card. To fix that, 2checkout.com is going to have to submit charges to your credit card now. So, if you see that, don't be concerned. It's not a new charge, it's a charge that should have been applied when you purchased the book, but wasn't.

If you have any kind of indication, including your memory, that an earlier charge was applied, please let me know (allen.itz@gmail.com). I trust 2checkout.com is correct about this problem. It will not be a problem in the future because, now that I have been told what I'm supposed to do, I'll do it.

Sorry for the mix-up.

For San Antonio area folks who would like to buy a book but don't like buying things on the internet, the books are available now at a couple of locations, La Taza Coffee Shop at Crown Meadow and 281 and Half Priced books on Broadway. I also checked on stock at the Twig Bookstore, also on Broadway and books are still available there. I also still have a few books left at Casa Chiapas on South Alamo, right down from Rosarios.

Venues for book sales are hard to find here. I was surprised to discover, too late to make a difference, that there's only one independent general subject bookstore in San Antonio. (in a city with a million plus people, can you believe that?) The chains are just too hard to deal with for a little guy like me, so I'm more and more looking into coffee shops as a possible sales point.

Anyway, so long for this week.

And remember, please, all of the works featured in this blog remain the property of their creators; the blog itself is produced by and is the property of me....allen itz.





Wait, wait, we're not done yet. Just one little piece of unplanned, last-minute silliness before I go.

D and I were having a nice outdoors lunch this morning at a place over in Southtown called Madhatters. They had an oldies radio station on and right in the middle of my half of a club sandwich they played this song. It was the first big hit for thirteen-year-old Dodie Stevens in 1959 and was written by Mark Grant.

I was either a sophomore or junior in high school in 1959 when this came out and, from the distance of nearly 50 years, I remember it as a really good year, a dumb, jerky, fun time perfectly represented by this dumb, jerky, fun song.

Copy and paste this url http://www.last.fm/music/Dodie+Stevens to your browser to watch Dodie Stevens sing this song. You can also check out a video of the Simpson cast dancing to it.



Now I've got a guy and his name is Dooley
He's my guy and I love him truly
He's not good lookin', heaven knows
But I'm wild about his crazy clothes

He wears tan shoes with pink shoelaces
A polka dot vest and man, oh, man
Tan shoes with pink shoelaces
And a big Panama with a purple hat band

ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh
ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh

He takes me deep-sea fishing in a submarine
We go to drive-in movies in a limousine
He's got a whirly-birdy and a 12-foot yacht
Ah, but thats-a not all he's got

He's got tan shoes with pink shoelaces
A polka dot vest and man, oh, man
Tan shoes with pink shoelaces
And a big Panama with a purple hat band

Now Dooley had a feelin' we were goin' to war
So he went out and enlisted in a fightin' corps
But he landed in the brig for raisin' such a storm
When they tried to put 'em in a uniform

He wanted tan shoes with pink shoelaces
A polka dot vest and man, oh, man
He wanted tan shoes with pink shoelaces
And a big Panama with a purple hat band

ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh
ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh

Now one day Dooley started feelin' sick
And he decided that he better make his will out quick
He said ""Just before the angels come to carry me
I want it down in writin' how to bury me."

A'wearin tan shoes with pink shoelaces
A polka dot vest and man, oh, man
Give me tan shoes with pink shoelaces
And a big Panama with a purple hat band

ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh
ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh
ooh-ooh, ooh, ooh

And a big Panama with a purple hat band



Ok, now we really are finished.
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On The Street Where I live   Saturday, December 15, 2007


II.12.3




Welcome back. Only a few more days and we'll be free of Christmas carols for another year. A reason to celebrate the season even if you have no other.

It's been a strange week, 55 degrees at noon one day, 85 degrees at the same time the next day and 45 degrees the day after that. I go out every morning and feed the dogs, then check the thermometer to know what to wear for the day, tee-shirt or woolies.

A note to those who pay attention more than most. Usually, I try to find pictures that connect somehow with poems that follow. I freed myself of that restraint this week. In all but a few instances, I've used pictures I took last weekend in Austin, whether I could imagine some connection or not. Mostly not.








We begin this week with the crown jewel of San Antonio literati, Dr. Waldazo.



Don't you just hate it

When you find yourself standing in front of the refrigerator door
And you can't remember what you came there for?
So you look around and wonder
Hoping for a clue,
But nothing comes to mind.

You begin to curse and mutter....
Oh yeah! The fucking butter!

Chanting "Butter, butter, where are you?" the search begins
Top shelf juice and milk
In the back
Behind a big pot of last week's beans
In a moldy jar, something green
"God, I hope that furry thing isn't the cat!"

Maybe the butter is in the veggie bin.
"Damn! That cat crapped in there...again!"
Close the door in disgust,
Turn around and see Butter,
Right there on the counter!
So begins the rhetorical rant,
Once again you begin to mutter...

"Curses! What did I want with this butter?
Why do I need this fucking butter?"

So you begin to wander about the room
Butter in hand
Hoping for a hint, some clue...
About what to do?

A quick glance at the shelf inside the door
To confirm there's not a stick
Of Land-O-Lakes in the fridge.

Perhaps there"s a clue behind Door #2
"Butter, butter, what do you do?"
No longer a chant, but now a rant!
"Butter, butter, with what do you mix?"

"The pantry has all the ingredients for a cake I could fix.
Let's see, was it to use with vanilla or mint?
Are there muffins about?
Maybe a slice of toast?
Homemade bread?
Come on. Butter, give me a hint!"

"Okay, I give up, Butter you win!
To hell with what I was going to do,
I'll forget about you.
I'll stick you away...HAHHAHAHA
Behind some leftover casserole
Butter, Butter...you...you..."

Then just as before
You stand by the refrigerator door
Butter in hand
And then a fool's grin
When you realize that you came to the fridge to put the butter back in!

Morale of the tale:
Put everything back in place
Before you get shit-face.








This next poem is from The Temperature of This Water, a book of poems by young Korean-American poet Ishle Yi Park. The book was published by Kaya Press in 2004.

I enjoy very much the directly stated efficiency of Park's poetry and nitty gritty reality she embraces in it. She tells stories with her poetry, her own story and the stories of the times and places of her life.



Miracle

Once, a father who sold fish
discovered his son
was a Flushing gangster
who extorted restaurants,
robbed livery cabs
at knifepoint, and bought
cigarettes and pizza
for older gangsters.
sobbing, he beat his son
for the first time,
each thud throbbing
like the long-dead planks
trembling under his boots.

the son ran away, slept
in pool halls
on burnt, uncovered
mattresses, had sex
with a prostitute,
felt aloneness
wrap around him
like a wool blanket.


He returned at Christmas
to help with the fish store
filled with hungry,
ticket-waving Italians.
He cashiered alone,
dozed in the heated Nissan,
smoked Marlboros,
wept only once.

The father watched him,
wanting to tear the blond
streaks out of his hair.
They moved in silence
through the freezer-cold stretches
of pre-Christmas Eve,
packing orders, tying blue bags,
hauling them onto shelves,
ordering more salmon, more halibut,
more cocktail shrimp.

The son, apron dirtied
and smelling like socks,
sat on top of a white freeze box,
his worn boots
hanging over the side.
He leaned on his fists,
cap over his eyes.


His father took a whisk
from a blue inhaler,
then knelt
on the black tile's
gleam and kneaded
his only son's legs,
from ankle to knee,
slowly, slowly, through
the battered jeans

Under the pale pool
of fluorescent light,
one bulb broken,
too dim, the son let him,
the son let him.








We live in a country of bountiful harvests for most of us and, often, do not think of what that means. I think about it a bit with this poem.



chiliquiles

I had no idea
of eating
when I stopped,
meant to just have
a latte
on the porch
and watch the people
go by
but there was a
chill wind
that blew me inside
and once there
the cooking smells
from the kitchen
reminded me
I had not eaten

so in just minutes
I had a plate of
chiliquiles
and refried beans
laid out before me
all hot
and ready to eat

and I thought
how fortunate
we are in this
american
life we lead

we're hungry
and we eat

and that's all
there is
to
it








Next, I have a poem by Simon J. Ortiz from Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, published in 1988 by HarperCollins.

Ortiz was born in 1941 and raised on the Acoma Pueblo Community in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He earned a Masters Degree in writing from the University of Iowa. He has taught Native American literature and creative writing at San Diego State University and the University of New Mexico.



Four Bird Songs

First Song

Is a little wind
fledging
nestled
in mountain's crooked finger,

is a river
into a secret place
that shows everything,
little song.

In your breath,
hold this seed
only a while
and seek with it.

One single universe,
I
am
only a little.

Second Song

The sound
in wood,
a morning hollowness
of a cave on the flank of a small hill

startles
with its moan,
yearning,
a twitch of skin.

In the distant place,
a wind starts
coming here,
a waiting sound.

It is here now.
Shiver.
You are rewarded
for waiting,

Third Song

By breathing he started
into the space
before him
and around him,

cleared his throat,
said this song
maybe tomorrow
is for rain

Lightly hummed
a tight leather sound
and then heavily.

It rained
the next day,
and he sang
another song for that.

Fourth Song

An old stone
was an old blue,
spotted,
the egg's shell
only moments before
under the sun
that had become new
against old sand.

A tear falling,
stirring into space
filling it completely,
making new space.

When he touched it,
and it moved,
it was still warm
with that life.








Iowa web-poet Justin Hyde hasn't been with us for a while. I'm glad to have him back.



some bar-napkin genealogy on a tuesday afternoon

the men
in my family
have all
drank themselves
to death

but

if my
long division
is correct
it took them an average of
62.86 years
to get the job done

(now
my great-great grandfather
who enjoyed absinthe
just a much as whiskey
strung it out for 103 years and
outliers like that
skew the hell out of a
straight arithmetic mean
so it's probably closer to
53 years but
this is a poem
not some god-damned
statistics lecture)

bottom line

if you're a
fan of my poetry
there should be more to come
for another
33.47 years

and if you're not
there's always
lightning,

bear attack,

killer bees from
brazil,

or the offhand chance
i'll actually
find the stones someday
and

pull the trigger.








Now I have a poem by Wendy Barker from her book Winter Chickens, published by Corona Publishing Company of San Antonio in 1990.

Barker, born in New Jersey, received a BA in English from Arizona State University. She taught English in high schools in Phoenix and in Berkeley, California, then earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Davis. At the time the book was published, she was Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas, San Antonio.



You, Arthritis Fusing Your Joints

Rocking on wind the house sways,
the trees pelt shadows
into the rooms, shadows in the shapes
of leaves, of twigs, of stones.

You tell me your knee has fused now.
The doctor asked how you were able
to drive with your ankle so swollen,
how you were able to dress yourself.
Could the elbows move above the shoulders,
could the fingers still
pull a zipper.

How long does it take
to fuse bones, to turn this
fleshy interlocking puzzle
of 206 separate bones
into one piece,
something to fit a frame,
two-dimensional, flattened.

You have been told
to lie down
for twelve hours a day,
horizontal, to stop
the grinding of the joints.
Stop the bones wearing
each other away,
bones that have pushed
against each other for thirty-six years,
infuriating the membranes
that have tried to hold them a bay,
tried to let them keep their distance.

This morning as the wind
turns the house inside out
I read in the paper
that two Brahma bulls
escaped from the packing plant,
plowed through a southside
neighborhood, running
and running, not ever
gunshot could stop them.

I wish your bones could gather
like reeds by the creek,
clicking and singing in breezes,
hard and green but slick
from the water, smooth and wet
gleaming from water.
I wish your bones could glide
easy as the twigs
of bones that let sparrows'
wings work, let them fly
in all this wind.

Or failing that, let them rage
like the bulls, great muscles heavy with purpose,
dark with power, pounding the sidewalks,
running the streets, running
over the fused flat ground,
breaking everything into stones.








There I was, all set to contemplate the mysteries of life and the universe and things got complicated.



fire brigade

fifty degrees
today
and a little damp
perfect
for sitting around
a fire
outside
and contemplating
the larger questions
of life
and the universe

so i got me
some of the wood
i keep for such
contemplating
sessions,
just enough
to fill the
chiminea,
and carefully
built
my fire base

a big problem
right off

i only have about
a half a squirt
of lighter fluid
and i knew that
wasn't enough
so i set out
to apply my
boy scout
experience
only then
remembering
i wasn't ever
a boy scout
causing a quick
transition to plan
"b"
which involved
picking my backyard
clean of small twigs
and branches
and that pile
of natural fuel
combined with
the entire sunday
edition of the
newspaper of the
7th largest city
in the united states
(smaller than phoenix
by just two thousand
parched
and dehydrated
souls)
and i had a fire
not a roaring fire
by any means
but a fire at last

a smokey fire

a very smokey fire
in fact
such that my
entire backyard
was smothered
in clouds of gray
and black smoke
leading me to worry
that one of my neighbors
might panic at all the
smoke
and call the fire department
but that turned out not
to be a problem
when it started to rain
putting out the fire
and eliminating
its smokey
output

my hot chocolate
had gone cold
while I had been
attending
to the fire so
i took it inside
and popped it
into the micro
wave until it
was steamy hot
again
then sat down
at the kitchen table
and watched it
rain
all the while
contemplating
the larger questions
of life and the
universe








The poet is Bruce Isaacson, cofounder of the Cafe Babar Reading Series, publisher of Zeitgeist Press and author of love affairs with barely any people and Mad Dog Blues; the book is The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry; the poem is a wild and funny ride.



Lost My Job & Wrote This Poem

No longer will I swallow hard boiled
instructions. No longer smile at
people I'd like to bite.
Today I am free.
Today I am Mick Jagger's lips.
Today I am Kerouac's touchdown in Lowell '39.
Today I'm Jack Kenedy - ich bin ein unemployed!

There will be time later for assassins.
Today I am Lenin arriving at Finland Station
Napoleon back from Egypt.
Today I am Neville Chamberlain's peace
Timothy Leary's PhD
Joplin's vocal chords
I am used up - but new
and yesterday was my last day of work.

Now come the women who say no.
Now come New York Amsterdam Leningrad Rangoon.
Now comic books I'm to undisciplined to write
poems written on white bread and toilet paper.
Now comes literature rubbing at my leg like a dog.
Now come Christmas with its childish lies.
And I will believe all of them.
I'll make up new ones.

I'll buy Jesus a pink shirt & leather chaps
and wear them to parties of the damned.
I'm the vagrant with a purpose
the comrade in a Mercedes.
The King is dead. Long live dead capitalism!
Long live the bridge loan made of Rolaids.
Long live Hemingway's shotgun,
Milken's salary.
Long live the hand of God as it
fingers its way to your rectum
pushing you to do what you must.
You must tell the boss to treat you with respect.
You must stand up for free speech.
You must stand up in a crowd
of an overpriced New York restaurant
and shout - O Waste Nuclear Waste!

Tell the emperor when the people have no clothes.
Homeless & health farms, convenience stores & medicare,
tummy tucks for pets, advertising titty hope hologram.
I am the blister on the burn
I am the golden boy turning bronze.
I am Kerouac's belly,
Howard Hughes' germs,
I am Van Gogh's knife
looking back at you in the mirror.

I wrote poems for a nation of tv stars.
I became the floating eyeball
that looks over your shoulder as it
peering off the edge of the earth.
I have strip mined love for poetry.
I cracked bones like Jesus cracked bread.
That's how poems visit me.
Like the ghost of a lover done wrong.
Like a party for a world done wrong.
Imagine Abe Lincoln and Karl Marx
in the party masks of Nixon & Stalin.
The Popes collect gold, now the Russians prefer Pepsi.
I would rather take dictation from the planets.
From the strangest bottomfish scrubbing the sea.
From the worst delusion
       of the best psychotic
              waving poetry like a flag
                     in a wind that burns as it blows








I'm also happy to welcome back another web-poet we haven't seen in a while, Christine Kiefer.

Christine is an attorney in the midwest. More of her work can be found by clicking on her link on the right.



Winter Weather Advisory

this afternoon you dug yourself
out of the weather and asked
do I understand the magnitude of this day
I know ice is weighing on the trees
power lines are dragging
cars are spun in wrong ways
there is a man with no heat
who tells me lies in white
sits close to a fire and longs
for the feel of a woman,
any woman, on his arm
while a young girl with Dirty South
tattooed across her breasts
sleeps in a leather jacket and black boots
on my purple couch which my sister says,
"has seen lots of action"
My son is sixty miles north
jumping on his father's lap
saying "yes you can too snow-board"
I know a woman is in my hometown
smiling into another's eyes,
her heart beating like summer love
while down the road you
pack and move, and roll
and tell me to know the finality of today
that you've let the memory of me freeze
like the pipes around the corner
and I sit shivering in my warmth
with the electric buzzing
my stove in working order
and still nobody had better
ask me for a hot meal








Next, I have three African poets from the mid-20th century.



My first poet is Ingrid Jonker of South Africa. She was born in 1933 and committed suicide at the young age of 32. Although she wrote in Afrikaans, her poems have been widely translated into other languages. Jonker is often called the South African Sylvia Plath, owing to the intensity of her work and the tragic course of her turbulent life.

Jonker started writing poems when she was 6 years old and by the age of 13 had produced her first collection of Afrikaans poems entitled Na die somer (After the summer). Although several publishers were interested in her work, she was advised to wait before going into print. Her first published book of poems, Ontvlugting (Escape), was eventually published in 1956.

Her relationship with her father, never good, grew worse as she grew older and came into opposition to the government, of which he was a part, culminating at one point to his denial in a speech to parliament that she was his daughter.

She had begun a new collection of poems at the time of her suicide in 1965.



The Child Who Was Shot Dead by Soldiers At Nyanga

The child is not dead
the child lifts his fists against his mother
who shouts Afrika! shouts the breath
of freedom and the veld
in the locations of the cordoned heart

The child lifts his fists against his father
in the march of generations
who shout Afrika! shout the breath
of righteousness and blood
in the streets of his embattled pride

The child is not dead
not at Langa nor at Nyanga
not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville
nor at the police station at Phillippi
where he lies with a bullet through his brain

The child is the dark shadow of the soldiers
on guard with rifles, saracens and batons
the child is present at all assemb lies and law-givings
the child peers through the windows of houses and into hearts
    of mothers

this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is
    everywhere
the child grown to a man treks through all Africa
the child grown into a giant journeys through the whole world

Without a pass



The next poem is by Wole Soyinka of Nigeria. He was born into a Yoruba family in 1934. He studied at the University College, Ibadan and the University of Leeds, from which he received an honors degree in English Literature. He worked as a play reader at the Royal Court Theater in London before returning to Nigeria to study African drama. He taught in the Universities of Lagos, Ibadan, and Ife where he became Professor of Comparative Literature there in 1975.

He also played an active role in Nigeria's political history. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested and put in solitary confinement for his attempts at brokering a peace between the warring parties. While in prison he wrote poetry which he later published in a collection titled Poems from Prison. He was released 22 months later after international attention was drawn to his imprisonment. His experiences in prison are recounted in his book The Man Died: Prison Notes.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, becoming the second African to do so.

Here is his poem.



Night

Your hand is heavy, Night, upon my brow,
I bear no heart mercuric like the clouds, to dare
Exacerbation from you subtle plough.

Woman as a clam, on the sea's crescent
I saw our jealous eye quench the sea's
Fluorescence, dance on the pulse incessant

Of the waves. And I stood, drained
Submitting like the sands, blood and brine
Coursing to the roots. Night, you rained

Serrated shadows through dank leaves
Till, bather in warm suffusion of your dappled cells
Sensation pained me, faceless, silent as night thieves.

Hide me now, when the night children haunt the earth
I must hear none! These misted calls will yet
Undo me; naked, unbidden at Night's muted birth.



And my last poet in this series is Jean-Baptiste Tati-Loutard, a Congolese writer and politician born in 1938 in the town of Pointe-Noire. He is regarded as one of the major voices in francophone Africa and has published a dozen books of poetry and won several awards.

After studying in high school he began a career as a teacher first. From 1961 to 1966, he studied letters in France, obtained a license from modern literature and Italian, then taught literature and poetry at the Center for Graduate Studies Brazzaville.

He became leader of the cultural movement and held various senior management positions, including director of the Academy of Letters, director of the Center for Higher Education in Brazzaville, then dean of the University of Human Sciences. From 1975, he combined the literature and and politics and became Minister of Higher Education, Culture, Arts and Tourism. After returning to teaching for a few years, he became Minister of Hydrocarbons in 1997.

And here is his poem, translated by Eric Sellin.



Early

I got up early and faced the east
Which I thought was made of bright red brick
Like an old temple for the worship of Fire
In the eastern axis
In the minaret I saw a body worked over by ruin
Ready to collapse in a fateful fall
Like a bird about to break with space
Which had bourne it up to the clouds
The muezzin called out as thought the new age
Would appear at the end of his cry.








I was in one of the taller buildings downtown a couple of days ago and I had one of those moments when you remember you know something obvious that you never thought about before. I remembered that I remembered when elevators had human operators, usually an older man, often in a uniform fancy enough to belong to the admiral of the fleet.

It was a feat of technological faith to get into an elevator for the first time without an operator and have to pilot it yourself.



going up

uniformed
in epaulets
proud

captains
of their ships
sailing
their vertical
seas

replaced
in their high-rise canyons
by rows of buttons

going up
and going
down








The next poem is by Federico Garcia Lorca from the collection of his poems, poet in new york, translated by Greg Simon and Steven F. White.

Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist of stage and screen, painter, pianist, and composer. He was killed by Nationalist partisans in 1936 at the age of 38 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

The poem comes from a section of the book titled Introduction to Death, Poems of Solitude in Vermont. It's not clear to me if that is Lorca's title or the editors' of the book.

Lorca is not the kind of poet I normally enjoy, but I am able to appreciate the richness of his metaphor and imagery, even though I rarely understand exactly what he's trying to get at.



Landscape with Two Grave and an Assyrian Dog

Friend,
get up and listen
to the Assyrian dog howl.
Cancer's three nymphs have been dancing,
my son.
They carried mountains of red sealing wax
and stiff bed sheets to the place where cancer slept.
The horse had an eye in its neck
and the moon was in a sky so cold
that she had to tear open her mound of Venus
and drown the ancient graveyards in blood and ashes.

Friend,
wake up, the mountains still aren't breathing
and the grass of my heart is somewhere else.
It doesn't matter if you're full of seawater.
For a long time I loved a child
who had a tiny feather on his tongue,
and we lived inside a knife for a hundred years.
Wake up. Be still. Listen. Sit up in your bed.
The howling
is a long purple tongue that releases
terrifying ants and the liquor of irises.
Here it comes toward the rock. Don't spread out your
    roots!
It approaches. Moans. Friend, don't sob in your dreams.

Friend!
Get up and listen
to the Assyrian dog howl.









My next poem is by fellow web-poet Beau Blue. In addition to reading this poem yourself, I suggest you watch Beau's reading of it on "youtube." I don't know what to call they process he used to make his video, so I'll just call it animation. To see the video, copy and paste this
to your browser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kThT01wOzMc

It can serve as an introduction to the work Beau does on his website which you can visit by clicking on his link on the right.

I know you'll enjoy it.



Trial of a Poet

                   A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian
                   in a civilized community.
                             - Karl Shapiro

Funny looking legs standing in the quicksand,
Here, have another drink and try to look respectable.
Remember, you can tell them all to go to hell
And the tax man will still come to get what he's expecting.
You only think that you can get to somewhere safe.

They humor you, you know, and it's insanity that's calling,
Leaving telltale traces in all your mirrored halls,
A tuft of gray and a vein that pops a little too close to home.
And you can terrorize the Jesus Christ into their souls
But we both know that you're just a homeless waif.

Face it, funny legs, you can make 'em laugh
But you cannot make 'em feel
You can even charge their lives with bright collections.
But you can never bring 'em home or call them orphans
And they will always see the spots on your reflections.
Limitations, after all, are meant to chafe.

                   So now, what say
                   let's you and I
                   try to survive
                   for one more day.








Next, I have a poem by Nikki Giovanni from her book My House, published by William Morrow & Company in 1983.

Giovanni was born in 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee. She is a Grammy-nominated poet, activist and author. At the time the book was published, she was a Distinguished Professor of English at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.



Rituals

i always wanted to be a bridesmaid
honest to god
i could just see me floating
down that holy aisle leading
some dear friend to heaven
in pink and purple organza with lots and lots
of crinoline pushing the violets out from my dress
hem
or maybe in a more sophisticated endeavor
one of those lovely sky blue slinky numbers
fitting tight around my abounding twenty-eights
holding a single red rose white gloves open in the back
always forever made of nylon and my feet nested gently
in chandlers number 699 which was also the price plus
one dollar to match it pretty near the dress color

wedding rituals have always intrigued me
and i'd swear to friends i wouldn't say goddamn not even
once no matter what neither would i give a power
sign but would even comb my hair severely
back and put that blue shit under my eyes
i swear i wanted to be in a wedding

     [20 dec 71 ]








Here's a poem from my book, Seven Beats a Second.



dinner plate moon

dinner plate moon
rising round and bright
in the April sky,
spreading pale blush
across the hills and valleys
of our central texas home,
casting faint shadows
in the groves of oak and pecan
that grew up wild around us

we watch the stars flicker on
as night becomes itself,
appearing one by one
until we see it all,
the moon above,
and all the
soft night's stars,
ageless and unchanged,
while our time passes,
their glow ever-blazing









My next poem is by Margaret Atwood from her book Two Headed Poems published by Simon and Schuster in 1978.

Atwood, born in 1939, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, feminist, activist and winner of the Booker Prize and Arthur C. Clarke Award. At the time this book was published she had been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice.



fromFive Poems For Grandmothers

ii

It is not the things themselves
that are lost, but their use and handling.

The ladder first; the beach;
the storm windows, the carpets;

The dishes, washed daily
for so many years the pattern
has faded; the floor, the stairs, your own
arms and feet whose work
you thought defined you;

The hairbrush, the oil stove
with its many failures,
the apple tree and the barrels
in the cellar for apples,
the flesh of apples; the judging
of the flesh, the recipes
in tiny brownish writing
with the names of those who passed them
from hand to hand: Gladys,
Lorna, Winnie, Jean.

If you could only have them back
or remember who they were.


iii

How little I know
about you finally:

The time you stood
in the nineteenth century
on Yonge Street, a thousand
miles from home, with a brown purse
and a man stole it.

Six children, five who lived.
She never said anything
about those births and the one death;
her mouth closed on a pain
that could neither be told nor ignored.

She used to have such a sense of fun,
Now girls, she would say
when we would tease her.
Her anger though, why
that would curl your hair
though she never swore.
The worst thing she could say was:
Don't be foolish.

At eighty she had two teeth pulled out
and walked the four miles home
in the noon sun, placing her feet
in her own hunched shadow.

The bibbed print aprons, the shock
of the red lace dress, the pin
I found at six in your second drawer,
made of white beads, the shape of star.
What did we ever talk about
but food, health and the weather?

Sons branch out, but
one woman leads to another.
Finally I know you
through your daughters,
my mother, her sisters,
and through myself:

Is this you, this edgy joke
I make, are these you long fingers,
your hair of an untidy bird,
is this your outraged
eye, this grip
that will not give up?








My webpoets in this issue are all folks we haven't seen in a while. Jack Hill is one such and I'm happy to see him back, as I'm happy to welcome back all those who have been missed in their absence.



A season for everything

I'm setting here waiting for a poem,
looking out the window
at the sweet gum tree
with it's red and yellow leaves,
a harvest picture;
all that's needed are pumpkins.

A doe runs through the picture
I see the whites of her eyes,
it's deer season.
Two hundred thousand eyes
are searching for her,
with one thing in mind.

Then I sit back
wait for a four legged poem
to run across the screen.
Maybe my luck will
be better than hers.








Storyville, A Hidden Mirror is a fascinating book of poetry by Brooke Bergan, centered on the story of the red light district that served the needs of the men, both high and low, of New Orleans. Almost all the poems were inspired directly or indirectly by the photographs of E J Bellocq.

Bellocq was a commercial photographer whose business was centered around the ships, shipyards and warehouses of New Orleans. All that survives of his work is not those commercial photographs, but the relatively few photos he took of prostitutes in Storyville. Although the prostitutes he photographed were usually partially or fully nude, the results are not salacious, but true portraits in the classical sense, revealing as much about the character of his subjects as their skin.

The character played by Keith Carradine in the movie Pretty Baby was based in part on Bellocq.

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.

The book was published by Asphodel Press in 1994.



To Bellocq In Heaven

Some people think you are
a movie star seducer/
protector of a teenage
girl, Papa Bellocq,
impassioned only
about your photographs.

The man who played you
learned the way of your
big view camera quickly
"producing decent portraits
in a day," as he had learned to
ride and shoot for someone else
or sing a country-western song.

For just that once
you got to be romantic,
not the mincing "waterhead"
who "waddled...like a duck"
the printmaker thought he knew,
photography's Toulouse-Lautrec,
Jose Ferrer on his knees
in a top hat, impotent
without a camera

In a novel, hydrocephalic
again, corrupt, it is you
who defiles the plates,
"making and destroying
...from the same source."
Light-absorbed, you ring
yourself in fire, dying
decades before you really
did, probably of diabetes
from those orange jelly
slices that you loved.

To the critic you are
a pornographer, turned artist
only by the crumble of wear
you had no hand in, because
your "harsh, unmediated" image
of a nude prostitute is "exposed,
facing the viewer," as she faced you,
unflinching.

Your friends deny
you were misshapen,
say you were "rotund
and balding," spoke
with a thick French accent,
or Teutonic, or New Orleans,
always carried a camera, and
hated having your picture taken.

Malle, Ondaatje, Friedlander,
Joe Sanarens, Johnny Wiggs, Adel
(movie director, novelist, printmaker
photographer, cornetist, prostitute)
those who knew you, or thought they could
from a drawerful of glass plates, a handful
of memories, make you the homosexual-pederast-
voyeur-pornographer-sentimentalist they want to see.

Denied your chance to crop or choose
explain, the gashed out face or re-
touch it, you leave us only 89
8x 10 glass plates, bright
flecks of a world you saw
as whole. What you did not show:

open cisterns breeding yellow fever
mosquitoes thick as gauze mattress
whores like gray mist shadow plague's
living corpses out of graves in high
water moccasin ashes photograph
buried face down purple permanganate
clap squeeze ten cent a fuck heat
hazed river air black vomit in

summer you sometimes took pictures
of pretty girls at the Pontchartrain beach.








I wrote this next poem in 1971. It was finally published 28 years later in Alchemy.



conceits of the recently evolved

some time ago,
way, way back there
in pre-history,
before pre-history,
in the beginning,
we climbed up from the sea,
all of us,
together,
from our best
to our worst
and everyone in between,
we fought our way up
from the foaming, salty sea,
licked our amoeba lips,
hitched our britches
over our amoeba hips,
and began to build cities,
make way
discover love
defy fear
kill our brothers
name the stars
imagine art
invent time.....

how full of ourselves
we have become
since those first days,
self-exulting and prideful,
crowing like the cock
who lights up the sun,
too much pride, perhaps,
for a one-celled accident
with a few optional accessories








Coleman Barks was born in 1937 in Tennessee. Although he is well known as a poet, he is best known as translator of Rumi and other mystic poets of Persia.

This is one of his poems, taken from a collection of his work titled Gourd Seed published in 1993 by Maypop Books of Athens,
Georgia.



Orange Circles on Lavender Wings

A moral question for the intuition: How long
to keep coming out by this pond in Oconee County,
hoping the dog will show up, the dog
my son lost track of here unbelievably,
she's such a whiney crybaby wanting total
attention and constant contact, and what
he was doing anyway with his friend Jim and Jim's dog
on Jim's father, Rufus' many hundreds of acres, remains
mostly unanswered. This is my fifth time out twenty miles,
walking this kudzu-engulfed-and lizarded road
to hear App bark just once. All the way in to the slime pond
with the rotten dock, up through pines past
a deer stand to a scrawny orchard
with my whistling and calling, baffled
that a runt of the litter, five-year-old, spayed collie
could be lost in this tangle, or ever leave the safety
of road for any reason, I try to grieve
for my dead dog, and my cold, quick son,
who seems so little concerned, and uncatchable
in his escape cars. I haven't cried yet
over the dog, gone four nights, probably
lying down eaten up with ticks and mosquitoes and hornets,
or shot by someone for a fox, or maybe alive,
decided to go wild, unlikeliest
chance. This long.
Tonight's the last after-supper run.
Then I'll put ads in the papers, and it's up to how
it is to be. In my mind now she seems a little, loose
leathery pod, like those hanging on a bush
outside my cabin, and I'm not there so I can't check
whether this one's rotten inside, or broken open
with whatever it is free and flying around with
orange circles on its lavender wings,
close to my face.

***

Second stanza.
The girl down the street whom I've called
"sentimental doglady" goes out, two and a half weeks after,
knocks on every door of a housing development,
locates word of a thin, tick-crusted
something, wandering the area, stays and waits
with her husband, and there's the dog!
By God, I change my tune
about crying and giving up hope.








And now, although Susan McDonough hasn't been gone from us as long as the others, I welcome her back with equal pleasure. Susan splits her time between Arizona and Maine and I'm certain I can tell where she is by her poems. This is a dark, winter poem that has to come from Maine.



numbness, double or nothing

card decks
and calendar
pages, it's all
the same.
fate, the shuffle,
kismet. where
it shall fall.
nothing about
goodness, how
hard we try
and substance.
I careen and
bump into life
honeyed or bitter.
so I'll inhale
the months
of fragrance
take them
in my lungs,
pull them
through each cell
like a last breath.
and I'll spit -
choke out each
bad face card
that's dealt
coated in its
strychnine finish.








My next two poems are by Kenneth W. Brewer, Poet Laureate of the state of Utah.

Brewer received his doctorate in creative writing at the University of Utah in 1973. He retired from Utah State University after 32 years as a writing teacher.

The poems are from the book sum of accidents published by City
Art of Salt Lake in 2003.



The Pink Clouds

In her childhood
Adah's family watched
the pink clouds
that floated over the Lake
like large balloons.

"Harmless," the radio said,
so they stood outside
in the fields, or watched
from porches, kitchen windows,
fishing boats, playgrounds.
They trusted the radio.

On her twelfth birthday,
the animals began to die.
Two foals were still born,
all the lambs but two
came out dead, one
with two heads, one
with no legs, one
like a half-chewed Milky Way.

"Poisonous weeds,"
the county agent said
but he never found any.
Adah's mare died,
just dropped in the corral.
No reason for it.
She prayed so hard
God became her enemy.

She has never liked summer.
"A winter soul," she says.
She doesn't breathe well summers,
asthma, allergies, she's never
bothered to find out.
She prefers the winter air,
cold, clear, and the stormclouds
of gray or black -
nothing that floats,
nothing pink.


Genealogy At Fish Haven

Adah begat Carl.
He died.

Adah married Joe.
He died.

Adah lives alone
in the house at Fish Haven.
She raises horses,
registered, each name
a blood link
to the past.

Every Sunday
she rides
Joseph out of Sarah,
leans into his mane
fast along the trail
toward Paris.

The Lake glitters in the sun.
A redtailed hawk circles.
An ibis lifts its head
as if something
were about to change.








What the heck - having done one poem from my book, might as well close this week with another.



brotherhood of the forever spreading stars

a million billion
you's and me's
in never ending
varieties of
size and shape
and unimagined
chemistries
scattered in places
we can never be,
places so far,
so strange,
so contrary
to all we know
that only minds
vanity free
and welcoming
impenetrable mysteries
can ever chance
to see the possibilities
of all our fellow
you's and me's









I've already gone overlong this week so will quickly exit, not forgetting to say:

All the work on this blog remains the property of its creators - the blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz
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Dawn's Early Light   Thursday, December 06, 2007


II.12.2.



So, we're back for another week, a little longer than usual because I started with several poets (Whitman and Andrade, especially) and liked what I was typing so much I couldn't stop.

I finished this issue very early, intending to concentrate a couple of days on putting stuff together for the new, possibly mythical, book. But the weather was so great I spent the extra time outside. Maybe next week.

For this week, read and, I hope, enjoy.









I concentrated in past issues on the travel poems of Blaise Cendrars because he is such a delightful traveling companion and, also, because his travel poems are short and easy to use here.

But there's more to him then those little travel notes. Here's number 4 in a series of longer poems he titled Nineteen Elastic Poems



fromNineteen Elastic Poems

I. Portrait

He's asleep
He wakes up
Suddenly, he paints
He takes a church and paints with a church
He takes a cow and paints with a cow
With a sardine
With heads, hands, knives
He paints with a bull's pizzle
He paints with all the dirty passions of a little Jewish town
With all the exaggerated sexuality of the Russian provinces
For France
Without sensuality
He paints with his thighs

He has eyes in his ass
And it's suddenly your portrait
It's you reader
It's me
It's him
It's his fiancee
It's the corner grocer
The milkmaid
There are tubs of blood
The wash the newborn in
Skies of madness
Mouths of modernity
The Tower as corkscrew
Hands
The Christ
The Christ is him
He spent his childhood on the cross
He commits suicide every day
Suddenly, he is not painting
He was awake
Now he's asleep
He's strangled by his own tie
Chagall is astonished to still be alive

II. Studio

The Beehive
Stairways, doors, stairways
And his door open like a newspaper
Covered with visiting cards
Then it closes.
Disorder, total disorder
Photographs of Leger, photographs of Tobeen, which you don't see
And on the back
On the back
Frantic works
Sketches, drawings, frantic works
And paintings...
Empty bottles
"We guarantee the absolute purity of our tomato sauce"
Says a label
The window is an almanac
When the gigantic cranes of lightning empty the booming barges of the
   sky and dump buckets of thunder
Out fall

Pell-mell

Cossacks Christ a shattered sun
Roofs
Sleepwalkers goats
a lycanthrope
Petrus Borel
Madness winter
A genius split like a peach
Lauremont
Chagall
Poor kid next to my wife
Morose delectation
The shoes are down at the heel
An old jar full of chocolate
A lamp that's split in two
And my drunkenness when I go see him
Empty bottles
Bottles
Zina
(We've talked about her a lot)
Chagall
Chagall
In the graduations of light

(October 1913)








You learn all sorts of things listening to NPR. This is what I learned.



engineering for the ages

to produce
one liter bottle
of water
takes
four liters
of water -
three
to make the
bottle
and one to
fill it

I learned that
today

I also learned
that when all else
on this world is gone
two things will remain
cockroaches
and
plastic
water bottles

finally!
we have created
something to match the
durability of the
cockroach








Being untaught, or at least, unlearned, in all the range of poetry in this world, I knew William Carlos Williams mostly by the two or three poems of his that appear in just about every anthology of 20th century poets. You know which ones I'm talking about - the wheelbarrow thing and the plum thing. Now, as I read more and more of him, he has become one of my poetry heroes.

This poem is from the book William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems edited by Charles Tomlinson. It was published by New Directions Paperbook in 1985.



Seafarer

The sea will wash in
but the rocks - jagged ribs
riding the cloth of foam
or a knob or pinnacles
      with gannets -
are the stubborn man.

He invites the storm, he
lives by it! instinct
with fears that are not fears
but prickles of ecstasy,
a secret liquor, a fire
that inflames his blood to
coldness so that the rocks
seem rather to leap
at the sea than the sea
to envelope them. They strain
forward to grasp ships
or even the sky itself
that bends down to be torn
upon them. To which he says,
It is I! I who am the rocks!
Without me nothing laughs.








Next, another fine poem from fellow web-poet Thane Zander.



The Light of Day in the Square

The light dawns crimson from the east,
sun lovers pack a mental note
to head to the beach, Himatangi

The ladies traipse around the Square
shopping, no noticing the Marae o Hine
not seeing me rolling up my sleeping bag,

the infusion of smog making transport,
I wander over towards the sun, to toilet
refreshed by another Palmerston North night.

My mental note not of the Beach, but food
a tummy hungry now for two days, pancakes
from Mac's on the Square, my two bobs worth,

I taste love in the air, couples toing and froing,
summer, early as it may be, gets the best of people,
the garbage collector beats me to the trash cans.

The warm rays of a climbing Sun remove my coat
a three year old hoody limps free, shoes scrape on,
Michael, the sociopath, juggles for cigarette money,

As the summer Sun climbs to midday, a sweat starts,
still hungry, I tackle my bank account, no benefit yet,
so hang around Subways and scoot in to fill with leftovers.

Afternoon finds me back in the Marae, writing poetry,
I can't escape those boulders, a new poem for each,
I wonder often if they'd frame each poem for each boulder.

The traffic out of town, after school, kids and parents
off to the beach to capture the rays and swim, balmy
yes, Balmy Palmy, those with nouse head to the Lido.

The sun starts to dip, it's day almost done, reverence,
I bow to my feet and supplant life curses on the ground,
the day cooling means jacket back on, the hoody too.

Shadows from the Library lengthen, the Square darkens,
people shuffle home leaving me to my solitude,
cars return with red skinned children, and sandy feet.

In the deepest recesses of the West, the Sun sinks
the lights in the Square take effect, brighten key areas,
a dog that turns up around the cafes, looks for scraps.

Suddenly I find myself unrolling my sleeping attire,
the benches in the Green Belt a usual haunt, peace
the statues of reverence overlooking as sentinels.

Goodnight.








Anna Akhmatova was born in 1889 and died in 1966. She first achieved fame as a poet as an "icon of pre-Revolutionary Russian literary society." An early victim of Stalinism, she was briefly rehabilitated during World War II because of her patriotism, but was later returned to the repression that wasn't lifted until late in her life, when her achievements and international recognition could not be ignored.

I took this poem from, Anna Akhmatova, Selected Poems published by Zephyr Press in 2000. It is a bilingual book, with Russian and English on facing pages. The English translation was done by Judith Hemschemeyer.



July 1914

1.

It smells of burning. For four weeks
The dry peat bog has been burning.
The birds have not even sung today,
And the aspen has stopped quaking.

The sun has become God's displeasure,
Rain has not sprinkled the fields since Easter.
A one-legged stranger came along
And all alone in the courtyard he said:

"Fearful times are drawing near. Soon
Fresh graves will be everywhere.
There will be famine, earthquakes, widespread death,
And the eclipse of the sun and the moon.

But the enemy will not divide
Our land at will, for himself;
The Mother of God will spread her white mantle
Over this enormous grief."

2.

The sweet smell of juniper
Flies from the burning woods.
Soldiers' wives are wailing for the boys,
The widow's lament keens over the countryside.

The public prayers were not in vain,
The earth was yearning for rain!
Warm red liquid sprinkled
The trampled fields.

Low, low hangs the empty sky
And a praying voice quietly intones:
"They are wounding your sacred body,
They are casting lots for you robes."

July 20, 1914
Slepnyovo








Well, I had a little break in the routine this week. Here's what happened.



over it

went
to work
today,
first day
of a three day
gig

not so bad

nothing
really exciting
but not so boring
either

when i first
retired
i'd get restless
after a couple of months
idle,
get a little jealous
of all the people
passing me
on the highway,
going
to work

but that was almost
ten years ago
and
i'm mostly
over
it








Here are five poems from the book One Hundred Poems From the Japanese. The poems are translated by Kenneth Rexroth.

Poems number 5 and 6 are attributed to the poet Akahito and number 7 to Lady Akazome Emon. The authors of numbers 9 and 10 are unknown.

Translator Rexroth makes an interesting note in his introduction to the book. These poems were written to be sung and are still sung and recorded. Each poem also has a characteristic pattern of dance gestures.

Here are the poems.



V

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


VI

I wish I was as close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.


VII

I should not have waited.
It would have been better
To have slept and dreamed,
Than to have watched night pass,
And this slow moon sink.


IX

The purity of the moonlight,
Falling out of the immense sky,
Is so great that it freezes
The water touched by its rays.


X

The cicada sings
In the rotten willow.
Antares, the fire star,
Rolls in the west.








Now, a poem by Alex Stolis, next in his series inspired by the Tarot deck.



Card VII

The Chariot - a 1967 Shelby GT 500 -

Act I
(fade to street level, pan to fifth floor)

There's this girl on First Avenue - a real Georgia peach if ever you could paint
one. She screams out the hotel window to a not-so-young man wearing a baseball
- Mets not Yankees - shirt. Hey Paco, you get it? The not-so-old boyman ignores her,
strolls to a blue Ford Mustang - a shelbyforreal'tang - muscles his way
into the driver's seat, hangs his arm out the window like a rope and pops away
from the curb. The girl is left by the window twisting her hair into a perfect knot.

Act II
(cut to a deserted street; late evening)

Meanwhile, the manboy called Paco whose real name is Wendell - Pete - Jackson
pretends to know all the words to that new-last year's album - Dandy Warhols
song, the one about Miami and early signs of heroin withdrawal.
He seems interested in the way the streetlights look damp in all this heat
but what he really wants is a way to get into Rochelle's panties - Angel
bodywear - without being as obvious to her as it will surely look to anyone else.

Act III
(soundtrack plays- The Pixies; intro from Bone Machine)

He drives around the block, recites the best lines from The Big Sleep -
Bogart's - and fumbles for his lighter. At least five minutes go by - one, two
at most - At the same time Rochelle - her real name is Juliana - pours herself
into a margarita. She can almost see the moon fold back on itself and wishes
the rain could wash away regret. This ride is pistol whipped and loaded,
there's a crack and bang - his last chance to chisel a smile into the sunset.

(fade to black; wait 30 seconds, roll credits)








The next poem is by Frederick Seidel from the collection of his work Poems 1959-1979, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1989.



The Walk There

As he approaches each tree goes on,
And the girls one by one
Glance down at their blouses, A nun,
The six or seven, hop in
A cream station wagon,
White-beaked blackbirds baked in a pie,
In his mind is
The lid of an eye
The dark dilated closing behind him.

Rilke. Arched eyebrows and shadowed
Moist eyes. An El Greco. Swart, slim.
He's late to her. He thinks of her, waiting
Limb by limb.

Her defenselessness and childlike trust!
Smiling to be combed out
And parted - her lust
Touching the comb like a lyre.
To have been told by her to to trust her!

And he distrusts her.
And everywhere he sees
Hunchbacks and addicts and sadists
In braces in the cities,
Roosting in their filth,
Or plucking the trees,
In New York for true love,
In Boston for constancy.
You can be needed by someone,
Or needy, thinks Rilke.

They clutch their loves like addicts
Embracing when they see
Hot May put out her flowers.
Or clutch themselves. They can't shake free.

He thinks of the time
He lived by her calendar
When she missed her time.

She gave the child a name.

When she bled, she laughed and gasped
Tears warm as pabulum
On his wrists. But that is past.

Rilke feels his body
Moving in front of his last
Step. He sweats, and thinks
Of the rubble massed
On Cresa behind Aeneas'
White-hot shoulders and neck.

addresses
And clothesline laundry swelled
Like pseudocyesis.
That's what he has to pass through.

His tie is so blue,
And a new lotion gives him and air
Of coolness. He combs his hair,
And tries to smooth his hair.

Light, light is in the trees
Pizzicato, and mica
Sizzles up to his knees.
A dozen traffic lights
Swallow and freeze
And one by one relay red red
Like runners with a blank message.

Rilke.








There was another little lively event in our lives last week. Had a bit of a sad ending, but I won't go into that.



squirrel for sale, best offer

there is a
squirrel
in my kitchen
cabinet

i saw it

huddled
in a corner
of the cabinet
shivering
in fear

i don't know how
it
got there but there
it
surely is

i also don't know
how
i'm going to get
the creature
out

remembering
jimmy carter's
killer rabbit
i'm hesitant
to try to do it
myself

but I can't find
squirrel
removal
services
in the yellow pages
anywhere








I opened the book and fell into these poems, each so good I couldn't choose between them.

The book is Forbidden Words; the poet Eugenio De Andrade.

The book was published by New Directions Paperbook in 2003. It's a bilingual book, Portuguese and English on facing pages. The English translation is by Alexis Levitin.



The Wall is White

The wall is white
and suddenly
night falls upon the whiteness of the wall.

There is a horse close to silence,
a cold stone on its mouth,
a stone blind for sleep.

I would love you if now you would come
or bend
your face over mine, so pure,
so lost,
oh life.


There Was

There was
a word
in the dark.
Minuscule, Unremarked.

Hammering in the dark.
Hammering
at the water's heart

From the bowels of time
hammering.
At the wall.

A word
in the dark.
For me. A call.


You Knew Summer By Its Fragrance

You knew summer by its fragrance,
the ancient silence
of the wall, the frenzy of the cicadas,
you invented the slightly bitter perpendicular
light, the brief shadow
in which a young urchin had dropped asleep,
the luster of his shoulder blades.
It is that that blinds you, the sunlight of the flesh.


You Are Where My Gaze Begins

You are where my gaze begins
to ache, I recognize the lazy
murmur of August, the carmine of the sea.

Speak to me of cicadas, of that special
sand, your bare feet,
the grain of the air.

Be Still, Light Burns Between The Lips

Be still, light burns between the lips
and love does not ponder, always
love searches, touches in the dark,
this leg, is it yours? is this your arm?
I climb you branch by branch,
breathe close to your mouth,
the soul opens itself to the tongue, I would die
now if you asked me to, sleep,
love was never easy, never,
the earth also dies.








Back with us again, Christopher T. George with another travel tale.



Twaddle: A Journey Not So Long

When I was a boy, Mum and Dad drove up
the boring Jersey Turnpike to Manhattan.
We'd play a game of naming cars; I'd
note each car make Dad identified
on a cream pad in purple ballpoint.

I wrote down Dodge, Plymouth, Ford,
Hillman, Olds, Austin, Ferrari. Added
my physical therapist Dad: "Forceps!"
It's Wednesday: I drive my 87-year-old Mum.
She groans about the long journey. We hear

a blah flute piece on the radio. I say,
"It's the Flute Concerto by Twaddle,
Johann Sebastian Twaddle. The little-known
Tyrolean composer. Utterly Twaddlistic.
Replete with his unique Twaddlisms."








My next poem is by Cyra S. Dumitru from her book Listening to Light. In the book, published by River Lily Press in 2003, Dumitru imagines the world of mythical figures as if if were current events, finding humanity in figures most often obscured by devotion.

The poet is a long time writer, swimmer and student of theology who grew up in Ohio and migrated to Texas. A former medical writer, she now teaches a variety of writing and literature courses at St. Mary's University in San Antonio.

These two poems are the last in the section of the book titled "First Makers."



Eve Consoles Her Granddaughter

Yes, last night was a full moon and, yes,
you usually strike what you seek with arrows.
But even your older brothers walk side by side after dark,

they know what springs from shadows.
Your mother's anger will lift.
You'll swim the river again

while turtles perch on roots of cypress tees
and a green snake barely ripples the water behind you.
You'll feel black mud ooze between toes

as a trout seizes your fishing line.
There's a time to stay close to home
with its tangle of cobwebs.

This quiet can carry you through the noise to come
when you must push your strength.
You will know the moment.

It rises before you -
another world calling
swirling with strange light

heavy as rain upon the air
before a storm opens up.
Yes, like now.

Hear the distance rumbling.


Lamenting the Death of Eve

A strange silence woke me just before dawn.
I went to collect water in hollowed gourds
watching as sky brimmed

with changing light.
I kept listening for you -
your voice singing

every morning from the same hilltop.
As the quiet continued unsung
some impulse led me here

to find you
encircled by white stones
on Grandfather's grave.

As I held you
I traced deep curve of muscles
in old arms

that still smelled of firewood
and smoke, arms that once held me
and spoke about strength.

I am leaving this morning,
a panther preys upon my sheep.
I will track it, taste its blood

wear it skin unless it shreds mine first.
Tucked among my arrows
is the small stone

you held in your hand
when I found you
a greeting

to the warmth of a new sun.
I hear you singing as I too step
alone into unknown light.








We had one of those nights that make you feel a little noirish. Made me feel that way, anyway.



a little night music

damp night
mist
like cold
lace

like diamonds
hanging
in
moonlight

a night to walk
city streets
hat
low over lost
eyes

fading
into shadows
cold and
wet








Now, the greatest of all American poets, Walt Whitman.



fromSong of Myself

48

I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the
   soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self
   is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks
   to his own funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the
   pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod
   confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young
   man following it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for
   the wheel'd universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand
   cool and composed before a million universes.
And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am courious about each am not courious about
   God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace
   about God and about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand
   God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful
   than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four,
   and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my
   own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every
   is sign'd by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that
   wheresoe'er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

49

And as to you, Death, and your bitter hug of mortality,
   it is idle to try to alarm me.

To his work without flinching the accoucheur comes,
I see the elder-hand pressing receiving supporting.
I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors,
and mark the outlet, and mark the relief and escape.

And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure,
   but that does not offend me.
I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing
I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polish'd breasts
   of melons.
And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of
   many deaths.
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times
   before.)

I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,
O suns - O grass of graves - O perpetual transfers and
   promotions,
If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?

Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing
   twilight,
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk - toss on the black
   stems that decay in the muck,
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.
I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,
I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday
   sunbeams reflected,
And debouch to the steady and central from the
   offspring great or small.

50

There is that in me - I do not know what it is - but I
   know it is in me.

Wrench'd and sweaty - calm and cool then my body
   becomes,
I sleep - I sleep long.

I do not know it - it is without name - it is a word
   unsaid.
It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol.

Something it swings or more than the earth I swing
   on,
To it the creation is the friend whose embracing
   awakes me.

Perhaps I might tell more. Outlines! I plead for my
   brothers and sisters

Do you see O my brothers and sisters?
It is not chaos or death - it is form, union, plan - it is
   eternal life - it is Happiness.

(The problem with the greatest American poet ever is, once you start with him, it's hard to stop.)









Back with us again, fellow web-poet Dan Cuddy with a scary word poem.

Dan has his own new blog that he just set up. You can get to it by clicking on his link on the right.



cancer

how morose such a word?
how dark in a world of light?
how dreadful in the mirror,
in the snap and buckle behind the eyes,
in the rough tangle of the hair in the brow,
in the excess of silence,
and the pulse staccato in the wrist?
how ordinary,
an alphabet learned an eon ago,
a clench of fist,
a chill?

and it is all about growth,
the growth of skin,
the wild fire growth of skin,
of cells,
of the basic building blocks of life,
the frenzy of life.

how ironic,
such a natural outgrowth of birth,
the creative design.








My next poem is from The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry, an anthology covering the full 3,000 year tradition of Chinese poetry.

The poet is Zhao Mengfu, born 1254 and died 1322. Unlike many of his contemporary Chinese officials, he accepted Qubilai Khan's invitation to serve in the government set up after the Mongol invasion. Because of that decision, his reputation fell and never recovered.

The poem was translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping, coeditors of the book.



Guilt at Leaving the Hermit's Life

To stay in the mountains is called great ambition;
leaving the mountains you become a small weed.
It was already stated in ancient times.
Why didn't I foresee all this happening?
All my life I longed to go my own way
and to give my ambition to hills and valleys.
I paint and write for my own entertainment,
hoping to keep my nature wild.
Unfortunately I am trapped in a net of dust,
I turn and get tangled up.
I was a gull over the waters,
now a bird in a cage.
Who cares about my sad singing?
Day by day my feathers turn to dry ruin.
Without relatives and friend's help,
vegetables and fruit were often scarce.
My sick wife carried my weak son,
and they left for a place ten thousand miles away.
We are separated, flesh and bones,
and our family tombs have no one to tend them.
When sorrow is deep, words all gone,
I gaze at clouds riding south till my vision fails.
A sad wind comes and I cry,
"How can I tell heaven my story?"








Never far from my coffee shop canvas. This is from yesterday.



girl at the coffee shop with friends

she's
self-conscious
about her slight
overbite
and presses her lips
together
over and over

gives her
a little chipmunk
aspect

but when she
smiles
it's like
opening
the curtains
in a sickroom
bringing
sunlit day
to the gloom
and her eyes
pick up that
light
and it dances
above her
smile








April Bernard is a teacher at Bennington College in Vermont. She is the author of three collections of poetry and a novel. This poem is from the second of her three poetry collections, Psalms, published by W. W. Norton in 1993.



Psalm of the Surprised

The world lay warm and sugared at waking,
as the head of a child leans back into a big hand, learning to float

So shall we now lean, back in to the forgiveness of strangers,
the blue and red scrapes moving bodiless past cafe railings

Warm sun that plucks the hair of sheep and the skins of pigs
from out backs, leaving us clothed in dust motes
and their conveyances, beams

A pair of miniature women from across the river
arrived clutching portents in a bag they would not open

Wipe the salted, grateful, ignoble tear from the triangle of the eye;
finger the beads of hematite, tell the new works,
a prayer for every step hesitant across cobblestones
rounded and polished, slick with shine








Jane Roken has another little trip for us. Here it is.



Oracle signposts

Way out in the waste lands
you will meet signposts
bloody with rust
pocked with shot
buttered with birdshit
And you may ask them
any kind of question

Signposts that answer back:
No reason to stop here

You can travel the wastes
for days and days and never
see a living soul
but there will be eyes
upon you all the time

The gravel shifts underfoot
and what will be revealed?
The abyss of uncertainty:
superhuman proficiency
unspecified
in all its permutations
in all its rapture
or just a rusty signpost
illegible beyond absurdity?

Losing the ground under your feet?
No reason to stop here
Ask any kind of question:
no one hears you here
your whisper
is a match lit up against the sun

Who is holding the keys to the pit?
Don't let your life depend








My next poem is by Lawrence Ferlinghetti grandmaster survivor of the Beats. The poem is from his book Wild Dreams of a New Beginning, published by New Directions Paperbook.



An Elegy To Dispel Gloom

(After the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in San Francisco, November, 1978)

Let us not sit upon the ground
and tell sad stories
of the death of sanity.
That two sweet men are dead
is all that need be said.
Two such sentient beings
two humans made of flesh
are meshed in death
and no more need be said.
It is pure vanity
to think that all humanity
be bathed in red
because one young man man
one so bad man
lost his head.
The force that through the red fuze
drove the bullet
does not drive everyone
through the City of Saint Francis
where there's a breathless hush
in the air today
a hush at City Hall
and a hush at the Hall of Justice
a hush in Saint Francis Wood
where no bird
tries to sing
a hush on the Great Highway
and in the great harbor
upon the great ships
and on the embarcadero
from the Mission Rock Resort
to the Eagle Cafe
a hush on the great red bridge
and on the great gray bridge
a hush in the Outer Mission
and at Hunter's Point
a hush at a hot potato stand on Pier 39
and a hush at the People's temple
where no bird
tries its wings
a hush and a weeping
at the Convent of the Sacred Heart
on Upper Broadway
a hush upon the fleshpots
of Lower Broadway
a pall upon the punk rock
at Mabuhay Gardens
and upon the cafes and bookstores
of old North Beach
a hush upon the landscape
of the still wild West
where two sweet dudes are dead
and no more need be said.
Do not sit upon the ground and speak
of other senseless murderings
or worse disasters waiting
in the wings
Do not sit upon the ground and talk
of the death of things beyond
these sad sad happenings.
Such men as these do rise above
our worst imaginings.








This poem is from my book, Seven Beats a Second, available for sale, I might add, by clicking on the link to the 7beats website at the top of the page

Commercial over, here's the poem.



dark lover

you are of a piece
with a universe
made mostly
of dark unknowns

an enigma

black energies
surging
behind bright facade

I have felt your force

dark elements
unseen
clandestine desires
untold

dark thoughts
dark looks
flickering behind your face
fair as an open sky

I am drawn to the clouds
behind the morning sun
to the flashes of night
within you
I live in the shadows
of your mysteries
searching
for the light








My next poem is by LeRoi Jones, Marxist, anti-semite, conspiracy mongerer and damn fine writer of poetry, drama, essays and musical criticism. The poem is from the book American Negro Poetry, an anthology prepared edited by Arna Bontemps, first published by Hill and Wang in 1964, the republished with revisions in 1973.



Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

     (For Kellie Jones, born 16 May 1959)

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelops me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad-edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars,
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night, I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
the door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands.








Here's a very nice autumn poem from Sara Zang



When Autumn Winds Give Way to Chill

In October, the forest
holds committee meetings.
Town Council sees the need for change.
Gnarled oaks and matronly maples
let the young ones have their say.

Junior Chamber strategizes,
They think new colors is their idea,
that ancient trees are too old, too slow to know.
Unschooled upstarts - they are too new
to realize old truths.

October sways and sighs,
frost is soon to make its mark.
It's only the saplings that can't visualize
stark limbs. Old trees are veterans
at changing leaves to fit the season.

They know the drill of hunkering. When
harsh winds blow cold across the hill,
fragile twigs give up the dream in fear.
Weathered veterans whisper,
"Spring will soon be here."








The next poem is by Charles Harper Webb. Educated at Rice University , the University of Washington and the University of Southern California, Webb worked for fifteen years as a professional rock singer and guitarist and is now a licensed psychotherapist and professor of English at California State University, Long Beach.

The poem is from the book Reading the Water published by Northeastern University Press.



True Prophets

Their speech doesn't sound prophetic:
"Wish the damn heat would let up."
"Do you carry three-inch finishing nails?"
Too late their wisdom becomes clear.

True prophets, though, care nothing
for their prophecy. It just leaks out
of them like garlic after Korean food.
Prophets adore food which is thoughtfully

prepared. Sometimes at a restaurant,
a prophet will leap from his chair,
shrieking with rage, or laugh for no
apparent reason, or weep uncontrollably.

This indicates a profound meal.
Prophets will speak of it for centuries,
and congregate where it was served,
although it rarely re-occurs.

Prophets love billiards, but play badly.
Whatever sparks their gift, extinguishes
their sense of angles and geometry.
The can shoot hours without sinking

a ball. When one goes in - even
the white - every prophet on earth
feel an orgasmic shudder. Sex
doesn't interest prophets much. Knowing

the outcome makes them lackadaisical.
This may explain their rarity. They mate
infrequently, and never with the same
person twice. What most upsets
a prophet is the so-called "hot-foot"
in which matches are stuck between the sole
and upper of a shoe, then lit, causing
the victim to dance wildly and, if a prophet,

to fall into a trance from which he
or she can only be wakened by rapping
on the "funnybone." With the advent
of running shoes, however, and migration

of the populace toward video games, MTV,
and shopping malls, the method of "turning
a prophet" like prophecy - however true -
has ceased to have any significance at all.









I'll finish up this week with a goof of a poem I wrote four or five years ago. I suppose there's some principle involved, some message, but mostly it was for fun.



if god had wanted us to fly she'd given us wings

i was last on an airplane
in 1969

a military flight, not a bad one,
just very long, thirty-six hours
in the air in three stages

when it was finally over
and i stepped off the plane
and took in my first full breath
of moist Charleston air
i knew i was done with airplanes

and from that time on
i've either driven
wherever i needed to go
or changed my mind
and decided i didn't need
to go there anyway

it's not that i'm afraid

we all have a time to die
and my time will come three hours
after i win the largest jackpot
in lottery history whether
i'm on an airplane or not

so, since i haven't won yet,
there's no sense in being afraid
to get on a plane, even though
it does not seem to me to be
a highly intelligent thing to do,
to tie myself in a chair
in a sheet metal sausage
further high than i can
throw a rock (which
always to my knowledge
come crashing back to earth)
propelled through thin air
by a highly explosive liquid
under the control of a driver
who may or may not be
a drunken homicidal maniac
with gender identity problems
and suicidal tendencies

and besides
what's the point of going somewhere
if you can't see stuff along the way








And that's another week in Poetyland. D has some business in Austin, so I'll probably go along for the ride. Maybe find some good pictures laying about around Town Lake or maybe Barton Springs area. The picture above was taken from Congress Avenue in Austin, seen from the south, looking toward the state capitol. Found this one last time I was there.

We'll probably have dinner in Austin Friday night, spend the night there, then head out Saturday for a drive in the hill country, through Johnson City, then to Fredericksburg where we'll probably spend the night at Itz Bed and Breakfast on Main Street. The place has nothing to do with the Itz family, except that it's next to the building my grandfather built for his general store in 1902 or something like that. The family lived upstairs.

The general store was lost to the bank in the depression and my grandfather ended up working as manager of the store until he retired many years later.The old store is now, as are most of the old buildings on Main Street, antique shops for the tourists, of which there are many.

Anyway, been wanting to stay at the bed and breakfast to see if I can channel a bit of the old days when the town was one of several little German bubbles in the otherwise English countryside.

And all of that is why I posting a couple of days early this week.

Everything now having now been said and done for this week, please remember, all of the work included in this blog is the property of its creators. The blog, itself, was produced by and is the property of me....allen itz.
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Cold Nights and Old Songs   Saturday, December 01, 2007


II.12.1


First week in December and the year is almost passed. It does that when you're not looking. Paid $50 for a tank of gas today - nothing unusual about that these days. It's just that every once in a while my old brain kicks in and I realize how strange the everyday of today is.

Thought back to those lost old days when the gallon numbers on the gas pump turned over faster than the dollar numbers.

And the worst of it is, I don't even like most of the people I'm sending my money to.

Anyway, back to poetry, a true recession-proof commodity.








My first poem this week is by Brigid Milligan from her book Mi'jja, Never Lend Your Mop... published in 2000 by M&A Editions when she was seventeen years old and a senior at Health Careers High School here in San Antonio.



6 a.m. Tortilla Lessons

the perfect circles
of my Abuelita's tortillas
stream on the comal
at 6 a.m. on Sunday mornings
my tortillas
come from a just-add-water box
of pre-mixed masa
I cheat
use a press
and a knife
for trimming
Abuelita uses rhythm
and strong wrists -
the thump thump
of the palote
on the kitchen table
turning turning turning
perfect
circles"
"dimelo en espanol"
tell me in Spanish
she chides
as I giggle my tortillas
look like clouds -
additional affirmation
of my Irish half

the warm tortillas
fill a wicker basket
beside the stove
strong
small
brown
hands
mold the balls of masa
flour flakes off the balls
as she works
barefoot
walking on clouds
of flour that she kicks up
off the floor

Abuelita's hair is still in curlers
surrounded with a bandanna
she whistles Te Seguire
by the Todos de Los Panchos
as she eyeballs the ingredients
into a large brown bowl

it is said that when a woman
can make perfectly round tortillas
she is ready
for the sacrament of matrimony
Abuelita says it's a good thing I'm young
my rough edges may doom me
to be an old maid
with practice
she says
like all things
with practice
and a little espanol
my edges
will smooth








Now, here's a more complicated view by another young woman. She is Larissa Szporluk and the poem is from her book Dark Sky Question, published by Beacon Press in 1998.

At the time of the book's publication, Szporluk taught at Bowling Green State University. The book is the first collection of her work, though it has appeared in many journals.



Libido

A hand has her hair.
Don't move, don't cry out -
The odd foliage is shining in the light.

With the stealth of a wheel,
he rams against her knees
from behind. She falls

back into his purpose,
which is hers: to be provided for,
to find her insides altered

and grow huge.
But he runs off, done with her mouth,
leaving her dazed by the waste

of that kind of love.
She asks around, asks how,
where do we feel to find who we are,

watches some poppies freeze
in an orgy of plants,
their cold red gaze grown sideways.

She listens to parrots,
true inner birds, never at rest,
into whose breasts the world

blows pleasure,
shaking the nests full of Indian bees -
To scream is to sing








The next poem is by S. Thomas Summers from his book Rather, It Should Shine. Scott teaches English at a High School in New Jersey. He has been a frequent contributor to us here.



With Apologies to Mr. Merwin

I meant to spend some time
with you this evening, page by page,
sifting for a nugget I could stash
in my pocket, a metaphor I could
roll between my fingers, but July
has settled heavy under the trees
and this chardonnay - so sweet and cold.

A warbler flits over the backyard
grass. A yellow-jacked hovers above
my wine, contemplates a swim. Darkness
cradles itself in a pine near the splintered
fence as night slips into cool silks.
Forgive me - I shall not read a word.








The next poem is by R.G. Vliet from his book Water & Stone, published by Random House in 1980.

Vliet is the author of two previous collections of poems, as well as two novels. He won the Texas Institute of Letters Award three times, twice for his books of poems and later for his novel, Solitudes. Born in Chicago in 1929, he graduated from high school in Texas City, Texas and later from Texas State University (then Southwest Texas State University) in San Marcos, Texas, and did graduate work at Yale. He has lived in American Samoa, the Southwest, New England and Mexico. At the time of the publication of this book, he and his family had lived for eight years working on a small farm in Vermont. He was working on a third novel while living on the farm and died in 1984, just days after its publication.

This poem is a character sketch and, as in the best of such form, it illuminates equally both the subject of the poem and the poet.



Mrs. McElroy

The front room was always closed:
the half-pulled
shades, the listening furniture, old
novels, Latin School Cicero, lace
tea-brown
curtains waiting in the still air.

In the parlor she put another chunk
in the cast-
iron stove, then sat in her rocker
with the tattered throw, among heaps
of Christian
Science Sentinels and Monitors, in company

with the pain in her hip, the constant witness
of pain
in her long hand bones; angels
of error she daily to wrestle with.
She wore
white drawstring cap, long

blue cotton dress with flat
white
collar and white cuffs, black
apron. A cane hung from her chair.
I never saw
the ankles of her cricket-dark shoes.

Her husband had been translated years ago.
A rose-wreathed
saucer sat on the table beside me
with its twice-weekly offering of apple
brown
Betty. Before I split the kindling

we visited, she in the loneliness
of dwindling
time, I in the pain of a boy's
eternal present. The slop bucket
conjectured
by the kitchen door. Mrs. McElroy

hobbled through the yard, her cane
touching
this chore and that chore: slops
to be poured, mulch turned, thinning
of a strawberry
bed, tying up the brambles.

Under the mulberries, red stains
and bird
droppings, April, asparagus. Cuttings
of rhubarb thick as my wrist. Raspberries.
Loganberries.
In August I fought starlings for bushels

of bing cherries, fistfuls of damsons
for her tart
jellies. The sun still shines that shone
on her. Since, my dear one, my mother
and my bird,
I have loved the struggling aged.








I drove down to the Rio Grande Valley (that's right at the southern tip of Texas, on the Rio Grande River) on Thanksgiving to join family for turkey dinner. I lost all radio stations as I crossed the King Ranch, except for several Spanish and a country station.

I was a country music fan back in the 70's, when Willie and Waylon and the boys began that whole new scene in Austin that shook a lot of the dust out of the genre, but hadn't listened to much of it since.

I liked what I heard as I was driving, some good new folks as well as the best of the old. What struck me most, though, was the quality of the lyrics. It could be that country music is the only place left in popular music where the lyric counts.

I was also impressed by some of the innovation I heard, use of form and instrumentation that pleased me. There's been, for some time, country music backed by a wall of strings, screaming "sell-out" to the worst of the easy listening pop of the time. What's happening now seems more an authentic extension of the music. I make a little fun of it in this poem, but, truth is, I liked it a lot.



country time

i was listening
to a country station
on the radio
on my way down for
turkey

heard a guy singing
a sad song, pretty
good song, in fact,
but the cello solo
surprised me a bit

guy's a mighty good singer
though don't know
his name, sure'n
hell
weren't
Gene Autry








Now I have a poem by my favorite Korean poet, Ku Sang, from his book Wastelands of Fire, published by Forest Books of London and Boston in 1990. The poems in the book were translated from Korean by Anthony Teague.

The poet was persecuted by both the North and South Korean governments during the course of his life, fleeing to the south before the Korean war, then being jailed in South Korea after the war for writing essays on the corruption of power.

Born in 1919, he died in Seoul in 2004.



Scenes of a summer's day

1. Morning

Mountains, villages and fields,
all decked with scales of green,
dazzle the eyes,

along the far-stretching cotton-white paths
men, bursting with well being
like those you see in the city
in advertisements for health products,
out at work since dawn
irrigating the rice-fields,
are returning homewards

2. Noontide

A jolly lass sets out, bearing the workers' lunch
in a basket on her head,
a hairy dog trotting behind her.

Refreshed by a scoopful of makkoli,
a bowl of rice,
a moment's snooze,
the men go back to the rice fields,
while a pair of white herons
fly across the sky
with a creaking sound.

3. Evening

Through the evening twilight,
driving a cow,
with a frame on their backs, they return.

The smoke from kitchen fires,
the brushwood gate, offer warm welcome.

As from time immemorial,
hills, villages, fields,
all are unchanging here,
and even in the land’s present chaos
this primordial scene is in itself enough
to restore serenity.








Next, I have a piece from San Antonio performance poet Rob Soto. Rob is a true heir of all those who over the years have told tales around campfires. Only recently, I am told, has he taken to putting down on paper those pieces he performs.

Here is one of those, taken from Atheist in a Foxhole a little pocket-sized book of his work put out by Le Artworks.



River City

Asphalt rivers carve deep skyscraper canyons into the heart of the city. Source and destination either unknown or forgotten to anyone you ask, but still, they find their way back home, back up stream, back out of mind. Traffic sails down navigable back streets, splashing head lights down tributary alleyways.

"All streams lead to I-35," scream the sidewalk prophets from the brick paved banks.

Cascading off-ramps of 281 feed the heart of the city. These rivers flow past churches, administrative buildings, mass transit facilities where the alienated find a place to rest.

We all ford these mighty rivers and risk being swept up in the current, which leads, oddly enough, to the Alamo. Or maybe you'll end up on the west side where the American dream is filtered out of the tap water. Or maybe you'll end up on the east side, where road signs still read no admittance.

You could end up at the delta of south Flores where the fertile silt of Theo and Malone has long since been washed away. If you fight the mighty
Broadway current you will find yourself at the head waters of disillusionment. They say their rivers are cleaner there, but that's because their trash gets swept down stream.








Coming up next, I have a poem by Ralph Angel from his book Neither World.

Angel was raised in Seattle, Washington where he attended inner-city public schools. He worked on freight trains for the Union Pacific Railroad as he earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Washington, then later received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Irvine.

He is Edith R. White Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Redlands, and a member of the MFA Program in Writing faculty at Vermont College.

This book, Neither World, published by Miami University Press in 1995, was the second collection of his poetry to be published. A third book has been published since.



Breaking and Entering

Many setups. At least as many falls.
Winter is paralyzing the country, but not here.
Here, the boys are impersonating songs of indigenous
wildlife. Mockingbird on the roof of the Gun Shop,
scrub jay behind the Clear Lake Saloon.
And when she darts into a drugstore for a
   chocolate-covered
almond bar, sparrow hawks get the picture
and drive off in her car.

Easy as 8th & Spring Street,
a five-course meal the size of a dime.
Easy as vistas admired only from great distance,
explain away the mystery
and another thatched village is cluster-bombed.
Everyone gets what he wants nowadays.
Anything you can think of is probably true.

And so, nothing. Heaven on earth. The ruse
of answers. A couple-three-times around the block
and ignorance is no longer a good excuse.
There were none. Only moods
arranged like magazines and bones, a Coke bottle
full of roses, the dark, rickety tables about the room.
And whatever happens, well, it's whatever it takes,
a personality that is not who you are
but a system of habitual reactions to another
light turning green, the free flow of
traffic at the center of the universe where shops
are always open and it's a complete
surprise each time you're told that minding
   your own business
has betrayed your best friend. But that's over,
that's history, the kind of story that tends to have an ending,
the code inside your haunted head.

Easy as guilt. As waking and sleeping, sitting down
to stand up, sitting down to go out walking,
closing our eyes to see in the nocturnal
light of day. "Treblinka
was a primitive but proficient
production line of death," says a former
   SS Untersharfuer
to the black sharecropper-grandchild of slavery
who may never get over
the banality of where we look.

Only two people
survived the Warsaw uprising, and one
whose eyes are paths inward, down into the soft grass,
into his skeleton,
who chain-smokes and drinks, is camera shy,
wears short-sleeved shirts, manages to mumble,
"If you could lick my heart, it would poison you."








Gratuitous sex and violence in movies never bothered me. A good chase or a good gunfight in an action movie is right down my line. But some of the new stuff, the "Saw" series comes to mind first, I don't even like to sit through the previews. I don't see how anyone can sit through a movie like that and not come out a lesser human being than they were when they went in.

But that'beside the point, since I believe that if people want to degrade their sensibilities it's up to them and none of my business. What I hate to see though are the parents who go into those movies taking their elementary-age kids in with them. It's form of child abuse as far as I'm concerned. The other thing that irritates me is that if it were naked people in the movie instead of chopped off human parts, the theaters would probably keep the kids out.



family time

full of turkey
and dressing
and all the rest,
napped
said hello
to everyone
and goodbye
to some

nothing
to do now,
everybody
else I knew
in this place
where I grew up
is either dead,
gone, or, in one
or two cases, in
jail - so I think
I'll just go to the
movies, there's
a good one
across the street
from the hotel,
people killing
people
and things
blowing up,
no sex though
or naked
people
so we can
take
the kids

it's
exactly
what this season
calls for -
good family-friendly
entertainment








The book is one long contemplation and deconstruction, almost frame by frame, of one scene in the movie Giant, and its effect on the life of the poet, a fourteen year old Hispanic boy at the time, seeing it for the first time from the back row at the Holiday theater in San Marcos, Texas. I never actually saw the movie myself, but it seems, from the text that the scene is the last in the movie.

The poet, Tino Villanueva was born in San Marcos in 1941, at a time when there was a real, if mostly invisible, social and cultural line between Hispanic and Anglo (anyone who wasn't Hispanic) communities, mostly not sanctioned by law, but still a social fact, a fact that was in the early stages of breaking down.

After completing his military service, Villanueva earned a degree in Spanish and English in 1969 at Texas State University (then Southwest Texas State University), then moved on to SUNY-Buffalo where he received an M.A. in 1971, then to Boston University where he completed his doctoral dissertation on contemporary Spanish poetry in 1981.

His book, Scene From the Movie Giant, was published by Curbstone Press in 1993. At that time he was Preceptor in Spanish at Boston University. He had published three earlier collections of his poetry prior to this one.



The Serving of Water

Tell the portly waitress to stay overtime and
she will do it. Dressed in white, she is a
Version of Sarge...Who follows orders well
...Who may have it in her mind she is "The

Sweetest little rosebud that Texas ever knew."
Her whole embodiment is whatever she is doing.

At a booth, here, on the warm sketchy plain
Of day, it is water she sets out for the
Benedicts: the measurement of water is a ritual
That isolates a face from the many colors of the

Day, and she does so with her eyes aimed at
Anyone she has given a harsh name to - like Juana,

And her child, half-Anglo, who in Juana's womb
Became all Mexican just the same. The waitress,
Entirely conscious of her act, whose eyes, quick,
Flee back to Sarge and now call out in silence,

Brings this moment to the edge of something tense
That spreads to everything. Her sudden look of

Outward regard - then Sarge, stirring dense cloud
Gathering (entering left), standing over everyone
In tallness almighty, Ice-cream is what Rock Hudson
Wishes for his grandson: "Ice-cream it shall be."
His words a revelation of delight: "Give the
Little fella some ice-cream"...Summer is one long

Afternoon when Sarge, moved by deep familiar
Wrath, talks down: "Ice-cream - thought that kid'd
Want a tamale," An angry mass of time travels
Back and forth the distance between Sarge and

Rock Hudson, as I sit, shy of speech, in a stammer
Of light, and breathe a breath not fully breathed....








Next, here's a poem by web-poet friend Dave Ruslander from is book Voices in My Head. You can read more about Dave and his book by clicking on his link on the right.



Rapacious

Funny how the black dog glows
carrying his quarry.
When the game turns,
he will nip at out heels
and we will be the hunted,

shooting blanks.
We ride the wings of Prozac
as high as they will take us
to bring down fowl.

Hunt to hunt, hit the mark.
The black dog flushes quail:
a kind word, a pat, a bone,
or freedom from foggy swamps.

Bullets of raindrops shoot hunter and prey.
Either way, the black dog
is satisfied.








Over the course of a number of weeks, I've used a number of journal-like poem from the book Homecoming Poems by Julia Alvarez, perhaps neglecting her other work.

So, here is another kind of poem from the same book.



What Could It Be

Around the kettle of chicken and rice,
the aunts were debating what flavor was missing.
Aunt Carmen guessed garlic.
Aunt Rosa, some coarsely ground pepper.
Aunt Fofi, so tidy she wore the apron,
shook her head, plain salt was what was needed.
Aunt Ana, afraid to be wrong, echoed salt.
Just a pinch, she apologized, and reaching for the shaker.
Aunt Gladys said parsley never hurt anything.
Aunt Victoria frowned and pronounced,
Tarragon. No one disagreed.

The tarragon dotted the rice in the cauldron.
And now, as if signaled, the spice jars popped open,
unladened their far eastern wonders:
cumin, turmeric, saffron, and endives.
The aunts each put in a shake of their favorites.
The steam unwrinkled the frowns from their faces.
They cackled like witches, sampled, and nodded.

Around the table the uncles were grunting,
wolfing their food down, gnawing their chicken bones.
and yet the grunts stopped in the middle of swallows,
heads cocked at each other as if they had heard
in some far off room their own baby crying.
It needed a pinch more of...saffron? Paprika?
What could it be they had missed putting in?
The uncles ate seconds and rose in a chorus
of chair scrapes and belches,
falling to slumber on living room couches,
empty plates glowed like the eyes of the spell bound.








After a spring and early summer of rain two or three times a week it seemed, the later part of summer and the fall were unusually dry. We finally got a little break last week with a few passing showers.

More rain came in with a cold front, but that another story.



time out

overhead,
a black cloud
pauses

a scattering of
drops
spot the red brick
patio
like pennies
thrown
from a parade

sun
and blue
sky are hidden

the cloud
passes

drops
dry and
this bright
november day
continues
without
interruption








HarperCollins just released a new collections of poems by Charles Bukowski. The Pleasures of the Damned includes Bukowski's early poems in 1951 to some of the very last of his poems written before his death in 1994.

I just bought the book this morning and haven't had time to read in any detail, but here's the poem excerpted in the Times' review on Sunday. It is one of the last of his poems, written when the closing of his time could no longer be denied.



sun coming down

no one is sorry I am leaving,
not even I;
but there should be a minstrel
or at least a glass of wine.

it bothers the young most, I think:
an unviolent slow death.
Still it makes any man dream;
you wish for an old sailing ship,
the white salt-crusted sail
and the sea shaking out hints of immortality.

sea in the nose
sea in the hair
sea in the marrow, in the eyes
and yes, there in the chest,
will we miss
the love of a woman or music or food
or the gambol of the great mad muscled
horse, kicking clods and destinies
high and away
in just one moment of the sun coming down?

but now it's my turn
and there's no majesty in it
because there was no majesty
before it
and each of us, like worms bitten
    out of apples
deserves no reprieve.

death enters my mouth
and snakes against my teeth
and I wonder if I am frightened of
this voiceless, unsorrowful dying that is
like the drying of a rose?








Next, we have a short poem by T Rasa, who describes himself as a 60ish semi-hermit who grew up in a mythical place called the Wild West, leaving home in the Sixties to see the world.

After forty years of seeing, he says he decided the "world" was pretty much the same everywhere and returned to the mythical place to read poetry and listen to blues and jazz (and Stevie Nicks) for the rest of his life.

He says he tries, occasionally, to write the kind of poetry he likes to read, but his main goal in life is still to brew the perfect cup of dark-roast coffee.



Gliders

Dwelling in the standing wave
between two pebbles
dropped to pond water,
we are gliders
of glass.








Here's a poem by Diane Glancy from her book Lone Dog's Winter Count, published by West End Press of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1991.

Glancy was born in 1941 in Kansas City, Missouri, of a Cherokee father and an English/German mother. She received a BA degree from the University of Missouri, an MA from Central State University in Oklahoma and an MFA from the University of Iowa. At the time this book, her third, was published, she taught literature and creative writing at Macalester College in Minnesota.



E Wa Coo Me's Conversion

She twirls & twirls
on the dance floor,
her skirt higher & higher
off the ground spinning round
& round first her knees show
then her thighs
soon the lace on her panties.
The skirt rises higher over her head.
It sucks her up into itself,
her shoulders waist hips knees
ankles her little red toes.
She dances inside her skirt.
The starch in her crinoline
twinkles like stars in the universe.
Ah! that's where she moves now,
the black space of herself where
all memories put on white faces,
ribbons hanging from the ears,
bright red spots on the cheeks.
They come alive & speak now,
their Bible open
the Saints pouring out
Paul Peter Mary Joseph Jesus








Next, our friend Alice Folkart reflects on a day in the life of many of us.



So What?

I've made it home, but
the things of this day
have been too close together,
too intermingled and tightly packed,
too loud, too soft, too bright, too muted,
too fast even to be heard.

I have traveled miles and miles
this day without running into anyone,
although I have used my horn more than usual.
And, I have learned that
meditation in a traffic jam is a nice idea,
but in the middle of an "Om" the cars all move,
the spell is broken, and so is my fender.

So many highways and bridges and
on ramps and off ramps and
numbered exits to places I've never been
and would be afraid to go,
but maybe they're okay.
I've skimmed across the face of several cities today
without smelling a single enchilada or
pot of stew, hot dog, or frying donut.
So, what's it all worth?








The next poem is by David Henderson and was taken from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.

The poem is about the end of Miguel Pinero a Puerto Rican poet, actor, playwright, addict, ex-con and friend and benefactor to many during his short lifetime. He died on 1988 in New York City from cirrhosis. His ashes were scattered across the Lower East Side of Manhattan, as he asked his 1985 "Lower East Side Poem."

Henderson, the poet, is author of several books and has published three volumes of poetry. He has written extensively on reggae and rap.



Poem - Miguel Pinero

there is a procession for departed poet-playwright-santo Miguel Pinero del lower east side

you were a fucking movie star! - Miky
"Short Eyes," "Fort Apache - The Bronx"
on television - "Miami Vice"
in one season they killed you twice

they scatter our ashes
all over the east side
like you say in your poem
and they even play a fucking videotape
of you reading the poem
as your ashes take to the breeze
and then they have a party, a feast for you
miguelito cumbia para bailar
and at this party
I saw a Latina play an African drum
along with the cumbia record
playing while everyone danced
and there were others playing
and others chanting in time
when the time came
drumming     changing     dancing
at the same time
and then at once everything in the room
became another avenue of time
Santo Latino rhythms
on the fringe of the fringe
bridges between worlds
between black and white - Mikey!
cambia para bailar








I wrote this next piece several years ago in a coffee shop in Dallas. I was up there with D who was on business travel. I went along for the ride.

I was trying something a little different with this piece, a different approach to a character sketch, trying to get inside the character by getting inside his fantasies and his fantasy vision of himself. This, I speculate, is what's inside the brain of the kind of dangerous man nobody ever sees until he starts shooting.

The poem was published in 2006 in Blaze/VOX.



Benny McGruder

Benny McGruder
     is not
          a Certified
          Public
          Accountant.

He does not have
     a wife named Phyllis
     two kids, a mortgage
          and a pet
          named Flea.

Benny McGruder
     is not
     five foot nine
          with bandy legs
          and a 40 inch waist.

He does not play golf
     on weekends
     with old high school friends
          named Tubs,
          Squeel and
          Bartholomew.

Benny McGruder
     does not take a bus
     every weekday
          to his office
          at Franklin and Bean.

He does not masturbate
     at night
     in the bathroom
          after Phyllis
          has gone to bed.

And he does not weep
     in the morning
     in the shower
     with his cheek pressed
     hard against
          the cold
          wet
          tile.

Benny McGruder
     is not
     what he seems.

     desired by women,
     admired by men,
     feared by those
     he might cross,
          Benny McGruder
is a powerful man,
a man of presence,
     a rough man,
     a tough man,
          a mean
          motherfucker
          man.

Someday you will know
     about Benny McGruder.

Benny McGruder
     is a man
who will matter.

Someday.








Charles Simic was born Duhan Simic in Belgrade in 1938. and was the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States. He is co-Poetry Editor of the Paris Review and the 2007 recipient of the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.

I've taken these poems from The Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry.



Classic Ballroom Dances

Grandmothers who wring the necks
Of chickens; old nuns
With names like Theresa, Marianne,
Who pull schoolboys by the ear;

The intricate steps of pickpockets
Working the crowd of the curious
At the scene of an accident; the slow shuffle
Of the evangelist with a sandwich-board;

The hesitation of the early morning customer
Peeking through the window-grille
Of a pawnshop; the weave of a little kid
Who is walking to school with eyes closed;

And the ancient lovers, cheek to cheek,
On the dance floor of the Union Hall,
Where they also hold charity raffles
On rainy Monday nights of an eternal November


Harsh Climate

The brain itself in its skull
Is very cold,
According to
Albertus Magnus.

Something like a stretch of tundra
On the scale of the universe.
Galactic wind.
Lofty icebergs in the distance.

Polar night.
A large ocean liner caught in the ice.
A few lights still burning on the deck.
Silence and fierce cold.








Next, I have a piece by fellow web-poet Cliff Keller. Cliff has been with us several times and I'm glad to have him back.



Write

I write to you
no, more aptly, at you.
I imagine
your heart racing at the mailbox
when there
between last month's water and Land's End
you find a framed view
into another's soul.

My envelope's torn open on the threshold
creases kneaded out on the way inside
your lips sift to the meter
as you read me.

But, in truth

my entreaties fall flat
I'm just dusting for prints on this page
looking for a testimonial to support
my plea bargain.








My next poem is by Mahmud Darwish. Born in Palestine in 1944, he has lived many years since in exile in Cairo and Paris.

He wrote his first poem when he was eight years old. It was about his village being lost to occupation.

This poem was translated by Ben Bennani.



The Prison Cell

It is possible...
It is possible at least sometimes...
It is possible especially now
To ride a horse
Inside a prison cell
And run away...

It is possible for prison walls
To disappear,
For the cell to become a distant land
Without frontiers.

- What did you do with the walls?
- I gave them back to the rocks
- And what did you do with the ceiling?
- I turned it into a saddle.
- And your chain?
- I turned it into a pencil.

The prison guard got angry.
He put and end to the dialogue.
He said he didn't care for poetry.
And bolted the door of my cell.

He came back to see me
In the morning;
He shouted at me:

- Where did all this water come from?
- I brought it from the Nile.
- And the trees?
- From the orchards of Damascus.
- And the music?
- From my heartbeat.

The prison guard got mad,
He put an end to my dialogue.
He said he didn't like my poetry,
And bolted the door of my cell.

But he returned the next evening.

- Where did the moon come from?
- From the nights of Baghdad.
- And the wine?
- From the vineyards of Algiers.
- And this freedom?
- From the chain you tied me with last night.

The prison guard grew so sad...
He begged me to give him back
His freedom.








It's that time of the year - the best time of the year for me.



first fire

I've been sawing
wood into foot-long logs
since last spring's trimming,
preparing for today,
that first day of winter
when frigid wind and rain
blows in from the north
setting aside for certain
the hot and sweaty days of
summer, making it time now
for the first fire of the season

so I go to the woodpile
and pick out a careful selection
dried firewood and load up
the chiminea, little pieces
on the bottom,
big ones on top,
sprinkle it with charcoal
lighter fluid
and set it to going,
big flames whooshing up
at first, then dying down
to a polite little fire
that the dogs
and I can sit around,
me with hot chocolate,
the dogs huddling
at my knee
for an ear scratch,
as together
we welcome winter

I don't know why
this is important to me,
but there's something
about freezing my ass off
around an outside fire
in the first cold of winter
that validates me
and the ruses and routines
I go through to make it
from year to year, season
to season, something bigger
to it, the closest I'll ever get
to a primal night's dancing
around a tribal fire, dancing
to the gods of survival,
appealing
for one more year of life
under fortunate stars








So there's a prettty picture to close the day. I'll be back next week. Hope you are, too.

In the meantime, remember, all of the work shown on this blog is the property of its creators. The blog itself is produced by and the property of me...allen itz.
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