Here and Now: May 2008

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Don't Fence Me In Saturday, May 24, 2008

The picture above was taken from the side of a the little highway that runs goes Presidio to Lajitas on the Texas border with Mexico. The Rio Grande River runs right alongside the road for most of the way. In fact, the river is below the bluff I'm taking the picture from.

I grew up on the border and have the same view of the silly, racist fence Homeland Security wants to build as just about all the people I know from that part of the state.

Homeland Security has taken the legal position that no existing state or federal law can divert them from doing what they want to do, that they are in fact, exempt from all law other than their own.

The fence, if built in this area, would likely make it impossible to get to this road, much less drive along it, just as in extreme South Texas the fence as proposed cuts through people's yards, ranches and farms, through lands long set aside for protection of endangered flora and fauna, and, actually, cutting across the campus of Texas A&M University, Brownsville. The fence would make every thing south of it difficult to get too, in not completely inaccessible, becoming in effect the new national border, de facto ceding everything south of the fence to Mexico.

In Texas, there is a growing coalition of mayors, county judges, state legislators, business interests and environmental interest fighting the fence. I'm with them. I don't think we ought to allow racist or any other kinds of hysterics in Arizona, Iowa and Washington build a Berlin Wall around our country.

That said, on with the show.

I start this week with a poem by Paula Gunn Allen, from Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, published by Harper Collins in 1988.

Allen was born in 1939 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She grew up in Cubero, New Mexico, a Spanish-Mexican land grant village bordering the Laguna Pueblo reservation. Of mixed Laguna, Sioux, Scottish, and Lebanese-American descent, she has always most closely identified with the people among whom she spent her childhood and upbringing.

Allen obtained a BA and MFA from the University of Oregon and her PhD at the University of New Mexico, where she taught and where she began her research into various tribal religions.

Kopis'taya, A Gathering of Spirits

Because we live in the browning season
the heavy air blocking our breath,
and in this time when living
is only survival, we doubt the voices
that come shadowed on the air,
that weave within our brains
certain thoughts, a motion that is soft,
imperceptible, a twilight rain,
soft feather's fall, a small body dropping
into its next, rustling, murmuring, settling
in for the night.

Because we live in the hardedged season,
where plastic brittle and gleaming shine,
and in this space that is cornered and angled,
we do not notice wet, moist, the significant
drops falling in perfect spheres
that are the certain measures of our minds;
almost invisible, those tears,
soft as dew, fragile, that cling to leaves,
petals, roots, gentle and sure,
every morning.

We are the women of the daylight, of clocks
and steel foundries, of drugstores
and streetlights, of superhighways
that slice our days in two. Wrapped around
in plastic and steel we ride our lives;
behind dark glasses we hide our eyes;
our thoughts, shaded, seem obscure.
Smoke fills our minds, whisky husks our songs,
polyester cuts our bodies from our breath,
our feet from the welcoming stones of earth.
Our dreams are pale memories of themselves
ad nagging doubt is the false measure
of our days.

Even so, the spirit voices are singing,
their thoughts are dancing in the dirty air.
Their feet touch the cement, the asphalt
delighting, still they weave dreams upon our
shadowed skulls, if we could listen.
If we could hear.

Let's go then. Let's find them.
Let's listen for the water, the careful
gleaming drops that glisten on the leaves,
the flowers. Let's ride
the midnight, the early dawn.
Feel the wind striding through our hair.
Let's dance the dance of feathers,
the dance of birds.

For many years I was one of the suits, responsible for the work of hundreds of employees and systems spending hundreds of millions of dollars. I was a media personality, seen and quoted often in newspaper, radio and tv. I advised business men and politicians on matters of significance. I projected an image of competence, maturity, reliability, and expertise in matters large and small.

A medium-sized frog in a medium-sized pond ... and a fake.

There are a lot of us among the suits, I think.

at the grown-up's table

i often forget
i'm a grown-up,
when dealing
with peers
of my own age
or younger,
feeling
like a child
seated
by some accident
at the grown-up's table,
exchanging banalities,
wishing
I could go outside
and play

David Budbill was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1940 to a streetcar driver and a minister's daughter. He is the author of six books of poems, eight plays, a novel, a collection of short stories, a picture book for children, dozens of essays, introductions, speeches and book reviews, and the libretto for an opera. He is also a performance poet on two CDs. He was, for a time, a commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."

This poem is from the anthology I've used for the past two weeks, The Rag And Bond Shop Of The Heart.

This poem, with its everyday brutality, turns my stomach.

What I Heard At The Discount Department Store

Don't touch that. and stop your whining too.
Stop it. I mean it. You know I do.
If you don't stop, I'll give you fucking something
to cry about right here
and don't you think I won't either.

So she did. She slapped him across the face.
And you could hear the snap of flesh against the flesh
halfway across the store. Then he wasn't whining anymore.
Instead, he wept. His little body heaved and shivered and
wept.
He was seven or eight. She was maybe thirty.
Above her left breast, the pin said: Nurse's Aide.

Now they walk hand in hand down the aisle
between the tables piled with tennis shoes
and underpants and plastic bag of socks.

I told you I would. You knew I would.
You can't get away with shit like that with me,
you know you can't.
You're not in school anymore.
You're with your mother now.
You can get away with fucking murder there,
but you can't get away with shit like that with me.

Stop that crying now I say
or I'll give you another little something
like I did before.
Stop that now. You'd better stop.

That's better. That's a whole lot better.
You know you can't do that with me.
You're with your mother now.

My next poem is by Michael Sottak.

I don't know what to say about Michael except that it seems he's been around. I ask him for a short bit of bio information and he sent the following, which, I guess, explains it better than anything I could conjure up.

We'd been to Iraq, Kuwait .... my brother shows up on my sister's doorstep after hurricane Ivan destroyed Pensacola .... we are both broke from fixing up the homes of people we loved and he says "Dude, I'm fucken broke, let's go jump a ship in the Gulf of Mexico"...

"Alright, let me pack my bag." We were in Aransas, Texas by three a.m. the next morning, swatting misquitos and drinking beer. He points down the dock, gravel and mud puddles .... "This is the Oil Fields."

I start laughing, because all I can see is a fat engineer and a broken down pick up truck.

"Alright asshole! Did I ever tell you that I never loved you?"

Here's Michael's poem. Later on in this issue we'll have some of his photos from his "oil patch."

gulf of mexicali blues

Sea Fogg is pacing the points
of the compass around the bridge wing,
steps back into the wheelhouse staring
at the reception bars on his cell phone.
the gravity of frustration pulling his eyes
and cheeks toward his jaw.

i'm reclined in his captain's chair sipping
coffee. he knows i've been watching him
and senses i can't digest my grin:
"Fuck you, muthafucka! Three weeks out here now!
I need to talk to my woman!"

The bow tugs at the mooring line, Elsa Leigh rolls gently to starboard, water wringing from her three hundred foot leash, continues her lazy figure-of-eight waltz south by west.

"Don't worry, Man. I'm sure someone's taking good care of her!"

"Why don't you get your ass out on deck and paint something ... better yet, break something that will send us to the yards!"

i start whistling "hi ho" down the ladder and catch his haki-sak ball on the back of my head.

Phil is a new hire, just flown down from Alaska last night. We talk about king crab fishing in the Bering. Know some of same skalliwags and start laughing. He leans forward, confidentially:
"Are all these guys crazy?"

"Whadda you mean, Phil?"

"I asked that guy Weazel what i should be doing.

He said,"Climb the mast, cinch your balls in a noose, hang upside-down singing 'Camptown Racetrack'".

"oh ... you caught him in a good mood."

"really man, i don't know where i'm supposed to be working."

"you're with me. did you smuggle any beer past the helo-port?"

"No! Are you fucking kidding me? They have all these signs up forbidding alcohol."

"Well, Amigo, a sign is just a sign isn't it?"

It's time to get a little wild with this piece by Richard Brautigan from the anthology The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.

Brautigan was an writer, best known for the novel Trout Fishing in America. He wrote ten novels and over 500 poems. Most of his novels dealt with satire, black comedy, and Zen Buddhism. Born in 1935, he ended his own life by gunshot to his head in 1984. His suicide followed years of depression and heavy alcoholism.

This longish poem seem pretty representative of his work.

The Galilee Hitch-Hiker

The Galilee Hitch-Hiker
Part 1

Baudelaire was
driving a Model A
across Galilee.
He picked up a
hitch-hiker named
Jesus who had
been standing among
a school of fish,
feeding them
pieces of bread.
"Where are you
going?" asked
Jesus, getting
into the front
seat.
"Anywhere, anywhere
out of this world!"
shouted
Baudelaire.
"I'll go with you
as far as
golgotha,"
said Jesus.
"I have a
concession
at the carnival
there, and I
must not be
late."

The American Hotel
Part 2

Baudelaire was sitting
in a doorway with a wino
on San Francisco's skid row.
The wino was a million
years old and could remember
   dinosaurs.
Baudelaire and the wino
were drinking Petri Muscatel.
"One must always be drunk,"
   said Baudelaire.
"I live in the American Hotel,"
said the wino. "And I can
   remember dinosaurs."
"Be you drunken ceaselessly,"
   said Baudelaire.

1939
Part 3

Baudelaire used to come
to our house ad watch
me grind coffee.
That was in 1939
and we lived in the slums
of Tacoma.
My mother would put
the coffee beans in the grinder.
I was a child
and would turn the handle,
pretending that it was
   a hurdy-gurdy,
and Baudelaire would pretend
that he was a monkey,
hopping up and down
and holding out
a tin cup.

The Flowerburgers
Part 4

Baudelaire opened
up a hamburger stand
in San Francisco,
but he put flowers
between the buns.
People would come in
and say, "Give me a
hamburger with plenty
of onions on it."
Baudelaire would give
them a flowerburger
instead and the people
would say, "What kind
of a hamburger stand
is this?"

The Hour of Eternity
Part 5

"The Chinese
read the time
in the eyes
of cats,"
said Baudelaire
and went into
a jewelry store
on Market Street.
He came out
a few moments
later carrying
a twenty-one
jewel Siamese
cat that he
wore on the
end of a
golden chain.

Salvador Dali
Part 6

"Are you
or aren't you
going to eat
your soup,
you bloody old
cloud merchant?"
Jeanne Dual
shouted,
hitting Baudelaire
on the back
as he sat
daydreaming
out the window.
Baudelaire was
startled.
Then he laughed
like hell,
waving his spoon
in the air
like a wand
changing the room
into a painting
by Salvador
Dali, changing
the room
into a painting
by Van Gogh.

A Baseball Game
Part 7

Baudelaire went
to a baseball game
and bought a hot dog
and lit up a pipe
of opium.
The New York Yankees
were playing
the Detroit Tigers.
In the fourth inning
an angel committed
suicide by jumping
off a low cloud.
The angel landed
on second base,
causing the whole infield
to crack like
a huge mirror.
The game was
called on
account of
fear.

Insane Asylum
Part 8

Baudelaire went
to the insane asylum
disguised as a
psychiatrist.
He stayed there
for two months
and when he left,
the insane asylum
loved him so much
that it followed
him all over California,
and Baudelaire
laughed when the
insane asylum
rubbed itself
up against his
leg like a
strange cat

My Insect Funeral
Part 9

When I was a child
I had a graveyard
where I buried insects
and dead birds under
a rose tree.
I would bury the insects
in tin foil and watch boxes.
I would bury the birds
in pieces of red cloth.
It was all very sad
and I would cry
as I scooped the dirt
into the small graves
with a spoon.
Baudelaire would come
and join in
my insect funerals,
saying little prayers
the size of
dead birds.

San Francisco
February 1958

Michael Sottak's mention above of swatting mosquitos in Aransas, Texas reminded me of this poem I wrote several years ago. (The picture above is of sunrise from the Bayfront, downtown Corpus Christi. The tiny lights you can barely see are in the area of Aransas Pass/Port Aransas as mentioned in Michael's introduction of himself.)

I was on North Beach in Corpus Christi, checking out an apartment. We lived in Corpus Christi for 15 years before moving to San Antonio. I retired five years after that move and after about 4 years of not doing much decided to go back to work, which I did, for the local United Way organization.

It was my intention to find a cheap apartment in Corpus Christi where I could live during the week, then commute back and forth San Antonio on weekends to be with family.

I did find a nice efficiency on the bay, but not on this particular morning. I did get a poem out of it though. The poem was eventually published in The Horsethief's Journal, a poetry venue I miss greatly, in 2003.

And that's more introduction than I intended for this little piece of occasional humor.

(I guess I should add, just to finish the story, that, although Corpus Christi is a great little city and my earlier years there were some of the best of my life, the weekly commute on this second go-round got to me after a year and a half and I retired for a second time.)

Welcome Home

it's early morning and i'm looking for this
apartment that was listed in the classifieds

(on the beach, the ad said,
half a block from the Sea Shell Motel,
lovely view of the bay at sunrise)

through fog so thick I could run over
a dozen geezers reading their free
USA Today in the lobby of the Sea Shell
Motel and not know it until my insurance
premiums went up in the next quarter

but with the humidity so high
all my car windows are so smeared
with condensation inside and out
that i can't see the fog and i figure
what the hell and don't worry about it

i'm looking for Bushnick Street
and all the street signs are lost somewhere
in that thick fog that i can't see anyway
because of the goddamn humidity

until i finally give up and
turn off my air conditioner
and open all the car windows
thinking that if i get the smeared
windows out of the way maybe
i can see through the fog enough
to at least figure out where i am

but that doesn't work either
and all i do is let in a black
cloud of starving mosquitos
that settle on my face and arms
like a cactus blanket, greedy little
vampire bugs nipping a hundred
little nips, sucking my blood, leaving
wet red splotches as i flail my hands
around, slapping myself silly at seven
o'clock in the gulf coast morning
and i'm reminded of all the things
about this place i haven't missed

After all the modern stuff so far, how about a little bit of he ultra-conventional - from the anthology 101 Famous Poems, this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with probably the best known first line in American poetry.

(Speaking of that, who else remembers this from when you were 10 or 12 years old.

"You're a poet,
but don't know it,
but your feet show it
'cause they're Longfellow's."

What do kids say now instead of that, I wonder.)

Hiawatha's Childhood

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the fir with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.
   There the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with raindeer sinews;
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
"Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!"
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
"Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!"
   Many things Nokomis taught him
Of the stars that shine in heaven;
Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,
Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,
Flaring far away to northward
In the frosty nights of winter;
Showed the broad white road in heaven,
Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
Running straight across the heavens,
Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.
   At the door on summer evenings,
Sat the little Hiawatha;
Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
Heard the lapping of the waters,
Sounds of music, words of wonder;
"Minne-wawa!" said the pine-trees,
"Mudway-ashka!" said the water.
   Saw the fire-fly Wah-wah-taysee,
Flitting through the dusk of evening,
With the twinkle of its candle
Lighting up the breaks and bushes,
And he sang the song of children,
Sang the song Nokomis taught him:
"Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
Little flitting, white-fire insect,
Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
Light me with your little candle,
Ere upon my bed I lay me,
Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!"
   Saw the moon rise from the water,
Rippling, rounding from the water,
Saw the flecks and shadows on it,
Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?"
And the good Nokomis answered:
"Once a warrior, very angry,
Seized his grandmother, and threw her
Up into the sky at midnight;
Right against the moon he threw her;
Tis her body that you see there."
   Saw the rainbow in the heaven,
In the eastern sky the rainbow,
And the good Nokomis answered;
"Tis the heaven of flowers you see there;
All the wild-flowers of the forest,
All the lilies of the prairie,
When on earth they fade and perish,
Blossom in that heaven above us.”
   When he heard the owls at midnight,
Hooting, laughing in the forest,
"What is that?" he cried in terror;
"What is that," he said, "Nokomis?"
And the good Nokomis answered;
"That is but the owl and owlet,
Talking in their native language,
Talking, scolding at each other."
   Then the little Hiawatha
Learned of every bird its language,
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How they built their nests in summer,
Where they hid themselves in winter,
Called them "Hiawatha's Chickens."
   Of all the beasts he learned the language,
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How the beavers built their lodges,
Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
How the raindeer ran so swiftly,
Why the rabbit was so timid,
Talked with them whene'er he met them,
Called them "Hiawatha's Brothers."

Longfellow's poem reminded me of San Antonio poet Margaret Mayberry who writes in the difficult, for me, impossible, style of rhyme and form.

Born in London in 1932, Margaret, as the wife of a British doctor, lived in many countries around the world before coming to San Antonio 35 years ago and staying. She has an MA in Clinical Psychology from St. Mary's University as well as an MA in Environmental Management (Urban Studies) from the University of Texas at San Antonio. in addition to a full slate of volunteer and charitable work, for twenty years, she's been on the City Council of Hill Country Village a small incorporated city within the general geographic limits of San Antonio, 20 years. For those same years she's served on the Board of directors of the local Animal Defense League organization. A widow, Margaret says she always wanted to write poetry, but never got around to it until recently.

I've had this poem from her for several months, intending to save it for the issue that included Mothers' Day, but in the rush of not enough time, forgot about it.

Margaret has a lovely accent and listening to her read her poems is a great treat.

The Nature of Mothers

Temperature flaring, no hope of sleeping,
In the shadowy night, a figure creeping,
With pills and syrup, thirst quenching drinks too,
The ministering angel looks after you.

The little child falls, it's only a scrape,
She'll murmur soft words, in her arms will take,
Like mothers the world over that is her role,
It's the nature of mothers from north to south pole.

When false promises tarnish love's first glow,
There's understanding, not "I told you so."
When the pain's so bad that you want to die,
She's ready and waiting, your tears to dry.

And when you call on God in anguished prayer,
She's still there with you and your grief will share,
All her life's been spent in loving and giving,
It's for you not herself that she's been living.

And when things go wrong, wherever you are,
You look to your mother, that shining star
Who loves you, comforts and eases your strife,
Who's been there herself, knows the sorrows of life.

Then one day she's gone, life has just slipped by,
Perhaps not even a chance to say goodbye,
A life serving others, showing they care,
That's the nature of mothers, everywhere.

My next poem is by David Lehman from Poet's Choice, Poems for Everyday Life, an anthology of poems selected and introduced by poet Robert Hass.

Lehman, born in New York City in 1948 is a poet and the series editor for The Best American Poetry series, as well as editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry.

He has written six collections of poems and collaborated with James Cummins to produce a book of sestinas entitled Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man. His books of criticism include The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets, which was named a "Book to Remember 1999" by the New York Public Library and several others. His study of detective novels, The Perfect Murder, was nominated for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Lehman is on the permanent faculty of The New School and teaches a freshman honors class at New York University and divides his time between Ithaca, and New York City.

Toward a Definition of Love

1.

Another time they were making love. "It's even better
When you help," she said. That was the second thing
He liked about her: she had memorized hours
Of movie dialogue, as if their life together
In the close apartment, with the street noise,
The crank calls, and the sinister next-door neighbor,
Consisted of roles to be played with panache,
If possible, and with a song in her heart. Was she lying
When she told him she loved him? Or was she
The nude in his bed with her back to him
As if he were a painter in Paris in 1870
And she were a model in Brooklyn in 1992,
and what separated them was a painted ocean
Representing the unbridgeable distance between them,
As between age and youth, Europe and America?
A condition of their romance was impossibility -
She would have panicked if he had proposed,
Because love was passion consuming itself
Like a flickering cigarette, an ember in an ashtray.

2.

When she went back to sleep, he thought about her
Some more, and what they had done the night before:
Something holy, but with awful consequences,
Like a revolution about to enter its reign of terror.
In the movie, he was the jilted soldier ("don't you still
Love me?") or the Scandinavian philosopher ("he wondered
Why he had to give her up"). But their lines so truly parallel
Through infinite could never meet, and there was no use
Arguing against the despair that had wakened his longing
For her, now that she was gone. There was no way
To make it last, to prolong a moment of such pleasure,
Sweet and intense, that Faust would have bargained away
His soul for it. In public they acted married. One day
She left. She phoned from the road. A morning of tears
In honor of the first morning he had woken up beside her
With the shades rattling in the window, and the rays
Of light seeping weakly into the room, and the noise
Of the kids playing with a ball in the gutter.

I've been really fatigued lately, working for the "man" during the week and working on the San Marcos money pit on the weekend while trying to keep up with my writing - going to bed too late and getting up too early. I wrote this last week, mainly to express my deep feelings of self pity.

Of course, the poem didn't work out that way. But then my poems seldom work out the way I planned when I started them. Seems I'm always getting sidetracked.

wisdom, alas, overpowered by sex again

yesterday,
all day,
hard work
in the heat and sun
took me close to my limit;
i just can't handle it
like I used to,
went to bed at 8 last night
up at 8 this morning
still tired -

time was
i could do that all day
day after day
and stay out all night
on weekends
with my girlfriend,
who, tall and lean,
looked just like
Paula Prentiss,
my long time
late night fantasy friend ,
who often played
best friend in stuff
like the beach blanket
movies, moved on to
stripper
in "What's New Pussycat"
and after that got naked
and decapitated
by an propeller
on a crashing bomber
in "Catch 22" then married
whatshisname and went legit)

but that was fifty years ago
so i expect some loss
in physical capacity
could be assumed,
but i expected
there would be
some compensation
for that in the form of
wisdom
farsightedness
vision
and i got none of that,
no flashes of deep though,
no insight into a new moral code
that might bring peace
and understanding
to this troubled world,
here i am
writing a poem
that could use some of that
some of that wisdom
some of that insight
some good old deep think
and all i get is the hots for
Paula Prentiss all over again

The Defiant Muse is a bilingual anthology of "Hebrew Feminist Poems From Antiquity to the Present." Lea Goldberg is one of those poets.

Born in 1911, Goldberg was the first woman poet to be admitted into the canon of modern Hebrew poetry and is still one of the most widely read and admired Israeli poets.

She grew up in Kovno, Lithuania and won a scholarship to study in Germany in 1930. She completed her doctoral dissertation on the Samarian translation of their Bible at the University of Bonn. In 1935, when the British were preventing Jewish immigration to Palestine, she received, with the help of poet Avraham Sholonsky, a certificate allowing her to enter Mandatory Palestine. Her mother soon managed to join her and they lived together until Goldberg's death in 1970.

During the course of her life, she formed a modernist poets' group, worked for socialist daily newspapers as a drama and literature critic, taught in the department of comparative literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and wrote and published continuously, beginning with her first published in 1928. By the time of her death, she had published nine volumes of poetry in all, three works of prose, three plays and a number of translations. Among her best known translations into Hebrew include War and Peace, Petrarch's sonnets, Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Shakespeare's As You Like It. She was also a recognized artist and her drawings often illustrated her books.

This is one of several of her poems included in the anthology. It is translated from Hebrew by Robert Friend.

A Look At A Bee

1
On a lit-up window square,
on the pane, outside
the silhouette of a bee -
you can hardly see her wings.

Upside-down.
Narrow body.
Six thin legs.
Her nakedness exposed,
her ugliness menacing,
she crawls.

How can we crown her
with the words of a poem?
What can we sing?
A small child will come and say:
The Queen is naked.

2
In sunlight she was a falling leaf of gold,
a drop of dark honey in a flower;
she was a dew drop in a swarm of stars,
but only a shadow here.

A word of a poem in a humming swarm,
in a scorching wind a message of keen will,
a flash of light in the ashes of dusk,
but only a shadow here.

3
Your honey? Who remembers your honey?
It's there, not here, there in the hive.
Here, on the lit-up window pane, your head, your body,
all of you sting and hatred -
miserable, blind, helpless hatred.
Fear kills.
Watch out.

Photo by Michael Sottak

Earlier in this issue I presented a poem by Michael Sottak and promised his photos would be presented also. Well, here they are, the one above and the five that follow.

Photo by Michael Sottak

My next poem is from The Longman Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, a college textbook. The poet is Shirley Kaufman.

Kaufman, the daughter of Eastern European immigrants, grew up in Seattle and lived in San Francisco for many years before settling in Israel in 1973. She is winner of two NEA fellowships and many other awards. She has produced eight books of poetry and several books of translations from Hebrew.

The Dream of Completion

When asked for a sample of his work
Giotto took a red pencil,
drew a perfect circle
free hand
and sent it to the Pope.

What does it mean
to be that sure of anything?
The dream of completion.
We cross the field
with the small stones biting our sandals,
picking up shards.

Sometimes you finish
what I think I've said.

We take the clay fragments,
skin-colored, bits of them worn
or crumbling between our fingers,
and piece them together.
Something is always missing.

I continue to try to keep up with the poem a day routine. Sometimes, the best I can do is make my excuses, like this.

dry well

tired

no inspiration
here
too
day

pro
ba
bly
wouldn't
seeit
if I
sawit

tired

And sometimes my excuses are even good ones.

attention must be paid

game seven
in the
voodoo dome

the passing
fancies
of everyday life
must be put
aside -

war and peace
politics
religious discussions
of the greatest
magnitude
leaving a million souls
in limbo
domestic disturbance
sex
even poetry -

tonight
is basketball night

game seven,
spurs vs hornets

i'm sorry
to leave you

but ...

attention must be paid

One more look, above, from the same area as the first picture of this issue, ripe for Homeland Security fencing. The little brown strip through the patch of green in the middle of the picture is the Rio Grande.

Enough of that, late with issue already.

So, as I rush off, remember, all work featured 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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Leaving Bush Country Friday, May 16, 2008

III.5.3.

Here we are again.

Counting the weeks now until the right side of history is ours again.

Might as well read some poetry while we're waiting

My first poem this week is from Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides, a collection of poems by Stephen Dobyns.

Dobyns born on February 19, 1941 in Orange, New Jersey. He was raised in New Jersey, as well as in Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania and graduated from Wayne State University. He also received an MFA from the University of Iowa in 1967. He worked as a reporter for the Detroit News.

Dobyns taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University.

His many books include collections of his poetry, novels and a book of essays on writing poetry.

In this book, Dobyns looks at the world through the eyes of Heart, a blood-pumping organ, lover, poet and skeptical philosopher of the everyday life.

It is from this poem that the book gets its name.

Thus He Endured

Heart's friend Greasy gets nixed by a stroke.
His pals give him a wake; they drink all night.
The next day they cart the coffin to the church.
In life, Greasy waxed cars; now he's defunct.
The priest says how Greasy's in a better place.
Heart takes exception. What could beat this?
Some mourners weep; others scratch their butts.
In life, Greasy was a practical joker. Even salt
in the sugar bowl wasn't too childish for him.
When the service is over, Heart and five friends
have the coffin on top of their shoulders.
Outside it's raining. They wait for the hearse.
Maybe it's late, maybe it showed up and left.
The priest locks the church. The last cars depart.
Let's carry the coffin, it's just a few blocks.
As they set off, Heart hears a whistle. Show some
respect, he complains to a buddy in back.
In life, Greasy often asked, What's the point
and What comes next? Heart thought his jokes
helped keep the dark at arm's length. Rain drips
down the pallbearers' necks. Because of the fog
they can't see beyond their noses. Right or left?
If their hands weren't full, they would flip a coin.
Someone plays the harmonica, then starts to sing.
The pallbearers look at each other, it's none of them.
In life, Greasy reached reached three score and ten.
He had a wife, four sons, and five Great Danes,
but not all at once. He always drove a Chevrolet.
Did we take a wrong turn? asks Heart. The rain
turns to sleet; it's getting dark. Someone starts
playing the trombone. A tune both melancholy
and upbeat. Where could this be coming from?
In life, Greasy felt a lack. He worked to hard,
the holidays were short. His wife kept asking
why didn't he do better? Then his sons left home.
Greasy suck rubber dog messes on the hoods
of his friends' cars. This is what life's all about,
he'd think. Thus he endured. It begins to snow.
Heart shoulders his load. The sun goes down.
Will Greasy get planted today? It looks unlikely.
Heart watches the road. He can't see that the coffin lid
is tilted up and Greasy perches on top, just a shadow
of his former self. With both hands he flings wads
of confetti. He's a skeleton already. Heart would
scratch his head but he'd hate to let his corner drop,
his pals ditto: pall bearers envying the one who rides.

I played the tuba in my high school band. While, as a tuba player, I was never better than just barely adequate, the band was very good. The best thing about being a tuba player in that situation was, first, I never had much to do in any performance and, second, where tuba players sit way back in the back of the band is a great place to hear the music. So, while never contributing much to it, I heard a lot of very good music.

That was all running through my mind last week when it occurred to me that I hardly ever have time to sit down and really enjoy the good music that's all around us. From there to this poem was just a minor jump.

i wish i had more time for music

i wish
i had more time
for music -

time
to dress up
for the Symphony;
time
for an evening out
in a little jazz club
where people sit in close
and listen;
time to find the dark bars
where the new music
is being made;
time to sit in an easy chair
for an afternoon
and listen to favorites,
Cash, Haggard, the lovely,
lost Susannah McCorkle,
the wit of John Prine,
all the old '50s rockers,
the doowoppers, the soulmen,
all those,
to just sit and listen to them,
to hear them,
not as some soon-forgotten
accompaniment
to whatever it is that occupies
me at the time,
not as sound-haze,
but as the purpose,
the sole purpose of the sitting...

i wish i had more time
for music...

i wish i had more
time

The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart is a poetry anthology edited by poets Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Meade. It's another of the books I picked up last week.

David Ignatow is one of the poets in the book. He was born in Brooklyn in 1914 and spent most of his life in the New York City area. He died in 1997 at his home in East Hampton, New York.

Ignatow began his professional career as a businessman. After committing wholly to poetry, he worked as an editor of American Poetry Review, Analytic, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Chelsea Magazine, and as poetry editor of The Nation.

Winner of many poetry prizes, he also taught at the New School for Social Research, the University of Kentucky, the University of Kansas, Vassar College, York College of the City University of New York, New York University, and Columbia University.

Here are two of his hyper-realistic poems.

Sunday at the State Hospital

I am sitting across the table
eating my visit sandwich.
The one I brought him stays suspended
near his mouth; his eyes focus
on the table and seem to think,
his shoulders hunched forward.
I chew methodically,
pretending to take him
as a matter of course.
The sandwich tastes mad
and I keep chewing.
My past is sitting in front of me
filled with itself
nd trying with almost no success
to bring the present to its mouth.

No Theory

No theory will stand up to a chicken's guts
being cleaned out, a hand rammed up
to pull out the wiggling entrails,
the green bile and the bloody liver;
no theory that does not grow sick
at the odor escaping.

Robert McManes is back with us this week with a new poem.

Mac is one of the many fine poets I share poems with on the web. He's been with us several times and I'm glad to have him back again.

a block with shaved corners

i drank shots with a priest
discussed politics with a senator
counted stars with an astronomer
sang karaoke with the eagles
wore bell-bottom blue jeans
and later a three piece suit

i sipped tea in england
sniffed brandy in france
smelled the tulips in holland
danced in a german disco
tasted the air in the swiss alps
felt the ground tremor in croatia
and touched holy water in macedonia

every block has a corner
and lord, I've rounded a few
even looked cancer in the eye
and have since survived
but how I ended up in rural Kansas
is still a mystery to me

My next poet is David Rivard with a poem from his book Wise Poison, winner of the 1996 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.

Rivard was born in Massachusetts, in 1953. His other books include Bewitched Playground and Torque, which won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and was published by the Pitt Poetry Series. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines.

He has received many literary awards and is now Poetry Editor at the Harvard Review. He teaches at Tufts University and the Vermont College M.F.A. in Writing Program.

Change My Evil Ways

Some days it is my one wish to live
alone, nameless, unfathomable,
a drifter or unemployed alien.
But that day the movie was over.
I found myself walking
in Cambridge, & on the Common
here were some conga players, as well as the guys
with xylophones, with fingerpianos & tambourines.
Have you ever seen minnows flopping
from shallow to shallow, doing somersaults?
The drummers' hands were pale fish,
like guppies thrashing light in a clear plastic bag,
as blurred as children careening around
lawn sprinklers in the careening mercuric blue dusk of August.
Dulse wavering! Hair shook out while somebody dances.
Some days it isn't a life alone I need
but one that supplies the luxury
of forgiveness. It was a day like that,
luckily. Past the tobacconist,
a kid sang his song about changing
my evil ways, & strummed
a three-chord blues, plugged into a boom box
And I put my ear close to his snout,
and - a little
cautious at first - I began to listen.

I wrote this last week, near the end of a very hot day.

hot

she's
about 5'10" -
"built" as they say
and you can tell
from the way she walks
she knows every man
within 50 yards
is watching every little
twitch
of her hips
and you know
she's right,
and you know
she's used to it,
has fun with it...
grace...
sex...
h...
o...
t...
...and speaking of that
it was 101 degrees
here today,
that is 101
as measured by the good
Doctor Fahrenheit,
not that wuss,
Celsius,
who squushed
everything together
to a base 100
'cause he thought it was neater
or something,

101 degrees,
75 percent humidity,
it'll be this way until
mid-October

101 degrees,
101 reasons why
i ought to be
somewhere
else

Alice Walker won her Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple, but she is also a fine poet.

This next poem is from Once, her first poetry collection. In this book she writes of her experiences as a black American in Africa.

Love

i

A dark stranger
My heart searches
Him out
"Papa!"

ii

An old man in white
Calls me "mama"
It does not take much
To know
He wants me for
His wife -
He has no teeth
but is kind.

iii

The American from
Minnesota
Speaks Harvardly
of Revolution - Men of the Mau Mau
Smile
Their fists holding
Bits of
Kenya earth.

iv

A tall Ethiopian
Grins at me
The grass burns
My bare feet

v

Drums outside
My window
Morning whirls
In
I have danced all
Night.

vi

The bearded Briton
Wears a shirt of
Kenya flags
I am at home
He says.

vii

Down the hill
A rove of trees
And on this spot
The magic tree

viii

The Kenya air!
Miles of hills
Mountains
And holding both
My hands
A Mau Mau leader.

ix

And in the hut
The only picture -
Of Jesus

x

Explain to the
Women
In the village
That you are
Twenty
And belong -
To no one.

James Hutchings is a 58-year-old truck driver and poet, among other things. He says he started writing poetry when he was in school, where he played in garage bands and wrote songs. "A sort of natural progression to poetry," he says.

This poem outlines that progression for us.

Three Chord Progression

when I was fifteen
I learned to play guitar

I joined a band
two brothers a girl on keyboards
a drummer and me

they replaced the girl
with a concert pianist
but the sound wasn't right
they got a country guitarist
that's when I quit

started my own band
a friend played bass O.J.T.
another on drums
my best friend backup singer
an older guy on lead guitar
The Thirteenth Degree was born

walked around hair slicked back
black sports coats
black corduroy pants t-shirts
and black velvet Beatle boots
floated on a reefer cloud

we played school dances
churches the Moose Club
and a little place
called The Etc. Club
a hippie coffee house
across from the fairgrounds
and the battle of the bands

made some money
had a little fun
played Beatle songs
and the stuff I wrote

it was good for a couple years
and then came the blues
I grew bored with them
I joined a group that
tampered with Willie Dixon
Sam Cook and Wilson Picket
did music with soul

played two gigs got drafted
so the story goes
I have two guitars in the closet
and haven't looked at them in six months.....

Wistawa Szymborska was born in 1923 in Poland, where she lives today. She has worked as a poet, poetry editor, columnist and translator. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

This poem is from a book of her work Poems: New and Collected 1957-1997 published by Harcourt Inc. in 1998.

The poem was translated by Stanislaqw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

Notes From A Nonexistent
Himalayan Expedition

So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo - a white mute.
Quiet.

Yet, down there we've got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.

Yeti, crime is not all
we're up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.

We've inherited hope -
the gift of forgetting.
You'll see how we give
birth among the ruins.

Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At night fall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.

Up here it's neither moon nor earth,
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back, think again!

I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting
snow.

Well, it's true, work is not all toil and trouble. I wrote this last week.

secrets revealed

for some days now
i have been reading
essays by 8th graders
from a state that shall
remain unnamed

on the subject
of "Freedom,
And Why It Is Important
To Americans"
many grand and noble
sentiments
have been writ,
sometimes
with great and refreshing
eloquence,
as well as, sadly,
evidence that for some
eloquence
will always be a mighty
reach

there is excitement
like a burst of fresh air
sweeping the crowded room
when,
from the pen of a 12-year-old
beautiful
powerful prose
erupts

and, for the readers,
excitement
as well when hidden knowledge
is revealed,
as when a student tells us
that
among the reasons
America's founders fought
the British
was the promise in the
Declaration of Independence
of "Life,
Liberty, and
the Prostitute of Happiness"
or
when a student reminds us
to support our soldiers fighting
for our freedom in
"Elfganistan,"
letting slip the mystery
that has puzzled scholars
for ten thousand years -
i.e. the hitherto secret location
of the homeland
of the Elves...

Here's another poem from the anthology The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart.

This one is by Pablo Neruda in a translation by Robert Bly.

The United Fruit Co.

When the trumpet sounded, it was
all prepared on the earth,
and Jehovah parceled out the earth
to Coca-Cola, Ind., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other entities:
The Fruit Company, Inc.
reserved for itself the most succulent,
the central coast of my own land,
the delicate waist of America.
It rechristened its territories
as the "Banana Republics"
and over the restless heroes
who brought about the greatness,
the liberty and the flags,
it established a comic opera:
abolished the independencies,
presented crowns of Caesar,
unsheathed envy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Turjillo flies, Tacho flies,
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, damp flies
of modest blood and marmalade,
drunken flies who zoom
over the ordinary graves,
circus flies, wise flies
well trained in tyranny.
Among the bloodthirsty flies
the Fruit Company lands its ships,
taking off the coffee and the fruit;
the treasure of our submerged
territories flows as though
on plates into the ships,
Meanwile Indians are falling
into the sugared chasms
of the harbors, wrapped
for burial in the mist of the dawn:
a body rolls, a thing
that has no name, a fallen cipher,
a cluster of dead fruit
thrown down on the dump.

And now a treat. Alice Folkart, friend and frequent contributor to "Here and Now," has turned back to work on her first love, the short story.

So, here's a short story by our friend Alice.

The Same River

"You could not step twice into the same river, for other waters are ever flowing on to you." Heraclitus

I been a bad girl sometimes, but my momma, she worsen me. She run off to Chicago with that fancy man to become a poor, that's what my gramma say. She say I'm gonna go the same way if I'm not careful. I gotta be twice as good as other girls 'cause I gotta stickma. I don't know what a poor is, but I know she gotta stand on the street corner and make eyes at men to get money. Don't sound so bad to me, but gramma always talking 'bout an honest day's work and the laborer being worth his fire or something like that which I take to mean we all gotta take in laundry and clean white people's houses if we want Jesus to love us and don't want to burn in Hell and Damnation, and no pretty clothes neither, and no lipstick, and no fun, all of which momma really liked 'cause she was so pretty.

So, I gotta live with my gramma.

I know she love me even when she whupp'n me. She fixed for me to get baptized in the river next Sunday, for my own good. Wash my sins away, They'll just float away, like dry leaves on the river.

Momma used to take me down to the river, into the reeds, away from the road, and we'd get naked and splash play and she'd float me and I'd scrub her back with wet leaves. Then we'd lie in the sun on our clothes and dry. Momma said this was the river of life like in a poem, the waters of life we was bathing in, just like the Pharaoh's daughter and the little baby Moses.

So, on Sunday, I'm gonna shut my eyes real tight and hold my breath when Rev. Therman tips me back and dunks me. I'm gonna remember that my momma has been in the same river with me, the river of life, and that wherever she is, she'll know that I'm saved 'cause she'll probly look out her window and see my little brown sins floating by and she'll be comforted

William Carlos Williams was born in 1883 and died in 1963.

He was a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine who, according to his biographer, "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician." All with good effect. He was hero and mentor to the modernists and the beats and all the poetry outlaws that followed his insistence that American writers ought to write of American things in the idioms and cadences of the American language and was, in his own writing, the closest thing to a perfect poet American literature has produced.

Here is one of the brief poems he is most famous for.

Poem

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down

into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot

I used the William Carlos Williams poem above because I think it's a masterpiece in stark modernity. But, as well, I used it to set up this next poem, a Williams tribute piece of my own.

the good pediatrician

WCW,
that good pediatrician,
drops his little
bursts
of reality
into this fog-infected world
and clarity
has its short moment
in the sun

and in that brief light
we, his children,
play

Born in 1919, William Meredith died in 2007 after 45 years at the center of the poetry world. His first collection of poetry, Love Letter from an Impossible Land, written while he was serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 1943. Many volumes of poetry followed. This poem is from his collection Effort At Speech published by Northwestern University Press in 1997.

Walter Jenks' Bath

For Rollin Williams

These are my legs. I don't have to tell them, legs,
Move up and down or which leg. They are black.
They are made of atoms like everything else,
Miss Berman says. That's the green ceiling
Which on top is the Robinson's brown floor.
This is Beloit, this is my family's bathroom on the world.
The ceiling is atoms, too, little parts running
Too fast to see. But through them running fast,
Through Audrey Robinson's floor and tub
And the roof and air, if I lived on an atom
Instead of on the world, I would see space.
Through all the little parts, I would see into space.

Outside the air it is all black.
The far-apart stars run and shine, no on has to tell them ,
Stars, run and shine, or the same who tells my atoms
Run and knock so Wealter Jenks, me, will stay hard and real.
And when I stop the atoms go on knocking,
Even if I died the parts would go on spinning,
Alone like the far stars, not knowing it,
Now knowing they are far apart, or running,
Or minding the black distances between.
This is me knowing, this is what I know.

I said earlier that friend Alice Folkart had returned to her first love, short stories. I didn't say Alice had quit writing poetry. Here's one of her latest poems, a little short story in poetic form.

I Don't Think We're Going to Chinatown

Mama's boy friend
said he'd take us to Chinatown.
But, he fell asleep.
So did mama.
I played jacks
on the front steps.

When it got dark,
I turned the porch light on.
Mama and her boyfriend
were still asleep in our room,
so I told the cat to sit still
and dressed her up like a princess.
She ran away with Mama's handkerchief.

The only Chinese Food I know
is fortune cookies - folded fortunes,
Mama reads them for me.
I was hoping to get a good fortune for us,
but Mama's boyfriend is still asleep.
I don't think we're going to Chinatown.

Zbigniew Herbert was born in 1924 and died in 1998.

He was a spiritual leader of the anticommunist movement in Poland. His work has been translated into almost every European language. This poem is from the collectionElegy For The Departed. The poems in the book were translated by John and Bogdana Carpenter.

The Adventures of Mr. Cogito With Music

1
long ago
actually since the dawn of his life
Mr. Cogito surrendered
to the tantalizing spell of music

he was carried through the forest of infancy
by his mother’s melodious voice

Ukrainian nurses
hummed him to sleep
a lullaby spread wide as the Dnieper

he grew
as if urged on by sounds
in chords
dissonances
vertiginous crescendos

he was given a basic
musical education
not completed to be sure
a First Piano Book
(part one)

he remembers hunger as a student
more intense than then hunger for food
when he waited before a concert
for the gift of a free ticket

it is difficult to say when
he began to be tormented
by doubts
scruples
the reproach of conscience

he listened to music rarely
not voraciously as before
with a growing feeling of shame

the spring of joy had dried up

it was not the fault
of the masters
of the motet
the sonata
the fugue

the revolutions of things
fields of gravitation
had changed
and together with them
the inner axis
of Mr. Cogito

he could not
enter the river
of earlier rapture

2
Mr. Cogito
began to collect
arguments against music

as if he intended to write
a treatise on disappointed love

to drown harmony
with angry rhetoric

to cast his own burden
onto the frail shoulders of the violin

the hood of anathema
over a clear face

but let us think about it impartially
music
is not without fault

it's inglorious beginning -
sounds in intervals
drove workers on
wrung out sweat

the Etruscans flogged slaves
to the accompaniment of pipes and flutes

and therefore
morally indifferent
like the sides of a triangle
the spiral of Archimedes
the anatomy of a bee

it abandons the three dimensions
flirts with infinity
places ephemeral ornament
over the abyss of time

its obvious and hidden power
caused anxiety among philosophers

the godlike Plato warned
changes in musical style
provoke social upheavals
the abolition of laws

gentle Leibniz consoled
that nevertheless it provides order
and is a hidden
arithmetic
training
of the soul

but what is it
what is it really

- a metronome of the universe
- exaltation of air
- celestial medicine
- a steam whistle of emotion

3
Mr. Cogito
suspends without answer
reflections on the essence of music

but the tyrannical power of this are
does not leave him in peace

the momentum with which it forces
its way ito our interior

it makes us sad without reason
it gives us joy with no cause

it fills harelike hearts
of recruits with the blood of heroes

it absolves too easily
it purifies free of charge

- and who gave it the right
to wrench us by the hair
to wring tears from the eyes
to provoke us to attack

Mr. Cogito
who is condemned to stony speech
grating syllables
secretly adores
volatile light-mindedness

the carnival of an island and groves
beyond good and evil

the true cause of the separation
is incompatibility of character

different symmetry of the body
different orbits of conscience

Mr. Cogito
always defended himself
against the smoke of time

he valued concrete objects
standing quietly in space

he worshipped things that are permanent
almost immortal

dreams of the speech of cherubs
he left in the garden of dreams

he chose
what depends
on earthly measure and judgment

so when the hour comes
he can consent without a murmur

to the trial of truth and falsehood
to the trial of fire and water

Here's one of my stream of consciousness things. I wrote it last night.

streaming

thinking
about days past
and days to come,
knowing
there are many more
of the first
than there will be
of the second,
remembering,
that when my
generation was young,
the age i'll be
on my next birthday
was seen as no more
that two or three doors
down from dead,
i think a lot
about that sort of thing,
the whole age thing,
not out of
morbid
obsession, but just
plain curiosity, how
we are at one time
young and most
of the world around us
old until years pass
and we seem to be
old while the world
grows younger and
younger
and if we are lucky
there is that little spark
of inner essence
that doesn't age
as our body sags
and droops
and withers,
that keeps us
forever
in our mind young
as the world
around,
until the fever
or the stroke or the fall
that lays out the stark reality
of our condition
beyond even our most
frantic effort to dispute it

i wonder at how wrong
we always are about ourselves,
old and young, and how our
ignorance protects us,
keeps us every ready
to fill the sky with kites
in the first favorable wind

The next poem is by Charles Bukowski from what matters most is how well you walk through the fire, one of the eight thousand three hundred forty-six (a rough estimate) collections that have come out since he died. Couldn't have happened to a better poet, not the dying, but the eight thousand and whatever part. As long as they keep coming out, I'll keep reading. Though not to everyone's taste, he's one of my favorites.

38,000-to-one

it was during a reading at the University of Utah.
the poets ran out of drinks
and while one was reading
2 or 3 of the others
got into a car
to drive to a liquor store
but we were blocked on the road
by the cars coming to the football stadium.
we were the only car that wanted to go the other way,
they had us: 38,000-to-one.
we sat in our lane and honked.
400 cars honked back.
the cop came over.
"look, officer," I said, "we're poets and we need a drink."
"turn around and go to the stadium," said
the officer.
"look, we need a drink. we don't want to see the
football game. we don't care who wind. we're poets, we're
reading at the Underwater Poetry Festival
at the University of Utah!"
"traffic can only move one way," said the cop,
"turn your car around and go to the stadium."
"look, I'm reading in 15 minutes. I'm Henry Chinaski!
you've heard of me haven't you?"
"turn your car around and go to the stadium!" said the cop.
"shit," said Betsy who was at the wheel,
and she ran the car up over the curb
and we drove across the campus lawn
leaving tire marks an inch deep.
I was a bit tipsy and I don't know how long we drove
or how we got there
but suddenly we were all standing in a liquor store
and we bought wine, vodka, beer, scotch, got it and left.
we drove back,
got back there, read the ass right off that audience,
picked up our checks and left to applause.
UCLA won the football game
something to something

Cliff Keller says that, with two bands going now that play all original music, he's been concentrating on song lyrics, rather than standard poetry. But he did send me a couple of poems written within the past year, including the one below.

I'm still hoping to have music on the blog at some point. Maybe if I get that done, we'll get to hear some of Cliff's music.

Mountain Passage

Head down, ascending,
avian shadows flicker on the trail,

morning sun refracts

through new blades of grass,
the cochlear hum underscores the birdsong.

I stop at the ridge top
below, progress looks up and salutes.

The opposing valley face hangs
like a tapestry on a wall,
verdant pointillism of spring aspen,

heavy pine, and forest shadow.
I reach out to brush the frayed top
of the ridgeline and notice

Birds and insects surround me now,

stillness is the attraction,
but stillness is not what brought me here.
I drop

Into a glen,

stream's white noise courses

through a tuft of shivering leaves.

I march through the still parade
and watch to the right

the shuffling alignment of

tarnished white aspens,
the myriad of silver eyes that stare
where waving limbs once gestured.

I do this so often:

turn to track the cadence

of my own passing

as in this poem.

One more poem, and then I'll fold the tent for the week.

In the last issue, I mentioned that I had written successful poems about my father, but nothing very good at all about my mother.

Well, on Mothers' Day I took another shot at it and came up with this next poem, the best I've done so far on the subject and pretty OK in its own right.

what i remember now

as the end approached
she was often
confused,
obsessive over things
and times
no one else could remember,
and suspicious,
sure people
were stealing from her

i was impatient

i think of that now,
add it
to my ever-growing list
of sorrows,
things i would change
if the past
once set
could be reshaped
to correct
errors
of inattention
and selfish
negligence

but when i think of her
i don't think
of those last months,
but of all the months
and years before
and from all that
passing time,
it is another picture
that comes to
mind -
it is her smile,
standing
at the backdoor
arms outstretched
to welcome me
when i visit

that's what i remember
on this day

That's it.

Come back next week.

Until you do, remember all the work presented in 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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Dry Friday, May 09, 2008

III.5.2.

Get out your little plastic wading pools, friends. It's the only way to get wet around here. Just remember as you scroll through our latest issue of "Here and Now," electronics and water do not mix. So try to keep you laptop dry.No splashing.

My first poem this week is from a new book of poems/lyrics by Ani DiFranco. (Yes, I do, sometimes, buy a new book from an actual new book dealer, Borders in this case.) The book is titled, simply, Verses

Since DiFranco is new to me and I know nothing about her, I'll just present here her official biography from the Righteous Babe Records website.

Our story begins in Buffalo, New York, a rust belt city perched precariously on the edge of the Great Lakes, known best for its terrible snow storms and lost superbowls. It is here that our heroine, Ani (pronounced AHH-nee) DiFranco was reared on a mid-eighties diet of oat bran and radio mayonnaise, and launched into the world somewhere in the interim between Woody Guthrie's "Pastures Of Plenty" and MTV's unplugged.

O.K. Just the facts. Ani is a punk folksinger who writes songs that can appeal to old folkies and simultaneously climb the college radio charts. She tours on the acoustic, college, and rock club circuits, shattering stereotypes and winning over unsuspecting fans everywhere. But of course, like all overnight success stories that were ten years in the making, the beginnings were much more humble.

Ani started playing Beatles' songs in local bars at age nine but didn't start writing her own material until age fifteen when she moved out of her mother's apartment. Living on her own, she played every Saturday night at the Essex Street Pub, and at sixteen she graduated from the Visual and Performing Arts High School. By the time she was eighteen she had played every bar in Buffalo a gazillion times and moved to New York City for a change of scenery. Now, five years and six albums later, she is still a steadfast independent.

To finance her first album, Ani looted her bank account and borrowed the rest from friends. She rejected offers from indie and major labels alike, and instead started her own record company, Righteous Babe Records, in an industry dominated by multinational corporations. Ani has since sold over one hundred thousand tapes and CD's on her own. She not only writes and publishes her own songs, but also produces her own recordings, creates the artwork, and releases them. She employs like-minded people in management and staff positions, supports local printers and manufacturers in her hometown, and utilizes a network of independent distributors in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She tours extensively and damn near constantly on both sides of the Atlantic, repeatedly setting on-sight album sales records at music festivals and concert venues.

With a voice that can rock the boat one minute and the cradle the next, Ani DiFranco has a sound like no other. In performance she never ceases to stun and stagger her audience with her famous hundred-fifty watt smile and easy laughter juxtaposed against the brutal poetics of her lyrics and the reckless manhandling of her guitar. She has played to packed houses and rave reviews from Boston's Somerville Theater to San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, and from Toronto's Phoenix to a twelve-hundred-seat sell-out at Vancouver's Vogue Theatre. As a writer in Tampa exclaimed, "If folk music has a future it's Ani DiFranco."

You can listen to DiFranco here:

http://www.righteousbabe.com/ani/

You will have to copy and paste the url to you browser, but it's worth the effort.

To the Teeth

the sun is setting on the century
and we are armed to the teeth
we're all working together now
to make our lives mercifully brief
and schoolkids keep trying to teach us
what guns are all about
confuse liberty with weaponry
and watch your kids act it out

and every year now like christmas
some boy gets the milkfed suburban blues
reaches for the available arsenal
and saunters off to make the news
and the women in the middle
are learning what poor women have always known
that the edge is closer than you think
when your men bring the guns home

look at where the profits are
that's how you'll find the source
of the big lie that you and i
both know so well
in the time it takes this cultural
death wish to run its course
they're gonna make a pretty penny
and then they're all going to hell

he said the chickens all come home to roost
yeah, malcolm forecasted this flood
are we really gonna to sleep through another century
while the rich profit off our blood?
true, it may take some doing
to see this undoing through
but in my humble opinion
here's what i suggest we do.

open fire on hollywood
open ire on MTV
open fire on CNN
Fox News and ABC
open fire on NRA
all all the lies they told us
along the way
open fire on each weapons manufacturer
while he's giving head
to some republican senator

and if i hear on more time
about a fool's right
to his tools of rage
i'm gonna take all my friends
and i'm gonna move to canada
and we're gonna die of old age

I wrote this during a particularly dull moment at work last week when I was supposed to be enriching my employer. Ha!

it's two thirty

it's two thirty
in the afternoon
and the tedium
rises
like flood water
on a dark and rainy
december night...
time
when the fantasies
begin to build
in minds
dulled
by routine
and suspicion
that one could

...poof...

disappear
in a very small
wisp
of smoke
and no one would
notice...
and i begin to think
of a meteor strike
and all of us
rushing
to the parking lot
as orange streaks
of molten meteor
slice
through an blazing sky,
parting black clouds
with a sizzle
of fried ozone,
and all of us rushing home
in our cars
rush home
rush home
the civil defense
officials
tell us,
take a nap
in an easy chair
the scientists say
with a cat in your lap
purring
as you both
sleep...
sleep...
and all will
be well

Sometime last year I bought an anthology contemporary poets selected by Billy Collins. The book is 180 More, Extraordinary Poems For Every Day, published by Random House in 2005.

After a quick flip through the book, I picked out several poems I wanted to use first, but then lost track of the book. Well, I found it again, so I'll be finally using those poems this week.

The first poem is by Cate Marvin.

Marvin received her B.A. from Marlboro College in Vermont, and holds two M.F.A. degrees: one in poetry from the University of Houston, and the other in fiction from Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her collection of poetry, World's Tallest Disaster, received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, the Greenwall Fund Grant from the Academy of American Poets, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.

Here's Cate Marvin's poem. Other poets from the book will be included throughout this issue.

On Parting

Before I go let me thank the man who mugs you,
taking your last paycheck, thank the boss who steals
your tips, thank the women who may break you.

I thank the pens that run out in midsentence,
the flame that singes your hair, the ticket you can't
use because it's torn. Let me thank the stars

that remind you the eyes that were stars are now
holes. Let me thank the lake that drowns you, the sun
that makes your face old. And thank the street your car

dies in. And thank the brother you find unconscious
with bloody arms, thank the needle that assists in
doing him in - so much a part of you. No thanks

to the skin forgetting the hands it welcomed, your
hands refusing to recall what they happened upon.
How blessed is the body you move in - how gone.

Laurel Lamperd joins us again this week from here home within sight of the Southern Ocean on the south coast of Western Australia. Laurel writes novels and short stories as well as poetry and, with a friend, published The Ink Drinkers, a poetry and short story anthology of their work.

Koombana Bay

Walking along Koombana Beach
to Port McCleod
the sun setting beyond Rocky Point
on Back Beach
I watch for the dolphins
but they are away
frolicking upon some far off wave
watching a last fish for the day.

I look to the west again.
You used to come from there
to our rendezvous.

I reach the spot where we met
and try to remember you
fifty years ago
slender
long hair tied in a ponytail
firm brown legs in shorts
but images of our granddaughter intercede
and I see her, not you
as you once were.

Memories are fleeting
tiny cameos
like rain drops on spring mornings.

Suddenly you came
sneaking from beneath the image
of our granddaughter.
I hang onto your smile
as desperately as I held onto your life
but the smile has gone
as you have
and I walk alone
beside the darkening waters
of Koombana Bay.

Robert Bly, author, editor and translator of numerous collections of poetry, has been a major force in American poetry for forty years.

This piece is from his book Selected Poems, published by Harper Perennial in 1986.

Two Sounds When We Sit By The Ocean

Wave rush up, pause, and drag pebbles back around stones...pebbles going out...It is a complicated sound, as of small sticks breaking, or kitchen sounds heard from another house...Then the wave comes down to the boulders, and draws out over the stones always wet...And the sound of harsh death waves racing up the roof of loose stones, leaving a tiny rattling in the throat as they go out...And the ecstatic brown sand stretched out between stones: we know there is some resonant anger that is right.

And always another sound, a heavy underground roaring in my ears from the surf farther out, as if the earth were reverberating under the feet of one dancer. It is a comforting sound, like the note of Paradise carried to the Egyptian sands, and I hear the driftwood far out singing under the waters singing, what has not yet come to the surface to float, years that are still down somewhere below the chest, the long trees that have floated all the way from the Pacific islands...and the donkey the disciples will find standing beside the white wall...

This is a poem I wrote this week while sitting at one of my favorite poem- writing perches, the front porch at Casa Chiapas.

restoration

quiet street
dusk
in early summer
orange light
reflected
on loft windows
across the street

a cat
on the hood
of a '59 Desoto
stretches
and a fat man
walks towards Tito's Tacos
pushing
his belly before him
like a wheelbarrow

a man
in shorts and
worn huaraches
eases
out of his car,
a '71 Corvette Stingray
he's parked at the curb

fully restored,
beautiful,
the car was new
when i was in my twenties -
would that i could be so
restored,
so beautiful
in this orange light
on this quiet street
for this early summer night

I bought another book at Borders today, new, but off the remainder shelves which let me pay a used book price ($2.99) for it. The book is Void of Course, published in 1998 by Penguin Books. The poet is Jim Carroll.

Carroll, a poet, punk musician and diarist, was born and grew up in New York City. He attended Trinity High School in Manhattan on a basketball scholarship and was an All-City star, a period described in his book The Basketball Diaries which was made into a movie staring Leonardo DiCaprio. His first book of poetry, Living at the Movies was published in 1973 when he was twenty-two. He late later published four more books, including this one. His work has appeared in publication as diverse as Rolling Stone and The Paris Review. As leader of the Jim Carroll Band, he recorded three albums for Atlantic Records and a spoken word record for Giant Records. The Best of the Jim Carroll Band was released by Rhino Records in 1993. He's published two additional books since this book was released.

Sick Bird

The positions we use when making love
Determine the next day's weather

Tomorrow it will rain
Then heat lightning by evening

Every time the telephone rings
A green sea turtle dies
And a phlegmatic guilt chants across your day

The side of your head
Where you part your hair
dictates the direction
The trees lean
Left or right
In the yard out back.

A poor Mexican teenager in the Texas panhandle
Is suffering from a venereal disease
And as he urinates in his bathroom the pain
Is too much to bear, so he smashes his closed fist into the plaster
Leaving a hole there and he discovers a shelf within the wall
Filled with stacks of fifty-dollar bills left behind by a drug dealer perhaps
Who departed in haste and so he is rich for a lifetime
Because of pain and urine

A blond woman with a silver tongue stud and gold rings
Above her left eye lights a cigarette with a candle
In the VIP lounge of a club in Minneapolis
And the candle drips wax to the red carpet, somehow causing
A long fisherman on an upstate lake
To slip on some odd substance, falling overboard and drowned
Eventually eaten by his own propeller
While a child from a lake tribe
kneeling in his canoe
Watches in distance and mist
Unable to do a thing for him
He mutters, "That poor man,"
And paddles through the reeds
Skimming the surface with a plank,
continuing to harvest wild rice from the surface of Glacier Lake

A popular character actress removes her Emerald brooch,
After a banquet to raise money
For the twin benefit of Los Angeles runaways
And the Dalai Lama's return to Tibet.

By her simple actions, undoing the clasp of the brooch,
The Dalai Lama stubs his left foot on a cabinet in his room
At the San Francisco Zen Center's guest house, 800 miles up the coastline
Causing alarm among the Roshi and initiates, and a marlin-blue swelling
On the big toe of the gentle Lama, who meditates the pain to Maya
While in a cluttered shop in the thin streets of Milan, Italy,
Its floor filled with rosewood shavings
The air cramped with Oak dust,
The man who built the cabinet
On which the Dalai Lama's foot was stubbed
Slumps over his workbench with a cerebral hemorrhage.
He is dead.
It has been growing a long while in his mind.
It was simply a matter of time.

And a young Norwegian film student thoughtlessly
Decides to title his short film
I Was Simply a Matter of Time.
It has nothing to do
With time, however, nor the dead
Italian cabinet maker.

A mosquito sucks the blood of a post-Soviet Baltic girl
And she falls in love with a balding Ammenian
Who assures her that only girls with strong sexual drives are chosen by
   these insects
The mosquito dies and provides a small meal to a starving bird.

The bird's song awakes me at 5 a.m.
I shiver with a sudden sense of dread because the mosquito
Which it ate was poisoned by the blood of the girl which it bit
Because she was imbibed with lies and designer drugs and so the bird
   sings off-key
As it jars me from sleep, and the room is folding over
Darker as I rise and I know a change is coming & bad & soon writing this
   poem

Christopher George is back with us this week with four short observational pieces that are lots of fun.

Appearing regularly in "Here and Now," Chris was born in Liverpool, England in 1948 and first emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1955. He went back to Liverpool for a refresher on his Scouse accent, living with his grandparents while attending Rose Lane and Quarry Bank Schools. Chris returned to the U.S.A. in 1968 and has lived there ever since. He now lives in Baltimore, Maryland, near Johns Hopkins University with his wife Donna and two cats. He is very active as a poet, performance reader, lyricist, and editor. He also has a blog that you can visit by clicking on the link among those listed on the right.

I was very honored that Chris read one of my poems at a reading he did in Baltimore recently, to good response, he said.

On Seeing "Syriana" Again

Recalled I had seen
it when they pulled out
Cooney's fingernails.

Gun Rites

The second
amendment's shot
through with holes

After 9/11

I stopped fantasizing
I saw planes fly
into buildings

Seen on a D.C. Street
Corner Concession Stand

All beef
Half smoke
Pretzel
Candy

Here's another poem from 180 More Extraordinary Poems For Every Day selected by Billy Collins. This one is by Adam Zagajewski.

Zagajewski is one of Poland's most famous contemporary poets as well as a novelist and essayist. His work translated into many languages, his most recent book in English is Mysticism for Beginners. Since 1988 he has served as visiting associate professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. He splits his time between homes in Paris and Houston.

Iron Train

The train stopped at a little station
and for a moment stood absolutely still.
The doors slammed, gravel crunched underfoot,
someone said goodbye forever,

a glove dropped, the sun dimmed,
the doors slammed again, even louder,
and the iron train set off slowly
and vanished in the fog like the nineteenth century.

(Translation by Clare Cavanaugh)

I wrote this last weekend, taking a break, as described, at Starbucks.

sweet memories

Tony Bennett
overhead...
blender blending
behind...
kid at the counter
asks
if the cinnamon chip scone
is baked locally
or shipped in from somewhere else,
carbon footprint
you know,
he says
as the barrista
reassures him
"yes sir, all local"
which i find hard to believe
since the pastry
at every Starbucks
i've ever been in looks
exactly
like the pastry
at every other Starbucks
and since this is the city
where the Manske Roll,
a cinnamon roll
big as a dinner plate,
was invented
and is still sold
on the square across
from the County Courthouse,
i'd think if i was doing local
i'd be doing Manskes
and not that
fat free
taste free
identical looking
cardboard
they serve at every Starbucks,
but it's all academic to me
since i don't want any of the Starbucks
cardboard
and a single Manske Roll
would probably shorten my life
by five to seven days,
at least,
so
let's just forget it about it
as a friend from long ago,
Star
from Starr County, Texas,
used to say...

the thing is,
i'm just killing time here,
scribbling in my little notebook
at Starbucks
while D takes a run through
the outlet mall on the other side of the road

we came up here today to finish painting
the money pit
but a strong north wind
has blown away a beautiful day,
blowing away, also,
our breath and our painting ambitions
so we just puttered a bit, taking more trash
out of the shed, (god, what pack rats they were),
putting up a new screen in the kitchen vent
where birds
keep trying to make nests,
nailing
up a loose board on the side of the shed,
then heading back to San Antonio,
with this side stop
at Starbucks and the mall,
the total accomplishment of this
140 mile round trip being the lodging
in my mind
of memories of Manske Rolls
consumed
in years long past

memories that will
bedevil me now
for days

Norman Nawrocki is a Vancouver-born, Montreal-based cabaret artist and activist. His serves both as a writer, actor and vocalist/violinist for the "rebel news orchestra" Rhythm Activism. His poem is from the book Rebel Moon @ anarchist Rants & Poems.

It doesn't appear that he would object to being called a "Radical."

The Magon Brothers

They say down in Mexico,
on a moonless night when
coyotes wail into the void and owls
give the signal,
the Magon Brothers will ride high across
that desert sky
lassoed to the brightest
shooting star

They say the Magon Brothers
armed with guns 'n typewriters,
books and bullets
will drop into the saddles
of two great white horses
and lead a column of the poor
north from the jungles of chiapas
to the factories along the Rio Grande
all shouting
Tierra Y Libertad!

They say this mighty column
bristling with dangerous ideas
and powerful dreams
traveling on foot and bicycle,
in beat up old buses and Chevys
will take back all the land
from the privileged
and kick 'em out

They say no laws will be tough enough
to scare them
No army strong enough to stop them
No TV lies loud enough to drown out their cries
of Tierra Y Libertad!

They say the Magon Brothers
Ricardo and Enrique, started folk
thinking a long time ago
when they declared
all wealth should be shared
all men and women free
all governments abolished
replaced by a new, more just world
of Anarchy

They say you'll know when
the Magon Brothers ride again
In the mile high cloud of dust, smoke and ashes
you'll see 'em
In the thunderous pounding of heartbeats, hooves
and drums, you'll hear them
In the aftermath of the storm that follows
wherever they go, you'll know
Tierra Y Libertad!

Our good friend from Washington state, Gary Blankenship likes to pick a theme and write a series of poems based on that theme. One theme I think he completed some time ago is a series of poems inspired by the various fifty states. Gary has let me use several poems from that series and we're going to start this week with, what else, the state of Texas.

Poetic States VII - Texas

Larger than a Breadbox

You are too huge to be captured
in verse written by a minor poet
who knows that it takes two days
to cross you no matter where the start.

and you raised two modern presidents -
one mostly good, the other a bit less,
though they both seemed all too fond
of guerilla wars that couldn't be won.

Nothing more needs to be mentioned
in a short poem but Dick's Riverwalk,
the perfect place for tequila shots
and buckets of boiled crawdads

as we forget which war explodes now
and the humidity blowing from the Gulf.

Now I have another of the long-delayed poems from Billy Collins' collection of 180 More Extraordinary Poems For Every Day.

This poem is by Robert Shaw, a professor of English at Mount Holyoke college. Shaw's books of poetry include The Post Office Murals Restored and Below the Surface.

In the Rear-View Mirror

Thinking about them as you saw them last,
you see them standing there behind your back,
leaning out into the road to wave goodbye,
lingering even as growing speed and distance
diminish them until they neatly fit
head to foot in the mirror-strip you glance at.
Tiny in your lengthening wake, still waving,
they could be nameless people on a postcard,
too far away for you to make out faces.
Then, at the first turn, they're lost completely,
places taken by someone's windbreak pines,
a split-rail fence, and then, as the wheel straightens,
nothing but empty road. Ahead of you
are towns where you will never know a soul,
exits following exits you will pass
and never take, amassing a stiff toll
finally to make good on. Fortunately
you carry along with you that high-powered
reflective instrument that you can use
no matter how far down the road you've gone
to bring them back in view as large as life,
putting yourself in the picture, too, which makes
thinking about them as you saw them lasting.

This is something else I wrote last week, for when you're ready to start thinking really long term

this is it

a persistent little
stomach bug,
too much sun from working
outside all weekend,
and your standard
all-purpose
bone-deep
fatigue
convinced me
to skip work,
which,
in as much as i'm not in a coma
and otherwise
still ambulatory,
means you can add
guilt
to the list of ailments
plaguing me today

it's about getting old
is what it is

it's about age
that weakens us,
raises the bar
on every challenge
until what....

entropy

an irreversible decline
until final
stasis
is achieved
and our bodies
are as lifeless as the box
they put us in till
rot
do us part
and that which defined us
before the world
is reduced
to mud
leaching into the soil,
enriching the soil
to the benefit
of flora
we once consumed
as it
in this last phase
consumes us
until it, in its turn,
is consumed
by some being
far beyond the horizon
of our own time
and our own being

if eternal life
is what you seek,
this
is
it

To taste the power of American poetry, go to the original "outlaw poet," Walt Whitman.

This is from Leaves of Grass.

Spontaneous Me

Spontaneous me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hillside whiten'd with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same late in autumn, the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple and
      light and dark green,
The rich coverlet of the grass, animals and birds, the private un-
      trimm'd bank, the primitive apples, the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments, the negligent list of one after another
      as I happen to call them to me or think of them,
The real poems, (what we call poems being merely pictures,)
The poems of the privacy of the night, and of men like me,
This poem drooping shy and unseen that I always carry, and that all
      men carry,
(Know once for all, avow'd on purpose, wherever are men like me,
      are our lusty lurking masculine poems,)
Love-thoughts, love-juice, love-odor, love-yielding, love-climbers, and
      the climbing sap,
Arms and hands of love, lips of love, phallic thumb of love, breasts
      of love, bellies press'd and glued together with love,
Earth of chaste love, life that is only life after love,
The body of my love, the body of the woman I love, the body of the
      man, the body of the earth,
Soft forenoons airs that blow from the south-west,
The hairy wild-bee that murmurs and handers up and down, that
      gripes the full-grown lady-flower, curves upon here with
      amorous firm legs, takes his will of her, and holds himself
      tremulous and tight till he is satisfied;
The wet of woods through the early hours,
Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep, one with an
      arm slanting down across and below the waist of the other,
The smell of apples, aromas from crush'd sage-plant, mint, birch-bark,
The boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what
      he was dreaming,
The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl and falling still and content
      to the ground,
The no-form'd stings that sights, people, objects, sting me with,
The hubb'd sting of myself, stinging me as much as it ever can any
      one,
The sensitive, orbic, underlapp'd brothers, that only privileged feelers
      may be intimate where they are,
The curious roamer the hand roaming all over the body, the bashful
      withdrawing of flesh where the fingers soothingly pause and
      edge themselves,
The limpid liquid within the young man,
The vex'd corrosion so pensive and so painful,
The torment, the irritable tide that will not be at rest,
The like of the same I feel, the like of the same in others,
The young man that flushes and flushes, and the young woman that
      flushes and flushes,
The young man that wakes deep at night, the hot hand seeking to re-
      press what would master him,
The mystic amorous night, the strange half-welcome pangs, visions,
      sweats,
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling encircling fingers,
      The young man all color'd, red, ashamed,
      angry;
The souse upon me of my lover the sea, as I lie willing and naked,
The merriment of the twin babies that crawl over the grass in the
      sun, the mother never turning her vigilant eyes from them,
The walnut-trunk, the walnut-husks, and the ripening or ripen'd
      long-round walnuts,
The continence of vegetables, birds, animals,
The consequent meanness of me should I skulk or find myself in-
      decent, while birds and animals never once skulk or find
      themselves indecent,
The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of mater-
      nity,
The oath of procreation I have sworn, my Adamic and fresh daugh-
      ters,
The greed that eats me day and night with hungry gnaw, till I
      saturate what shall produce boys to fill my place when I am
      through,
The wholesome relief, repose, content,
And this bunch plucked at random from myself,
It has done its work - I toss it carelessly to fall where it may.

Alan Addotto is back with this week after a bit of an absence.

Song # 5 Watermelon Girl

I'm a thief and a charlatan, a fool
mixed up in petty crimes
too afraid

or cowardly to stand up
to myself in the mirror
I pretend not to notice the blonde

at the corner table
she knows what I want
and doesn't care

what I need
the kind of woman
who'll leave

me the way she found me
and not think twice about taking
her time about it

her name is daisy
she has pale blue eyes
and a heart shaped tattoo

on her shoulder blade
and I'm sure of this in the same way
that I know

she'll walk over here
and call me by name even though
we've never

been in the same story
then she'll shrug at my indifference
ask me

for a light and tell me
she's the last cliche of my life
and I will believe her

because I want to
and I'll fall because I know
she'll be there to catch me

Here's one last overdue poem from 180 More Extraordinary Poems For Every Day Life. This one is by Michael Donaghy.

Donaghy was born in New York City in 1954. Three of his collections were published after his death in London in 1985. All three were prize winners, Shibboleth in 1988, Errata in 1993, and Conjure in 2002.

Local 32B
(US National Union of Building Service Workers)

The rich are different. Where we have doorknobs,
they have doormen - like me, a cigar store Indian
on the Upper East Side, in polyester, in August.
As the tenants tanned in Tenerife and Monaco
I stood guard beneath Manhattan's leaden light
watching poodle turds bake grey in half an hour.
Another hot one. Mr. Rockefeller!
An Irish doorman foresees his death,
waves, and runs to help it with its packages.
Once I got a cab for Pavarotti. No kidding.
No tip either. I stared after him down Fifth
and caught him looking after me, then through me,
like Samson, eyeless, at the Philistine chorus -
Yessir, I put the tenor in the vehicle.
And a mighty tight squeeze it was.

My father died nearly 30 years ago; my mother only 8.

I've written many poems about my father, including a couple of good ones.

I have never written a good poem about my mother. I tried to do one last year for Mothers' Day, but could only come up with one that promised that a good poem would be coming.

Well, that hasn't happened yet, so the best I can do for this Mothers' Day is the same one I wrote last year, making the same promise this year as I made last. At some point, I will find that good poem that still eludes me.

This is the best I can do right now.

this is not a Mothers' Day poem

I'll never
be loved again
like my mother
loved me

it's
the kind of thing
we all take for
granted

I did
anyway

and only
in the years
since her death
has it become clear
the extent of my loss

I try
not to think about this
on Mothers' Day
because on this day
the truth I'm only now
coming to learn
is overlaid by such
trite, commercial crap
that I feel a danger
I might lose it again

so this
is not a Mothers' Day poem

I'm still working on that
and someday
when I finally get it right
I'll put it down on paper
and imagine my mother
finally knowing
that I know it now
too

Well, that's it for this issue. We'll be back next week with more of our homemade poetry jams and jellies and hope you'll be back too.

In the meantime, don't get lost in the woods, and, as you try to remember which side of the tree the moss grows on, don't forget this. All of the work included in this blog remains the property of its creator. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz

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A Summer's Sun Rising Friday, May 02, 2008

III.5.1

Summer's sun is rising earlier and earlier now, and setting later.

Summer is not a season I look forward to, expecially in the heat of South Texas. From now until mid-October, I will shun the ouside in favor of anywhere that is air conditioned. Luckily, my little office has a/c, so "Here and Now" will continue, despite the hellish weather outside.

And it will begin to continue right now.

I'm starting this week with a poem by Charles Bukowski from The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain one of the many books of unpublished poems put out since he died. The man must have had 10,000 poems laying around when he left the scene because the books keep coming and coming and coming.

And I like most of them, like this.

nights of vanilla mice

unshaven, yellow-toothed, sweating in my only shorts
and undershirt (full of cigarette holes),
I was sure that I was better than F. Scott or Faulkner or
even my buddy, Turgenev.
ah, not as good as Celine or Li Po
but, man, I hd faith, felt I was more on fire
than
any 3 dozen mortals.
and I typed and lived with women that you
would shrink from, I
brought love back to those faded eyes as vanilla mice
slept below our bed.
I starved and starved and typed and
loved it, I
reached into my mouth and plucked rotten teeth
out of my gums
and laughed
as the rejections came back as fast as I could send my stories
out, I
felt marvelous, I felt like I owned a piece of the
sun, I listened to all the crazy classical music from previous
centuries, I sympathized with those who had suffered
in the past like
Mozart, Verdi, others,
and when things got really bad
I thought of Van Gogh and his ear and even
sometimes
his shotgun, I
jollied myself along as best I could, and Jesus I
got very thin
and still during the sleepless nights I would
tell my ladies about how I was
going to make it as a writer some day
and from all of them (as if with one voice) they would complain:
"shit, are you going to talk about that
again?"
(my voice): "you saw how I punched that guy out in the alley the other night?"
(again, as with one voice): "what has that to do with writing?"
(my voice): "I don't know..."

of course, there were many nights with no voices
there were many nights alone and those were fine
too, of course, but the worst nights were the nights
without a room and that hurt because a writer needed
an address in order to receive those rejection
slips.

but the ladies (bless them!)
always told me, "you're crazy but you're
nice."

being a starving writer is
treacherous
great
fun.

I wrote this one just a couple of days ago, thinking back to a time of some really shameless fun.

expert testimony

i used to be
an expert...

newspaper reporters
would come
with their thirty five cent
spiral notepads
and tv reporters
with their cameraman
even radio reporters
with their little
pocket-sized
cassette recorders

and they'd all ask
questions
and i'd talk to them
until i figured out
what story
they wanted to write
that day
and give it to them

they liked to talk to me
because as one of them said
i "gave good quote"
and that was important
because the editors'
general rule was
two local quotes for every story
and i was a reliable source
who understood the demands
to their profession
and was ready to help them out -
as long as they were around
and ready to help me out
when there was a particular story
i wanted to see run -

the thing is
it really surprised me
at first
but people believed me
even though i made up
most of it
off the top of my head

a reinforcing dynamic
began to develop -
the more questions they ask
the more expert i became
and as i became more expert
more people began
to believe me
and the more people
believed me
the more they came to me
with questions
etcetera
and
etcetera
and so forth
for several years
until it got a little scary
and i began to feel like
chauncy gardner
in that "being there" movie...
the one with Peter Sellers

and that made me
think
maybe i oughta
really know
what
i was talking about
which led to complexity
and more elaborate and extended
explanation and extrapolation
which screwed up my "good quote"
and pretty soon the media faded away
and found someone else to be the
public expert

until now days
nobody asks me questions
so i don't know
hardly
anything at all

The Tao Te Ching, written most probably in the 6th century B.C. by Lao Tsu has been translated more frequently than any other work except the Christian Bible.

Although earlier philosophers first wrote of the "Tao" it is with the sixth century B.C. philosopher Lao Tzu that the philosophy of Taoism really began. Some scholars place Lao as a slightly older contemporary of Confucius while others believe that the Tao Te Ching (The Way and Its Power), is really a compilation of paradoxical poems written by several Taoists using the pen-name, Lao Tzu.

Whatever the truth of the matter, there is a wonderful legend that Lao Tzu was keeper of the archives at the imperial court. When he was eighty years old he set out for the western border of China, toward what is now Tibet, saddened and disillusioned that men were unwilling to follow the path to natural goodness. At the border, a guard asked Lao Tsu to record his teachings before he left. He then composed in 5,000 characters the Tao Te Ching.

In simplified form (and that is the only form for the "way"), the essence of the philosophy is that to live a good life one must accept what is without wanting it to be different, studying the natural order of things and working with rather than against it.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted several short poems which sought to express my own understanding the way. This week, I've gone to of the most respected sources, the Tao Te Ching as translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English which was first published twenty-five years ago and which has sold more copies than any other English translation.

The lessons of the Tao are presented in eighty one short poems. Here are several of them.

Two

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.

Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other;
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.

Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not possessing,
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.

Seven

Heaven and earth last forever.
Why do heaven and earth last forever?
They are unborn,
So living forever.
The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead.
He is detached, thus at one with all.
Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment.

Eight

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places me reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, ge gentle and kind.
In speech, be rue.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.

No fight: No blame.

Thirty-Two

The Tao is forever undefined.
Small though it is in the unformed state, it cannot be grasped.
If kings and lords could harness it,
The ten thousand things would naturally obey.
Heaven and earth would come together
And gentle rain fall.
Men would need no instruction
and all things would take their course.

Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop averts trouble.
Tao in the world is like a river glowing home to the sea.

Seventy-One

Knowing ignorance is strength.
Ignoring knowledge is sickness.

If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick.
The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness.
Therefore he is not sick.

and, finally,

Seventy-Five

Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.

Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.

Here's a new piece from our friend Gary Blankenship.

The Gift of Salt

There is only one reason to go to war...you have a cause
so great that it justifies asking people to sacrifice their children.
- Ann Quindlen

My grandmother sent six sons
and one grandson
into Europe and the Pacific
for the war that followed
the War to End All Wars

All the sons came home
the grandson lies buried
with his medals in the family plot
I was too young for the next war -
to keep godless Commies
from overrunning all of Asia

Do we still call it a police action?

I was too early for my generations
by no more than a couple of months
A cousin was not
but he returned -
after he shot a village water buffalo

My children grew during the long peace
between LBJ's war and the Bushs' -
Their mother did not have to sacrifice them
though she shared the pain of those who did
and watched the torment of those
who returned with shades owning their soul

My children's children will not escape
the long dark that looms ahead

I can only hope I do not live
to see them buried in the family plot

Tupac Amaru Shakur was born in 1971 and died in September 13, 1996 after being shot in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. He was a top-selling recording artist, a successful film actor and a prominent social activist. Shakur's was known through his work for advocating political, economic, social and racial equality, as well as his raw descriptions of violence, drug and alcohol abuse and conflicts with the law. He was initially a roadie and backup dancer for the alternative hip hop group Digital Underground before gaining critical acclaim from his first album, 2Pacalypse, as well as suffering backlash due to his controversial lyrics.

With the book The Rose That Grew From Concrete published after his death, Shakur showed a gentler and more thoughtful side than was usually associated with his public persona. This poem is from that book.

And 2morrow

Today is filled with anger
Fueled with hidden hate
scared of being outcast
Afraid of common fate
Today is built on tragedies
which no one wants 2 face
Nightmares 2 humanities
and morally disgraced
Tonight is filled with rage
Violence in the air
Children bred with ruthlessness
Because no one at home cares
Tonight I lay my head down
But the pressure never stops
gnawing at my sanity
content when I am dropped
But 2morrow I c change
A chance 2 build anew
Built on spirit, intent of heart
and ideals based on truth
And 2morrow I wake with second wind
And strong because of pride
2 know I fought with all my heart 2 keep my dream alive

Enheduanna who lived in the early centuries of the third millennium B.C. was a Sumerian/Akkadian high priestess of the moon god Nanna (Sin) in Ur, who came to honor Inanna above all the other gods of the Sumerian pantheon. She was high born and held high positions in government until dislodged by local priests and is the world's oldest known author whose works were written in cuneiform approximately 4300 years ago.

Here are two of her hymns honoring the god Inanna, taken from the anthology Voices of Light described as a book of "spiritual and visionary poems by women from ancient Sumeria to now."

Inanna and the Holy Light

You with your voices of light,
Lady of all the essences
whom heaven and earth love,
temple friend of An,
you wear immense ornaments,
you desire the tiara of the high priestess
whose hand holds the seven essences.
O my lady, guardian of all the great essences,
you have picked them up and hang them
tightly on your breasts.

Moon Goddess Inanna and An

Like a dragon you fill the land with venom.
Like thunder when you roar over the earth,
trees and plants fall before you.
You are a flood descending from a mountain,
O first one
moon goddess Inanna of heaven and earth!
Your fire blows about and drops on our nation.
Lady mounted on a beast,
An gives you qualities, hold commands,
and you decide.
You are in all great rites.
Who can understand you

Here's another one I wrote last week.

juiced

just
a little bitty
poem
is what I need
today
'cause
my battery's
low
and all the tables
by electric
plugs
are taken
by med students
who
probably aren't
doing anything
as important as
me
but that's
life
you know -
oh
what
a pretty girl
just
walked in
dark eyes
big smile
dumb ass
looking
boyfriend
oh well -
but
as i was saying
not a lot of juice
so gotta
hang kinda
loose
and hope
a poem
appears
pretty
soon before
my battery
and your patience
gives out

uh oh
too
late

Mark White is a young poet about whom I could find little information. His poem is from Poetry East and in their very short bio, it only says that he intended to enter the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin in 2007.

This is a longish piece, but it's fun to read.

Of Seven Defenses at Having Thrown Hayden
Carruth Out of My Second Floor Window

    It is something for young artists to bear in mind.
    Voluntary poverty is not such a bad idea.
       - H.C. in "Fragments of Autobiography"

1.
Oh, Master, the skunk-cabbage is blooming along the edges if the
   clear-cuts again here in Long Beach, Washington,
but oh you have deceived me so.

2.
I've tried to study the flora and fauna
out here, but the bristly textured weeds
rising in profusion around my previously abandoned
dark and dank farmhouse look like practically every
bristly textured weed in the color plates
of the field books I bought.
The wood I cut and split - ash? cedar? hemlock? -
only sits and weeps in my Earth Stove,
barely keeping me warm
and not nearly hot enough
to keep away the mold.

3.
I asked my neighbor Bubba
to take a look at my Stihl chainsaw
which has been broken down
since the day a good friend
(though I, too, have enemies
couldn't have done me no worse)
gave it to me. I pulled the condenser,
cleaned the rotor and replaced the plug.
The damn thing still wouldn't spark.
Bubba, who tears apart and rebuilds
his '72 Scout whenever he gets bored
of reruns, said I had completely fiddled it
out of commission. I told him of Old Stan
and the yellow McCulloch you gave him,
but Bubba said burying the Stihl at this point
would only get me a twenty dollar fine if I got caught.

4.
Actually, I have learned the name of one thing out here:
the junco, junco hyemalis, the Executioner Bird,
so named for the black cap
that appears as a hood
over the male's head.
Like street urchins out of Dickens,
they sweep out of the shadows
of their hiding to steal what seed
the wind has blown into the streets.
Bubba says they hoard their food
for the winter, but in the coldest months
their metabolism slows them
to a crawl, their brain stems
begin to die, and they forget
where they've hid the food.
By spring, a new brain has grown back,
and with it the genetic material of the old one,
thus allowing tome to find their stashes again.
Bubba sees the life of the junco
as a metaphor for abused children.

5.
We have out idiots, too, though
they tend to leave the bears alone.
Instead, they drive their new Integras
along the long stretches of peninsula beaches
considered by the state to be a line item
of the Highway Department.
I occasionally meet these people
at the Depot Tavern, a hole-in-the-wall near the beach,
where they down pints of microbrews and complain
about the depth of beach sand while they wait
for Gas'N'Grub to respond to their calls for a tow.
Idiots they may be with their twenty thousand dollar cars
immobile in a few inches of sand,
but at least they have cars that run
and they can afford good beer.

6.
Bubba's full of shit most of the time.

7.
The only god New England ever produced,
and then only sort of, was Larry Bird.
(Maybe JFK, but he was before my time.)
Hayden Carruth, you old displaced Yankee bastard,
I name you here in front of a small but knowing
jury of my peers for what you are: Two stories
above your broken-spined and molding book,
I name you : I name you to my cat
and to the souls of the dozens of sacrificial mice,
virgin and otherwise, he has offered me this winter:
I name you with three dollars of food stamps left
to my name : I name you to the trees
I can't name, and to my meadow whose changes
I've been unable to detect "Later tonight, beneath
the omnipresent and, I suspect, omniscient, cloud-cover
of this sun-forsaken peninsula, three thousand miles away
from my own New England birthplace and home, I'll name you
to the same darkness through which I've often sung
your praises and sung your songs : And I'll name you thusly"
Hayden Carruth, you're a poet, that's all, just a poet.

Here's another of the meditations by Thane Zander that I like so much.

Reflections on Life in Bold Type

In my childhood, I'd go to the river, and skip stones. I'd stand on one bank too, and try and throw a stone across the river. I tried this until one day I succeeded. I didn't need to throw any more, but still had to skip to see if I could break my Father's family record. One day he died and I had no need to chase his record. I have daughters now, and neither have been to the river to skip stones.

Legacy is endearment
the chance to pass down
a recall of ancestry
a play with real life
to counter negative things,
the pace of life
dictated by
the things we do daily.

My brother's in love with his wife
she's a veritable witch
does that make him
Dragon master?
or just a lucky soul,
that's happy with his life,
does it make him greater than I
greater than the cosmos?

I took my family for a short bush walk. The place was a motel/camp called Sapphire Springs. It had to be lucky, my wife's birthstone was Sapphire. We walked for about two hours and crossed little streams (I didn't skip stones) and climbed small hills. We all enjoyed the twitter of wild birds, the patter of feet on undergrowth, the splash of dirty shoes in puddles, the aroma of old forest and trees meant to impress.

I made my bed every night
the same way as I made it I the morning
an attempt to engender order
and regularity,
the sheets crumpled
pillow puffed out
the dust mites crawling.

Sadly I was divorced
I found this enchanting
Me - divorced
ever the careful Father
ever the happy husband
Happy Ever After
shot to pieces by a mental disorder,
I was happy with my life
now I'm sad
and happy
and joyful
but by heck I miss my family.

We made it to the five mile bridge, Sally and I. She a consummate walker, me a doodler, just making the distance. In my youth I would have run that distance in the blink of an eye, but now my youth has deserted me, left me for the decay of oldish age. My running is now in my fingertips, the need to write poetry and short fiction to sate my existence. I made a palindrome up the other day.

O - on
L - last
D - days

and realized if I put any letter at the beginning I change the effect of the words. I liked BOLD – Bloody Oranges Lack Desire. I thought again about going down to the river and to see if I could throw a stone across it. If not, then I'm a kid again, regressing. I'd also be so bold enough to skip stones again, to try and break Dad's record (in my dreams).

From The Outlaw Bible of American poetry, I have this little hard-to-get information by New York avant-garde poet and special editor of the The Evergreen Review Reader, Mike Topp

Rejected Mafia Nicknames

Vanilla
Kitty
Jughead
Senor Wences
Marcel Duchamp
Archilochus
Tony the Logical Positivist
X-15
Gideon
Achilles Fang

Also from The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry I have this piece of daydream by New York poet and novelist John Farris.

Imago

This is what I get: two minutes with you in an elevator. Going
   up was never
so fast - so dizzying - but going down. Imagine if we had gotten
stuck together
between the twenty-third & twenty fourth floors

just once, & we'd
have had to share our lunches while the maintenance men
were called
to unstick us, & after hours, our
emergences from our metal chrysalis like twins - it would have been
difficult to separate, so I would have hoped to join
   you
for another bite of something. This time
I would have your ear. You'd

have needed a hand
getting out
of the elevator. I'd have gladly
given you mine, except the

ride could not have gone more smoothly, gliding without so much
   as
a whisper, down to the lobby,
where you disgorged yourself, indication nothing - not
a scent, not a smile; nothing.

Photo by Rose Cosme

A couple of weeks ago, I met two wonderful photographer. One of the two is Rose Cosme, who I'm very happy to present for the first time on "Here and Now."

Rose, a mid-life bloomer, obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Houston, in May 2006. During her 3 year art program, she says she finally came to realize how she viewed herself and why she got that way. She adds that art has given her the language to verbalize the feelings that she has about herself.

About her unusual subject and source of inspiration, she has this to say:

"I have been obsessively photographing prosthetic pieces for the last four years. My reasons for doing so are interwoven with childhood experiences and the consequences of those experiences. If my images transform what is "ugly" into something of beauty, and I hope they do, it might well be a consequence of having my own sense of wholeness comprised as a child.

"I would like the viewer to look at prosthetics in a new way, one they would not normally have considered. It's not a matter of creating some sort of sympathy or pity for those who have lost limbs. Rather, I would like the viewer to consider issues of otherness, definitions of beauty and all those internalized concepts that are responsible for allowing us to feel whole and complete."

With that, here are a few more of her photographs.

Photo by Rose Cosme

Photo by Rose Cosme

Rose will be joining us here again in future issues with more of her work.

Desperate to write my poem for the day, I came up with this just a couple of days ago after listening to the NPR program, The Infinite Mind.

biological imperatives

the biological
purpose
of a man
is to seek,
find
and
impregnate
available women

male
brains
are configured
to encourage and
support this purpose

women
by contrast
are biologically directed
to attract
men,
employing
whatever wiles
are culturally appropriate
so that they might
produce
and rear offspring

civilization
is the product of
sublimation
of these biological
imperatives
through alternate
modes
of creation

we owe,
in other words,
all we have made
of ourselves, all
our great cities,
all our great inventions
and scientific discoveries,
all our great art and literature
and music
to the inability
of the weak and
undesirable
to
get
lucky
on saturday
night

Jimmy Carter has had an active life since leaving the presidency, doing good works, advocating for peace and justice and publishing a number of books on almost everything, including a couple of books of poetry. This next poem is from Always a Reckoning one of those poetry books. It's a little love poem.

Rosalynn

She'd smile, and birds would feel that they no longer
had to sing, or it may be I failed
to hear their song.

Within a crowd, I'd hope her glance might be
for me, but knew that she was shy, and wished
to be alone.

I'd pay to sit behind her, blind to what
was on the screen, and watch the image flicker
upon her hair.

I'd glow when her diminished voice would clear
my muddled thoughts, like lightning flashing in
a gloomy sky.

The nothing in my soul with her aloof
was changed to foolish fullness when she came
to be with me.

With shyness gone and hair caressed with gray,
her smile still makes the birds forget to sing
and me to hear their song.

It's great to have Marie Gail Stratford back with me this week.

Marie is a freelance writer and dance instructor from Kansas City, Missouri, where she also works for a small computer retailer. Her work has appeared in several online periodicals, including The Loch Raven Review, Blue House, and Poems Niederngasse.

This week, we have this series of short poems from her on a common theme.

Pastels

Heather Gray

wispy clouds
of a gathering storm
reflect ground cover

Petal Pink

tea roses tinkle
against porcelain saucers
as the hostess
serves refreshments

Peach

the sun, a globe reminiscent
of Georgian fruit, approaches
the evening horizon, spreads
a hint of watercolor orange
across the sky

Lemon Yellow

sweet tangy pudding
hides beneath mounds
of meringue

Sea-Foam Green

behind relaxing guests
the pool house tiles sweat
over the jet stream
in the whirlpool

Robin's Egg Blue

the sky drops a tear
onto the pavement
where it chips to reveal
the yolk of a broken promise

Lilac

he halts the borrowed Model A
at the bottom of the lane
to whittle down several
blossom-laden twigs -
a gift for his bride-to-be

Lavender

the legend breathes across time:
flowered stalks that color a corner
of St. Hildegarde's garden
are remembered by guests inhaling
the fragrance sprinkled over their pillows

Snow White

grown out of youth's gray garb
a swan graces
the pond of a city park

Jane Hirshfield, born in 1953 in New York City has received many awards for her work and has published frequently in the best publications featuring poetry. She received her bachelor's degree from Princeton University in the school's first graduating class to include women. She later studied at the San Francisco Zen Center.

Hirshfield has worked as a freelance writer and translator. She has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, and as the Elliston Visiting Poet at the University of Cincinnati. She is currently on the faculty of the Bennington Master of Fine Arts Writing Seminars.

The poem I'm using this week is from her book Of Gravity & Angels, published by the Wesleyan University Press in 1988.

A Different Rising

I reflect, in the bath,
on your penis -
how it floats, lotuslike,
loose-stemmed, a different rising.
And as it hardens, dips:
a long-billed bird, curving for fish.

But mostly we are made
of a heavier stuff,
the slow descent of breast,
foot-arches flattening towards earth,
the hundred ways the body longs for home.
Even those red worlds,
the hybrid dahlias -
despite the bamboo stakes,
the wire,
leaning further groundward with every flower -
with what love or greed or vast indifference
gravity pulls them down.

While n the water bird's throat,
the white, visible pulse of a fish.
Between being and becoming,
turning wildly
as it falls.

Here's another one I wrote this week.

what next

i got my first car
when i was 16 years old,
a 1949 Plymouth coupe
that never went over
45 miles per hour
except once
when i got it
all the way up
to 55 on the highway,
thinking
it was a miracle,
that Oral Roberts
or someone like him
musta heard about me
musta laid hands
on my car when
i wasn't looking
and healed the heap,
just like that,
and i was ready
for the next
tent revival
to come to town,
ready to stand up
and shout
Jesus saves!!
old Plymouths anyway,
which,
for years,
coulda used some
divine
intervention,
but then i looked
in my rearview mirror
and saw
that one of my friends
had snuck up
behind me in his car
and was pushing me

in the almost fifty years
since then
i've owned
(that i can remember)
three more Plymouths
including a '62
with a mother jumping
speed monster of an engine and
a push button transmission
on the dash,
four Chevrolets,
including a '49 fastback
and a pickup,
two Fords,
a Mustang
and a Thunderbird,
oh, love of my life,
a Nash Rambler station wagon,
a Volvo, the first
Honda Civic imported
to the United States,
a '56 Olds 98, three
Cadillacs, including a '52,
three Lincoln Town Cars,
a Mitsubitsi pickup,
an '86 Pointiac station wagon,
which had been in a fire
i didn't know about until
after i bought it (from my brother),
a Datsun station wagon,
a Pontiac Le Mans,
and, among others
i can't remember
right now,
four Toyotas, including
the mini SUV i just bought
which has one entirely
unique feature not possessed
by any of the other cars
i ever owned, a lack
of something, actually,
that i didn't notice
until i was driving home
this afternoon

it is a 2008
Toyota
Rav4
and it doesn't have
an ashtray in it

anywhere

as a 40-year smoker
who started at 12
and quit 12 years ago,
an automobile
without an ashtray
is a concept
that grows and grows
in mind-boggleisity
the more i think
about it

what's next?

a black president?

a female president?

i'm beginning to think
it might happen

Tony Hoagland, who I had never heard of when I started "Here and Now," has become one of my favorite poets. I picked up his book donkey gospel blind during one of my Half-Priced Books sweeps. I don't remember what else I bought that day, but Hoagland's has been the most fun.

His first book, Sweet Ruin won the Brittingham Prize if Poetry and the Zacharis Award from Ploughshares at Emerson College. This book, donkey gospel won the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets in 1997. He currently teaches at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

Memory As a Hearing Aid

Somewhere, someone is asking a question,
and I stand squinting at the classroom
with one hand cupped behind my ear,
trying to figure out where that voice is coming from.

I might be already an old man,
attempting to recall the night
his hearing got misplaced,
front-row-center at a battle of the bands,

where a lot of leather-clad, second -rate musicians,
amped up to dinosaur proportions,
test drove their equipment through our ears.
Each time the drummer threw a tantrum,

the guitarist whirled and sprayed us with machine-gun riffs,
as if they wished that the could knock us
quite literally dead.
We called that fun in 1970,

when we weren't sure our lives were worth surviving.
I'm here to tell you that they were,
and many of us did, despite ourselves,
though the road from there to here

is paved with dead brain cells,
parents shocked to silence,
and squad cars painting the whole neighborhood
the quaking tint and texture of red jelly.

Friends, we should have postmarks on our foreheads
to show where we have been;
we should have pointed ears, or polka-dotted skin
to show what we were thinking

when we hot-rodded over God's front lawn,
and Death kept blinking.
But here I stand, an average-looking man
staring at a room

where someone blond in braids
with a beautiful belief in answers
is still asking questions.

Through the silence in my dead ear,
I can almost the the future whisper
to the past; it says that this is not a test
and everyone passes.

It's always great to see what our friend Alice Folkart is doing. Here, Alice, has gone minimalist on us with a series of terrific mini-poems.

I love this stuff.

Quintet

silver light
sun is gone
meatloaf next door

Sunday
afternoon
emptiness

From
under the bed
cat rules

It may be
cool enough
to walk to the beach

Broccoli tonight
why can't we have
ice cream instead?

I visited Kabul in 1969 on a three day pass from my duty station on the frontier of Pakistan, with in sight of the Hindu Kush. While there, I bought two books, a copy of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book and The Afghans, a small book by professor Mohammed Ali first published in 1958, an effort, according to the professor, to introduce the "customs nd manners" of the 5,000 year old Afghan culture, "a culture as old as the Assyrians."

One of the subjects covered was Afghan literature, including it's traditional poetry. This is a love poem from the book.

O the flowers are lined in thy hair,
And they eyes, O my beloved,
Are like the flowers of narcissus.
O my priceless rare treasure,
O my life, O my soul,
O my little mountain poppy,
Thy art my morning star,
Thy laughter is the waterfall:
Thy whispers the evening breeze.
O my branch of apple-blossom,
Who spilt moonlight in thine eyes?
O my little butterfly,
Come and rest in my affectionate heart.

My great fear right now is that, as a result of our Glorious Leader's Iraq obsessions we may, for the second time, desert the good people of Afghanistan after raising their hopes. It was a beautiful country in 1969 and has been through ten kinds of hell since. After promising much, again, (see Charlie Wilson's War if you haven't - instructional as well as hilarious) I am very afraid they will see our backs before we have finished what we started.

I wrote this on Earth Day, as you might guess.

I usually like to end on a light note, but there's nothing light about matricide.

on the day after Earth Day our heritage is reviewed

every acre of land
on the planet
has been stolen
and stolen
and stolen again
many times stolen
over the hundred thousand
years or so
we the people
have pushed to dominate
the wild given to us
by the mother -
stolen by someone
from someone
then lost it to someone else,
back to that original theft,
the garden razed
for our pleasure and profit

we are all beneficiaries
of someone else's loss and pain
even as we continue
to impose loss and pain today,
all victims
of the nature of our beast,
our insatiable appetite
that defines us
will one day devour us, too

the time of our accounting
will come
and the payment found due
most severe

The sun rises; the sun sets, a time for beginning and a time to end. And time now to be ending for this week.

Until next issue, enjoy this first full week of May before it gets too hot to drive with the top down, and, as the wind blows through your hair, please remember, all the material presented in this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog, itself, was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.

4 Comments:

at 1:18 PM Alice Folkart said...

Super issue, Allen. Thanks for introducing us to so many poets we might never have seen without you, especially Mark White - I now want to find out what he's up to now, that 7 Defenses is spectacular. But then, the Carter love poem, and I generally don't like love poetry at all, touched my soul, revealed to me the man that I thought he was. Opened the relationship, showed me how a little distance can be the closest closeness. Rose Cosme's photos are astonishing. I cover my eyes, and then peek through my fingers. And, that photo of a city downtown-no signs - except for one small one on a light-colored building lower right center, no signs on top of buildings. No signs painted on the sides of buildings. Amazing. And the city, tall buildings, busy streets, fading off into trees - all flat. Where is this? Loved the Hoagland hearing aid poem-what a true and quirky voice he has. Poem made me feel as if I were in his head, lodged right behind his ear - his good ear. Laughed over the rejected Mafia nicknames and wanted to make my own list - a good poem always spurs poets who read it to want to 'carry on the work.' Of course, I loved Juiced and the Car poem deeply, those deserve a wider audience. And of course, enjoyed Thane Zander and Marie Gail's offerings, and Jane Hirshfield - if I could, I'd go and study with her. After reading this issue I said to myself, but I don't really like poetry, do I?' And, I had to answer, "Oh yes, yes, I do!" If I were a teacher, I'd use this stuff in my classes - it's all so real, even the Tao, maybe, most especially the Tao. And, by the way, the Tao excerpts following your poem, were just right. Seemed to amplify what you seemed to be feeling - especially that since no one asks any questions anymore, you don't know much of anything - that is an interesting conundrum - philosophy to be masticated!

Thanks for including my work. I am honored.

Alice

at 12:11 AM prabha said...

There is a saying that seeing is believing. In the account of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, this was key. Why? Because the followers of Baal were of the same spirit as their leaders, they followed their "heads." Since Ahab and Jezebel were unable to recognize the one true God, so were they. Elijah knew the best way to reveal the one true God was through a tangible experience. It was obvious that the drought had taught them nothing! They needed an experience.

After hours of the prophets of Baal failing miserably to prove the existence of Baal, Elijah upped the ante. He called for the most coveted resource, water (remember there had been a three year drought) which he used to drench the altar and sacrifice he was offering to God. Then he laid it out, "Where is the Lord God of Elijah!" Basically he said, "Show 'em who's boss Lord!" And immediately the fire of God fell and burned up the offering, the wood, the stones, the dirt, and even the water in the trench. All the people saw it happen and fell on their faces in awed worship, exclaiming, "God is the true God! God is the true God!"
-----------------------
tony

Drug Intervention North Dakota

at 5:14 AM Anonymous said...

Hi all,
I just want to say that I like poetry and specially M. Whites. I think poems are based on our real life stories.Poems can touch our soul and I can read and write poems. Thank you so much for sharing.
Stella
Drug Intervention Oklahoma

at 8:15 AM Shekhar said...

Hi guys,
I appreciate the concern which is been rose. The things need to be sorted out because it’s not about the individual but it can be with everyone. Thanks
NYK
Drug Intervention Nebraska

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