|
|
|
|
|
Snow Day
Saturday, December 05, 2009 IV.12.2. I am sitting here by the window, waiting to watch it snow, which it's not going to do despite four days of prognosticator promises. Feeling bereft, I turn to the only snow available to me, pictures from trips to Colorado this year and last. I will share those photos with you in this issue. Here are those on the duty roster for this unsnowy day. i am not watching it snow Leroy Searle Turkey Shooting on Mount Monadnoc Sheep Elizabeth San Juan Moths Joe Mockus Last Day in Idaho Me it's a left-right world we live in Stan Crawford How I see it Observed in Belize Charles Levenstein Sabbath Gloria Fuertes To Have a Child These Days The Birds Nest in My Arms Me 300 miles, south Grace Paley Stanzas: Old Age and the Conventions of Retirement Have Driven My Friends from the Work They &nbso; Love On Mother's Day Charles Levenstein Walker Brigit Pegeen Kelly Arguments of Everlasting Me if you see Alvin, tell him i'm looking for him Sudeep Sen Durga Puja Charles Levenstein Window of Desire Pat Mora Los Ancianos Mi Tierra Desert Woman Me Sunday quiet William Matthews The Blues Charles Levenstein Bees Me winter slips in at midnight Ray Gonzalez Three Snakes, Strawberry Canyon, Berkeley Me before i forget again  I start with this piece, written when the snow did not come as promised. i am not watching it snow so the plan was i'd be sitting here near downtown San Antonio on the corner of San Pedro & Mistletoe looking out the great windows at Timo's Coffee House watching it snow right here in near downtown San Antonio but it is not to be for Houston New Orleans on the bayous but with no soul and no music and too many people too many rich people in $10,00 suits and $5,000 boots and too many poor people living three blocks on the wrong side of the edge of desperation Houston the city of the big suck has sucked up all my snow and how like them that is (and lest you be suspicious Mistletoe is the true name of the cross street upon the corner of which today's drama did not transpire promise)  I hit the mother lode at my used bookstore last week, a copy of Poetry, February, 1973, and a copy of the Berkeley Poetry Review, Winter, 1977. They cost me $1.98 each, more than they sold for when new and who said there wasn't any money to be made in poetry. I love my used bookstore. I following my "find," here two poems from Poetry (February, 1973) by Leroy Searle, making his first appearance in the journal. In 1973, he was assistant professor of English at the University of Rochester. He is currently a professor at the University of Washington. Turkey Shooting on Mount Monadnoc I saw all the signs: "Turkey Shoot on Sunday," Well now, Come in your pickup; drive right to the village green and load your shotgun. Bluster of feathers, gobbling in a wire cage, neck-tics gesturing the hape of space. I took my turkey, a Swift's Premium Butterball weighing eighteen pounds. Hung it in a tree where it swayed there, peaceful as a moon of fat, glistening like a great carbuncle. And I sat down calmly and shot it several times. It seemed like the thing to do. Sheep As they would come, they lit up the distance like rocks at dusk; the low bagpipe of their voices filling the afternoon, flowing over its brim into the center of the field. Sheep, with a common failing, they knew each other and that was all: perfect victims that the dogs could tease, as helpless, one by one, as clouds. Seeing them at sundown, tight against each other like some freezing arctic infantry, they move, a single beast, looking foolish as they plunge against the dark, against the imperfect scent of wolves, shipping them to run. They seem demented in their following, slaves to a law invisible to all but them, going over waterfalls in its service, dead in canyons at the foot of cliffs. Dead sheep: voiceless, inexplicable to men who never saw their priesthood and devotions; saw how passionate dumb beasts can be, saving the appearances, fearing the teeth and claws of the active, silent blank. Next, I turn to two poets from Winter 1977 issue of the Berkeley Poetry Review. The first poet is Elizabeth San Juan. The Review doesn't include any information on contributors. I was also unable to find any google-reference to the poet, so all I have to represent her is her poem. Moths say yes to the moths. they wish to speak to you now, while it's quiet, dark, while they see the glow of your eyes in the grass and the dew beaded on your bangs and lashes. stand up to meet them. you know you can't fly so let them see a bodyprint of crushed grass, the film of green on your skin, show them the magic that wets their wings The second poet from the review is Joe Mockus. I found reference to Mockus as contributor to the summer, 2008 issue of r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal, with a note that, as of that issue he assumes the duty of poetry editor for the journal. He is a criminal defense attorney, rock and roll drummer, and, as a poet, has been published extensively in the small press. Last Day in Idaho Lodgepole pine cracked up the dawn the day I drove Keith's pickup truck off the road and down the cliff, leaping from the cab into blackberry, wild rose, watching it bounce like a dream, rolling helplessly into the cherry trees snapping their sapling necks. Stinging fingers gripping thorns, body stiff biting against the dire and quickly the deep quiet: I watched the sun's light pink behind the lodgepole pine, trying to awake, sensing the hillside not the place to turn back to sleep.  The next piece form me this week is from one of those "my how interesting" stories you run into in the New York Times Science Section. it's a left-right world we live in it's a left-right world we live in even snails have their differing orientations (amphidromus perversus snails to be exact) the difference is in the shell and on which side is located the little opening from which citizen snail can poke out his little head to survey the world around him - snails of the right have their opening on the right while snails of the left are open on the left - you can certainly understand how this fundamental difference in orientation governs how the lefties and righties view the world they slowly traverse, creating, no doubt, corresponding differences in the most basic snail philosophies, so basic are their differences, marriage between a lefty and a righty is fundamentally and genetically not possible - that does not mean they are asexual creatures, both enjoying mutually satisfying sex with their own kind at a moment's notice this is especially true of the righties who, in addition to their sack and plunder philosophies, are physiologically better equipped for the act being that their right-wing orientation allows their genitals to touch and touch again while making snail whoopee while, lefties, on the other hand would usually rather talk, mostly about boring things like political philosophies or the plight of the poor in southern Guatemala, with the additional handicap of non-touching genitals due to their lefty orientation meaning the only lefties who are able to reproduce are those with extensive study of yoga there is some justice in the world, however, that keeps the lefties from being overrun by righties, that justice comes in the form of snail-eating snakes with asymmetric jawbones that make a fine feast of righties while making the lefties impossible to swallow the latin name for this genus of snail-eating snakes is keitholbermannus  Inprint is a nationally recognized nonprofit literary arts foundation in Houston. The organization conducts workshops and other literary events and, occasionally sponsors publication of poetry collections, such as Five Inprint Poets, published by Mutabilis Press in 2003. I have chosen Stan Crawford to feature this, one of the five poets included in the book. I will return to other poets in the book in weeks to come. Crawford is an attorney who practices civil trial law in Houston. He has a B.A. from Brown University, where he studied poetry, and a J.D. from the University of Texas. His history as a poet is much like mine. Both of us wrote when we were younger than quit for many years, 30 years in my case and 25 in his, returning to poetry later in life when other obligations began to consume less of our life and time. How I See It This morning's light holds its shoes and tip-toes past the windows. Soon recycling trucks will come for everything we go through twice. Three lemons on the kitchen counter keep a quiet vigil. Someone spilled gin and a little tonic on the only map. We lit midnight cigarettes. Acrid lacy smoke. That raccoon who fled up our pecan tree never came back down. By five A.M. your eyes went out like fireflies. I love you, off and on. Observed in Belize You saw him first beside the sandy track puddled with rain white as cafe au lait - a blue crab still as an exposed root, one claw held high, the pincer torn, his gray meat open to the wind. Then I looked at starlight metastasized how many centuries ago, give a familiar name; Invader of Shallows, Breathing Bone, Crab Nebula. Muzzy pricks of light over restless palm trees shadowing your crab. Let us close our eyes and dream one eye acute enough to see particular each instant lit by stars exploded years ago, kind enough to capture with a glance the broken crab in shadow by the tin-roofed shack dispensing Chinese takeaway.  This week I am featuring poems from our friend Charles Levenstein. Chuck is professor emeritus of work environment at University of Massachusetts - Lowell. He has published his poetry widely in e-zines and currently has two books available, Poems of World War III and Animal Vegetable. This is the first of his poems you will read this week. Sabbath Such comfort, the music of bathwater falling, the other household sounds are stilled, even the cats have stopped their scrambling, a cup of evening ease is filled. In my mind, you are surrounded by bubbles, Carib sponges and exotic soaps, the scent of flowers seeps under the door, the mystery of the bath gentle, hopeful. A wonderful day, a sabbath of dreams, we have taken our time together, enjoyed the sun, we are home now, traveled enough, home now, water falling, preparing for sleep.  Next, I have two poems from Spanish poet Gloria Fuertes. The poems are from The Defiant Muse, published by The Feminist Press at the City University of New York in 1986. Subtitled "Hispanic Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present," the collection is a bilingual anthology featuring the original Spanish text and the English translations on facing pages. The poems I'm using this week were translated by Kate Flores. Fuertes, born in 1917, summarized her life in these words: "I began to write before I learned to read. I recited my first poems to the kids in my neighborhood. Then I was taken to Radio Espana to recite my poems and later they took us all to war, which turned me into a pacifist and I went on writing for children." Fuertes died in 1998. To Have a Child These Days To have a child these days... only to deliver him into the hands of men - if at least it were to deliver him into the hands of God - to have a child these days, only to deliver him into the mouth of a cannon, to abandon him at Sorrow's door, to cast him into the waters of confusion. To have a child these days, only to have him suffer hunger and sun, and not listen to my voice, only to earn the catechism later. To have a child these days, only to have him blinded with passion or victim of persecution, only to witness destruction. To have a child these days... I carry him around inside me, where even he himself cannot hurt him, where only God can make him die. The Birds Nest in My Arms The birds nest in my arms, on my shoulders, behind my knees, between my breasts I have quails, the birds think I'm a tree. The swans think I'm a fountain, they all come down and drink when I talk. The sheep nudge me going by, and the sparrows ear from my fingers; the ants think I'm the earth and men think I am nothing.  It was a pretty normal Thanksgiving, seeing everyone we usually see. 300 miles, south 300 miles, south - we go every Thanksgiving, almost to the banks of the Rio Grande 300 miles, south, the story of my life in reverse the story of the 45 years since my 20th birthday, moving north, always, pushing north always, looking to find the life i grew up imagining, passing with almost every mile markers of my life 300 miles, south, turkey dinner, some time with family, and today, the day after, a visit to the cemetery where my parents are buried to where time slips away mostly unnoticed this year, for the first time, the years were heavy on my mind as i looked at the gravestone, looked at the dates and measured them from now my father, died in 1980, 30 years ago, how is that possible, and my mother, 11, with her smile still so fresh, 11 years in the ground time passes and memories fade, the big ones mostly lost, the little memories, the flashes of a moment, are the ones that hang on, like it seems they always will i do not remember the sound of my father's voice, but i can see him, in lost moments as clear as if it was this very day his face in the sunshine, his smile, him, at the kitchen table at night, with crackers and the stinky cheese he loved, the tears, one time near the end, as he worried about my mother after he was gone, and his reserve, his reticence when it came to displays of emotion, of affection (not a hugger was he, acknowledgment with a nod was the most i could expect from him, a deficiency i inherited and overcame with my own son when he was young, finding now as we're both older my father's distance becoming, against my wishes, my own) and my mother, later gone, still fresher in my mind, finding now, like every man when they finally get old enough to understand the true things, recognizing the hard truth and the guilt we earned for never seeing how our mothers were owed much more than we ever paid our unpaid debt, like the so many other things in life we learn to late then, today, going home 300 miles, north, leaving behind many things, including some i still don't know i lost  The next poems are by Grace Paley, from her book Leaning Forward, published by Granite Press of Penobscot, Maine, in 1985. In her short bio at the back of the book, Paley says of herself that she was born in 1922 and has lived in New York City most of her life, living with her husband, writer Robert Nichols, in Vermont part of the year. She calls herself a combative pacifist and a cooperative anarchist and says she has always been active in anti-war and feminist causes. At the time this book was published, she taught at Sarah Lawrence and City College. According to her Wikipedia entry, Paley died in 2007. Stanzas: Old Age and the Conventions of Retirement Have Driven My Friends from the Work They Love 1 When she was young she wanted to sing in a bank a song about money the lyrics of gold was her song she dressed for it 2 She did good. She stood up like a planted flower among yellow weeds turning to please the sun they were all shiny it was known she was planted 3 No metaphor reinvents the job of the nurture of children except to muddy or mock. 4 the job of hunting of shooting in hunting season of standing alone in the woods of being an Indian 5 The municipal center the morning of anger the centrifugal dream her voice flung out on plates of rage then they were put in a paper sack she was sent to the china closet and never came back 6 every day he went out, forsaking wife and child with his black bag he accompanied sewed our lives to death 7 One day at work he cried I am in my full powers suddenly he was blind with slaps of time and aperture returned dear friend we asked what do you see he said I only see what has been seen already One day when I was a child long ago Mr. Long Ago spoke up in school He said Oh children you must roll your r's no no not on your tongue little girl IN YOUR THROAT there is nothing so beautiful as r rolled in the throat of a French woman no woman more beautiful he said looking back at beauty On Mother's Day I went out walking in the old neighborhood Look! more trees on the block forget-me-nots all around them ivy lantana shining and geraniums in the window Twenty years ago it was believed that the roots of trees would insert themselves into gas lines the fall poisoned on houses and children or tap the city's water pipes or starved from nitrogen obstruct the sewers In those days in the afternoon I floated by ferry to Hoboken or Staten Island then pushed the babies in their carriages along the river wall observing Manhattan See Manhattan I cried New York! even at sunset it doesn't shine but stands in fire charcoal to the waist But this Sunday afternoon on Mother's Day I walked west and came to Hudson Street tri-colored flags were flying over old oak furniture for sale brass bedsteads copper pots and vases by the pound from India Suddenly before my eyes twenty-two transvestites in joyous parade stuffed pillows under their lovely gowns and entered a restaurant under a sign which said All Pregnant Mothers Free I watched them place napkins over their bellies and accept coffee and zabaglione I am especially open to sadness and hilarity since my father died as a child one week ago in his ninetieth year  >Now here back again is Charles Levenstein with his second poem for the week. Walker Starts his day in a usual way. Barred from salt, measures calories, surreptitiously jiggles his belly to check the progress of a new diet regime, no discernible effect although an already sour disposition is getting worse. He throws out the heavy cream; in the refrigerator so long, won't pour down the drain. No bagels left, so toasts German pumpernickel. Maybe he'll have a pickle for the strength he'll need to circumnavigate the reservoir on a cold shiny morning. Suppose I live forever, he thinks, without the taste of chocolate, the delight of opening a pie, melting vanilla ice cream on a cobbler, suppose I never look a potato in the face again. Pulls on ragged sweat pants, itchy socks and sneakers, dons polar fleece over an old peace t-shirt, decides to wear the woolen watch cap that makes him look like a thug, or a fat old slug with delusions. Walks along the muddy path, he's passed by sturdy youth of the rugby team, golden girls of track zip by, only the ancient Vietnamese pushing the stolen supermarket cart moves more slowly than he who pursues immortality.  My next poem is by Brigit Pegeen Kelly from her book Song, published in 1995 by BOA Editions Ltd. The book was the 1994 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets. Kelly was born in Palo Alto, California in 1951. Winner of numerous literary prizes, including being a Pulitzer finalist, she has taught at the University of California at Irvine, Purdue University, and Warren Wilson College, as well as numerous writers' conferences in the United States and Ireland. In 2002 the University of Illinois awarded her both humanities and campus-wide awards for excellence in teaching. She is currently a professor of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Arguments of Everlasting My mother gathers gladiolas: the little tubes shout and clamor: a poppling of unstoppled laughter: the guileless leaps and quiet plosives of the fountain when it is working: when mechanics and meaning are flush and untroubled. Not like my brother's stammer: speech and its edicts broken by that intruder between tongue and tooth: something winged: of insect color. My mother gathers gladiolas. The gladness is fractured. As when the globe with its thousand mirrors cracked the light. How it hoarded sight: all the stolen perspectives and the show of light they shot around us: so that down the dark hall the ghosts danced with us: down the dark hall the broken angels. What keeps the grass from slipping? The steep grass? Like my brother it imitates the; stone's arrest: this done this done and nothing doing. In the face of the wind it plants its foot and fights its own going: a traveling line of adamance. My mother the doves are in full cry this morning. The leaves are heavy with silken grieving: soft packages of sorrow: cacophonies of sighing. It is a pretty thing, a pretty thing, the light lathered like feathers, and the day's spendage beginning. The flag unspools its furl above the school, pulsing out and our: a wake of color in the air: blue: red: blue: and how white the sky is. How white.  Barely December, and I'm already going crazy from Christmas. if you see Alvin, tell him i'm looking for him ok call me a scrooge if you must but the next chipmunk i see, whether he's named Alvin or not is gonna be one dead rodent and it's not even December yet and Perry Como and Andy Williams and Dean Martin were pretty darn good lounge singers but do we really need to drown in their too-sweet Christmas schtick every year i mean if it wasn't for Christmas these guys would be on the radio maybe once every forty-seven years and then only on PBS pledge week and Bing Crosby? another candidate for pledge week I mean, Der Bingle and Bob Hope were lifetime friends but even Hope would throw his golf club at the radio at the 63rd playing of "White Christmas" it really frosts my eggnog that i have to listen to this stuff for a month and a half every year and even worse during that whole month and a half they almost never play the good stuff - like "Grandma Got Runned Over By A Raindeer" for example i haven't heard that classic even once so far this year  Here's a poem by Sudeep Sen from his book Postmarked India, published by HarperCollins in 1997. Sen is a widely recognized and widely traveled poet (my copy of his book is autographed and presented to its buyer at a reading he did in San Antonio in 2000). He was born in New Delhi in 1964 and lives now in London and New Delhi. His education took place in India, the United Kingdom and the United States. He studied at St. Columba's School and read literature at Delhi University. As an Inlaks Scholar, he received a master's degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York. Sen was an international poet-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh, and a visiting scholar at Harvard University. Durga Puja Today/man will triumph over gods T Khair, "My India Diary IV" 1 Through the swirling fumes of the scented incense, the arati echoes as the priest hums, and the Chandipaat chants in a scriptural rhyme. From the bamboo pedestal she stares through her painted pupils, frescoed and tinseled, the three-eyed pratima of the Goddess Durga - resplendent, statuesque, armed with ten hands on her roaring chariot, her glazed clay demeanor, poised, even after the mythic bloody war. Every year after the monsoons diminish she comes partly to perform heriot, high from Himalayan palace sculpted in fresh snow and the open sky, to the earth where she once belonged, her home with the voice of her parents and people, reminiscing the quadrangle of her playful days. Today and the next four days, we worship and rejoice at her presence and her victory over Ashoor, the demon, half-emerging from the deceptive black buffalo, as she spears his green body crimson in a cathartic end to the Crusades. These five days are hers, exclusively hers, even her children - Saraswati, Lakshmi, Ganessh, and Kartik - fade in her presence. For five days we spark and light, sing and dance, laugh and cheer, untutored, uninhibited, unlike the rest of the year. 2 The dashami came even before we realised the baribe was graced. After the mid-afternoon rites, the procession began - Durga's face totally effaced, red and white with sindoor and sandesh, or perhaps it is the residual stains of the fervent worship; her body weary, her coat of arms mutilated, often dismembered, as she sits on open lorries, while he young men and women dance the continuous drum beats, possessed - and Durga, bewildered, now one of the multitude - a rare frozen moment when the gods look human. Though it may seem today that men will triumph over the goddess, that her immersion at the ghats with mortal hands seem real, it is, like some myths, only an illusion of victory and sadness, as she mingles, melting with the great silting Ganga, her soft clay body browning the greenish-blue bhaashaan waters, the damp stripping her flesh bare, as we hear the receding din of the last offerings, see the muted wick's faint glimmer of the floating earthen lamps, and the moonlight's occasional flicker on the damp strewn petals, as she wades her way upstream miraculously through the cantilever of debris, dirt, sewage and homage of many unknown towns and villages, back to the pristine snow-crowned peaks, where triad incarnate Shiva welcomes her home in an unusual dance of life; while we, on the earth, await her return the following year, perhaps to celebrate, perhaps to pray, perhaps to forget the life around, but perhaps to believe that really, without fear, the life force lives, that the celestial cycles still exist just as Durga visits, once every year, ceaselessly,. just as, at the close of every season, she whispers from the heavens, "Akhone aami aashi" - that I'll return once again - Shashti, Shaptami, Ashtami, Nobami, Dashami...Shashti, Shaptami, Ashtami, Nobami, Dashami.  Here's a third poem by our friend Charles Levenstein. Window of Desire If you sit in the same place each morning, The blind cat snoozing on a leather hassock, The wild one prowling for Cinderella moths, Seasons walk by, slowly enough To document colors and preeminent wildlife, The urban skunk ever present, Squirrels from fat to lean and back again, Sparrows and starlings, songbirds and cranks, Until winter, a time for theory, not practice. We migrate then with more ambitious fowl, Find a beach where mango daiquiris are served And a pile of novels consumed without interruption; Or we remain at this window of speculation, Watch endless snow cover our mistakes, Contemplate the dimming landscape of desire.  Pat Mora was born El Paso in 1942. She taught at the University of New Mexico as an distinguished visiting professor. She also was a museum director and consultant for US-Mexico youth exchanges. She's received two degrees. She got a BA from Texas Western College in 1963 and got an MA from the University of Texas, El Paso in 1967. The next several short poems are from her book, Borders, winner of the Southwest Book Award, published by Arte Publico Press at the University of Houston in 1986. Los Ancianos They hold hands as they walk with slow steps. Careful together they cross the plaza both slightly stooped, bodies returning to the land, he in faded khaki and straw hat, she wrapped in soft clothes, black robozo round her head and shoulders. Tourists in halter tops and shorts pose by flame trees and fountains, but the old couple walks step by step on the edge. Even in the heat, only their wrinkled hands and faces show. They know of moving through a cloud at their own pace. I watch him help her off the curb and I smell love like dried flowers, old love of holding hands with one man for fifty years. Mi Tierra Men wonder why I remove my shoes. They think it's the high heels, but I kick off sandals too, press my soles closer to your hot, dry skin feel you move up my arms, through me and into the world through me, but in me, in me. Desert Women Desert women know about survival. Fierce heat and cold have burned and thickened our skin. Like cactus we've learned to hoard, to sprout deep roots, to seem asleep, yet wake at the scent of softness in the air, to hide pain and loss by silence, no branches wail or whisper our sand songs safe behind our thorns. Don't be deceived. When we bloom, we stun.  No such thing as a "day of rest" anymore. But you can get a little feel for what is used to be like early Sunday mornings. Sunday quiet things to do today but i'm not ready to start yet enjoying this quiet Sunday morning a good breakfast a cup of thick black coffee and through the windows the beginning day at just that point of sunrise when the streetlights begin to flicker off the traffic on I-10 in Sunday quiet a few people early-risers like me and the truckers the never-stop truckers headed west on I-10 El Paso and all points west to the Pacific as all else is still sky overcast with a promise of rain and the smallest flicker of movement in the oak trees i am an oak enjoying the smallest flicker of movement while i can knowing Sunday is a temporary state of mind soon broken for still the storm is coming  Here's a poem by William Matthews, from his book Blues If You Want. published by Houghton Mifflin in 1989. Matthews was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on November 11, 1942. He earned a B.A. from Yale and an M.A. from the University of North Carolina. During his lifetime he published eleven books of poetry and a book of essays, winning the National Book Critics Award as well as being finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He served as president of Associated Writing Programs and of the Poetry Society of America, and as a member and chair of the Literature Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. He received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Ingram Merrill foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, and in April 1997 he was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize. He taught at several schools, including Wells College, Cornell University, the University of Colorado, and the University of Washington. At the time of his death in 1997, he was a professor of English and director of the creative writing program at New York's City College. The Blues What did I think, a storm clutching a clarinet and boarding a downtown bus, headed for lessons? I had pieces to learn by heart, but at twelve you think the heart and memory are different. "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," the Queen remarked. Alice in Wonderland. Although I knew the way music can frill a room, even with loneliness, which is of course a kind of company. I could swelter through an August afternoon - torpor rising from the river - and listen to J. J. Johnson and Stan Getz braid variations on "My Funny Valentine," and feel there in the room with me the force and weight of what I couldn't say. What's an emotion anyhow? Lassitude and sweat lay all around me like a stubble field, it was so hot and listless, but I was quick and furtive like a fox who has thirty miles a day metabolism to burn off as ordinary business. I had become me, after all, the bare eloquence of the becalmed, the plain speech of the leafless tree. I had the cunning of my body and a few bars - they were enough - of music. Looking back, it almost seems as though I could remember - but this can't be; how could I bear it? - the future toward which I'd clatter with that boy tied like a bell around my throat, a brave man and a coward both, to break and break my metronomic heart and just enough to learn to love the blues.  Now, one last one from Charles Levenstein Bees Maintaining this hive, an enterprise started as divine joke or, at most, an explosion of interest in the otherwise dreary void, requires more of my time and less of hers, she seems to have lost interest, preferring hard bodies or growing minds to an old honey - Possibly standards have risen, in the beginning, "dirty" was without substance, but with germ theory and profit centers, leaving well enough alone won't do. Perhaps we/I have been dropped off in a distant suburb, too much bother, loving care of an untrainable, slothful swarm, best returned to the no-kill pound which is where I find myself considering honey in a superannuated apiary.  Like everyone native to a warmer climate, we get a little bit of what might be winter and go overboard with our response to it. winter slips in at midnight a cold, damp day and people are out in the streets with their polar bear coats braving the elements most people would say it's not really that cold but we're not used to it and usually overreact when the first cold snap slips in at midnight and it makes for an exciting morning everybody hugging themselves under their dead-of-winter hats, stomping their feet on street corners how 'bout this weather they say as the north wind blows leaves finally give evidence of loosing their grip on the trees and by tomorrow gone leaving stark branch shadows on the sidewalks under tomorrow's winter sun meanwhile everyone wants to drink their coffee by the window watch this cold-slow day as it passes  Now I have a poem by Ray Gonzalez from the anthology From Totems to Hip-Hop, edited by Ishmael Reed. The book was published by Thunder's Mouth Press in 2003. Gonzalez was born in El Paso and has received many awards for his poetry, essays, short stories and editing. He has taught at various universities, including the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota. Three Snakes, Strawberry Canyon, Berkeley The Rattlesnake We really didn't see it, but the guy walking ahead of us said it struck and missed him. He pointed to the tall grass. "If you get closer, you can see its eyes." We looked, but couldn't see it and kept walking. I thought of the rattlers I killed as a boy, back home in Texas, the next of six baby rattlers we found in the yard, my mother insisting I cut their heads off with a shovel, saying the babies were more lethal because they could fill you with venom, and not know when to pull back like adult snakes. I recalled how I killed them and regret it still, and wanted this rattler to bite the hiker so I could forget his bravery, his wonder. The Garter Snake It looked like an overgrown worm, tiny and quick as it flashed across the trail, its sidewinding motion leaving marks in the dirt. As we noticed it, we forgot what we said about poetry, how those things vanish, then reappear before us, how we admit black and green bands of the garter snake are the same colors we keep missing each time we try to write something. The Gopher Snake We found it sleeping in the middle of the trail. It didn't move, but glistened as we approached, but I knew it wasn’t the rattler that haunts my footsteps. The snake looked like a giant slug, a slow, wet creature that sunned itself so it could dissolve into the ground. Suddenly, we realized it was good luck to have snakes cross our path like the unknown pulses in the earth that traveled underground, ahead of us, all the way to the bottom of the surprising, moving canyon.  I end this week with this little absent-minded love poem. before i forget again reading about hiking down the Grand Canyon in winter - remembering again of all the things i have waited too long to do which reminds me before i forget again to say i love you  That's it for this week. Just a couple more weeks before the fat guy comes (no, not me, the other fat guy). Until then, remember, he's making a list and checking it twice (no, not Dick Cheney, the other list-keeper). All the material presented in this blog remains the property of its creators. As owner and producer of the blog I declare any of that made exclusively by me to open to whoever wants it, so long as, if used, it be properly credited to me...allen itz. |
||||
|
||||
| Archives May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 |
||||
|
||||
| Links Loch Raven Review Mindfire Renewed Holy Groove Records Tryst Poems Niederngasse BlazeVOX Eclectica Michaela Gabriel's In.Visible.Ink zafusy The Blogging Poet Poetsarus.Com Wild Poetry Forum Blueline Poetry Forum The Writer's Block Poetry Forum The Word Distillery Poetry Forum Gary Blankenship The Hiss Quarterly Thunder In Winter, Snow In Summer Lawrence Trujillo Artsite Arlene Ang The Comstock Review Thane Zander Pitching Pennies The Rain In My Purse Dave Ruslander S. Thomas Summers Clif Keller's Music Vienna's Gallery Shawn Nacona Stroud Beau Blue Downside up Dan Cuddy Christine Kiefer David Anthony Layman Lyric Scott Acheson Christopher George James Lineberger Joanna M. Weston Desert Moon Review Octopus Beak Inc. Wrong Planet...Right Universe Poetry and Poets in Rags Teresa White Camroc Press Review The Angry Poet |
Post a Comment