Here and Now: March 2009

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Black Hats & White Nights Friday, March 20, 2009

IV.3.3.

So here's who we get to share a ride with this week.

Ku Sang
"Addition to Exodus"
"Homeward journey"
"Eros III"
"Eros IV"

Me
"i watch as the hills are leveled"

Brigit Pegeen Kelly
"Song"

Barbara Moore
"Bukowski"

Marvin Bell
"A Lesson from the Corps"

Me
"a fog over the Capitol"

Pat Mora
"Mango Juice"

Dan Flore
"the ocean's name"
"observation at Sun Chins"
"the conscious scalpels"

Wendy Cope
"On Finding an Old Photograph"
"Tich Miller"
"At 3 a.m."

Me
"those whip-thin guys"

Greg Nagan
from "The Illiad" (for readers with a short attention span)

Dan Cuddy
"Rhino Virus Poem (Wear a Mask if You Enter)"

Me
"smile for me"

Charles Bukowski
"Bruckner"
"smiling, shining, singing"

Cliff Keller
"Scuttle"

Me
"swing batter batter swing"

I start this week with poems from Korean poet, journalist, essayist and playwright, Ku Sang, from his book Wastelands of Fire published by Forest Books in 1989.

Ku Sang was born in Seoul in 1919 but grew up in what is now North Korea. After studying in Japan, he returned to Korea to work as a journalist. He fled to South Korea during the Korean War and worked there for many years as a journalist for one of the major Korean newspapers. Persecuted by both North and South Korea during the course of his life, he was imprisoned in the 1950's in South Korea for essays on the Corruption of Power. Ku Sang died in 2004.

The poems in Wastelands of Fire were translated by Anthony Teague.

Addition to Exodus

You know, in those days too they made
a golden calf and worshipped it.

Trust, sincerity of love,
such basic necessities of existence,
thrown aside like old sticks or worn-out boots,
they became beasts,
fighting one another, simply wearing human masks.

The world, with Aaron's hoards in charge,
became a place of submissiveness.

But even then there were people
trusting, waiting for Moses to come down from Sinai,
simply, in solitude.

Ah, Canaan,
flowing with milk and honey!
Ah, far off and how hard to reach.

Homeward journey

On board Gemini 6,
the rendezvous completed,
on the way back down,
just as in the evening
farmers return homeward
riding an oxen
and playing willow flutes,

eating one mouthful less of steak
(to reduce his weight)
then pulling out the harmonica
hidden in an arm pocket
and making music, oomp-pa-pa,
eager to be home with wife and kids,
he sailed back down earthwards

(I've used the first two poems in his "Eros" series some time ago. Here are the third and fourth poems in the series.

Eros III

I draw in empty space.

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

Things drawn in the heart
may not be given form.

Eros IV

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

Passion faded into pale silver...

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

I'm shocked by what I see sometimes when I forget to not pay attention to what's going on in the hills around my city. Brings out the little eco-nerd in me.

i watch as the hills are leveled

i watch
as the hills are leveled,
the earth ripped
and torn,
trees pulled from the ground
and burned,
deer and skunk and raccoon
and all the birds
and other woodland creatures
driven
to lands that cannot
sustain them

all that remains
covered
in black-tar asphalt
that blocks
rain from its underground
reservoirs,
runs it off instead
to desalinate
the bays and estuaries
that give home and life
to denizens
of the salty marsh
lagunas -
all the balances
unbalanced
by the excess
of our clumsy hands

i see
and i am left only
with sadness
too deep
for any words
i can find

Brigit Pegeen Kelly was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1951.

Her first collection of poems, To The Place of Trumpets, was selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Song, which followed in 1995, was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Her third collection, The Orchard, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry, and the National Book Circle Critics Award in Poetry.

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.

The next poem is the title poem from her book Song.

Song

Listen: there was a goat's head hanging by ropes in a tree.
All night it hung there and sang. And those who heard it
Felt a hurt in their ears and thought they were hearing
The song of a night bird. They sat up in their beds, and then
They lay back down again. In the night wind, the goat's head
Swayed back and forth , and from far off it shone faintly
The way the moonlight shone on the train track miles away
Beside which the goat's headless body lay. Some boys
Had hacked its head off. It was harder work than they had imagined.
The goat cried like a man and struggled hard. But they
Finished the job. They hung the bleeding head by the school
And then ran off into the darkness that seems to hide everything.
The head hung in the tree. The body lay by the tracks.
The head called the body. The body to the head.
they missed each other. The missing grew large between them.
Until it pulled the heart right out of the body, until
The drawn heart flew toward the head, flew as a bird flies
Back to its cage and the familiar perch from which it trills.
Then the heart sang in the head, softly at first and then louder,
Sang long and low until the morning light came up over
The school and over the tree, and then the singing stopped...
The goat had belonged to a small girl. She named
The goat Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry, named it after
The night's bush of stars, because the goat's silky hair
Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit.
The girl lived near a high railroad track. At night
She heard the trains passing, the sweet sound of the train's horn
Pouring softly over her bed, and each morning she woke
To give the bleating goat his pail of warm milk. She sang
Him songs about girls with ropes and cooks in boats.
She brushed him with a stiff brush. She dreamed daily
That he grew bigger, and he did. She thought her dreaming
Made it so. But one night the girl didn't hear the train's horn,
And the next morning she woke to an empty yard. The goat
Was gone. Everything looked strange. It was as if a storm
Had passed through while she slept, wind and stones, rain
Stripping he branches of fruit. She knew that someone
Had stolen the goat and that he had come to harm. She called
To him. All morning and into the afternoon, she called
And called. She walked and walked. In her chest a bad feeling
Like the feeling of the stones gouging the soft undersides
Of her bare feet. Then somebody found the goat's body
By the high tracks, the files already filling their soft bottles
At the goat's torn neck. Then somebody found the head
Hanging in a tree by the school. They hurried to take
These things away so that the girl would not see them.
They hurried to raise money to buy the girl another goat.
The hurried to find the boys who had done this, to hear
Them say it was a joke, a joke, it was nothing, but a joke...
But listen: here is the point. The boys thought to have
Their fun and be done with it. It was harder work than they
Had imagined, the silly sacrifice, but they finished the job,
Whistling as they washed their large hands in the dark.
What they didn't know was that the goat's head was already
Singing behind them in the tree. What they didn't know
Was that the goat's head would go on singing, just for them,
Long after the ropes were down, and that they would learn to listen,
Pail after pail, stroke after patient stroke. They would
Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees
Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There
Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last a song,
The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother's call.
Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song,
It is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

This week we have a new friend of "Here and Now," Barbara Moore, making her first appearance. She, like me, is a big fan of Charles Bukowski and it was her poem on Facebook that caused me to contact her.

Barbara, born in Danville Virginia in 1948, describes herself as an almost native New Yorker. She earned a B.A. from Hofstra University., majoring in English, and an M.S.W. from Fordham. She has been a research assistant at Reader's Digest as well as a substance abuse counselor at Long Island College
Hospital. Now writing full-time, Barbara is awaiting publication in a
Goldfish Press anthology.

Here's Barbara’s poem.

Bukowski

I see Bukowski everywhere
Pissing against the wall
In the alleyway
Pissing off the vegetable vendor
Lifting fresh parsley to his nose
With dirty finger-nailed hands
Inhaling deeply; never buying

Weaving his way down the avenue
Cursing the bicycle riders
Whistling at the one-legged woman
In the sexy red dress
Sprawled on the sidewalk
Beside an orange cat
On a rhinestone leash

I see him in the post office
In mock-like slow motion
Saluting the clock at noon
Leaving a customer open-mouthed
Transaction incomplete
Hurrying to the lukewarm beer
Stashed in his third-hand car

I see Bukowski at the bar
Sometimes Jane is with him
But mostly he's alone
Observing his reflection
In the mirrored glass
Looking for a fight
Or a temporary friend

I see him at the track
White-knuckling his losses
Anesthetizing his sorrow
With baby sips of beer
As he finds the words
And the lines flow
And a poem is born.

Marvin Bell is a 65 year old veteran of service in the United States Army. He is now a professor at the University of Iowa and Poet Laureate of the State of Iowa.

His poem is from the anthology, Poets Against the War, published by Thunder Mouth Press in 2003. Poems in the book were selected from the "Poets Against the War" website, which included several of my poems. None of them are in the book.

In my own mind, I emphasize the "the" in Poets Against the War, being not against all war as a matter of the pratical business of survival in a world of aggressive evil and ambition, but specifically against one of the two wars our men and women are currently fighting. I'm pleased that the one I'm against is winding down, while, at the same time, concerned that the one in Afghanistan I consider just and necessary may be lost due to lack of attention and support by the previous American administration, distracted as they were by the other war, the foolish war, they began on their own.

But whatever the political consideration, it is good to be reminded by poets like Bell of the awful, awful things we do to each other and ourselves in every war, whether just or unjust, necessary or the blunder of foolish leaders. It all bleeds the same.

A Lesson from the Corps

When you find the body, it has cauliflower ears.
It stinks of dead worms, the blood crumbles
    between your fingers.
When you find the body, the sleeves of the combat
    fatigues are in shreds.
Its face is puce, its torso black and blue, its
    guts purple, but the teeth still gleam, and
    the bones will shine when cleaned.
Your saliva congeals, you taste dried paste.
Later you may feel shame for noticing the colors
    or hating the smell.
You were schooled to do this.
To yank the dog tag of with a snap.
You were trained not to answer back to the
    silence.
There is a hiss as you compel the metal tag
    between the teeth.

This day may become a whiteout, a glare, a deficit
    in memory.
A place too barren even for a shriek.
A picture that didn't develop, just a clear
    negative.
For nothing recorded the thump of the bullet as it
    hit, nor the webbing wet inside his helmet
    liner, nor the echoing within the helmet
    itself.
But you may think you remember the shudder you
    didn't see when he died.
You may imagine the last word, the mouth before
    the lingering stare.
The machinery of his broken chest may appear in
    dreams.
You may see the eyes, and hear the last expulsion
    of air.
He is the vault now for your questions to God.
Only the dead can tell you the distance from here
    to there.

I wrote this while on an overnight visit to Austin last week.

fog over the Capitol

from my hotel balcony
i can see the haze settling
in over downtown,
the Capitol dome already
lost to it's gray cloud

fog
over the Capitol,
what a metaphor
for this time that is -

the Legislature
is in session, a threat
to the wealth and security
of the state that comes up
every two years - reading
the morning paper, it is tempting
to think of how much better we'd be
if they went into session
only every four or six years
instead of the constitution's current
requirement for biannual meetings

i knew a lot of these people
during my professional career
and it always puzzled me
how intelligent, competent, well-meaning
people could turn into a blithering mob
the minute they walked through the doors
of the Capitol's legislative chambers, like
victims of some kind of mind-scramble-death-ray
that zapped them
as they passed the Austin city limit sign

D is here on business
with these same woolyknobs,
and i just tagged along for the ride
and a chance to have dinner
with Chris last night
and maybe a drive around the city today,
revisiting old haunts from when i lived here

traffic
on I-35
down below my balcony
is roaring past,
a good thing, since most often
traffic this time of morning
is at a dead stop,
40,000 UT students
and about the same number
of state bureaucrats
all headed downtown,
the center of all things that are
as seen by the ants in the ant pile

and the usual other visitors,
lobbyist,
for sure, with the lege in session
you can hardly swing a stick in a circle
without hitting a dozen lobbyist
and assorted other pleaders of some
very special, just ask, they'll tell you, interest,
and the regular old tourist
come to watch the circus under the golden dome,
and kids from all over the state
getting their, god help us, civics lessons,
here in the sweaty fist of our hit and run governance
and others,
like the thousands of high school kids
in town today
for some kind of future business professionals
type event,
most of them lodging,
from the sound of it last night,
right down the hall from me
here on the fourteenth floor

the city is full of people trying
to do good things,
most without a clue how to do it,
and more succeed than you would think likely,
despite their own best efforts
and the efforts of everyone around them

The next poem is by El Paso native Pat Mora from her book Borders published by Arte Publico Press of the University of Houston in 1986 and winner of the Southwest Book Award.

Born in 1942, Mora received a BA from Texas Western College in 1963 and an MA from the University of Texas, El Paso in 1967. In addition to writing poetry, nonfiction, and children's books, She taught at the University of New Mexico where she held the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor.

Mora currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Mango Juice

Eating mangoes
on a stick
is laughing
as gold juice
slides down
your chin
melting manners,
as mangoes slip
through your lips
sweet but biting

is hitting pinatas
blindfolded and spinning
away from the blues
and grays

is tossing
fragile cascarones
on your lover's hair,
confetti teasing him
to remove his tie
coat and shoes
his mouth open
and laughing
as you glide
more mango in,
cool rich flesh
of Mejico
music teasing
you to strew streamers on trees
and cactus

teasing the wind
to stream through
your hair blooming
with confetti
and butterflies

your toes warm
in the sand

Next, I have three poems from our friend Dan Flore.

Dan lives in Pennsylvania where he leads poetry groups for people with mental illness. He is presently working on a poetry book to hopefully get published.

the ocean's name

I remember
the sun
dancing in an ocean
I can't recall
what we named
that swishing magical tide
with currents that only
washed to shore
when birds with mighty talons
would mate
I remember you naked
on the milky way like sandbar
and me by the coastline
feeding you apricots
with a song
I clothed you
in the cosmic rain
we hid in a sand igloo
wish I could remember
that oceans name
all I can call it is
the waters of memory

observation at Sun Chins

callused hands
red working man's knit hat
deep
lost virgin brown eyes
from long ago
rough muddy voice
says "I ain't haulin' all that shit to Spatston"
on her way out of the restaurant
she fluffs her hair in the mirror
and for that one moment
she sees herself in a flowing gown

the conscious scalpels

the conscious scalpels
doctors that cut viciously in the street
believing their moisture is glue
to stick themselves with washable options
places to cleanse their embattled drama once winter love
charisma exudes from their motion
but it itches their fast treading sun glare on skin
the knives get broken
by the pouring hail
the doctors drift into asylums of wonder
their winter love turns into fall
than finally a burst of paths, purples and mornings without nights
there on a wooden road
everything grows

Born in Erith, Kent, in 1945, Wendy Cope is a new poet for me. After completing her degree at St. Hilda's College, Cope spent fifteen years as a primary-school teacher. In 1981, she became Arts and Reviews editor for the Inner London Education Authority magazine, Contact. Five years later she became a freelance writer and was a television critic for The Spectator magazine until 1990.

The next three short poems are from her first book of poems, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, published by faber and faber in 1986.

On Finding an Old Photograph

Yalding, 1912. My father
in an apple orchard, sunlight
patching his stylish bags;

three women dressed in soft,
white blouses, skirts that brush the grass;
a child with curly hair.

If they were strangers
it would calm me - half-drugged
by the atmosphere - but it does not move -

eases a burden
made of all his sadness
and the things I didn't give him.

There he is, happy, and I am unborn.

Tich Miller

Tich Miller wore glasses
with elastoplast-pink frames
and had one foot three sizes larger than the other.

When they picked teams for outdoor games
she and I were always the last two
left standing, by the wire-mesh fence.

We avoided one another's eyes,
stooping, perhaps, to re-tie a shoelace,
or affecting interest in the flight

of some fortunate bird, and pretended
not to hear the urgent conference:
"Have Tubby!" "No, no, have Tich!"

Usually they chose me, the lesser dud,
and she lolloped, unselected,
to the back of the other team.

At eleven we went to different schools.
In time i learned to get my own back,
sneering at hockey-players who couldn't spell.

Tich died when she was twelve.

At 3 a.m.

the room contains no sound
except the ticking of the clock
which has begun to panic
like an insect, trapped
in an enormous box.

Books lie open on the carpet.

Somewhere else
you're sleeping
and beside you there's a woman
who is crying quietly
so you won't wake.

I'm not sure where this poem came from, maybe i was thinking of my older brother, passed on about ten years now. Or maybe I was just thinking how i'm always a beat behind in most situations, especially the kind described here.

those whip-thin guys

i've always
admired
those whip-thin guys
who run their life
on instinct

who
when disrespected
lays the offender
out on the floor,
lights a cigarette,
walks to the bar and
orders another beer

while
i'm still lost
in internal dialogue...

"what did that guy say?"

'did that guy just call me a punk-ass motherfucker?"

"he did, he did just call me a punk-ass motherfucker!"

"why would he do that?"

"i'm a nice guy!"

"i never did anything to him!"

"well, i don't care, i can't let anyone call me a punk-ass motherfucker!"

"i'm gonna have to take him down!"

"where'd he go?"

of course by this time, he's probably move on to his next stop, laughing with his friends,
probably forgot he called anyone a punk-ass motherfucker, and everyone else in the bar,
disappointed that there wasn't gonna be no fighting after all, has turned back to their beer

and
i'm standing
in the middle of the room
by
myself
prepared to fight a shadow
already out the door

one of those whip-thin
instinct guys
would have swung first
and thought about it later
and you can see from the scars
that sometimes they've
swung first
when they should have thought
about
it
maybe just a little bit
longer

Here's some fun I ran across at Half-Price Books, The 5-Minute Iliad and Other Instant Classics - Great Books for the Short Attention Span by Greg Nagan.

Nagan, a writer for Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion was cofounder of both the Chicago theater group, igLoo, and the award-winning Studio 108 and creator of the Web site JustMorons.com. He lives in New York, but claims to remain nostalgic for Central Time.

Here are a few lines from the opening of Nagan's Illiad, including his introduction to the poet Homer and his works.

Homer (no relation) was a blind poet who lived in Greece around the ninth or eighth century B.C., and, as a result of the curious Greek dating system, was apparently born about eighty years after he died. It is believed the Illiad and Odyssey , his two surviving works, were both originally oral rather than written works, which goes a long way toward explaining how a blind guy could have written them thousands of years before the introduction of Braille. The Illiad is a vital piece of literature for all readers, because all the greatest writers of Western Civilization have been alluding to it for eons ("alluding to" being Greek for "stealing from"). This is an abridged translation, meaning I have skipped all those parts of the epic that might have been troublesome to translate and have made up the rest. Also, it does not rhyme and has no meter. I assure the reader that in all other regards this is almost a faithful presentation of the Iliad.

Ancient Greek civilization flowered around 500 B.C., at which point it became classic . Its eventual decline was the result of ouzo and philosophy, which might have been survived separately, but taken together proved too much.

(from Nagan's Iliad

Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles!
If you don't know it I can hum a few bars.
Murderous, doomed, he cost the Achaeans countless losses
(or the Argives, or the Greeks, same difference),
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls
that they opened an Achilles wing. And gave a discount.
Begin, Muse, when the two got n each other's faces,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.

What god drove them to fight with such fury?
Apollo the son of Zeus and Leto. Why? Who knows.
The gods have reasons, and see things unseen by us,
and also, they can be pissy.

And so Apollo, god of the sun,
Golden-faced Apollo, did drive a wedge between them.
Agamemnon and Achilles, general and warrior, friend and
   friend.
And so the warrior Achilles, great Achilles, was moved to
   anger
and would not lead his men to fight beside Agamemnon
unless Agamemnon said he was sorry, and begged forgiveness,
and didn't just say it, burt really meant it.
But that lord of men, that Agamemnon, was proud,
and would not say he was sorry, because he wasn't,
and why should he apologize anyway? Wasn't he general?
Didn't anyone know how hard it was to be general?
Didn't anyone care about his feelings?

And so while the Greeks, or Achaeans, or Argives,
or some combination thereof, but not necessarily limited
   thereto,
laid siege to Troy, or Ilium, that impenetrable city,
whose walls rose from the plain like something really tall
   and flat
rising out of something really broad and flat,
as they laid siege, Achilles and his men hung back, got drunk,
and played quarters. and without them
Agamemnon's force was weak, and Troy beheld this,
and Hector, noble Hector, valiant Hector, son of Priam,
saw this too, and thought, "Woo-hoo!"

Out came the Trojans! Led by mighty Hector
out of their walled city, out against Agamemnon,
and they started to kick some fanny.

How many Greeks fell at that time. How many stout heroes
did the valiant Trojan arms dispatch?

Lots.

Been poking around Facebook this past week and came up with two poems, the Bukowski poem by Barbara Moore and this next one by our friend, Dan Cuddy.

Living as I do in the universal center of Cedar Fever, this poem seems a very familiar state 0f affairs to me.

Rhino Virus Poem (Wear A Mask If You Enter)

the rhino virus seems unsuitable for a poem
but
the coughs, sneezes, wheezes
certainly make caricatures of people
and rhino means nose
schnozz
and a poet will try to joke through
God's little curse

what redeeming social quality
such a virus
or any virus
no
always good under the Divine sun
or the pagan moon
or the Christian Science
or other religious apologies for
biologies bersek

okay
so I am Job
sniffling
hacking with a sledgehammer cough
I want to off
this monstrous group of mucus-bound molecules
atomized in the air
like so much fog
and attaching
with fish hooks
to vulnerable lungs

oh how I would like to praise creation
but I'm sneezing all over it

what a poem!!!

even the rhythm is an irregular breath
oh Charles Olson
did you ever have a cold?

i was having lunch the other day, feeling like I'd been dropped into the middle of a tornado.

smile for me

it's the lunch side
of Sunday
brunch

& the place
is packed
a mixed crowd

of church folk
in their Sunday
best

& the just-
crawled-
out-of-bed

in shorts &
flip-flops
bed-head

hair
flat on one side
sticking out

on the other
like a
porcupine

in heat,
& the golfers,
from the Quarry

clip-clop
clip-clop-clip
in their golf shoes

& the grandmas & pregnant
moms
with last year's

babies
in high chairs
dads in khakis

& hard starched
checkered shirts
thinking

how simple
life
is at work

& that baby
again
looking at

me
from across
the room

talking
talking
talking

hyper-alert,
smiling
a big toothless

smile
for
me

this swirl of sound
& color
is like i'm alone

unmoving
in the center
of a whirlpool

of sensation
all moving sound & color
streaming

like paint
flung
in a circle

except the baby
talking
talking

talking
smiling a big
toothless

smile
for
me

Here are two poems by Charles Bukowski from what matters most is how well you walk through the fire., one of the many collections put out after his death from the thousands of unpublished poems he left behind.

I include these this week as a special welcome to first time friend of "Here and Now" and fellow Bukowski fan, Barbara Moore, whose homage to the man is included earlier in this issue.

Bruckner

listening to Bruckner now,
I relate very much to him.
he just misses
by so little,
I ache for his dead
guts.

if we all could only move it
up one notch
when necessary,
but we can't.
I remember my fight in the
rain
that Satuday night in the
alley with
Harry Tabor.
his eyes were rolling in
that great dumb
head,
one more punch
and he was mine -
I missed.

or the beautiful woman
who visited me on
night,
who sat on my couch
and told me that she was
"yours, a gift..."
but I poured whiskey,
pranced about
bragged about
myself
and finally
after returning from the
kitchen
I found her
gone.

so many near misses.
so many other near misses.

oh, Bruckner, I know!

I am listening to Bruckner
now and
I ache for his dead
guts
and for my living
soul.

we all need
something we can do well,
you know,
like scuba diving or
opening the morning
mail.

smiling, shining, singing

my daughter looked like a young Katharine Hepburn
at the grammar school Christmas presentation.
she stood there with them
smiling, shining, singing,
in the long dress I had bought for her.

she looks like Katharine Hepburn, I told her mother
who sat on my left.
she looks like Katharine Hepburn, I told my girlfriend
who sat on my right.
my daughter's grandmother was another seat away;
I didn't tell her anything.

I never did like Katharine Hepburn's acting,
but I liked the way she looked,
class, you know,
somebody you could talk to in bed for
an hour or two before going to
sleep.

I can see that my daughter is going to be a
beautiful woman.
someday when I'm old
she'll probably bring the bedpan with a
kindly smile.
and she'll probably marry truck driver with a
heavy tread
who bowls every Thursday night
with the boys.

well, all that doesn't matter.
what matters is now.

her grandmother is a hawk of a woman.
her mother is a psychotic liberal and lover of life.
her father is an asshole.
my daughter looked like a young Katharine Hepburn.

after the Christmas presentation
we went to McDonald's and ate, and fed the sparrows.
Christmas was a week away.
we were less concerned about that than the nine-tenths of the
town.
that's class, we both have class.
to ignore Christmas takes a special wisdom
but Happy New Year to
you all.

Before we shut down for the week, here's a poem by Cliff Keller, our songwriter-poet friend from California.

Scuttle

Your salvo of flares
is too late for his ship,
Andrea Dorea shifts,
hear the glasses shatter.

Dinner jacket, oiled hair, tan
scheming his slow descent to the bottom,
icy cocktail in hand
offered to the tilting blond at the bar.

All you've learned to loathe and love
you gathered like olives on papa's blanket.
Madonna suffered the stones
to serve her martyr

When you set yourself out to write a poem a day, you have accept that there will be bad days as well as good, and sometimes the best you can do really sucks.

And you have to accept those that suck just as you accept the better ones. They are all part of the stories you are telling about yourself through your writing.

But you do get to hope you'll do better the next day.

swing batter batter swing

i slept last night
to the sound
of thunder
and rain

feeling
kinship
with all the humans
in my line

who on dark & stormy
nights
slept peacefully
in their caves

to the concerto grosso
accompaniment
of
elementals

wind
rain
thunder
lightening

throwing shadows
such as
Plato saw
in his philosophies

all this
while i sleep
in a most primitive
comfort

safe and snug
while nature's most
powerful forces
clash outside my door

.......

blah blah blah
doubleblah

what a
c r a p p y c r a p p y c r a p p y c r a p p y
poem
this is

a
duty-poem

a good idea
gone
way the f-word
(see how hesitant i am today - afraid of truth and true language)
over the cliff
fit only
as Caesar might say
for
the
nearest
bullshitorium

i
will post this
because it is my poem today
or at least
the closest semblance
to one

fervently
hoping
as i do that
i will find my balls
before i have to write another one
tomorrow

So off we go, thinking about all the big questions that make up a day in our modern life, hoping for some big answers next week.

As we hope, 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.

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Night Visions Friday, March 13, 2009

IV.3.2.

If I'm on time, it's March 13th, time for a new "Here and Now."

Here's what I have in this Friday the 13th issue.

Juan Felipe Herrera
"Ofelia in Manhattan, Circa 1943"

Me
"Tootsie Roll Pops & Deathstars"

Travis Watkins
"For Claude"
"My Voice"

Shirley J. Walker
"Papa and Pine"

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
"I am Waiting"

Me
"that i cannot abide"

Sudeep Sen
"Remembering Hiroshima Tonight"

Robert McManes
"bangs were popular once"
"total absolution"

Richard Wilbur
"Piccola Commedia"

Me
"mysterious"

Elizabeth Seydel Morgan
"Safeway"
"May Tenth"

Mick Moss
"Nature"

David Lehman
"April 26"
"April 27 or 28"
"April 29"

Me
"a thief's confession"

Marina Tsvetaeva
from "On a Red Steed"

Michael Sottak
"By Water"

Me
"scattered in the wide night sky"

Juan Felipe Herrera is a very exciting poet, but his book Giraffe On Fire is a difficult source to use in "Here and Now." Individual pieces are usually long, and if they're short, they're connected to other short pieces, so it's hard to pull out a brief 200 or 300 words that are both coherent and reflective of the genius of his writing.

I do what I can, without going too long.

The book was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2001.

Ofelia in Manhattan, Circa 1943

Girl, you couldn't sport finer gabardine jacket
with Ofelia Robles going up to the sunrise service
on Easter Sunday at the Radio City Music Hall.
You see, everything was in the shape of a fancy guitar -
even the question mark by her telephone number
in my pocket calendar or the last note scribbled
on a napkin full of your philosophy.
It was all personality, black coffee, and music.
You were there, sister. Drinking post prohibition.
Even the most fancy accountant loved gospels
and occasionally visited the Methodist Broadway Temple.
I can just see it. I never forgot the staging
with that elegance and romance and rosewood:
so many notes curled in there, kind of velvety,
bows ties that you couldn't see, but
they were there, fluttering with a mysterious
sweetness at the center. That's when cousin
Tito played string bass; small, plump, hot-tempered,
polka-dot vest and Saturdays nothing
but congas with Ralph Gomez, the No. 2 man
because he always stuttered.

In the middle of Central Park,
I as the girl with the baggy corduroys doing a tango.
Me and Ofelia and her Portuguese accent.
She was the only real dancer at 40 degrees
north latitude, baby.

I wanted the war to end. Japan had to lose, right?
The Queen Mary was serving cocktails
and you had ten in small paper cups while
we were waiting in line. Look at the sea, you sang.
It was spitting up pure imagination and ambition.
Flashes as far as the eye could see. Take the Rockefeller Center
beyond ol' Sixth Avenue, for example.
Who lived there anyway?

I just wanted to love Ofelia on the rooftops.
Rum-colored bandannas. Our open shirt.
You could hear all the busboys gripes from up there.
Bad tips, the boss that didn't like you using the phone
in the back room. A few bashful tenor voices by the jukebox.

You were reading the New York Times in those days.
Pretty good English.

Going like this:
Oye, que tu, esto cosa estu caraja
and Mr. Pickett won't pay me as much because
I don't belong to the golf club; you know, like Wilfredo?
Everyone should live in an oyster bar, right?
that's my philosophy, sister. You used to say
that it was about purpose not just Wall Street.
That's when subways had class. And mink too.
All the women were wearing it. Ofelia looked like a doll
until Jorge, the janitor at the new Woolworth Building
told her the fur was a mutation. She gave me
some binoculars she had gotten at an auction.

Move your fingers and just like that
you could see everything. A thousand miles away, easy.
You could count all the electric peanuts in the sky.
Jesus, that's when I was still trying to get a job
working at the night cleaners. Girl,
you could even eat those sizzling candies
hanging over the park.

What about Sammy Hill,
the guy we used to box when we were kids?
He was pure muscle. Then, a fat badge.
One evening I saw him twirling his nightstick.
The guys used to grunt that he was the only black cop.
You had to be German or Polish, maybe Italian,
if you wanted to be a policeman. And that was it.
Sammy didn't like me teasing him about his floppy cap.
Man, it was just me and Ofelia. "Dizzy legs,"
I called her one night at the Rooster
listening to a little bit of Harlem royalty.
You went there, right? We were "dracula,"
the two of us, in a class by ourselves.
Girl, the clubs were hot. But, I had to move.

It happened so fast. One day I just couldn't
sell anymore of my bullfighter paintings on the street.
Nobody was buying them anymore.
Maybe something was going to happen.
All of a sudden nobody wanted bulls
and gallant lean men in shimmering bronze suits
on their walls. People started talking about
abstract portraits, squares and upside-down eyes.
How could you eat with that stuff over your head?

Things were changing, I guess. So,
I left. Just like that. It was always about leaving paintings
and some clothes and taking paintings and some clothes.
This time, I didn't know what to take. I am telling you.

I never saw Ofelia again.
Maybe she's still dancing out there.

She had a gift, you know. We said
we wouldn't write letters.
It couldn't work that way with us. It had to be pure chance.
A bird-of-paradise in a vase over a piano top, the way
Ella sang or Uncle Vince roughing you up
with his famous question: how's misery?

You said you could handle it. Just wait -
things were going to get a little better after the war.
You said someday you'd get in touch
and we'd joke about that saxophone
we put five dollars down on at the pawnshop.

I can still see the open case from here,
against the glass, a miniature city of mad sparkles,
so alive, I could step in there, dance to the music,
look sharp forever. It was our island, girl.

Here's a piece from a week or so ago, bemoaning (and possibly even explaining) the lack of profundity in my work.

Tootsie Roll Pops & Deathstars

i might be profound today
except
let's face it
i am to profound
as a Tootsie Roll Pop
is to a Star Wars Deathstar

while both round
we may be it is in different circles
we travel

the above, exactly the problem -
even when bemoaning my lack of profundity,
i can't resist throwing a little Yoda
into the mix

a helium balloon
should celebrate it lightness,
not seek
the weighty heft
of a Kant or Nietzsche
or even poor-old obscure
Johann Georg Rosenzweig
who no one ever heard of
but his mother,
several cousins, and the
boyfriend
nobody ever talks about

so
no profundity from me today

instead
i'll just go with the float,
satisfied
the only heights i'll achieve
will be strictly
at
mos
pheric

Here are two poems by performance poet Travis Watkins. The poems are from his book, My Fear is 4 U, published in 2006 by Layman Lyric Productions of Houston.

For Claude

I sing.
I sing for the un-named and chained.
And I sing for the un-brained who remain restrained.
It's strange how progress equates so less change
It's plain, some chains remain
I sing.
I sing for the uneducated, degraded and confiscated.
And I sing for those related to the hated who procreated
And created a people so created and elated
That hate has been deflated
I sing.
I sing for the jail-cell black as an oil-well
And I'll sing un-til, black men re-bel, and black men leave hell
And black men ring bells, of liberty and justice for all!
And it's not jus-us after all.
I sing.
I sing for the crack slanger and gang-banger
And I sing just to mask my anger for those strangers
That murder and endanger then point their fuckin' fingers
At society...that's just a cop-out to me
I sing.
I sing for the senseless odds stacked against us
And I sing for the cent-less who will stand relentless
"Though far outnumbered count us brave."
I sing this song for Claude McKay.
I sing.

Spring '04

My Voice

My fifth grade teacher said my voice carries.
My voice carries
My voice carries
My voice...
Carries

The prayers of my father, the love of my mother,
The strength of my people, the hope of my brother.
the hurt of the past, the dreams of the slaves,
The blood of their wounds, the tears of their graves.

My voice carries
My voice carries
My voice carries

The burden of truth, the threshold of pain,
The product of hate, the sting that remains.
The pursuit of many, the triumph of few.
The bullshit endured, the struggle they knew.

My voice carries
My voice carries
My voice carries
My voice...
Carries.

And my voice strains.

Fall '03

Shirley J. Walker describes herself as a native California Pisces who enjoys writing a diverse array of short stories and poems while eating banana pudding. Her work has appeared in several online and print literary journals. "My busy inner child keeps me young, and my creative juice drips on occasion," she says.

I found Shirley's poem on the Wild Poetry Forum and emailed her for permission to use it on "Here and Now."

Permission granted, so here it is, inspired, Shirley says, by a story from William Henry Lewis

Papa and Pine

Papa paused in the lumberyard
and sniffed. His rheumy eyes lit
like twin stars on a darkening sky.

Pine's down there, son.

Years back, Papa and me would sit
on the porch and sip lemonade
while he spoke of pine.

When rain pounds the ground,
you can smell those roots deep
in the earth, son. That wood has a way
with air and rich, black soil.

Papa had begun to look like that soil; as if
he was getting ready for it. Weathered
earth skin, wrapped in a faded plaid shirt.

I need eleven planks, son. Six for sides and bottom.
Two for ends. Two for the cover. One for bracing.

The buzz-saw pass of years had left sawdust
memories of when Papa stood like a cedar.
His hands, dark against the white wood, caressed
the grain with a practiced plane of wisdom.

Can't spend eternity smelling like a lunch box.
Pine smells better, son. Got finer grain, too.

Here is more performance poetry, this from a much earlier source, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from his book A Coney Island of the Mind, first published in 1958 by New Directions. The poem is one of seven in the book conceived, according to Ferlinghetti in a foreword, "specifically for jazz accompaniment and as such should be considered as spontaneously spoken 'oral message' rather than as poems written for the printed page. As a result of continued experimental reading with jazz, they are still in a state of change."

Well, that was then and this is now and what we have now is the printed page. And what we have on the printed page with Ferlinghetti is often very long (like this poem) or very eccentrically organized on the page. I like that, myself, but it is really a pain to transcribe for "Here and Now," which, unfortunately means there's lots of his stuff I really like but don't have time (as well as patience) to deal with here.

I Am Waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am seriously waiting
for Billy Graham and Elvis Presley
to exchange roles seriously
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the living end
and I am waiting
for dad to come home
his pockets full
of irradiated silver dollars
and I am waiting
for the atomic tests to end
and I am waiting happily
for things to get much worse
before they improve
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the human crowd
to wander off a cliff somewhere
clutching its atomic umbrella
and I am waiting
for Ike to act
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and save me forever from certain death
and I am waiting
for life to begin
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting
for Ole Man River
to just stop rolling along
past the country clubs
and I am waiting
for the deepest South
to stop Reconstructing itself
in its own image
and I am waiting
for a sweet desegregated chariot
to swing low
and carry me back to Ole Virginie
and I am waiting
Ole Virginie to discover
just why Darkies are born
and I am waiting
for God to lookout
from Lookout Mountain
and see the Ode to the Confederate Dead
as a real farce
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for Tom Swift to grow up
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to takeoff Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth's dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace and I am waiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

I'm a tough guy; I can put up with a lot. But one thing just goes too far.

that i cannot abide

cut
all my hair off
about a month ago
and now, when i glance at a mirror
as i pass
and take in the short gray hair,
i see
just another old man passing

a most respectable looking old man

old is ok -
it is a biological fact
i am happy to live with,
with luck, for
many many
years to
come

but
respectable?

that i just
cannot
abide

My next poems are by Indian poet Sudeep Sen, from his book Postmarked India, published by HarperCollins in 1997. Actually, calling him an "Indian poet" is unduly restrictive. While it is true he is from India, he is truly a world poet, at home and writing just about anywhere.

The book, signed by the poet with personal note, illustrates something I've noticed over the past several years as I've been buying poetry books from used book stores. The thing I've noticed is the large number of poetry books signed by their authors. This reflects two things, I suspect. First, it's a demonstration of the limited press runs of most books of poetry, as well as the works poets have to do to sell their book once it's written and published.

Remembering Hiroshima Tonight

It is full moon in August
the origami garlands surrounding the park

glitter as the stars, plutonium-twinkle,
remember the fall-out of that sky.

Tonight everyone walks around the solemn arcades
where lovers were once supposed to be.

In the distance the crown of Mount Fuji sits, clear
on the icy clouds, frozen in time with wisdom.

Suddenly the clouds detonate, and all the petals,
translucent, wet, coalesce: a blossoming mushroom,

peeling softly in a huge slow motion.
But that's only a dream.

Tonight, real flowers are blooming
in the ancient Japanese moonlight.

One Moonlight December Night

you came knocking at my door,
I took my time to open.
When I did,
there was just a silk scarf,
frayed, half-stuck in the latch.

Next I have a couple of pieces by our friend from Kansas, Robert McManes.

bangs were popular once

twilight never gleams
moon beams shake and shimmer
tumble to the ground
rattle off rocks
bounce off trees
and manmade junk
piles and piles
old tuna fish cans

this is our legacy

we tremble
shake and roll
half life ideas
and take the next
exit (insert here)
knowing nothing
is ever free

and this is
e-z

these are the times
mimes and rhymes
volumes of words
spoken and broken
red and read

the book of books
the dead of dead
page after page
grave after grave
it's all relevant

vagabonds of civilizations
limping into tomorrow
battered but never bettered
a rhapsody unchanged

and one day it ends
with or without
the bang

total absolution

the old adding machine
rests in a dusty corner
and dreams of tabulations
where cybernetic meadows
grow wires while high-speed computers
live together in programming harmony
with less fortunate technology
like pure rain water
falling from a clear sky

it likes to think
of great electronic forests
full of plastic based pines
and sophisticated semiconductors
where analog machines roll peacefully
past third generation super computers
that hums in deep caged meditation
as if they were sleeping lions
in a far flung metropolitan zoo

and the little machine dreams
its big dreams unaware
that being obsolete
is the final tenement
of absolute absolution

in plug we believe

Born in 1921 in New York City, Richard Wilbur was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and in 1989.

The following poem is from his book Collected Poems, 1943-2004, published by Harcourt, Inc. in 2004.

Piccola Commedia

He is no one I really know,
The sun-charred, gaunt young man
By the highway's edge in Kansas
Thirty-odd years ago.

On a tourist-cabin verandah
Two middle-aged women sat;
One, in a white dress, fat,
With a rattling glass in her hand,

Called "Son, don't you feel the heat?
Get up here into the shade."
Like a good boy, I obeyed,
And was given a crate for a seat

And an Orange Crush and gin.
"This state," she said, "is hell."
Her thin friend crackled, "Well, dear,
You've gotta fight sin with sin."

"No harm in a drink; my stars!"
Said the fat one, jerking her head.
"And I'll take no lip from Ed,
Him with his damn cigars."

Laughter. A combine whined
On past, and dry grass bent
In the backwash; liquor went
Like an ice-pick in my mind.

Beneath her skirt I spied
Two sea sea-cows on a floe.
"Go talk to Mary Jo, son,
She's reading a book inside."

As I gangled in at the door
A pink girl, curled in a chair,
Looked up with an ingenue stare.
Screenland lay on the floor.

Amazed by her starlet's pout
And the way her eyebrows arched,
I felt both drowned and parched.
Desire leapt up like a trout.

"Hello," she said, and her gum
Gave a calculating crack.
At once from the lightless back
Of the room came the grumble

Of someone heaving from bed,
A Zippo's click and flare,
Then, more and more apparent,
The shuffling form of ED,

Who neither looked nor spoke
But moved in profile by,
Blinking one gelid eye
In his elected smoke.

This is something I've never told,
And some of it I forget.
But the heat! I can feel it yet,
And that conniving cold.

?

I lie.

It comes with the territory, part of the writerly lot.

And, sometimes I tell the truth, doing the best I can to make it so you can't tell the difference.

mysterious

we are mysteries
to us

you're a mystery
to me

and i'm just as mysterious
to you

and that's the way
it's best for us to be

how much of the stories i tell
is true

and how much
is false

made up for my amusement
and maybe yours

you'll never know
and i'll never tell

cause ofttimes
i don't even know myself

Elizabeth Seydel Morgan is currently The Louis D. Rubin Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University for 2007, Morgan lives in Richmond, Virginia. She is author of four books of poetry.

The next two poems are from her earliest book Parties, published by Louisiana State University Press in 1988. I have also used poems in "Here and Now" from a later book, The Governor of Desire, also by Louisiana State University Press.

Safeway

This world is category. Raw meat
In slick clear film does not insinuate
Its bloody fresh into meringue-topped sweet
Potato pie. Dark been and mild don't mate
In this geometry. The Safeway's grid
Defines my need: aisle B the bread, white wine
On C, detergent stacked to pyramid.
The orange and onion never cross the line.
So how come this crippled child bisects my path?
Careens his wheelchair, jerks his body. Why
Does he cock his heavy head at me and laugh
With such strange glee? I can't meet his eye.
I came to this sane place to be alone,
To choose my food, to buy it, to go home.

May Tenth

Ten on May tenth,
you think it's fine:
two numbers in your age
till you're a hundred.

You've learned to flip
your silky hair in such a way
your unsure eyes don't show.
Your unruly arms and legs
most often seem askew,
but you can still curl up
like a touched caterpillar
and suck your thumb.

Ten years ago this hour
you uncurled from me.
Weak and silly from ether and relief,
I took you
into the crook of my arm,
felt the rush of blood
that cleared the blurring gas.

Satisfied,
I kissed the spot on your bare head
that throbbed.

Next, a poem from our friend Mick Moss. Mick is a 54-year-old poet from Liverpool, England.

Nature

The young male sits and watches
learning from the older males
how best to make a kill
the group lies in wait
sometimes for hours
in the shade
hidden from the harsh sun
and their prey
in silence
saving up adrenaline
for when the time comes
nerves tense
eyes focused
waiting.......

NOW

An echo ricochets around the square
and another Palestinian stone thrower
bites the dust.

Human nature.

The next three poems are by David Lehman, from his book The Daily Mirror, A Journal in Poetry, published by Simon & Schuster's Scribner Poetry imprint in 2000.

Lehman is on the core faculty of the graduate writing programs at Bennington College and The New School. His editor of the Best American Poetry series and published numerous collections of his own work.

His "journal in poetry" approach in this book gives me great encouragement for my own poem-a-day efforts.

For this week, I just picked three days at random from the middle of the book.

April 26

When my father
said mein Fehler
I thought it meant
"I'm a failure"
which was my error
which is what
mein Fehler means
in German which
is what my parents
spoke at home

April 27 Or 28

As Hamlet would have said
if he had lived through
the russian revolution and
his author had written in Russian,
"To live a life is not to cross
a field." I think I see what he
means, or would have meant,
by that line so hard to translate,
yet I wouldn't underestimate
the difficulty of crossing a field,
a snow-covered expanse, say,
wide as the Steppes, that no
footprints have defaced, so that,
staring at it, you feel like
a writer facing a blank page,
and the trees may be full of rifles,
and the whole reason for crossing
the field escapes you now that
you have reached its edge,
and the rumor of a castle
on a high hill in the distance
is almost certain to turn out false.

April 29

God bless Wellbutrin
I see the market's down
a hundred and forty points
but I don't care I know
it will go up again tomorrow
thanks to the Dead Cat Bounce
as "the Street" terms it
still I refuse to invest in El Nino
by buying soybean futures
on the Chicago Options Exchange
I'd rather phone Joe who answers,
"You have reached WJOE,
all Joe Lehman, all the time,"
as for the guy who reviewed Jim
Tate's book and called it "almost
Victorian in its piety," I got news
for you, buddy, not even the Victorians
were Victorian in their piety have you
ever read "In Memoriam" or "Dover Beach"
well, have you, punk?

Here's a little story on where guilt can take you.

a thief's confession

Borders,
deciding there aren't
enough of us early birds
to justify lights and payroll,
has changed its opening time
from 9 to 10 a.m.
making me, again,
the wandering poet, looking
for a perch to begin the day

i found this place
this morning,
a pastry shop and cafe,
lots of room,
free wifi,
and accessible electric plugs
and i'd be pretty happy with it
except it's way the hell out on
what last year
would have been called the far-northside,
now, the way the city keeps growing north
into the hills, i guess you'd call it the not-so-far
northside, soon to be next year the north southside

so i probably won't be back, even though,
i like the place, first, because it's so damn far,
and second, because i can remember not so long ago
when this was wooded hills
and pastures so i sit here with my latte
and my little laptop feeling a tad guilty,
because, like,
somewhere, there is a homeless cow
whose ancestral grazing land
i have subsumed
for a poem i doubt the cow
would consider worth the loss

best
i return downtown
where cow's memories of grazing
by the flowing green river
are lost in the dusty annals of time
and the harm i do
is erased
because theft is no long thievery
when the time of stealing is
forgotten

Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow in 1892. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was only 18 years old and it attracted notice from some of the most important critics and poets in Russia. Twelve years late, she went into exile in Paris because of the Revolution and became one of the leading writers of the emigre community. She returned to the Soviet Union in 1939. Her husband was arrested and executed shortly thereafter. She committed suicide in 1941 in a small town to which she had been evacuated at the beginning of World War II.

The next poem is from Poem of the End a collection of her work translated by Nina Kossman and published in 2004 by Ardis Publishers. It is a bilingual book with the original Russian and the English translation on facing pages.

Following are concluding passages from On a Red Steed, a poem too long to use here in its entirety. I don't know that sense can be made of such a partial transcript, but it does give a good indication of the fierceness of Tsvetaeva's writing.

I spur on; behind me -
the whole horde of winds.
In the choir-loft the thunder of hooves
Has not yet died down.

Like the rumble of Requiem,
The snowstorm revives.
the altar's upended. - Empty!
Vanished into the earth.

Weep, wail, wail!
Snowstorm, rage on!
The horse's foam dims
the radiance of chasubles.

The dome is trembling. Fall,
Hosts of might and glory.
And the body falls, its arms
Spread-eagled, like cross.

_____

The rays of the icon-lamps
Scatter like great rainbows.
- Receive me, thou pure and sweet,
Crucified for us.

This - your feast, o jealous palm:
Receive this flame.
But who is that horseman from on high,
And what is that steed?

His armor is like the sun...
His flight, steep...
Onto my chest he places
His horse's hoof.

_____

Is that thunder in the cranium - or
A crowbar to the skull! - People! - People!
Grinding the dry pillow with my brow,
To say, for the first time. He loves me not!

Loves me not! - I need no woman's tresses!
Loves me not! - I need no red beads!
Loves me not! - I will mount my steed!
Loves me not! - And rise up to - the sky!

Ancestral spirit, shake off your chains!
Rattle the primeval pines!
Ancestral spirit, Aeolus!
Tousle my golden mane.

Leading my regiments, on a white steed,
With a silvery thunder of hooves - forward!
We shall see how he does in battle,
That braggart on the red steed.

The sky has broken. A good sign:
Dawn bloodies my helmet!
soldiers! It is one step from here to heaven:
By the law of the grain you go - into the ground!

Forward! - Over the trench! - Fallen?
Next row - Over the trench! - Fallen?
Again - Over the trench! - Is that
Dawn on the snow-white armor? Blood?

Soldiers! What enemy are we fighting?
A burning chill invades my breasts.
And piercing, piercing my heart like a lance,
A ray of light

_____

He whispers: "I wanted you like this."
and rumbles: "I chose you like this,
Child of my passion - sister - brother -
My bride in armor of ice.

Mine and no other's - forever."
I, rising my arms: "Light."
"You shall be no other's. You swear this?"
I, stanching my wound: "Yes."

_____

No muse, no Muse - not the frail ties
Of kinship - No, not your bonds,
O friendship! That was no woman's hand - a fierce one
Drew this knot tight
Around me.

A terrifying union, I lie
In the trench's darkness - while the dawn rises
Oh, who suspended these
Two weightless wings
On my shoulders?

A silent spy
Of living storms
I lie - and I watch
Shadows.

Until I'm whirled
Off into the blue
On the red steed
Be my genius!

Moscow, 1921

Here's a poem our friend Michael Sottak. Michael tells it about as straight as you're ever going to get it.

By Water

we slip then
you and i...
to places unseen
periwinkle death...
in pools left by tide
rocks of the Sakonnet
burned into wind

you'll grow stronger
with this breath
like wind might measure
circumstance...

Elephant Rock withstood it all
chiseled like i might understand

out there where all
lives or dies

your panties left
in crushed oysters...

i went back
for the scent

I was born and will always be a science fiction nerd, even though I rarely read it anymore.

Which reminds me that I should note in passing that Philip Jose Farmer, one of the great science writers, died recently. His was one of the names I look for and, unfortunately, one of too many names that can't be found on the bookstore shelves anymore.

scattered in the wide night sky

scattered
in the wide night sky
are pinpoints of light
bringing star-heat
to worlds like our own

biological stews
pining the universal spark
on some
and on others
life at its most simple
is cradled,
protected from the cosmic storms,
and on a relative few
creatures who strive
and dream,
like you and
i

i
know this
like some people
know God, such knowledge
a product of longing
in the lonely bright
for a companion
worthy
of our best nature

That's it, folks. See you next week.

In the meantime, remember, all of the material in this blog remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.

2 Comments:

at 2:51 PM Anonymous said...

Allen,
As someone who used to serve you coffee at Borders several years ago, let me tell you how much I enjoyed your poem "The Thief's Confession," particularly the part about the cow not appreciating the poem... Also enjoyed the David Lehman journal in poetry, especially April 27 or 28.
Nancy, formerly of Borders

at 10:33 PM Ms.M said...

I particularly enjoyed "That I Cannot Abide", because I so identified with it, and "A Thief's Confession" -- with its knock-out ending.

As for Juan Felipe Herrera's "Ofelia in Manhattan Circa 1943", I was completely caught up in the rhythm, the tone, the style, the history, the story. It left me wanting to read more.

Wonderful selections all in this issue.

Barbara Moore

Post a Comment

Life Below the Tree Line Friday, March 06, 2009

IV.3.1.

Time passes, two months of the year gone and here's another "Here and Now" for your enjoyment.

This week we have these assorted goodies:

Miichael Van Walleghen
"The Foot"
"Worry"

Me
"how i was introduced to the life of a layabout latte lizard"

Margaret Atwood
"Two-Headed Poems"

Alice Folkart
"We Are National Treasures"

John Ashbery
"Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse"
"You Spoke as a Child"

Me
"the doubter's prayer"

Robert Bonazzi
"Cantos of Particles and Waves"

Alex Stolis
"Lovelines"
"You Lose"
"Treatment Bound"

Shel Silverstein
"Tired"
"Whatif"

Me
"in the news today"

Ryokan
"Winter Night"

Thane Zander
"Repercussions"

Philip Larkin
"Sad Steps"
"This be the Verse"

Me
"writing my morning poem at the end of the day"

Dan Gioia
"Night Watch"
"Veteran's Cemetery"

Dan Cuddy
Dan finds a web-report explaining the similarities between dead mules and investment banking.

William Matthews
"The Introduction"

Me
"big news in the astrophysical world"

Gary Soto
"L.A. Scene at a Restaurant Called 'One'"
"The Artist Thinks, 'So This is Me'"

Me
"hoodat hoosay hoodat"

Wowsers - Something that almost looks like a "table of contents" - Going uptown tonight.

My first two poems this week are by Michael Van Walleghen, from his book Blue Tango published by the University of Illinois Press 1989. He has published six books of poetry, including four since Blue Tango. Before retirement he was a Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the first director of the MFA in Creative Writing program created there in 2003.

The Foot

I rang his doorbell
every day for a month

I knocked on his windows
I kicked hard at this door

with my frozen Redwing boot.
It was winter of course

A month of deep snow. And
I could see from his slurred

footprints that he was home.
He was there all right

reading the paper, watching
the tube maybe - the bastard.

He owed me five dollars.
Christmas was coming up.

And I was twelve years old
and ordinary paper boy

freezing my ass off, trying
to collect, that's all. Then

the door opens. A hot
sour wind, like cabbage

boiled in piss, springs up
from deep inside somewhere

and almost knocks me down.
"Here, you want it?" a voice

is saying. "Here take it!"
And a shower of quarters

nickels, dimes goes sailing
past me over the porch rail.

When I look back, the door
is closed again, or rather

almost closed. A dirty foot
I remember his dirty foot

poking out into the snow
the filthy yellow thickness'

of the toenails, the dead
gray, socklike grime

that covered it...I never saw
his face. I was too young

even to imagine it. I just
dug up the money I could

and ran home to the stoic
misery of my own dumb feet

thawing in a yellow dishpan.
small, snow-white, delicate

they hurt for a long time
and looked all wrong somehow.

My face looked wrong...staring
back from the kitchen window

where it was night already
and the night looked wrong.

as if there might be nothing
out there, that owed me anything.

Worry

It was getting late
it was time for supper

but we had this rat
trapped in an oil drum

hydrophobic perhaps
and there was a hole

in the drum. Someone
had better do something

drop a brake drum on it
or better yet, perfect

if we could ever lift it
one of those fossil-looking

prewar transmissions
we'd spotted in the weeds...

On the other hand, suppose
we missed the goddamn thing

suppose we only crippled it?
We'd have to burn it then

or maybe we could drown it
if we plugged the hole somehow

if we had a hose or something
if even now the streetlights

might cease their flickering
and night not fall not fall

upon that fussy, worried knot
of small, good children there

in the twittering field
where the nightmare rats

were not afraid of anything
and swarmed and swarmed

Here's a little story about my transition to a new way of life.

how i was introduced to the life of a layabout latte lizard

i came in
this morning
like i usually do,
shivered a bit cause
it's coolish outside
which is not the normal
state of affairs around here,
and ordered my medium latte,
just as i always do, and
sat down to read the Times
and write this little morning
epistle
on the state of my mind this a.m.

and the state of my mind this a.m.
relates to the latte situation
and how i became hostage to the latte-nation

twas
a day like this,
except it was hot not cold
and night not morning
and i ordered a decaf coffee
as i usually did pre-medium latte days
and Crystal, the barrista of yore,
said, oh my gosh, we're out of decaf
and i said oh, double-gosh,
i must have my coffee and being it is night
i must have decaf lest i not sleep until
2 a.m. of the wee early morning

well,
she said,
demonstrating her secret barrista-wisdom,
though i do not have decaf coffee
at this juncture of the space-time continuum,
i can, most quickly, make you a decaf latte

spiffy, i
said,
embarking
on the first latte
of my hitherto unwashed in the blood of the latte life

and
that's the story of that

Here's a piece by Margaret Atwood, from her book Two-Headed Poems published by Simon and Schuster in 1978. Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, feminist and activist.

The title poem is an eleven part piece, too long to use in full here. Instead, I've selected three of the pieces that might encourage you to find the full poem somewhere.

Two-Headed Poems

      "Joined Head to Head, and still alive"
          Advertisement for Siamese Twins,
           Canadian National Exhibition, c. 1954 -

The heads speak sometimes singly, sometimes
together, sometimes alternately within a poem.
Like all siamese twins, they dream of separation.

i

Well, we felt
we were almost getting somewhere
through how that place would differ
from where we've always been, we
couldn't tell you

and then this happened,
this joke or major quake, a rift
in the earth, now everything
in the place is falling south
into the dark pit left by cincinnati
after it crumbled.

this rubble is the future,
pieces of bureaucrats, used
bumper stickers, public names
returnable as bottles.
Our fragments made us.

What will happen to the children,
not to mention the words
we've been stockpiling for ten years now,
defining them, freezing them, storing
them in the cellar.
Anyone asked us who we were, we said
just look down there.

So much for the family business.
It was too small anyway
to be, as they say, viable.

But we weren't expecting this,
the death of shoes, fingers
dissolving from our hands,
atrophy of the tongue,
the empty mirror,
the sudden change
from ice to thin air.

ii

Those south of us are lavish
with their syllables. they scatter, we
hoard. Birds
eat their words, we eat
each other's words, hearts, what's
the difference? In hock

up to our eyebrows, we're still
polite, god knows, to the tourists.
We make tea properly and hold the knife
the right way.

Sneering is good for you
when someone else has cornered
the tree market.

Who was it told us
so indelibly,
those who take risks
have accidents.

xi

Surely in your language
no one can sing, he said, one hand
in the small-change pocket.

That is a language for ordering
the slaughter and gutting of hogs, for
counting stacks of cans. Groceries
are all you are good for. Leave
the soul to us. Eat shit.

In these cages, barred crates,
feet nailed to the floor, soft
funnel down the throat,
we are forced with nouns, nouns,
till our tongues are sullen and rubbery.
We see this language always
and merely as a disease
of the mouth. Also
as the hospital that will cure us,
distasteful but necessary.

It is always a treat to have our good friend Alice Folkart join us at "Here and Now." This is one of her newer poems, posted on Blueline's "House of 30" where the Muse stops in every morning for coffee and a danish. (If you're a poet, you might want to join her/us.)

We Are National Treasures

I am a national treasure
and so are you and
the turtles in the bay,
at break of day that bird that
chimes like a clock
in dawn dimness,
noisy children
on the way to school,
fooling around,
making obscene noises,
daring each other to laugh.

The world couldn't turn
without us to spin it,
to chew gum, to take out the trash,
cash our checks, drive rusted wrecks
through the sweet streets
of our burgs and towns,
hang nightgowns out to dry,
lie in the sunny grass,
pass the bottle, take a nip,
sip, not gulp, the wine of life.

Now, for two poems by John Ashbery, "America's Greatest Poet," according to Harold Bloom. The poems are from Ashbery's book Where Shall I Wander, published in 2005 by HarperCollins.

Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse

We were warned about spiders, and the occasional famine.
We drove downtown to see our neighbors. None of them were home.
We nestled in yards the municipality had created,
reminisced about other, different places -
but were they? Hadn't we known it all before?

In vineyards where the bee's hymn drowns the monotony,
we slept for peace, joining in the great run.
He came up to me.
It was all as it had been,
except for the weight of the present,
that scuttled the pact we made with heaven.
In truth there was no cause for rejoicing,
nor need to turn around, either.
Were lost just by standing,
listening to the hum of wires overhead.

We mourned that meritocracy which, wildly vibrant,
had kept food on the table and milk in the glass.
In skid-row, slapdash style
we walked back to the original rock crystal he had become,
all concern, all fears for us.
We went down gently
to the bottom-most step. There you can grieve and breathe,
rinse your possessions in the chilly spring.
Only beware the bears and wolves that frequent it
and the shadow that comes when you expect dawn.

You Spoke as a Child

We sat together in the long hall.
There was something I'd wanted to ask you,
a new mood I was after. Something neither posed nor casual.
Outside under a slappy sky the leaves were right on.
They're our own skeletons. And slack was the tautology report.

They don't have bare beds. The children here are as
hunted rabbits, and don't think too much about what comes after.
A suffocated prince summons the septuor,
celestas wax dim and bright in the distance,
what was meant to be distance. You spoke out of the margins.

Something, I think it was one of Alice Folkart's poems in "The House of 30," set me to thinking about how desperate people will reach out to things they shun in less desperate times, religion being a good example. Of course, even then they don't reach out without some hesitations, which i thought were kind of funny.

the doubter's prayer

dear most unlikely
heavenly father,
god of fear and weak
minds, hear my prayer

if you exist
and actually care
about stuff like us, please
bring us peace and protect us
from harm in the world you may
or may not have created

your creations,
should you willing to accept
such responsibility,
are in disarray - your stock market,
to take just one example, is in deepest
doo-doo, as are your banks, your big box
retail stores, your automobile manufacturers,
your farmers, your ranchers and your purveyors
of overpriced goods in upscale niche markets

not only that,
but your most worthy of all claimed creations,
me,
is getting old and fat and exceedingly
absent-minded

it's all in the toilet,
as you should very well know
if you really are the all-seeing eye
your PR flacks proclaim you to be, which,
quite frankly, brings into deep doubt
your status as a be-all-end-all master builder

so just in case you actually are king of all this creation,
i would humbly (if reluctantly) pray
that you get back on the job and fix this mess
your creation has slipped into

in your unlikely name
i pray you to make it so, just like the Star Trek guy
who, i have to say, has a much more likely
backstory than your own
and who would probably be an acceptable replacement
to most of us
if you don't demonstrate some
all-powerful, celestial
Mr. Fix-it skills pretty darn quick

it's the least you could do
if your really are all you're cracked up to be

(but i doubt it)

Here's a piece by Robert Bonazzi, a poet I've never read before. The poem is from his book Maestro of Solitude, published by Wings Press in 2007.

Born in 1942 in New York City, Bonazzi has also lived in San Francisco, Mexico City, Florida and several Texas cities, including San Antonio. From 1966 until 2000 he edited and published more than one hundred titles under his Latitudes Press imprint.

Cantos of Particles and Waves

only the ego is lonely
because it has no body or place
- Paul Christensen

I

Alive
in perpetual thesis
anti-thesis expanding endlessly
outside parentheses marking past
horizon eternally afloat
in a circular wordplay
inscribed or a page
or merely functional
speech led silently
to oneself

Ergo
centric city
grand gated prison
spreading concentric
circles around itself
center piece of void
mirrored wilderness
herded round scenery
fallen on deaf
fears

II

Being illuminates becoming
why time ticks art
curves wave shapes change
exists arguing
mind over matter
mystery

Original
fragment of
unknowable whole
infinite source eternal
within spirit essence
cycle of spring flowering
swarming insects take wing
over orange grove on
palette of shifting
colors seen as
windy light

Freedom
true solitude pure
exists not except as
modal consciousness
explicating obscure
lowercase depths
punctuated
space

III

Self
mother of pity
self-pity father of ego
imperfection of non-
violence renders violence
anonymous genocide

Perfection
of non-violence
absolute humility
facing murderous rapist
lost in contemplating
my perfect
crime

IV

Be
yond senses
stars orbit word
foreplay no hands
counter clockwise

Tao was then - Zen is now!
(no
milk or sugar
in the tea)

Here are three pieces by our friend Alex Stolis.

My filing system is such that I may have used these before, but, to paraphrase Whitman, I repeat myself? - so I repeat myself.

Repeating a good thing is not a bad thing.

Lovelines

I'm a Sagittarius and enjoy the simple things in life like flowers, bonfires, Chinese art. I'm 5'3", 110lbs, long straight blonde hair. I like to read and listen to music. If you are at all interested send me a message and I'll get back. Box 86345

Tonight, the sky is dressed in black
with gold trim; its silk feet bound
by crisscross moons

it's 2 AM and the crush of water running
in the bathtub next door
sounds like a Chinese fortune

I sit here,
think of cutting my teeth on the scar
that resembles a bird's feather
on your thigh,
parallel
to the curve of your hip.

Instead, I cut my teeth
on the round skin of an apple,
picture Madam Butterfly

covered to her neck,
petals and stems floating
around her breasts.

You Lose

back when misery was glamorous
the streets were tethers that kept us warm and broken,
we were caged with clipped wings
and unshorn hair

tomorrow, loss will be bundled like straw
and left to dry
in a crisp November sun

but for now,
there is no enchantment
in remembering:

there is no warm skin, no angels, no flights
of fancy only the remains of our bones
bleached by the cold

blame it on rain that can shred a conversation
until I love you
turns to later baby
to not a chance motherfucker

Treatment Bound

the bartender says it's time to go,
winks at me through last call and pretends
to pour a long count

we're all frightened of winter
and its bitter cough, wary of the cold sun

she's got nothing, not even god on her side
but twenty dollars later she drinks
me under the table

it arcs a path through this brittle day
and we get lost in layers of sin

I want to take her home, whisper her name
in my sleep but the only sound left is the clink,
clink of quarters and dimes against glass

waiting for forgiveness to blot out the moon
and erase the dirt from our memories

she tells me there is nowhere
to go but here
and we're running, fast as we can

I'm thinkng it might be a good time for some fun with Shel Silverstein. I was first a fan of Silverstein for his cartoons in Playboy, and didn't know him as a writer of children's books not just for children until his publication in 1974 of Where the Sidewalk Ends. The two poems I'm using this week are from A Light in the Attic, published in 1981 and given to me as a Christmas present in 1982 by my wife. With these two Silverstein books, as well as a beginning collection of Dr. Seuss, we were primed and ready when our son was born in 1983.

Tired

I've been working so hard you just wouldn't believe,
And I'm tired!
There's so little time and so much to achieve,
And I'm tired!
I've been lying here holding the grass in its place,
Pressing a leaf with the side of my face,
Tasting the apples to see if they're sweet,
Counting the toes on a centipede's feet.
I've been memorizing the shape of that cloud,
Warning the robins to not chirp so loud,
Shooing the butterflies off the tomatoes,
Keeping an eye out for floods and tornadoes.
I've been supervising the work of the ants
And thinking of pruning the cantaloupe plants,
Timing the sun to see what time it sets,
Calling the fish to swim into my nets,
And I've taken twelve thousand and forty-one breaths,
And I'm TIRED!

Whatif

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
And sang that same old Whatif song:
Whatif I'm dumb in school?
Whatif they've closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there's poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don't grown taller?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won't bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don't grown in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems swell, and then
The nighttime Whatifs strike again!

To more or less repeat a line from a TV show I liked last year than this year, "Burn Notice," a newspaper can be a deadly weapon if it falls into the wrong hands. Then there's this thing I did with a newspaper a couple of weeks ago.

in the news today

we break
from our TV Land
original drama
"Lucy & Ethel's Secret Adventure"
for this headline news update

shuttle launch postponed againin

NASA head
goes house-to-house
for parking meter change

suspect in slayings of 2 cops kills self

future
potential suicides
to be given marksman training
so they might better get it right the first time

Chicago shooting kills 3 teenagers

cure
for acne not yet
perfected

drought to halt water for farms

saved for priority uses -
spokesman says,
no water for swimming pools,
no starlets
in tiny bikinis -
mental health of Hollywood
producers on the line

Clintons' cat Socks dies at 18

last surviving
eyewitness to Monicagate
is laid to rest -
tell-all memoir due next year

holocaust-denier bishop to depart

he
denies it

some convicts to get amnesty

human rights advocates
decry
terms of amnesty -
claim
kissing the robe of
the Great Oz
just goes too far

boat cuts ice, rescues dolphins

boats crew
fired by their employer
Starkist tuna
for missing the dolphins
and hitting the ice instead

Ryokan Daigu, who lived in Japan between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries, was a quiet and eccentric Soto Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. Ryokan is remembered, and in many instances revered, for his poetry and calligraphy, which are said to present the essence of Zen life.

The poems are from One Robe, One Bowl - The Zen Poetry of Ryokan, translated by John Stevens, and first published in 1977 by Weatherhill.

Winter Night

Concealed in a dense forest, my hermitage lies far beyond
   the village river.
A thousand peaks, ten thousand mountain streams, yet no sigh
   of anyone.
A long, cold winter's night - slowly a piece of wood burns
   in the fireplace.
Nothing can be heard except the sound of snow striking
   the window.

***

Who can sympathize with my life?
My hut lies near the top of a mountain,
and the path leading here is covered with weeds.
On the fence, a single gourd,
From across the river, the sound of logging.
Ill, I lie on the pillow and watch the sunrise.
A bird cries in the distance -
My only consolation.

***

The number of days since I left the world and
entrusted myself to heaven is long forgotten.
Yesterday, sitting peacefully in the green mountains;
This morning, playing with the village children.
My robe is full of patches and
I cannot remember how long I have had the same bowl
   for begging.
On clear nights I walk with my staff and chant poems;
Who says many cannot lead such a life?
Just follow my example.

***

Finishing a day of begging,
I return home through the green mountains.
The setting sun is hidden behind the western cliffs
And the moon shines weakly on the stream below.
I stop by a rock and wash my feet.
Lighting some incense, I sit peacefully in zazen.
Again a one-man brotherhood of monks;
Ah...how quickly the stream of time sweeps by.

Here's a recent piece (also from Blueline's "House of 30") by our friend Thane Zander. I like most of what he does and this one is so "Thanish" I couldn't pass it up.

Repercussions

Immobilized by technologies danged finest,
I pierce a rogue nipple (or two)
dance an Irish Jig in the manner of insanity,
lick my wounds and place an errant computer
in a bin that's full to overflowing.

Immaculate, the precision required to lick postage stamps,
a record player lying defunct thanks to CD's
yet the needle scratches a pile of old 78's
when the mood for Dicky Valentine
and maybe early Frank
takes hold of a desire to just cruise into the sunset,
with waders on, a fishing pole, and a map marked with an X.

Impossible, the ability to scratch your back
where that little irritating ache emanates from,
the door jamb passes for a lithe finger
but still it irritates, just like a politician
that stands in front of you and proclaims
"every thing is fine"
you check your heart monitor for leaks.

Indestructible is the passion you display typing poems,
your fingers working aged joints like a modern day gladiator,
the trunks in the spare room moan holiday,
the empty space in your wallet decrying miserliness,
your daughter rings to say "hi", you say Hi back
arguing with yourself to ask what is wrong,
she smiles (you guess) and giggles and chats
letting you know you're not yet on the road
to grandfatherhood, the grey hairs mounting.

Igloo - a place you'd stay if they had power and modems.

Next, I have a couple of short poems from a very small book of poetry by Philip Larkin. The book is High Windows, published by Faber and Faber in 1974. A poet, novelist, and jazz critic, Larkin died in 1985. He spent his working life as a university librarian and was offered the Poet Laureateship at one point, but declined the post.

Sad Steps

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of Love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad
  They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
  by fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
  And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
  It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can.
  And don't have any kids yourself.

A break in routine led me to this.

writing my morning poem at the end of day

i usually do my writing
in the morning,
when the fresh breath
of a new day
informs
my imagination,
bringing to early light
possibilities
lost in the denser parts of day

sundays
are especially difficult,
busier
as they are
than any other day
with activities
planned
and places to be

it's hard
to get a morning poem
on Sundays

This sunday,
today,
more packed even then usual,
preparing
for dinner tonight
with family

we do this often
on weekends,
will do it again next Sunday,
in fact,
our son's birthday (26);
my birthday (65);
our anniversary (32),
something simple,
family type food,
probably an enchilada casserole
that everyone likes
and that's quick to make
and that goes a long way
when you're feeding 10 people

i enjoy these evenings
together -
i'm always the oldest,
and from my place
at the head of the table
i can look down on either side
and count the changes
we've all seen together,
especially the kids, the youngest now
approaching her 15th birthday,
looking forward to her Quinceanera
in June almost as much as her parents -
D and i are padrinos of the tiara
so we will stand with her at the altar
through the mass, and will at some
appropriate time play our part
in the ceremony, and whatever that part is,
it will be gladly done,
as such things are always gladly done
for the happiness to those we love

and that is why i often miss my morning poem
on Sundays - there are priorities
in writing and in life
and in the companionship of family
and Sundays are the days
when life and family assume the first
position, and writing,
if it's time comes at all,
is in the late hours
like now,
when
the fresh breath of morning is long gone,
and what i want most
is the quiet
whisper
of sleep

Born in 1950, Dana Gioia is a poet and critic who retired early from his career as a corporate executive at General Foods to write full time. He recently completed nearly five years of service as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States government's arts agency, where he worked to revitalize an organization that had suffered bitter controversies about the nature of grants to artists in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During his tenure, Gioia sought to encourage jazz, which he calls the only uniquely American form of art, to promote reading and performance of William Shakespeare, and increase the number of Americans reading literature. Before taking the NEA post, Gioia was a resident of Santa Rosa, California, and before that, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

The next two poems are from his book, The Gods of Winter, published by Graywolf Press in 1991.

Night Watch

for my uncle, Theodore Ortiz, U.S.M.M.

I think of you standing on the sloping deck
as the freighter pulls away from the coast of China,
the last lights of Asia disappearing in the fog,
and the engine's drone dissolving in the old
monotony of waves slapping up against the hull.

Leaning on the rails, looking eastward to American
across the empty weeks of ocean,
how carefully you must have planned your life,
so much of it already wasted on the sea,
the vast country of your homelessness.

Macao, Vladivostok, Singapore.
Dante read by shiplamp on the bridge.
The names of fellow sailors lost in war.
These memories will die with you,
but tonight they rise up burning in your mind.

Interweaving like gulls crying in the wake,
like currents on a chart, like gulfweed
swirling in a star-soaked sea, and interchangeable
as all the words for night - la notte, noche, Nacht, nuit,
each sound half-foreign, half-American, like America.

For now you know that mainland best from dreams.
Your dead mother turning toward you slowly,
always on the edge of words, yet always
silent as the suffering madonna of a shrine.
Or your father pounding his fist against the wall.

There are so many ways to waste a life.
Why choose between these icons of unhappiness,
when there is the undisguised illusion of the sea.
the comfort of old books and solitude to fill
the long night watch, the endless argument of waves?

Breathe in the dark and tangible air, for in a few weeks
you will be dead, burned beyond recognition,
left as a headstone in the unfamiliar earth
which no one to ask, neither wife nor children,
why your ashes have been buried here

and not scattered on the shifting gray Pacific.

Veteran's Cemetery

the ceremonies of the day have ceased,
Abandoned to the ragged crow's parade.
The flags unravel in the caterpillar's feast.
the wreaths collapse onto the stones they shade.

How quietly doves gather by the gate
Like souls who have no heaven and no hell.
The patient grass reclaims its lost estate
Where one stone angel stands as sentinel.

The voices whispering in the burning leaves,
Faint and inhuman, what can they desire
When every season feeds upon the past,
And summer's green ignites the autumn’s fire?

The afternoon's single thread of light
Sewn through the tatters of leafless willow,
As one by one the branches fade from sight,
And time curls up like paper turning yellow.

Our friend Dan Cuddy sent this to me. I don't know where it originated, but it’s funny.

Explaining Investment Banking

Young Chuck moved to Texas and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100.

The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.

The next day the farmer drove up and said, "Sorry Chuck, but I have some bad news. The donkey died."

Chuck replied, "Well then, just give me my money back."

The farmer said," "Can't do that. I went and spent it already."

Chuck said, "OK, then, just bring me the dead donkey."

The farmer asked, "What ya gonna do with a dead donkey?"

Chuck said, "I'm going to raffle him off."

The farmer said, "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!"

Chuck said, "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead."

A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?"

Chuck said, "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars apiece and made a profit of $898.00."

The farmer said, "Didn't anyone complain?"

Chuck said, "Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back."

Chuck now works for Morgan Stanley.

The next poem is by William Matthews, from his book Blues If You Want, published Houghton Mifflin in 1989.

Matthews was born in Ohio, in 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. He received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Ingram Merrill foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. In 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 Introduction

I have a few remarks. He smiled.
Restless and unbeguiled,
we shifted in our seats, This morning's
speaker, he began, and then without warning
we were in the midst of a dark essay.
His first remarks concerned equality
between the speaker and himself - also
a biped, an inquiring mind and slow
to take offense. A change of venue
for each numb buttock in the hall? The menu
was all appetizer napped with dust.
Award Adam a Ph.D and Eden must
have been like this. The naming
of the animals was more like registration,
even, than like class. Animals
frequently cooked with fruit milled
on the left, blue animals in the center,
and on the right in puffs and blurs
like dissipating ground fog, wraiths
from each species that would fade
into extinction while he spoke.
This introduction was no joke,
like so much of life. And after all, whom
would we meet? A look around the room
confirmed that we were us - deft
at pretending to be there, bereft
because we were. Oh, an artesian
joy and other fluids bubbled in
us, but we strove to be attentive all
the same. From the podium a rumble
rose (Ladies) and fell and Gentlemen).
Is this the onset of the end?
Here comes the speaker, like a comet's tail.
It wasn't a bad introduction after all.
I think the topic, though I could be wrong,
is the afterlife. I hope it doesn't go on long.

More news that brought me to this.

big news in the astrophysical world

big news
in the astrophysical world
is the massive explosion some
12.2 billion light years
from our own little howdydoody home
from whence
we ofttimes claim a place
as big-time-charlies
in the heavenly order of things,
even though, being only
8 light minutes from our own star
we call the sun
and 12 light minutes from the furthest
named object to circle that sun
with us, it is a very small neighborhood
we live in, a very small neighborhood
where, with all our searching and seeking,
we have yet to reach
even our own
front
gate

Columbus sailed the ocean blue
and thought he had circled the world,
such ignorance is to us denied and we
are better for it...
for it
lets us see
our true place, tiny bits of carbon base
in a vastness we can quantify
but not imagine,
little carbon dandies
important only in our doings
with our little carbon
fellows

frankly,
my dear,
the rest of all that is
doesn't give a damn

Gary Soto is a poet, playwright, essayist, and author of several children's books. Widely anthologized, he has been honored with both the Bess Hokin and Levinson Prizes, as well as the Discovery/The Nation Award, the Andrew Carnegie Award for Excellence in Children’s Video, the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, and an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He has received several fellowships and was a National Book Award finalist for his book, New and Selected Poems. He divides his time between Berkeley and his hometown of Fresno.

The next two poems are from his book, a simple plan, another National Book Award finalist, published Chronicle Books in 2007.

L.A. Scene at a Restaurant called "One"

"I'm a conceptual artist," he says,
and shows me, a violinist, the fingernails of his left hand -
Brittle scenes of the Seine river in its four seasons.

I'm drinking a California champagne,
Little bubbles applauding at the lip of the glass,
Not unlike the clamor of my last Beethoven Sonata #@4 -
To hid the hundred no-shows,
Ten friends in the audience forced up a thousand faces.

"They look real," I say, and, sipping, destroy the applause,
My Happy Hour pleasure at $8.75 a glass.

"You should grow our nails longer," I suggested.
"Do scenes of Twain's Mississippi, the Grand Canyon,
Or" - sip, sip of champagne - "the four stages
Of the Rodney King Riots."

He lifts a glass to his face,
Rivers of lines around his mouth,
The deltas of every piece of gossip he helped spread.

"Can't," he answers.
“My fingernails chip easily."

I tip back my drink,
And size up this artist through a light buzz -
He needs those fingernails.
Needs them to claw his way up.

The Artist Thinks, "So This is Me"

On a diet, I move the salt shaker like a chess piece,
and the pepper follows. Forget eggs,
Forget the steak wrapped in butcher paper,
And let's not dwell on the Freudian meaning
Of half-and-half cream.

(We get older. The cornucopia
Of spleen, kidney, and liver bruised,
Our joints stiff, our lives a glint in the rearview mirror.
The hair on your head just that - a hair.)

The red-nibbled radish is OK,
The glass of water with the milk ring on the bottom,
The apple, the pear, the Orange quartered cleanly,
And a mob of grapes. I think,
My lunch is nothing but a still life!

But it's life. When I open the refrigerator,
I'm greeted by Mrs. Butterworth and her nemesis, Quaker Oats.
The beer looks beer-bellied - why didn't I see that earlier!
and the tortillas! I'm sure if you threw one
Onto the burner, Jesus' face would appear.

Wallace Stevens, poet and insurance salesman,
Once rolled his pant legs up and stood on a lapping shore.
From that tug of nature, he wrote three books,
So moved was he by the little act of slapping sand from his toes.

I have no shore, no insurance, no letter that begins, "My Dear Love."
In a park I would fall face first into autumn leaves
And rub my wounds until those leaves healed me.
Then I would go home, my mind big as a canvas.
My brushes are stiff, and the first figures just sticks,
But I can do a still life - an apple
And pear, the grapes in the biggest bowl.
In the background, the salt and pepper shakers, their red tops -
My yearning, critics would say, to roughhouse with a bloody steak?

Here's a little shiver of a poem I wrote last week to finish off this week's presentation.

hoodat hoosay hoodat

early to bed last night,
barely made it
to 8:30

really tired

dreams all night

woke up
from a dream
that reminded me
of a place and people
in my past, fond memories,

then realized
that i was only dreaming
i woke up
and all the fond memories
from the past
were dream memories
inside of a dream
inside of a dream of waking up

seemed so real
when i dreamed it,
so confusing when i woke up
from the waking-up dream

it's like the door slam
that wakes you up at 2 a.m.
and you have to decide whether
the door really slammed
or did you just dream a slamming
door

like the voice
that seems to come from just beside the bed

Time to mosey off down the trail for another week.

As I try to recall the essentials of my 7th grade mosey lessons, you should recall that 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.

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