Kind of Blue
Friday, May 29, 2009
IV.5.5.
My title and images this week are meant as my own humble homage to Miles Davis, whose birth date was celebrated last week - May 26, 1926. Davis died in September 1991, arguably the most influential American musical figure of, at least, the 20th century.
A life worth noting.
Also worth noting this week, though with perhaps less fanfare, are our poets for this issue.
Mary Swander
Scheherazade
Me
death of a friend and patron
just like you and me
six white-haired men
Simon Armitage
Kid
Song
The Catch
Dan Flore
dream of me
Jim Carroll
My Father's Last Words
Poem
Sick Bird
me
the draft board
Gene Fehler
The Marksman
Coloring Outside the Lines
In the Back Seat
Dan Cuddy
Getting a Haircut
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Bury Me in a Free Land
Me
Memorial Day
Sapphire
Rabbit Man
Arunsansu Banerjee
Divine
Jose Emilio Pacheco
Eye Witness
Me
mondo weirdo
Kevin McCann
Yet Another Fractal
Me
Star Trek can wait
My first poem this week is by Mary Swander. It is from her bookHeaven-and-Earth House, published by Knopf in 1994,
Swander was born in Iowa in 1950 and grew up in small towns in Iowa.
She began college at Georgetown University, but finished an English degree at the University of Iowa, coming back because her mother was dying of cancer. She earned her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. She was involved in a variety of pursuits for several years, including becoming a certified and licensed practitioner of therapeutic massage. She began teaching English at Iowa State University, Ames, in 1986.
She has published several books - nonfiction, memoir, poetry - and has had a number of poems, essays, short stories, and articles in several national magazines and journals.
She continues to live in Iowa and still teaches at Iowa State. She was named this year as Iowa's poet laureate.
Scheherazade
Batteries and blanket, this spring
I've made a little place here
down in the cellar to listen
to the radio crackle the weather:
TORNADO WATCH, high winds and hail,
take cover. In this furnace room,
I'm alone with the centipedes and
cinder blocks, the mouse scurrying
to squeeze in from the rain.
I'm away from all windows and
flying glass, the silver maple
that might crash through the roof.
Overturned bucket, my chair, I see
by an oil lamp on loan from a neighbor.
How dumb to depend on lines from
the world. In these storms, it's no use
to think phone or pump, or switch.
In the draft, only the dust churns
in the old ducts, their arms
branching up, the octopus.
Outside, the anemones swim along
the grove floor and bend in the inky dark.
Once I knew a man who drove a friend
here from the East, she belted in,
terrified the whole time of a funnel cloud.
Just as they crossed the state line,
the sky clear and cool, he pulled his
VW bug to the side, and ordered her down.
"This is it, quick. The only safe place
underneath." She dove past the
exhaust pipe, crawled and scrunched,
scraping her back, her butt, on the pan.
He stood on the highway and laughed.
Once I lived above a garage, and when
I heard the horns, ran to the owners'
basement, their ninety-year-old mother,
senile, but still strong, nailing shut
the door, crying, "Sinbad, Sinbad
we're all ruined, lost in the wreck!"
Once I was yanked from my sleep, my mother's
hand flying me down the three flights
of steps. That time, the coal room,
and prayers, Hail, Mary, while
a twister wound its fury past the house,
ripping up everything in its path.
Our clothesline and poles were found
a mile from town where a barn collapsed
on a man milking cows. Holy, Mary,
I answered and pressed my legs together,
trying to stop the pee from wetting
my pants. Upstairs, my father, the engineer,
moved from one window to another,
opening, closing, each a crack, trying
to assure the proper flow of air.
But this year the blows have become
routine - they howl through the attic vents,
feed sacks tumbling across the field
smack into the fence. Two a.m.,
and I'm chewing gum, recounting
other times - the snakebite, car wreck,
doctor goof, the bolt of lightning
so close it fanned the hairs on my arms.
Suddenly, I recall the dryer blowing up,
the bang, the smoke, the flames in the air,
then at age four, the fall from the elm tree,
and at thirty, the drunk who broke in,
and how, from the second story window,
I jumped to safety. Now I sit up
and tell these tales to the mouse.
His black eyes glare back at me.
The two of us know the game.
Where on night ends, another begins
until all is forgiven, and the sky relents.
I attended a funeral this past week for a longtime friend and patron. These three short poems came from that.
death of a friend and patron
a man
in constant
motion
hard
to think of him as
still
just like you and me
traveling south
to bury a friend
in a crypt
beside the sea
like the restless, roiling waves
he came -
and then he went
just like you and me
six white-haired men
six
white-haired men
stand around the pit
watch the box
as it is lowered into the hole
think of their friend
and wonder
whose box is next
The next poems are by Simon Armitage from his book Kid, published in 1992 by faber and faber, another of their little poetry books that have been showing up at my local half price bookstores for $1.98. They have become the first thing I look for whenever I go in shopping.
Armitage was born in West Yorkshire in 1963, and in 1993 was the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. He works as a freelance writer, broadcaster, and playwright, and has written extensively for radio and television.
I start with the book's title poem.
Kid
Batman, big shot, when you gave the order
grow up, then let me loose to wander
leeward, freely through the wild blue yonder
as you like to say, or ditched me, rather,
in the gutter...well, I turned the corner.
Now I've scotched that "he was like a father
to me" rumour, sacked it, blown the cover
on that "he was like an elder brother"
story, let the cat out on the caper
with the married woman, how you took her
downtown on expenses in the motor.
Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!
Holy roll-me-over-in-the-clover,
I'm not playing ball boy any longer
Batman, now I've doffed that off-the-shoulder
Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number
for a pair of jeans and crew-neck jumper;
now I'm taller, harder, stronger, older.
Batman, it makes a marvelous picture:
you without a shadow, stewing over
chicken giblets in the pressure cooker,
next to nothing in the walk-in larder,
punching the palm of your hand all winter,
you baby, now I'm the real boy wonder.
Song
The bridle-path, the river bank,
and where they crossed I took a length
of hazel bark, and carved a boat
no bigger than a fish, a trout,
and set it down and saw it float,
then sink. And where it sank
and inch of silver flesh declared itself
against the sun. Then it was gone.
and further south, beyond the bridge,
I took a nest of cotton grass
and flint to make a fire. Then watched
a thread of smoke unhook a pair
of seed propellers from a sycamore
which turned together and became
a dragon fly that drew the smoke
downstream. But the fire would not light.
Then at night, the house at the mouth
of the river. Inside, a fish,
a trout, the ounces of its soft
smoked meat prepared and on a plate.
I sat down there and ate it. It is
the way of things, the taking shape
of things, beginning with their names;
secrets told in acts of sunlight,
promises kept by gifts of rain.
The Catch
Forget
the long, smouldering
afternoon. It is
this moment
when the ball scoots
off the edge
of the bat; upwards,
backwards, falling
seemingly
beyond him
yet he reaches
and picks it
out
of its loop
like
an apple
from a branch,
the first of the season.
Here's a poem from our Pennsylvania friend Dan Flore Dan is 30 years old and has led many poetry therapy groups for people with serious mental illness. He also hosts a writer's circle.
dream of me
dream of me
as I crawl across sidewalks
drink the past with me
we'll flatten out the sun
and crawl across it
till we realize we're on fire
remember me
embracing you from behind
where you never saw the blood
in taking the hill
we lost the mountain
the world is stone
can you feel it chipping away?
we came from places
between stars
come back to our old bed
we are voids again
I have caught the avalanche
smelled my own decay
the seance died
but we saw many ghosts
in each other
sing to me tonight
and I will dream of you
with sterling kingdom
and oceans where miracles are born
pray for me
I am a swinging spider
eating it's own web
Born in 1950, Jim Carroll is an author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician, best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries, which was made into the a film of the same name in 1995.
Born and raised in New York City, Carroll attended Roman Catholic grammar schools from 1955 to 1963. In fall 1963, he entered public school, but in 1964 was awarded a scholarship to the elite Trinity School.
Apart from being interested in writing, Carroll was an all-star basketball player throughout his grade school and high school career. He entered the "Biddy League" at age 13 and participated in the National High School All Star Game in 1966. During this time, Carroll was living a double life as a heroin addict who prostituted himself to afford his habit. By age 13, Carroll was using heroin, but was also writing poems.
Carroll attracted the attention of the local literati, and published his first book, Organic Trains, at age 17. In 1970, his second collection of poems, 4 Ups and 1 Down was published, and he started working for Andy Warhol. At first, he was writing film dialogue and inventing character names, then, later on, worked as the co-manager of Warhol's Theater. Carroll's first aboveground publication, the collection Living At The Movies, was published in 1973.
In 1978, Carroll authored The Basketball Diaries, an autobiographical book concerning his life as a teenager in New York City's hard drug culture. It is an edited collection of the diaries he kept between the ages of twelve and sixteen, detailing his sexual experiences, high school basketball career, and his addiction to heroin.
Also in 1978, Carroll formed The Jim Carroll Band, a New Wave/punk rock group, with encouragement from Patti Smith.
In the mid-1980s, Carroll returned to writing full time and began to appear regularly on the spoken word circuit. Since 1991, Carroll has performed readings from his unfinished first novel, tentatively titled The Petting Zoo.
I have three poems from Carroll's book Void of Course.
My Father's Last Words
On his death bed
He reached up and grabbed my wrist
Pulling me close so I could hear he said,
"Promise me that you'll never eat
Any of that Japanese food. Promise."
That may sound racist and perhaps it is
but keep in mind my father spent all
of World War Two fighting in the Pacific
Mainly, the island of Saipan.
I myself admire the Japanese, but
As they themselves would well appreciate,
I must honor my father's last wish.
The irony is I've never like Japanese food.
The irony is that
At his funeral,
The Priest that said
Mass was Japanese.
Poem
The wide Mojave sky dark
And vain as my heart tonight
Walking back by the feel
Of the blacktop under foot
What's that desert fragrance
That lights the 4 A.M. sky
With a shampoo green glow?
Is that a coyote eye
Or a tail reflector that bumped loose
From and old English racer?
Which are popular on the reservation
But never last long
They weren't made for this landscape
Sick Bird
The positions we use when making love
Determine the next day's weather
Tomorrow it will rain
the heat lightning by evening
Every time the telephone rings
A green sea turtle dies
And a phlegmatic guilt chants across your day
The side of your head
Where you part your hair
Dictates the direction
The trees lean
Left or right
In the yard out back
A poor Mexican teenager in the Texas panhandle
Is suffering from a venereal disease
And as he urinates in his bathroom the pain
Is too much to bear, so he smashes his closed fist into the plaster
Leaving a hole there and discovers a shelf within the wall
Filled with stacks of fifty-dollar bills left behind by a drug dealer perhaps
Who departed in haste and so he is rich for a lifetime
Because of pain and urine
A blond woman with a silver tongue stud and gold rings
Above her left eye lights a cigarette with a candle
In the VIP lounge of a club in Minneapolis
And the candle drips wax to the red carpet, somehow causing
A lone fisherman on an upstate lake
To slip on some odd substance, falling overboard and drowned
Eventually eaten by his own propeller
While a child from a lake tribe
Kneeling in his canoe
Watches in distance and mist
Unable to do a thing for him
He mutters, "That poor man,"
And paddles through the reeds
Skimming the surface with a plank,
Continuing to harvest wild rice form the surface of Glacier Lake
A popular character actress removes her Emerald brooch
After a banquet to raise money
For the twin benefit of Los angeles runaways
And the Dalai Lama's return to Tibet.
By her simple action, undoing the clasp of the brooch
The Dalai Lama stubs his left foot on a cabinet in his room
At the San Francisco Zen Center's guest house, 800 miles up the coastline
Causing alarm among the Roshi and initiates, and a marlin-blue swelling
On the big toe of the gentle Lama, who meditates the pain to Maya
While in a cluttered shop in the thin streets of Milan, Italy,
Its floor filled with rosewood shavings
The air cramped with oak dust,
The man who built the cabinet
On which the Dalai Lama's foot was stubbed
Slumps over his workbench with a cerebral hemorrhage.
He is dead
It has been growing a long while in his mind.
It was simply a matter of time.
And a young Norwegian film student thoughtlessly
Decides to title his short film
It was simply a Matter of Time.
It has nothing to do
With time, however, nor the dead
Italian cabinet maker.
A mosquito sucks the blood of a post-Soviet Baltic girl
And she falls in love with a balding Armenian
Who assures her that only girls with strong sexual drives are chosen by
these insects
The mosquito dies and provides a small meal to a starving bird.
That bird's song awakes me at 5 A.M.
I shiver with a sudden sense of dread because the mosquito
Which it ate was poisoned by the blood of the girl which it bit
Because she was imbibed with lies and designer drugs and so the bird
sings off-key
As it jars me from sleep, and the room is folding over
Darker as I rise and I know a change is coming & bad & soon writing this
poem
Even now, the funeral last week still has me thinking.
the draft board
life,
such a serious game,
no matter how carefully you play it,
it kills you every time
a random thought,
and even
i don't know what to do with it
just know that
that kind of stuff has been on my mind
since a funeral i went to last week,
not so much the funeral itself
affecting me
- a nice affair, loose and unassuming,
perfectly capturing the man
who had left us -
but the new evidence of mortality -
as if additional evidence
is needed in the middle of one's 66th year -
like a chapel full of mostly old people
who know their own time is coming,
an exclusive club of those whose time
is running out - exclusive, only in the sense
of selective membership and the years of waiting
to get on the list, whether you want to or not
Groucho said he didn't want to belong
to any club
whose standards were so low
as to accept him
that's how i feel about this club
of the not yet dead but daily dying -
i would like to think i'm
overqualified,
despite all evidence
to the contrary
but it's like the draft board
on my eighteenth birthday,
there was not a lot of concern
with my preferences
on the matter
I have three poems now by poet Gene Fehler from Golden Jubilee Anthology, 1949-1999 published by the Austin Poetry Society in 2000.
Formerly of Austin, Fehler teaches poetry in elementary and middle schools in South Carolina. He is a frequently published poet and author, concentrating mostly on sports books for young readers.
The Marksman
Of all the things
I loved about my granddad
the best was not the fact
that he let me sit next to him
on the front seat of the township truck
when he drove to the quarry
for a load of gravel
but the way his spray
of sweet-smelling chewing tobacco
sailed over my lap
while we bounced over country roads
at forty miles an hour
and pinged dead center
in the coffee can
every time.
Coloring Outside the Lines
got me kept after school
in first grade,
especially when Mrs. Dobbish
found I was
doing it on purpose, running
the orange
crayon all the way across
my page
and onto my desk, where
I drew a
flat nose, big eyes, smiling
mouth on a
bright round sun that Mrs.
Dobbish, in spite
of the smile, thought looked
like her.
In the Back Seat
In the back seat
of my '54 Ford
on my ninth date
with pretty Julie Mae
on Potter's Road
down where the leaves
danced
under a romantic May moon
nothing much happened
again.
Now here's a poem from another one of our Dan-friends, this one Dan Cuddy from Baltimore.
Getting A Haircut
i sit with my mouth shut
a barber shop
you need to keep your mouth shut
they play with razors
like people pic guitars
Oh, no reenactment of Sweeney Todd
the music is John Philip Sousa
the talk is pure Ronald Reagan
the barber doesn't use deodorant
a rank place
but ya gotta get the wild hairs cut
ya gotta look like ya belong someplace
besides the island in the middle of the street
with a cardboard sign
"will harass for money"
ya aren't like that
ya gotta a credit card
and the trumpets play
"Charge"
every time you become a part
of this Greatest Little Economy on Earth
okay, the talc,
the aftershave
your neck feeling red
your heart beating red, white and blue
you will vote Republican
because you do
and you like money
you put up with a cheap apartment
because you like to spend on electronics
you like to be wired into the world
ah, the barber slides your plastic
numbers are changing microscopically
in the macro world
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, born a free black woman in Baltimore, Maryland in 1824 earned financial independence and nationwide acclaim with her poetry, essays, fiction and public readings on behalf of racial equality, women's and children's rights, Christian morality and temperance. She died in 1911,
The poem by Harper is from African American Poetry, an Anthology, 1773-1927, published in 1977 by Dover Publications.
Bury Me in a Free Land
Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill,
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves.
I could not rest if around my grave
I heard the steps of a trembling slave:
His shadow above my silent tomb
Would make it a place of fearful gloom.
I could not rest if I heard the tread
Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
Rise like a curse on the trembling air.
I could not sleep if I saw the lash
Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast,
Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
Of blood-hounds seizing their human prey,
And I heard the captive plead in vain
As the bound afresh his galling chain.
If I saw young girls from their mother's arms
Bartered and sold for their youthful charms,
My eye would flash with a mournful flame
My death-paled cheeks grow red with shame.
I would sleep, dear friends , where bloated might
Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave
Where none can call his brother a slave.
I ask no monument, proud and high
To arrest the gaze of the passer-by;
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.
I wrote a Memorial Day poem for the occasion last Monday.
Memorial Day
i served
but did not fight
i did my time,
instead,
bent over a radio
seeking out the secrets
of those
who we thought to be
our enemies
and since the secrets
i found
did not seem very interesting
to me or to anyone else, it never occurred to me
my contribution to the security of my country
amounted to much
another cog
in the military-industrial machine,
that's all i ever was -
the outcome of choice for me
but
while i did what i did, there were others
who did fight during those same years -
1967 through 1969 - and, among them,
thousands who died
gave their lives for their country,
is the way we
describe it
what a conceit that is
the idea that the lives of
those who did not fight or die
were of such value -
"had better things to do" in the words
of one former vice-president
who enjoyed his five deferments -
that men and women would
give up
lives and future for those who had "better things to do"
give up education never completed
give up marriages never consummated; the midnight kiss;
making love with the new sun rising
give up the joy of watching their son or daughter
bat or catch a fly in little league play; the crack of the bat;
the slap of a hard thrown ball as it hits
the catcher's mitt
give up future careers and professional accomplishment
give up all -
give up, everything that could ever be, everything that
those
who did not serve and fight
would come to accept as their due in life
for my limited service
i got two years of college
and a government backed loan
for my first house
but
what can you give a soldier dead for weeks or years?
nothing,
i'm afraid,
but honor and respect for the time they gave us
the lives of these good men and women
was a loan,
given to us in good faith,
that must be repaid
with the honors that are the best we can do
and today
is one of the 365 days this year
to do it
Sapphire does not write "nice" poems; she does not write "soft" poems. Sapphire writes hard, nasty poems that take your breath away.
Rabbit Man
1.
he's the night
chasing rabbits,
a pot of dust
under the asphalt sky
cracked with stars.
athlete,
"colored boy from Houston makes good."
standing straight as a razor
he cuts my vagina open
stretches it like bleeding lights thru dark air
his rabbit teeth drag my tongue
over sabers hidden in salt,
from the slit tip
red roses drip
screaming: daddy don't.
I'm not supposed to be
your dinner nigger.
your semen forms fingers
in my throat,
furry fingers,
i cough all the time
rabbit man
colored boy
run
jump
hurdle after hurdle -
higher
till your penis melts
like a marshmallow in fire
and your fear is a desert with no flowers
except two daughters,
American Beauties,
tight rosebuds you hew open,
petals of pink light left bleeding
under a broken moon.
pine needles spring up in the sand
but you don't ask what they're for
surrounded like you are by infant daughters,
little dog fish drowning in diapers.
you did this rabbit dick,
rabbit dick
rabbit dick
hopping coprophagous freak
blind eyes opening
like terminal disease
in mouth after mouth -
paralyzing light.
2.
I slide between cold polyester rooms,
into your bed -
everything is so cheap and falling apart.
I recoil from the blond skin and
bleeding blue eyes of Jesus.
most nights you slept
in the obituary of light -
alone.
the picture is positioned
so when you head hit the pillow
you saw Jesus.
the what?
3.
you saw death like the black legs of your mother
like the bent teeth of your retarded sister
like the wet smell of light in a fish's eye.
you saw death riding without a car or credit cards.
you saw death creeping waddling like the fat women
you hated.
you saw Jesus could not save you.
god's hand is creased with the smell of burnt hair and
hot grease,
she hears you tell your sons don't get no
black nappy-head woman.
her titties sag down sad snakes that crawl up your legs
till your penis talks and with blind sight you see
the two daughters you left in the desert without water.
oh death knows you and invites you to dinner,
rolls out the driveway like a coupe de ville,
is a snake-tongued daughter who turns on you,
is a thirsty rabbit choking on a lonely road.
death is an ax in an elevator rising to the sun.
death is god's egg.
death is a daughter who eats.
you are the table now the wet black earth lays upon -
you are dinner for dirt,
a cadillac spinning back to a one-room shack.
you are the rabbit released from fear,
the circle broken by sun
the handle of a buried ax,
head rolling thru desert
like a tumble weed -
back to Neptune.
4.
now I am the queen of sand,
wind wrapping like wire around the rabbit's neck,
the end of a cycle.
my children refuse to believe your penis is a lollipop.
my children are the desert in bloom;
cactus flowers opening to forgiveness,
millions of rabbits hopping -
hopping over you.
Next I have a short piece (a Tanka) from our friend Arunansu Banerjee, from from Calcutta, West Bengal, India. Since childhood, Arunsansu says, he has been a prolific painter and a "bookworm." He is a teacher by profession, with a degree in physics and specialized expertise in softwares. His primary love is listening to Indian Classical music. His favorite poets are Emily Dickinson and Rabindranath Tagore.
Arunsansu explains that this poem is about the painting of the Goddess Durga. He says that the greatest appeal of the Goddess "lies in her eyes. The artist's rendition of her eyes are thus almost at par with drawing forth her soul, so an auspicious moment is chosen for the painting of the Goddesses eyes."
Divine
A brush paints
the three brightest eyes
over cold clay.
Light watches darkness,
folded hands cling to prayers.
Now I have a poem by Jose Emilio Pacheco, from his book The Ark of the Next Millennium, published by the University of Texas Press in 1993.
Pacheco was born in 1939, in Mexico City. He studied at Autonomous National University of Mexico. After graduating Pacheco worked as the Assistant Editor for Revista de la Universidad de Mexico from 1959 until 1960, then as Associate Editor to La Cultura en Mexico, and then went on to teach literature at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. Pacheco's first book of poetry, Los elementos de la noche (The Elements of Night), was published in 1963, when he was barely twenty. .
Pacheco is a well-known translator of works by Samuel Beckett, Yevgeny Yevtuschenko, and Albert Einstein, among others. He was awarded with the Mexican National Poetry Prize in 1969 for his collection No me preguntas como pasa el tiempo (Don't Ask Me How the Time Goes By). His collection El silencio de la luna (The Silence of the Moon) was awarded the Premio Jose Asuncion Silva for the best book in Spanish to appear in any country between 1990 and 1995. Pacheco is considered the most important Mexican poet of the generation following Octavio Paz and Alfonso Reyes. He currently lives and teaches in Mexico City.
The poems in the book were translated by Margaret Sayers Peden.
Eye Witness
At the edge of the sea, curving sand
and a line of dead fish
Like shields abandoned after battle
No sign of suffocation or visible
putrefaction
Jewels polished by the sea
sarcophagi
enclosing their own deaths
Those fish shared
a ghostly
peculiarity
None had eyes
Twin cavities in each head
As if something said
the land might claim their bodies
But their eyes belong to the sea
the sea sees through them
So when a fish dies on the sand
its eyes evaporate
and with the tide
the sea recovers what is hers
Like the poem says, I don't know where this came from, but here it is.
mondo weirdo
don't know why i thought of this
but i remember
reading in Believe It or Not
about this businessman, an
owner of a big company back East
who had himself stuffed or embalmed
or whatever when he died
back in 1837 or something like that,
a long time ago, anyway, who
put a clause in his will that
his body be wheeled out
and sat at the head of the table
at every board of directors meeting
this had been going on since he died
back in whenever up to 1955 or 1956
when i read about him in my
Believe It or Not book
i was 11 or 12 years old at the time
and i loved that book, full as it was
of great stuff like that
and several years later,
the Italian movie
Mondo Cane
a cinematic
Believe It or Not
with a few naked people
and a theme song More
remembered today,
while its source is forgotten
by most, as are the many
mondo-movie rip-offs, usually
with even stranger stuff than the original
and increasing numbers, with
each new version, of naked people,
and, eventually naked people
simulating sex. naked people
having sex and, finally, naked
people having weird sex
and their still making them,
you know,
except they're on TV now,
shows that don't go off
to some far-away exotic land
to find the strange and twisted,
but right next door, instead,
to our neighbors, those staid
upright looking people who,
it seems,
will do anything to be on
television,
to be famous,
to be famous for doing things
not discussed in the world i grew up in
back in 1955 and 1956
i saw all those mondo-movies,
loved them
from my young perch in the
world of the mid-50's -
loved them for the shock
of their strangeness
shock and strangeness
was not in big supply
where i came from
and finding it in a movie
theater was a gift
to that young inquiring mind
this new stuff -
i don't watch it
living right in the middle
of all that weirdness
is a little unsettling
for an older guy like me -
long past
any young fascination
with shock and awe
Here's a short piece by our friend Kevin McCann. Kevin has been a full-time writer for 16 years now. He's published six limited edition pamphlets in England, including I Killed George Formby, which includes this poem.
Yet Another Fractal
After being adored by ants
For the honeydew
Excreted from her back,
She's cocooned inside their nest
Until, silk shell splitting
And resurrected as a butterfly
She totters outside,
Her new wings unfurled,
They curve on the air,
Spinning each breeze
To a twister
That'll wring trees leafless,
Rip off rooftops,
Stampede waves crag height
While Fundamentalists explain :
Our God is angry ! Our God's in pain !
(Yet again.)
Mostly dark and/or weird poems from me this week. Here's something a little brighter to close on.
Star Trek can wait
rain blew in
from the north yesterday
and while the rain's gone
today,
the north wind continues to blow,
cleaning the air,
leaving it crystal sharp,
the humidity
that usually leaves an soft damp film
over everything, like looking at the world
through a glass of water,
has been pushed back to the coast
it's like waking up from a long sleep,
colors bright as fresh paint,
green especially,
leaves and grass sagging
from heat and humidity yesterday
erect after the rain, like
green flags
waving at a spring parade
we had meant to go to a movie
this afternoon
but it is a beautiful day
and we decided not to waste it
in a dark theater
Star Trek can wait until
summer returns
tomorrow
So we're on the road again to next week, when our party favors will include poems by Cornelius Eady, Tu Fu, John Ashbery, Jane Hirshfield, Henri Coulette and another one of those dark German expressionists.
Until they show up, remember all of 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.
|
 |
|
|
Post a Comment
Introducing Lawrence Trujillo Thursday, May 21, 2009
Tribute to Barnette Newmann
by Lawrence Trujillo
IV.5.4.
All the images in this issue are by friend , former coworker, and San Antonio artist, Lawrence Trujillo.
Lawrence was born in 1971, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After studying art at New Mexico State University, he traveled extensively throughout the Western and Midwestern U.S. to promote his experimental visions. Using his numerous sketchbooks as source material, his paintings evolve arbitrarily, and tend toward the geometric. In addition to galleries, he has exhibited in a deli, a library, a liquor store, at home, and portably, using lightweight displays and easels. His work is in a growing number of collections, including those of The University of Texas at San Antonio and the New Mexico Department of Transportation, and various private supporters. In 2009, Lawrence has upcoming shows in New Orleans, Louisiana and Rio Rancho, New Mexico, as well as several ongoing exhibits in San Antonio.
A visit to his San Antonio studio is chronicled in the online literary magazine, invasivethoughts.com: From Event to Studio. More art can be found at Lawrence Trujillo's Artsite, now listed in YourArt.com, and also in myspace, at www.myspace.com/lawrence_trujillo.
In talking about his vision as an artist, Lawrence says "I combine colors, lines, and shapes at will to achieve vibrant, layered, and highly contrasting oil and acrylic paintings. Though the subject matter may sometimes vary, a common thread of all artworks is my outright refusal to use rulers or straightedges; I believe that the sanctity of the drawn line is paramount."
.....
I'm going a bit longer than usual with this issue, mainly because it got done in bits and pieces, right in the middle of a bunch of other stuff, and it just kind of grew while I wasn't watching.
So, in addition to Lawrence's art, here's the list of our poets for the week:
Selections from the book Chiyo-ni, Woman Haiku Master
Me
as the cookie crumbles
Rose Becallo Raney
Fresh
Marilyn Kallet
Fireflies
Joan Shroyer-Keno
Knowing
Susan B. McDonough
Flower Bits
Federico Garcia Lorca
from Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias
Me
apology
Arlita Jones
January
Meatwrapper's Lyric
Alice Folkart
Pure Trash
Chinatown Sunset
Last Night in Chinatown
Rose Romano
So I Lost My Temper
Laura Boss
At the Nuclear Rally
Alan Chong Lau
The Upside Down Basket
Me
stirring in the mist
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Mr. Flood's Party
William Shakespeare
When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes
Percy Shelley
Ozymandias
Barbara Moore
Dares go first, diana rigg
Me
the NRA is ascared of me
Thomas R. Smith
Com in From the Rain
Me
on this Mother's Day
start with biography
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
I begin this week with a little gathering of haiku from the book Chiyo-ni, Woman Haiku Master, published by Tuttle Publishing in 1998.
This is the first book in English on a woman haiku poet. Chiyo-ni, the poet was born in 1703 and died in 1775. She is Japan's most celebrated female haiku poet. A student of two of Basho's disciples, she worked in an age when haiku was largely a male domain. She was a poet, painter, and Buddhist nun.
All the poems in the book were translated by Patricia Donegan andYoshie Ishibashi.
The book's poems are divided into seasons.
flying of cranes
as high as the clouds -
first sunrise
one mountain after another
unveiled -
the first mists
Under New Year's sky
holding Mount Fuji's
smile
New Year's sake -
until the next,
this first delight
first dream
even after awakening
the flower's heart the same
Spring
wrapped around
this world's flower -
hazy moon
green grass -
between, between the blades
the color of the water
to be in a world
eating white rice
amid plum fragrance
butterfly -
what's it dreaming
fanning its wings?
morning and evening
the dew swells
on the buds
Summer
the moon's coolness -
on that leaf, this leaf
not only light
keeping cool -
in the deep night
strangers on the bridge
the coolness -
of the bottom of her kimono
in the bamboo grove
change of kimono:
showing only her back
to the blossom's fragrance
moonflowers -
the beauty
of hidden things
autumn
at the crescent moon
the silence
enters the heart
twilight
is left
in the maple leaves
moon viewing -
after coming home
nothing to say
first wild geese -
the nights are becoming long,
becoming long
moonlit night -
a cricket sings
out on a stone
winter
snowy night -
only the well-bucket's
falling sound
sleeping alone
awakened
by the frosty night...
sewing things -
I fold in dreams
on a December night
the passing year -
irritating things
are only water
anyway
leave it to the wind -
dry pampas grass
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
You know how it is, sometimes you just have to kick loose all the traces chase down some excitement.
as the cookie crumbles
having a chocolate-chip
cookie
with my latte this morning,
leaving me
aquiver with the excitement
at such a foray
into the world
of wild and crazy guyhood
it's a sign,
these palpitations are,
of my normally serene
and laid-back heart, that
i'm on a tear for sure,
set to become again the
adventurer
of my youth when
a bottle of Lone Star
for breakfast,
followed by pancakes
three eggs, sausage
and a gallon of coffee,
was the start of many a day
(i knew it was breakfast
because the light hurt my eyes)
i'm ready
this getting old and creaky
crap
has run it's course
it's time to fight back
against the deprecations
of excessive birthdaying,
smoke inhalation
from all those candles
a major source of deterioration
of elders' respiratory functions
..........
the cookie's finished,
every last crumb,
and, though dizzy now from the
big chocolate chunks,
i'm still up to the fight
but i'm going home first
to take a nap
after that,
those mattress tags
better beware
cause i'm on a
crazy
desperado
law-busting
tear
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
The next several poems are from All Around Us: Poems from the Valley published in 1996 for the Knoxville Writer's Guild by Blue Ridge Publishing. This the second anthology of poems from their region by the Guild, the first being titled Voices from the Valley. The new anthology includes the work of 72 poets.
The first of the poems I'm using this week is by Rose Becallo Raney, a senior technical writer and editor for a scientific and engineering management firm in Oak Ridge. She completed her MA in English with emphasis in creative writing in 1992 at the University of Tennessee in 1992 and was one of two first-place winners in the 1994 Tennessee Writers Alliance poetry competition.
It is getting close to dinner time as I write this and I was very hungry, even before I read this poem.
Fresh
He stands by the wheelbarrow full of sweet potatoes.
"Big as your arm," he says, turning
tubers over in their dust and soft clods.
Fuzzy root hairs hang down from them - fresh, ripe,
snapping with harsh orange in brown dirt skins.
He scrubs them down, sloughs off warm mud,
gnarled fingers knuckling in the knots of his work
as he dreams the steaming baked potatoes
mashed across with butter, yellow running
with some of the white corn and those beefsteak
tomatoes: wavering rinds, sliced-through sleeves.
The smile wrinkles as his shirt billows soft.
The next poem from the anthology is by Marilyn Kallet, a professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A poet, translator, essayist, and editor, Kallet is widely published, including six books of her own, and winner, in 1988, of the Tennessee Arts Commission's Literary Fellowship in Poetry.
Fireflies
In the dry summer field at nightfall,
fireflies rise like sparks.
Imagine the presence of ghosts
flickering, the ghosts of young friends,
your father nearest in the distance.
This time they carry no sorrow,
no remorse, their presence is so light.
Childhood comes to you,
memories of your street in lamplight,
holding those last moments before bed,
capturing lightning bugs,
with a blossom of the hand
letting them go. Lightness returns,
an airy motion over the ground
you remember from ring-around-the-rosie.
If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies
again, not part of your stories,
as unaware of you as sleep, being
beautiful and quiet all around you.
My last poem this week from the Knoxville Writer's Guild anthology is by Joan Shroyer-Keno who published frequently in area literary journals.
Knowing
Crickets, feather pillow,
old soft sheets against my cheek.
My mother, does she sleep
or turn and bend fourteen
hours on the night shift?
My grandmother curled
on her side, snoring. My great
grandmother flat on her
back. Stomach rising, falling.
Like her mother and her mother
before her: rising, blooming,
enduring, falling back to earth.
I see them in their fields, kitchens,
factories. Under their moon-white
sheets darned and bleached
their eyes in darkness, blinking.
Each seeing the lives of their mothers
longed for, but never had.
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
Here's a series of little poems about flowers by our friend Susan B. McDonough. Sue is a master gardner who creates gardens for a living and enjoys the journey of transplanting words into poetry. She has one foot in Arizona and the other in Maine. Her poems can be found both on-line and in print.
If I have my timing right, she has just left Arizona and is busy preparing her gardens in Maine now. What a great life that must be, except for all the hard work.
Flower Bits
1
Bachelor buttons
lust for Evening Primrose
her soft pink petals
exposed to twilight
2
The clover that refused
to grow: lays lush covering paths
in a thick abundant emerald
carpet now that the plan
has been scrapped.
3
I wonder where tiny
grains of pollen land
(besides in our nostrils)
I envy imagined voyages
adrift on the whim
a late morning's wind.
4
I pretend I am
from another
planet, It is May
and I have discovered
bright yellow flowers;
something called
Dandelions. I find
them exquisite.
5
My woods were someone else's
once. The first fresh air camp
for kids with juvenile diabetes.
Each spring I find their flower
memories greening again;
day lilies from beneath dry oak leaves
and I know that their giggles
and summer shrieks rest here too.
6
I watch African Daisies
react to light. They
blink through wind blown
dappled. They telegraph
sun to shade, sun to shade
I watch for a few minutes
while they open a bit and close
and wonder how it is they know.
Painting by Lawence Trujillo
I have a poem now, actually a part of a poem, by Federico Garcia Lorca from the book In Search of Duende, published by New Directions in 1998. I'll leave it anyone unfamiliar with Garcia Lorca do their own google search.
The following are two sections from a long poem lamenting the death of a matador. The poem was translated by Stephen Spender and J. I. Gili.
from Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias
2. The Spilled Blood
I will not see it.
Tell the moon to come
for I do not want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.
I will not see it!
The moon wide open.
Horse of still clouds,
and the grey bullring of dreams
with willows in the barreras.
I will not see it!
Let my memory kindle!
Warn the jasmines
of such minute whiteness!
I will not see it!
the cow of the ancient world
passed her sad tongue
over a snout of blood
spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando,
partly death and partly stone,
bellowed like two centuries
sated with treading the earth.
No.
I do not want to see it!
I will not see it!
Ignacio goes up the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawn
but the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profile
and the dream bewilders him.
He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood.
I will not see it!
I do not want to hear it spurt
each time with less strength:
that spurt that illuminates
the ties of seats and spills
over the corduroy and the leather
of a thirsty multitude.
Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!
His eyes did not close
when he saw the horns near,
but the terrible mothers
lifted their heads.
And across the ranches,
and air of secret voices rose,
shouting to celestial bulls,
herdsmen of pale mist.
There was no prince in Seville
who could compare with him,
nor sword like his sword
nor heart so true.
Like a river of lions
was his marvelous strength,
and like a marble torso
his firm drawn moderation
The air of Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
where his smile was a spikenard
of wit and intelligence.
What a great torero in the ring!
What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling in the fiesta!
How tremendous with the final
banderillas of darkness!
But now he sleeps without end.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
and now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
sliding on frozen horns,
faltering soulless in the mist,
stumbling over a thousand hoofs
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No.
I will not see it!
No chalice can contain it,
no swallows can drink it,
no frost of light can cool it,
nor song nor deluge of white lilies,
no class can cover it with silver.
No.
I will not see it!
(This next, and final section of the poem follows part 3, The Laid-Out Body
4. Absent Soul
The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have died for ever.
The back of the stone does not know you,
nor the black satin in which you crumble.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died for ever.
The autumn will come with small white snails,
misty grapes and with clustered hills,
but no on will look into your eyes
because you have died for ever.
Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of he Earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.
Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
for posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of you appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.
It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.
I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through olive trees.
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
Every once in a while a newspaper headline hits close to home, even when home is a little bitty place few others have ever heard of.
apology
the first swine flu death
of an American
in the US
was a 33-year-old
woman from Harlingen, Texas
who taught school in Mercedes, Texas,
both cities very familiar to me
as the bracket my old home town
on Highway 83, one the west
and the other to the east,
7 miles in either direction
both important to me in their
proximity as places
we could go to do the things
we didn't dare do
in our little home town
where everyone knew us
and our parents
and where we lived
and we couldn't get away
with nothing without hearing
about it at home
Mercedes
is a little town
about the same size as
La Feria,
where i grew up, famous
for it's annual live stock show
and rodeo, bringing in "big names"
in the country-field for it’s midweek
musical performances,
the old singing cowboy, Gene Autry,
one year, and most notoriously,
Dan Blocker, the big guy who played
Hoss on the tv show Bonanza, who
got drunk in Mexico before the show
and had to be tied to his horse
to keep him from falling off during
the his ride around the arena
(some cowboy skills were required
of all performers, singing cowboy
or tv actor, as well as rodeo riders)
we didn't have much else to do
with Mercedes except for a couple
of fights with Mercedes kids over
a swimming hole about halfway
between the two towns
(a great swimming hole, right beside
a field of watermelon
which we stole until the farmer finally
wised up after three summers
and planted cotton instead -
what i
wouldn't give
for a watermelon
that tasted that good again)
Harlingen was where we
most hung out, a larger city
of 30-35 thousand, with
several movie theaters,
English and Spanish, and
two drive in movies, for when
you had better things to do
that watch a movie; two
drive in restaurants about
fifteen blocks apart, good
for 60-70 miles a night
cruising
back and forth, to see,
to be seen, important in
equal measure
(hard as it is to believe
as i look at the pictures,
but i looked a little older
than my friends and was usually
the one to supply the alcohol
that helped fuel the cruising -
bought it in a little town called
Bluetown,
a few miles south of home,
almost right on the Rio Grande
neither blue nor much of a town,
but with at least one little cantina
with a healthy disrespect
for gringo law
and Constable Pinky who preferred to stay
well north of Bluetown
where he might have to prove the existence
of several personal characteristics
like toughness and personal grit he'd
prefer to have just assumed by one and all)
other times,
we crossed the river to buy
hard liquor, a hassle, since,
being underage we couldn't
declare it and had to smuggle
it across - our greatest coup
when we smuggled 25 pints
of rum across the river inside
the front seat
of a friend's '61 Ford station
wagon, becoming famous
among our rum drinking friends)
the city also hosted an Air Force
base, closed after the 1960 election,
bringing hardship to many families,
including some of my friends',
leaving a ghost town of grass-grown
streets and derelict barracks
that i helped dismantle several
years later while on a summer job,
tearing apart the skin and bones
of the former lifeblood of many
workers and their families
..........
all this remembering
from the death of one person
unknown to me and unborn
for many years
after these memories
were created
would she care about any of this -
very unlikely,
few will i would suppose, making this
a poem to myself
(as most are)
a poem extended to myself
even more blatantly that usual,
with apologies
for dragging you along
but, you know,
it's what i do and if i didn't do
what i do, well,
i'd hardly be doing anything
at
all
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
Alaskan butcher's daughter, meatwrapper, and poet, Arlitia Jones, won the 2001 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize with her first collection of poems, The Bandsaw Riots, published by Bear Star Press.
Here are two poems from that book.
January
Morning is a black wing flaring
at a window feathered with ice
through which there's nothing
to be seen but Anchorage
hunkered under halogen limps.
Industry stops. Too cold
even to work inside
at Wholesale Tendermeats where
the butchers move like slow bears
dazed in the chill of the cutting room,
white luggers stretched over
bulk of winter coats and longjohns.
At break the coffee in their cups
turns cold before they drink it.
They pass sections of newspaper -
a well-worn currency between them.
I see they're selling health insurance
for pets now, says the bookkeeper
behind the counter who, at age forty-eight
and uninsured, could finally pay
cash for her first mammogram.
And the butcher scrabbling
his fingers in the candy dish
set out for paying customers swears
These fucking people drive me nuts,
and tells about the border collie
he had when he was a kid. Smacked
by a car, not bad enough to kill it.
I had to hide him under our porch
or my dad would've shot him.
we never heard of a veterinarian.
Says his father worked swing
at he railroad, coupling, un
coupling the cars, In his house
nothing went to the animals.
Hardly anything to the kids.
In the office black and white
floor tiles tell the lie: wrong and right
remain distinct, one from the other.
It's the cold platform they stand on
every day. Their break
stretches to a half hour and still
they're reluctant to hit it.
With four hours and twenty-six
minutes of light, dark rules
the beginning to every year
and appetite sets the price
for red meat. Out of Nebraska
beef tenders run twelve bucks pound
when you can get them. For months
Americans have been stockpiling
New Yorks and Tenderloins
to prepare for the barrenness
of a new century. They pay dearly
to avoid hunger, to avoid chicken.
One of the butchers worries
about pipes on the outside wall
of his house. In weather like this
something always bursts. Every
thing shuts down. In her reflection
in the window glass the meat-
wrapper watches her self trying
to breath warmth into her hands.
You never think it'll come to this.
The kid who once believed
she would fly, vowed
to throw herself to the wind,
is hunched in a chair, conserving
body heat, cold and grouchy
as the thought of getting up.
Meatwrapper's Lyric
Out of the corner of my eye I peg her
to be the pretty wife of an important man.
Always, it's ones like her who ask, "How can you
stand the sight of blood?" She watches me
weigh out the three pounds of extra lean ground round
and wipe my hands on my apron to keep
from spoiling the clean white butcher paper
I wrap it in. "You get used to it," I shrug
and think of the blood's aged color -
not that hot red shock of a life leaked out -
more brown and watery as old coffee,
blood dull as engine oil on the cutting floor
where we've tracked through with our heavy boots.
Thursday night must be her night to cook
for husband and two kids. Her recipe, from a magazine,
will clutter her kitchen with forty-eight separate ingredients,
an electric chopper and, I'd bet money, a double broiler.
I smile. Count back change. "It's no big thing.
I wash my hands a lot and when I get home
the kides dog goes apeshit licking my feet."
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
Here's a kind of a series of poems by our friend from Hawaii, Alice Folkart.
Alice was involved in a spoken word project that had its rehearsals in Chinatown. From her observations and impressions, came these poems.
I'm hoping to see more because I really like these and the sense of time and place that makes them so real.
Pure Trash
Pure trash,
that's one thing
you can count on
in Chinatown.
Nothing
with any life
left in it
is ever thrown away.
Unsmiling old women
in black cloth shoes
eye even banana peels -
they must be good for something!
Piled high on lava curbstones,
yellow, pink, blue and white,
plastic bags bulging with nail parings and
dead rats, wait for Monday pick up.
Even the orange striped cat
walks past without sniffing.
Chinatown Sunset
Orange striped cat
sniffing in the drain pipe
in a Chinatown gutter.
Are you someone's idea of a meal,
cat meat with lobster sauce,
in this haven of the poor?
Is that why you won't look
when I call, "Pretty cat!"
Woman on a blue-plastic stool,
gold front tooth glinting in
the setting sun that
a mile away, on Waikiki Beach
sends tourists ohhhing and ahhhhing.
Seated on the dirty sidewalk,
tossing grain to filthy pigeons
to entertain just-learned-to-walk son.
Last Night in Chinatown
Crooked little man
in a boy's striped tee shirt
orange and brown,
sitting on a produce box
in a dirty doorway in
the bad part of Chinatown,
peel the rotten leaves
off yesterday's Brussels Sprouts
to make them new for tomorrow.
What were your dreams?
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
My next couple of poems come from a book I just picked up at Half-Price Books.
The book, Unsettling America, An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, was published by Penguin Books in 1994. A great buy, this book, at $3.48.
My first poem from the book is by Rose Romano, poet, editor and publisher. The granddaughter of Neapolitan and Sicilian immigrants, she was born and raised in Brooklyn.
So I Lost My Temper
Another one was coming toward me
yelling and wagging his finger
in my face. So I lost my temper.
I yelled louder than he could.
I backed him into a corner. His wife
tried to console him. It's an Italian
trait, she explained. I went out
and bought a votive candle and
a little glass cup to put it in. Then
I went home and made a big pot
of spaghetti.
Another on said he didn't believe
I could be that way, that Italian women
are much to sexual to be like
that, that he was sure I knew
how to make a man feel appreciated.
I went out and bought some tomato
seeds and a small clay pot. Then I
went home and lit the votive candle,
planted the tomato seeds, and made
a big pot os spaghetti.
Another one assured me that all women's
bars are owned and operated by the
Mafia, that the women who signed
the papers, redecorated the place,
stand behind the bar every night,
serve the drinks, sweep up at
closing time, and count the money,
are just a front. I went out and bought
a statue of the Sacred Heart of Mary.
Then I went home and put her on my
dresser, lit the votive candle in front
of her, watered the tomatoes, and made
a big pot of spaghetti.
I'm walking down the street
and I hear the words - garlic eater.
I tuck holy cards into the corners
of the mirror over my dresser.
I hear the word - greaseball.
I staple a tiny palm cross on
the door frame in my bedroom.
Dago - I put a red and white
checked tablecloth on the little
round table in my kitchen.
Guinea - I redo my bathroom in
green, white and red.
Wop - I stop shaving the little
black hairs growing out of my chin
If this trend continues,
when I'm eighty years old
I'll wear black shapeless dresses,
black stockings, black chunky shoes.
and my hair in a bun at the back
of my neck.
Now I'm thinking maybe
this is how Italian women
become grandmothers.
Now I'm thinking maybe
this is how Italian grandmothers
last long enough to become
boss of the family:
they lose their temper.
The next poem from the anthology is by Laura Boss. Her books of poetry include Stripping and the Alta Award-winning On the Edge of the Hudson.
At the Nuclear Rally
thinking of my father
who died of cancer of the pancreas
now linked to radiation
thinking of my father
who worked for the Atomic Energy Commission
that ran security checks on him
questioning our neighbors in Woodbridge
thinking of my father
with a pen in his pocket
who could add four columns of figures
in his head but stayed poor
working for the OPA
while colleagues took
expensive presents
thinking of my father
who embarrassed me, singing in the car
with the radio on as I now do
who returned from government trips
with marzipan strawberries, bananas, grapes
who cooke Sunday breakfast of chocolate
French toast (his special recipe)
and let my mother sleep late
thinking of my father
who was born Jewish
but never went to temple
never was Bar Mitzvahed
thinking of my father
who smelled of Chesterfields
who never hit, never spanked me
told me he was glad I walked home
with the only black woman
in my high school class
thinking of my father
who would have been at this rally
next to me tonight.
My last poem from Unsettling America is by Alan Chong Lau, whose books include a collection of poetry entitled Songs from Jadina.
The Upside Down Basket
For Connie Young Yu,
Chinese American Scholar
"the chinese came to california for gold, they worked on the railroad and wore
hats that looked like upside down baskets."
- from a california state history textbook now in use
my grandmother
rakes up chicken shit
mixed with mud
to feed her roses
head protected
by and upside down basket
dares the sun to get closer
her shirt ablaze
with hawaiian pineapples
she imitates the cackle of hens
as they run merry off nests
wings flapping dust
an egg
still warm
cuddles the round
of my chin
a tickle unbearable
so i laugh
and she does too
so hard
the upside down
basket trembles
as though shaking
a fist
at the heat
we walk home
the musk of rotten apples everywhere
incense curling into skin
on the porch the upside down basket
sits rightside up
we drink gallons
of lemonade
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
Strange things afoot. If you don't believe me, look at this.
stirring in the mist
heavy haze
weights down the air
thick and gray
days
for the past week,
the buildings downtown
like tall-walking ghosts
at midday
a time for sussing out
mysteries, opportunities
to discover new delights
abounding -
pledge week
on public radio, a chance
to investigate the rest of the dial,
alternating between NPR, the all-jazz
format of KRTU at Trinity University until late at night,
the eccentric, eclectic mix of KSYM at San Antonio College,
and, every once in a while, the "golden oldies"
at 101.1, where the good old days are now starting
in 1980; that's the reason i don't stop in there often,
i'm looking for Jerry Lee and Chuck Berry and Little Richard
and they're giving me early Madonna, no different from late Madonna,
except not as buff and stringy and that's the way it is about getting old,
all the good stuff either dies or gets stringy, it's all about change,
mostly bad, but sometimes good, sometimes even amazing,
like Kumar,
going from "White Castle" and "House" to the White House,
and Harold,
now new helmsman on the SS Enterprise,
boldly going anew where no one has gone before
that's the way it is
on these dim and hazy days, strange things
stirring in the mist
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
Next, I have a couple of poets from another book I found at the used book store, A Pocketful of Poems, Vintage Verse, Volume. one in a series of anthologies directed at students. This first volume was published by Thompson Advantage Books.
My first poet from the book is Edwin Arlington Robinson.
Born in 1869, Robinson grew up in Maine, describing his childhood later as "stark and unhappy." His parents, having wanted a girl, did not name him until he was six months old, when they visited a holiday resort and other vacationers, deciding that he should have a name, selected a man from Arlington, Massachusetts to draw a name out of a hat. Although he endured a slow start to his literary career, he eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for the years 1922, 1925 and 1928. During the last twenty years of his life he became a regular summer resident at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where he maintained a solitary life. He died in 1935.
Mr. Flood's Party
Old Eban Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
and Eban, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light
The jug that had had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will."
Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant Armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees.
Where friends of another day had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feed
with trembling care, knowing that most things break:
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
and with his had extended paused again:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.
"Only a very little, Mr. Flood -
For auld lang syne. No more sir; that will do."
So, for the time, apparently, it did.
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang -
"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below -
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.
I don't I've ever featured this particular poet before, but here he is, from A Pocketful of Verse,, William Shakespeare.
When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes
When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless' cries,
and look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and this man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet, in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think of thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.
For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Having done Shakespeare, why not Percy Shelley, also from the anthology and also a poem we learned to recite in high school. I wonder if they still do that.
Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
Here's a poem by our friend from New York, Barbara Moore.
Barbara was born in Danville VA. in 1948. She earned a B.A. from Hofstra U., majoring in English, and an M.S.W. from Fordham U. 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.
Dares go first, diana rigg
We were in bed
as we usually were
back then,
a regular yoko and john
without a cause,
in your boyhood bedroom
in your parents' house
(independent were we)
watching and half watching
emma peel and john steed
avenge with a vengeance
of elegance and grace
you said something
or failed to say something
Feeling ignored, discounted
and jealous of diana rigg
i pouted; you kidded
with your usual
"got your goat, barbs
got another one
here's another
look at all these goats, barbs
you're losing all your goats
you're not smiling. barbs"
and I wasn't smiling
i was not amused this time
Throwing back the bedcovers
all high drama now
i walked with dignity
toward the bathroom
tossing in my wake
"you don't care about me
i'm going to off myself."
closing the bathroom door
i pushed in the flimsy lock
and began my search
through the medicine cabinet
Q-tips, craig martin toothpaste
the one without fluoride
you insisted on using,
(as our teeth cried for mercy)
because it had pepto bismol,
cheap seconal chaser,
that soothed your stomach.
you wouldn't buy a bottle
of pepto. That was for people
with more serious problems
not for junkies-in-training
Your parents kept the cabinet childproof
murine, guest soap, stool softener
vicks vaporub, emory boards
but on the top shelf
behind the lavoris
lurked bayer aspirin
bottle of 100, nearly full
mindlessly, i began to swallow pills
a few at a time with water
my attention span waned
this would take forever
In a light bulb moment
i emptied the bottle
into the waste paper basket
coverng the pills with tissue.
i unlocked the door
and called for you
before stretching out
on the cold bathroom floor
feigning a death pose
worthy of ms. rigg
Forced to leave daring dianna
you approached with annoyance
that swiftly turned to fear
enough to awaken your parents.
you and your dad
carried me back to bed
shook me and talked at me
while your mom mixed together
some concoction in the kitchen
something to swallow
dry mustard was in it
i remember that much
I was supposed to vomit
but I never did
your mom got suspicious
she looked for and found
the unswallowed pills
in the trash
she was not pleased
you defended me though
took all the blame
said you'd double dared me
they believed you
because they needed to
because they wanted to
go back to sleep
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
Sometimes, after a triple dose of classical, it just feels great to bust loose. Like this.
(Thin-skined gunowners with heart conditions and no sense of humor should avoid this next poem at all cost - save yourself a lot of heartburn and just skip on to the next poem.)
the NRA is ascared of me
been reading
the NRA people
are scared that i'm gonna
take away
their pistols
and their hunting rifles
and their AK47's
and their machine guns
and their grenade launchers
and their anti-tank mines
and their bunker buster missiles
and whatever, if it makes
a bang they want it -
makes their dicks grow,
you know, and they're sure
i'm going to take it all away
and leave them alone with their
inadequacies,
and i would of course, if i could,
but i can't, and the the lily-livered,
chicken-gizzard politicians in Washington
sure as hell aren't going to risk their weekly
pay-offs by doing it, so that's the way it is,
at some point, you or me or both of us
are going to be blown away by some
NRA card-carrying pencil-dick wacko
with mother issues and a NRA certified
shoot-all-the-motherfuckers-with-one-trigger-pull
50 calibre machine gun
all because his mother dressed him
in little girlie-panties and didn't
quit breast-feeding
him until he was twenty-six years old
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
The next poem is by Thomas R. Smith, from his book Horse of Earth, published by Holy Cow! Press of Duluth, Minnesota in 1994.
Smith is the author of three books of poems, most recently The Dark Indigo Current . He writes criticism for Ruminator Review and teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.
Come In From the Rain
Many remain mute. This one kneels
on a folded blanket sodden with rain
and sways toward the wall, his face
floating in the long bay of his hands.
He is one of the sad beggars of Barcelona
who kneel on sidewalks barefoot, hold out
cigar boxes, display some deformity or wound.
Some grip signs saying merely, "I am hungry."
Coins dropped on his laboriously printed plea
glisten, kings' faces drowning. He seems
oblivious of the winter wind on the alley,
the great stains devouring his shoes.
Such men turn up without explanation
or history on the streets of every city
of the world, delivered in our path
as if ejected by some shabby womb
to be rained on or frozen drunk
under a viaduct, without dry clothes
or honor. For God's sake, man,
it's time to come in from the rain!
But I do not say it. Beneath my
umbrella, I'm unsure whether I'm addressing
this Gypsy - master of cruel discipline -
or my father, my brother, men of my country.
Painting by Lawrence Trujillo
Every year I try to write a Mother's Day poem and am never satisfied. This year I tried two, one light, one not, and neither worthy of their subjects.
Another year of failure...
on this Mother's Day
early start
on this Mother's Day
at the supermarket
to buy flowers,
chocolate
and a card preprinted
with sincere
and humorous sentiments
the crowds
and long checkout lines
demonstrating
the demographic fact
that there are, indeed, one heckuv
a bunch
of mothers and
procrastinators
in the world today
rushed my hard-won sentiments
home
and presented them to
a mother of my long acquaintance
along with a kiss
that truly did Hallmark proud,
then treated
the same mother of my long acquaintance
to her favorite breakfast,
that being my specialty, world-famous
french toast
and extra crispy call-the-fire-department-honey
bacon
- truth in poetical reporting
requires me
at this point to admit that the fire department
has never actually been called
on behalf of my bacon
and, while it might be a stretch
to call my french toast world famous,
many who have experienced it might declare
it should be so -
following breakfast
we continued with our regular Sunday morning
routine of caffein-enhanced
newspaper wallowing
the news of the day digested
- best done, as usual, on an
empty stomach -
we hopped into my little red truck
and hied ourselves off to Austin
for a mid-afternoon brunch
with our first-born
at a little Mexican cafe not to far
from his house, blackened fish tacos
for the mother-of-my-long-acquaintance
and our more gastronomically sophisticated
first born, while i enjoyed my standard
enchiladas, rice, and beans
the meal complete, the after dinner conversation
about all those things that never quite get said
on the telephone duly explored,
we dropped F.B. off at his house and,
after hugs and proper motherly nagging,
made out way back to San Antonio
where we noticed, driving in from the heights,
that the haze downtown had lifted, a result,
it could be, of a day of rest taken
by those in Mexico burning their fields,
or a gift, it could even be, from Mother Nature
on this, her special day
start with biography
start with biography
youngest child,
mother dead at her birth
father
an independent produce man,
he bought fruits and vegetables
in the fields and orchards
of South Texas,
hauled his produce
to city markets in San Antonio
and Houston
and sold his truckload
for what the market allowed
a hard
day to day
hand to mouth way to support
five children with few good years
and many poor as crops failed
or abundance caused prices to fall
so that a truck load this year
might be worth only as much as a half load
last year, the years few
when supply and demand balanced
and better times left money
for a pair of winter shoes
to be proudly worn and shown
on the buckboard ride to school
widowed
with a young son
while still in her teens,
years struggling to feed the child,
marriage finally to the man, my father,
with whom two more sons were born
more years of struggle, working at home
to supplement a blue collar income, making
prom corsages out of discarded hosiery,
dyed the color of leaves and roses,
baking, wedding cake, birthday cakes,
skillfully decorated with her sure hand,
always better and cheaper than the
professional competition - she worked
at such a bakery during the years of struggle
with her first son, and, as always, never
let a day pass without learning something new -
living through the decline and death
of another husband, nursing him, caring
for him like the nurse she'd learned to be
raising three sons, holding his hand
as he died - finding new life then
days spent as a hospital volunteer, learning
to paint, supporting the hospital gift shop
with her flower arrangements, then managing
the gift shop as a volunteer, taking music lessons,
learning the basics of auto repair, carpentry
and plumbing, learning the joys travel, sometimes
on her own, or with her friends, or with her sons,
always on the move, until the Thanksgiving Day
in her 81st year when she finally lay down to rest
and did not rise
again
and beyond
this biography, what
do i know of this woman
i know that, though poorly educated
herself, she taught me to read and write
before i attended my first day of school
i know that, though often hungry, her
children were always well fed
i know that, though stern when discipline
was required, she was gentle in her comforting
i know that, though a simple country woman
at heart, she could always calm
the most complex storms of the heart
i know that there were four deep
and abiding loves
in her life, and one of them was me
i know
that, once again
on this mother's day
as on the last,
i have failed
to write the poem she deserves
When I introduced Lawrence Trujillo at the beginning of this issue, I neglected to mention that, in addition of his primary work as an artist, he is also a poet. For a period of time, he and I were meeting for weekly poetry sessions at a local restaurant. Eventually, when we were unable to gather a consistant crowd, we gave it up. I thought I might close this issue with a picture showing another side of Lawrence's talent as he reads at one of our gatherings.
And with that, once again, "Here and Now" is done for the week.
One last thing though
As I was finishing up on the issue, I got word that a very old friend and patron passed away, which means I'll be going back to the coast for his funeral on Friday, which means, in turn, that I'll be posting this either early, like Thursday, or very late, like Sunday or Monday.
So, this will be posted when it gets posted. When it does, let it remind you that all of the work presented in "Here and Now" remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.
Post a Comment
Green Shadows of Spring Friday, May 15, 2009
IV.5.3.
I'm going to cut the chatter to a minimum this week and just tell you who's up.
Generations
James Hoggard
Luneros
The Riverside Down
Reason for Reserve
Me
not fooled by their broad and desperate smiles
Wendy Barker
Disappearing Acts
Robert McManes
beginnings
commercial break
Diane Wakoski
Some Pumpkins
Seeing Robert in the Crystal Ball
The Tree
Me
a good week
James Laughlin
The Love Puddle
Joanna Weston
Seasons at the River Bend
Local Cafe
The Bowl
Campbell McGrath
Trouble with Miami
Me
seeking common ground
Brenda Cardenas
Poem for the Tin -tun-teros
Me
quickly and surely i sidestep the rant
Andrey Voznesensky
Notes on architecture and poetry
Me
changing the subject
I begin this week with a two-part poem by our friend from the great Northwest, Gary Blankenship.
This poem has special meaning to me as I watch the rocky hills and wooded pastures all around me clear-cut acre by acre, month after month, by developers who always know where to find the loopholes left in our conservation laws by their bought-and-paid-for cronies in the state legislature.
As in Gary's poem, it all began so well, with hard, backbreaking work by proud and fearless men and women, only to go to asphalt and baby-shit diapers by the greed of their lesser descendants.
It is a shameful crime what we are doing with our natural inheritance.
Generations
1. "sweat of the sun"
an unpainted shotgun cabin
surrounded by empty fields
surrounded by scrub oak and pine
shirtless boys and barefoot girls
gather rocks to clear land tired
before their kin trekked over the peaks
stones enough built a barn
stones enough to hid clear jars
stones enough to never finish
clearing a farm meant to grow rock
2. "tears of the moon"
cinder block buildings line the road
in a corner of cracked parking lots
tweekers pace their connection late
empty store fronts gather debris
the pawnshop, dollar store, bondsman
hang on to their place in the strip mall
behind the shops a bulldozer piles
scrub oak and pine, clap board and stone
with the promise of low income housing
in a woodland meant for turtles and possum
Next I have three poems by James Hoggard, from his book Breaking an Indelicate Statue, published in 1986 by Latitude Press.
Hoggard is a poet, translator, essayist, novelist and previous Poet Laureate of the State of Texas. The author of twelve books, he has published two collections of his translations of poems by Oscar Hahn, The Art of Dying and Love Breaks. His most recent books are Alone Against The Sea: Poems From Cuba By Raul Mesa in 1998 and the novel Trotter Ross in 1999). He is the McMurtry Distinguished Professor of English Chair at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Luneros
Their bodies moved
with the minds of their touch
andd sang an epic breath
that swam
their waving sheets.
They left themselves,
going through drowning land
beyond the mystic moon
whose light
flared on their backs
becoming hard
wetness growing, heaving
into their long loins' strokes
diving
through lunar lanes
mirroring them
rising, falling: shining
mountainranges inflamed:
blind force
of mooncast world
whose honeyed musk stung
acridly in against
their breathcooled membranous throats.
Moist air
swept chill down them,
it's moonskin taste
piquantly salted, sweet
and smooth as liquid hair
blowing
subtly on them.
Their motions, slowed,
brought undulant forms
back in them. Easing to two,
they lay
hushed like their world
whose bodies move
hard against the hard walls
the moon breathes on.
By The Riverside Down
A woman remembered was
my babysitter at twelve is the one
who scratched her blue percale ass
and sang me Down
By the Riverside and told me while brushing
her unbunned gray frazzle-hair
that I was like a boy she knew
when she was young who...stopped,
asked me to check her singing heart
when my brother was asleep,
but it was soft and dry until
she took me singing with her down
by her riverside
where the waves were weak
and the feather-reeds long
and the air was full of powderspice
when I was twelve and saved from dream-need
by her river-rolling moistened heart.
Reason for Reserve
This is the godmillionth damn time
I've scissored myself up to you,
and I'm bitter and rattled, mad and smashed
and now ice-skinglued-cold
streaking on the brittlebrink of collapse.
I've curled behind you everywhere
I knew you would not look
and, silent, I've stared at the shadows
spreading here before us
like bruises. Diminished, I've balked at rage
and so have you. We've been bravely
deceitful, our gestures jerked toward
intimacy to gentle each other,
but I have no notion
we're more than another mere rhythm
that passes: I remember too well
being scorched with fever or shrunk
to a short strung line in the cold
and hearing you cry I
just lacked the courage to sail out the door.
So this time I give you my back:
I can't curl with hope into nothing,
and there's no point now in trying
to make a moment's spasm
dance despair away just for an hour.
I wrote this last week, after catching premonitions of a future we all dread.
not fooled by their broad and desperate smiles
he was pushed
through the door
in his wheelchair
his daughter
struggling with the door
and winning
before i could get up to help
she,
in her early to mid fifties
i estimate,
he,
so bent and crippled
the question of age irrelevant
old,
just say old
and let the question rest
a stroke victim,
it seems obvious,
reduced to a thin bent reed
curled in his chair,
his head hung down
and to the right,
his face strong,
his eyes bright and clear,
smiling,
still finding pleasure
in his life
and his morning coffee
beyond
anything i can imagine in myself
i'm reminded
of the old man struggling
to get into his car,
his frail wife in the driver's seat
while he is stuck
half in
half out
can't back out
can't lift himself the rest of the way in
a passerby,
my brother-in-law in fact,
sees the old man's difficulty
and helps him the rest of the way in,
physically lifts him in, actually,
though he is a very large man,
and arranges his feet out of the way
of the closing door, the old man leaving
with a smile and a thumbs up
through the window
as the wife drives away
and i remember stumbling
on the scene
of my grandmother bathing
my stricken grandfather,
he lying naked on the bed
his face turned to me,
humiliation
like a quiet storm
across his gentle features,
as she lifted his limp cock
and vigorously scrubbed his balls,
that memory from when i was young
and the later memory
of my father,
in his final weeks,
shitting himself as my mother and i
struggled to get him on the toilet
twice in this past week
i have been reminded of the past
and have been given a foretaste
of the future
not fooled
by the broad and desperate
smiles
of these old men,
the truth of that
which awaits
scares the
bejeezus out of me
My next poem is by Wendy Barker, from her book Winter Chickens and Other Poems, published by Corona Publishing of San Antonio in 1990.
Born in New Jersey, Barker spent many years in the southwest, earning her BA in English from Arizona State University in 1966 and teaching at the High School level in Phoenix. Having received her Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Davis, she is now Professor and Poet in Residence at the University of Texas in San Antonio.
Winter Chickens was her first book and has been followed by many more.
Disappearing Acts
We are so tired
there is no
cooking dinner.
In bed we share slices
of cheese and red apples.
We try
not to fall asleep.
When our boy comes home
from the magic show
he raves: the woman
in the shower
vanished
Just like that!
The thrill of such power,
the negative of creation -
to disappear someone.
Before he'd walked in
you had been saying
how upset you'd been
by the story in the paper
of the girl they'd found dead,
months had gone by,
no one had claimed her.
Who could disappear like that?
And no one know?
In Chicago last month
with five friends
after ten meetings all day
we joked so loudly
we began to drown out
the yelling of the Greek waiters.
Maybe there is no Self at all,
we laughed, maybe it's you
all the time who's the one
brushing my teeth in the morning.
We laughed and laughed while eating
moussake, spanakopita,
and I forget what else,
joking about the non-existence
of the Self
Under the blankets
I begin to blur.
Is it me these bread crumbs
are scratching?
If I could be like the dolmas.
Wrapped like that,
in a soft, green leaf.
If I were less tired
I might know who I'd be
when we wake,
when the bright lights
of morning shine on the shower,
show the magician's assistant
somehow back again, bowing
and smiling, moist and supple
as pink spring lamb.
Here are two poems by our friend Robert McManes. Mac has appeared here with his poems a number of times.
beginnings
A flower opens, speculating
on a morning sunrise. A place un-named,
the river empties into an ocean.
Dark shapes suggest themselves,
rise and fall, dissolve
into delineating horizons.
Sand and shell, a blend
of life and death
earth, wind, and water,
less than an Eden, the vision
of sin before Adam and Eve
created the name and
whatever it might symbolize.
In this eerie landscape -
the water
writes and rewrites shorelines,
the world is a perception
with all that it is not
and all that might be.
A point and counter-point,
one chance
to start all over
again.
Commercial break
We interrupt this poem
to inform you
that the end of this world
has been postponed
in order to bring you
this one time offer.
Today and only today,
we offer the ginzu poem
guaranteed to be
the best poem
you've never heard.
Each one is numbered
and registered
by the international
society of poetic
polygamists.
The first thirty callers
will also receive
a special surprise gift,
reconstituted unknown
poet sperm saved
in a plastic bottle.
All sales are final
no refunds, offer isn't valid
in New York, Alaska,
or California.
The next several poems are by Diane Wakoski, from her book The Rings of Saturn, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1986.
Wakoski was born in Whittier, California, in 1937. She received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of California at Berkeley. She has published more than forty collections of poems, including the four books that constitute her series The Archaeology of Movies and Books, in 1998, The Emerald City of Las Vegas, in 1995, Jason the Sailor, in 1993, and Medea the Sorceress, in 1991. Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987, in 1988, won the Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award. Her honors include a Fulbright fellowship, a Michigan Arts Foundation award, and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Michigan Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Diane Wakoski lives in Michigan, where, since 1976, she has taught at Michigan State University.
Some Pumpkins
lie
on our patio brick
Robert says
no
I can read
each autumn morning
by pumpkin light
Seeing Robert in the Crystal Ball
He's in the corner,
a figure like a crow
with on long shoe, like a tree reaching over
water.
An upsidedown lighted lamp
floats on the other side of the room,
like a cow grazing in a field.
There are three other people
in this room,
but none in the ball. Only crow-Robert,
on his cottonwood shoe, with his
lighted-cow
that once was a room.
The Tree
outside the north window
has moss growing around its total
circumference. does this mean
there is only a north? No
south or east or west? How little
I know about trees, even few names,
though flowers have always yielded
information like little pellets falling out of their petals,
to me
Possessions rigidify a man or woman.
Even the people you love,
making you stiffen yourself
in a discipline against your annoyance
at the way they eat, or blow their noses.
You know
you love them, yet petty
observations irritate you so much you
dare
not think of them. When
no one
is listening, you say
"I hate (blank)," thinking the forbidden
loved-one's name. Then
you tell yourself how bad you are
and try to think of flowers,
or Mozart, or losing yourself in books about
violent death. Where is Beethoven,
surely a man whose habits would have made any
lover hate him? Bukowski too
has discovered he'd rather live alone, as Pound
discovered he'd prefer
most of the time
not to speak.
The couple in the Nebraska steak restaurant last night,
who sent back their,
were embarrassed, but no so much they didn't do it.
No thanks from the waitress.
Adjustment of price
from the management. A tree
with moss growing
on all sides must be a modern
product, like all
of us, not willing to declare boldly
he'll grown his moss on the North side, or
not at all. Usually doesn't send back his steak,
no matter how bad. He covers,
as they say,
all the bases. No good
if you're lost and need direction, the moss
on all sides saying they're all
north,
like the love which is not good
if you want romance
or sex instead,
how much better if you want a calm
and peaceful
everyday life, one where you assume
you'll never
be lost in a forest.
This is my May 1st poem that I didn't get around to writing until May 2nd, requiring some modifications to it.
a good week
yesterday
was May 1st,
the transition day
from weather
better than the fiery pits
of hell to the fiery pits of hill,
also May Day,
not so good these days
since most of the communists
fell into the trap of robber baron
capitalism, retiring their May Day
parades with columns and columns
of high-stepping soldiers
and tanks and guided missiles,
except for North Korea
whose missiles fall into the sea
and whose tanks are cardboard,
carried underneath on sticks like
the dragons in Chinese New Year parades,
and whose soldiers, having not eaten
in a week, are not so high-stepping
but that was yesterday, as they say,
history come and gone, and today
is May 2nd, starting well enough
as a brisk breeze blew in
from the southeast while I was crossing
the supermarket parking lot, a cool
breeze, but damp, with the passing smell
of salty sea and shrimp i remember
from when i was a kid and we'd drive
the 30 miles to Port Brownsville to buy
big gulf shrimp right off the boat
i'm a lot further then 30 miles from
the coast nowadays, and how that smell
gets all the way across the coastal plains
to treat my nose and my morning is a
mystery, but not one i feel inclined to solve,
accepting, instead, however it came to me
today is Saturday, tomorrow Sunday,
either the end or the beginning of the week,
depending how you look at it - either way
the days ahead clear of the issues
that have cluttered up the last weeks,
good days to stay inside,
hide from the weather,
write poems,
nap in the afternoon
a good week
James Laughlin was born in 1914 and died 1997. He was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishers. He was born in 1914 to a wealthy family in Pennsylvania.
While a student at Harvard University, he took a leave of absence and traveled to France and then to Italy where he met and studied with Ezra Pound, who advised him, "You're never going to be any good as a poet. Why don't you take up something useful?". Pound suggested publishing, and when Laughlin returned to Harvard, he used money from his father to found New Directions in a barn on his Aunt Leila's estate in Norfolk, Connecticut.
He died of complications related to a stroke in Norfolk, Connecticut in 1997, at age 83.
The next poem is from The Secret Room, Poems by James Laughlin published by New Directions in 1997.
The Love Puddle
is not deep but it's
usually muddy. If you
stray into it you won't
drown but you may come
out of it looking like
a tramp and with your
feelings more dishevel-
led than your trousers.
You may feel guilty or
feel betrayed or even
disgusted, you'll wonder
why you walked through
the love puddle instead
of going around. But
you know you'll do it
again - that's for sure.
Now here are three poems from our friend Joanna M. Weston.
Joanna has had poetry, reviews, and short stories published in anthologies and journals for twenty years. She has two middle-readers, The Willow Tree Girl and Those Blue Shoes; also A Summer Father, poetry, published by Frontenac House of Calgary, all in print.
Seasons at the River Bend
the river curls my hand
takes rock from the bank
places it under ice
lays snow on ledges
and freezes people
along its shore
remnants of winter
hold the confluence
while spring bends
and breaks the ice
in the first stir
of surface current
children lift branches
raise hands
paddle their feet
in brown waters
dive to deep sand
finding ripe pebbles
blown leaves settle
surf high rapids
flood-waters rising
the first fall storm
when frost-bite
silences land and river
along my horizon
Local Cafe
the waitress recommended
them, not steamed, but
fried in bubbling butter
to bring out the flavour
souvenirs for sale
six tables
one other couple
the aroma rioted
in my nostrils
and led my willing hand
to fork in
one by one
five fat scallops
The Bowl
a child's small hands
poked and moulded
face scrunched in absorption
at the making
and the shaping
until he held it up
eyes alight
"it's a bowl" he said
for years it held oddments
paperclips buttons
old pennies
a broken clay mouse
until it came
to be what it was -
the poem of a child
Campbell McGrathis a modern American poet, author of six full-length collections of poetry, including his most recent, Seven Notebooks. He was born in Chicago in 1962, and grew up in Washington, D.C., where he attended Sidwell Friends School. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1984 and his MFA from Columbia University's creative writing program in 1988.
McGrath currently lives in Miami, Florida, and teaches creative writing at Florida International University.
The next poem is from his book Florida Poems, published by HarperCollins in 2002.
Trouble with Miami
is the lack of significant galleries & serious theater,
the absence of museums, operas, ballets, symphonies,
a dearth of cultural infrastructure so profound
that the only institution worth its salt is the ocean,
that watching beautiful women on the beach
with bodies cast from bronze & soft lobed chrome
may be our best shot at real enlightenment
their formal aspects comprise our artistic endowment,
their lubricity constitutes our esthetic nourishment,
hard candy loaves & fishes.
a sculpture garden of erotic possibility
displayed in postures of wicked amusement
like wild palms abandoned to wind and solar decay,
and I am a happily married man
who sunburns easily.
There is a part of all of us, often the most important part, that no one else knows. Hard as we may try there's always something in us that can surprise even those closest to us. The struggle to find that part in another, so that we can feel we truly know the other, is an ongoing motif if every relationship.
seeking common ground
i wrote a long poem
about my father this morning,
and scrapped it, something i
hardly every do - recognizing
as i read though it
that all my bad habits
as a writer
had taken over and produced
a self-indulgence beyond
even my own generous norm
the thing is,
it's thirty years after he's dead
and we continue our discussions,
no closer to conclusion
than the day we laid him
in the ground
and every time i try
to wrap it up in a nice little bow
of a poem, i am forced to admit
that i cannot wrap that
which is not yet finished
i struggle still to know him,
knowing he never knew me,
disappointed
in the failure of both of us
i know i will never resolve this
until i can look through his eyes
and see the me he saw, which
is another way of saying i cannot
know him until i know myself
better than i do now
meaning that as i continue
my own self-examination,
admitting that i am not nearly
as simple and easy as i claim
to be, nor as unique,
admitting my own
complexity
and recognizing in it the complexity
we all share, i can only come closer
to the truth of all of us, recognizing
the commonality of our breed,
like the commonality
of the panther and the wolf who must
stalk and prey, our commonality,
the need to know the world
and the universe of ourselves
and each other
to understand
to see the humanity
in others of our kind;
and the greater challenge,
to see the me
in those others
as well
The next poem is by Brenda Cardenas.
Cardenas holds an M..F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and is coeditor of Between the Heart and the Land/Entre el corazon y la tierra: Latina Poets in the Midwest.
The poem that follows is from her first chapbook, From the Tongues of Brick and Stone, published in 2005 by Momotombo Press, Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame.
She has had poems published in many literary journals and received a 2000 Illinois Arts Council Finalist Award in Poetry and a 2002 Award from Chicago Women in Publishing for editing Between the Heart and the Land.
At the time this book was published, Cardenas was moving from Chicago back to her home town of Milwaukee to teach English at a two-year college during the 2005-06 school year. She has also taught US Latino and Latin American Literature, Contemporary American Literature and writing courses at the Wright College in Chicago, University of Michigan, Wayne State University and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Poem for the Tin-tun-teros
This is for teh timbaleros, percussionists, tin-tun-teros,
those who tap with spoons on their stoves
with pencils on their desks
with nails and knuckles on tables, beds, their own heads
with fists against walls
and fingers on the spines and curves of their lovers, dances.
This for the congueros, drummers, bongoseros,
those who never rest
with their staccato heels always hammering the skin of the floor
stomping in their dreams filled with maracas, guiros and claves,
these dancers with steps so smooth
and hips that move like their high hats and snares.
This is for the timbaleros, percussionists, tin-tun-teros.
They are bad asses with their cymbal storms
their games of sticks that flay like wings. How scampish
their tricks that won't let us work or sleep
only dance and sing, sing and dance
and sometimes move the earth a little.
quickly and surely i sidestep the rant
i was thinking
i might write a poem
about the abortion clinic
i pass every day after morning coffee,
usually surrounded by antiabortion protesters,
rarely if ever women of child-bearing age,
waving signs with pictures of dismembered babies
and other such deeply intellectual arguments
and ever though i'm kind of antiabortion, myself,
i do suffer from an inability
to consider only one side of a question,
making me no friend of these little bands
of papal hustlers determined to insure
a steady supply of poor babies
who can be put to the service of maintaining
a steady flow of golden tribute to the pope's palaces
but i decided that,
despising equally the soul-suckers of all sects,
i would almost certainly slip into rant mode
should i attempt that particular poem - it
is a slippery slope for sure
so
rather than get myself in deep shit
with god-screamers,
everywhere -
you know the ones,
ready to lay down and spread their legs
for any hocus-pocus merchant
with a steeple up his ass
who'll tell them
what they want to hear -
but i'm not going to talk about that,
instead i'm just going to take note
of something i saw while walking Reba
yesterday
she was just riding along with me,
on our way to a place were we often
do a morning walk and, all of a sudden,
she stated crying and moaning and i
was thinking she's really got to do some
business so maybe we ought to just stop
right here and take a little walk and poop
and pee or whatever it is that is causing
her such deep and vocal distress
so we stopped
and it was a little upscale shopping center
but Reba was not intimidated by the
uppercrusty
ritz
of the place
(she is, after all, queen of all she surveys)
but when i saw the little store
dedicated exclusively
to the sale of gourmet doggie treats,
i quickly hustled her back into the truck
before she saw the sign
and developed a whole new set of life-
expectations, demanding
only the finest
gourmet roadkill as her due
you have to watch
these things
you know
or you'll end up with a furry,
four-footed queen of the nile
instead of the old fish-breath dog
whose queenly assumptions
are mostly a matter of a $-store
dog bone in the morning,
a favorite smelly pillow at night,
and a little bit of personal attention
whenever she's feeling down
(as even the humbler queens
sometimes do)
..........
so the anti-religion rant
is avoided today,
replaced by a good dog story
instead, and the poet
is left to thinking, if god was
more like a good dog,
welcoming in the morning
and satisfied with a good ear-scratch
before going to bed,
there wouldn't be any reason to be
anti-religious
at all
Next I have the Russian poet Andrey Voznesensky from his book Selected Poems, published in 1966 by Hill and Wang Publishers.
Described by Robert Lowell as "one of the greatest living poets," Voznesensky was born in 1933 in Moscow. Early in his life, he was fascinated with painting and architecture, graduating in 1957 from the Moscow Architectural Institute. But, while still a teenager, he sent his poems to Boris Pasternak, beginning a friendship between the two that had a strong influence on the young poet.
His first poems were published in 1958 and, during the Cold War thaw in the 1960, he traveled abroad in Europe and the United States, becoming one of several Russian poets achieving near "rock star" status.
In 1978 Voznesensky was awarded the USSR State Prize. He is an honorable member of ten academies, including the Russian academy of learning, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Parisian Academia Goncourt and others.
A minor planet 3723 Voznesenskij, discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1976 is named after him.
He continues to live and work in Moscow.
Voznesensky, throwing words all over the page as he does, is very hard to transcribe. So, rather than fight that battle late on an afternoon when I'm both hungry and tired, I'm going to use here, rather than a poem, notes he made on architecture and poetry. Very interesting they are - at least to me.
"Architecture is a discussion with posterity. The new Kremlin Palace is linked with the Kremlin Towers by its youth, by its contrast, by its sheer downpour of glass and pylons. It is a symbol.
"The best tradition is novelty. Mayakovsky and our new poets are nearer to Pushkin than the hundreds who still lisp iambics. Picasso is the continuation of Titian and Rublyov.
"It seems to me that every artist should be tested by this light-permeated structure as if by an X-ray apparatus.
"Pictures? Here you couldn't Laktionov and merchant-style ornamental gilded frames.
"Poems? will every poem ring true in these merciless aluminum interiors?"
"What is important in poetry for me? To look deep into the spirit of man, into oneself, into the interior of consciousness. It isn’t a question of from.
"Form must be clear, unfathomably exciting, filled with the highest thoughts, like the sky, in which only radar can determine the presence of airplanes."
. . . . . . . . . .
"A Settlement in Bratsk, (referring to a painting) This settlement of building workers consists of typical little houses made with slag-filled walls. They are built like this: On the left a wall of bricks, on the right plasterboards, and the space between them is filled with slag, with building rubbish......That's how certain poets build their poems: to the left a wall of initial letters; to the right, rhymes; and between them God knows what is chucked in! And at the same time they forget that which is good for architecture, the qualities of cheapness and standardization, are not at all a plus for poetry.":
Sometimes, when you get to the end of a thing and you think of how many people you might have pissed off, it may be time to start thinking about....
changing the subject
it was 100 degrees
yesterday afternoon,
in this first full week
of May, a certain sign
we will see hellfire
and brimstone before
mid-July
(is it too late,
God,
to apologize
for that little poem i wrote
last week - all in good fun,
you know, hee hee)
the end of life
as we know it
a more immediate
prospect
than usual,
i try to belay
thoughts of my future
incineration
in the devil's own
furnace
of self-recrimination
by changing the
subject
like...
did you read in the paper
about the discovery on a
faraway Pacific island
of the final resting place
of a Hobbit, such identity
proven by examination of
the tiny creature's bones -
calcified architecture
of a huminoid about three
feet tall with tiny shoulders
and head and feet seven-
teen inches long
working out to roughly
one inch of feet for
every two inches of height, a
disparity greater even
than that of my cousin,
a little guy
everyone called Big Cletus,
naturally,
known by many as the
"Bigfoot of Joaqanaka County"
before his death last year
at the hand of his preacher's
wife's cousin's husband,
Festaidious, known locally as
"Shotgun Fever Festus"
but that's another story
maybe i'll tell it someday,
if we all don't end up
in mid-July as crispy-
critter-reminders of life as
we used to know it
see,
there i go again
once i get my mind set
on the great flaming fireball
of the apocalypse
it's hard
to get back to
regular thinking
Time to head back to la casita verde. Until next week, remember, all 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.
Post a Comment
Remembering Snow at the Onset of Summer Friday, May 08, 2009
IV.5.2.
I have some good work for you this week, something old, something new, just about all of it borrowed and a touch of blue.
Here's how it shakes out.
Climbing a Height
Climbing a Tower
Night at the Pavilion
Me
trading with North Korea
W. S. Merwin
For a Coming Extinction
James Wright
Small Frogs Killed on the Highway
Wallace Stevens
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Alice Folkart
conversation
It's Hard to Hear
I'm Going OUt
Decent Obscurity
A Very Fine Finish
Charles Bukowski
the souls of dead animals
the tragedy of the leaves
Me
las cruces
Tao Lin
hamsters are heads with little characteristics on the head, parts one through four
Kevin McMann
The Bear
Robert Penn Warren
Questions You Must Learn to Live Past
Me
another Sunday morning
Octavio Paz
Touch
Duration
Rotation
Walter Durk
Evening
Jacinto Jesus Cardona
Pan Dulce
At the Wheel of a Blue Chevrolet
Wicked Green Buicks
Back in '57
Musing Under a Mezquite
Me
sweet separation sadness
All for your pleasure, beginning now.
I am starting this week with a poet from a book I bought just a couple of days ago. The book is 300 Tang Poems, published by the Far East Book Company in 1973. It is a finely bound hard cover book with wonderful illustrations by Chiang Yee. It includes both the Chinese text and English translations on facing pages.
The poems in the book were translated by Innes Herdan.
The poet is Tu Fu, born in the year 712 and died in 770. He was unsuccessful at the official examinations, but was appointed, fairly late in life, to a minor posts through the recommendation of influential friends. When those friends came into disfavor, he lost his positions. In 766, he settled in Kuei-chou, where he wrote many of his most famous poems, describing the bitterness of exile and failure, and the ruin of the Empire. He died while traveling alone by boat on a journey back to the Capital. He has been rated, at times, as, with Li Po, one of the two greatest poets of China.
"Tang Poetry" refers to poetry written during China's Tang dynasty, often considered the Golden Age of Chinese poetry.
Climbing a Height
A sharp wind,
the sky high,
gibbons' mournful screeching;
Blue islets,
white sands,
sea-birds wheeling.
Without cease
falling leaves
drift down with a whisper;
Without end
the Long river
washes endlessly by.
Miles from home,
mourning the autumn,
always a wanderer,
An old man,
often sick,
I have climbed this height alone
My hardships
and bitter regrets
have added frost to my temples:
In my unhappiness
I push aside
the cup of rough wine.
Climbing a Tower
Flowers beside the high tower
sadden a wanderer's heart.
From a world beset with troubles
I have climbed up here.
The spring colors of Brocade River
bring all nature before me;
In shifting clouds over Jade Rampart
the whole of history passes...
With the Imperial court
firmly set in the north,
Brigands from the western mountains
should cease their sallies.
The pitiful Second Ruler
still has his temple here.
As the sun goes down
I shall hum a Liang-fu song.
Night at the Pavilion
Sun and moon vie to shorten the day
at the year's end;
To the horizon, frost and snow have settled
this bitter night.
Drums and bugles of the fifth watch
sound desperately sad;
Shadows of the stars tremble
in the waters of the Three Gorges.
In many homes over the countryside
they are crying for the war dead;
In some parts, fishermen and woodcutters
hum the barbarians' songs.
"Sleeping Dragon" and "Restive Horse"
ended under the yellow earth -
Useless to lament our human lot,
even the letters cease to come.
It's the keeping track of the diddly-squat that gets me down.
trading with North Korea
i need
to talk to someone
at the headquarters of
my credit union
located
i'm not sure where but i'm thinking
it might be somewhere
in North Korea
to assist me
in this endeavor
i have a 3-inch stack of paper
which included,
when it was sent to me,
the name and telephone extension
of the person i need to talk to
naturally,
now that i need to make the call
i have searched through every
one of the 3-inch stack of papers
and found everything intact,
except for the single page
that includes the name and
telephone extension of the person
i need to talk to
it is nowhere to be found,
not in the 3-inch stack of paper,
not anywhere near the 3-inch stack of paper,
not anywhere in, on, or around my desk,
not in the den by the TV,
not in the bathroom reading rack,
not even, goddamnit,
in the refrigerator, where lost things
often turn up
this happens to me all the time
simple things made difficult
because i can't keep track of diddle-squat,
all my diddle-squat being stacked high in closet
corners, making the simplest act of record retrieval
an archeological expedition, pith helmet and lantern required
i blame it on no longer having a secretary
to keep track of my diddle-squat,
but the truth is, even with a secretary,
diddle-squat retrieval was most often a lost cause
no,
the truth is,
i'm a 65-year-old man
who has lived most of his life
with the abandon of a college sophomore,
a big-picture kind of guy, leaving behind,
with every step, a crush of detail i'll vaguely remember
but never find again,
and will again
and again
pay the price of my inattention
don't sweat the small stuff -
that's been my motto
there are grander things to occupy
the mind, that was my opinion
that worked better when i was younger
and my mind less calcified -
i could remember stuff better
and could often get away with faking it
but, no more
today, again, the diddle-squat
has come home to roost
and the rest of my day will be spent
trying to call someone in North Korea
whose name and telephone extension
i do not know
and i don't speak Korean,
North or South
Now I have for you three poets from the anthology The Harvard Book of American Poets, published in 1985 by The Bellnap Press of Harvard University Press.
I start with W.S. Merwin, recently announced 2009 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also won the Prize in 1971.
Born in 1927, Merwin made a name for himself as an antiwar poet during the 1960s. In the 80s and 90s, his interest in Buddhist philosophy and deep ecology also influenced his writing. He continues to write prolifically, though he also dedicates significant time to the restoration of rain forests in Hawaii, where he currently resides.
For a Coming Extinction
Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
and forgive nothing
I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day
The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours
When you will not see again
The whale calves trying the light
consider what you will find in the black garden
And its court
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
And fore-ordaining as stars
Our sacrifices
Join you word to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important
The next poem is by James Wright. Born in Ohio in 1927, Wright died in 1980, shortly after being diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. He won the Pulitzer Prize, as did his son, Franz Wright, also a poet. Together they are the only parent/child pair to have won a Pulitzer Prize in the same category.
Small Frogs Killed on the HIghway
Still,
I would leap too
Into the light,
If I had the chance.
It is everything, the wet green stalk of the field
On the other side of the road.
They crouch there, too, faltering in terror
And take strange wing. Many
Of the dead never moved, but many
Of the dead are alive forever in the split second
Auto headlights more sudden
Than their drivers know.
The drivers burrow backward into dank pools
Where nothing begets
Nothing.
Across the road, tadpoles are dancing
On the quarter thumbnail
Of the moon. They can't see,
Not yet.
My last piece from this anthology for this week is by Wallace Stevens.
Stevens was born in 1879 in Pennsylvania. Educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, he spent most of his life working as a lawyer for an insurance company in Connecticut. He died in 1955.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro:
The mood
traced in the shadow
And indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do your imagine golden birds?
do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
when the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbirds must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Next, I have a series of poems by our friend from Hawaii, Alice Folkart.
Though she writes poetry, Alice prefers to think of herself as a short story writer. You can see her narrative skills and eye for story detail in this series of domestic poems written on consecutive days for Blueline's "House of 30."
Conversation
He's inside his skin,
inside his dentist appointment,
caught up in a song in his head,
wandering the strings of his ukulele,
not noticing that it's out of tune.
He's aware of the itch between his toes,
wonders where he put the screw driver,
tries to remember if it's time to change the oil,
how about those L.A. Rams, hey?
somewhere, across an ocean, on another
continent, content to be alone,
silent but completely occupied,
his conversation with himself
goes on without her.
It's Hard to Hear
He can't hear her
when the water's running,
or the News is on,
when that kid from
New Mexico almost
makes a touchdown.
He can't hear her
when he's chewing
crackers, or picking his nose,
thinking of taxes,
or drinking a cup of coffee.
No, he can't hear her at all.
I'm Going Out
"I'm going out,"
he says,
putting on his shoes,
buckling his belt,
jingling his keys.
"Where," she asks,
knowing she shouldn't.
"Out,
to get something,
I need
to get something,"
he calls as he goes.
She doesn't ask again.
Knows better.
Let him go,
and go and go.
Let him.
She stays in.
Stays here,
to keep something.
"I need to keep something,"
she calls after him.
"Something of my own."
Decent Obscurity
He gargles, sloshes, spits,
then sits enthroned
in his own bathroom,
reading Ellery Queen
with a dictionary at hand.
She moisturizes,
pats dry, hair dryer
half-cocked, heat diffused
to prevent frizzing,
whizzing through the morning.
The two, in their separate
walk-in closets, choosing colors
and sizes, fat today, slender tomorrow,
the right shoes to make it through the day
in decent obscurity from all, from each.
A Very Fine Finish
He's a small man.
He used to be bigger.
He needs her small too.
She's grown so tall.
She loves him,
so makes herself
small enough to fit into the
beautiful little box
he has crafted for her.
It has a very fine finish.
The next two poems are by my favorite honest man, Charles Bukowski.
the souls of dead animals
after the slaughterhouse
there was a bar around the corner
and I sat in there
and watched the sun go down
through the window,
a window that overlooked a lot
full of tall dry weeds.
I never showered with the boys at the
plant
after work
so I smelled of sweat and
blood.
the smell of sweat lessens after a
while
but the blood-smell begins to fulminate
and gain power.
I smoked cigarettes and drank beer
until I felt good enough to
board the bus
with the souls of all those dead
animals riding with
me;
heads would turn slightly
women would rise and move away from
me.
when I got off the bus
I only had a block to walk
and one stairway up to my
room
where I'd turn on my radio and
light a cigarette
and nobody minded me
at all.
the tragedy of the leaves
I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead,
the potted plants yellow as corn;
my woman was gone
and the empty bottles like bled corpses
surrounded me with their uselessness;
the sun was still good, though,
and my landlady's note cracked in fine and
understanding yellowness; what was needed now
was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester
with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd
because it exists, nothing more;
I shaved carefully with an old razor
the man who had once been young and
said to have genius; but
that's the tragedy of the leaves,
the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world had failed us
both.
These markers are appearing more and more now, as they begin to receive a kind of semiofficial tolerance.
las cruces
more line the highways as authorities
who used to take them down
as distractions
have become more tolerant,
more likely to see them now as a reminders
to those of us who still live and drive,
cocooned in the metal boxes
that could someday
kill us
some very plain,
just a plain wooden cross
weathered from the elements
other crosses
wrapped in reflective foil,
decorated with ribbon
and strings of colored beads,
sometimes
something personal from the victim,
a hat,
a picture,
a teddy bear if a child
i saw many of these
in my recent travels,
and stopped at one near
the Colorado-New Mexico border,
it was on a curve,
looking out over deep valleys
and rolling mountain crests,
a view to die for
as they say
this little memorial
moved me
as visits to cemeteries,
landfills for failed flesh,
never have
for those buried in cemeteries
their last wisp of breath
was gone long before they were
laid beneath
the sod
unlike the dead memorialized
at these little roadside shrines
who bled and died right here,
their blood soaked into the ground
beneath the cross,
alive like you and me,
light giving color through their eyes
to the beauty all around,
their minds active
and engaged,
talking, perhaps,
celebrating life in that mundane way
we all do,
until that second when the accident
happened
and they who had been
were no more
right here
at this spot
where they are remembered
by all those, like me,
who did not die with them
The next poems are from a quirky little book titled Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin. The book was published by Melville House in 2008.
The poet, born in 1983, is the author of the novel, Eeeeee Eee Eeeee, the story collection, Bed, and an earlier book of poetry, You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am. He also has a blog called READER OF DEPRESSING BOOKS.
He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
I think this is one of the funniest bits I've read in a long, long time.
hamsters are heads with little characteristics on the head, part one
in florida a giant hamster lays in bed worrying about its future
the hamster has bad eyesight
and many other problems
later that night the hamster drives its car around
listening to sad music; the hamster lightly drums its paws on the
l steering wheel
the hamster is alone
but not for long, a home three waffle friends wait
cooling inside a counter top oven in the kitchen
hamsters are heads with little characteristics on the head, part two
the next morning the hamster stands in the shower
the hamster's upturned paw has a small dab of shampoo on it
this will not be enough shampoo
the hamster feels sarcastic
the hamster's body and cheeks are warm
from the sunlight through the window
and the hamster is very afraid
it feels so sad so early in the day
hamsters are heads with little characteristics on the head, part three
in the evening the hamster sits at the computer
watermelon juice and coffee sit by the computer
the hamster drinks all of the coffee
after a few minutes the hamster drinks all of the watermelon juice
the hamster lays its paw atop a neatly folded to-do list; this is a
l resourceful hamster
with a strong will, a sincere and loving hamster friend, and confident
l nature
we do not need to spend any more time or empathy on this hamster
hamsters are heads with little characteristics on the head, part four
yet we return to the same hamster the next night
the hamster lays in bed on its side at four a.m.
looking a photos of its faraway hamster friend
carefully the hamster places the photos in a neat pile behind its pillow
the hamster remembers when its hamster friend showed its ass
on the side of a mountain; the hamster knew it was good
the hamster knows it was good because it cannot easily remember
l whose idea it was
that's how you judge things: if you can or cannot easily remember its
l source
from now on that's how you judge things
A hamster friend types a comment about Richard Yates - an extinct
species of severely depressed hamster - on the hamster's blog and
replaces the pronouns with "John Wang," a form of online hamster
known to edit internet literary magazines.
The comment is one sentence long and says “John Wang” four times.
The hamster tells its hamster friend on email chat that the comment
made it happy. The hamster says it wants to read Richard Yates right
now. The hamster friend says it is just thought of Richard Yates and saw
a giant ant sitting in a wheelchair not doing anything.
The hamster friend says it watched a one-hour documentary on driver
ants. "I need to talk about slug death," the hamster friend says.
"They found a slug in a tree and like 50 ants climbed on top of the slug
to try to kill it but the slug jumped on of the tree to try to kill itself
but it didn't die and the ants jumped down on the slug because they
can never die by falling and they attacked it more but the slug oozed
this stick mucus and the ants got caught in it and the small ants went
and got soil and put it all over the slug and soaked up the mucus and
they pulled the soil clumps off and all the ants got free and then
sawed the slug's body apart with their pinchers and brought it back to
the babies," the hamster friend says.
The hamster tells its hamster friend that what it just typed is the name
of their new press if they just add the word books at the end.
The hamster friend says ants are the only good thing left in the world.
The hamster says driver ants should have eaten Richard Yates.
The hamsters talk about Bruce Lee. They don't know if 20 million
driver ants could eat Bruce Lee if Bruce Lee was in an enclosed area
and was only allowed to do front rolls. Bruce Lee is a rare species of
hard-muscled hamster capable of insane destruction.
One time in Manhattan the hamsters were walking uptown holding
hands. In Chinatown the hamster friend saw Bruce Lee doing front
rolls on a TV screen. The hamster stopped and showed the
hamster and hamster friend said it could do front rolls.
The hamster said it was as good as Bruce Lee because it could do front
rolls.
The hamster friend said being able to do front rolls didn't make the
hamster as good as Bruce Lee, which was not a true statement and
not an untrue statement, because the word "good" is meaningless until
defined within a context and a goal, and hamsters when enjoying
the company of other hamsters rarely define or think about contexts and
goals, because because to do so would make them aware of certain things
about the universe that would make them feel a kind of emptiness
or "neutrality of emotion" that is usually desirable only in situations
where the hamster wants to stop his or her self-perpetuating cycle
of negative thinking, in order to fight severe depressions or crippling
loneliness.
In a situation of severe depression or crippling loneliness caused by
a period of time of uncontrollable negative thinking this "kind of
emptiness" - effected by an understanding (of the arbitrary nature
of the universe) that is attained by thinking comprehensively about
context, goals, and meaning - can be used to neutralize the hamster's
automatic and self-perpetuating pattern of negative thoughts, at
which point the hamster can form new thoughts, that will cause new
behaviors, that will cause new patterns of thought, with which the
hamster can better function in life and in relationships with other
hamsters.
Here's a poem from our friend Kevin McCann.
Kevin McCann has been a full-time writer for 16 years now. He's published six limited edition pamphlets in England. He also writes for children.
The Bear
Maggots glowing red
Swarm the embers
Of my campfire
Back there
Hearts and Minds
Our only goal
Until
Their Spring Offensive
Pinned down four days
Women
And kids
Their bodies
Charred logs
We stumbled over.
Some, we later caught,
Crucified,
Smoked dope
Laughing at their screams.
I was nowhere.
Shipped back home,
Didn't like being touched,
Never spoke.
Every year since then
I've come up here
And it's him I've always seen,
A great black bear
Roaring louder than the gunships
That still shudder when I dream.
He always charges, feet pounding
Dry clay, stops short,
Rears up arms outstretched
Then drops back on all fours
And turns away.
Each year getting a little closer.
Tonight, in this valley,
There's bear skat everywhere,
Tracks too and one set so close,
I smell him.
Tomorrow, after twenty years,
I will ditch these useless weapons,
Rebuild my fire and silently stand,
Arms outstretched.
Tomorrow he's bound to come.
The next poem is by Robert Penn Warren, poet, novelist, literary critic and one of the founders of New Criticism. He received the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel for his novel All the King's Men in 1946) and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice, in 1957 and 1979. He is the only person to have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry.
Born 1905, Warren died in 1989.
Questions You Must Learn to Live Past
Have you ever clung to the cliffside while,
Past star-death at midnight and clouds, the darkness
Curdles and coils, and wind off the sea, caterwauling, swings in
To bulge your shirt belt-free, while claws
Scratch at eyeballs, and snag at loosening stone -
In Hell's own conspiracy with
The five-fathom, lethal, up-lunges of sea-foam fanged white,
That howls in its hunger for blood?
Have you stood by a bed whereon
Your father, unspeakable anguish past, at length
To the syringe succumbs, and your sister's
Nails clench in your biceps? Then, crazed, she cries:
"But it's worse - oh, it's driving pain deeper,
Deeper to hide from praying, or dying, or God -
"Oh, worse!" or have you remembered the face
Of an old, loved friend, how drowned and glimmering under
Time's windless wash? Then cannot summon the name?
Have you dreamed that you are a child again
And calling in darkness, but nobody come?
Have you ever seen your own child, that first morning, wait
For the school bus? Have you stood in your garden in autumn,
At some chore, and in the junipers found
Where a three-foot snake - a big garter, no doubt -
Has combed its old integument off in the convenient prickles?
Would you hold that frayed translucence up,
Beautiful, meaningless, blessed in the mellow light,
And feel your heart stop? And not know why?
Or think that this bright emptiness
Is all your own life may be - or will be - when,
After the fable of summer, a lithe sinuosity
Slips down to curl in dark, wintry hole, with no dreams?
Here it is, another day in the life.
another Sunday morning
i was
just finishing up
my sausage gravy
and biscuits
when two Leon Valley
police officers walked in,
both kind of pear-shaped,
as Leon Valley, being
a small suburb of a city,
had not nearly the pay scale or
physical job requirements
of the city within it was subsumed
they sat at the table to the right of me,
all jingly with all the tools of their trade
hung up on their utility belt
from a table to the left of me,
a tall, granite-faced fella
with a sweat-stained cowboy hat
and a basso-profondo voice
that seemed to come from some
deep, dark cavern beneath his shoes,
said, "Howdy, boys."
the officers said howdy back
and asked, "What's up,"
and the tall man said, in
his voice from the center of the earth,
"Same bull, different chute."
and i was thinking, first,
goddamn how cool is that,
and, then, by god, there must be
twenty people tops
in the great state of Texas
who can say that and not sound stupid
and here i am sitting next to one of them
i started listening then
to the tall man and the two other fellas
at his table, wanting to hear more
of that great voice saying cool things,
but mostly he talked about the goddamn newspaper
and stupid reporters and how he called them
and threatened to cancel his subscription
if they didn't quit all their commie reporting
and talk such as that
seems he only had the one good line
how disappointing!
but then, later,
we stopped at the supermarket
on our way to our Sunday-morning
newspaper reading marathon
and i noticed a fat-assed man
and a fat-assed woman walking in
ahead of me, noticing the tender way
the man put his hand on the woman's butt
stroking it and patting it as they walked
and i was thinking, damn
ain't it great when people get what they want
in life...
and appreciate it
The next poems are by Mexican poet and diplomat Octavio Paz, from his book The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz, 1957-1987. It is a bilingual book, Spanish and English on facing page. The poems were translated by the book's editor Eliot Weinberger.
Paz, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in 1914 and died in 1998.
Touch
My hands
open the curtains of your being
clothe you in a further nudity
uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
invent another body for your body
Duration
"Thunder and wind: duration"
I Ching
I
Sky black
Yellow earth
The rooster tears the night apart
The water wakes and asks what time it is
The wind wakes and asks for you
A white horse goes by
II
As the forest in its bed of leaves
you sleep in your bed of rain
you sing in your bed of wind
you kiss in you bed of sparks
III
Multiple vehement odor
many-handed body
On an invisible stem a single
whiteness
IV
Speak listen answer me
what the thunderclap
says, the woods
understand
V
I enter by your eyes
you come forth by my mouth
You sleep in my blood
I waken in your head
VI
I will speak to you in stone-language
(answer with a green syllable)
I will speak to you to you in snow-language
(answer with a fan of bees)
I will speak to you in water-language
(answer with a canoe of lightning)
I will speak to you in blood-language
(answer me with a tower of birds)
Rotation
Tall column of pulsebeats
on the unmoving axis of time
the sun dresses and undresses you
The night shakes loose from your body
The night shakes loose from your day
and is lost in your body
You are never the same
you have always just arrived
you have been here since the beginning
Here's a short piece by our friend Walter Durk, a contemplation of night and the dark.
Evening
After digging in warm soil with my hands
I wonder who have I touched.
My knees are mud.
Tired, I must rest.
Tonight the moon has stolen a piece
of the sun to remind us of the fire of
which we are part. Even on a cold
windy night it hovers, a cool suspended
silver disc above the bed in which we lie.
It is a night like no other when we
count hours and minutes without ticks,
with no deliberateness. Is it one or three a.m.?
The nomenclature of the night: evening, dark,
darkness, moonlight does not reveal even in shadows,
has no clock except a flowing stream.
Often it is the night that takes the light away.
The next several poems are from a book I just picked up at the used book story several days ago, by a poet, Jacinto Jesus Cardona, i never heard of. I love it when I take these blind jumps of faith and find a poet I really like.
Cardona was born in Palacios, Texas, and grew up around Alice, Texas, the so-called "Hub of South Texas." (Actually, it's a small town in the South Texas oil patch, beloved by those who call it home and few others.)
Cardona teaches at Palo Alto College and the Trinity University Upward Bound Program, both in San Antonio. In addition to publishing his literary journals, he has read his poetry on National Public Radio.
The book, Pan Dulce was published in 1998 by the Chili Verde Press, also of San Antonio. I enjoyed the book very much for a couple of reasons beyond just the quality of the poems. First, I grew up, lived, and worked most of my life in the South Texas culture that forms the heart and breath of the poems. It's like old home week, reading this poems.
The book also enjoys the benefit of the enthusiasm of its first owner, a young woman, I'd judge by the neat square handwriting, whose notes on almost every page testify to the poet's power to move another soul.
Pan Dulce
I remember riding my fenderless bike
to la panaderia del pueblo.
Sometimes I would go alone,
sometimes I would dream
I took abuelo by the hand.
I remember pan dulce tasting even sweeter
after confessing my sins
at St. Joseph's Catholic Church.
Nothing like dulcified bread
for crucified bones.
I remember standing in front of the glass displays,
telling el panadero, "I'll take one of these,
and one of those, and one of these."
Unlike the cool pachuco who came in asking for pan de polvo,
un regalo, y un hueso azucarado to go,
I had not mastered the names of pan dulce.
so imagine my thrill,
imagine the authority in my chavalon bones
when I returned asking for dos huesos azucarados,
two sugared bones to go.
Yes, I remember pan dulce,
la Virgen de Guadalupe bordered by blue neon lights,
and how the smell of canela
reminded me of abuelito's piloncillo skin.
At the Wheel of a Blue Chevrolet
No, I am not at the wheel of a blue chevrolet
on my way to Lisbon.
In fact, I'm on Highway 281
on a two-lane black top between George West
and the next stop, the Hub of South Texas
No, I am not at the wheel of a blue chevrolet
on my way to Lisbon, but the blur of barbed wire
makes me think of how I take the x in Tex
and the x in Mex and how I add for good measure
the humble x my mother used to make.
No, I am not at the wheel of a blue Chevrolet
on my way to Lisbon,
but my bones contemplate the palimpsest
of x after dusty x paisanos make
across caliche pits.
No, I am not at the wheel of a blue Chevrolet
on my way to Lisbon.
I'm on Highway 281
on a two-lane black top between George West
and the next stop, the Hub of South Texas,
Alice, America.
Wicked Green Buicks
Dogs ran loose
in our neighborhoods,
and wicked green Buicks
curled their chrome lips
in arrogance.
Back in '57
I was just another Latin American boy
deep into khaki pants, steam-ironed pleats, gaudy cufflinks,
impressed by the passive parking meters on Main Street,
mesmerized by the chrome spokes of customized wheels.
And yes, I would laugh and laugh at how I took my black shellac,
celebrating the edges of my orange Stacy's, my dancing shoes
anxious to shake loose the alkaline kiss
of caliche down my unpaved streets.
Caught in the vortex of oil wells and taco shells,
Spanish was my first, English was my second,
but Star-Spangled Splanglish became my middle name.
So was I Tex or was I Mex,
part-time Aztec, or was I your classic borderline case?
Biped and bilingual, I even wore bifocals,
but my biceps remained monolingual.
Back in '57 I could care less and less
because I could always laugh
with Cantiflas at the Ranch Drive-In.
Musing Under a Mezquite
The cash box mocks me,
the vault lisps in sacred digits.
I am a peon all over again.
I leave the glass bank
to rest my bones
under a parking lot mezquite.
While I wait for my spitball of a credit history,
a cricket rises from an asphalt crack.
I'm thinking of an old country song, "I Won't Miss You Till You're Gone - So Go Away."
sweet separation sadness
it being the 29th day
of April
we are on the cusp
of the conclusion
of the first rainy month
in a year and a half
the effects of this
rainy month
seen yesterday
at the money pit
where i went to turn
the keys
over to the new owner
nearly an acre of high grass
where for months
no grass had grown, waiting
for someone, not me
anymore,
to pull out the tractor and
give it a mow
and the truth is
despite all,
i felt a twinge of separation
sadness
we bought the pit
for our son to live in
while studying at the university
a lot of music was made
and recorded
in this little country corner,
but, sad to say, not as much
studying
as would have been beneficial
to the timely conclusion
of a university career
oh, well
there will be a successful
conclusion,
we are confident, whether
during my lifetime or not
the only thing still up
for discussion
in later years
we rented the place out
to a series of tenants,
culminating
in the tenant who, when evicted
for his pathological denial
of the universal truth of rent,
proceeded to trash
the premises, including kicking
and punching holes in every wall
now,
twelve months later,
after great expenditure
of cash
and sweat of my brow,
not to mention all the other
sweaty body parts,
the pit is no longer mine
i drive away from this place
i shall never see again,
this place for which i have
not a single pleasant memory,
feeling stupidly nostalgic
bemused
by the complexity
of the human heart
And that's that.
Come back next week for more if you liked what you got today.
Either way, all the work presented remains the property of its creators. The blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.
For an analysis of Wallace Stevens' poem:
Wallace Stevens’ Experimental Language: The Lion in the Lute. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Copyright © 1999 by Beverly Maeder.
Post a Comment
Introducing Katie Sottak Friday, May 01, 2009
Photo Provided by Katie Sottak
IV.5.1.
I was very pleased with my "Introducing Thomas Costales" issue two weeks ago and am doing it again, this time introducing young artist Katie Sottak. All of the images in this issue are Katie's work, including the lead photo of her standing in front of her mural "Midnight Magic."
Katie is currently studying art at Florida Atlantic University. She plans to obtain her masters degree in visual arts with a primary focus in painting. She got into her first gallery at the age of 18, and since then her work adorns the walls of coffee shops as well as Pineapple Grove Arts District of South Florida. She travels all around South Florida to display her work at art shows and events. During a show, she usually does a live painting in front of an audience. She plans on teaching at a college level when she obtains her degree and she will continue her goal of becoming an internationally known artist.
Also , I am sure that Michael Sottak, the poet whose work appears here frequently, wouldn't mind if I mention that Katie is his daughter.
So, we have Katie, and then here's the rest.
Discretion
ALISON MARSH HARDING
The Night of the Full Moon
ME
just having a bad day
CARTER REVARD
My Right Hand Don't Leave Me No More
JIM BARNES
An ex-Deputy Sheriff Remembers the Eastern Oklahoma Murderers
WENDY ROSE
Leaving Port Authority for the St. Regis Rezz
THANE ZANDER
The Day God's Balls Were Captured by Satan
CZESLAW MILOSZ
Vini Creator
Encounter
A Meadow
December 1
If There Is No God
Meaning
ME
poesis interruptus
LANGSTON HUGHES
I Dream a World
BOB KAUFMAN
Cocos Morning
GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON
Your World
GARY BLANKENSHIP
oozing through th joints of the stone
COLEMAN BARKS
Tu Fu Rephrased, and Kittsu
This
Spring Lizards
Me
on my own
LOPE DE VEGA
Various Effects of Love
VICENTE ALEIXANDRE
The Visitor
MIGUEL HERNANDEZ
The Train of the Wounded
BARBARA MOORE
Uncle Johnny
LORNA GODISON
Garden of the Women Once Fallen
RACHEL MANLEY
Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude
KENDEL HIPPOLYE
Poem in a Manger
ME
seeing what there is to see
"Tranquil Reflections" acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
From 180 More Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, the anthology of poems selected by Billy Collins, I have, first, a poem by Robert Wrigley.
Wrigley teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Idaho. A former Guggenheim and two-time National Endowment for the Arts fellow, he has published six books of poetry.
Discretion
Wearing only moonglow
and the fire's final shawls of smoke,
she made her way from the tent
at 2 a.m., then squatted to pee.
and the heavenly light showed me everything:
its cool tongues of silver lapping mountain
stones and the never-motionless leaves
of aspens, licking her back, her hips,
haunches and more, illuminating even the deep
green eyes of whatever animal it was
that watched her from the forest then -
a deer, I believed, and still believe,
though I confess I did not rise that night
to make sure, did not shine my light or murmur
but waited, letting my head
as she returned settle slowly back
down to the pillow made of my clothes
and welcomed her shivering
back into the tent, from which
I had sworn I would not look.
Also from Collins' anthology, I have this poem by Alison Marsh Harding, a native of Montana who now lives in California. Her poems have appeared in a number of fine journals.
The Night of the Full Moon
On Highway 5 the moon
is low and bright in the sky, a natural headlight.
It is not the orange globe of my childhood,
when the dish ran away with the spoon,
nor the oyster of last month,
pearlizing my walk through the lily garden.
It is the moon the general talked
about on the radio station Sunday morning,
when he said, "the night of the full moon,
is perfect to begin a war."
Now, I imagine the man in the moon
strobing the cannon of light,
across a field of soldiers and dust riddled road,
down the mountain and into the valley,
past abandoned clothes hanging on the line,
to the darkened house, a blazing guide.
"Shadows over Addingham Village" oil on canvas
by Katie Sottak
Ah, hell. What a rotten day! Don't talk to me.
just having a bad day
yesterday was nice,
fog over sun
in the early morning
bathing the world in a yellow light,
a mysterious light
suggesting forces were at work
laying our surprises
in the corners of the day
today it's just a dreary
April day
perfect for my mood
i grumble and grouch
and have done so
since waking,
embracing this dark day,
the north wind
cutting,
as i walk Reba,
right through the thin
short sleeved shirt
i slipped on this morning,
forgetting the vagaries of April weather
when 30 degrees one night
is followed by 101 two days later
then back to the 50s two days past that
...............
.
.
..... perhaps a burst of honesty
by the poet
at this point will bring some truth
to this stumbling exercise
this poem has been much to much work
to be any good
its prime difficulty
being
that the poet wants to blame a day
a little darker
and a little cooler than usual
as the cause
of his own rotten mood
a dodge he hates in other people,
the kind of people who apologize
for being an asshole
by saying things like - geez
i'm really sorry, but
i'm just having a bad day
we make our own bad moods
just as we make our own bad days
and the plain truth is
our whiny poet has decided to have a lousy day
today
and will accept no
substitutes
"Pumps" acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
Next, I have several poets from Harper's Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, published in 1988,
The first of the poets is Carter Revard, born in Oklahoma in 1931 and raised on the Osage reservation. After earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Tulsa he went to England as a Rhodes scholar to study at Oxford University, where he received his Masters degree. Revard received his doctorate in English in 1959 at Yale. He is currently a professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Revard is also a Gourd Dancer, and has served on the Board of the American Indian Center in St. Louis. His Osage name is Nompehwahteh which means "Fear-inspiring."
My Right Hand Don't Leave Me No More
When you were drunk you could always whip Joe Louis -
Lucky he never stopped by Bartlesville
On a Saturday night in the Green Lantern Saloon,
Or he'd have been forced to let you knock him out.
I think he'd have done it; not even the local bullies
Would take advantage when you were fighting drunk
And sober, you were so goddamned meek and truthful
You once outfaced the big fat deputy star
Who came to take our bootlegging uncle away.
My uncle was holding his breath up in our attic.
The sheriff believed he'd been around out place
but thought he'd hid out back somewhere in the hills.
The laws all knew that you never told a lie,
So when they'd searched, this one came out and asked,
"Now Alex, is your boy anywhere around here?"
"Wellsir," you said, straightfaced, "He was around."
One time though, I didn't think you'd make it.
Out in the chipstrewn yard beside my window
I saw you face the drunk with his butcher knife:
He raised it over your deprecating hands
And weary eyes that held its point with meekness -
I saw him halt and scowl, then stumble close:
"Old man, your time has come, you hear me old man?"
One thing you did kept his knife from slashing;
You did not meet his eyes. i saw him turn
Bewildered eyes to me; you took the knife
From his passive hands. I heard drunken apologies,
Then brought him into the house and had a drink with him.
You dealt with time, that way, and better ways:
You fixed he broken farm. Your hands once drove
A shining nail, squeaking under the hammer, into
The massive gatepost's new-peeled oaken bulk;
I marveled how those huge things yielded to you
Under strapegong blows of the hammer's bluesteel are
In the grip of your hands -
I thought your hands that held off shame and poverty
From all of us, could keep off death from you,
My grandfather, but I was gone when he came
And did not help. You died bringing in wood for the fire.
Jim Barnes is my second poet from the anthology.
Barnes, born in 1933 in Oklahoma, is of Choctaw-Welsh descent. In the 1950s, after high school, he migrated to Oregon, where he worked for ten years as a lumberjack. He returned to his home state to take a B. A. at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Later, he earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Arkansas. He has taught American and French languages and literatures, as well as world literature in translation, at Truman State University since 1970. In 1978, two years before the publication of his first book, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. Since 1980, he has published eight books of poetry, two of poetry in translation, one of criticism, and an autobiography. In 1980 his translation from the German of Dagmar Nick's Summons and Sign won the Translation Prize from The Translation Center. In 1990 he received a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency Fellowship. In 2003 he enjoyed another Bellagio Fellowship. In 1993-94 he held a Senior Fulbright Fellowship in Switzerland (University of Lausanne). The City of Munich (Germany) awarded him a two-month Translation Residency at Villa Walberta in 1995 to continue translating poems by the Munich poet Dagmar Nick. From January through May 1996 he held a Camargo Foundation Fellowship to Cassis, France, to continue work on a volume of poetry. On Native Ground: Memoirs and Impressions won an American Book Award for 1998. He was awarded a second Camargo Foundation Fellowship for 2001. For three months in 1998 and three months in 2000, he was Guest Writer at Akademie Schloss Solitude, in Stuttgart, Germany. He is presently Writer-in-Residence and Professor of Comparative Literature at Truman State University, where he also edits The Chariton Review, an international journal of poetry, fiction, essays, and translations.
from An ex-Deputy Sheriff Remembers the Eastern Oklahoma Murderers
i. Summerfield
They took a tire tool to his head,
this gentle stranger from Wyoming.
Oh, we caught them over
at Talihina drinking beer
at Lester's place, calling
the myna bird bad names
and shooting shuffleboard.
I'm telling you
they were meek in the muzzle
of our guns. They claimed innocence
and: why, they went fishing
with the Cowboy just he other day.
We said we knew, knew too
the way they stole him blind
that night. We spoke of blood,
the way the dogs had lapped his face.
The youngest of the three had brothers,
barely thirteen, began to cry:
"He told us everything was all right
and we hit him till he died."
And that is how it was ,
a simple thing like breathing,
they hit him until he died,
until he bled Wyoming dry
there on the road
to that part of Oklahoma
no stranger has ever owned.
ii. Red Oak
We shot the Choctaw way back in '94,
last legal execution by firing squad.
He didn't die, through the heart, square
and he didn't die.
The high sheriff, my old boss,
stuffed his own shirt down
the Choctaw's neck
to sop the rattle in his throat.
You couldn't shoot a downed man
no matter what and he had to die.
Damned good Choctaw, I'll say that.
Red Oak had no jail and it was too
blasted cruel to execute him
before his crop was in. The judge
scheduled it for the fall, first Saturday
after the corn was in the Choctaw's crib.
That damn fool Choctaw gathered
his corn like any other dirt farmer,
dressed clean, and kept his word.
"I'm ready" is all he said that day.
You got to admire a man like that,
Indian or not, murderer or just plain fool.
He'd shot three men for sleeping
in his barn and taking the milk bucket
away from his little girl, though she
wasn't harmed at all, and he showed up
just like he said he would.
There
was a picnic in the shade after we choked
the Choctaw to death and took the rifle home.
First time I'd ever seen a camera,
big damned black thing on legs,
smelled like seven kinds of sin every time
it popped. Had fresh hominy and chicken and the last
of some damned fine late sweet red watermelons.
My next poet is Wendy Rose.
Born in California in 1948 of Hopi and Miwok heritage, Rose grew up in an environment which placed little regard on her Native roots. She received her B.A. and M.A. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976 and 1978, respectively. Her teaching career includes instructor in Native American and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, 1979-83, California State University, Fresno, 1983-84, and Fresno City College, 1984-. She is also an anthropologist.
Leaving Port Authority for the St. Regis Rezz
I saw a mesa
between two buildings,
a row of tall
thin houses on top
bare like the desert I know,
the roofs occurring
in clumps like greasewood. Oh Wendy, he said,
looking at his fingernails,
that's Weehawken.
Well
one way or another
we'll get some
where soon
for I have seen crows
dancing on the snow,
a hawk on Henry Street,
smoke plumes on the lips
of streetkids,
mesas
along the Hudson.
I am getting ready.
"Serene" acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
Over the past eight-ten years, I've posted poetry on the web with lots of poets. Many are good; some are not. But most of us are what we are, doing essentially what we've done since we started.
Thane Zander, our friend from New Zealand, is a different case. The truth is, when I first started reading his work years ago, it wasn't among my favorites. But it seems with each new poem he writes, Thane becomes a better poet, reaching further, digging deeper and, finally, producing amazing work, like this next piece, one of his latest.
The imagery and passion and fire and unique Thane-Zander-voice of this poem astounds me.
The Day God's Balls Were Captured By Satan
The blue painted and wearing balustrade
counts the memories of several thousand
pliant and placated hands,
washed
unwashed
the dirty nails scratching and bending
into a music hall delivered from the Halls of Hell.
Suck a Lemon child, your viscous tongue beholds the demon,
your yellow spoiled frock the blood
of a thousand infantrymen,
a hundred thousand Blessed Virgin Mary's,
your lollipop stick holds succor
to a baby with teeth
and a little boy with no balls yet.
You see the eyes of Beelzebub shine like coal pits
and the frozen North Wind pockets the eight ball,
a sullen party goer kissed by a female vixen
runs with the ochre of life running from his groin,
the passenger passes,
the passerby seeks passage,
the red headed ex-blonde smiles a perfect smile,
paid for with several years of massaging God's Balls
in a church whose spire hides bells,
the time chimed;
the duck fucked;
with a shotgun blast in a protected park;
who says the winners dresses in pink?
In the Halls of Valhalla, the Norsemen drink to Odin
in a Vatican in it's own city, the Pope prays,
in a reservation in West Idaho, the boneshaker rattles,
in a street of Main and Third, a drunk shits in a corner,
each with a mission in life,
the purple of damnation
sex starved
demented
rejected
over and over and bloody over,
the licorice green/black from years of practice
indicates it's time to chew the stuff
to spit with dark green teeth,
to perpetuate the myth
that God got his balls caught by Satan - in a fair fight.
Today, life would seem that way inclined.
"Escape" acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
My next poems are by Nobel Prize poet Czeslaw Milosz from his book Selected Poems, 1931-2004, published by HarperCollins in 2006.
Miloz was born in 1911 in Lithuania. He survived World War II in Warsaw, publishing in the underground press. After the war he served as cultural attache from Poland in the United States and France. He defected to France in 1951 and accepted a position at the University of California at Berkeley in 1960. Although his writing was banned in Poland at the time, he was awarded his Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. He died in Krakow in 2004.
Vini Creator
Come, Holy Spirit.
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame.
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow
covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore call one man, anywhere on earth,
not me - after all I have some decency -
and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.
Berkeley, 1961
Encounter
We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn
A red wing rose in the darkness.
and suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand
That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.
O my love, where are they, where are they going -
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.
Wilno, 1936
A Meadow
It was a riverside meadow, lush, from before the hay harvest,
On an immaculate day in the sun of June.
I searched for it, found it, recognized it.
Grasses and flowers grew there familiar in my childhood.
With half-closed eyelids I absorbed luminescence,
And the secret garnered me, all knowing ceased,
Suddenly I felt I was disappearing and weeping for joy.
December 1
The vineyard country, russet, reddish, carmine-brown this season.
A blue outline of hills above a fertile valley.
It's warm as long as the sun does not set, in the shade cold returns.
A strong sauna and then swimming in a pool surrounded by trees.
Dark redwoods, transparent pale-leaved birches.
In their delicate network, a sliver of the moon.
I describe this for I have learned to doubt philosophy
And the visible world is all that remains.
If There Is No God
If there is no God,
Not everything is permitted to man.
He is still his brother's keeper
And he is not permitted to sadden his brother,
By saying that there is no God.
Meaning
- When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.
- And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on a branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?
- Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.
'Ultramarine' acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
As I think I've mentioned before, I don't much like holidays because of the way they interrupt my life.
poesis interruptus
i stopped off
at my friendly local
gas-grocery-beer-cigarettes
convenience store
for money
after my morning coffee
and newspaper read
at my usual table
at my usual diner
with the usual Sunday morning
dueling churchfolk
to the behind and either side of me,
including an extra place or two
at each table
filled by the twice-a-year
Christians
who, it would seem,
get all the saving they need
on Christmas and Easter,
securing all other Sunday mornings
for sleeping late or golf
discovering,
after my third cup,
that i had no cash
but for four pennies
three dimes, two quarters
and a canadian coin
i've been trying to pass
for two weeks now
leaving me to pay
my $1.94 coffee tab
with a credit card.....
.....it is at this point in the story
that the poet is interrupted
by life outside the poem -
poesis interruptus -
and the question is 4 hours later
as to whether
he can get it up again
to finish
what he had most ardently
begun
at first you might think
that returning to the poem
half finished is a process of
separating
the wheat of earlier inspiration
from the chaff
of the humdrum interim,
but that's not the case
because with proper
poetic recognition
of reality
all could be one and
each could be the other
with no separation
necessary or
possible
integration the need instead,
finding the wheat in the
essence
of all chaff
and the chaff that infiltrates
all wheat
like the small strip shopping center
by the gas-grocery-beer-cigarette store
where i stopped to use the ATM machine,
anchored by a large vacant "$1 Store"
close up to the "X-treme Impact Church"
next to "Alive MMA - Brazilian Jiu Jitsu"
adjacent to the "Gathering of Grace Church"
neighbor to "Fantasy Nails and Tan"
snuggled up tightly to "Tattoos and Piercings"
sharing a common wall with "Gin's Chinese
Restaurant"
it's all
like that shopping center,
all the disparate bits and pieces,
all the wheats and chaffs
of everyday urban life,
swirled together by the mix master
of every day living,
making....
the single and complete
here and now
of this particular
and unique
Easter Sunday morning
another party
to which i am not invited
because i will not pay the price
of admission -
separation of sinners from the saved
rather than the embracing unity of all mankind,
some sinner
in every saint and a bit of saint
in every sinner
wheat from chaff
i am one
and i am both
and cannot separate my one self
from the other
or either
from
you
"A night in Paris" oil on canvas
by Katie Sottak
Next I have a couple of poems from the anthology American Negro Poetry, published Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, in 1974.
The first of the poems is by Langston Hughes who was born in Missouri in 1902. He was a poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, columnist and one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best-known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He died in 1967.
I Dream a World
I dream a world where man
No other will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its path adorn.
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way.
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
and every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head,
And joy, like a pearl,
Attend the needs of all mankind.
Of such I dream -
Our world!
My next poet from the American Negro Poetry anthology is Bob Kaufman
Kaufman was a Beat poet and surrealist inspired by jazz music. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was known as the "American Rimbaud." Born in 1925, he died in 1986.
Cocos Morning
Variations on a theme by morning.
Two lady birds move in the distance.
Gray jail looming, bathed in sunlight.
Violin tongues Whispering.
Drummer, hummer, on the floor,
Dreaming of wild beats, softer still,
Yet free of violent city noise,
Please sweet morning,
Stay here forever.
Finally, from the anthology, I have a lesser-known poet, Georgia Douglas Johnson, born in 1880 and died in 1966. Johnson was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.
Your World
Your world is as big as you make it.
I know, for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner,
My wings pressed close to my side.
But I sighted the distant horizon
Where the sky line encircled the sea
and I throbbed with a burning desire
To travel this immensity.
I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease!
"Crimson Horizon" acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
Gary Blankenship wrote this very tight poem last week and posted it on Blueline's "House of 30." I like it very much.
The title is a quote from Henry Fuseli writing about slave forts in Africa. Gary says he found it in the book The Decline and Fall of the British Empire by Piers Brendon.
oozing through the joints of the stone
The stones seep blood
like rock struck by Moses' staff,
the stain as dark as a slaver's heart
steel
concrete
asphalt
plastic
rubber
leach
humanity
until those who protect
as stone hard
as the destroyers
deep in the dungeons
of old forts
the sound of whips continue
"Sublime Spot" acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
Coleman Barks published his first book of poetry, The Juice, in 1972. Since then, he has been know primarily for his translations of the 13th century mystic, Rumi. The poems that follow were selected from his book, Gourd Seed, a collection of his own work, published by Maypop Books of Athens,Georgia in 1993.
Tu Fu Rephrased, and Kittsu
A drizzling rain feeds the moss on the rocks
and slows down the mail.
Inside the mountain's cold afternoon shadow,
a black bull makes a lowing noise.
By the river a white gull
screams out how hungry.
Inlaid hairpins drop to the floor.
She's sitting by her loom, almost crying.
This will not come untangled,
all day staring at threads.
This
After a long time of not, I light a cigar I'm given
for a baby girl, and sit like my father used to sit
on the porch, late, in the dark, in underwear.
Mother had gone to bed. I would sit with him.
We didn't talk much, or whatever we said was
just part of being inside a summer night,
with its one orange focal point,
the breath-lit sun of his silence
Spring Lizards
Where the filter of the hill
empties, I dig a miniature circular lake,
a foot across and a foot deep,
and leave to let it clear and come back,
to arrange creek rocks around the edge
and leave to let that clear and come back
to fill a mason jar and a coffee carafe
with spring water.
I have never been so slaked
with the mystery of freshness.
And now I've left for two weeks and come back
to find tiny spring lizards
living in the well-place I dug,
little waterbaby salamanders
under the sweetness of galax
and rhododendron around the opening,
that leads up through reticulated rapids
and invisible passageways smooth with giving
the patience and hallucination
of groundwater into this mouth where
beings play in the clear
like tongues, like sounds that hide
so instantly, or pretend to hide.
Nothing can actually hide
its fear or its wiggly joy
in so transparent a pool.
"Sippin on Seduction" oil on canvas
by Katie Sottak
Getting thing in order - the hardest part of leaving for me.
on my own
it was heaping plate of frustration
for breakfast this morning,
scrambled,
with a mix of crisp-fried angst
and three dollops of most wretched
resignation
twelve things to do before
Reba and i set out Wednesday
in our little red RAV
for Denver, a dose of mountains and snow
sorely needed as the seasons here
begin their change
from not-so-bad to gates-of-hell
twelve things
on nobody's agenda but my own
"casa blanca"
by Katie Sottak
I picked this interesting book at a used book store for the grand price of $1.98. It is Introduction to Spanish Poetry, published in 1965 by Dover Publications. It is one of a number of dual-language publications by Dover, intended for use by students of the various languages it's publications covered, from Arabic to Swahili.
One of the poets in the book is Lope de Vega, born and 1562 and died in 1635. A writer of all types of materials, de Vega was, in his day, best known for his plays. He claimed to have written 1,800, of which 500 survive today, and was instrumental in the creation of Spain's national theater.
Born in Madrid, he enjoyed a number of lovers, as well as two wives, and was a volunteer in the great Armada that threatened, unsuccessfully, England. He was ordained a priest in 1614, which did little to curtail his various love affairs.
I like this poem - a little 16th century tongue-in-cheek. I can't find credit anywhere in the for the translation of this or any of the other poems.
Various Effects of Love
To be fainthearted, to be bold, to be raging mad,
surly, tender generous, aloof,
courageous, near death, dead, alive,
loyal, treacherous, cowardly, spirited.
Not to find, beyond your lover, satisfaction or peace.
To look happy, sad, humble, arrogant,
irate, valiant, self-effacing,
satisfied, offended, distrustful.
To turn your face from clear proofs of deceit,
to drink poison as if it were a soothing liquor,
to disregard gain and delight in being injured.
To believe that heaven can lie contained in hell;
to devote your life and soul to being disillusioned;
this is love; whoever has tasted it, knows.
The next poet from the book is Vicente Aleixandre. Born in 1900 in Seville, Aleixandre lived most of his life in Madrid. Because of frail health, he lived a mostly secluded life devoted primarily to writing. He belonged to a group known as the Generation of 1927, When the Civil War started, many of the group went into exile. Aleixandre stayed and mentored younger poets and, in time, became a link between them and the older Generation of 1927 exiles.
Aleixandre died in 1984.
The Visitor
Here too I entered, in this house.
Here I saw the mother sewing.
A girl, almost a woman (one would say: how tall, how beautiful she is
becoming),
raised her large dark eyes, that were not looking at me.
Another child, a tiny shadow, hardly a cry, a small noise on he floor
touched my legs gently, without noticing me.
Outside, near the door, an unworried man was hammering on a piece of
iron.
I entered, but nobody noticed me.
I entered through the door to go out through another.
A wind seemed to shake their clothes.
And the girl raised her face, her big, vague eyes, and raised her fingers to
her forehead.
A deep, quiet sigh escaped the mother's breast.
The child felt tired and softly closed his eyes.
The father stayed his hammer and set his gaze on the blue line of the
twilight
My last poet from this book is Miguel Hernandez.
Hernandez was born in Orihuela in 1910. He was a shepherd for some time and was mostly self-educated. He began to read poetry, then began to write it. He died in 1942 in prison after the end of the Civil War. He was only 32 years old and in his short life became a strong influence for younger generations of Spanish poets.
The Train of the Wounded
Silence shipswrecked in the silence
of the mouths closed at night.
It does not cease to be silent or to traverse it.
It speaks the drowned language of the dead
Silence.
It opens roads of deep cotton,
gags the wheels of the watches,
stops the voice of the ocean, of the dove:
it stirs with emotion the night of dreams.
Silence
The rainy train of flowing blood,
the fragile train of the bleeding,
the silent, painful, pallid train,
the hushed train of suffering.
Silence.
Trains of the mounting mortal pallor:
the pallor coating the heads,
the cry of pain, the voice, the heart, the ground,
the hearts of the badly wounded.
Silence.
They are spilling out legs, arms, eyes -
they are spilling out fragments all over the train.
they pass, leaving a wake of bitterness,
a second Milky Way of starry limbs.
Silence.
A hoarse, faltering, reddened train:
the coal is dying, the smoke sighs,
and the engine sighs like a mother
and pushes forward like a long dejection.
Silence.
This long mother would like to stop
in a tunnel and lie down to sob.
there are no stations to stop at,
except in the hospital of the heart.
To lie, a fragment is enough:
a man can squeeze into a corner of flesh.
A single finger, a single piece of wing
can support the total flight of the entire body.
Silence.
Stop that dying train
that never ceases to cross the night.
And even the horse remains unshod,
and sand gets into its hoofs and breath.
"Sunset silhouette" acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
Here's another character piece, this one by our friend Barbara Moore.
Uncle Johnny
My dad and I observed him
taking prisoners
at Joan McGrover's wedding
in the hotel suite
From our corner, drinks in hand
solitary companions
in mute dismay
we watched him work the room
Uncle Johnny to me
four flusher to my dad
he glad-handed all
beguiling his prey
Pumping hands, flashing teeth
he moved from clique to clan
flattering the flappable
goosing the glib with gab
working every angle
tweaking each detail
for "a sure thing, easy money"
his tongue silver, never still
He was always "on"
and folks were always fooled
"Just look at him," I said
"What a piece of work" my dad replied.
"Island Fusion" acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
The next poems are from the anthology Crossing Water - Contemporary Poetry of The English-Speaking Caribbean, published by the Greenfield Review Press in 1992. The book's editor, poet and novelist Anthony Kellman, selected the poems included in the book. Born in Barbados, he attended graduate school in the United States
and is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at Augusta College, Georgia.
The first poem is by Lorna Goodison, Jamaican poet, painter, fiction writer, art teacher and public relations consultant. Her first collection of poems, Tamarind Season, appeared in 1981. She is one of the best know poets in the Carribean.
Garden of the Women Once Fallen
I
Shame Mi Lady
Lady, what could you have done so
to make you close in on yourself so?
The lady folds her arms across her chest
The lady droops her head between her breasts.
The lady's eyes will not answer yours
Lady, if I tell you my crime
will you tell me yours?
Mine are legend and all to do with love misplaced
yet I've been replanted in this arboreal place,
now, if I can find favour (me with my bold face)
you bashful you shy you innocent lady
must/bound to find absolution/grace.
Come lady, tie bright ribbon-grass around your waist
Let you and I bloom redemption in this place.
II
Broom Weed
You exhaust yourself so
O weed powerless
your life devoted to sweeping, cleaning
even in your blooming.
You pull dust balls from the air
whisk away bee-droppings
with your coarsened hair.
And in your fullness
they bundle you
without so much
as a by-your-leave.
Drudges, make a coat of arms
wear broomweed on your sleeves.
III
Poui
She don't put out for just anyone.
She waits for HIM
and in his high august heat
he takes her
and their celestial mating
is so intense
that for weeks her rose-gold dress
lies tangled round her feet
and she don't even notice.
IV
Sunflower Possessed
Her folded neck-skin
reveals her age
but the face powdered
is limned by myriads
of mirrors and gold-washed frills.
This display for the benefit
of the perfect one in the sky.
To the ragged coterie of weeds round her
she says, "In my first bloom I was
the tender honey-skinned mamma
of that great golden one on high."
The ragged weeds
never knowing glory
(for this reason some weeds are evil)
shiver their rags and hiss
"sure"
she semaphores, hoping
the golden circle of her unmaking
will give her they go round once more.
The next poem is by Rachel Manley a Jamaican poet born in England, raised in Jamaica, and currently living in Canada. She is a daughter of former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley.
Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Old men tell better tales.
Somewhere in exile
Between rumour
And the slow revenge of memory
The veins of a continent
Crawl like snakes between stones
You laugh from the belly
Of the tribe's womb,
On the vocabulary of blackbirds
Words fly to meet carnage;
Black black Orpheus.
Before these cities
That have come to look the same
Truth had its own shape,
Magic was magic...
Those whose eyes are windowless
live chained to a tree
And she is love
Who wanders through the generations
collecting bones
For the library,
Listening to the returning confessions
Of the broken rosary of blood...
It is the knowledge
And the mercy of the mind
That are insomniac.
My last poet from Crossing Water is Kendel Hippolyte. Born in St. Lucia in 1952, he is a teacher, playwright, actor, director, poet, and musician.
Poem in a Manger
where is the poem?
not on this page i'm looking at and reading from.
where is the poem?
not here, not in these miserable words i'm writing now
though i have to write them, though you have to
read them, see them, hear them.
cause really, if i could, i'd make this page
howl at you, the paper burn crisp, the letters burst
like pustules and pressurized blood vessels, so you
would see
on opening this inadequate irrelevant book
flipping this ridiculous bit of paper
not a "poem"
but a baby blackening and charred and smoking still
cindered by its private holocaust-to-come
if the baby
(that's its ear you're holding at the corner of the page -
let go!)
could curl and stretch and stiffen
one last time like a burnt page in a still wind
if this baby
would show its blackening sooty teeth
like letters hitting a page
without a w o r d
if it would turn over on its back
contracting to a bitter foetus, regretting every screaming
moment it was in the blank book of the living
if you'd see this
hear this, touch the wincing flesh of it
just as you turned this page
if you'd see - goddamn it, why don't you! -
that the baby on this page, disguised as a raving poem
'is you, really all the time is you
then how
would there ever be again another war
another flash of nitroglycerine
another tin soldier flashing tin-medalled teeth
another jack-booted "yes-i'm ready" puppet in the box
another and another and another
wall-eyed uniformed somebody's son to press or pull or
push or ram
the triggers, switches, levers, plungers, pins, parapher-
nalia of the
weltering world-waste of another war?
how would there be
if this baby, swaddled in words, lying on this inade-
quate page
would burn alive
before your eyes and howling all the time
that it was you?
if you would see, they you'd see why
the poem isn't on this fucking page
then you'd see where the poem has gone
and why i'm trying to use these useless goddamn
words! to catch it, and
why i need you to
help me do that
look at the page again:
these are just words
let us go find the poem.
"Wine Glasses of Funk" acrylic on canvas
by Katie Sottak
Here I am, getting things a little backward, ending this week where I started last.
seeing what there is to see
dropped Reba off
at the beauty parlor
for a bath
and stink-abatement
we'll be driving together
for ten days
beginning tomorrow
and her addiction
to rolling in anything
offering the slightest promise
of disgusting
- it's her jones, you know -
makes her not the most pleasant
traveling companion
in a small SUV
de-rankafication
before we leave is a
pre-journey requirement
if all goes to plan
we'll be in Roswell
tomorrow night and
Denver the night after,
D joining us Friday
via the magic of human flight
- being non-disposed to magic, i do not fly -
four days
of the sights and sounds of Denver
and D will head for home
via that old black magic
she know so well while i
take four or five days
to do the same,
enjoying along the way
the essence of the Southwest
from ground level - no scurrying
ants for me - stopping when i want
for a Pepsi Cola and a Moon Pie
or a walk in a park with Reba -
other things you can't do
at 40,000 feet
having been to Denver
only once, and that for
the sole purpose of driving
200 miles out of the way
to worship at the Shrine of Red Rocks,
enshrined, according to my son,
by the several times the natural
amphitheater provided venue
for the Dave Matthews Band
i assume
there is something else to do in Denver
whatever it is,
we'll have four days to find it
"A Day of Fishing"
by Katie Sottak
That's it for another week.
I'm back now from my travels for a while. Tired though; 3.000 miles driving in 6 days wore me like it didn't used to. Still game for the next one though.
Until next week, I remind again - all the work included in this blog remains the property of its creators; the blog itself was produced by and is the property of me...allen itz.
Post a Comment